Descending Road - SHE SPAT THE WORDS OUT LIKE POISON by Dana W. Paxson

SHE SPAT THE WORDS OUT LIKE POISON

1563 4D

The four of them stood together at the end of a long tubular corridor running directly away from the lift and fading into shadow. A gray light came from a small round fixture overhead in a recess in the rock. On top of the lift car three bodies lay tangled in a heap; Andrew reached over and touched one. Burned stumps, shell-like greaves shattered and jutting beyond the cauterized flesh, marked where its legs had been. “Chitin,” he said. “I used to see this kind of thing in Poly Town. Bugs.”

“Like I said, choppers,” Ezzar replied. “They hunt, and they hack, and they suck, and they’re faster than Grendel.”

One of the three bodies, on its back across the others, showed only a void where its belly and spine had been. Its head hung off the top of the car, thrown back, staring with huge black hex-tiled eyes upside down at Andrew and the others. The face seemed almost human, with eyes, nose, mouth, cheekbones and brows in the right places; but the eyes, lidless and shining indigo-black, bugged out like goggles, giving a wider-than-human field of vision; the mouth and jaw, with slash-cut lips now slack and hung open, thrust forward and narrowed into a muzzle with great ripping teeth; the nose opened along nearly the entire muzzle in a series of raised parallel lengthwise folds; the ears, barely visible under the spread of the natural helm‘s edge, recessed versions of the nose; and rising from the thick neck in the rear to cap the overhung brows, a sectioned, gray-green helm of anchitin bulged like crowded mushrooms through orifices in the leathery skin. One great arm hung beside the head, its forearm section greaved with gray anchitin and showing some calligraphic marks incised in a delicate line.

Ezzar glanced around. “Look at this.” She scuffed at a metal plate in the stone wall. Scratched almost to illegibility, raised marks on it showed the number 780. “Shit.” She spat the words out like poison. “This is near the bottom. We’re in Babiar.”

Story List	SURPRISE ME	Author Page
USER SURVEY	PUZZLE ME	MAKE ELM MARK

HOVER Lucida Bright BARE	HOVER Lucida Bright FULL	HOVER Palatino Linotype BARE
HOVER Palatino Linotype FULL	HOVER Times New Roman BARE	HOVER Times New Roman FULL
PAD Arial BARE	PAD Arial FULL	PAD Lucida Bright BARE
PAD Lucida Bright FULL	PAD Times New Roman BARE	PAD Times New Roman FULL


	SHE SPAT THE WORDS OUT LIKE POISON 1563 4D The four of them stood together at the end of a long tubular corridor running directly away from the lift and fading into shadow. A gray light came from a small round fixture overhead in a recess in the rock. On top of the lift car three bodies lay tangled in a heap; Andrew reached over and touched one. Burned stumps, shell-like greaves shattered and jutting beyond the cauterized flesh, marked where its legs had been. “Chitin,” he said. “I used to see this kind of thing in Poly Town. Bugs.” “Like I said, choppers,” Ezzar replied. “They hunt, and they hack, and they suck, and they’re faster than Grendel.” One of the three bodies, on its back across the others, showed only a void where its belly and spine had been. Its head hung off the top of the car, thrown back, staring with huge black hex-tiled eyes upside down at Andrew and the others. The face seemed almost human, with eyes, nose, mouth, cheekbones and brows in the right places; but the eyes, lidless and shining indigo-black, bugged out like goggles, giving a wider-than-human field of vision; the mouth and jaw, with slash-cut lips now slack and hung open, thrust forward and narrowed into a muzzle with great ripping teeth; the nose opened along nearly the entire muzzle in a series of raised parallel lengthwise folds; the ears, barely visible under the spread of the natural helm‘s edge, recessed versions of the nose; and rising from the thick neck in the rear to cap the overhung brows, a sectioned, gray-green helm of anchitin bulged like crowded mushrooms through orifices in the leathery skin. One great arm hung beside the head, its forearm section greaved with gray anchitin and showing some calligraphic marks incised in a delicate line. Ezzar glanced around. “Look at this.” She scuffed at a metal plate in the stone wall. Scratched almost to illegibility, raised marks on it showed the number 780. “Shit.” She spat the words out like poison. “This is near the bottom. We’re in Babiar.”