From: mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon)
Subject: Jungle Man
Date: 11 Nov 92 18:46:55 GMT




Alistaire froze on the edge of a chasm.  What little light there
was glinted off the surface of a subterranean lake.  Perhaps two
hundred feet below.  Drowned tenements.

Drip.

Drip.

Splash.

It was a long way down, and it was a long way across.  Perhaps
only fifteen feet,  but far enough.  Alistaire studied the chasm.
Studied the exposed beams.  His combat radar array sprang to life,
mapping the area.

Alistaire leapt.

He landed.  His foot slid.  Part of the surface was giving under
his weight.  He had not distributed it well.  To focused.  The lip
of concrete crumbled.  He lost his balance.

He fell backwards.

But he didn't fall far.  A powerful hand grabbed his calf.  The
cougar.  Damn,  thought Alistaire.  So damn fast!

Drip.

Drip.

Splash.

Alistaire hung in space.  Straps kept his overcoat in place.  The
heavy material was armor, and it was best kept in close to the
body.  Other straps kept his weapons from falling.  His pistol and
his personal cannon.

He could feel webs all around him.

Sticky and strong.

He batted at them with his arms.  Would the spider come out?
Probably.  If it was big, it would show up on his combat array.
If it didn't, it wasn't worth worrying about.

Drip.

Drip.

Three spiders.  Moving fast.

The cougar was pulling him up.  Again.  How humiliating.

But the webs were sticking.  The spiders would climb onto him,
their bulbous black bodies the size of his fist. It made his skin
crawl.  He grabbed at them as they came.  They bit at him as he
grabbed.

Squeezed.

He could feel dull stabs.  A normal man would be screaming in
agony, his hand pierced nearly through.  But only a few upper
layers of almost-skin were pierced.  The spiders died with a loud
pop.

The last one just before it reached his face.

The cougar lifted him over the concrete lip.  Alistaire got to his
feet.  His hand had started to hurt.  Bubbles of poison, each
nearly half an inch in diameter, had been pumped beneath the skin.
The poison was the real threat.  It would seep ever deeper into
his system.  He had anti-toxins, but this stuff was strong.  Damn
strong.  And it caused pain.  Attacked the nerves.  Set them on
fire.

It paralyzed with pain.

Alistaire fumbled around in his jacket.

"Thanks," he said, as he pulled out a little knife.

The cougar didn't reply, just watched as Alistaire carefully
pierced the bubbles, letting the clear poison drain across his
hand.

"Still going to hurt like hell, I'm afraid," he said as he slipped
the knife back into his jacket.  "Like hell."

The cougar nodded.


---------------------


The cougar had taken him to an abandoned tower.  Part of what was
once a corporate hotel.  Its halls had accomodated some of the
wealthiest, deadlist men and women the world has ever known.  But
now they were empty, silent passageways.

In many places, the floors had fallen away.  Platforms were
connected by narrow, steel beams.  Perfect for a cat house.
Alistaire moved towards a window.  It reminded him of the back bay
of an antique bomber.

He was perhaps twenty floors above the Street, now.

There was a hamock.  The cougar had indicated he could sleep here.
He would be safe.  The Cats were supreme, now.  The other gangs
had been relegated to technological inferiority.  Out of ammo,
their ranks thinned by the Metal Plague - they were just human.
With weapons that couldn't puncture the bio-enhanced skin of these
strange felines.  Few in number, they ruled the Core.

Alistaire wondered if his encounter with the prowling black
panther had not been engineered.  Surely the gang was closely
affiliated with those tenancious, silent hunters.

Alistaire stared into the Core.  Towards the old City Hall.

Despite the hostile environment, the Core was not abandoned.  Not
at all.  Fires burned in the darkness.  Controled fires.  The
provence of man.  Advanced as they had become, the cybernetic cats
and the terrifying spiders still could not master fire.

In the heart of Los Angeles, humanity had reverted to packs of
primitive tribes.  They lived as man had lived before the
industrial age.  Their language was spoken, not written.  Schools
had been among the first casualties of the Fall.  Writing was
secondary to survival.

Agricultural, these tribes.  Hydro-agrarian societies, of no more
than a few hundred members each.  The massive sky-scrappers and
housing complexes built at the turn of the century had begun to
incorporate the most advanced agricultural technologies, largely
eliminating a dependence on the farms of the drying central
valley.  Several city planners had seen the Fall coming, and
realized that the cities would starve if they did not fend for
themselves.  The new projects were among the first to benefit from
their foresight.

And the technology was sustainable, even without vast technical
knowledge.  Especially with the advent of artificially stimulated
rain storms.

Like the one that was brewing off the cost.  Alistaire could see,
in the moonlight, a billowing wall of steam rising to the West.
The winds would carry it inland.  And it would rain.

Rain like hell.

His hand hurt.

Alistaire returned a glance to the Core.  Somewhere in there was
the man he was looking for.  Eldritch Morrison.  An archaeologist.
And a wizard of technology.

"A fucking missionary," said Alistaire to the broken window as he
sat delicately in the hammock.

He was tired.  The hammock was comfortable.  He stretched out and
looked up at the ceiling.  There wouldn't be any spiders here.
The cougar would keep his den clean.  Though the cougar was
nowhere to be seen.  Just as well.  Alistaire wished the Cats had
kept the common decency to keep themselves clothed.

Typical Brit, he could hear his commrades saying.

"Typical Brit."

Alistaire went to sleep.


---------------------


Ten year ago, Alistaire was a younger man.  More than the passage
of time had aged him.  The world was tamer now.  And he had tamed
it.  Like the Wild West.  He was a marshal, an emissary of the
Law.  And he had brought order to the chaos.

The Law.

That was Baalphegor.  She was absolute.  The Judge.  The highest
authority in all of California.  Even the corporate mayors
deferred to her.  Even now.  They ruled in the arcologies.  In the
Wilshire Corridor and New Babylon.  But Baalphegor was absolute.

The Queen of Hell.

And she was a product of another time.  And in this time, she was
to man as a dinosaur would be to man:  an being to inspire fear
and awe.  But she was not alone.  There were others like her.
Three others.

Alistaire had seen pictures of one.  Prometheus Mage.  Like
Baalphegor, he looked human.  Aside from the brilliant golden
skin, he looked human.  But the other two.  They looked the part
of the monsters they were.  And Alistaire had come face to face
with one of those.

And his life changed.

It was not a routine AB sortie.  AB.  Anti-biotic.  It had become
very fashionable to refer to the workings of a society in
biological terms.  An Anti-Biotic Sortie was a raid.  Entire city
blocks would be sealed off and destroyed.

Completely and utterly destroyed.

Baalphegor had implemented this policy.  Ruthlessly.  And with it,
she brought Los Angeles back from the Edge.  Many, many people had
wanted Baalphegor dead.  But she was power incarnate, and her will
was the Law.  The Anti-Biotic Sorties went on.  The dangerous
cells were destroyed, such that the body could live.

But Baalphegor herself went on this AB sortie.  That hadn't
happened in years.  Her silver Salamander jet - a military fighter
craft beyond the wildest imaginations of even the deadliest Street
lords.

Prometheus Mage had given it to her as his parting gift.

Alistaire remembered sitting in a chopper, covered with armor and
bristling with weapons, skimming above the urban sprawl.  The sun
burned menacingly in the sky, as the security forces coordinated
their strike.  Alistaire watches units move into position on the
surface.  He imagined the terror of those within the condemed zone
as the containment walls went up.

No escape.

No mercy.

That was Baalphegor's way.

It was routine, until the Salamander flew by.  A screaming hawk of
silver and gold.  Power.  It radiated power.  In it's graceful
arcs.  In the subtle shifts of steal feathers.  It was the highest
of high-technology.  Near-perfect mechanical reproduction of a
bird of prey.  Every feather, functional.  And it was built for
one pilot.  Each Salamander in the air had been built for the one
pilot flying it.

Alistaire's heart started pounding.  Baalphegor didn't do
publicity stunts.  The Queen of Hell didn't need stunts.  She was
here.  She had left her perch, atop the Griffith ziggurat.  That
meant only one thing.

Something big.