From: mattm@apple.com (Matthew Melmon)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Subject: Jungle Man
Date: 6 Oct 92 22:40:44 GMT
Followup-To: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo
Organization: Apple Computer, Inc.


The burning skies hid behind a wall of decay.  Condemned buildings, 
fifty stories high.  Between them, a narrow strip of florescent fire.  
The only light.  But Alistaire Niles didn't need light.  Ghostly 
silhouettes danced before his radiant eyes.  Phantom pools of red in the 
blackness of his form.  Alistaire's steps were careful.  Calculated.  
Beneath him, the old urban growth extended as far down as it did up.  
Through gaping holes in the surface, the unsuspecting could plummet 
hundreds of feet into a spider's web of rusted iron and broken glass.

And spiders.  Real spiders.

Not a pleasant death.

But even the suspecting had to be wary.  The surface was not always as 
solid as it seemed.  Pitfalls beneath every potential step.  The gangs 
knew where to walk.  Where to run.  The safe paths were committed to 
memory.  To live here and not know where to step was not to live here 
very long.

A plume of burning gas burst up from the depths.  For a moment, 
challenging the flaming clouds.  Then gone.

This was but one Hell among many on what has become of God's earth, 
thought Alistaire.  But he was not afraid.  Alistaire was a demon.  And 
he served the Queen of Demons.

A cat.  Alistaire stopped.  No house cat.  A real cat.  A mountain lion 
adapted to life in this burned out jungle.  Dogs couldn't live here.  
This was not a land for stray packs of wolves, not like The Valley.  
This was the Core.  Only cats had the balance to prowl these steel 
trees.  Dark, black, sinewy.  These cats were beasts to fear. The gangs 
feared them.  Stray travelers certainly feared them.  Even Alistaire had 
cause to fear.  He felt the little hairs on the back of his neck itch.

The beast snarled.  A silent hiss.  Alistaire didn't move.  The cat 
would know the ground, too.  Know when and where to jump.  And it would 
jump, as soon as Alistaire moved.  He tried to make out it's entire 
form.  

Very difficult.  Its grease-slicked coat nearly matched the temperature 
of the air.  Thermal prints were impossible.  Not enough spare UV rained 
down from above to pierce the gloom.  Alistaire could see the fangs and 
hear the breath.  

But that was more than most could do.  The cat was puzzled.  The strange 
deer on two legs didn't usually notice the silent hunter. The cat didn't 
move.  

Frozen.  Staring.  Waiting.

Alistaire knew the cat would pounce if he reached for his gun. He was 
fast, very fast, with a gun.  Among the best on the Force.  But these 
cats were faster.  Every bunched muscle was ready to pounce.  Alistaire 
knew he could nail the beast in the air.  Maybe twice.  But that might 
not kill it.  The damn things were often infested with nanites.  From 
their victims.  Their tissues had been bound and strengthened.  Their 
blood vessels toughened.  Their wounds would be immediately attendended.  
A remarkable natural development.  No one ever though about what would 
happen if you ate a 'Punk loaded up with nanites. 

Very expensive nanites. 

But that's what these cats had done, back when such technology was 
common.  Now, much less common.  But Nature was working still at work.
The cats had kittens.  The kittens had nanites.  The kittens had grown
up even stronger than their parents.  They were now what the cats of
old were:  lords of the jungle.  Only the jungle had changed. 

Alistaire jumped.  The cat jumped.  Alistaire crashed through a gaping 
hole and plummeted into the Earth.  The cat landed nimbly where he had 
been standing.  It hissed ferociously, but could not pursue.  Almost 
instantly, the great beast leapt back into the inter-woven steel beams.  
Back into the shadows.  There would be other two-legged deer.

Alistaire hung from a rusting pipe.  He had seen it through the gloom, 
but could not gage its strength.  It was not very strong.  Once the 
cat's hisses had stopped, Alistaire could hear the groans of the pipe.  
Very clearly.

He heard something else.  Footsteps.  Soft.  Almost imperceptible.  Only 
someone who could have sensed the cat could have heard them.  Out of the 
pan, into the fire thought Alistaire silently.  He looked down.  The 
glint of water.  Perhaps fifteen feet away.  

Or something like water.

He looked in the direction of the footsteps.  After a short while, a boy 
stepped into a pool of light raining in from above.  Naked and pale.  
With a tuft of blonde hair.  Wiry.  Faceted.  Like a cat.

He was a Cat.  The smallest of the major gangs.  The least seen.  The 
best armed.  The Cats were believed to report to none other than 
Prometheus himself.  Even now.  With Prometheus gone north.  He had 
never been clear about what would become of the Cats.  The Queen of Hell 
didn't like that, but not even she could demand anything of Prometheus 
Mage.  The Cats remained a mystery.

The boy hopped up and down in place.  Alistaire thought that strange.  
Again, the boy hopped.  And again.  Alistaire looked down, then up.  The 
boy hopped.  Furiously, Alistaire tried to pierce the gloom with his 
eyes, but the light was too poor.  Only the glint of water.  Or some 
liquid.

The boy leaped.  His path through the air was graceful and sure.  
Avoiding all beams, he landed beneath Alistaire with a slight splash.  
Only a thin film of water.  Covering a solid surface.  Alistaire 
dropped.  His landing was not so smooth as the boy's, but neither was it 
clumsy.  Augmented legs absorbed the strain without difficulty.

The boy had moved away, hidden in the shadows.  And then, with a 
backwards flip, he was gone.  Alistaire stood alone in the darkness.  
Though he wanted to, he did not draw his gun.  He knew he was being 
watched and that the gun would be an unwelcome sight.

Alistaire took a couple of steps and vanished.  Crashing through the 
roof, he cursed himself for being so stupid.  He felt some strange tugs 
as he fell into the structure.  He slammed into something.  Solid and 
hard.  And not too far down.  It could have been a hell of a lot worse.

And then, he noticed the rat spinning in a web.

He slapped himself.  His skin crawled.  The rat kept spinning.  The gun 
came out.  Spiders.  Alistaire hated spiders.  And they got very big 
here in the Core.  Black widows the size of your fist.  Bloated and 
slow.  With strong, very strong, webs.  He remembered the tugs.  One bite 
would kill a normal man, very painfully.  Alistaire wouldn't die, not 
even from several.  But it would hurt like hell.  And he'd have spider 
guts all over him.

His skin still burning, he looked around the room.  Typical tenement.  
Burned out and abandoned.  Overpopulation wasn't much of a problem 
anymore.  Fifty, sixty thousand people once lived beneath the Core in 
rooms like this.  Now they were dead.  Most weren't buried.  And the 
world above didn't care. Had its own hells.

The room was full of rusted furniture - what people above would consider 
cheap lawn fluff.  A mattress covered with mold.  Broken wooden table.  
Rats.  Rat carcasses.  Alistaire looked around for the spiders, but 
couldn't find them.

"This is not fun," he mumbled.

Something heavy landed on the roof.  There was the sound of bending 
steel.  A snap.  Alistaire watched the hole he had made, his gun 
back in it's holster.  A rusted metal pole descended.

"Grab on," grunted a deep voice from above.

Alistaire did so.  He was lifted up.


Matthew Melmon
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo