Vigilant lop-3

by James Alan Gardner

  SIREN-LIZARDS

  Oh-God was still alive, but only thanks to machines — while Mother and I were in the grove, his diaphragm had futzed out, slack as a sack of potatoes. But the heart-lung was ready and Oh-God barely lost a breath. He was packaged up now, inside a clear plastic shell that would protect him till the emergency team arrived from Pistolet. Once our smuggler friend was in their hands, he could be kept alive mechanically for as long as it took to find a cure.

  If a cure existed. And if Pteromic B didn’t flare so wildfire rampant that our medical system crashed in flames.

  Demoth would be all right as long as the disease stayed Freeps-only. The world-soul told me we had 3,219 Freeps currently on planet — more than I expected, but our hospitals could manage the load. Barely. On the other hand, if Pteromic B hopped home to Ooloms, or even to Homo saps… hey, kids, the Circus is coming back to town.

  Meanwhile, Oh-God was the most advanced case on Demoth. Other members of the Freep trade team tested positive for the microbe, but hadn’t showed symptoms yet. They’d all been bunged into hospital, of course, but Oh-God was going to be the star attraction for medical researchers. Total slackdown. He’d have the best specialists in the world looking after him, searching for a way to fight the disease before the full outbreak struck. He’d be poked and prodded and proctoscoped, but at least they’d keep him alive.

  As for Tic, Festina and me… did we have to call the feddies? Tell them what Oh-God said about Iranu and Mummichog? Report that the dipshits had attacked again, firing illegal bazookas and what-all? Damned right we did. Yes, we might have felt a twingey temptation to hot dog, to jaunt around solo like dashing VR adventurers: but the stakes were too high to Indulge our vanity.

  "I’ll call it in," Tic said. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall of Voostor’s medic room. His pouchy old face went distant: in communion with Mom-Xe.

  "What’s he doing?" Voostor asked.

  "Talking to the world-soul," I replied. "Which will then talk to a slew of other people. Sorry, but you’re going to have hordes of company coming."

  Mother sighed. "Does this mean I have to clean?"

  "Don’t be silly," Voostor said. "We’re always ready for guests. And if this guest is really my fearsome stepdaughter Faye…" He gave a smile intended to show he didn’t believe half of what my mother must have told him. "The least we can do is offer you breakfast. All of you. Come on."

  Festina frowned. "Someone should stay with Oh-God."

  "I’ve dealt with the plague before," Mother said. "And I know how to work these machines. You get something to eat… before other people arrive and things get hectic."

  Smooth way for Ma to avoid breakfast with her darling daughter. But I told myself it wasn’t spite or anger — just embarrassment over her confession. ("He glowed.") She wanted some time to herself after sharing that little intimacy… not because she was mad at me but just feeling a titch shy.

  Voostor took me by the arm (Oolom-style, hands delicately wrapped round my elbow to keep himself from bouncing too high) and led us through the parlor again, then under an archway of raspfeather fronds onto a covered patio with a view of the ocean. The sun was five fingers above the horizon now, shining onto a bamboo table with three places already set: one with Oolom fruit soup, two with Homo sap cheese fritters.

  "You have company," Tic observed.

  "One of our favorite guests," Voostor said. "A biologist who visits often to study the rain forest." He went to a grass-and-lath door leading off the far side of the patio and knocked lightly on the red-bamboo frame. "Breakfast time. How are you feeling this morning, Maya?"

  Festina was closest to the door. Without a hair’s hesitation, she drove her heel into one of the wood door slats, a full-strength side-kick that snapped the slat in two. The force of the kick didn’t stop there; the door flew backward, slamming against the wall of the next room with an impact that shivered the grass-thatch roof. Shouting a kiai, Festina leapt through the doorway, fists in a tight guard position.

  Tic went straight through after her. Ditto me, as soon as I’d snatched up a heavy clay porridge bowl for throwing.

  All three of us came to a halt in the middle of a small bedroom. Spring mattress on the floor, sheets rumpled. Wide-open window, looking out on the orchid grove.

  "Shit!" Festina growled. "Missed her."

  "She must have seen Mother and me walking out back," I said. "Took to her heels as soon as we were out of sight."

  "Would she recognize you?" Tic asked.

  "My picture was on every broadcast when Chappalar died," I told him. "She must have thought we were coming for her."

  "What’s going on?" Mother demanded, storming in through the patio doorway. "What’s all this noise?"

  "Your visitor," Tic said. "Maya Cuttack, correct?"

  "Yes. So?"

  "You really don’t listen to the news," I muttered. My mother stood on the far side of the patio, her face flushed: clearly thinking I’d gone bad-girl again, smashing the house to tinder. I told her, "Maya Cuttack is the most wanted woman on Demoth."

  "She’s a dear friend," Mother replied, fierce as frost. "What’s she wanted for?"

  "Questioning," Tic said. "Possibly murder."

  Festina was at the window. "She climbed out this way; I can see her tracks in the dew. Heading inland."

  "What is there in that direction?" Tic asked Voostor.

  "Nothing. Our fields. The rain forest."

  "I’ll bet there are mines," I said. "Ma told me there’ve been Freeps poking around back there."

  "There is a sort of alien mine in the jungle," Voostor admitted.

  "Which explains why Maya’s a frequent visitor," Festina said. "Her and Iranu."

  "Do you think she has more androids here?" I asked.

  "Maybe androids, maybe worse," Tic answered. "Why are we standing around when she’s getting away?"

  "You want to go after her ourselves?"

  "We have to," Tic said. "The nearest police are at least half an hour off. If she’s headed for the mine, she could activate robots, destroy evidence—"

  "Maya?" my mother interrupted. "Impossible!"

  "Time’s wasting," Tic replied, bouncing up to the window sill. "Voostor, show me the mine. Faye, you call Protection Central, then follow on foot."

  Without waiting for an answer, he bent his knees and vaulted into the sky, spreading his gliders to catch whatever thermals might be rising in the tropical dawn. Voostor gave my mother a weak glance, helpless apology, then jumped out the window himself. As he flapped into the sky, that "Sorry, my dear," look on his face switched fast to a grin, caught up in Tic’s excitement.

  "Well," Mother said, "what a charming guest you’ve been, Faye. Perhaps you’d enjoy setting fire to the house before you start hunting down my friend like a dog."

  "You’ve got it all wrong, Ma." I speed-linked to Protection Central: Maya’s here. Send cops. Back in a beat came the ETA — Pistolet police would take at least thirty-seven minutes to reach Mummichog.

  By that time I knew it would all be over, one way or another.

  I squinched up my thoughts, fierce concentration. Peacock, can you reach out to help the police get here faster?

  No response.

  "Come on," Festina shouted. "We have to go!"

  "One more second." Peacock, I thought again, Xe, Father, whoever you are, can you get us to the mine before Maya?

  A swirl of light appeared outside the window. Festina leapt into it without asking questions.

  "What is that?" my mother cried.

  "Dads," I said. "Or whatever you were sleeping with the last few months of his life." I leaned in to give her a quick kiss on the cheek; I thought she might flinch, but she didn’t. Maybe too shocked to react. "When this is all over," I told her, "I’ll call and explain."

  Then I sprinted forward, bounced off Maya’s mattress, and sailed out through the window like a diver from a springboard. The Peacock caught me in its mouth lon
g before I touched the ground.

  The Peacock dumped me on a game trail deep in the rain forest. As usual, the tube disappeared instantly, back… back… well, I’d shot the chute often enough by now that I wasn’t quite so queer-head dizzy as I’d been the first time I’d gone through. I had the presence of mind to look around fast, hoping I might catch sight of where the Peacock went. For just a second, I thought it was coming toward me: straight at my face, tangly-jambly lights plunging right at my eyes; but then the Peacock was gone, vanished, and I felt no different than I ever had.

  I got to my feet. Dusted myself off. Thought about that phrase, "no different than I ever had" and wondered just how long the Peacock had been guarding my botjolo butt.

  In the bad old days, sometimes I’d been Christly lucky to miss getting killed. And considering my habitually tin-sober state, would I have noticed a few more flickery lights?

  Hmm.

  Festina stood a few steps away, staring up at the trees with a gloomy expression.

  "What’s wrong?" I asked.

  "This place looks too much like my home."

  "That’s bad?"

  "My home was a damned dangerous place." She glanced at me. "Do you know anything about jungles?"

  "No."

  "Never mind — you’ll be all right if you remember one simple principle."

  "Which is?"

  "Everything here wants you dead."

  It sounded like a joke.

  "I mean it," Festina insisted. "Everything wants you dead. Even the things that won’t directly kill you still want you dead. You’re a waste of good nutrients; they want you recycled back into the ecosystem."

  She reached to her belt holster and drew her stun-pistol… the first time I’d seen her do that in days. She hadn’t bothered with her gun in the face of androids, reporters, or dipshits, but now she wanted a weapon handy.

  Okay. Chalk me up as intimidated.

  "Keep to the trail," she said. "Don’t touch anything, don’t step on anything, don’t brush against anything. Understand?"

  "Yes. Everything here wants me dead."

  Which was too bad. To someone who’d grown up with Great St. Caspian’s half-throttled flora and fauna, the rain forest was a heady gush of abundance. Take the insect life, for instance. In Bonaventure, bloodflies were puny things, traveling in fast-moving swarms that dodged and weaved like drunken dockworkers. Here in Mummichog, I was buzzed by a single fly near as big as my thumb — no need for safety in numbers, this guy could take care of himself. Slow and bullish, able to withstand a head-on swat: the supertanker of bloodflies, with a monstrous hemoglobin-carrying capacity. Thank God this beastie had one thing in common with his baby brothers up north; evolution had only taught him to suck on native Demoth lifeforms, not humans. Perhaps he gave me a sniff as he flew by… but I didn’t smell like his natural prey, so he continued bumbling past.

  One insect down, billions to go.

  Ants the size of a baby’s foot… moths bigger than my hand… beetles so huge you could use their carapaces as bread plates… not that these were genuine terrestrial insects, of course. Eight legs, no antennae, oddly hinged mandibles; but the names humans hung on most Demoth wildlife were Earth names because those were the names we had. These creatures scuttled like beetles; they had chitinous shells like beetles; they filled the same ecological niches as beetles; they might as well be called beetles, even if they were giant alien groundthumpers.

  "Stop gawking," Festina ordered. "We have to find Cuttack."

  "I asked the Peacock to take us to the mine," I told her. "It must be close by."

  "Says you," she muttered. "Your pet Peacock might have dumped us a thousand klicks from Mummichog because the place was too damned dangerous."

  "You’re just jealous you don’t have an invisible friend."

  I looked at the ground again; the dirt held a string of clear bootprints, made when the soil was muddy and preserved when everything dried. The tracks couldn’t be Voostor’s — too deep for a lightweight Oolom. If my mother never came back here, this had to be Maya’s trail. I asked, "Is this the sort of jungle where it rains every afternoon?"

  "How should I know?" Festina said. "This is your planet."

  "Yes, but you’re the jungle queen."

  She stuck out her tongue at me. I didn’t know admirals did that.

  "Let’s go this way," I said, pointing back up the trail: the direction the boots had come from. If rain fell here every afternoon, the tracks must have been made late yesterday — Maya heading back to the house after knocking off work. Follow them backward and we’d find where Maya spent her day.

  The bootprints kept to the game trail for a few dozen paces, then veered off on a narrower track. Still easy to follow — Maya hadn’t tried to disguise her path. We wove our way over dirt leached light as sand, while bloodflies buzzed round our ears and wondered if they should bite us just for jollies. Past creeping vines and epiphytes floating on balloon sacs… crimson-strip fungi laid out like bacon on dead tree trunks… even a snake-belly or two… till we nearly walked past an overgrown hole in the forest floor.

  If not for the bootprints, we would have missed the mine. Part of the entrance had been cleared with a machete, then covered again with prickly-leaved branches from nearby shrubs. Festina was still wearing her good-for-the-tundra gloves ("And I’ll wear them till we get someplace that I call warm!") so she had no trouble pulling branches away from the hole, never mind the bristles and pricks.

  Leaving a tunnel that led downward.

  Just inside the tunnel sat a plastic box holding five torch-wands.

  "Convenient," Festina said, picking one up.

  "Easier to stash a box here," I replied, "than bringing them up from the house all the time. Besides, Maya was pretending to be a biologist. Mother or Voostor might have wondered why she needed torch-wands to poke about beamy bright jungle."

  "Mmm." Festina looked into the hole. "Down now? Or wait for Maya and ambush her?"

  I looked at the hole myself, then shook my head. "It’d be nice to know what’s in there, but Maya’s more important. Stop her before she does something we’ll regret."

  "Agreed." Festina checked the batteries on her pistol.

  "Before you start shooting," I said, "remember she still might be innocent. Maya could have had her little dance with Chappalar, then headed down here the same night. Sounds like no one in Mummichog listens to the news, so she never heard tell of the murders. Doesn’t know her sweetie’s dead, doesn’t know the cops want to question her…"

  Festina just looked at me.

  "Right," I said. "Stun the bitch’s tits off and apologize later."

  We made the ambush simple: Festina down the tunnel, waiting with pistol in hand. I borrowed her gloves and covered back the hole with branches, so Maya wouldn’t know she’d had visitors. Then I moved off a ways, hunkering down behind a fallen log till our target arrived.

  (Not touching the log. I’d heard about insects who made nests in such places, and got swarming mad if you gave their homes a knock.)

  So we waited. For Maya to scuttle down the path, racing toward the mine and whatever she’d stashed below. Festina would stun her the second Maya started clearing branches from the hole, and that would be that. In due time, flocks of people would arrive from Pistolet: the med team for Oh-God, police for Maya, plus a rabble-pack of robot experts, archaeologists, forensics specialists and who-all else might get sent to investigate Maya’s home away from home.

  With luck, they’d let Tic and me look over their shoulders for a while… till more senior proctors arrived to shove us aside again.

  In the distance, I heard shouting. Tic and Voostor yelling. At Maya? Why? If they’d caught up with her after she bolted from the house, they wouldn’t holler; Tic would sweep silently out of the sky and deck her with a sock to the jaw. I’d never seen him fight, but he was a master proctor. Zenned-out too. That put him in the same league as those little old gents in tic-chips, the kind wh
o look beatific as soap till they whonk you with a heelkick to the head. If Tic could reach Maya, he could take her down.

  So why all the whooping and bellowing?

  Suddenly, Tic’s voice got joined by shrill animal howling: a noise I recognized from VR sims of jungle life. The danger call of siren-lizards. They were only the size of squirrels, teeny pseudo-reptiles who clambered through the canopy eating fruit and seedpods… but they had eyes keen as hawks’, and a resonating collar around their throats that made their shrieks trumpet-loud. Naturalists called them "the Klaxons of the rain forest" — little noise-boxes that screamed blue murder if something scared them.

  They were scared now: dozens of them, high and off to my right. Then another troop of lizards took up the cry, this one a fair bit closer. Were they just echoing the shrieks of the first bunch — an instinct to squeal when they heard other sirens howling? Or had they actually seen something, something coming my way?

  More sirens took up the wail. Closer. I couldn’t hear anything else over the racket. What was up there? What?

  Something they could see from the treetops. Something flying. A skimmer?

  Christ, of course Maya had a skimmer. We’d known from the start she didn’t leave Bonaventure by transport sleeve. She had her own vehicle, and now she was bugging out in it.

  World-soul, I thought, track it, track it! But even before I finished the mental shout, my mind filled with the world-soul’s response: ground radar couldn’t get a fix.

  Lord weeping Jesus, did everyone on this planet have stealth equipment?

  Something ripped through the canopy of leaves straight overhead, I had a quick glimpse of a skimmer’s underbelly, its bay doors open; then something big and black and blimp-shaped started to fall, crashing down through the trees.

  "You’re kidding," I said in disbelief. A bomb? She had a bomb in the skimmer? And she was dropping it on me. No, not me, she didn’t know I was here; she was bombing the mine entrance, to close it off, seal it up.

  Which would still blow me to smithereens.

  "Festina!" I shouted. "Incoming bomb! Head down the mine, deep as you can go."