by Stephen Hunt
I managed to reach the electric fence without attracting attention. I glanded myself combat-variant norepinephrine to run at inhuman speed and climb the fence in two quick grabs of its mesh, a gentle fizz of sparks as my gloves indicated they’d absorbed a lethal current. I landed softly on the other side, rolling into a bush of moss-like material. Checking the nearest watchtower, I could see no sign its sentries had spotted me. A faint smudge of blue indicated a set of eyes scanning the forest for threats. Naturally, my clothes made the background appear visible through my body, customizing the invisibility effect for the majyos’ witching eyes. No threat, here. A shadow in the shadows, that was Sweet William.
The forest appeared beautiful under my enhanced vision. No fear, now. Nothing so pedestrian with my m-brain in control of my drug regime. It felt good to shed my trader personality and walk in different boots. Hidden corners of my brain having the dust blown away and the covers pulled off the furniture. I had to force my m-brain to dial back from Extreme Combat Mode to appreciate it. The vista didn’t benefit from having every insect-lizard moving across the forest threat-graded, hundreds of labels flowing across my sight with probable poison, bite and sting warnings. I had to dial back my clothes too, lest the sound of popping mosquito analogues alert the Ferals to my presence – every inquisitive critter angling for a taste of Sweet William finding its nervous system unexpectedly fried.
There were existing trails through the forest to be followed. Made by the plantation staff, Ferals and the occasional wild dweller like my poacher friend. I kept to the paths despite the increased chance of being discovered. I needed to keep my mission as short-and-sweet as myself. Hologram-me might not keep the plantation surveillance fooled for long. This alien realm wouldn’t be easy to traverse if I beat and cut a passage through it. I moved below mushrooms and toadstools shaped like tower-sized coral; cooperating and curious, dangerous and deadly. While I continued my journey, I heard horns blowing. It sounded like a Ferals’ ox-horn. Far off, though. Were they assembling again? I didn’t fancy their chances if they decided to attack the convoy inside the plantation. I came across a region of gentle hills. On Earth-standard worlds, the hilltops would be bare and grass-covered. Here, the forest filled every niche, hilltops crowned by vast aerial-shaped fungi reaching for the stars and the chance of feeding off energy storms from the gas giant we orbited.
I came across a small wooden shrine at the foot of one of the hills. Its interior had been painted red. Not, I hoped, with blood. Under the roof squatted a carving; two barley leaf sheaths, their blades twisted around each other like a DNA Helix. It was the classic iconography of Landsat, god of bounty, fat harvests and fertility. Odd-looking offerings had been left on platters scattered around the statue. Given Landsat stopped answering prayers here as soon as Inuno abandoned the world, it was a hell of a long time to continue worshiping a hollow god. These were the devotions of nearby Ferals. They would find it hard tracking me wearing active camouflage, but I needed to keep my eyes peeled, nevertheless. Something about the offerings aroused my curiosity. I slipped closer for a better look. They were small hand-cranked battery packs, aluminium surfaces worn and ancient. Suddenly, I realised who the packs had been left for. Not the god Landsat. This offering was for the Kodama. I grunted in amusement. So, the little forest spirits trailing the convoy had been following us on purpose, marking the wagons for the Ferals to attack. This forest’s symbiotic ecosystem had extended to include both its human survivors and the spirits. I wondered whether the plantation mistress knew? Quite probably. If so, it was telling she hadn’t warned the Blez forces. Nominally, the plantations served competing houses. The reality was those living beyond the capital’s wall shared far more in common with each other than they did with the unedited humans they’d left behind. Not an arrangement made to last.
I overlaid the hand-drawn map I’d bribed into my possession over satellite imagery sent by the Expected Ambush, following the trail to Dumitru Bai’s dwelling. It was a poor affair when I located it, a ramshackle roundhouse no larger than a single room. Half dug into the ground, its moss-turfed reciprocal frame roof splintered and poorly patched. Items lay carelessly scattered across the clearing around a circular cooking fire. There was also a well dug down to the water-table. A full bucket of water rested by its winch. I upped my sight’s thermography. The fireplace filled with nothing but cold ashes, but an elevated heat signature twinkled inside the roundhouse. My poacher chum? I dropped my active camouflage before approaching. Then I walked towards the hut to find its simple door open already. Ducking, I stepped down two mud steps into the dwelling. ‘Goodman Bai? I’ve come in search of your services.’
Sadly, Dumitru Bai seemed uninterested in my commission. This doubtless had much to do with the fact his throat had been carefully slit before his corpse was laid down on a wooden cot. Recently put out of business, too, or the poacher’s residual heat signature would register at corpse-level rather than warm.
I checked the poacher’s body for anything hidden about his person, coming up blank. His clothes did seem a little damp. Not urine, though. His death had been too quick for him to empty his bladder in fear. I sniffed his arm, unable to identify the source of the damp material. Then I methodically searched the dead man’s roundhouse. Not much here. A plate of salted mushroom jerky on a small square table. He had a couple of paper books in his possession, kept in a wooden chest under his cot. They were well-thumbed and old enough to have been inherited. Fiction. One was a title I didn’t recognise, by a local author probably. The other was Baron Follyman on Aldebaran by Jiao-long. The fictional itinerant adventurer had been keeping readers on a thousand worlds amused with his antics for centuries. Jiao-long was still producing new books from the other side, not even death enough to still his pen. Poor Bai. All alone out here. These books were your only friends, weren’t they? Apart from whoever pretended to like you well enough to get close and drag a razor across your throat. He had sought to avoid the people who only brought him pain by holing up in the wilds as a hermit. Dumitru Bai’s only mistake was not keeping his distance well enough. All he had wanted was to be left to his own devices, but the wider universe had intruded on his peace. I knew how that felt. I grumbled softly and suppressed my rising rage. Almost every mistake I’ve ever made has been born out of anger.
I moved my gaze across his hut. No banking houses out here. Had whoever murdered Dumitru stolen his coins? His warm body told me the killers wouldn’t have had much time to search.
‘Fractal pattern analysis,’ I announced to my m-brain.
A grid of green lines overlaid across my vision, each square analysed in turn, hundreds of discrete visual mapping algorithms running simultaneously. My stomach grumbled. Operating in so high an enhanced mode came with a high-calorie cost attached. I tried the salted mushroom jerky, singing a prayer for Dumitru’s soul as I consumed his last meal. Not bad. He had cured the flesh perfectly. It’s funny how you can feel fond of someone you never met. One square began to flash, the pattern of dried earth containing micro-disturbances out of place with the rest of the floor. I bent over to examine it, then started to dig with both my hands. A couple of inches below the soil I found the kind of miniature wooden box a mother might keep her jewellery inside. This one, however, contained a pouch of coins. I emptied them across the floor and examined Dumitru Bai’s sad little haul of treasure. Not much to show for a life of labour, even the dishonest kind. I grunted. Each of the hexagonal silver coins bore the wurm-loving Derechor’s golden hornet stamped on the obverse face. Six month’s salary for a labourer in the capital. Nearly exactly what the spore-spice used to try and poison Lord Blez was worth on the black market. The obvious conclusion seemed a little too obvious to me. Nothing’s ever that easy for Sweet William.
I stood up, examining my memory of the roundhouse’s exterior for something I could use to bury Dumitru Bai when I heard a rush of feet outside. Moving fast and with what they probably thought was stealth. I didn’t drop into active c
amouflage. I thought they deserved to see my face when I showed them exactly what I thought of killing Dumitru.
Ajola Hara burst through the open doorway, her hand stretched out towards me. ‘Out of here, now!’
There was hardly time to process the background scream of something completely inhuman outside, before it smashed into the roundhouse and the interior vanished in a cloud of timbers and mud. I barrelled through the outline of what had once been Dumitru’s door, taking the plantation mistress with me. When I say me, it was more of a flash flight protocol generated by my m-brain, but we were too intertwined in this mode for there to be much difference. I hit the ground with Ajola and took in what had just charged through the humble dwelling. It really didn’t need the superimposed threat marker hovering above it. Three spheres of black flesh speckled brown in a camouflage pattern, joined together in something only slightly smaller than a train locomotive, the eyeless front sphere mounted with four sets of intertwined mandibles. Ajola recovered from her extraction from the roundhouse with a speed which would have been remarkable for a basic human. Like me, she absorbed the impact and converted it into momentum to regain her stance. I guessed it wasn’t only her eyes that had undergone amateur editing. The creature slithered off like a snake while each sphere rolled, interconnected by some kind of armoured spine. Pieces of roundhouse fleeted off its body like seawater from a ship’s hull. There was nothing left of the dwelling and no sign of the dead body. The connected spheres crashed through the forest, departing the clearing without a backward glance or a by-your-leave.
‘What was that bloody thing,’ I croaked.
‘A vioba.’ Ajola took my hand, sniffed it with her nose, and then pushed me towards the well to plunge my arms into the bucket. The cloudy water felt warm.
‘My hands aren’t that dirty, surely?’
Ajola rolled her eyes. ‘There is only one thing that makes a vioba attack like that. The scent of a rival vioba on her territory. Wash it off you.’
I remembered Dumitru’s damp clothes. Someone had dosed the corpse with vioba gland essence to remove all evidence of their crime. They had damn nearly removed me as well. ‘It’s eaten Dumitru Bai.’
‘A vioba’s mouth and forward sphere are only used to drink water, bite predators and clear a path through the forest. Her rear sphere’s stomachs are full of acids like a battery. She feeds by draining power from the forest.’
‘Well, she’s certainly cleared a path through Dumitru.’
‘Poor boy. He hated us almost as much as he loved the forest.’
‘It wasn’t the vioba that killed Dumitru. He was dead before he was consumed: his throat slit before I arrived.’
She grunted in acknowledgment.
‘You don’t seem surprised.’
‘This land is full of tribes, bandits, marauders, and Ferals. And the plantation people that did business with Dumitru Bai were not exactly possessed of a surfeit of community spirit.’
‘The people that did business with Dumitru Bai happened to pay him a goodly weight in silver Derechor coins.’
Ajola looked over at the ruins of the roundhouse. ‘I doubt the vioba will enjoy having them rattling around her forward reticulum stomach much.’
Ajola was a cool fish. She didn’t give much away. I had to admire that. ‘You don’t care a whit about the Four Families, do you?’
‘The families rise and fall. Perhaps even the institution of the four houses will fail. What do you think of that?’
‘I’d rather know what led you out here to me.’
Ajola laughed and pointed behind me. I turned and spotted a familiar companion by the treeline. It was the bloodhound I had left guarding my doorstep back in Grodar.
‘You followed me?’
‘I followed the dog when it came to me. Truth to tell, I wondered if you were one of Lady Blez’s spies. Sent to see what you could find on the plantation. She is suspicious of me and my people.’
I laughed, too. ‘I thought that was my dog. But all this time he was yours.’
‘Did you feed him?’
‘I believe we did.’
‘Then he’s probably yours. Can we agree that I just saved your life?’
‘I thought I saved yours.’
‘That autonomous flash flight reflex of yours may have assisted a little. But as I will never meet the m-brain designer who created it…’
‘I’m just a simple trader,’ I protested.
‘Do I look in any way simple enough to believe that?’
‘Well, I was once a magistrate on Arius. That sad fact on my CV is what got me into all this.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘I am not without means, even as a simple trader.’
‘I don’t want your stupid coins. Among the majyos, there is only one fitting way to pay for a life saved. How much of what you are will be passed along?’
‘I think that’s up for grabs.’
‘That’s a poor choice of words.’ Ajola seized my buttocks before starting to pull my expensive and very rare clothes off.
I considered ordering my robes to re-electrify, but a debt owed is a debt owed. And where would this simple trader’s reputation be if he didn’t honour his debts? I sighed and deactivated the gland producing my counter-agent to Ajola’s pheromones. As soon as I halted production I shed my inhibitions as fast as Ajola managed to shed our clothes. She glowed in the night, her blue eyes and strange whirling tattoos both. A veritable Amazon goddess standing under the starlight, as strong and fierce as the gas giant our moon orbited. Enough to make me feel centuries younger, even without the very proficient engineering of her signalling pheromones boosting my zeal to a painful degree.
At least on the exterior, I felt painfully outclassed by her genuine raw beauty. My body was more or less my original form, albeit artificially suspended at the physical state of forty human standard years. Fit enough. Healthy enough. Too tanned for this sunless moon, perhaps. Keeping to the target weight for my height was as simple as setting an optimum BMI inside my m-brain. I held onto a few original scars, even on the limbs I’d needed to regrow. But epigenetic changes, buildup over the centuries, would do for me sooner rather than later. It seemed fitting. That’s all aging is, really, the accumulation of errors in our cells. And I had made so many errors over the ages. I suspected this was about to be another of them, but I wasn’t thinking with my brain anymore – either the brain I had been born with or the organic software insert that had come later.
We made love under the light of distant suns and I lost myself in Ajola, as empty as the darkness between the stars. The warm wind slipped through the towering vegetation, strong enough to ensure that I sweated in the open, her own slick skin like oil sliding between us. The majyos had really gone to town on the siren edits they needed to make up for their population imbalance. It was actually hard to keep up with her. I knew there were warreners on this moon, Sylvilagus valued for their fur and meat. It was fair to say we went at it like rabbits. In between Ajola’s kisses she wrestled and pummelled me, massaging my aching flesh if I dared show signs of faltering. After an hour, I finally needed to shut down my cGMP-specific phosphodiesterase type 5 enzyme response. What some wag had labelled the Viagra algorithm in my m-brain’s menu system.
Ajola screamed in wild delight between my moans. I hoped the vioba wouldn’t slither back, attracted by her loud pleasures. It probably wouldn’t. We were outside its behavioural range. I, however, was well within mine; a rascal and a rake to the end. Besides, the plantation mistress appeared to be biting me enough without the vioba’s return.
This went far beyond what was needed for a functional widening the gene-pool. I guessed that command of the town, mistress of her people, was a lonely position for Ajola. That, I understood more than anything. It’s always empty between the stars.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Eclectic lie.
Ajola Hara’s last words to me before our convoy left her plantation rattled around my mind. As unexpected
as her whispering in my ear. There are no sunrises on Hexator and this moon looks on many nights. You should leave here quickly while you still can. Was it a threat, a warning, or perhaps in part a prophecy? The bloodhound abandoned the plantation and followed our wagon, which pleased Simenon. The boy had fully recovered, now. I’m not certain I had yet, but that’s another story. I told Simenon how the dog helped save my life in the forest. The lad decided to name the hound Billy Bones, which was apt enough, given the vigour with which the dog chewed every bone discarded by the convoy’s wagoneers and warriors. Hexator was certainly large enough to accommodate two Williams. One with old bones, another with a taste for them.
I paid one of the convoy guards to teach Simenon how to ride on the journey back to the capital. We had spare war horses enough after the outbound ambush. I informed Simenon it was fitting for an apprentice trader to know how to ride. In truth, astrogation, xenobiology, fractal calculus and probability mechanics would have been more useful subjects. But they weren’t properly available to teach, and Simenon mastering the saddle gave me time to think. At least, until my robot conscience started nagging at me.
‘Went out with one old dog. Coming back with two.’
I raised a weary hand. ‘Don’t start, Moz.’
‘If you’ve left a bun in the oven back there, mate, you’ve certainly sorted out the next generation’s gender imbalance issues.’
‘Let’s hope for the best.’
‘Hope for the best? I don’t think they were using the bleeding rhythm method back in the domes, doc.’