Together, Robard and Lieutenant Kossov grunted and sweated the Admiral’s wheelchair down a flimsy aluminum stepladder to the ground. Once his feet touched concrete, Robard breathed in deeply and looked around. One of the lifeboat’s three landing legs looked wrong, a shock absorber not fully extended. It gave the craft an oddly lopsided appearance, and he knew at once that it would take more than a tankful of fuel to get it airborne again, much less into orbit. Then his eyes took in what had happened beyond the rust-streaked concrete landing pad, and he gasped.
The landing field was less than two kilometers from the brooding walls of the garrison, on the outskirts of the scantily settled north bank of the river. South of the river, there should have been a close-packed warren of steep-roofed houses, church spires visible in the distance before a knot of municipal buildings. But now the houses were mostly gone. A cluster of eldritch silvery ferns coiled skyward from the former location of the town hall, firefly glimmerings flickering between their fractally coiled leaves. The Ducal palace showed signs of being the worse for wear; one wall looked as if it had been smashed by a giant fist, the arrogant bombast of heavy artillery.
The Admiral slapped feebly at the arm of his chair. “ ’Ot right!”
“Absolutely, my lord.” Robard looked around again, this time hunting the advance landing party. They were halfway to the control tower when something that glowed painfully green slashed overhead, making the ground shake with the roar of its passage.
“Enemy planes!” shouted Kossov. “See, they’ve followed us here! We must get the Admiral to cover, fast!” He pushed Robard aside and grabbed the handles of the wheelchair, nearly tipping it over in his haste.
“I say!” Robard snapped, angry and disturbed at his position being usurped. He cast a worried glance at the sky and decided not to confuse the issue further; the Lieutenant’s behavior was unseemly, but the need to get the admiral to safety was pressing. “I say, there’s a path there. I’ll lead. If we can reach the tower—”
“You! Follow us!” Kossov called to the perimeter guards, confused and worried ratings who, thankful at being given some direction, shouldered their carbines and tagged along. It was a warm morning, and the Lieutenant wheezed as he pushed the wheelchair along the cracked asphalt path. Robard paced along beside him, a tall, sepulchrally black figure, hatchet-faced with worry. Weeds grew waist high to either side of the path, and other signs of neglect were omnipresent; the field looked as if it had been abandoned for years, not just the month since the invasion. Bees and other insects buzzed and hummed around, while birds squawked and trilled in the distance, shamefully exposing the locals’ neglect of their DDT spraying program.
A distant rumble prompted Robard to glance over his shoulder. Birds leapt into the sky as a distant green brightness twisted and seemed to freeze, hovering beneath the blind turquoise dome of the sky. “Run!” He dashed forward and threw himself into the shade of a stand of young trees.
“What?” Kossov stopped and stared, jaw comically dropping. The green glare grew with frightening, soundless rapidity, then burst overhead in an emerald explosion. A noise like a giant door slamming shut pushed Robard into the grass: then the aircraft thundered past, dragging a freight train roar behind it as it made a low pass over the parked lifeboat and disappeared toward the far side of the city. Bees buzzed angrily in his ears as he picked himself up and looked wildly around for the Admiral.
The Lieutenant had been knocked off his feet by the shock wave; now he was sitting up, cradling his head gingerly. The wheelchair had remained upright, and a loud but slurred stream of invective was flowing from it. “’Orson swiving’role’erian cocksu’ing ba-a-stards!” Kurtz raised his good arm and shook a palsied fist at the sky. “You ’evolushunary shit’ll get yours! Ouch!” The arm flopped.
“Are you alright sir?” Robard gasped nervously.
“’Astard stung me,” Kurtz complained, drooling on the back of his wrist. “Damn bees.” An angry buzzing veered hay-wire around Robard, and he whacked at it with his dirt-stained gloves.
“I’m sure you’ll be alright, sir, once we get you to the control tower and then the castle.” He inspected the mashed insect briefly, and froze. Red, impact-distorted letters ridged its abdomen with unnatural clarity. He shuddered and smeared the back of his glove on the ground. “We’d better move fast, before that plane decides we’re the enemy.”
“You take over,” said Kossov, clutching a reddened handkerchief to his forehead. “Let’s go.” Together they turned and pushed on toward the control tower, and beyond it the uncertainties of the Ducal palace and whatever had become of the capital city under the new order.
eighty kilometers away, another lifeboat was landing.
Rachel shook herself groggily and opened her eyes. It took her a moment to realize where she was. Re-entry had been alarmingly bumpy; the capsule was swinging back and forth with a regular motion that would have made her nauseous if her vestibular dampers hadn’t kicked in. There was a moan from behind her seat and she glanced sideways. Martin was waking up visibly, shaking his head, his face going through a horrible series of contortions and twitches. Behind her, Vassily moaned again. “Oh, that was terrible.”
“Still alive, huh?” She blinked at the viewscreen. Black smears obscured much of it, remnants of the ablative heat shield that had melted and streaked across the cameras on the outside of the hull. The horizon was a flat blue line, the ground half-hidden beneath a veil of clouds as they descended beneath the main parasail. An altimeter ticked down the last two thousand meters. “Say yes if you can wriggle your toes.”
“Yes,” said Martin. Vassily just moaned. Rachel didn’t bother to inquire further after their health; she had too many things to do before they landed. It could all get very messy very fast, now they didn’t have an engine.
Pilot: Plot range and heading to rendezvous waypoint omega. A map overlay blinked on the viewscreen. They were coming down surprisingly close, only a few kilometers out from the target. Pilot: Hard surface retromotor status, please. More displays; diagnostics and self-test maps of the landing motor, a small package hanging in the rigging halfway between the rectangular parachute and the capsule roof. Triggered by radar, the landing turbine would fire a minute before touchdown, decelerating the capsule from a bone-crushing fifty-kilometer-per-hour fall and steering them to a soft touchdown.
“I could do with a drink,” said Martin.
“You’ll have to wait a minute or two.” Rachel watched the screen intently. One thousand meters.
“I can’t feel my toes,” Vassily complained.
Oh shit. “Can you wriggle them?” asked Rachel, heart suddenly in her mouth. She’d never expected a third passenger, and if the hammock had landed him with a spinal injury—
“Yes.”
“Then why the fuck did you say you couldn’t feel them?”
“They’re cold!”
Rachel yawned; her ears popped. “I think we just depressurized. You must have your toes on top of the vent or something.” The outside grew hazy, whited out. Ten more seconds, and the wispy cloud thinned, peeling back to reveal trees and rivers below. A dizzying view, the ground growing closer. She gritted her teeth. Next to her, Martin shuffled for a better view.
“Attention. Landing raft inflation.” A yellow python wrapped itself around the bottom of the capsule and bloated outward, cutting off her view of the ground directly below. Rachel cursed silently, looked for a clearing in the trees. The forest cover was unusually dense, and she tensed.
“Over there.” Martin pointed.
“Thanks.” Using the side stick, she pointed out the opening to the autopilot. Pilot: make for designated landing ground. Engage autoland on arrival.
“Attention. Stand by for retromotor ignition in five seconds. Touchdown imminent. Three seconds. Main canopy separation.” The capsule dropped sickeningly. “Motor ignition.” A loud rumbling from above, and the fall stopped. The clearing below lurched closer, and the rumbling gre
w to a shuddering roar. “Attention. Touchdown in ten seconds. Brace for landing.”
Trees slid past the screen, implacable green stems exfoliating purple-veined leaves the size of books. Martin gasped. They dropped steadily, like a glass-walled elevator on the side of an invisible skyscraper. Finally, with a tooth-rattling bump, the capsule came to rest.
Silence.
“Hey, guys.” Rachel shakily pushed the release buckle on her seat belt. “Thank you for flying Air UN, and may I take this opportunity to invite you to fly with us again?”
Martin grunted and stretched his arms up. “Nope, can’t reach it from here. Got to unbelt first.” He let his arms flop down again. “Feel like lead. Funny.”
“All it takes is eight hours in zero gee.” Rachel rummaged in the storage bins next to her leg well.
“I think I understand you Terrans now,” Vassily began, then paused to let the tremor out of his voice before continuing. “You’re all mad!”
Martin looked sidelong at Rachel. “He’s only just noticed.”
She sat up, clutching a compact backpack. “Took him long enough.”
“Well. What do we do now? Make with the big tin opener, or wait for someone to pass by and yank the ring pull?”
“First”—Rachel tapped icons busily on the pilot’s console—“we tell the Critics that we’re down safely. She said she’d try to help us link up. Second, I do this.” She reached up and grabbed the top edge of the display screen. It crumpled like thin plastic, revealing the inner wall of the capsule. A large steamer trunk was half-embedded in the bulkhead, incongruous pipes and cables snaking out of its half-open lid.
“I knew it!” Vassily exclaimed. “You’ve got an illegal—”
“Shut up.” Rachel leaned forward and adjusted something just inside the lid. “Right, now we leave. Quickly.” Standing up, she unlocked the overhead hatch and let it slide down into the capsule, taking the place of the screen. “Give me a leg up, Martin.”
“Okay.” A minute later, all three of them were sitting on top of the lander. The truncated cone sat in a puddle of yellow inflatable skirts, in the middle of a grassy meadow. To their left, a stream burbled lazily through a thick clump of reeds; to their right, a row of odd, dark conifers formed a wall against the light. The air was cold and fresh and smelled unbearably clean. “What now?” asked Martin.
“I advise you to surrender to the authorities.” Vassily loomed over him. “It will go badly with you if you don’t cooperate, but if you surrender to me I’ll, I’ll—” He looked around wildly.
Rachel snorted. “What authorities?”
“The capital—”
Rachel finally blew her top. “Listen, kid, we’re stuck in the back of beyond with a dead lifeboat and not a lot of supplies, on a planet that’s just been hit by a type three singularity, and I have just spent the past thirty-six hours slaving my guts out to save our necks—all of them, yours included—and I would appreciate it if you would just shut up for a while! Our first priority is survival; my second priority is linking up with the people I’ve come here to visit, and getting back to civilization comes third on the list. With me so far? Because there are no civil authorities right now, not the kind you expect. They’ve just been dumped on by about a thousand years of progress in less than a month, and if your local curator’s still sitting at his desk, he’s probably catatonic from future shock. This planetary civilization has transcended. It is an ex-colony; it has ceased to be. About the only people who can cope with this level of change are your dissidents, and I’m not that optimistic about them, either. Right now, we are your best hope of survival, and you’d better not forget it.” She glared at Vassily, and he glared right back at her, obviously angry but unable to articulate his feelings.
Behind her, Martin had clambered down to the meadow. Something caught his attention, and he bent down. “Hey!”
“What is it?” Rachel called. The spell was broken: Vassily subsided with a grumble and began hunting for a way down off the capsule. Martin said something indistinct. “What?” she called.
“There’s something wrong with this grass!”
“Oh shit.” Rachel followed Vassily down the side of the pod—two and a half meters of gently sloping ceramic, then a soft landing on a woven spider-silk floatation bed. “What do you mean?”
Martin straightened up and wordlessly offered her a blade of grass.
“It’s—” She stopped.
“Rochard’s World is supposed to have an Earth-normal biosphere, isn’t it?” Martin watched her curiously. “That’s what it said in my gazetteer.”
“What is that?” asked Vassily.
“Grass, or what passes for it.” Martin shrugged uncomfortably. “Doesn’t look very Earth-normal to me. It’s the right color and right overall shape, but—”
“Ouch. Cut myself on the damned thing.” Rachel dropped it. The leaf blade fluttered down, unnoticed: when it hit the ground it began to disintegrate with eerie speed, falling apart along radial seams. “What about the trees?”
“There’s something odd about them, too.” A crackling noise from behind made Martin jump. “What’s that?”
“Don’t worry. I figured we’d need some ground transport, so I told it to make some. It’s reabsorbing the capsule—”
“Neat luggage,” Martin said admiringly. The lifeboat began to crumple inward, giving off a hot, organic smell like baking bread.
“Yeah, well.” Rachel looked worried. “My contact’s supposed to know we’re here. I wonder how long . . .” She trailed off. Vassily was busily tramping toward the far side of the clearing, whistling some sort of martial-sounding tune.
“Just who is this contact?” Martin asked quietly.
“Guy called Rubenstein. One of the more sensible resistance cadres, which is why he’s in internal exile here—the less sensible ones end up dead.”
“And what do you want with him?”
“I’m to give him a package. Not that he needs it anymore, if what’s happened here is anything to go by.”
“A package? What kind of package?”
She turned and pointed at the steamer trunk, which now rested on the grass in the middle of a collapsing heap of structural trusses, belching steam quietly. “That kind of package.”
“That kind of—” His eyes gave him away. Rachel reached out and took his elbow.
“Come on, Martin. Let’s check out the tree line.”
“But—” He glanced over his shoulder. “Okay.”
“It’s like this,” Rachel began, as they walked. “Remember what I said about helping the people of the New Republic? A while ago—some years, actually—some people in a department you don’t really need to know much about decided that they were ripe for a revolution. Normally we don’t get involved in that kind of thing; toppling regimes is bad ju-ju even if you disapprove of them or do it for all the right moral reasons. But some of our analysts figured there was a chance, say twenty percent, that the New Republic might metastasize and turn imperial. So we’ve been gearing up to ship power tools to their own home-grown libertarian underground for a decade now.
“The Festival . . . when it arrived, we didn’t know what it was. If I’d known what you told me once we were under way, back at Klamovka, I wouldn’t be here now. Neither would the luggage. Which is the whole point of the exercise, actually. When the aristocracy put down the last workers’ and technologists’ soviet about 240 years ago, they destroyed the last of the cornucopiae the New Republic was given at its foundation by the Eschaton. Thereafter, they could control the arbeiter classes by restricting access to education and tools and putting tight bottlenecks on information technology. This luggage, Martin, it’s a full-scale cornucopia machine. Design schemata for just about anything a mid-twenty-first-century postindustrial civilization could conceive of, freeze-dried copies of the Library of Congress, all sorts of things. Able to replicate itself, too.” The tree line was a few meters ahead. Rachel stopped and took a deep breath. “I wa
s sent here to turn it over to the underground, Martin. I was sent here to give them the tools to start a revolution.”
“To start a—” Martin stared at her. “But you’re too late.”
“Exactly.” She gave him a moment for it to sink in. “I can still complete my mission, just in case, but I don’t really think . . .”
He shook his head. “How are we going to get out of this mess?”
“Um. Good question.” She turned and faced the melting reentry capsule, then reached into a pocket and began bringing out some spare optical spybots. Vassily was aimlessly circling the perimeter of the clearing. “Normally, I’d go to ground in the old town and wait. In six months, there’ll be a merchant ship along. But with the Festival—”
“There’ll be ships,” Martin said with complete assurance. “And you’ve got a cornucopia, you’ve got a whole portable military-industrial complex. If it can make us a lifeboat, I’m sure I can program it to manufacture anything we need to survive until we’ve got a chance to get off this godforsaken hole. Right?”
“Probably.” She shrugged. “But first I really ought to make contact, if only to verify that there’s no point in handing the luggage over.” She began to walk back toward the lander. “This Rubenstein is supposed to be fairly levelheaded for a revolutionary. He’ll probably know what—” There was a distant cracking sound, like sticks breaking. At the other side of the clearing, Vassily was running back toward the luggage. “Shit!” Rachel dragged Martin to the ground, fumbled for the stunner in her pocket.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“I don’t know.”
“Damn. Well, looks like they’ve found us, whoever they are. Nice knowing you.” A large, hunched thing, hugely, monstrously bipedal, lurched into the clearing: a vast mouth like a doorway gaped at them.
“Wait.” Rachel held him down with one hand. “Don’t move. That thing’s wired like a fucking tank, sensors everywhere.”
The thing swung toward the lander, then abruptly squatted on its haunches. A long, flat tongue lolled groundward; something big appeared at the top of it and stepped down to the meadow. It swept its head from side to side, taking in the decrepitating lifeboat, Vassily hiding behind it, the rest of the clearing. Then it called out, in a surprisingly deep voice. “Hello? We arrive not-warfully. Is there a Rachel Mansour here?”
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