by Tobias Roote
He set off, checking his equipment as he went. His experience in this type of approach to mutants was extensive and he had only needed to resort to Ario’s back-up measures once. Grady felt confident that this colony would be receptive. Although, if he was honest he had no grounds for such confidence, it was something within him that generally warned him of impending danger. His senses didn’t pick up anything so far.
“Ario, you receiving me ?” he queried into his headset.
“Loud and clear, Grady,” it answered in its pleasant baritone voice. Sometimes it was a lazy bass, but today’s was a confident tone that carried across the frequency. Ario frequently changed voices, often mid-conversation. It wasn’t a personality thing, Grady was certain that the programmers had forgotten to set the modulators to a fixed state and every time the ship hit turbulence, or carried out fast course corrections something would slip and his voice would alter. He kept meaning to get it fixed, then would think about whether it was Ario’s deliberate intent to personalise its contact with him, so would let it slide again.
He concentrated on the terrain. There were considerable ponds of water, which to his mind looked stagnant and algae coated. He didn’t relish the idea of falling in one. He could swim, but he had the impression that the murky waters contained other creatures and might not welcome his intrusion. The ground scans indicated that many of the ponds were interlinked in a vast subterranean lake and some were quite deep. Just how the hillocks and pathways retained their structure and stability he hadn’t yet ascertained. As it wasn’t part of Grady’s current mission he put the thought to the back of his mind.
As he continued to walk the ground changed to a more stable foundation. Now the sky was dotted with flyers who were beginning to grow in size as he got closer to the trees. He could make out individuals, but none appeared to come near although he was sure he had already been seen.
As he approached, Grady’s ability to see into the tops of the trees became impossible, he couldn’t wind his neck back that far. Instead he concentrated on the growing number of flyers that were in the vicinity. He decided he would need to stop shortly. There was no way he could climb the trunk of any of these mammoths, the bark looked too smooth. He wanted some reaction from the flyers to acknowledge him in some way. He needed to gauge their response.
He turned outward away from the trunk to look further afield - and came face to face - with a mutant.
The creature was taller than Grady by a good two inches, perhaps more - the curvature of the body made it difficult to tell. It was male. They wore no clothes and this one was well muscled, hairless with a slightly grey tinge to the skin. Something in the way it moved reminded Grady of a coiled serpent and although unarmed Grady wasn’t fooled. The menace oozing from the creature would be accompanied with solid reactions and quick reflexes. He had no doubt this mutant would hurt him if it felt threatened.
“You are not welcome here,” the mutant spoke gruffly in Standard. The language was common to all worlds and whilst dialects could make for difficulties sometimes, it was pretty much ubiquitous throughout the galaxy. He gestured at Grady indicating back the way he came as if expecting him to just leave.
Grady quickly recovered from the shock of the stealthy approach of the mutant, managing to hold his body still, withholding the desire to quiver from the adrenalin reaction, instead he stood straighter in an attempt to reach an equal eye level.
“My name is Philus Grady, I am here at the request of the planet’s owners. I need to meet with your people.”
“We wish to be left alone - your people hunt us, killed many. This is all that remain and we will protect it. Leave - tell them there is nothing to fear, we are not infected and we only want what they don’t,” he gestured towards the swamps and trees “...these lands are our home.”
“It is not that simple. The owners will allow you... no... they want you to stay, but they must know more about your people to assist you. I am here to check for infection and instability. You are aware of the Mutant Protection Regulations. I must carry out the law. If you can prove your free of the virus and stable breeding you will be permitted this land and more, but I must be allowed to complete my investigation.”
“No ! - you must leave now !” he gesticulated again toward the road back from where he had come. He moved towards Grady as if to grab him while Grady moved aside to avoid his potential attack.
A sound behind caused Grady to swerve around, to find two more males had appeared and were close enough to touch. Damn ! these guys were stealthy, he thought warily. At times like this he wished he had a human partner to back him up. The corporations would take considerable advantage of an AWA agent being caught spying. However, Grady was unique in that he didn’t have that problem - nobody knew he was with the AWA, not even other AWA agents.
For all public concerns, he was an ex-Core officer retired on grounds of suspicion of being a member of a prohibited group, even though he’d been cleared of it - legally. The Core Navy weren’t interested in promoting anyone who didn’t fit their mould - and Grady didn’t fit any mould, which didn’t make him any friends - so he had learned to keep largely to himself.
The one nearest him held his hands up, his fingers appeared to be playing a game which looked strange to Grady until he realised it was a form of communication. When he glanced frontwards he could see the mutant’s eyes taking in the message.
The second new arrival remained directly behind Grady, just out of his line of sight. He considered taking some form of action to free himself from the trap he was being manoeuvred into, but then the mutant spoke again distracting him.
“Myami says you must come with us,” his fingers were playing the same game as the other one, the one referred to as Myami. Grady didn’t know if it was a title or name. He went to step back, knowing there was one mutant behind him and wanting to force it to move aside. As he moved he felt no contact and continued several steps - it worked. The creature had moved aside and he now felt happier facing the three of them.
Grady wasn’t overly happy with their tone and body language, but had known it wouldn’t be easy. Most mutant colonies had bad experiences with outsiders, especially those who had official business. They wouldn’t be forthcoming which was why his training included all of the observational skills to make judgements. So far the risk was within acceptable parameters in that he felt he still had options. He nodded his agreement and the mutants relaxed as if suspecting he would refuse and attempt to leave. He decided that something was off, but couldn’t pin it down. It wasn’t quite a nagging feeling yet, but that might soon change.
“Ario, stand by for fast extraction,” he sub-vocalised, covering the muscle movement and whisper with a hand movement across his face.
“Ready,” was all the answer he got.
One of the mutants looked up, the other two copied him and almost together they leaped upward with arms outstretched. Grady could now see translucent ribbons floating across the sky at all levels. They shimmered when the light caught them just right. Why hadn’t he seen them before ?
They had grabbed the trailing gossamer strands and were pulling them down, taking up the slack. Grady could see them becoming taut, turning into cords. He tried to see where they originated, but all he could tell was the angle took them directly towards the lower branches of the nearest tree. That has to be at least three hundred feet, Grady thought.
The mutants had several ties in each hand as they moved towards Grady. He went to step back, but realised he had nowhere to go. Behind him dark pools swirled ominously, as though something swam beneath the surface.
They grabbed his arms and tied them with ribbons which pulled at him even though they were held back by the others. Each of them linked his ribbon to their own and together he and two of the mutants walked back down the path he had arrived on, pulling them tighter. He could sense the tension rising in the other ribbons although his own remained tight, but not uncomfortable. The third was yanking his own t
ies and Grady could now hear the breeze humming through the invisible cords as they tautened. The effort of tightening seemed out of proportion to the resulting tension and he realised that the tree must be responding in some way, as if taking up the slack from its own end. How strange.
Without warning, he was yanked off his feet and airborne. The ties to the other two had stretched out and he was literally hanging suspended in the air by his wrists as they shot upwards into the sky towards the lower branches of the tree. His eyes watered from the air rushing past. The tears reached his ears and pooled in the crevices.
Then he was no longer rushing upwards, but simply floating as his captors, with their arms and legs outstretched, converted to gliding mode carrying themselves and him effortlessly, heading towards the landing area he had observed from space. Knowing what was coming Grady moved his feet forward in preparation for a hard landing but was surprised when as the wooden platform rushed up at him, they landed without him touching. The mutants were holding him away from the tree’s branch, supporting his weight effortlessly.
Clear of the edge, they let him go and his feet touched the surface, worn flat and smooth from thousands of landings. The mutant that had accompanied him looked at him suspiciously while the other, Myami, unravelled the threads on his arms. Grady looked back at where he had just come from, the excited rush of the flight still with him. The distant horizon and the swamplands went as far as the eye could see.
Chapter Two
Tree Colony
The older mutant grabbed his arm and gestured impatiently towards the bole of the tree. “Come.” The mutant who now stood behind blocking his exit should he want to jump to his death also pushed him, not roughly. Grady not wanting to antagonise them complied.
He’d had very little chance to look around. There were many mutants staring, many of them women who were almost as tall as the men, small-breasted and equally muscular, but in proportion to their size and sex. There were no signs of children. He wondered where they were being kept. It was an important function of his confidential AWA report that the children were evaluated. Many cultures hid their children from prying eyes precisely because they were the subject of intense scrutiny by agencies looking for aberrations that would indicate instability, or regression in a population. Grady knew he wouldn’t be popular, but for their own sake he needed to resolve this before other hunters were called in. He knew that the some of the other members of Fezon were less prone to altruism and more likely to side with removing the problem. Either way these people needed him to protect their way of life.
As they mounted a massive set of stairs built around the trunk capable of managing three people at a time, Grady had a chance to look over the side at the area they were leaving for the next level. There were plenty of habitats seemingly cutting into the bark of the tree and although he could see utensils for various jobs, there was no evidence of anything large enough to cut into the iron-hard trunk of these mega-sized tree villages. He wondered how they achieved such a clean, professional finish.
He was pushed further into the centre of the foliaged paths and at the end of one of them he saw their destination. A hole in the tree large enough for them to enter.
Expecting it to be dark within, Grady was surprised to find that the tree was illuminated internally. He couldn’t see exactly what it was, but his first glance gave him the impression of algae. There had been many instances in the past where cultures had used natural light sources for illuminating interiors so this wasn’t anything special, except that Grady hadn’t been expecting it.
There were other mutants inside, mostly male as well as a few females. They looked older than the others he’d seen. These must be the elders of the village then, Grady surmised. All openly studied him as he entered. How could they communicate so quickly, or was something going on here that he was missing. A few of the males were openly hostile, the others saw this and held them back. It wouldn’t take them much to break free, Grady thought.
One of the old men turned and rounded on him accusingly. “Why do you come here ?”
Grady had already answered this question, but he now repeated his mission so that all of the elders could hear him.
Grady sensed the animosity was fear more than anger and explained that as this was a company world they had the right to everything on it and in it. That included genetically modified humans that had been placed here, or had settled from other planets after the wars.
“Yes, yes ! I know all that,” the old man sputtered in Standard. “You came HERE, why ?” he repeated. The others murmured amongst themselves, they all sounded concerned.
Grady wondered if he was missing something and set his senses to pick up what he could. There was tension in the place and the mutants that had remained at the door were twitching, their fingers communicating at a frantic pace. He maintained his non-confrontational expression and tried to explain.
“The company that owns this planet specifically requested I visit you to ascertain if you were a stable community. If so, they are prepared to provide you with land and support in return for your cooperation. If your people aren’t stable they will bring in teams to help you resolve the medical issues so that you can eventually take your place within the world’s development. It’s a very generous position for them to take when other corporations are treating the matter in a more negative and permanent way,” Grady explained.
“Yes, but you’re a mutant hunter and your kind have hunted us almost to extinction. Yet, you come here unarmed and alone and expect us to cooperate with you. Why should we trust you ?” he spat at him, his dislike of Grady more evident now.
“Yes ! I am a mutant hunter, but I don’t work for the corporations,” Grady confessed.
“You work for yourselves, you contract out to the corporations so they can keep their hands clean while you do their dirty work. We know how you animals operate.”
True, Grady thought, the hunters do the corporations dirty work, but could he tell them his real mission, and would they believe him ? He wondered if they would understand the difference or care overly much. He had to try.
“I work for an organisation called the Alliance of Worlds. The AWA oversees the corporations and ensures that people like yourselves aren’t exterminated quietly and removed from planets that the corporations want to own outright. I work undercover as a mutant hunter to enable me to infiltrate the corporations and learn where their attentions are being concentrated. The company that sent me here knows my reputation for finding peaceful solutions and sent me instead of the killers you expect.” Grady sensed he now had the elders attention so he continued.
“If I fail they will have no choice but to send in the other teams. There is nowhere else to run, your people will not survive unless I can warn the AWA that your people are in trouble.” It wasn’t true, the company would probably try a different non-violent option, but if Grady was killed, it would place a heavy burden on the company and the AWA and complicate the solution deeply.
The murmurings amongst the others were growing more strident and for the first time the feeling in Grady’s stomach twinged. He sensed movement behind him and stepped aside just as one of the male guards had gone to grab him. He had a wicked looking knife in his hand and the way he held it, indicated to Grady that he meant to use it. None of the elders stirred.
Grady realised he had been brought here out of sight to be executed. He had mistaken their intent and was now going to pay the price. He moved away from the knife wielding mutant and towards the entrance. One male guard still stood in front surprised at his speedy response to the other guard’s attack. Grady swept in and uppercut him and the mutant folded and Grady pushed him into the other guard delaying him the vital seconds he needed to reach the doorway.
“Ario, get me out. Now !” he called to his AI.
“On my way,” came the reply through his earpiece. Grady’s camera was recording everything and Ario was receiving it back on-board the Citrix.
> “Move higher, I cannot penetrate these branches,” Ario warned.
Grady had seen the stairway continuing upwards into the higher levels and slipped out quickly and ran the wide stairs keeping ahead of the posse now racing behind him. When he reached what appeared to be the end of the stairway Grady was amazed to see a barrier between him and the upper tree.
He looked back, the sound of pursuit was close, he had no time to dally. He removed his laser from his satchel and fired it into the mass of branches that had been woven into the wall in front of him. It was his only route to the upper branches.
“Don’t go through there !” the voice of Myami shouted from behind him having followed with the guards and who was now holding them back. Grady looked at them surprised at the change in them, but was already crawling through the hole he had made.
He ran on, but there was no more stairway. He began climbing the nearest branch. they were all well-spaced and the foliage was dense giving him plenty of purchase as he climbed. When he looked back he saw no-one following. Strange !
Two branches higher brought him to an area of reasonable stability. He looked up at the next level, but was startled when out of the corner of his eye something flitted in and out of view. It was large, human-sized, possibly smaller than a female mutant. Grady looked carefully, but it was gone. His gut twinged ominously. There was good reason for the barrier and the lack of pursuit, he slowly realised.
“Ario, how much higher do I have to go ?”
“At least another two levels, I detect life-signs around you. I suggest you move with more than your usual alacrity,” Ario suggested.
“Hey ! enough of the backtalk, Ario. Any idea how I’m going to get off this overgrown tree-trunk ?”
“It is possible I can sweep in and you can leap in through the hatch, but it is more likely that you will have to launch yourself off the branch and catch the harness. I’m extending it out now. Be warned though, there are increasing life-signs in your proximity,” Ario warned.