Polity 2 - Hilldiggers (9 page)

Tigger separated completely now, his chrome Bengal tiger form peeling away from the sphere and sending the latter up into space, via which he observed the ship in flames as it plunged towards the planet. Continuing to listen in on com traffic, he discovered McCrooger was aboard none of the escape-pods now spreading out into space. Belatedly he detected one single pod splashing down in the ocean, and realised it had been cut out of the communication system. Tigger sent his tiger body bounding in that direction, accelerating to just below the speed of sound and occasionally grav-planing tens of miles above the landscape. Then out over the ocean, neutrally buoyant, paws slapping the waves and jaws grinning a joyful grin.

—RETROACT 6—

Rhodane—in adolescence

“Happy Assumption Day,” said Rhodane wryly.

Peering back at her from the flimsy screen, Harald—clad in the foamite uniform of a chief engineer in Fleet—replied, “Ah, so all four of us are responsible adults now. Words cannot express the extent of my indifference.”

Rhodane studied her brother, noting how much he had changed in the six months since they last spoke. Back then he wore his blonde hair in the customary Fleet queue. Now he allowed his hair to grow long all over his head, and wore it tied back. His acerbic features were thinner, if anything, and his mouth was constrained in a strict line that failed to conceal his protruding canines. His pale blue eyes, however, seemed as cold as ever.

“It's all right for you, but then you escaped the net—as did Yishna,” Rhodane told him.

Harald acknowledged that with a slight tilt of his head, then added, “Though not entirely. We have both been subject to rather patronising supervision. I at least found the Fleet command structure so much easier to accept than did Yishna her regular psychological assessments.”

“Oh that.” Rhodane grinned. “She's on her fourth counsellor now. I wonder how long this latest one will last?”

“And I wonder what complete change of career she'll convince this one to make. The first two returned planetside to study physics, but I'm not quite sure what happened to the third one. Apparently he irritated her immensely, and that was about the last I heard.”

“We'll be able to ask her directly—her comlink is now establishing.”

The display before Rhodane divided so that it now showed Harald and Yishna both.

“Happy Assumption Day,” said Rhodane.

“Yes, equally,” Harald added.

Yishna smiled seductively. “It's a happy day now that I can apply myself completely and without interference to my research. My last psyche report was very good, apparently. I necessarily helped in writing it since my counsellor appears to be suffering a nervous breakdown. They're shipping him planetside soon and I suspect that, after a long rest, he will be taking an inordinate interest in cell biology...One for you, Rhodane.”

“We are curious,” said Harald. “What happened to your third counsellor—the one before this one? Didn't she seriously annoy you or something?”

“She suggested my intelligence was not as high as I myself rated it since it was undermined by my being emotionally retarded. It seems I made the mistake of becoming too involved in my research and not paying sufficient attention to her. She was therefore preparing to recommend to the Director that I be sent to the Threel Asylum, where corrective measures could be undertaken.”

“What happened to her?” Rhodane asked.

“She's now a permanent resident of the Threel Asylum herself. My explanations to her of the nature of reality convinced her that there was no further point in her existing. She tried walking out of an airlock without a spacesuit, but since our mother's day the safety procedures developed have made that a difficult option.”

“As if the asylums aren't full enough,” muttered Rhodane.

“True,” said Yishna, looking slightly discomfited. “What of yourself, Rhodane? How goes it?”

Rhodane replied, “Now that I am officially an adult, I can freely accept one of the offers that have been made to me. Standing at the head of the list thus far are researching bioweapons with Fleet, or pharmacology and xenobiology with Orbital Combine. There are numerous positions being offered planetside, but as you must know, they don't interest me.”

“Which will you go for?” asked Harald. “I hope you realise that bioweapons is not only concerned with new and interesting ways of killing Brumallians.”

“You would say that,” interrupted Yishna.

Before this turned into an argument, Rhodane continued, “Whichever of those will get me to Brumal quicker. I have made them all fully aware of my main interest.”

“What fascinates you so?” asked Harald.

“Filling the gulf in my head, Harald. But what fascinates you so much with Fleet, and you, Yishna, with the Worm?”

Harald shrugged, and Yishna replied, “We could always take the view that all life is empty, and so try to end it. We do what we do because we have interests beyond just our own personal existence. Why question this?”

“Because it is the one question we don't ask,” came a new voice.

The display divided again and Rhodane and the others now looked upon the ravaged features of their brother Orduval.

“Happy Assumption Day,” he added brightly. The shadows around his eyes had grown deeper since Rhodane last saw him, and his face appeared horribly thin, almost skeletal.

“Orduval,” said Yishna in acknowledgement, but no more than that. None of them bothered to enquire after his health. Why ask about the blatantly obvious and force him to tell comforting lies? She knew that Harald and Rhodane felt as she did, both guilty and relieved. It was ridiculous really: Orduval had fulfilled the mental illness demographic for them of one in four being committed to an asylum, but that did not mean they were now immune.

“They are happening closer together now, aren't they,” Harald pointed out succinctly.

“Three or four fits every day,” Orduval concurred. “They won't tell me here, but it's not difficult to work it out. If the fits continue at their present rate of increase, and with their present adverse effects on my health, I'll be dead within a year, either from heart failure or a cerebral haemorrhage...But let us return to the questions we don't ask.”

“Those being?” Rhodane asked, though reluctantly.

“Why are we what we are?” asked Orduval.

Rhodane felt the gulf in her mind widen, a sudden anger suffuse her, then pity. Orduval's mind was weak, though the impulse that drove them all to excellence lay as strong in him as in the other three of them. It was like strapping a rocket engine to a sand sledge: now this sledge was breaking up. Also, it could not have helped that his consuming interest lay in subjects with no certainty, no definition, which led to existential angst and pointless speculation. Rhodane now felt contemptuous, considering her brother ripe for plucking by one of the planetside cults or the dominant religion down there, the Sand Church.

“It has been interesting talking to you all,” Harald was staring distractedly to one side, “but I have fusion-pellet injectors to strip and lengthy diagnostics to run. Stay well.” His image blinked out.

“I too have much I must attend to, though I cannot detail it over public com,” said Yishna, turned glassy-eyed. Her image also blinked out.

“And you next, Rhodane?” asked Orduval. “Some urgent need to go out and study skirls, or to clip your toenails?”

So easy for him to say such things while confined there in that asylum. She really did have things she needed to attend to. There were those research offers from Combine and Fleet... Rhodane suddenly found herself hot and sweating copiously. “I don't know what you mean.”

“You do, because of the gulf in yourself , and because sometimes you ask those questions that hurt you.”

Rhodane hesitated with her hand poised over the cut-off switch. With an effort of will she drew the hand back but, almost concurrent with that motion, the blackness in her head expanded. “I can't... Orduval.”

“No, you can't, because you are constrained. You have no choice but Brumal, Rhodane. Once you get there, will you do something for me?”

“What... I...”

“Look into your gulf and admit to yourself what you see there.”

Rhodane's hand slapped down on the cut-off switch, and it seemed that same switch operated simultaneously inside her head.

Now, back to those offers from Combine and Fleet ...

—Retroact 6 Ends—

McCrooger

Viral slippage ...

Down on its side the pod moved in a way I recognised at once. Water slopping through the hole where I'd removed the hatch below the nose cone, now down beside me, confirmed that this had been a splashdown rather than a dustdown. I felt horribly sick but could not throw up, and feverish, while pain rolled through my body, yet was not centred around my greatest injury. I damned Iffildus and Earth Central, wondering if this was enough to finally tip the balance, then decided I must just continue without any expectation of death.

Iffildus was a haiman—a human highly augmented with computer hardware—an Earth Central agent and brilliant biophysicist who went rogue. Though the Spatterjay virus makes us practically immortal, as well as very strong and dangerous, on Spatterjay itself there is a natural substance, extracted from the bile ducts of large oceanic leeches, which can kill the virus. It is called sprine and is our get-out clause, our easy way out should the prospect of endless life become unbearable. The investigators supposed Iffildus did what he did because he felt hoopers to be a danger to the Polity. He mutated the virus using advanced nanotech to create a strain he called IF21. I received it in a bite from one of the leeches in his laboratory when I went to find him. Call it a mirror of the Spatterjay virus: it unravels where the original binds, it deconstructs, it produces sprine to kill the original virus, and it grows irrevocably. It is not yet certain that it will kill me, but then it is not certain that walking through the fusion flame of an interplanetary shuttle will kill; it's just very very probable.

With great difficulty I wrapped safety straps, attached to a couch, about each hand, then placed my feet against the couch itself and pushed back. The broken bones in both my forearms crunched and grated, and already there came some resistance from the rapid healing that had already occurred, but I gritted my teeth and kept pushing with my legs until both forearms seemed relatively straightened. I held them in that position and began slowly counting down from five thousand, which was usually how long it took for the viral fibres to rebuild enough bone to stand up against the tension of my muscles. All the time I seemed to gaze into a long dark tunnel that was ready to snap shut at any moment. Finally reaching the end of my countdown, I paused for a moment, then dropped back to the floor and unwound the safety straps. With some relief I felt the nausea and pain receding, the tunnel opening and light shining in. Now I really needed something to eat, because already what was known on Spatterjay as 'injury hunger' began hitting me.

Even without the added complication of IF21, hooper physiology is a strange and dangerous thing. The Spatterjay virus sprouts as fibres from the cells of its host, not destroying them but linking them together in a steadily toughening network. It is in fact mutualistic in that it actually increases its host's survivability. Thus a hooper can live forever and recover from the most hideous injuries. The downside of this is that the virus can actually alter the DNA and physical structure of its host. An eclectic collector of the genomes of all sorts of other creatures, the virus will use that mishmash of coding to increase its host's survivability. So a man who has lost his legs might end up with the slimy foot of a mollusc, or one who has lost his head might end up with a leech mouth sprouting between his shoulders. Unchecked, the virus will make such changes even though its host remains uninjured. Earth foods and many others will provide nutrition for the human body but very little for the virus, and thus act as a check upon its meddling. The food here in this planetary system, being very little different from Earth food, therefore served the same purpose. Injury uses up resources and if the ensuing hunger is not sated the virus moves into survival mode and can rapidly start making those physical changes already mentioned. The result can be monstrous, and not entirely sane.

However, other things first. I picked up the ceiling panel from where it lay on an acceleration couch, glanced outside at the familiar heave of ocean, then banged the panel back into place over its protruding bolt stubs. I then found a tool compartment beside the entry hatch, which was now above my head, and from this removed a small hammer which I used to rivet over some of these stubs to hold the panel in place. Now, at least, our danger of sinking decreased. I finally turned to my companion.

Of course, being a hooper, I got off lightly. He was not so lucky. The impact had snapped his spine so violently that bone protruded from his skin and blood had sprayed round inside his survival suit. Quick, anyway: he was spasming into death within a minute of our splashdown. I stooped down to pick him up, and laid him on one of the couches, securing him in place with the safety straps. There seemed little else I could do for him. So pathetic, so wasteful and stupid. I didn't even know his name. It was with a feeling almost of guilt that I started opening food lockers so I could tend to my own needs.

Noting how things were beginning to get a bit stuffy inside my ship survival suit, I removed it completely, since in order to eat I would need to remove the head covering anyway. Beyond its now depleted air supply it served little purpose, being composed only of a lightly reinforced plastic.

First I noticed the cold—my breath huffing vapour clouds into the air—then a smell like strong bleach hit me, and my lungs tightened. I recognised chlorine gas, though it was not very strong inside the pod, which would still be scrubbing its own air and adding oxygen. But should I need to leave the pod, I would be in pain for a while before my body adapted. And of course there would be the risk of further viral slippage, of further gains by IF21, and of death.