The Abyss Beyond Dreams (22 page)

Then finally, the beacon fires had been lit. There had been a Fall in the lands around Prerov, six hundred miles east along the Eastern Trans-Continental line, the main railway track that
bisected the continent from west to east. The regiment had swung into action. They’d deployed their full strength of five hundred troops in less than three hours. Along with all their
equipment and mods, they’d embarked the special train laid on for them. Half the town had come out to cheer them off.

He had spent most of the journey with his face pressed against the train carriage window, watching the beacon flames roaring away in their huge iron cage braziers. So big they took days to burn
out. He could almost feel their heat every time the steam train raced past one, helping to raise his excitement and determination.

The bulky iron engine had finally pulled in to Prerov’s station along with several other troop trains. Eight regiments had been called out to help sweep the estimated Fall zone for eggs.
It was the first time Slvasta had ever been outside his own county – his first time anywhere, really. The station was in the middle of the commercial district at the foot of the striking
mountain town on the western end of the Guelp range. Slvasta stood on the platform and stared up at the regional capital in delight. Prerov was over two thousand years old. Humans and mods had
spent generations hacking into the stony slopes, producing terrace after terrace cluttered with buildings that had whitewashed walls and red clay tile roofs. Most of them were shaded under huge
tomfeather and flameyew trees growing in their courtyards. And, perched right at the top, without any trees close by, was the great observatory dome of the Watcher Guild, whose eternal vigil helped
protect Bienvenido from Falls. He was desperate to climb the steep winding steps that knitted the terraces together and explore the ancient town, with its wealth and colour, and lots of well-to-do
girls who would probably be appreciative of regiment troops risking their lives.

As it happened, the regiment didn’t even spend one night billeted in town. A squadron of Marines had arrived from Varlan, the capital, as soon as the beacons were lit. Smart tough men in
their imposing midnight-black uniforms, they’d quickly claimed the authority of the Captain and started organizing the regiments. It was important to get the sweeps underway as soon as
possible, before the eggs had time to ensnare anyone. So an hour after the train pulled in, Corporal Jamenk’s squad, which comprised just Slvasta and Ingmar, had been assigned to sweep the
whole Romnaz valley. Slvasta had been proud of the responsibility – it was a huge area. Until Captain Tamlyan had sneeringly pointed out that they were on the very fringe of the estimated
Fall zone; it was an assignment to keep the new recruits and an untried corporal out of the way and out of trouble.

A convoy of farm carts had taken them and eleven other squads out of Prerov, the humans rattling round in the back while the regiment’s mods trotted alongside. The farmland immediately
outside the regional capital was like an extended garden, with the fields and meadows and groves immaculately tended by mods and their human owners. Lovely villas sat in the middle of each estate,
larger and grander than any of the houses back in Cham. Streams and canals were meshed together, providing excellent irrigation and drainage. Pump houses clattered away, puffing smoke into the
blazing sapphire sky as the engines spun big iron flywheels, maintaining the all-important water levels. It was the only noise the troops could hear. No one else was on the broad road with its
guardian rows of tolmarc trees. The villages they passed through had sentries – the old men and stout women; the younger, able, men were in the local regiment reserve, out helping to
sweep.

On the second day, the farms were larger, and less arable. Cattle, sheep and ostriches roamed across bigger and bigger meadows. Abandoned quarries disfigured the land. Slvasta was amazed at how
much ore, sand and rock had been dug out in the past. The hills to the south grew steeper – precursors to the distant Algory mountains. Active quarries were still and silent, their mod
workforces penned up in corrals while their wranglers waited for the sweeps to finish and give the all-clear. Forests began to dominate the rolling landscape, most of them with big square areas
eaten out of them where logging operations were felling timber. Farms were further and further apart, and most buildings were made from wood rather than stone.

Trees lined both sides of every public road on Bienvenido, forming leafy avenues the whole world over. It was a law dating back to Captain Iain, who ruled seven hundred years after Landing, so
travellers could always see the route ahead. Here, they were just icepalm saplings, the hope of a road to come rather than a definitive path. The convoy began to split up, with carts rolling off at
junctions down tracks marked by even smaller saplings. As the sweltering afternoon stretched out interminably, Jamenk’s squad rattled on until they finally left the sentinel trees behind. All
that marked the way to Romnaz valley now was a couple of wheel ruts in the ground. Their driver dropped them off at the head of the valley. The last village they’d passed was half a day
behind them.

‘I’ll pick you up back here in eight days,’ he told them. So their sweep began.

*

The squad’s equipment and supplies were carried by a regimental horse-mod and a pair of dwarf-mods. Slvasta was never entirely comfortable around the creatures. They were
different from most of Bienvenido’s native animals, which bolstered his suspicions. He just found the whole thing weird – the way their embryos could be moulded by skilled adaptors into
any form. In their neut form they were simple six-legged beasts half the size of a terrestrial horse, but fatter. Six odd lumps along their back were vestigial limbs which the adaptors could coax
out in the various mods if they were needed. He simply didn’t see how that could be natural.

For the mod-horse that carried the bulk of the squad’s kit, adaptors had produced something not dissimilar to a basic neut, but larger and with stronger legs. More subtle internal changes
gave them colossal stamina; they weren’t fast, but they could carry a load for days at a time. And the simple thoughts in their brain could be easily controlled with ’pathed
instructions.

The mod-dwarfs were loosely modelled on a humanoid form. With four legs and four arms kept in vestigial form, they were bipedal, though clumsy with it. Their heads came up to Slvasta’s
elbow. Jamenk had given them the flamethrower cylinder backpacks to carry. If they did find any Fallers, the mod-dwarfs could hand over the weapons quickly. In an emergency they could even fire
them – though Slvasta wasn’t entirely convinced about how good their aim was.

Flamethrowers were supposedly a fool-proof method of dealing with Fallers. They could cover themselves with much stronger protective teekay shells than most humans; bullets didn’t always
get through. Even so, Slvasta felt reasonably confident that the carbine he carried on a sling would give any Faller a pretty hard time of it. If the weapon worked, that is; they jammed all too
often in practice firings.

The mist began to lift, long tendrils winding up lazily into the sky, where they vanished amid the delicate indigo twigwebs of the quasso trees. Bright beams of sunlight filtered down past the
blue-green leaves, dappling the lingrass. The sky above became very blue again, with no clouds.

Slvasta took his tunic jacket off, and ’pathed a mod-dwarf. The dumb creature trudged over and took the jacket from him.

‘Did you ask permission to do that?’ Jamenk asked. ‘Regiment uniform will resist an eggsumption.’

Slvasta didn’t let his contempt for the corporal show through his teekay shell; he was too used to the idiot’s insecurities for that. Jamenk had been a corporal for four months; he
was twenty-two with all the maturity of a twelve-year-old. The youngest son of the Aguri family, who owned some land in the county, which was why he was in the regiment in the first place; he
wasn’t going to inherit anything. And also why he’d got a promotion while better men languished in the ranks.

‘Sorry, corporal,’ Slvasta said in a strictly level voice. ‘It’s getting warm. I was worried the jacket might slow down my reactions when we come across the eggs.’
And he was mighty dubious about the jacket being resistant to eggsumption; it was just ordinary tweed soaked in mythas herb juice.

‘All right,’ Jamenk said. ‘But nothing else, okay?’

‘Yes, corporal.’ Slvasta made sure he didn’t look at Ingmar. They’d both smirk. No telling how Jamenk would react to that. Half the time he wanted to be their friend; the
rest of the day was spent trying to lord it over them. Inconsistency: another sign of a truly bad NCO.

After another half-hour the mist had vanished altogether. Jamenk and Ingmar had both taken off their jackets. Plenty of sunlight was filtering down through the trees, heating the still air
underneath. Even the bussalores had stopped rushing round as the heat built. Thankfully the lingrass was shorter here, or it would be exhausting work just to walk.

Jamenk unrolled the map Captain Tamlyan had given them, then closed his eyes. Somewhere high above, his mod-bird was gliding on the thermals, keen eyes scouring the bedraggled tree canopy that
smothered the rumpled valley – a view which skilled ex-sight could borrow. Slvasta wondered why the regiment didn’t give all of them a mod-bird and train them to see through it; the
ungainly things had excellent eyesight and actually did most of the searching during a sweep. But it was a status thing, of course. Officers and NCOs only, distinguishing them from the ordinary
troops. That would be one of a very,
very
long list of things Slvasta was going to change when he was lord general of the regiments.

‘I can see where they’ve been logging,’ Jamenk said, his eyes tight shut. ‘Another couple of klicks.’

The track was easy enough to follow. It wasn’t used much, but there must have been some traffic. Trees had been chopped down where there were particularly dense clusters. A couple of
streams they’d crossed had been forded by trunks laid across the bed. According to the Prerov mayor’s office, the Romnaz valley was claimed by the Shilo family, who were foresters by
trade.

Jamenk nodded in satisfaction and rolled his map up. ‘Come on.’

The mods began plodding forwards again. Slvasta started to follow the corporal. He knew he should be looking round for any sign of a Fallen egg. Smaller trees broken, strange tears in the canopy
of larger forests, long furrows in the ground, dead fish in ponds. But none of that was going to be visible in this wild forest. It was impossible to see twenty metres on either side of the track.
He just kept trudging on, remembering to take regular sips of water from his canteen. The air was horribly humid, but he was sweating hard. It was important to keep hydrated. That was one of the
few things he remembered his father telling him when they were out in their smallholding’s fields.

‘This has been used recently,’ Ingmar said. He was looking at the track as it passed across a runnel.

Ingmar was a skinny youth whose limbs seemed to belong to someone even taller, with glasses that had the thickest lenses Slvasta had ever known. They made his eyes implausibly large, showing up
the milky stains in his irises. In another ten years, Ingmar was going to be using his ex-sight alone – just like his father before him, who’d been eye-blind for the last eleven
years.

He shouldn’t be able to qualify for the regiment, either
, Slvasta thought guiltily. But Ingmar had been so desperate to prove himself capable of living independently from his
family, and the recruiting sergeant was always keen for new troops.

‘It’s a cart track,’ Slvasta pointed out reasonably. ‘The Shilos use it to get in and out of the valley.’

‘I know that,’ Ingmar said defensively. ‘I mean this cart was here in the last couple of days.’ He pointed at some wheel ruts in a patch of damp ground. The lingrass had
been crushed into the mud. ‘See? The breaks are fresh.’

‘Well that’s good,’ Slvasta said. ‘It means they’re still around.’

Ingmar gave the ruts another glance. ‘Nobody moves round after a Fall. All the farms and villages wait for the all-clear.’

Slvasta threw his arms wide and gestured at the immense forest. ‘Because anyone living here is really going to know what’s going on, right?’

Ingmar ducked his head.

‘There aren’t any beacons out here,’ Slvasta persisted. ‘The Shilos won’t even know there’s been a Fall.’

‘Okay,’ Ingmar said sullenly.

‘Come on, you two,’ Jamenk said. ‘You’re arguing about crud. We can ask the Shilos if they came in or out when we get to the croft.’

‘Yes, corporal,’ Ingmar said. He stood up, not looking at Slvasta.

After a minute of silent walking, Slvasta used a private ’path to say a very direct and humble: ‘Sorry,’ to his friend. Before they’d signed up, they would sometimes
spend days on end squabbling about the most ridiculous things as they learned about the world: Did Skylords drop Fallers? Was there an outside to this universe like the first ships claimed, and if
so where was it? Why was maize yellow? Would Asja kiss either of them? Was rust a disease from space? Would Paulette kiss either of them? How could coal possibly be squashed wood? What gave every
nebula its own shape when stars were all the same? Mynea was a great kisser – oh no she wasn’t – yeah, how do you know? Why do tatus flies always go for blond hair to spawn in?
Crud like that. It didn’t mean anything, and Ingmar with his logical brain won most disputes anyway; Slvasta just got in a whole lot of fun from trying to ruin his friend’s
argument.

He sighed. Life in the regiment was a fast lesson in growing up.

‘It’s okay,’ Ingmar ’path spoke back, equally direct, so Jamenk couldn’t sense their conversation. ‘I just didn’t understand, that’s
all.’

‘Understand what?’

‘If they were leaving the valley, going to town for supplies or something, then we would have known, either passed them or that last village would have told us they’d driven out of
the valley. If they were coming in, then why?’