Tropic of Creation (38 page)

Now the PrimeWay filled with low rumbles of talk, angry muttering and halfhearted cheers.

Hemms’ attendants could be seen trying to pluck at him from the side, but he irritably shook them off and continued with greater vigor.

“Who studies their kin nets among you? Who can recite the degrees, and so forth, and who among you can recite your high prime’s net to the twelfth? All, all, attend me, should do so! Should be able to do so, and would be more fitting a demonstration than white robes and carping on a few rugs rolled in the tunnels!”

Shouts of derision greeted this shocking statement, and Vod whispered to Zehops, “He is digging his own doom.” He looked about him at the astonishing spectacle of dwellers grumbling about their Extreme Prime.

Meanwhile, the screens showed frantic grabbing at Hemms’ sleeves. Hemms looked at the side, as though his own servants were his enemies. “Yes, even you, you short-tendriled progeny of vanishing bloodlines. Stand back and recite!” He was bellowing and waving one moment and the next his voice trailed off as he looked to one side. Dismay crept over his drained face. In a weaker, more uncertain voice, he continued: “All … kin nets … to the twelfth degree … in proper respect…

The screen went to black.

When it came back on, it was Nefer Ton Enkar’s face on every screen.

“One is very deeply sorry to note Hemms in poor health, as you observed.” A slight dusting of snuff still dotted her upper lip, such had been her haste to seize the moment.

“Hemms must surely regret his regrettable comments about our sacred dead. One is distressed by such—illness—which must excuse him from censure. And from his duties. It is one’s happenstance to become your Extreme Prime during this—temporary, one is sure—lapse.”

Behind him, Vod heard Zehops moan. Now, in the Way, a melee broke out, and hands were raised against the demonstrators. In a single stroke, Nefer had stolen the moment, turned the crowd from rebellion back to tradition. A blow landed on Vod’s shoulder. His companions shielded him, moving him toward the nearest portal, as Vod saw his advantage squandered.

As ever, Down World loved its stability—even if it meant choking to death on it.

Rushing toward the refuge of the SecondWay, the three of them could hear Nefer’s voice trailing behind them: “One has never looked to lead, but only to serve.…”

They fled the purring of her voice. But it was everywhere.

Three ahtra lay dead at Juric’s feet. He knelt next to one of the bodies, examining the wounds.

“Bot-fire, sir.”

Eli turned to look at the bot at his side: an innocent bot—if such a concept could be applied. This bot hadn’t been out of their sight for days.

Nonplussed by the sudden attention, the AI peeled off a slug of fire at a scavenger creeping back to resume its meal on the ahtra.

Vecchi and Pig stood guard, eyeing the bodies and the hexadron, perhaps thinking how close these three ahtra had been to safety, only to be cut down. Or maybe just seeing dead enemies.

Looking at the mangled bodies, Eli thought how vulnerable the ahtra were, to put themselves in harm’s way every four years, their cyclical war of procreation. Maret had said even the ahtra world ships sent shuttles home bearing the latest candidates for ronid, receiving the shuttles at a well-hidden portal to DownWorld. So this home
world was the ahtra Achilles’ heal. They needed UpWorld and its season. Once Congress Worlds knew this, the tide of war might well change.

Which will force Nefer to launch her ships sooner rather than later…

Nazim appeared from behind a small copse of trees. “Found it, sir.”

The second bot trudged forward, at her side. Its housing was punctuated on all sides by a full array of armament. Vines and moss hung around it, dragging behind it like the tattered wraps of a mummy. To Eli it looked weary beyond caring. And guilty as hell.

“No one else around, sir,” she reported, crushing any hopes they might have had for human survivors accompanying the bot. But from the expression on her face, it was clear that Nazim considered the bot a wild stroke of good fortune.

The second bot trundled toward their own bot as though happy to see it. The Als rustled with movement. Eli saw the new bot extend a narrow cylinder, inserting it into a port in the other bot. They were exchanging information.

No.

Eli strode forward, aiming a hard kick at the bridge between them, hoping to break the contact. It held with impervious strength.

A fresh nozzle emerged from the new bot, pointing at Eli.

Swiftly, Nazim aimed the domino at the machine. “Order, Captain? I can melt this bucket of bolts.”

But already the bot’s threatening tube had retracted, then the bridge between the two machines.

“Never mind,” Eli muttered. “Too late.”

Juric and the others looked at him in confusion.

“This bot has got it figured out,” Eli said. “About the enemy. Who it is.”

Pig stepped back from the bots as though he thought it might be
him
they decided on.

“Only problem is,” Eli said, “the bot’s got it wrong.” He looked with a kind of sadness at the new bot. “And now he’s told
our
bot.”

The soldiers shuffled uncomfortably, waiting for their superior to make sense of things. All but Juric. He was watching Eli all this time. “No act of war,” he said, “if our machines go nuts.”

Juric got it, of course. Nailed it.

Eli spoke low and steady. “These bots are under my command. I’m responsible for what they do. And what they
will
do.” On automatic, the Als were. To be sure. There was that little detail, but it wouldn’t absolve humans from the blame for a clear act of war. Eli turned away from the group and walked a short distance to clear his head.

If ahtra saw that CW bots had attacked their people—had attacked them during ronid—oh, the fury Miss Nefer could whip up. A clear act of aggression. How many had the bot already killed?

Nazim, Pig, and Vecchi eyed him nervously. Something was up. And they suspected that they weren’t going to like it.

A narrow shadow fell across him. Juric stood there.

The sergeant sat down, bracing his gun on his knee, light winking
armed
, muzzle pointing down-valley. He spat out a wad of fiber, residue of the yellow polyps. As a comment, it was eloquent enough. “Dead pocks never were a problem, far as I ever knew.”

“They’re a problem
now
; Sergeant.”

Juric’s regen side was toward Eli, making him about as easy to read as a bot. “The peace,” Juric said, making it sound like a wad of polyp fiber.

A jagged wall of dust arose from down-valley. It looked
like a curtain of orange rain, a spasm of dust, in an atmosphere scoured of dust every few hours. But Eli had seen the like before. It was an enormous cloud of insects, all hatched at once to improve their mating success.

“How many enlisteds have you seen die, Sergeant?”

The scent of rain rode the air, making each breath heavy. “Enough,” Juric answered.

Eli thought of the battles the man had known. It was a full list, holding a lot of blood.

“Is it? Enough?” Eli still gazed out at the plume of insects.

“Not a matter of what I think.”

Oh, but it was. Now it was. The master sergeant must concur. Two officers or two noncoms, or one of each, was what it took to decommission a bot in the field, if put on automatic. If Als were put on automatic, it meant desperate straits. So it would take more-than-ordinary measures to stand them down. So it was very much a matter of what Sergeant Juric thought. What he thought of
Eli
, most of all.

Eli went on, “How many you figure will die if the ahtra avenge their dead here?”

It was a clear and ugly choice: pull the plug on the AIs, and maybe not make it back to the ship. Or leave the two killing machines free to sweep the area of pocks.

Juric hadn’t blinked for a very long time. That side didn’t blink very much. Eventually the master sergeant said, “Guess us five don’t matter, live or dead.”

Eli wouldn’t have put it like that. They mattered. But soldiers got paid to die, every one of them knew that. Now maybe they’d earn their pay.

Clouds scudded overhead, as though fleeing from something up-valley. Their shadows swept over Eli and his troops, bringing a few seconds of relief from the dual blaze of the suns. Rains would form up again, within a couple hours.

Eli set out the choice, saying it simply. “Figure a short trek will kill us without the AIs?”

“Done a good job so far.”

“Yes. Cut us down to five. Three Transport, two Infantry.” He would have had it otherwise, but it was as Maret had said. “The worst of us in the whole unit. That’s who’s left. The meanest, most self-serving, paranoid bastards of both divisions.”

Juric turned a quick look on Eli, what might have been a smile of relish at the edge of his mouth. “Maybe so. Maybe we are.” He looked in the direction of Nazim, Pig, and Vecchi. “Good enough to get two miles, or die trying.”

As they gazed down-valley, a band of rippers could be seen galloping after something, all in silence at this distance.

Juric stood up, the act taking a little longer than it had in the other direction.

Eli knew Juric had no reason to love him; much the opposite. But the man was looking at him long and steady, maybe trying to take the measure of this captain as Eli was of the sergeant.

Then Juric nodded, his voice low and calm. “You ready to put those dogs down?”

Eli hoped he didn’t show his relief. He covered by getting to his feet and brushing the dust from his uniform. “I’m ready, Sergeant.”

They passed the enlisteds, who watched them, brows wrinkled.

As they approached the two Als, one of the bots backed up a step. It wouldn’t do to ascribe human motives to them, of course.

Juric stepped close to the bot, placing his hand on the command panel. “Too stupid to know an enemy when it sees one.” He grinned at the unit. “Me.”

The panel was reading the sergeant’s DNA.

The thought came to Eli as he reached out to the bot’s panel:
Were you with Sascha? Did you see her die?
Was
she dead?
The thought still nagged at him, that she might be out there somewhere.…

From deep inside the bot issued a high, stinging tone of the processors deactivating. Having read Eli’s genetic signature, it stood down.

The other bot—the one they thought of as “theirs”—also went meekly into sleep mode, emitting its own long whine, and then what sounded like a shudder, it seemed to Eli, of relief.

Then they left the bots behind, resuming their journey, with Eli on point, four good soldiers coming behind.

Along the perimeter of the woody den, Sascha dug another hole and buried the soft, bloody moss. In the torrential rains, the moss would soon have been clean again to use against her body, but moss was plentiful, and she feared the smell of blood would draw predators—those witless enough to enter the den of the king predators. There had been a few, to the delight of the Singers.

Madame Singer had left at first light, as was her habit. The others sat in the pitiless rain, watching the tumble play of the three youngsters, whose main targets of mock battle were each other and Brat. Watchful sat her place, chewing on a haunch of meat while observing Sascha digging her hole, blinking now and again to wash the rain from her eyes. Watchful hadn’t left the nest for days, acting irritable, staring at Sascha as though brooding over some awful lapse.

Sascha patted mud over the hole and pulled the vines back into place. The odor of rich mud mixed with the smell of Singer dung and the overripe fruit that had become her diet staple. She inhaled the soupy air, almost
nourishment in itself, it was so heavy. She stood, wiping her muddy hands on her shirt. She imagined her mother’s disapproving look. A lady did not wipe her hands on her clothes. And she was now, in truth, a lady, a woman grown. Not a feral child.

She longed to be clean again. The clothes she had worn for weeks were rotting from her frame. The buttons of her shirt were long gone. It was a simple matter to have done with the tattered things. As she freed herself from her shirt and long pants, they tore like seaweed. She stood naked in the forest shower, wearing only her boots and lantern, letting the rain pelt her skin while Watchful put down the bone she was gnawing on and stared as though she had never seen a naked human before.

Around Sascha the rain clattered, needling the leaves and puddles of the bower and the deeper woods. The sound was almost the crackle of fire, a conflagration feasting on the Gray Spiny Forest.

With her eyes closed, the sound became the roar of a two-man log in the great fireplace of the family hall. In another life she would have known her body’s change in a different way. With silk, and white velvet, and the creamy pearls of her maternal grandmother’s necklace. With tables of savory dishes, with meaty main courses, buttery side dishes, with food as decoration: carved, julienned, fanned, layered, and molded. Iced smallcakes heavy with candied fruits. Mutton and fragrant cheeses and shellfish stews with great loaves of herb bread. The young men, stiff in Officer Candidate uniforms too heavy to sit in, would be nudged on by their fathers to make nice to Sascha Jaizelle Olander. Her hair would glitter with spikes of light from a jeweled hair net, and at her bosom the symbolic long pin, resting in her gown’s fabric, capped with a diamond. In the old days, one drew out the pin at one’s breast and drove it into the eye of a conqueror taking
spoils. So her grandmother had told her with relish, knowing that Sascha thought the young bucks in their uniforms both silly and threatening.