Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “You’d think they’d just put in a focused beam signaller or something,” Solace said. “Blink tight-light from Anchortown to here. I mean, it doesn’t have to be radio.”

  “Oh they tried. Just because we’re not Partheni doesn’t mean we’re completely impractical,” Trine said. “Originator ruins do something to the light, my dear. Something interferes with the signal. Most of my colleagues said what they received was hopelessly corrupted, devoid of information.”

  “What did the rest say?” Idris asked automatically, suspecting correctly that he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “That a message did get through, it just wasn’t the one we’d sent. We got through a beam receiver a month. The nightmares, you know.” Trine’s face waggled its eyebrows alarmingly, wide-eyed, and Idris decided he could have done without that.

  *

  As Idris didn’t sleep, he found himself on his own once the camp had settled in for the night. Without the others distracting him, he couldn’t blot out the sensation anymore. He’d felt it the moment they came in sight of the ruins—perhaps even since he set foot on-world. There was a presence to the Originator site. It wasn’t dead, though surely it had once been something far grander and was now just a worn-down stub. Whatever had made this place what it was, whatever struck fear into the Architects, it was still here. The silence he felt was the silence of something standing close, making no sound—not simply an absence of sound. And nobody knows this, except me.

  Perhaps there was a whole covert research program on the subject, run out of Mordant House. But he thought not. There weren’t enough Ints, not enough Originator sites. Nobody to join the dots… except him. He felt as though he was on the edge of a colossal revelation—wondrous or terrible, he couldn’t say. And because no more understanding came, he just stayed on that edge. An exhaustion of suspense kept him strung out for hours, while dark turned back into dawn and then headed towards dark again. The camp, he discovered, worked for one day-night cycle and then rested for the next one. It wasn’t something that fitted well with human diurnal rhythms but, since Idris had shed those, maybe he was better suited to Jericho than anyone else.

  *

  “Basically, unless it’s an emergency, we put the EM down for an hour every two days—so’s people can call their loved ones. Or their pimps and bookies,” Robellin explained. “Also, we need to upload and download the science, y’know. Order supplies, get the news medios, all that. So it’s usually chocker, is what I’m saying. You getting a channel for your pilot, whether you can dodge the interference or not, wouldn’t normally happen.”

  “Is that right?” Solace said. The tilt of her jaw suggested that Mr. Punch might have something to say about that.

  “’Cept obviously we know Trine’s in a spot, and this is for him. And also…” The biologist shot a sly look Idris’s way. “Your mate here, he’s made a discovery. Something we never guessed was even there to be discovered, eh? Shows what a shower of fucking amateurs we are. Give us another bout of free and frank with him—then when we take the generators offline, you get first go on the transmitter. Deal?”

  “Idris?” And at least she was asking and not ordering.

  “I don’t know what I can tell you,” Idris said to Robellin, “but sure.” Then Robellin gathered an audience of geologists, biologists and Trine’s dig team, and his interrogation began. They asked him all manner of questions: about his Int senses, how he reacted to the Originator site, and on and on. True to his predictions he had precious little he could tell them, the same odd guesses and failures of description getting hopelessly mangled between mind and mouth.

  “Look,” he explained at last, “it’s what being an Int is, see? There’s a place you feel, and you go to, in here.” Poking himself hard in the side of the head. “Saint Xavienne was born like this, and they made the rest of us like her. As best they could.” Seeing too many blank looks on young faces he snapped out, “Surgery and implants and chemotherapy and most of the time it kills you, you understand. We’re not meant to happen. You wreck people’s brains, trying to make something like me.” Seeing their flinches or disapproving expressions and thinking, How is it you don’t even know this? Kids, they’re just kids. There was a war on, so of course they’d try anything.

  He reined himself in, before he started going all crazy old man on them. “Those of us that lived… There’s this sense we have, here inside, it lets us do what we do in unspace. But most of all, it let us talk to Architects, right? To say, ‘Hey, we’re here. Stop doing that. You’re…’” He let out a little laugh that sounded dangerously hysterical, even to him. “‘You’re killing us. Stop killing us,’ basically.” Staring out bleakly at their uncomfortable faces. “These ruins you’ve got here, they’re speaking into that same space. And your gropplers and things, they hear it too. So yes, I can hear this place doing its thing, just by being here. That’s what the Architects hear too, I guess—when they come to these places? But I don’t know why I’m hearing this. Nobody knows why. If we did, we wouldn’t have to kill so many people to make a freak like me.”

  He could tell they were disappointed and it made him ashamed to be so useless, so ignorant of his own workings. Then Robellin was there, putting a hand on his shoulder. Not a spacer’s usual quick tug for attention, but an attempt to give comfort.

  “It’s okay, mate,” the man said, and Idris realized he’d been shivering like a hypothermic. “Fuck me, I just thought Ints went through a secret training thing, or…”

  “I’m sorry.” Idris actually sniffled, like a child who couldn’t do his homework. “I wish I could tell you more about it.”

  “Look, it’s good. Just the idea that the site works that bloody way at all, mate,” Robellin said. “I’ll make sure you get your comms time…”

  Idris just felt more wretched with every word, as though the comms was a consolation prize. A trophy for turning up, no matter how dismally he’d performed. Desperately, he burst out, “If it’s any use, I can show you where the other ruins are.”

  There was a loaded silence, and then one of the archaeologists asked, “You… can… what now?”

  “The rest of the ruins. Unless you’ve found them, but just haven’t got to them yet?”

  “Menheer Telemmier, my old acquaintance, what precisely are you offering to impart?” Trine asked, stalking over.

  “Only, when I met the groppler, there was a moment,” Idris went on awkwardly. “I just felt… like a radar pulse went out from us. It sent a wave across the planet, and pings came back, mapping out… For example, there’s a long avenue that way.” He pointed, knowing the direction without needing to think. “And there’s another place at the end of it. Must be… a hundred and nineteen klicks that way. And… look, is there a map, a satellite map?”

  An hour later, and he’d drawn what he thought might be out there. If they could get a geophysics scanner working or even manage a flight over the jungle, then they’d see the truth of it. And he still couldn’t say how he knew it. In the Intermediary Program’s labs, they’d used every damn instrument invented to search for how the information flowed from the universe into their heads. Nothing had worked. What they did was happening on some unknowable other level, just like unspace.

  After this revelation, the dig staff told Solace she could take as much time as she wanted on their comms channel, and she set about hailing Olli up on the Vulture God. For the first fifteen minutes she was just shouting into the staticky void; frustrating for her but downright chilling to Idris. Because, sitting at her feet in the comms tent, he felt like he could hear the whole planet listening, breathing down the open channel.

  The EM interference that was screwing with their transmissions was just the visible portion of a shifting buzz of chatter. The cacophony tugged at the edges of his mind, the local life exploiting the channels opened to it by the Originator presence. He wondered about the uniquely plastic form of life that had been evolving around these ruins for millions of years, supremely a
ble to exploit its environment. Jerichan biology might be more unique than even Robellin had thought… It might be the only known biosphere that had developed to exploit unspace on a local level.

  “Let me help.” He pulled himself to his feet and Solace moved away from the transmitter, annoyed by her failure. He skimmed the frequencies, trying to ride a conflicting tide of EM babble from the jungle—tree shouting over tree, monster over monster, tiny bugs screaming at each other and a trillion other calls. There was a path through it, he knew, though it kept shifting. Solace had to fumble for it, blindfold. But if he just let his hands do their thing on the transmitter, without his conscious mind intruding…

  “Anchortown to Gold City, receiving, over.” It was the distorted voice of the transmitter operator, tiny and far away. Solace lunged in to speak, as Idris did his best to keep the connection open. She almost asked that they be put up the wire to the Vulture God before remembering their Jenny Kite alias. A few touch-and-go moments later and they had Olli’s voice on a slight delay.

  “About time!” the drone specialist snapped the moment she had them. “What the fuck are you doing down there?” There was more but she cut out for a moment before Idris retrieved her.

  “Jenny Kite, this is Gold City. We have Trine but need evac, over,” Solace said, as clearly and carefully as she could.

  “Yeah you sure do,” came Olli’s static-mushed voice. “Look, guess who Kit and I found docked right here. Remember the Raptorid? Belongs to that Magdan bastard who got Idris and the captain arrested.”

  “Yes, he’s here, on-planet,” Solace broke in. The interruption resulted in them losing the link for five whole minutes. Then they heard Anchortown station’s tremulous tones again and were patched back through.

  “Look, you’re not the only one who can do spy stuff, Patho,” Olli asserted belligerently, apparently as part of a tirade that had been going on for some time.

  Solace was gritting her teeth. “Gold City to Jenny Kite, repeat, over.”

  “Repeat what? Would you stop with the—” and they lost Olli for another moment. Solace kept on patiently asking her to repeat until her voice phased back in.

  “… I said that Kit hacked the Raptorid’s comms. All that shit on-planet means Uskaro’s not using encryption.”

  “Olli, we are losing you every few seconds. What do we need to know, over?”

  “Oh. Right.” Idris pictured the specialist swallowing her annoyance. “Did you get the bit where I said they were coming for you?”

  “No,” said Solace with some restraint. “No, I did not.”

  “They think you’re here to grab this Trine character,” Olli said, static rising and falling behind her voice like surf on a shore. “They think you’re stealing Originator secrets or some damn thing. Were waiting in town for the Hiver to come to them, but you taking off for the dig kicked them into gear and they’re on their way after you. Maybe twenty hours behind you.”

  Solace blinked, and Idris could see her doing the maths. He reckoned that meant Any time now, if Uskaro’s people had commandeered the same type of transport.

  “Olli, we need evac, over. We need to get out of here with Trine.” Solace met Idris’s look. They both knew that wasn’t likely to happen, given local atmospheric conditions.

  Olli apparently had a different take on things. “Well obviously,” she said sharply. “Been working on it since I knew you were in the shit. Sit tight. I will be with you as soon as I’ve finished refitting the Joan’s shielding.”

  “Wait, what do you—”

  “Seriously, the longer we’re jawing here, the less time I’m spending saving your ass, Patho girl.” And then Olli had cut the line, leaving Solace staring angrily at nothing.

  The pair of them bundled outside and grabbed Kris. “We’re getting company,” she announced to Trine, Robellin and the dig staff. “Armed Nativists from Anchortown, coming for Trine.”

  Everyone stared at her, Kris included.

  “We’re going to need a defensive perimeter,” she said. “Just as well the jungle’s just stubble close to the dig or…”

  “Solace, mate,” Robellin put in awkwardly. “We’re… you do understand we’re not soldiers, right?”

  She blinked at him.

  “You’re serious about this? There’s a squad of bloody gunmen on their way?” he pressed.

  “So I’m told. They’ve tried to kill Trine before, right?”

  Idris looked from face to ashen face. “Solace,” he said hollowly, “we can’t stay here.”

  “It’s not the most defensible position,” she agreed, not quite understanding his point. “But this is where Olli’ll come looking for us.”

  “If we stay here, people are going to get hurt. It’s not their fight. We’ve just screwed them over by turning up.”

  “Not entirely true, mate,” Robellin said. “I mean, Trine’s one of ours, right, and they’d have come sooner or later, I reckon. But… beanbag shooters aren’t going to be a whole lot of fucking good if these clowns have real guns.”

  “They will.” Solace stood very still, and Idris imagined her mind working like a military machine, breaking down the problem. How much weight did the Parthenon give to civilian lives, exactly? Colonial civilian lives, at that.

  “I hear vehicles…” someone called, voice twisted in panic. “They’re coming!”

  “Kris, Idris, Trine,” Solace said. “With me. We’re going to head up the trail, and then into the jungle. We’ll break their advance and then fall back. We’ll hope to lose them in the trees and circle back in time to meet the Joan, if Olli can get it down here. Compris?”

  They nodded, although Idris felt it was anything but Compris. As plans went it was a series of unknowns tied together with string.

  “These guys, they’re likely Voyenni, house guards for a Magdan Boyarin,” Kris told Robellin. “They’ll be all very pushy, arrogant… Probably won’t just go mad with bloodlust though. So give way and tug your forelocks. It’s us they’re after.”

  “With luck, they’ll just leave you alone,” the Partheni added. “I’m sorry. That’s all I can give you.”

  19.

  Idris

  Solace settled them two metres into the trees, where they could get a glimpse of the Anchortown trail from cover. Kris was plainly unhappy being even that far in. After all, they’d seen Jerichan trees in action. Idris himself was strangely calm. He didn’t feel he had some magic rapport with the planet’s unpleasant ecology and one abortive groppler attack didn’t make him the Archdruid of Jericho. He knew they were very close to the buried avenue he’d felt stretching from Gold City to the next Originator site, and was really hoping the Originator construction would keep away the nastier predators. He might be wrong, though, which might make them dead.

  What Trine thought of this development was anyone’s guess. They’d turned their face off so its glimmer wouldn’t give away their position.

  The sound of oncoming engines had grown steadily louder in fits and starts. It sounded to Idris as though the vehicles were trying to make best speed but falling foul of the vegetation. He could distantly hear a shouted argument. Maybe the bad guys were more concerned with each other than a potential ambush.

  He had lost sight of Solace completely.

  Then three vehicles came into view along the trail, two open-cabined cars on balloon tyres and a big enclosed truck behind them. The lead vehicle had four men hanging on to it. The second had traded half its crew for a significant toothy gash in its flank, suggesting some manner of groppler had put the vehicle on the menu. The men seemed a mix of local mercenaries and Voyenni thugs.

  Idris had assumed that Solace would pull some kind of highwayman stunt. She’d step out, point Mr. Punch in their direction and they’d surrender in the face of her sheer panache. Instead she opened by just shooting up the lead vehicle and its occupants. She still had the accelerator set for chain shot, and it made a hell of a mess of the car’s hull, tearing through metal and plastic
and just about slicing both engine and driver in half.

  The rear end of their vehicle flipped over the front and hit the dirt. The two Voyenni who’d been reclining back there were flung forwards, which put them out of Solace’s eyeline and likely saved their lives. The second vehicle, damaged as it was, was going slowly enough to steer clear of the wreck and its crew jumped and hit the ground running. Solace began potshotting at them from the trees, individual pellets punching clean through the skewed car they were trying to hide behind.

  Then men began to pile from the big vehicle at the back. There were at least half a dozen in the first wave, and they started shooting into the trees indiscriminately. Idris kept low, glancing back to check that the others were doing the same. Trine was crouching with their humanoid legs uncomfortably akimbo, chest close to the ground and propped up on their arms. The local mercs had projectile launchers and beanbag guns, but the Voyenni had magnetics and a couple of true accelerators. They would cut through Solace’s armour as easily as flesh.

  Even as a particularly savage salvo shredded the native life over Idris’s head, Solace was suddenly kneeling by him.

  “Come on,” she said. “Fall back.”

  “But we can’t,” Kris objected. “The dig crew—”

  “Not to the dig, not yet. We’ll go further in. Hope we lose them. Come on.” Solace gestured emphatically then raised Mr. Punch again. As Idris scrambled in the direction she’d indicated, he heard the weapon’s high, ringing voice toll three times. He hauled himself over a rise, slipped and rolled helplessly down the other side until Kris caught him.

  “Ow.”

  “I was concerned that I would be the most inept fugitive here, old comrade,” Trine observed acidly. “Thank you for sparing me that.” Despite their limp they were keeping pace well enough.

  Solace slung herself back over the ridge towards them, turning to send another few shots back towards the pursuers. As soon as the pellets had left Mr. Punch, she was already moving. She dropped into cover of the ridge before the answering salvo could shred the leathery foliage where she’d been. Then they were stumbling deeper into the forest, squeezing between close-grown trees, tripping over roots that twitched and writhed beneath them. Not trees, remember? Just monsters who’ve got a good tree thing going on right now. He hoped the Voyenni ran into some trees that were considering an aggressive change of lifestyle.