Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  ‘Take a break?’

  ‘Yeah, why not.’ Maybe my time schedule was tighter than I liked to admit, what with my viral problem, but I knew that ten years either way did not matter that much to Geronamid.

  The two tongues of metal over my thighs withdrew and I stepped off Tigger’s back down onto soft grey sand. Washed up in a tideline were numerous bones and mats of weed, though tides were rare here compared to Spatterjay or Earth, for this place possessed no moon. The tides only appeared during a few solstan months occurring three times every Brumallian year, when Sudoria passed close. As I recollected, such times were when many of the sea creatures bred. The wormfish then squirmed up onto beaches like these to bury their eggs in the sand. They hatched out between tides and the young headed inland, where they entered various pools and slow-moving rivers. By then they were carnivores, feeding on abundant pond and river life until attaining sufficient size to compete for mates in the ocean to which they eventually returned, transforming into weed-feeders on the way. No, not really like Spatterjay, for the only herbivores there were the land-based heirodonts, who were prey to just about every other life form they came into contact with. There seemed to be no predators feeding on these worms. As far as I knew they died of old age or from becoming loaded down with parasites. But the planetary almanac for this place was far from complete, so some as yet unknown predator might turn up.

  ‘So, you’re an Old Captain,’ said Tigger.

  Always that. Throughout the Polity there existed what I can only describe as an unhealthy interest in Old Captains. This stemmed from the part Spatterjay had played in the Prador-human war and other significant events much later that brought my world to the attention of Polity citizens. For it was the only world in the Polity where it was possible to attain immortality without technological intervention, and some of the sea captains sailing its oceans were the oldest humans in existence. This whole obsessive interest in us struck me as rather silly.

  ‘Yes, I was the captain of a ship on Spatterjay, but I was never one of Jay Hoop’s captives, and I arrived there a good few years after the Polity put in an appearance.’

  ‘How old are you, then?’

  ‘Old enough to be bored by that particular question.’

  ‘Probably about the same age as me.’

  ‘You don’t even have to speculate, since the information must be available to you.’

  ‘Okay, you’re about fifty years older than me.’

  The drone seated itself on the sand and began licking one of its paws. I gazed at it with renewed interest. On the whole, independent drones went out of fashion in the years after the Prador-human war. This was due to the rather lax quality control exercised then in the production of war drones, and because those that survived the war ranged from merely irritating and irascible to dangerously insane. They were not popular with either humans or the major AIs. After the war the big AIs no longer manufactured independent drones, but instead ones run by subminds recorded directly from themselves. However, over the years that changed as some of the subminds gained independence, and independent drones came back into vogue. There seemed almost to be a nostalgia for them, they being the product of a wild and raw time during Polity expansion. Many of the old ones achieved mythic status, like the war drone Sniper still resident on Spatterjay and still looking for trouble. Tigger was unusual in that he must have been made during the time when drones supposedly weren’t being manufactured – some 200 years after the war.

  ‘An unusual time for a drone to be made,’ I suggested.

  Tigger returned his paw to the sand. ‘A drone is an AI, so when is an AI not a drone?’

  ‘If language adhered to logical rules, it would constrain us.’

  Tigger grinned. ‘Now that’s a quote from Gordon.’

  I trudged a little way up the beach and plumped myself down on a rock. ‘Okay, as we define it now, and probably not as we’ll define it in fifty years . . . Those that we don’t call drones are permanently sited in large structures, and though they interact with the world they don’t change their position in it. But that description immediately falls down when you start talking about ship AIs. Drones are merely smaller more independent AIs, just like Golem androids are. Sildon created a more exact classification based on power usage, processing power and ability to move. I incline more to the idea that those generally called AIs, and nothing else, control the world and those defined as drones and Golem, and even haimans and humans, interact with it. What’s your point, anyway?’

  ‘I was incepted as a runcible AI, but some faults developed as I expanded from base format towards that end. I chose then to be a drone.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I wanted to interact with the world, not control it.’

  ‘Then I wonder if what you now describe as faults were truly such.’

  ‘I try not to let the question bother me too much.’

  I sat there and closed my eyes for a moment. I was tired, since it had been a rather trying day. ‘How long until nightfall?’

  ‘Eight hours.’

  ‘Then take me inland now and drop me off.’ I heaved myself to my feet and stretched. ‘I’ll need some way of contacting you.’

  I don’t know if Tigger had already made the thing in preparation, or simply made it right then as an extrusion from his skin. He flipped his paw at me, sending an object sailing across, which I caught. It was a chain with a pendant attached, the pendant depicting a leaping silver tiger.

  ‘Just say my name close to it – I’ll be listening.’

  Technology indistinguishable from magic? In a word: yes.

  – RETROACT 7 –

  Orduval – to the Desert

  It seemed the only way. His fits were becoming more frequent and the drugs being pumped into him, in an attempt to control them, ever stronger, till he could see himself soon joining the ranks of zombies he saw every day in the asylum. Orduval removed his arterial injector last, dropping it out of the window of the trans-Komarl maglev tram, along with the diagnostic device that linked him to the asylum’s computer. Now back there an alarm would be ringing somewhere and the medtechs running to investigate his room. They would find it empty and they would find him gone. He had no intention of ever going back.

  Hiatus.

  ‘Hey, are you all right?’ The woman leaning over him had the same concerned expression that Orduval had seen too many times before. As he blinked, everything seemed blurred around the edges, and fading light turned into a sharp pain in the centre of his skull. Another fit. He pulled himself upright and wiped bloody saliva from his chin, realizing he had once again bitten the inside of his cheek.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

  The woman returned to her seat, obligation discharged. Orduval quickly checked the time display and the tram’s current location on the screen display at the head of the carriage and realized, thankfully, that his latest fit had not taken him past the old outpost station. It would arrive there soon – hopefully before that same woman, now glancing at him with surreptitious concern, decided she was obliged to enquire further. It was always like this: first the immediate concern, then the relief once Orduval claimed to be okay, then a growing guilt impelling them to ask again after his health, to offer aid, to offer to call someone.

  Sandposts indicated they were now approaching the station, and the tram began to slow. Orduval picked up his carryall and headed for the nearby doors, confident that another three or four hours would pass before the next fit struck him down. Peering through the window he observed a conglomeration of shacks with aluminium roofs sand-burnished and gleaming under the hot sun, their windows frosted by the desert wind, and their resin-bound sandstone walls carved by the same abrasive force into seemingly organic forms.

  ‘Are you sure you want to get off here?’ The woman again, standing up and peering out at the desolation.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. My brother is coming to pick me up with his sled.’ Orduval turned to face her and projected as much
confidence as he could muster. ‘I made a small mistake with my medication, but have since corrected that. Thank you for your concern, but I will be perfectly all right.’

  ‘I’m sorry to seem intrusive but—’

  ‘Yes, quite. I’m sure you are,’ said Orduval, and turned back to the doors as the tram finally drew to a halt and settled on the lev-road. He had deliberately calculated his parting words to be just sufficiently insulting to annoy the woman enough for her to think, Damn this uppity prick, I was only trying to help, and then promptly forget the entire incident. Perhaps in some other society she would have persisted in showing concern, but nowadays it wasn’t uncommon to see people suffering Orduval’s complaint, or something worse.

  The doors folded open and Orduval stepped down onto the worn sandstone platform. Glancing to his right and left he waited for a moment to see if anyone else would descend from the front or rear carriages. No one did, and shortly the doors closed again, the tram rising on its magnetic field before sliding away. He watched it dwindle, raising a dust storm in its passage, and only when it was reduced to a black speck in mirage shimmer did he remove the gallon water bottle from his carryall, kick the bag away from him, and set off into the old outpost town nearby.

  The wind stirred up dervishes in the dusty streets, and moaned between the abandoned buildings. Orduval stopped to peer inside one house and observed a beetle-chewed floor collapsed inside, and glimmer bugs on the walls airing their photo-active wings. Had he expected anything else? Moving on down the street he soon reached the outskirts and saw how orange dunes buried the road a hundred yards beyond. Ahead of him the Komarl desert extended, interrupted only by granite islands, for 2,000 miles towards the sea. He did not expect to reach that coast.

  – Retroact 7 Ends –

  McCrooger

  We arrived at a clearing in the woodland, where a metal sphere six feet across rested on the ground.

  ‘I thought you were the only drone here?’ I said, as the tongues of metal clamping my thighs in place sunk out of sight, releasing me.

  ‘I am the only one; that’s the rest of me,’ Tigger replied, as I dismounted.

  My boots sank into soft loam and I peered down at a mat of damp rotting foliage subtly transformed to a bluish beige from the green-blue of that still growing on the trees. It looked like something produced by a paper shredder. Tigger padded over to the sphere and clambered up onto it; sphere and tiger then rose ten feet into the air.

  ‘Now I must return to station before Geronamid starts shouting at me. The chief can get irate when I don’t follow his instructions precisely, though he probably factors in both my disobedience and the effect of his shouting into his calculations concerning this place.’

  ‘Doubtless,’ I replied. Geronamid was a sector AI, a ‘big’ AI, but sometimes those of a lesser stature forgot what that status entailed. If he wanted absolute obedience he would have sent only those who absolutely obeyed. What I would do, and how I would react, he had already taken into account; as he had for Tigger. Predicted events here amounted to a formula inside Geronamid’s ridiculously powerful intellect, with myself and Tigger as merely known quantities within that formula. Perhaps that kind of omniscience repelled Tigger, and had informed his decision to become a drone.

  ‘Be seeing you, then, Old Captain.’ The drone rose above the level of the treetops and faded out of sight as the effect of its chameleonware impinged upon me. I sighed, and then began to survey my location.

  The trees – it was easiest to describe them as such – sprouted multiple trunks from large woody bulbs that ranged from three to six feet in diameter. The surface of each bulb gleamed like polished oak and the trunks like highly polished mahogany. About ten feet up they began branching and sprouting foliage. This consisted of small palm-like leaves whose separated fronds would eventually make up more leaf-litter like that I stood upon. Here and there above, I spotted dark globes up to a foot across. Perhaps they were some kind of seed or bulb that would be knocked to the ground to germinate when Sudoria’s passing influence also upset the weather here and started the storm season? I didn’t know for sure, even though I’d absorbed much knowledge concerning this planetary system. That knowledge still sat in my mind but, subject to the vagaries of human mentation, I had probably already forgotten about a third of it.

  I set out on my way, knowing from Tigger that the forest extended for eight miles, cut through with streams and peppered with lakes, until reaching the summit of a buried Brumallian hive city. Moving into the shade of the trees, I noticed blue fungal spears piercing up through the ground cover, and began to hear the sounds of the forest: a weird chittering, something burping distantly, and a thwocking sound that could have been made by a woodpecker. To me the air still smelt of bleach, but with an additional slight undertone on the borderline between putridity and the smell of a rose – an odd combination. A few hundred feet into the forest I spotted one of the creatures making the thwocking sound: a large insectoid thing with a rectangular body, sprouting jointed legs at each corner. It clung to one of the tree bulbs, vibrating on the spot to emit that sound, and, as I passed, it extracted its tubular snout from a hole in the side of the bulb, turned its bird-like head towards me for a moment, then dismissively returned to its work.

  As I trudged along I began to feel tired, and again hungry, so perhaps it would have been better had the drone dropped me closer to the hive city, but I needed time to think about recent events, and my response to them. I wanted to make my personal assessment of the Brumallians here, communicate with their ruling body – the Consensus – concerning their future course, for what the Polity achieved here depended upon them as well. After that I needed to get myself to Sudoria, intact. I could not use Tigger, since Fleet would pounce on that as proof of my having imported Polity technology. I would probably be unable to avoid the show trial Fleet was planning for me, but it being a media event, there might not be any overt attempts on my life, though the Fleet commanders would certainly try to keep me under tight control. Wondering how I might slip away from them, I did not notice the figure watching me until it emitted that same odd chittering sound I had heard earlier.

  I stared across the intervening twenty yards at a squatting humanoid figure. Its skin was mottled dark green, black and creamy white and bore a chequered texture as if a net had been drawn over it tightly. Its hands were shaped little different from my own, but a spur thumb sprouted from the juncture of wrist and palm on the opposite side from its normal thumb, and another sprouted at the elbow, lying flat against its forearm. The creature’s long neck extended forward, and connected to the skull in such a way that if it had risen vertically from the body, as with most humans, those wide total-green eyes would have been staring up at the sky. It possessed no nose and its face jutted forward at the bottom, terminating in saw-toothed mandibles that vibrated before its hard-looking mouth. It wore dungarees cut off at the knee, and sandals, and metallic rings adorned the extended neck. A Brumallian.

  While continuing towards it, I raised my hand in greeting and then signed the query, ‘Correct course to the city?’ gesturing ahead. The Brumallian language consists of a lot more than hand signing. There are numerous clicks, pops and sawing sounds I could not produce unaided, since I lacked their mandibles.

  The Brumallian first stood there, eyes growing wider, then made a sound similar to that of a brick being thrown into a bush. Though I could not myself make similar sounds, I did recognize their meaning: ‘What the fuck are you?’

  I now tentatively identified this one as a female. Duras and his associates had transmitted holocordings to Geronamid. I had spent many hours studying them so that I could more fully comprehend Brumallian society and better recognize its components. I supposed my initial difficulty in identifying her sex might be due to her being just an adolescent.

  ‘I’m a friend,’ I signed. ‘I am a Consul from the Polity.’ Believe me, conveying that last bit made the joints in my fingers crunch. I then wondered if
I’d got it wrong when abruptly she turned, dropping down on all fours, and hurtled away with a lizard-like gait. Maybe I’d unwittingly said something obscene or threatening. Then I reconsidered: perhaps from a distance she had mistaken me for a Sudorian, but as I drew closer my lack of a breather mask and sheer size must have become more evident. Being accustomed to living in hive-like conditions, Brumallians were probably a touch xenophobic – much preferring to face anything alien and new with plenty of their fellows around them.

  I trudged on, and within an hour I reached a treeless area spanning both sides of a wide, slow-moving river. Here the soft ground showed a multitude of trails cut between spongy masses of growths resembling huge chanterelle mushrooms. These, standing waist-high to me, were coloured slick green on top and urine yellow underneath. I thumped the edge of one in passing and the whole mass of it vibrated, sending black crab-things the size of marbles scurrying out from their boreholes in it. I quickly discovered that I could not approach the river here since, after moving a few yards out on this soft ground, I began to sink. The closest I did manage to approach was by climbing up onto the mushroom growths and using them as stepping stones. However, upon reaching the ones nearest to the river, I saw that ten feet of glistening mud still lay between me and the water.

  Then there was the murky water itself. Masses of weed like green caviar floated on the surface, things like black commas as big as fists shoaled everywhere, and quadruped insectoids, seemingly fashioned out of iron pipes and barbed wire, stepped from weed mass to weed mass. One of these, pausing too long astride a gap over the water, helped remind me that other creatures resided here too when a great yellow mouth engulfed it. The worm body of its owner then turned in the water like an ATV tyre, before disappearing with a final cocky flip of its meaty tail. I quickly returned to seek firmer ground.