Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  Remembering how the Brumallian girl had fled over to my right, I turned in that direction in the hope of finding a river crossing point. Soon I came upon a trail worn deep into the ground and there turned back towards the river again. I don’t know why I expected to find a bridge, since on Brumal it made perfect sense to instead find a tunnel burrowing underneath the river.

  The oval brick-lined pipe speared down into the ground at forty-five degrees, its arched entrance poking up from the soft earth like the end of a Victorian sewer. The smell exuding from it reminded me of a damp shower cubicle recently scoured and disinfected by a Cleanbot. Leaning against the arch I peered inside. At first I assumed it utterly lightless down there, but as my eyes grew more accustomed to the gloom I discerned a pale blue glow, so I entered.

  Just beyond the entrance, a series of steps led down, and there were hand grips grooved into the brickwork of the walls. As daylight began to grow dim behind me, I came upon the first of the overhead lighting units: a blue ovoid hanging from the ceiling attached to ornate black ironwork. Only when it shifted and repositioned itself did I realize my mistake, and now recognize the light itself as the body sac of a large tic, the black ‘ironwork’ comprising its thorax, legs and feeding head. I wondered what it fed on, and decided not to linger there in case I found out. Belatedly, as I moved on, I realized that what I had just seen was a biolight – a product of genetic manipulation, not nature.

  Where the steps ended I was forced to wade on through about a foot of water. From somewhere nearby came a sloppy rhythmic sound, as of dinosaurs mating. Some kind of pump was preventing this tunnel from flooding, but after seeing that biolight I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet this particular pump. To my surprise, at a point I estimated to lie directly under the midpoint of the river, I crossed a much wider tunnel that seemed to follow the river’s course. Had I now reached the hive city’s suburbs? I briefly considered turning left or right, but decided it would be better if I continued on towards the city overland, arriving in full view of lots of inhabitants. Judging by the reaction of the girl earlier, I didn’t want to come unexpectedly upon any Brumallians down here – no telling how they might react. Another flight of steps came into sight ahead, and thankfully I ascended them. Once out of the water, my boots promptly disintegrated on my feet. As I stopped to kick off their soggy remains, I also noted long rips and spreading patches of yellow now decorating my clothing, and surmised that it would not be long before that fell apart too.

  Finally I returned to yellow daylight, but my eyes did not even get time to grow accustomed to it before something big, heavy and smelling of boiled hammerwhelks, slammed me down into the mud.

  – RETROACT 8 –

  Yishna – on Corisanthe Main

  After stepping from her quarters Yishna paused to breathe in the metallic air of Corisanthe Main, then turned to the two Ozark containment technicians. The OCTs were a power aboard this station, and wore their own distinctive uniform of sticksole slip-ons, knee and elbow protectors, and a garment tube covering them only from thigh to solar plexus. This tube of tough fabric sported numerous pockets and tool loops, and was cinched around the waist with a wide belt into which they tucked their armoured gauntlets – markings on the gauntlets denoting their rank. When she first saw these people it annoyed Yishna to feel herself reacting like any ordinary groundsider to their near-nakedness, for she understood their attire to be entirely practical for working in the hot confined spaces around the Ozark Cylinders.

  ‘DalepanOCT. EdellusOCT.’ She acknowledged them both, though her gaze lingered on Dalepan, the male. He nodded to her, his thumbs still hooked into his belt, but said nothing. Edellus grinned widely, and Yishna allowed her gaze to stray to the woman’s large naked breasts overhanging her garment. She conceded to herself that though such attire was undoubtedly practical for their job, letting those two hefty objects swing free could only be a hindrance. Clearly practicality here had transformed into a fashion statement and a defiant assertion of lifestyle choices. Only later did she learn that Edellus was a member of the ‘Exhibitionists’ – one of the many subsects among the OCTs – while most other OCT women kept their breasts strapped up, both for decency’s sake and to prevent them getting caught in any machinery.

  ‘Are you carrying any com hardware or storage mediums?’ Edellus asked Yishna.

  ‘No, I am not.’ Silly question really, since the importance of not taking anything along into a containment cylinder that could be appropriated by a worm segment had been hammered into her from the moment she stepped off the inter-station shuttle.

  ‘Are you mentally prepared for bleed-over?’

  ‘I am prepared.’ That one was easy since it required a singularity of purpose, tight focus and no distracting emotional problems: on the whole an attitude of mind that described herself and her siblings only too well. However, not having yet experienced ‘bleed-over’, she did not quite know what to expect.

  ‘Then follow us.’

  Walking behind the two techs, she felt the almost ceremonial air about all this. An intensity, a strangeness, existed on this station, and people who stayed aboard for any length of time changed in odd ways – the OCTs were a good example – so that the society here differed considerably from that of other Orbital Combine stations. Yishna wondered if this might be the result of bleed-over occurring outside the Ozark Cylinders. She decided it seemed likely.

  Her quarters being located on the lower level of the station, they had to take a lift tube up to reach Centre Cross. The shaft was nil gee, so they had to pull themselves down into three of the four buggy chairs and strap themselves in. After ensuring each and every buckle was secure, Dalepan tapped a button on his chair arm, and the buggy revolved to close off their entry point, before shooting up through the shaft, cramming them back into their chairs at one gravity. Only when the buggy slowed to approach the Centre Cross did the necessity for the straps become evident, as their bodies rose against them. After halting, the buggy then revolved towards the exit, and they unstrapped.

  Yishna felt her excitement and trepidation growing. This was it: she was finally here. Stepping out after the two OCTs, she studied the Centre Cross Chamber. The roof was lit with star lights, giving the entire place a mystical air. Throughout the massive space, study units like lev-tram carriages were suspended on jointed crane arms, their occupants visible poring over touch-screens. Cables hung in liana loops between these units, and also connected to the four main ducts extending towards the containment cylinders. It was nil gee in here too, grav being maintained only in the study units, and then only when it would not interfere with research. Many OCTs could be seen at work in various surrounding areas: either maintaining or installing equipment. From the lift-shaft nexus, tubular cages extended to four quarters – reaching each of the inner caps of the Ozark Cylinders. Fortunately, these caps did not have to be opened for gaining access, since secure locks led through them.

  The two OCTs demonstrated their facility in nil gee by going down on all fours and moving fast and easy along the tube cage leading to Ozark Three. Yishna felt clumsy and awkward as she followed them, receiving constant bangs to her elbows and knees which demonstrated why the OCT uniform necessitated those knee and elbow pads. Shortly they reached the secure lock where Dalepan and Edellus took out their control batons and relayed to it their input codes, then stepped back expectantly. Yishna pulled herself forward, hurriedly removing her baton from her belt cache, and twisted its ring controls to her input code, and sent that too. The heavy door – a great bung of solid iridium steel – thumped and hinged open. They passed through this, then through another smaller door – with similar security – finally reaching a small anteroom where breather masks were provided to cope with the inert gas that filled the containment cylinder they were about to enter.

  As Yishna donned her mask, then allowed Edellus to check it fitted properly, she slowly became aware of a background murmur, as if she occupied only one room of many and crowds of peopl
e in the other rooms were conducting polite but insistent conversations. Then came an abrupt dissonance, as if a screeching lunatic was trying to fight his way through the same crowds. Briefly the tenor of the conversations altered, the strident madness infecting them all – till the atmosphere became suddenly threatening. Yishna felt a moment of panic, and realized she was tightly gripping Edellus’s wrist.

  ‘Some cannot feel it until they are right beside the canister itself,’ Edellus informed her. ‘We will have to watch you, for you are obviously sensitive.’

  Yishna released the woman’s wrist. ‘Bleed-over?’

  ‘We say it is the very thoughts of the Worm affecting us all by telepathic inductance. Those who style themselves more rational than us tell us telepathy is a myth, and that the Worm does not think, but they can offer no other explanation for the phenomenon.’

  Yishna would normally have pointed out that such rationalizations were ever the excuse for religion, and when things remained unexplained that was simply because no rational explanation had yet been found. There was no need to attribute such phenomena to the kind of mystical sources beloved of cultists. But instead she said nothing, for now her normal rationality and love of empiricism deserted her.

  Another door admitted them to the scanning area where station scientists conducted remote study of the Worm. Yishna inspected the giant heads of the multi-spectrum EM emitters and receivers poised around the giant canister below them, like thorns around a bug. Subversion-hardened machinery actually penetrated the canister: the heads of the nanoscopes, other emitters and receivers, and diamond probes and other mechanical tools. Intervening spaces were webbed with power and data cables and support frameworks. To perform maintenance impossible to conduct from outside, the OCTs always entered here in threes, so they could watch each other. Yishna now understood why.

  The invisible muttering crowd seemed packed shoulder to shoulder all around her, but just slightly out of phase with the reality she knew. She heard occasional distinct words, ‘location . . . compression . . . death . . .’ and began to feel a terrible anger, yet Yishna had always considered anger a destructive emotion and had trained herself to avoid it. Thoughts started surfacing in her consciousness. She saw Orduval having his first fit on the floor of the Ruberne Institute museum, remembered eating sage cake with blueberry jam, began making random calculations, wondered about starting a lesbian relationship with Edellus and considered strangling Director Gneiss because he knew too much about her. She could make connections between these thoughts, and logically argue how they had proceeded into her consciousness, yet felt on a deeper level that some outside influence had forced them there. Telepathic inductance. She understood why the OCTs felt the way they did, and felt her own fear grow as members of that invisible crowd all around now fell silent and seemed to turn their regard upon her.

  Bleed-over.

  Station Director Oberon Gneiss, the man with the weird eyes and seeming emotional disengagement from the world, had stated that those studying the Worm must gaze upon it with their own eyes and feel its presence, for otherwise they could too easily fall into anthropomorphism and an expectation of the prosaic. Though Combine scientific communities frowned on the irrational, they valued imagination. Very well. Yishna tried to separate herself from the effect and to focus on her purpose here. She had come to study the Worm, so she forced her attention back to analysing her surroundings.

  There were several scorched and melted places around the central canister. They called it an information fumarole breach when the Worm began to take over some piece of equipment, even equipment hardened to such attacks. A huge energy surge, tapped from massive capacitors lodged in Centre Cross, usually solved the problem, but to the detriment of the equipment that had been breached.

  ‘Let us go down now,’ said Dalepan.

  Pushing off from the lip of the airlock, they descended towards the canister. It was fashioned of a ceramic-steel composite except for one end-cap, that one being optically polished diamond. A lattice of grip bars stood out only a few feet from the cap in question, the knurling cut into them worn smooth in places by the clench of sweaty hands. Edellus and Dalepan took hold on either side, leaving a space in the middle for Yishna. She noticed Dalepan was staring in through the cap, while Edellus kept her face averted. Catching hold of one bar and placing her foot on another, Yishna too peeked inside the canister.

  Tangled bright complexity faced her: metallic ophidian movement squirmed across her optic nerves till she felt the need to scratch those places in her head, even though her eyes stood in the way. The mass lying underneath six inches of optical diamond seemed to be in constant motion, though when she focused on any part of it she saw no movement at all. This effect seemed to nibble at the periphery of her vision, at the edges of all her perception. At first she felt herself being observed, as she herself would observe a bug landing on her hand. But then the intensity of that observation increased, and it seemed a star-shaped crevice opened in her brain, and into that began to drain away all her self, all her will. There seemed a solution to all this contained in the patterns behind that diamond pane, if she could but stay a little longer to figure—

  ‘Time to go.’ Dalepan was gripping one of her biceps, Edellus the other.

  ‘No, I just need to—’

  They pulled her away from the bars and launched all three of them towards the airlock. She wanted to fight but, as the fascination broke, she realized how futile that would be since there was no way to get back there until she reached something to push off from again. However, by the time they reached the airlock, Yishna started to feel the fear, and did not want to return.

  ‘We thought you might be a scratcher,’ Edellus told her, as they unmasked.

  ‘Scratcher?’

  It appeared that one in fifty of those who looked upon the Worm would tear off their masks and try to scratch out their own eyes. The OCTs then warned her about after-images flashing in her visual field, and that if they occurred she must consult the doctor immediately, since the eye-scratching sometimes occurred after the visit to the canister. She also learned that her seemingly brief moment before the diamond pane had actually lasted for an entire hour. But now, with the formalities over, she could begin her apprenticeship, and decide the course her future research would take. Though, of course, Yishna had quickly decided her area of study would be bleed-over, as she searched for the god in the machine.

  – Retroact 8 Ends –

  5

  Our ancestors here used biotechnology far in advance of what we Sudorians currently possess (though perhaps not in advance of that employed by the Brumallians). They used adaptogenic drugs and DNA-editing nanomachines, esoteric surgical techniques and viral-recombination therapies, but these weren’t really enough. They knew with absolute scientific certainty that this world would kill them before they could enjoy grey hair. It was already killing them. Changed but not completely adapted, they took all that they and their machines could carry, and headed south out of the Komarl and into cooler climes. During the journey a quarter of them died, and a further quarter of them died while they set up their domed encampment where the city of Transit now stands. The survivors managed to endure simply because they limited the time they spent outside their specially cooled domes, where they worked quickly to raise the next generation. That next generation was created by drastic alteration of the embryos they had imported. The children inherited, and were free to walk outside but, as their parents and educators died around them, they did not inherit everything. Machines fell into disuse and technologies were lost, as these children tried to build a society. They did not yet understand that the nuts and bolts of civilization are more important than political infighting.

  – Uskaron

  McCrooger

  Face down I could not see what had me trapped. It must have leapt on me from the top of the tunnel exit. Just to the right side of my head I could see one long jointed finger the size of a banana, looking like it was made of
brass gone verdigrised on its upper surface, and terminating in a vicious though translucent talon. Chummy growled with gurgling wetness beside my ear, which gave me the benefit of its pickled-herring halitosis. I brought my elbow back – not too hard since I did not really know my assailant’s intentions. It made a glottal urf and a long red tongue slurped down the side of my face. I heaved myself up, lifting it with me, reached back and grabbed a thick wrist, rose onto one knee, then threw the creature over my shoulder, slamming it down hard into the mud before me. I then paused, somewhat at a loss on observing the form of my assailant.

  About three hundred pounds of something looking like a cross between a monitor lizard and a Rottweiler struggled there on its back, panting for breath. Its chest was a ribbed shield of yellow and green, its dog’s head and the rest of its body was that same verdigris-and-brass colour, without fur, reptilian. Its thick lizard tail whipped back and forth, and it gazed up at me with mismatched eyes – one blue and one brown. I stood up, not recognizing this creature from the Brumallian planetary almanac.

  It was also not alone.

  I pretended indifference for a moment. Most of my upper garment now hung bunched over my right shoulder and down that same arm. I slowly retrieved the ammunition clips from the waist pockets and tucked them into my belt caches, along with the gun and the palm screen – the belt being the only part of my attire that did not seem to be deteriorating the same way as my boots and top – then I tore away the soggy decaying cloth and dropped it to the ground. Finally I turned my attention to the four Brumallians who were now stalking towards me.

  They wore uniform clothing: bulky camouflage fatigues to match our surroundings, and strangely shaped helmets to fit the odd structural angle of their heads. They were armed with long double-barrelled guns holstered across their stomachs. One of them carried four rings attached by lengths of wire: presumably manacles to be placed upon me once their pet had subdued me. The pet which now, finally regaining its feet, sped away to slink around about behind them. Now two of them drew their weapons.