Hilldiggers

by Neal Asher

  I held up one hand and signed, ‘No need for that. I am not here to cause harm.’ I wished I’d spotted these four earlier, because then I could have remained ‘subdued’ and let them manacle me. Now they had witnessed my strength and might be scared of me – which was never a great thing when the one fearing you held a gun.

  They halted, and one of those pointing a weapon at me buzzed and clicked, ‘Should we kill it?’ accompanying this question with one-handed signing almost too fast to follow: interrogative, myself plus two names, consensus request in rhetorical mode.

  The one with the manacles replied, ‘Not yet.’

  ‘It must be a splicing, but it talks,’ added the gunman.

  ‘Not yet,’ said another gunman.

  ‘It talks,’ added the last.

  It took me a moment to realize ‘splicing’ meant ‘gene-splicing’ – something which, judging by their decidedly odd pet and the pump and the lights in the tunnel behind me, they obviously knew how to do quite well. I also noticed how their speech seemed to be blending together, and realized this was a sign of underlying pheromonal communication which had to be slower than sound.

  ‘Do – you – understand – us?’ asked all four of them together, speaking that language of stones in a food processor nice and slow for this retarded creature. The sentence seemed to slide from each to each of them, all of them speaking the words but emphasis on each separate word coming from different individuals.

  ‘I understand,’ I signed, ‘but for obvious reasons can only use hand signals.’

  They needed to discuss this:

  ‘Could it be a splicing –’

  ‘– from the Sudorians?’

  ‘We doubt it. They couldn’t splice a grug –’

  ‘– with a froud –’

  ‘– without making shollops.’

  No equivalent translation in any language I knew. The first two items mentioned I vaguely recollected as being some kind of mollusc, though I did not know what a shollop might be. This equally shared comment was obviously amusing, for they near split their cheekbones with their clattering and buzzing laughter that followed. ‘Or gloms,’ one added, obviously slow on the pheromonal uptake. The laughter became tentative – there’s always one who tries to stretch a joke too far, even when shared so closely.

  ‘Do you think he’ll put on the manacles voluntarily?’ asked one gun-waver, surprising me by speaking this entire sentence alone.

  ‘Will they work?’ asked two others. The one holding the manacles wound up the connecting wires and hung them from a belt hook. They turned and eyed their pet, which seemed to have now taken a special interest in a nearby tree and commenced some kind of strange backwards and forwards dance beside it, before finally raising its leg and urinating copiously, raising dense clouds of steam. Its eyes crossed as it missed its target entirely. The two turned back to me, the one with the manacles now drawing his gun.

  ‘You will first remove your belt. You will walk between us, then ahead of us,’ said he.

  The others added, ‘If you try to run we will shoot you.’

  ‘If you try to attack us, we will shoot you.’

  ‘And if you disobey an order we will shoot you.’

  That seemed to cover all bets, so I removed my belt and let it drop, then, while holding up my ragged trousers with one hand, I signed with the other, ‘I am a Consul from the Polity.’

  ‘Polity?’ all four again. ‘And when did you come up with that idea?’

  My problem here was that the word ‘Polity’ in their language came across as ‘political unit not of Sudoria or Brumal’, hence my difficulty in signing it. And now that they were parting ranks and waving me ahead of them, I could not explain, since even doing the hand signs with both hands before my chest was difficult enough.

  As I strode ahead of them, the dog thing moved through the trees off to my left and occasionally bark-growled ferociously as if to cover its embarrassment at its earlier pitiful performance. My captors meanwhile chatted amongst themselves.

  ‘He’s a big splicing, and very strong.’

  ‘Yes, but increasing muscle mass like that you always lose out in the cerebral area.’

  ‘Did you see the way he threw Tozzler?’

  ‘Is that why he thinks he has no loyalty to either world?’

  ‘We should think so.’

  ‘Probably escaped from some secret breeding programme.’

  ‘Yeah, some idiot trying to make quofarl again.’

  ‘No use in a space war.’

  ‘You need brains for that, not brawn.’

  It was easier for me not being able to see them, for I could pretend to myself that each comment found its source in a separate individual, despite this not being the case. I noticed how infrequently they used the word ‘I’ as in that ‘We should think so.’ The first question probably found its source in one or more of them and the answer came back the same. Communication was going to prove difficult for me, and that same difficulty was perhaps one of the underlying reasons for the war between them and the Sudorians.

  After trudging through yet another rainstorm, which turned into lime-coloured hail that beat at the trees like falling gravel, we eventually reached the edge of a lake. By a jetty was moored a fan-powered boat. I halted before reaching the shore, and turned round carefully. The one carrying the manacles now placed some kind of com device below his ear so it lay along his jawbone. His mandibles clattered and I recognized segments of the communication: code language, like Morse, but rattled out so fast I could barely pick up the occasional word or vague meaning.

  ‘I am surprised,’ he finally said in speech I could understand.

  ‘We are surprised,’ the others added, putting away their weapons.

  ‘This Polity –’

  ‘– is real –’

  ‘– but remained Consensus-denied until the information reached proving threshold.’

  The four moved closer to me, and one of them held out a bag made of some material similar to canvas. I accepted it and nodded my thanks – not being able to sign my gratitude since if I did that what remained of my trousers would end up around my ankles. Shaking the bag open I found it contained my belt, its caches open, and my gun, palm screen and spare ammo clips. The belt still seemed okay, so I used it for what it was designed. Surprisingly the gun remained gleaming and pristine, as did the clips – probably designed for warfare down here in this acidic environment. The screen, however, was warped and stained, and when I tried to turn it on it made a buzzing sound, part of the screen then melted, and the device emitted a puff of smoke. I tried detaching the control baton, since that might still be workable, but it just snapped in half. With great reluctance, since these devices had been an invaluable source of information, I tossed them on the ground, then passed the bag back to its owner.

  ‘We will await Consensus Speaker,’ two of the Brumallians informed me.

  ‘So my story been confirmed?’ I signed.

  ‘Sudorian individuality,’ they decided, ‘from Earth. We are out of Consensus until update. Part of the job. You will not be shot. Go full speak – one individual.’ What followed I could only assume to be some chemical debate in the air, then the one with the manacles spoke alone: ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘To establish relations between the Polity and the humans living in this system,’ I replied.

  ‘All humans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But why are you here?’

  ‘Because the ship taking me to Sudoria was hit by a missile. I landed in an escape-pod – incidentally one that was sabotaged.’

  ‘Fleet?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  All four now said, ‘We must await the Consensus Speaker. An update is imperative for us. We cannot communicate with you while uninformed, since this encounter is too important.’

  Four sets of mandibles snapped shut, then all four of these . . . individuals? Difficult to decide really . . . all four of them abruptly sat down c
ross-legged on the ground. I realized I would get nothing more from them and so sat down too. Tozzler edged his way over from the trees, came and paced around me stiff-legged, then abruptly sank down between me and his masters. Thus we remained for about an hour – the only sound being a rustling from the trees, the lapping of waves in the lake behind me, and the occasional thunderous rumbling of my stomach.

  – RETROACT 9 –

  Director Gneiss

  Gneiss sat in his chair gazing at a screen display which, divided into four, showed views through the diamond pane end-caps of each Ozark canister. The tangled complexity within appeared ever on the point of movement, like some simple optical illusion, and seemed to offer him answers to questions – but questions he did not know how to pose. He felt as if the images he saw pressed on his eyeballs, and sometimes wondered if that pressure lay within the skull behind them. But Gneiss had always been stubborn, and so resisted something he could not even identify.

  The only child of parents who had remained desert nomads despite all pressures to join ‘civilization’, he had inherited their pig-headedness and forever been a trial to them. He had in his early years learned all they taught him about desert survival, but then, before he even reached his teens, he decided their lifestyle was not one for him. Informing them of his decision had perhaps not been the brightest idea, because it developed into a contest of wills with them, often culminating in physical violence. They did not win in the end, for at the age of thirteen he packed up his meagre belongings and fled, taking himself off to the nearest city to acquire a ‘proper’ education. His parents came after him but, having rejected the society they now entered, they did not know how to fight the systems that would keep Gneiss from them. Despite having obtained what he had apparently wanted, Gneiss remained an outsider even within the Sudorian orphanage and schooling system. But ensuing years of conflict opened his eyes to the fact that his stubbornness, candour and uncommon intelligence would have made him an outsider in any society. Those same intransigent qualities finally secured him his promotion to the overall directorship of Corisanthe Main.

  The view of the four canister end-caps was one Gneiss called up regularly to remind himself that he was only human and must never again become complacent about his charge. He gazed frequently at the mind-distorting patterns so as to accustom himself to them, to toughen his mind and harden himself against their influence. Leastways, this is what he assured himself when given time to distance himself from the hypnotic experience. For during it he felt himself to be pitting his will against that of the Worm. Sometimes, as on this occasion, he felt himself locked in a conflict he could not resolve but which, oddly, enabled him to remain obstinately himself.

  Standing abruptly, Gneiss turned away from the images and walked over to a mirror inset in his apartment wall. He noted the even spokes radiating his irises, like two small wheels inset in his eyes, and remembered a time when they had not been like that – some months before Yishna Strone was born. Upon first noting this change, and suspecting some strange influence from the Worm, he had them medically checked but found that nothing else untoward could be detected. He reached out and palmed the carved head of the snake swallowing its own tail which formed the mirror frame, and stepped back while the mirror itself turned sideways into the wall to reveal the cavity of a small lift, into which he stepped.

  As the lift carried him down, he opened a small hatch and took out a visored breather mask to place it over his face. The direction of the lift’s acceleration changed, then changed again, and he clasped a handle beside him as he became weightless. Shortly afterwards the lift slowed to a halt, and then revolved partially to open into a gloomy chamber.

  None of the sensors here in Ozark One would report his presence, since he had long ago instructed them to ignore him. He pushed himself down in an angled trajectory he was well accustomed to, and after a few moments of weightless flight closed his fists on the hand bar positioned before the transparent end-cap of the Ozark canister. Now, without an imaging system intervening between him and the Worm itself, the effect upon him was distinctly more powerful, as was the effect of that muttering madness called bleed-over. It almost felt as if something was reaching out physically from within the canister, to push the patterns shimmering before him through his eyes and deep into his head. His customary response was instant: a solid mulish stubborn resistance. This was his parents trying to shape him into what they envisaged was a more perfect version of themselves. This was his political teacher trying to impress on him some ideology obviously at variance from reality. This was the constant pressure of Sudorian society showing him the easy path to conformity. And it was Combine society trying to deform his mental shape to fit a particular niche. He resisted with the flat negativity of an iron wall.

  Gneiss remained obstinately himself.

  Gneiss accepted that this conflict prevented him from being anything else.

  – Retroact 9 Ends –

  McCrooger

  While studying my erstwhile captors I remembered how their body chemistry was weirder than their appearance. They could breathe atmosphere such as once killed soldiers in the trenches of ancient Earth battlefields, and could eat bivalve molluscs and worms containing enough sulphuric acid to burn through hull plating. But, as I saw it, their main difference to ‘normal humans’ was a mental one, stemming from the hive-like set-up of their society and the consequent ways they had of communicating. It seemed as if, when together, their minds partially conjoined.

  This sort of thing had happened back in the Polity once or twice, when certain groups using cerebral augmentations tried to set up gestalt societies, which never lasted since each individual had been originally raised an individual. Such societies would inevitably break apart, often with many of their members needing psychiatric help for a long time afterwards. I wondered if here the formation of a gestalt had been a matter of necessity, or just resulted from their severe genetic modifications. It may even have been planned by some or all of the original settlers, but I would probably never find out for sure.

  After about an hour the sound of an engine alerted me to another fan-driven boat approaching across the lake. As it drew closer, I saw that it was another four-man vessel like the one waiting by the jetty, but with only three individuals aboard. Turning hard, it slowed by the beach and then drew up to the jetty. I noticed that the two in the front seats were very different from those waiting alongside me, and this difference became even more evident as they climbed out – one quickly securing the mooring rope to a bollard.

  These were bigger, heavier, more stooped and ape-like. Their heads seemed like boulders and what I at first took to be helmets I shortly realized were chitinous plates. Then I noticed similar growths extending over the rest of their bodies. The new arrivals were armoured, not by artifice but by biology, or rather by the artifice of genetic manipulation. Both of them lacked spur fingers, had eyes sunk into hollows, and were wearing green dungarees. They carried heavy carbines suspended across their stomachs, from which cables extended to packs resting on the near horizontal part of their backs just behind their shoulders. Their mandibles were huge and, upturned like tusks, were obviously intended for more than simply gustation.

  Standing up, the four with me in unison announced, ‘Quofarl.’ I glimpsed hand signals implying both trepidation and amusement.

  Soldiers, I realized, created by a society dependent on genetic manipulation and under the intense pressure of war. I wondered if these two creatures had been fashioned back then, or if the Brumallians still created them.

  One of the quofarl remained by the boat, while the other one, dropping down onto all fours in the disconcerting way of these people, accompanied the third figure as she headed towards us. She proved to be a Sudorian woman clad in some kind of tight-fitting envirosuit.

  Halting within a pace of me she inspected me from head to foot from behind a flat visor, then said in Sudorian, ‘Remain standing right there until I come back for you.’ At
her beck my four companions followed her to the edge of the forest. I couldn’t hear what was being said, nor could I see any sign language, for the quofarl stood directly in the way, glaring at me. Even when I tried to shuffle to one side to see more, he shuffled across to block my view.

  ‘How are you?’ I signed to him.

  ‘I have a headache and it makes me tetchy,’ he immediately replied.

  ‘Is she a Consensus Speaker?’

  ‘She is,’ he replied.

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing she’s Sudorian,’ I signed.

  ‘You got a problem with that?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should I have a problem?’

  ‘Just checking.’

  The woman returned, while the other four headed down to their boat and climbed in. Tozzler leapt in last, lying across the laps of the two sitting in the rear seats. The fan started and they pulled away. I raised a hand and four hands were raised in return. Strange people, these Brumallians, but I felt I could get along with them.

  ‘Consul Assessor David McCrooger,’ said the woman, ‘I am to take you to the Recon York. Meanwhile I would like you to explain to me how you came to arrive on Brumal.’

  ‘You’re what they describe as a Consensus Speaker, yet you’re Sudorian,’ I countered.

  A hint of a wry smile crossed her features. ‘My race has not prevented me becoming a member of Brumallian society. Are things very different in your Polity?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted.

  She led the way down to the boat, the quofarl falling in behind us. ‘Perhaps if you would continue?’

  ‘Well,’ I began, ‘my intended destination was Sudoria . . .’ and then related to her the events resulting in my presence here on Brumal, though omitting Tigger’s part in it all, merely saying that the escape-pod had washed into the shallows. As our boat pulled away, the fan became too noisy for me to be heard, so I then tried Brumallian signing, to which she responded easily. I had finished relating my story by the time we approached the far shore, where the quofarl at the helm shut off the fan, then turned on some grumbling electric motor within the boat’s hull to chug us into the mouth of a canal.