My room was a steel box, with a basic bed to lie on. No comforts or luxuries, because those were human things. My AI opened up the front of my armor, and I fell out. Or what was left of me fell out. A mess of tubes and cables still attached me to the inside of the suit, delivering nutrition and fluids and taking away wastes, for recycling. I lay on my side on the bare bed, my back and all its attachments still stretching away into the suit standing upright in the middle of the room. Like a guard watching over me.
I breathed heavily, slowly, disturbed by how different the Base air seemed, after the familiar recycled air of my hard suit. Seemed was the best I could manage; I had no sense of smell or taste anymore. I didn’t have much of anything anymore. No legs, and only one arm. Half my torso replaced by medtech holding me together and keeping me alive. No genitals. Half my face gone, replaced with smooth plastic. The rest of me was mostly whorled and raised scar tissue. I lay on my side on the bed, my eye squeezed shut, so I wouldn’t have to see myself. I can’t sleep inside the suit, or I’d never leave it. Never have to look at what they’d done to me, in the name of Science and Mercy.
Are you all right, Paul? The warm female voice of the suit’s AI drifted through my mind. I was never free of her, even when I wasn’t in the suit.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Leave me alone. Please.”
You know I hate to see you like this, Paul. It breaks my heart. Or it would, if I still had one. I wish I still had arms so I could hold you. But I’m still here, still with you. Even if all I can do is comfort and reassure you. Be the one sane voice left in your head. You might be a thing in a hard suit, and I might be just a memory imprinted in silicon, but we’re still man and wife. I’m still Alice, and you’re still my Paul.
“You’re the voice they put in my head to keep me from going psycho,” I said. “Let me sleep. . . .”
Why are you so hard to talk to, Paul? We always used to be able to talk about everything.
“That was then; this is now. Please, let me sleep. I’m so tired. . . .”
Yes. Of course. I’m sure things will seem much better, in the morning. Just remember: whatever’s out there, you don’t have to face it alone. I’ll be right there with you. Are you crying, Paul?
“Good night, Alice.”
Good night, Paul.
They dragged me from the wreckage of the air car, more dead than alive. They saved my life, and then expected me to be grateful. They told me my wife was dead. Alice was dead. I was so badly injured they had to cut more than half of me away, and then they decided the only way to save me was to seal me into a hard suit. Only the really badly damaged go into hard suits, because the bond is forever. And the process is really expensive. But the Empire has a desperate need for people in hard suits to do all the really dangerous work on truly hostile alien worlds, so they’re always ready to cover the bill. And people who might have been allowed to die mercifully in their sleep wake up to find they’ve been sealed in a steel can, forever. Indentured for life, to cover the Empire’s expenses.
Is it any wonder so many of us go crazy?
These days, every hard suit has its own built-in AI, to interface with the occupant. To talk with them and console them, encourage them in their work and keep them sane. To help with this, the AIs are programmed with the memories of someone close to the occupant, someone who cared about them. A wife or a husband, a father or a daughter. Anyone who could provide a memory deposit. Everyone is encouraged to make regular deposits at the Memory Bank, in case there’s an accident, and the brain needs to be reinforced with old memories. The Empire doesn’t tell you that they have the right to those deposits, once you’re dead. They don’t want you to know. It would only upset you.
They imprinted my dead wife’s memories onto my suit AI. From a memory deposit made some years earlier. She always meant to update it, but somehow she never got around to it. She had no memory of dying in the car crash. She had no memory of the last three years. You’ve changed, she kept saying to me. You haven’t, I said. And I cried myself to sleep every night, even as she tried to comfort me.
First thing in the morning turned out to mean 5:00 a.m. Base time, of course. With its two suns, Abaddon had a planetary cycle that would drive anyone crazy. The alarm drove me out of my bed and back into the armor, and then I followed the arrows in the floor to the transport ship kept inside the Base, where the plants couldn’t get at it. The ship blasted up through the top of the Base, through the force shield, and out across Abaddon to the unfinished terraforming equipment we’d come to work on.
We sat in two rows, looking at one another, strapped firmly in place. No windows, no holo viewscreen, no sense of where we were or where we were going. It was, at least, a fairly smooth ride compared to the trip down. The transport ship dropped us off in a clearing full of crates and half-assembled machinery and shot off again the moment we’d all disembarked. The Commander didn’t want to risk his ship. He’d have a hard time replacing his ship.
For a while we just stood there together, looking around us. Piles and piles of wooden crates, and something really high tech in the middle of the clearing, looking distinctly unfinished. It didn’t look like something that would eventually transform the entire planet. Something that would tame the jungle and make Abaddon a place where people could live. Where plants would behave like plants.
At least we had a pretty large clearing to work in. The ground had been specially treated so nothing could grow on it. It was gray and dusty, and solid enough that even our heavy footsteps sounded dull. The jungle had grown right up to the edge of the perimeter, and once again, the moment we appeared everything went absolutely insane with rage. Every living thing strained forward, frantic to get at us.
I did ask why the terraforming equipment couldn’t be surrounded by a force shield, like the Base, but apparently the field’s energies would disrupt the delicate terraforming equipment. So it was up to us to defend it the hard way. Only three of us were scientists, specially trained to assemble the equipment; the rest of us were just grunts, trained to walk the perimeter and slap down the plants as they pressed forward. They couldn’t survive long on the gray ground, but it didn’t stop them making mad suicide rushes, to get at us and the equipment.
So the six of us divided up the perimeter and walked back and forth, each of us protecting our sector. The plants surged endlessly forward, as though just the sight of us drove them right out of their minds. We walked back and forth, shooting them and frying them, blowing them up and cutting them down, and still they kept coming. To preserve our ammunition, we quickly learned to meet them with the built-in strength and speed of our armor.
The plants lashed us with barbed flails, ground at us with bony teeth inside flower heads, tried to force their way in through our joints, or just crush us under coil after coil of constricting creepers. We tore them up and ripped them apart, and our armor ran thick with viscous sap and sticky juices. The violent colors and clashing shades didn’t get any easier to deal with. The light was still painfully bright, and the wind slammed back and forth so viciously our armor had to fight to keep us upright. We set fire to the jungle, but it never lasted. We blasted the plants with heavy gunfire and ravening energies, and they just kept coming. We tore the plants up out of the ground, with their roots still twitching, and still they fought the hands that held them. As though just our presence on this planet was an offense beyond bearing.
There was a kind of sentience in the plants, in the jungle. I could sense it. They knew what they were doing. They hated us. The plants must have known they would die, that their continuing assault was suicide for every individual plant . . . but the jungle didn’t care. We were the hated enemy. We had to be fought. The plants came at us again and again, their barbs and teeth and thorns clattering viciously against our armor with almost hysterical rage. And all the time they were keeping us occupied, other plants were trying to break through on some unguarded fron
t, to get at the scientists and their equipment. As though the plants knew they were the real threat.The six of us worked the perimeter, killing everything we came into contact with. One, Three, Eight, Nine, Eleven, and me. We didn’t talk to one another. We had nothing to say. Occasionally, we’d overhear the three scientists on the open channel, discussing some technical matter. It might as well have been machines talking.
There wasn’t much left of my senses. Torn flesh and brain damage had seen to that. The armor replaced them with specially calibrated sensors, channeled through the suit AI. So I could see and hear for miles, and the pressure sensors built into my steel hands were sensitive, as well as strong. It wasn’t touch, but it would do. I was isolated from the world, but I could still experience it. I missed taste and smell, but it’s wasn’t like I had any use for them anymore. It was all tubes, now.
My vision was sharp enough that I could see every detail, every color and shade and shape, of every plant I killed. I could hear every scream and howl they made as they pressed forward, all the sounds of rage and pain and horror. I wondered, briefly, how that was possible. Plants didn’t have vocal chords. Wind blowing through seedpods, or reeds, perhaps . . . It didn’t matter. I was here to kill the plants, not understand them.
And killing them did feel so very good. I was strong inside my suit, strong and powerful in my armor. Stalks and flails and creepers tore like paper in my steel hands, and I could rip apart the largest plant with no effort at all. I broke everything I hit and everything I stepped on died, and I smiled so very broadly behind my smooth, featureless helm. Another reason why people don’t trust us. Because any one of us could do a hell of a lot of damage to people, if we ever lost control. Or threw it away . . .
Three cried out suddenly, and I looked around just in time to see his hard suit disappear under a mass of writhing blue and purple creepers. They wrapped right around him in a moment, burying him under layer upon layer, until he’d disappeared in a cocoon of pulsating vegetation, and then they just jerked him off his feet and hauled him away, into the thrashing jungle.
I ran forward and plowed into the jungle after him, forcing my way through the active plants by sheer strength. Nine was right there at my side. The others yelled for us to come back, that defending the terraforming equipment was far more important than rescuing one missing grunt. That we were all expendable. I knew that. So did Nine. That’s why we went after Three. Because you have to hang on to some of your humanity or you really would go crazy.
Strangely, the plants had left a trail for us to follow. A ragged path between tall plants, from where they’d dragged Three away. The surrounding vegetation hadn’t blocked or overgrown it, though they’d had plenty of time. So Nine and I pressed steadily on, the earth shaking under the heavy pounding of our steel feet. And the plants on either side of the trail . . . held back. It took us a while to realize they weren’t attacking us anymore. And the further from the clearing we went, the quieter everything became, until we were just walking through a still and silent forest, with no need to kill anything. Nine and I looked at each other and kept going.
It could be a trap, Paul. But it doesn’t feel like a trap. This is something else. Something new.
“Watch my back,” I said to the AI on our private channel. “Full sensor scans. Don’t let anything creep up on me.”
Of course, Paul. I have Three’s beacon. Straight ahead. He’s not moving. He isn’t answering my calls. Neither is his AI.
We finally found Three standing alone and very still, right in the middle of a small clearing. Or rather, what was left of Three. The hard suit was standing entirely motionless, and it only took me a moment to discover why. The armor was empty. It had opened itself, and there was no trace of the occupant anywhere. Just the broken ends of tubes and cables, hanging limply from the suit, from where Three had broken free of them. Nine and I looked around very carefully, but there was no sign of any body. No blood, no signs of violence. Nothing.
His AI is dead, Paul. Wiped clean. Suicided.
“Could Three still be alive here, somewhere?” said Nine.
“Without his tubes and cables?” I said. “Not for long. Why would he open his suit? The air alone would kill him.”
“Could the plants have forced it open, from outside? There’s no sign of violence on the front of the armor.”
“The plants couldn’t have reached him,” I said. “He would have had to persuade his AI to open it for him.”
“But why?” said Three. “Why has his AI suicided? Where’s the body? None of this makes any sense!”
We searched the surrounding jungle, looked and listened with our sensors set to their fullest range, and found nothing, nothing at all. The jungle was still and quiet, and the plants made no attempt to interfere with our search. They just stood there, swaying this way and that under the urging of the gusting wind. Almost like normal plants. As though they weren’t mad at us anymore. Or, perhaps, because they were satisfied with Three’s death. Maybe even sated, if they’d eaten the body . . . And then I stopped dead where I was. I’d caught a glimpse of movement, right at the edge of my sensors. Human movement, not plant. Or at least, something very like human. I pointed it out to Nine, but he couldn’t see anything. And now neither could I. I had my AI replay the sensor images and share them with Nine. Just a glimpse, of something that looked human but didn’t move like anything human . . .
“Not Three,” I said. “Whatever that was, it was a complete human figure. Not like us.”
“Could it have been a survivor from Base Two?” said Nine.
“I don’t see how,” I said.
“We have to check this out.”
“Yes. We need to be sure what that was.”
We strode quickly through the jungle, and the plants let us pass. And soon enough, we came to another clearing, and in it, another hard suit. Standing still and silent and very empty. Its steel armor had been chaffed and smoothed by wind and weather, and the stenciled number on its open chest was Thirty-Two. Nine and I stood very still, studying it from a safe distance.
“It’s an older model,” I said. “This could have come from Base Two, I suppose.”
“But you saw something moving,” said Nine. “This thing hasn’t moved in ages.”
We eased forward, one careful step at a time, and peered into the hard suit’s interior. The hanging tubes and cables had withered. The interior of the suit was full of flowers. Alive and flourishing. Blossoming with wild psychedelic colors.
“This . . . is getting seriously strange,” said Nine. “Did the suit’s occupant . . . turn into flowers?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “He opened up his suit and left it, just like Three. Somehow they left their suits behind and went . . . somewhere else. Except there’s nowhere for anything human to go, on Abaddon.” I turned slowly around in a complete circle, studying the jungle. “Tell me, Nine, what’s wrong with this picture?”
“The plants are quiet,” said Nine. “Nothing’s attacked us since we left the others to follow Three.”
“Maybe they’re not hungry anymore,” I said. “After Three.”
“I never got the feeling they wanted to eat us,” said Nine. “Just kill us. They wanted us dead. Wanted us gone.” He looked at me sharply. “We are gone. We left the clearing. We have to get back! This could all be a distraction, to lure us away while they launched an attack on the equipment!”
We raced back down the trail. The plants had kept it open. Nine had his guns at the ready and I had my flamethrower, but we didn’t need them. The plants just watched us pass, misshapen multicolored heads bowing and bobbing in the wind. And when we finally burst back into the clearing, all was just as we had left it. The three scientists were still working on the terraforming equipment, while the others patiently patrolled the perimeter. They all looked around as we crashed back into the clearing and demanded to know where we’d been
, and what had happened to Three. But Nine and I were too busy looking back at the jungle. The plants had gone mad again, straining forward with everything they had, desperate to get at us, and kill us. In the end, I just said, The plants got Three. And Nine said nothing at all.
We went back to guarding the perimeter. And the long hard day wore on.
Somehow the rest of us made it through to the end of the shift alive. Bone-deep weary and exhausted from fighting back the plants all day, but alive. The perimeter was heaped with torn apart, bullet-riddled and flame-blackened pieces of vegetation, some of them still twitching. We were all out of ammunition and power cells, reduced to fighting the jungle with brute force. The armor did all the heavy lifting, but we still had to work the armor. The real tiredness came from the unrelenting concentration, because you couldn’t relax, couldn’t let your guard down, even for a moment. Or you might end up like Three.
We were all searching the blood-red skies for the transport ship long before it was due to appear, and when it finally did touch down, we immediately turned our backs on the job and headed for our ride home. I looked back, just as I was about to climb aboard, and the plants had fallen still again. They were only violent when we were around to make them mad. . . .
I thought about that, all the way back to Base Three.
We sat in silence in our two rows, securely strapped in, facing one another. None of us had anything to say. I reported Three’s death to the Base Commander. He didn’t seem too surprised. Or upset. After we landed, and we were walking back to our quarters, it occurred to me to ask Four, one of the scientists, how long he thought it would take to finish assembling the terraforming equipment. Unless we get a lot more help, he said, Three years, maybe four. I tried to think of years like the day we’d just had and couldn’t. Years of constant fighting, against an enemy that would never give up? Maybe the Captain was right. Maybe this was Hell, after all.
Tales of the Hidden World Page 12
