Reality Dysfunction — Emergence nd-1

by Peter F. Hamilton

  “They let the Ivets out,” Lori said.

  Geoffrey Tunnard gave her a respectful look. “That’s right. Stole back in here right under our noses. Dogs never even noticed them. Slit old Jamie Austin’s throat, him that was standing guard on the pen. Our supervisor Neil Barlow went right off after them that morning. Took a bunch of fifty men with him, armed men they were, too. And we haven’t heard a damn thing since. That ain’t like Neil, it’s been six days. He should have sent word. Them men have families. We’ve got wives and kiddies left here that are worried sick.” He glanced from Darcy to Lori. “Can you tell us anything?” His tone was laboured; Geoffrey Tunnard was a man under a great deal of strain.

  “Sorry, I don’t know anything,” Darcy said. “Not yet. That’s why we’re here, to find out. But whatever you do, don’t go after them. The larger your numbers, the safer you are.”

  Geoffrey Tunnard pursed his lips and looked away, eyes raking the jungle with bitter enmity. “Thought you’d say something like that. Course, there’s those that have gone looking. Some of the women. We couldn’t stop them.”

  Darcy put his hand on Geoffrey Tunnard’s shoulder, gripping firmly. “If any more want to go, stop them. Have a log fall on their foot if that’s what it takes, but you must stop them.”

  “I’ll do my best.” Geoffrey Tunnard dipped his head in defeat. “I’d leave if I could, take the family downriver on a boat. But I built this place with my own hands, and no damn Govcentral interference. It was a good life, it was. It can be again. Bloody Ivets never were any use for anything, waster kids in dungarees, that’s all.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” Lori said.

  “Sure you will. You’re doing what you tell me not to: go out in the jungle. Just the two of you. That’s madness.”

  Lori thought Geoffrey Tunnard had been about to say suicide. “Can you tell us where Quentin Montrose lives?” she asked.

  Geoffrey Tunnard pointed out one of the cabins, no different to any of the others; solar panels on the roof, a sagging overhang above the verandah. “Won’t do you no good, he was in Neil’s group.”

  Lori stood at the side of the wheel-house as the Coogan cast off; Darcy was aft, heaving more of the interminable logs into the furnace hopper. Len Buchannan whistled tunelessly as he steered his boat into the middle of the river. Oconto gradually shrank away to stern until it was nothing but a deeper than usual gash in the emerald cliff. Smoke from the cooking fires drifted apathetically across the choppy water.

  We could send one of the eagles looking for them,lori suggested.

  You don’t really mean that.

  No. I’m sorry, I was just trying to save my own conscience.

  Fifty armed men, and no trace. I don’t know about your conscience, but my courage has almost deserted me.

  We could go back, or even wait for Solanki’s marines.

  Yes, we could.

  You’re right. We’ll go on.

  We should have told Geoffrey Tunnard to leave,darcy said. I should have told him; take his family and flee back to Durringham. At least it would have been honest. None of this false hope we left him with.

  That’s all right, I think he already knows.

  Karl Lambourne woke without knowing why. It wasn’t noon yet, and he hadn’t got to go back on watch until two o’clock. The blinds on his cabin’s port were still shut, reducing the light inside to a mysterious and enticing dusk. Booted feet thudded along the deck outside the door. Conversation was a persistent background hum, children calling out in their whiny voices.

  Everything normal. So why was he awake with a vague feeling of unease?

  The colonist girl—what was her name?—stirred beside him. She was a few months younger than him, with dark hair teased into ringlets around a dainty face. Despite his initial dismay with the Swithland carrying all those extra sheriffs and deputies it was turning out to be a good trip. The girls appreciated the space and privacy his cabin gave them; the boat was very crowded, with sleeping-bags clogging every metre of deck space.

  The girl’s eyelids fluttered, then opened slowly. She—Anne, no Alison; that was it, Alison! remember that—grinned at him.

  “Hi,” she said.

  He glanced along her body. The sheet was tangled up round her waist, affording him a splendid view of breasts, lean belly muscles, and sharply curving hips. “Hi yourself.” He brushed some of the ringlets from her face.

  Shouts and a barking laugh sounded from outside. Alison gave a timid giggle. “God, they’re only a metre away.”

  “You should have thought of that before you made all that noise earlier.”

  Her tongue was caught between her teeth. “Didn’t make any noise.”

  “Did.”

  “Didn’t.”

  His arms circled her, and he pulled her closer. “You did, and I can prove it.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He kissed her softly, and she started to respond. His hand stole downwards, pushing the sheet off her legs.

  Alison turned over when he told her to, shivering in anticipation as his arm slid under her waist, lifting her buttocks up. Her mouth parted in expectation.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Karl?” She bent her head round to see him kneeling behind her, frowning up at the ceiling. “Karl!”

  “Shush. Listen, can you hear it?”

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. People were still clumping up and down the deck outside. There wasn’t any other sound! And she’d never ever been so turned on before. Right now she hated Karl with the same intensity she’d adored him a second before.

  Karl twitched his head round, trying to catch the noise again. Except it wasn’t so much a noise, more a vibration, a grumble. He knew every sound, every tremble the Swithland made, and that wasn’t in its repertoire.

  He heard it again, and identified it. A hull timber quaking somewhere aft. The creak of wood under pressure, almost as if they had touched a snag. But his mother would never steer anywhere near a snag, that was crazy.

  Alison was looking up at him, all anger and hurt. The magic had gone. He felt his penis softening.

  The noise came again. A grinding sound that lasted for about three seconds. It was muted by the bilges, but this time it was loud enough even for Alison to hear.

  She blinked in confusion. “What . . . ”

  Karl jumped off the bed, snatching up his shorts. He jammed his legs into them, and was still struggling with the button when he yanked the door lock back and rushed out onto the deck.

  Alison squealed behind him, trying to cover herself with her arms as vibrant midmorning sunlight flooded into the cabin. She grabbed the thin sheet to wrap herself in, and started hunting round for her clothes.

  After the seductive shadows of his cabin the sunlight on deck sent glaring purple after-images chasing down Karl’s optic nerves. Tear ducts released their stored liquid, which he had to wipe away annoyingly. A couple of colonists and three deputies, barely older than him, were staring at him. He leaned out over the rail and peered down at the river. There was some sediment carried by the water, and shimmering sunlight reflections skittering across the surface, but he could see a good three or four metres down. But there was nothing solid, no silt bank, no submerged tree trunk.

  Up on the bridge Rosemary Lambourne hadn’t been sure about the first scrape, but like her eldest son she was perfectly in tune with the Swithland . Something had left her with heightened senses, a suddenly hollow stomach. She automatically checked the forward-sweep mass-detector. This section of the Zamjan was twelve metres deep, giving her a good ten metres of clearance below the flat keel, even overloaded like this. There was nothing in front, nothing below, and nothing to the side.

  Then it happened again. The aft hull struck something. Rosemary immediately reduced power to the paddles.

  “Mother!”

  She bent over the starboard side to see Karl looking up at her.

  “What was that?”


  He beat her to it by a fraction.

  “I don’t know,” she shouted down. “The mass-detector shows clear. Can you see anything in the water?”

  “No.”

  The river current was slowing the Swithland rapidly now the paddles were stilled. Without the steady thrash of the blades, the racket the colonists made seemed to have doubled.

  It came again, a long rending sound of abused wood. There was a definite crunching at the end.

  “That was aft,” Rosemary yelled. “Get back there and see what happened. Report back.” She pulled a handset from its slot below the communication console, and dropped it over the edge of the rail. Karl caught it with an easy snap of his wrist and raced off down the narrow decking, slipping through the knots of colonists with urgent fluid movements.

  “Swithland , come in, please,” the speaker on the communication console said. “Rosemary, can you hear me? This is Dale here. What’s happening, why have you stopped?”

  She picked up the microphone. “I’m here, Dale,” she told the Nassier ’s captain. When she glanced up she could see the Nassier half a kilometre upriver, pulling ahead; the Hycel was downriver on the starboard side, catching up fast. “It sounds like we struck something.”

  “How bad?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you.”

  “Rosemary, this is Callan, I think it would be best if we didn’t get separated. I’ll heave to until you know if you need any assistance.”

  “Thanks, Callan.” She leant out over the bridge rail and waved at the Hycel . A small figure on its bridge waved back.

  A screech loud enough to silence all the colonists erupted from the Swithland ’s hull. Rosemary felt the boat judder, its prow shifting a degree. It was like nothing she had ever experienced before. They were almost dead in the water, it couldn’t possibly be a snag. It couldn’t be!

  Karl reached the afterdeck just as the Swithland juddered. He could feel the whole boat actually lift a couple of centimetres.

  The afterdeck was packed full of colonists and posse members. Several groups of men were lying down, playing cards or eating. Kids charged about. Eight or nine people were fishing over the stern. Cases of farmsteading gear were piled against the superstructure and the taffrail. Dogs ran about underfoot; there were five horses tethered to the side rail, and two of them started pulling at their harnesses as the brassy scrunching noise broke across the boat. Everybody froze in expectation.

  “Out of the way!” Karl shouted. “Out of the way.” He started elbowing people aside. The noise was coming from the keel, just aft of the furnace room which was tacked on to the back of the superstructure. “Come on, move.”

  A sayce snarled at him. “Killl.”

  “Get that fucking thing out of my way!”

  Yuri Wilken dragged Randolf aside.

  The whole afterdeck complement was watching Karl. He reached the hatchway over the feed mechanism that shunted logs into the furnace. It was hidden beneath a clutter of composite pods. “Help me move these,” he yelled.

  Barry MacArple emerged from the furnace room, a brawny twenty-year-old, sweaty and sooty. He had kept indoors for most of this trip, and carefully avoided any member of the posse. None of the Lambourne family had mentioned that he was an Ivet.

  The noise came to an abrupt halt. Karl was very aware of the apprehensive faces focusing on him, the silent appeal for guidance. He held up his hands as Barry started to haul the pods off the hatchway. “OK, we’re riding on some sort of rock. So I want all the kids to slowly make their way forwards. Slowly mind. Then the women. Not the men. You’ll upset the balance with that much weight forward. And whoever those horses belong to, calm them down now.”

  Parents hustled their children towards the prow. A hushed murmur swept round the adults. Three men were helping Barry clear the hatchway. Karl lifted off a couple of the pods himself. Then he heard the noise again, but it was distant this time, not from the Swithland ’s hull.

  “What the hell—” He looked up to see the Hycel a hundred metres astern.

  “Karl, what’s happening?” Rosemary’s voice demanded from the handset.

  He raised the unit to his mouth. “It’s the Hycel , Mum. They’ve hit it as well.”

  “Bloody hell. What about our hull?”

  “Tell you in a minute.”

  The last of the pods were cleared away, revealing a two-metre-square hatch. Karl bent down to unclip the latches.

  That was when the second sound rang out, a water-muffled THUNK of something heavy and immensely powerful slamming into the keel. Swithland gave a small jolt, riding up several centimetres. Some of the more loosely stacked cases and pods tumbled over. The colonists shouted in panic and dismay, and there was a general surge for the prow. One of the horses reared up, forelegs scraping the air.

  Karl ripped the hatch open.

  THUNK

  Ripples rolled away from the Swithland as it wallowed about.

  “Karl!” the handset squawked.

  He looked down into the hull. The log-feed mechanism took up most of the space below the hatch, a primitive-looking clump of motors, pulley loops, and pistons. Two grab belts ran away to the port and starboard log holds. The black mayope planks of the hull itself were just visible. Water was welling out of cracks between them.

  THUNK

  Karl stared down in stupefaction as the planks bowed inward. That was mayope wood, nothing could dint mayope.

  THUNK

  Splinters appeared, long dagger fingers levering apart.

  THUNK

  Water poured in through the widening gaps. An area over a metre wide was being slowly hammered upwards.

  THUNK

  THUNK

  Swithland was rocking up and down. Equipment and pods rolled about across the half-abandoned afterdeck. Men and women were clinging to the rail, others were spread-eagled on the decking, clawing for a handhold.

  “It’s trying to punch its way in!” Karl bellowed into the handset.

  “What? What?” his mother shouted back.

  “There’s something below us, something alive. For Christ’s sake, get us underway, get us to the shore. The shore, Mum. Go! Go!”

  THUNK

  The water was foaming up now, covering the hull planks completely. “Get this shut,” Karl called. He was terribly afraid of what would come through once the hole was big enough. Together, he and Barry MacArple slammed the hatch back down, dogging the latches.

  THUNK

  Swithland ’s hull broke. Karl could hear a long dreadful tearing sound as the iron-hard wood was wrenched apart. Water seethed in, gurgling and slurping. It ripped the log feeder from its mountings, crashing it against the decking above. The hatch quaked violently.

  A gloriously welcome whine from the paddle engines sounded. The familiar slow thrashing of the paddles started up. Swithland turned ponderously for the unbroken rampart of jungle eighty metres away.

  Karl realized people were sobbing and shouting out. A lot of them must have made it forward, the boat was riding at a downward incline.

  THUNK

  This time it was the afterdeck planks. Karl, lying prone next to the hatch, yelled in shock as his feet left the deck from the impact. He twisted round immediately, rolling over three times to get clear. Pods bounced and pirouetted chaotically. The horses were going berserk. One of them broke its harness, and plunged over the side. Another was kicking wildly. A blood-soaked body lay beside it.

  THUNK

  The planks beside the hatch lifted in unison, snapping back as if they were elastic. Water started to seep out.

  Barry MacArple was scrambling on all fours along the deck, his face engorged with desperation. Karl held out his hand to the Ivet, willing him on.

  THUNK

  The planks directly below Barry were smashed asunder. They ruptured upwards, jagged edges puncturing the Ivet’s belly and chest, then ripping his torso apart like a giant claw. A metre-wide geyser of water slammed upwards out
of the gap, buffeting the corpse with it.

  Karl turned to follow the water rising, fear stunned out of him by the incredible, impossible sight. The geyser roared ferociously, shaking Karl’s bones and obliterating the impassioned shouts from the colonists. It rose a full thirty metres above the decking, its crown blossoming out like a flower. Water, silt, and fragments of mayope plank splattered down.

  Clinging for dear life to one of the cable drums as the Swithland bucked about like a wounded brownspine, Karl watched the geyser chewing away at the ragged sides of the hole it had bored. It was creeping forward towards the superstructure. The bilges must be full already. Slowly and surely more and more wood was eroded by the terrific force of the water. In another minute it would reach the furnace room. He thought of what would happen when the water struck all fifteen tonnes of the searingly hot furnace, and whimpered.

  Rosemary Lambourne had a hard struggle to stay upright as the Swithland tossed about. Only by clinging to the wheel could she even stay on her feet. It was the sheer fright in Karl’s voice which had spurred her into action. He wasn’t afraid of anything on the river, he had been born on the Swithland .

  That deadly battering noise was knocking into her heart as much as the hull. The strength behind anything that could thump the boat about like this was awesome.

  How much of the Swithland is going to be left after this? God damn Colin Rexrew, his laxness and stupidity. The Ivets would never dare to revolt with a firm, competent governor in charge.

  A roar like a continual explosion made her jump, almost sending her feet from under her. It was suddenly raining on the Swithland alone. The entire superstructure was trembling. What was happening back there?

  She checked the little holoscreen which displayed the boat’s engineering schematics. They were losing power rapidly from the furnace. Reserve electron-matrix crystals cut in, maintaining the full current to the engines.

  “Rosemary,” the radio called.