Great North Road

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Locked in a crouch, panicked, not knowing where the greater danger lay, ahead or behind, he activated his infrared function again. His Weston waved about, covering as much of the area as he could.

  Heightened senses warned him. He caught a flicker of motion from the corner of his eye, and jumped out of the crouch, diving down the slope. As he landed on his belly the end of a bullwhip branch came slamming down out of the iridescent aether. It struck him square on the back, hammering him deep into the snow.

  The blow was everything Ravi imagined a traffic smash would be. Incapacitating. Pain peaking towards overload. Disorientating, stretching time out to make that single moment resonate on and on. Sheer disbelief was his only other companion amid the torment. The tree! The tree had hit him. It was alive, just as Mark warned them.

  Ravi moved his head a fraction, seeing the branch lift elegantly, twitching as light as a cat’s tail flick as it began to gather itself back into a tidy horizontal coil.

  He’d heard his armour vest creak and crack as the branch hit him. That had saved him. But the armour was fractured now. He’d never survive another strike. And the trees were legion.

  Keep going. Just as he’d done all those years ago above New Florida. The odds were impossible, then as now. That didn’t matter. You did your best, you didn’t give in. Always, you gave your all, just as the military did throughout history.

  Ravi Hendrik heaved himself up out of the imprint his body had made. His yowl of anguish and determination was loud enough to wrench the fog and snow apart by itself. They’d have heard that back in Abellia.

  He couldn’t even stand erect. His back was too badly damaged. The bodymesh showed a dozen small puncture wounds where the fractured armour had jabbed into him. He hobbled off down the slope again, a fearful Neanderthal retreating. His head was craned back so he could watch for—

  Another bullwhip branch came lashing out of the jungle. Ravi vaulted as best as his crippled body could manage, and the branch tip sent up an angry plume of snow centimetres behind his ankles. He slithered on, rolling and bouncing down and down until he banged into something solid enough to stop him. Glanced up to see what the obstruction was.

  The monster looked down at him, haloed in a sapphire glow from the aurora borealis. He’d bumped into its legs. A desperate twist wasn’t quick enough. Those five dreadful blades came stabbing down. Ravi screamed in agony as one slid straight through his right upper arm, grazing the bone, pinning him to the crusty snow.

  His left arm came up and round as if fired by an electric shock. It put his pistol muzzle five centimetres from the monster’s inflexible face. He tugged the trigger. For once the bullet seemed to have some effect, punching the head back. He shot again. Again! A bright-orange spark erupted from the thing’s brow as the bullet piiinged away into the night, and it swayed back. Ravi fired once more.

  The blade withdrew, allowing the monster greater movement so it could avoid the relentless point-blank shots. Madness and fury shunted Ravi up to his feet. Following it. Shooting, always shooting. The dark head weaved from side to side, trying to elude the impacts.

  Then, as Ravi knew would eventually happen, the trigger clicked uselessly. The Weston’s chamber was empty. He and the monster paused for a second, staring at each other. Ravi could have sworn the thing was as startled as him by the crushing fall of silence. He did the only thing he could now, and threw the Weston at it before turning to run for his life. As he did the five blades came whistling towards him in a furious arc. Two razor tips caught his shoulder, ripping through his parka, slicing the flesh outside the rim of the armour. Ravi barely registered the new pulse of pain. So much of his body hurt now.

  He ran on. His grid was still dead. All links down. Fire burned into his spine. He ignored it. Blood drizzled down his arm from the blade wounds. He kept one foot swinging in front of the other, nothing else mattered, kicking the loose top-snow aside. Running he didn’t know where, just not up the slope to the trees.

  It was behind him. Close. He could hear the snow being thrust apart as those inhuman feet pounded after him.

  A deeper darkness grew ahead of him, and the mist churned around his legs, sliding forwards as if propelled by some natural urge. The snow was unrelenting, though sudden gusts began to buffet it up around him. Ravi knew then.

  Another ten paces brought him to it. He was sliding precariously on naked ice as he came to the precipice. Fog glided over the edge, sweeping down into the black canyon to accompany the flurries of snow spinning giddily in the ragged updraughts.

  He risked a glance over his shoulder. The monster was four metres behind, its arms coming up for the last, fatal embrace.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Ravi shouted with the full defiance that only a Wild Valkyries flyer could possibly muster. He turned, stiffened, and jumped—

  *

  The search party found some splatters of blood. In itself a miracle given how fast and thick the snow was falling.

  Elston had dispatched two squads: Botin, Atyeo and Leora in one; Omar, Raddon, and Jay in the second. He allowed them to go outside the ring of vehicles, but not out of link range, pitiful though it was.

  Back in the vehicles, Dean, Miya, and Ken tried desperately to clear the rip that had killed their net.

  Links were bodymesh to bodymesh only, so everyone got to see through Botin’s eyes as he shone a torch on the blood spots at the bottom of the riverbank. Flakes of snow landed softly on them, slowly obscuring the last evidence of Ravi Hendrik’s existence.

  Botin’s team was a hundred and twenty-three metres from the vehicles, putting their link strength down to ten per cent.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ Elston asked.

  ‘No sir,’ the lieutenant replied. ‘There’s a lot of marks in the snow here, and three spent nine-millimetre casings. This is where we heard the last shots from. There was obviously some kind of struggle.’

  ‘Lieutenant!’ Leora called.

  Attention switched to the Weston pistol she was looking at, lying in the snow with its barrel already covered in fresh flakes. She picked it up. ‘Chamber’s empty. He fired every round.’

  ‘Is there any indication where they are now?’ Elston asked.

  ‘Tracks leading south along the river, sir,’ Botin said. ‘Two sets. They were heading for the canyon.’

  ‘Do not pursue,’ Elston said. ‘I am not having you venture outside link range. Fire a flare.’

  Botin pointed the stumpy flare gun into the air, and fired. There was a glimmer of pink-white magnesium somewhere up amid the heavy falling snow, but it was barely brighter than the electron-blue flickers of the aurora borealis that swam among the trees.

  ‘He’s not going to see that,’ Atyeo said.

  ‘He’s not alive to see anything,’ Leora muttered. ‘Let’s not kid ourselves here.’

  ‘Stay on station another five minutes,’ Elston ordered. ‘Fire a flare every minute. If Hendrik doesn’t show up after that, fall back to the vehicles.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  It took another fifteen minutes before Dean and his team managed to reboot the meshes and processors, bringing the convoy’s net back on line. Pings fired out, coded for Ravi’s body-mesh. It never responded.

  Elston was startled to see Bastian’s icon slip up into his restored grid. Raddon led Omar and Jay over to the truck’s sledge as soon as the green emblem appeared for all of them to see. Omar got down on all fours, and peered past the runners. ‘Hey, buddy, didn’t expect to see you again.’

  ‘Has it gone?’ Bastian North asked. ‘Please God, it was terrible.’

  He told them how he and Ravi had been having trouble with the sledge pumps, how they’d gone over to investigate, how he’d heard some sort of commotion on the sledge. He’d glimpsed the monster emerging out of the veil of fog and snow just as the net crashed, and dived for cover under the sledge. He’d stayed there, hearing gunshots then silence, too frightened to move. Then finally, when the cold was biting hard into his flesh, th
e convoy net had come back on line.

  The Legionnaires escorted him back to Tropic-1, where he stripped off his parka and armour, and started to warm up. His face was badly bruised, some grazes leaking blood. ‘Smacked into the side of the sledge as I went for cover,’ he told them. By then Botin and his squad had come back. Everyone knew that Ravi was dead like all the rest before him.

  *

  Morale reached its nadir that night. Talk was the same in each vehicle. Every time the convoy stopped, the monster struck. They were only safe when they were moving, and now they couldn’t. With the canyon presenting an insurmountable barrier, they had to wait to see what the MTJs found. So they sat in their vehicles, unable to sleep, barely able to see the headlights on either side, knowing their net was vulnerable to the alien, listening to the servo whine of the remote gun, knowing its targeting sensors couldn’t penetrate the icy murk anyway. Waiting for dawn, waiting for the MTJs to return, waiting for the hated snow to lift, waiting for some intimation of hope.

  Sunday 5th May 2143

  The snow eased off some time after midnight, allowing sensors to stare further across the frozen river. There was no sign of Ravi’s body, but then no one was expecting that.

  Pale pink dawn brought tendrils of fog creeping out of the jungle again, slithering down to the river and over the frozen waterfall. As everyone was having their meagre breakfast allocation the shortwave radio crackled into life. It was Antrinell, his voice drifting in and out amid the hissing static of far-off storms. ‘There’s a way down. We’re about fifteen klicks west from you. The canyon wall dips down, and there’s a rockfall at the bottom. We can make it down there. Camm and Darwin are already halfway down, marking a route.’

  ‘Stay there,’ Vance radioed back. ‘We’ll come to you.’

  They couldn’t raise MTJ-2.

  ‘This radio is not like a link,’ Olrg told Vance. ‘The atmosphere does weird things to short wave.’

  ‘If we can reach one MTJ we should be able to reach the other,’ Vance complained.

  Olrg’s face showed how much he disagreed, but he didn’t contradict his colonel outright.

  ‘They were supposed to check in every two hours, as well,’ Vance said.

  ‘We had the first scheduled call from MTJ-2 yesterday afternoon, sir, they confirmed everything was okay, then the weather closed in, so we assumed that blocked them.’

  Vance wasn’t convinced. If it had been the other way round, and they’d lost contact with Antrinell, he would have simply waited for the MTJ to come lumbering back at the appointed time a day later. But Leif and Karizma, that was different. He told his e-i to open a secure link to Lieutenant Botin.

  ‘I want you and Atyeo to take Tropic-1 and follow MTJ’s route east. See if you can find any trace of them.’

  ‘Sir. They set off last night. The snow will have completely covered their tracks.’

  ‘I know. I just need to confirm that they stuck to the plan, and they didn’t encounter the alien. Drive for a couple of hours, then come back.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  *

  It started snowing again before the Tropic left, thick gentle flakes drifting slowly out of the dark vermilion sky. People saw the snow, and watched the Tropic roll steadily away along the top of the canyon, and grumbled among themselves. The morning’s news about finding a way down to the canyon floor was offset by the latest development. Searching for the missing MTJ meant yet more delay, and they were parked where they knew the monster lurked.

  Angela watched the Tropic vanish across the rumpled snow-scape as she stood behind biolab-2’s sledge. It seemed to be her drudgework destiny to distribute meal packets from the dwindling stocks they were towing along. Off to her right, Olrg and Chris Fiadeiro and Raddon were clambering all over the bladder framework on the truck’s sledge. There was some kind of fuel problem, which was where the monster had caught Ravi and Bastian last night. Judging by the swearing that carried on the still air, it was a major hitch.

  She piled twelve meal packets into the bag Omar was holding open. They were due for biolab-1, their allocation until the convoy was down on the canyon floor.

  ‘See you in a bit,’ he said, and headed off to the mobile biolab.

  Angela picked up her own equally heavy bag, and started walking over to the tanker. Her e-i told her Ravi was questing her on a secure link. She stood perfectly still, a chill that was never part of the atmosphere creeping along her arms and shoulders. ‘Open the link,’ she told her e-i.

  ‘Angela?’

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘Angela, it’s me, Ravi, I swear.’

  ‘Where are you? What the hell’s going on? We thought the monster got you.’ Her e-i couldn’t get a lock on where the link was originating from. Whoever had established it knew a lot about how to subvert the net-management routines.

  ‘It tried. I got away. I can’t move, Angela. I’m stuck over the edge of the canyon. It thought I’d fallen over, but there’s a ledge ten metres down on the waterfall. For pity’s sake get me out.’

  ‘All right. I’ll call Elston, we’ll get you back.’

  ‘No! No one else. You come alone. Please.’

  She checked round to see if anyone was watching her. Snow fell softly onto the vehicles, adding to the twenty-centimetre layer that had accumulated last night. Warm vapour spewed silently out of the fuel-cell vents, and the remote guns maintained their mechanical vigil.

  ‘No fucking way,’ she said. ‘I don’t know who you are. That thing took out the net again last night. We’re compromised. You could be it. I’m calling Elston.’

  ‘No! I can’t trust anyone else. Angela, you’re the only one who survived it before. Nobody else has. I know I can trust you. And we both know someone is sabotaging the convoy. They’re helping the alien for fuck’s sake. Damnit, I’m scared, and I’m cold, so cold nothing even hurts any more. I don’t think I can last much longer.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Angela. The trees are alive. That’s what Mark Chitty meant. It’s the bullwhips. They went for me last night. The goddamn branches lashed out and smacked me about like I was a hockey puck. It knows that, the monster knows. The jungle is helping it, the jungle is killing us, Angela.’

  It was crazy; his delusion was doing the talking, she knew it was. And yet . . . The MTJ on the ravine. Something striking Mark. A dozen little mishaps. All explained, if you believed.

  Angela had seen the monster. Had struck at it with her own hands. Felt it was real, solid beneath her skin; something the rest of the human race had sneeringly insisted was wrong for twenty years. She had been punished for that, for not giving in and doubting herself. ‘The bullwhips?’ she whispered. If they were part of the creature’s evolution, part of its hatred, connected to it, then the whole world was against them. She tipped her head back, looking for the enfeebled red star buried behind the darkling clouds. Sirius, too? She could believe it. She could believe anything of that devil. In her mind was the image of it waving its arms wildly, urging something on to attack Mark.

  ‘Yes,’ Ravi said. ‘One of them caught me on the back. Angela, help me. But steer clear of the trees.’

  ‘All right. Give me ten minutes. I’ve got to work out how to do this.’

  She dropped her bag of food off at the tanker, chatting briefly to Forster and Roarke who shared the driving. Then went back to Tropic-2, taking a long curving walk around the circle of vehicles. There was a big gap where MTJ-2 and the newly departed Tropic-1 had been parked next to each other. And the snowfall was growing heavier, reducing the remote guns’ sensor coverage. She told her e-i to access the solid memory cache she kept in her pocket. Scanning down the list of Zarleene’s dark software she found a program that would do the job she needed, and sent it into the convoy’s net.

  The remote gun on Tropic-2 kept on sliding from side to side, but now its sensors saw nothing. Angela walked up beside the battered snow-caked Land Rover and dropped the cache behind the fat rear wh
eel. Above the wheel arch were a couple of heavy printed bags that were strapped to the side of the Tropic. She opened one and pulled out a mini-winch – the so-called wall walker – a powered spool of superstrength tape. According to the inventory she had made back in Wukang, the bag also had some self-anchoring pitons. She found them eventually, and stuffed them in her big trouser pockets.

  Disembodied voices from the team trying to sort out the fuel sledge drifted through the snow. She took one last look round. No one was visible. ‘Turn off my bodymesh link to the net,’ she told her e-i. ‘And activate the cache.’ The cache’s link started using her identity code, so the monitor routines saw her as being in the Tropic.

  Confident the heavy snow would conceal her from any casual human glance, she hurried out through the middle of the broad gap in sensor coverage,

  Beyond the vehicles where snow ruled the air, the landscape of the snow-covered river was disconcertingly similar no matter where she looked. Her bodymesh kept a link open to the inertial guidance module she’d bought in the Birk-Unwin store in some life long ago. It was her compass now as the flakes swam round her and the sinister jungle mist oozed past her legs.

  Angela had gone only about a hundred metres along the river when she realized someone was following her. She wasn’t surprised. The whole Ravi being safe thing was a big stretch. Two options, this was either the monster or the saboteur. Either way, she was ready to settle this.

  In a swift motion she pulled the carbine out of its chest holster and flicked off the safety catch. Footsteps crunched on the loose snow, coming closer. Angela tensed, ordering her e-i to link to the carbine’s target sensors. This time she had the codes, Elston had assigned them to her himself. Green and purple graphics slid into her iris smartcell grid, smooth as neon fish.