Chapter 04

From the safety of the little plateau, a quarter of the way up the northern endcap, Tolton trained his telescope on the lobby of the Djerba starscraper. Another swirl of darkness was pushing up through the dome of white archways. Pieces of the structure tumbled across the crumpled lawn circling the forlorn building. He kept expecting to hear the sound of breaking glass reach across the distance. The telescope provided a good, sharp image, as if he was just a few metres away. He shivered at that errant thought, still able to feel the wave of coldness that had swept through him every time the flying monster passed overhead.

“This one’s a walker.” He moved aside and let Erentz use the telescope’s eyepiece.

She studied it for a minute. “You’re right. It’s picking up speed, too.” The visitor had shoved its way through the smouldering ruins of the shanties, leaving a deep furrow in its wake. Now it was traversing the meadows beyond. The wispy pink grass stalks around it turned black, as if they’d been singed. “Moving smoothly enough; fast, too. It should reach the southern endcap in five or six hours at that rate.”

Just what we need,the personality groused. Another of the buggers leeching off us. We’ll just have to reduce nutrient fluid production to survival minimum, keep the neural strata alive. That’ll play hell with our main mitosis layer. It’ll take us years to regenerate the damage.

Eight of the dire visitors had now emerged from the Djerba, three of them taking flight. Without fail, they had headed for the southern endcap, just as the first and largest had done. Those that moved over the land had left a contrail of dead vegetation behind them. When they reached the endcap, they bored their way through the polyp and into the arteries which fed the giant organs, suckling the nutrient fluid.

“We should be able to burn them out soon,” she said. “The flame throwers and incendiary torpedoes are coming on fine. You’ll be okay.”

The look Tolton gave her made his lack of affinity irrelevant. He bent over the telescope again. The visitor was crunching its way through a small forest. Trees swayed and toppled, broken off at the base. It seemed incapable of going round anything. “That thing is goddamn strong.”

“Yeah.” Her worry was pronounced.

“How’s the signal project coming?” He asked the question several times every day, frightened he might miss out on some amazing breakthrough.

“Most of us are working on developing and producing our weapons right now.”

“You can’t give up on that. You can’t!” He said it loud for the benefit of the personality.

“Nobody’s giving up. The physics core team is still active.” She didn’t tell him it was down to five theorists who spent most of their time arguing about how to proceed.

“Okay then.”

Two more are approaching,the personality warned.

Erentz gave the street poet a swift glance. He was engrossed with the telescope again, tracking the movements of the visitors still loose on the grass plains. No need to panic the others.

Quite.

The creatures had been arriving at the rate of nearly one every half hour ever since Erentz’s disastrous foray into the Djerba. The personality was now worried about its ability to maintain the habitat’s environmental integrity. Each new arrival invariably smashed its way into a starscraper, then proceeded to hammer the tower’s internal structure. So far the emergency inter-floor pressure seals had held. But if the invasion continued at this rate a breach was inevitable.

We believe some of the incumbents are now starting to move,the personality said. It’s slow, which makes it hard to tell, but they could start to emerge into the parkland within in the next day or so.

Do you think they’re multiplying like the first one did?

Impossible to tell. Our perception routines close to them are almost completely inviolable now. We suspect a great deal of the polyp is dead. However, if one did, then it is logical to assume the others will follow that pattern.

Oh great. Oh shit. We’re going to have to tackle each one separately. I’m not even sure we can win. The numbers are starting to stack up against us.

We will have to review our tactics after the first few encounters. If the expenditure is too great then we may adopt Tolton’s wishes and deploy everyone on the signal project.

Right.she let out a beaten sigh. You know, I don’t even consider that defeatist. Anything which gets us out of this is fine by me.

A healthy attitude.

Tolton straightened up. “What next?”

“We’d better get back down to the others. The visitors aren’t immediately threatening.”

“That can change.”

“If it does, I’m sure we’ll know about it real soon.”

They walked into the small cave at the back of the plateau. It housed a tunnel which spiralled down through several chambers to the caverns at the base of the endcap. Wave escalators and stairs were arranged in parallel down each level. Most of the wave escalators had stopped, so the descent took them quite a while.

The caverns had taken on the aspect of a fort under siege. Tens of thousands of people lay ill on whatever scraps of bedding were available. There was no order to the way they were arranged. Nursing the bedridden was left entirely to those slightly less ill, and consisted mainly of taking care of their sanitary needs. Those qualified (or with basic how-to didactic memories) to operate medical packages circulated constantly, perpetually exhausted.

Erentz’s relatives had formed an inner coterie in the deepest caverns, where the light manufacturing tools and research equipment were concentrated. They’d also taken care to stockpile their own food supply, which could last them for well over a month. Here at least, a semblance of normality remained. Electrophorescent strips shone brightly in the corridors. Mechanical doors whirred open and shut. The clatter of industrial cybernetics vibrated along the polyp. Even Tolton’s processor block let out a few modest bleeps as basic functions returned to life.

Erentz let him into a chamber serving as an armoury. Her relatives had been busy since the reconnaissance in the Djerba, designing and producing a personal flame thrower. The basic principal hadn’t changed much in six hundred years: a chemical tank carried on the user’s back, with a flexible hose leading to a slim rifle-like nozzle. Modern materials and fabrication techniques allowed for a high pressure system, giving a narrow flame that could reach over twenty metres, or be switched to a wide short-range cone. Scalpel or blunderbuss, Erentz commented. There were also incendiary torpedo launchers; essentially scaled-up versions of an emergency flare.

She started into discussions with several of her relatives, mostly using affinity. Only a few exclamations were actually voiced. Tolton felt like a child left out of abstruse adult conversation. His attention wandered off. Surely the personality wouldn’t expect him to join the combatants fighting the dark creatures? He lacked the kind of driven intensity Erentz and her relatives flaunted, their birthright. He was afraid to ask in case they said yes. Worse, they could say no and kick him out of their caverns to rejoin the rest of the population.

There must be some important non-combatant post he could fill. He raised his processor block to type an unobtrusive question for the personality. The Rubra of old would sympathise with that, and the Dariat section was his friend. Then he realized Erentz and her cousins had stopped talking.

“What?” he asked nervously.

“We can sense something in the rail tube approaching one of the endcap stations,” the block said. It was essentially the same voice Rubra had used to speak with him the whole time he was in hiding; though something about it had changed. A stiffness in the inflexion? Minor yet significant.