Tales of the Hidden World (11 page)

Two was pulled down by a mass of lashing creepers. They just engulfed him in a moment, crushing him with implacable force. His armor cracked in a dozen places under the incredible pressure. The creepers broke the armored joints and pulled Two apart. He died quickly, the plants soaking up his spurting blood, before it even reached the ground. Seven ran out of ammunition, or his gun jammed. Either way, he just stood there looking at it, and the top of a tree came slamming down like a massive bludgeon and slammed him into the ground. All his joints ruptured at once, and blood flew out of his armor at a hundred points. He didn’t even have time to scream. We never saw what happened to Ten. We just looked around, and he wasn’t there anymore. We heard him screaming over the open channel for a while, and then he stopped.

The rest of us plowed on through the jungle, killing everything that came at us. It was only two miles to Base Three, but it seemed to last forever.

We finally burst out of the jungle and there was Base Three, right before us. Reassuringly solid, rising tall and majestic into the blood-red sky, untouched by the world it had come to change forever. There was a shimmering on the air around it, from the force shield. It made the Base look subtly unreal, as though we’d fought all this way just to find a mirage. But the energies the field generated were more than enough to hold the plants back, and we stumbled across a wide-open perimeter to reach the Base. The force shield had been programmed to let us through, and we strode through the shimmering presence like walking through a sparkling waterfall, out of danger and into safety.

A few plants got through the force shield by clinging stubbornly to our armor. We quickly ripped them away, tearing them apart and then trampled them underfoot until the pieces stopped moving. Some of the larger growths clung to our armor as though they were glued there; so we all washed one another with our flamethrowers, just to be sure. We didn’t feel anything, inside the hard suits. When we were finished, we turned to face the main doors and found that gun barrels had appeared on either side of the doors, covering us. Possibly to assist us against invading plants, possibly to remind us that Base Three was ready to destroy any or all of us, should the need arise.

Because the armor made us too powerful to be trusted. And because everyone knew that if you weren’t crazy before they put you in the suit. . . .

The main doors slid smoothly open, and those of us who’d made it through the jungle stamped heavily forward into Base Three. Tracked by guns all the way. Once we were all inside, the doors closed very firmly behind us. Human lighting, and a human setting, seemed strangely pale and wan after the extreme conditions of the planet’s surface. The Base Commander’s voice came to us through overhead speakers. Like the ship’s Captain, he was just a memory deposit imprinted on the Base’s AI. I doubted he was as happy about it as the Captain had been.

“Welcome to Base Three.” A very male, very authoritative voice. Military to the core. Presumably intended to be the kind of voice we’d accept orders from. “Welcome to Abaddon. None of you can leave until the job here is completed. I have been assured that once the terraforming equipment has been assembled and tested, you will all be picked up and sent . . . somewhere more pleasant. You can believe that or not, as you please. I see nine of you. How many left the ship?”

“There were twelve of us,” I said. “Three of us died just getting here.”

“Get used to it,” said the Base Commander. “Nine out of twelve is a lot better than the last crew they sent.”

“How many crews have there been before us?” said One.

“That’s classified,” said the Commander. “But learn the lesson well. Now you know what to expect from Abaddon. Everything here hates you. Every living thing on this planet wants to kill you. The air is poison; the gravity is deadly; the radiation levels would fry your chromosomes. We are at war with the world.”

“Will we be allowed access to information compiled by the previous crews?” I said.

“Of course,” said the Commander. “Study the files all you want. Profit from their mistakes. But all you really need to know is that every other crew who came here is either dead, or missing presumed dead. So stay alert. And kill everything you see, before it kills you. Now, go to your quarters. Get what rest you can. You start work first thing in the morning.”

We all had more questions, but he didn’t want to talk to us anymore. Eventually, we gave up and followed the illuminated arrows set into the floor, guiding us to our private, separate quarters. We didn’t want to be around one another. We had nothing in common, except what had been done to us, against our will. No one ever volunteers to be put into a hard suit. There was a common room, but we had no use for it. We had nothing to say to one another, didn’t even want to look at one another. Too much like looking at ourselves.

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 front, 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.