"I could grow you an oxygen filter in my housewomb. It would be a part of you in a way your Skin never is. You would live with it in perfect symbiosis."
Lawrence held a finger up. "Yeah, stop right there. I'm not coming to live with you, okay?"
"Why? What do we lack? I do not mock, I am genuinely curious. You seem so primitive compared to us. I don't understand your reluctance. Do you not wish to better yourself, to be a part of a richer, more mature culture?"
"We're the primitives? Which of us is living in mud huts, lady? I wouldn't wish this existence on my worst enemy, let alone my own children. You're going backward faster than progress ever pulled us out of medieval squalor. Sure, this kind of life looks appealing now; you're still close enough to the industrial market economy to make you think this is all stress-free and rich in karma. Another two generations, and you won't be able to cure a cold, let alone cancer. And you call that living life to the full. I call it betraying your children."
"Ah." Calandrinia shook her hair again. "Now I begin to understand. How old am I, Earthman?"
"I haven't got a clue."
"I'm fourteen."
The information left Lawrence nonplussed. He simply couldn't see the relevance. "Really?"
"Yes. It wasn't just their biotechnology skills that our ancestors brought to this world, they brought a saying with them as well. Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. Thanks to them I can do that."
"How long do you live for?" Lawrence didn't want to ask it, because he suddenly knew he wasn't going to like the answer.
"Probably thirty years. Can you imagine such a time? How it must stretch at the end."
"The oxygen. It's the oxygen, isn't it?"
"Of course. Everything here is faster, more dynamic."
"But... thirty?'
"Thirty whole years, during which time I will live and love and think. Why do you think that is wrong? Why do you want to live for such a long time?"
"To live is to experience. You can't do that in thirty years. There's so much of the universe to know."
"I do experience, far more than you ever will. I grow faster. I learn faster. I live faster. We all do. This world's life is so much more vital than your bland biology. As for the universe, it is contained in your mind. Observation is purely relative. I can watch the stars from here, all of them, while you crawl between them in your tin cans and see only one at a time. I appreciate my life, Earthman; there is less memory in my brain, and much more thought."
"Thought," he sneered. "But you don't use it. What's the point of thinking if you have no way to apply it, nothing to create?"
Calandrinia let her breath whistle out between her teeth, as did several other new-natives. "We do nothing else but create, Earthman. Do you think we have time to carry and birth our young as your women do? I adapt my children to the world as I see it and know it."
"You're talking about shape, aren't you? That's why you all look different."
"We have become morphogenic, the greatest gift our ancestors left us. What I think, my children become. Can you imagine what that is like? If I see a tree that is so tall and full of grace that I have to sit at its foot and gaze up in admiration, I can engender a child who will be able to climb to its apex and laugh with the joy of doing so. When I swim in a mountain lake, I do so for a few exciting minutes, while my daughter will be able to glide through its deeps and play with the fish. And when I shake with awe as a macrorex walks past, I can absorb its essence and mingle it with my own."
"Sweet Fate, you're talking bestiality."
"How simple your mind is. How pitiable. Do you think we alone should remain sentient and aware? If we are to live with this planet, we must share the best of what we are with it. Are you so unselfish, Earthman? Would you stop us from doing that, from waking Gaia?"
"I won't stop you. But I want no part in it. You're not human anymore."
"Why, thank you. I rarely get paid such a compliment."
"Wait a goddamn minute here," Ntoko said. "Are you telling me that the macrorexes are part human, that they're self-aware?'
"Some of them," Calandrinia said. "They are our friends, they help us when we ask."
"And the windshrikes, too?"
"Of course."
"Jesus H. Christ."
"If you don't have pregnancy anymore," Lawrence said, "where do all these kids come from?"
"The housewombs gestate them," Calandrinia said simply.
"House...?" He looked at the dumpy buildings that made up the village. "You mean your homes contain some kind of artificial womb?"
"Do you listen to anything? There is nothing artificial about a housewomb, it is perfectly natural. Our houses were the last stage in bridging the gap from what we were to what we are. Tell me, do your files have fastrocks in them?"
"Yeah." His Skin AS was retrieving the information. Fastrocks were essentially a polyp-type plant that grew quite slowly by Santa Chico's standards. They resembled ocher stones that grew clustered together in vast colonies and were completely fireproof. Their shells were also tough enough to resist being split open by the jaws of anything smaller than a macrorex.
Calandrinia gestured at the houses. "Our ancestors modified those small plants into the sturdy buildings you see today, a true and grand amalgamation of the genes from two planets. Now we live in living houses. Their roots grow deep to collect water and nutrients, while their shells harvest the sunlight. Within our houses we are nurtured without violating the planet as you do. Their organs provide for us in the way your machines do for you, although our bond is closer and more appreciative."
"You mean symbiotic."
"Ah, you are listening. Yes, our houses are a part of our family. Once I have a fertilized ovum, I place it in a housewomb to gestate."
"Did you give them sentience as well?"
"Of course. How could you marry an entity devoid of thought?"
"Good point," Lawrence retorted sarcastically. "Surely you've made yourselves overdependent on these constructs? Do they grow your food for you as well? Our satellites didn't see any working protein cell refineries."
Calandrinia reached up and pulled a cluster of small red berries from the tree. "Modifying Santa Chico's plants to fruit terrestrial food was the first and hardest task facing our ancestors. Once they understood how to merge the two different genetic molecules in a successful union, then everything we are today became possible. It took decades of effort before anything so complex was achieved, which is why we had to involve ourselves with commerce. So much of our respective biochemistries was incompatible, as it is on every world humans colonize. The old ways of life, your markets and machines, had to be sustained for that whole time while the problems were solved. Now, as you can see, we have left them far behind."
"And left yourself in debt," Ntoko said.
"Only on your planet, Earthman. Here there is no such thing. Here we are one."
"Claiming you are above such things as money is a very convenient way to duck the issue," Lawrence said. "But I know you understand economics and technology. You still have spaceplanes and orbital systems. They have to be maintained, spare parts manufactured, fuel produced. House-wombs can't do that for you."
"We had such machines until you arrived and destroyed them," Calandrinia said. "Some among us have the kind of dream you have, Lawrence Newton, that of spreading out through space. They are involved with ideas of modifying our cells to live up there in the desert beyond the sky. Our space enthusiasts want what we are to blossom on the comets and moons that share our star. It is a pleasant dream, I think. But they are a minority. And your arrival has put an end to their aspirations. They have agreed to turn their minds back toward Santa Chico. They will help to seal the sky and prevent you from returning."
"How did you know my name?"
"I'm sorry," Calandrinia said. "I didn't know it was a secret"
Lawrence didn't like how casual she was being. If they'd decrypted the communication links, which he
acknowledged as a strong possibility, then they might have heard his name being used, as well as his conversation with Nic. But to identify individual Skin suits would be difficult. There were too many things here that the new-natives made light of. He still didn't even know how they communicated over long distances.
"What do you mean seal the sky?" Ntoko asked.
"You said you are leaving, which is what we want," Calandrinia said. "What we need to do after that is to make sure you do not return. At least, not while your present society is the dominant culture on Earth. To do that we must seal the sky." She exposed her tusks again.
"Come on," Ntoko said to Lawrence on the secure communication link. "This is wasting our time. We're outta here. If they had anything that could knock us down they would have used it by now. We just gotta watch our backs, and kill anything that moves out there."
"Right."
"Okay, we're going now," Ntoko told the new-natives. "You-all make sure you don't follow us. That way there's no misunderstandings, and nobody gets hurt."
"Such wise advice, Sergeant," Calandrinia said. "We will try to make use of it"
"Motherfucking smartmouths," Ntoko grumbled. "I wish we could nuke every fucking one of them."
The platoon tramped away, the soles of their Skin kicking up huge clouds of powdered ash. They crossed over from the island of tigergrass and trees around the village onto the black wasteland scoured by the wildfires. The ash rain had stopped falling around them, allowing them to see out across the countryside. Flames were still burning in the distance ahead of them, sending thick columns of smoke and ash soaring hundreds of meters into the deep-indigo sky. But it was no longer a solid wall; the wildfire had split around rivers and gullies, breaking into dozens of small blazes that raced onward.
"What the hell did you make of all that?" Ntoko asked.
"I'm not sure," Lawrence admitted. "It could just be a whole load of bullshit she made up to scare us. Or it could be true, in which case it's even scarier. There's a lot of things around here that don't add up."
"Jesus, smart animals for one. Maybe that part's true."
"Some of it has to be wrong. They used everything they've got to strike the starships when we were on our way in. They can't close off this planet from space."
"Damn, I wish we had some kind of contact with the captain. We should be telling people this."
"Satellite relay's still down."
"Yeah, I know. Let's hope the governor is still holding on at Roseport."
Lawrence was on edge for the rest of the march. If Calandrinia had been telling the truth, there was no way of telling what represented a danger to them.
By late afternoon the wildfires seemed to have died down. Smoke and ash hazed the air, darkening the sky to a sullen gray blue. They didn't see any more animals, large or small. Several times Lawrence thought he caught sight of wind-shrikes in the distance. But it could have just been dense swirls amid the lingering smoke. Underfoot, the tigergrass clumps started to weep, gooey sap leaking out of the burned blades. Their roots had obviously survived the fire, but then it had been so quick that it probably didn't heat the soil below a few centimeters. It wouldn't be long before the first new shoots were poking up through the mantle of ash.
The burnout zone ended along a narrow, deep gully with a brook of reddish water gurgling along its rocky floor. The land on both sides was covered in stones and boulders; there was little vegetation growing out of the cracks between them, which had reduced the fire's intensity. As he walked up to the gully, Lawrence realized it wasn't actually stone he was walking on. None of them moved under his feet, not even the pebbles. It was actually a vast bed of fastrock.
As the platoon crossed the gully a Xianti 5005 swept overhead, less than a kilometer in altitude. It was losing height.
"We've still got the spaceport," Nic said. "Thank Christ for that."
Half an hour later they topped a ridge that gave them a view of Roseport a couple of kilometers away. The lakeside city was in a bad way, with many of its houses smashed open. Lawrence's sensors zoomed in. Dark, glutinous fluid was oozing out of the broken shells, slithering slowly along the streets like molten tar. Internal organs lay exposed, reduced to a mass of pulped ginger jelly. Nobody was moving down any streets.
When he pulled the focus back he saw autosentinel guns had been set up in a broad perimeter around the outskirts— olive-green spheres on thick metal legs that were anchored into the ground, each with a trio of magnetic Gatling rifles protruding from its midsection, swiveling slowly from side to side as they tracked across the smashed houses. If anybody emerged from the city, they'd be cut apart in milliseconds.
Lawrence knew the autosentinels were part of the fleet's equipment, but he'd never seen them deployed before. Like land mines and laserfencing they were last-resort weapons.
Now that the platoon had line of sight, their communications link to the governor's field headquarters came back online. Ntoko reported in, telling the staff that they'd lost contact with Captain Lyaute hours ago.
With access to fleet tactical data restored, Lawrence requested a situation update from the headquarters AS. It was even worse than he'd been expecting. There had been a near-constant battle around Roseport. Skins entering the city had been killed by a variety of chemical and biological weapons. Each time they learned how to protect themselves from one, something new would hit them. In the end the governor ordered the autosentinel deployment in the hope they could confine the new-natives until the evacuation was complete. Even that was going to be touch and go. Macrorex herds had charged the spaceport three times. The Skins had to use armor-piercing smart missiles against them before the huge beasts reached the runway: nothing else could bring them down. Windshrikes were harassing the Xiantis when they lined up on final approach. The spaceplanes were having to fire antimissile airmine clusters from their countermeasure pods to kill them.
Of the eleven companies dispatched on scouring missions to factories and industrial facilities, only four had returned. Three more (including Lyaute) had reported in that they were under attack before communication was lost. The remaining four were currently classified as missing in action.
Events in orbit were equally hostile. The software assault on the starships was relentless. Communications bandwidth was reduced to a minimum to enable the onboard AS to examine every byte entering the ship's network. Kinetic slugs in a retrograde orbit had taken out several satellites. One swarm had got through the Mahonia's defenses, damaging a life support wheel and one of the compression drive's tokamaks.
In view of the unfolding catastrophe, the admiral had ordered a complete evacuation. Plans to capture Santa Chico's orbital industry stations weren't even on the agenda anymore.
Lawrence couldn't find out how many spaceplanes were operational. The data was classified. Estimates on how long the evacuation would take were also restricted. As was the number of surviving Skins.
Ntoko managed a few terse words of encouragement to the platoon and started to lead them toward the spaceport in a wide semicircle around Roseport. They jogged toward the runway, saying little. Lawrence knew they all shared the same anxiety. They were close to making it now. All they had to do was reach the runway. Someone else would take care of the rest—the admiral, the Xianti pilots. That just left the ground between here and there. Halfway around they stumbled into a wide patch of burned ground. Tigergrass was still smoldering round the edges. In the middle was the mangled wreckage of a TVL88 helicopter.
Ntoko decided they would be too exposed crossing the open space and took them around the side. Another couple of minutes added to the journey. It didn't help that they heard an autosentinel firing.
The last three hundred meters was a straight sprint. Discipline went all to hell, and the whole platoon charged over the tigergrass, dodging around trees, jumping low rocks, heedless of the target they presented. They made it past the perimeter, where Skins were lying in shallow trenches, armed with the heaviest portable weapo
nry in their armory.
Ntoko reported to the local lieutenant, who allowed them an hour's rest. They were issued with a ration pack of paste food, which they could eat with their helmets on. Headquarters also gave them a flight number. If the spaceplanes kept up their current schedule, they'd take off in another six hours.
The lieutenant gave them guard duty around the maintenance hangar. They took up position just as the sun sank below the horizon, integrating the new weaponry they'd drawn from the armory. Lawrence had taken a smart missile rack. So far the new-natives hadn't managed to glitch them.
He settled down to walk a regular route, making sure to keep his times random. His visual spectrum sensors provided him with a fuzzy blue-and-white image of the nighttime countryside, with the infrared bleed painting in small vermilion patches as rocks slowly radiated away the heat they'd absorbed during the day. Nothing moved among the tigergrass, not even small animals. He was thankful for that.
When he scoped Roseport, it glowed strongly in infrared, throwing off a coral-pink aura. There were no lights in any of the buildings. The autosentinels were taking shots at something every few minutes. Gossip on the general communication band centered on how much ammunition the robots had left and how long it would last.
Spaceplanes continued to arrive, thumping down out of the night sky amid the strident bellow of their Rolls-Royce turbojets on full reverse thrust. Sometimes they were preceded by the spectacular green-and-crimson magnesium firework display of their countermeasures clearing a path through the air.
An hour after nightfall one of the lost companies made contact. According to their report they'd suffered from a macrorex charge, losing most of their vehicles. On their way back they'd endured near-constant sniping and harassment from new-natives. Then they'd joined up with another company, which had a 30 percent casualty rate. Between them they had enough firepower to keep the new-natives back. It had been slow going with all the injured to care for, but they estimated they'd be arriving at the spaceport in another ninety minutes. Altogether there were over 120 of them.