“What of it?”
“Do you see that panel that’s a little cleaner than the rest?” Marlon nodded to make his point. “See if you can remove it.”
“Don’t be silly. Caleb and I tried forcing every panel on the perimeter when we were younger. The more you told us we weren’t old enough to go into Chasm City, the more we wanted to.”
“You weren’t as strong then. Anyway, there’s a knack to it. Press the panel against its frame, then apply a little clockwise rotational force. The seal should release.”
“If it was that easy …”
“Do it,” Marlon said.
Something in that command compelled Julius to obey, as if permitting Marlon one last order for old times’ sake. He moved to the panel, braced himself—glancing back in case there was some trick about to be sprung on him—and settled his palms on the cold, clean glass of the panel. He did as Marlon had instructed, and after sufficient resistance to have deterred a younger version of himself, he felt the glass click and unlock from its seal.
Carefully Julius extracted the panel and set it down on the ground, resting against the bottom edge of the dome.
A chilly draught touched his face. He raised his eyes to the gap in the dome, expecting to see Chasm City’s lights with more clarity and brightness than before, now there was no glass between him and the city.
There was only darkness.
His senses robbed of distant reference points, Sparver had to keep reminding himself that he was inside a cold lump of tumbling rock, not on the surface of some verdant, abundantly forested planet. Every footstep was taking him along the arc of a slowly curving floor, but with the oppressive sensory overload of the jungle it was impossible to tell he was walking on anything but a level surface.
“I saw something ahead on the feed,” Perec announced, when they were two-thirds of a kilometre in from the clearing. “Just for a second, when there was a gap in the cover. Looked like a big structure, a kilometre or so further on. Maybe less. Hard to judge how big or how far away it was. Feels like this path is taking us there, whatever it is.”
Sparver had also seen something but the glimpse had been too brief to offer anything substantial. Whatever it was they would get there soon enough, he felt certain.
It took less than a minute for the party to reach the point where the whiphound had gained that momentary glimpse of the structure, but the jungle seemed to have closed that particular sight-line. Perec crouched down to approximate the whiphound’s doglike viewpoint, then used her own unit to hack away some more of the foliage, all to no avail. From his vantage point behind her Sparver noticed an odd subliminal flicker on the whiphound’s second edge, where it encountered the greenery.
“Everything all right, Dalia?”
“Just some resistance, Prefect Bancal.” But she turned around to face Kober. “Did you lock in the effector settings on this unit?”
“There’s nothing wrong with my whiphound …” Kober said, trailing off when he noticed—in common with the offers—the abrupt termination of the visual feed from Perec’s forward scout unit.
“That’s not normal,” Gurney said.
Sparver had begun to notice the flickering effect on his own whiphound. A spangle of blue and pink flashes emanated from the cutting edge whenever it came into contact with any part of the jungle. The effort of swinging the blade was becoming harder, as if the cutting edge were dulling, meeting resistance.
A deep apprehension settled in his gut.
“Close up whiphounds,” he snapped. “Nobody cut or touch anything. This isn’t a jungle.”
“What the hell is it?” Perec asked.
“Quickmatter. Somehow. Certainly whatever the whiphounds touched, and maybe everything we can see. We’re deep in the middle of it.”
“That’s …” But Perec must have caught herself before she offered reflex contradiction. “This jungle goes on for kilometres. If it’s all quickmatter … we’ve never seen or trained for anything like this sort of concentration.”
“Quickmatter can’t hurt us,” Kober said. “There are safeties. We can conjure it out of the way …”
Kober used his free hand to make a conjuring gesture, palm to the jungle, fingers outspread, pushing back against air. The jungle should have detected his desire and at least made a show of partial retreat, but there was no response.
“It’s not obeying,” Perec said.
“It won’t,” Sparver said. “Not for us, maybe not even for someone with a head full of implants. Someone else is controlling it. The best we can hope for is that we don’t provoke it.”
They snapped their filaments back into their handles, clutching the whiphounds like truncheons, and advanced carefully along the path, all too conscious of the blades and fronds that brushed against their suits. Soon they came to what was left of Perec’s whiphound. It was on the ground, filament flicking limply, sparks dancing from the blade to the handle. Perec made to reach for it.
“No,” Sparver said.
She jerked back her hand in time. A network of fine green cilia had already begun to wrap itself around the handle. Where the jungle floor touched it the whiphound was losing form, its edges turning furry. It was in the process of being dismantled, its parts absorbed into the self-replicating mass of the jungle.
“We’d better get some distance from it,” Sparver said. “Gurney, Singh. Get back to the clearing and see if you can ride that elevator back up to the entry shaft. Instruct Panoply that we need an immediate enforcement action, with quickmatter specialisation.”
“I … yes, sir,” Singh said. “We’ll see if we can make it back.”
Gurney and Singh set off back the way they had come, walking at first then breaking into a jog just before their black suits passed out of sight. Sparver watched them go with profound unease, uncertain if he had improved their chances or just made them worse.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said resignedly, while Perec’s whiphound sparked and fizzed in its grassy crib. “This path was cleared for us for a reason.”
“I don’t like it,” Perec said.
“Me neither. But I’m not turning back just yet, not while we’re still dealing with Wildfire.”
They quickened their pace. Their whiphounds might have had their filaments retracted, but that did not mean they were totally useless. Perec was taking the lead, sweeping her whiphound back and forth like a wand or divining stick, relying on the scanning and threat-detection systems to offer some advance warning of trouble. Sparver followed with his back to Kober, unnerved—but not entirely surprised—to see that the walls of the trail seemed to press together once they had passed, leaving barely any trace of the path they had followed.
Singh and Gurney were still moving, at least. Their feeds were still playing, and Perec kept checking back with them for verbal updates.
“It’s not resisting us just yet,” Singh reported.
“Good,” Perec said. “Maintain your pace and stay calm.”
The world suddenly turned white, and after a soundless instant a shockwave hit Sparver just as if he had walked into an unyielding door. After-images fogged his eyes. Through pained slits he watched the whiteness die away to a sullen, green-filtered glow. Overhead, where the gaps in the canopy still allowed glimpses of blue, a soot-black cloud billowed and rose and dissipated. The prefects paused for a moment then resumed their advance, not needing to dwell on the obvious facts of the whiphound malfunction.
“Gurney. Singh. Were you clear?” Perec asked.
“Clear,” Singh said. “Inertial fix says we’re within one hundred metres of the start point.”
“Good. If your luck’s in, that elevator’s still waiting at this end of the shaft.”
A red outline showed on Sparver’s faceplate, pulsing for his attention. It defined a low, cryptic form, a blob of matter moving somewhere ahead of them, hidden from his eyes by layers of intervening foliage.
“Tracking it,” Perec said, tension in her voice. “Permi
ssion to deploy second edge.”
“Keep it sheathed,” Sparver said. “We want to stay on the right side of this jungle.”
“Damn it, Bancal,” she hissed. “There’s something moving out there.”
Sparver decided to ignore the breach of etiquette. “Easy, Field. If your whiphound detects an approaching threat, it will still go fully autonomous. Its reflexes are a thousand times faster than your own, so start trusting them.”
“I think I saw it,” Kober said breathlessly. “Something black, behind the ferns. Just for a moment.”
Sparver was still directing most of his attention to the rear of the trio.
“What did it look like?”
“Not sure, sir. Big, low. I think I saw eyes. Some sort of animal.”
“Keep moving,” he said, as much for his own benefit as the others’.
The whiphounds were still targeting the moving form, but the quickmatter was obviously confusing their acquisition and range-finding faculties, the shape remaining amorphous and poorly separated from the confusion of surrounding forms. There was no surprise to be had in that, Sparver thought. He thought it highly unlikely it was made up of flesh and blood.
“I see a second trace,” Perec said. “Something else moving, on the other side of the trail. They’re coming closer. What the hell are those things?”
“Cats,” Kober said.
“I’d really feel better with a sword in my hand,” Perec said.
“Go ahead,” Sparver relented, deciding that a psychological boost was what counted now. “One-metre extrusion, and keep that edge away from any part of the jungle.” Sparver unclipped his second whiphound and deployed its traction filament. “Protective cordon only, no second edge until I give the order. Proceed.”
The whiphound nodded and began to loop around the trio, whisking through the foliage but making no effort to clear away any part of it. Sparver then deployed his primary whiphound in sword mode, almost ashamed at how much better he felt when he had that time-honoured weapon in his grasp.
They moved on, the black shapes prowling close by but not yet letting themselves be seen. At last, through a thinning in the canopy, Sparver caught the white apex of the structure at the middle of the dome and realised they could not be far from it now, maybe only a few hundred metres. Whatever the nature of the building, its curving, spiralling architecture was more organic than geometric.
The path kinked. Ahead, emerging quite abruptly, was an opening, a smaller version of the earlier clearing, where at least two trails crossed each other. Sparver had the sense that the opening had not existed until they were very close to it, the quickmatter foliage reorganising itself like a clever stage set, falling into place just in advance of the actors. That was the least of his concerns, though.
A huge black cat blocked their way. Its stance was assertive, four powerful paws planted on the ground, its long body a study in predator biomechanics. Its tail curled high behind it, its head and neck lowered with belligerent intent, two preternaturally yellow eyes gleaming.
The cat was an absence with eyes, a moving inkblot with sentience. Slowly the mouth widened, white teeth gleaming into visibility.
The cat took a forward step.
Sparver’s whiphound gathered itself into a bundle and flung itself at the cat, extruding its filament to the fullest extent as it spun through the air.
Sparver only had time to observe, not to react.
His whiphound tried to wrap itself around the cat. Instead, the filament slipped all the way through, even as the cat remained whole. The whiphound redoubled its efforts, confused but determined, gamely convinced it could still disable this identified threat. Still its coils fell through the cat as if it were made of smoke.
Now a second cat emerged into the clearing, eyes and teeth flaring from the perfect void of its body.
The first cat had wearied of the whiphound’s efforts. With an insouciant paw-flick it sent the whiphound tumbling into the jungle, whereupon there was an immediate flicker of pink and blue sparks.
Sparver pushed to the front of the party. He still had his primary whiphound. He knew that the cutting edge would achieve nothing against the cats. He pulled in the filament and levelled the handle at the closest cat.
“Mark target. Grenade mode, minimum yield, contact fuse.”
He lobbed the whiphound, then sprung around and flung himself to the ground. Perec and Kober followed his lead, and then a white pulse bleached the world, accompanied by a shock wave and a burst of heat that Sparver felt all the way through his m-suit.
Kober was already giving a similar order to his own whiphound. “Mark target. Grenade mode …”
“Don’t waste your time,” Perec said.
Sparver stumbled to his feet and turned to assess the damage. The whiphound had excavated a small crater in the floor of the clearing. But the first cat was reconstituting itself, tributaries of black flowing in from all directions, pouring out of the ground as if it bled some dark, living ichor. The other cat had not been hurt at all.
Now the second quickened its pace.
They had two whiphounds left.
“Protective cordon,” Sparver said. “Both units. That’s all we can hope for. They can’t stop those cats but maybe they can keep them from reaching us for a few minutes.”
“And after that?” Perec asked.
The whiphounds formed their cordon, a moving corral around the party. The trio advanced into the blasted clearing. The cats, the first now fully reconstituted, closed in on the cordon from either side, prowling around it like a pair of orbiting moons.
A voice blared into his skull, breathless and anxious. “This is Singh. We’re back at the starting point. But the elevator’s gone.”
“Then summon it,” Perec said with admirable calm, little in her answer betraying their present circumstances.
“I have. But I can’t tell if it’s responding or not. It’s kilometres to the other end of that shaft. We’ve got another problem. I think something’s been tracking us. We’re picking up shapes … things … closing in on the clearing.”
“Here’s some advice,” Perec answered. “Don’t engage. Find the best cover you can and get behind a defensive cordon. Repeat, do not engage.”
“I … yes. Understood. We’re at the pit now. There’s something else, too. We found two things in the pit that weren’t there when we left. Giving you visual now, Prefect Perec. Please advise.”
“Thank you, Singh. I see what you’re seeing.”
Sparver saw it as well, projected onto his faceplate. The image was shaky, as Singh fought to control his nerves. Lying in the pit side by side, perfectly formed, as neat and solid as if they had been there all the time, was a pair of crossbows.
“Don’t touch anything you don’t have to,” Perec said. “You’ll be all right, Singh, as soon as that elevator arrives.”
The cats continued circling the party, occasionally testing the whiphounds with a lunge or a feint. Sparver had to admit that his knowledge of actual cats was not exhaustive. But something in the way these forms moved and behaved convinced him that some fundamental, feline algorithm was governing their actions.
“Look,” Kober said. “Ahead on the trail. Three of them, just like the ones in the pit.”
Kober was right. Three crossbows lay waiting, one for each of them, only a few metres beyond the front of the moving cordon.
Something flicked from the jungle, a blur of green, and one of the two whiphounds vanished.
One of the cats saw its moment and flung itself at Kober, bringing him down instantly. The other cat joined its mate and the two of them hauled Kober’s flailing, scrabbling form into the jungle, a curtain of green opening and then closing behind them.
Sparver saw his own moment, too. He sprang forward and snatched up two of the crossbows, even as the third seemed to be melting back into the ground. He tossed one of the weapons to Perec, who caught it one-handedly. Even as he did this, the final whiphound was snatch
ed away into the greenery.
“It’s a game,” he said, struck by a sudden, lurching intuition. “The jungle’s setting the rules, not us. We can hunt or be hunted. But this is all we get to use.”
He examined the crossbow. It was a simple, if elegant, thing. Lodged in the groove of its barrel was a single arrowed projectile, finned and barbed like a miniature spaceship.
Off in the distance Kober was screaming.
“We’ve got to help him,” Perec said, staring down at her own crossbow, her hand shaking.
“He’s gone,” Sparver said, surprising himself with the firmness of his response. “Understand that. He’s beyond any help you or I are capable of giving.” He raised his own crossbow, sighting along the groove. “Our duty now is not to die, if at all possible. We have a mission, an enforcement action. So I suppose we’d better make these things count.”
“This isn’t how I thought it would play out.”
“Me neither.” He started walking, trusting the trail to take him nearer to the structure he had glimpsed earlier. “But it’s a better than zero chance, and if those are the only odds we get, we’d better make the most of them. I’m willing to bet we only get one shot with these things. Wait until there’s no chance of missing.”
It was a relief of sorts when Kober fell silent, but only a small one, because that silence surely meant the cats would soon move on from the temporary distraction he had provided.
Sparver and Perec continued their advance, the trail opening up ahead of them, thickening and closing behind. Sparver was struck by an unwelcome mental image, that they were two pieces of food being squeezed along a digestive tract. It was not a position he much enjoyed finding himself in. But he was under no illusions that the jungle would not punish any attempt to ignore or negate the game.
“Whatever happens to us,” Perec said, twisting around to cover their rear, “this is only going to end one way for whoever’s behind this. Panoply will tear this place apart, quickmatter or not. Even if the Supreme Prefect has to petition for the use of special weapons. They’ll give it to her, this time—all the way to nukes.” Perec was breathing hard, and Sparver guessed that talking was her preferred psychological defence mechanism when under intense stress. “No one wants to think about a motherlode of hostile nanotechnology drifting through the Glitter Band like a rogue cancer. They’ll use whatever it takes to turn this place to dead ashes.”