Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

The CST planetary station was a lot more basic than usual, consisting of just five platforms, all prefabricated, and sheltering beneath a tinted polymesh dome which did absolutely nothing to cut down the equatorial sun’s intensity.

Gary Main was waiting for her on the platform as the train pulled in. He introduced himself as an aide to the Planetary President, a fourth-life Englishman five years out of rejuvenation, with a spiderweb of purple and yellow OrganicCircuitry tattoos mottling his face.

‘Wilson Kime assigned me to you for the duration,’ he shouted over the noise as everyone else thronged down the platform on their way to local trains. It was Farndale’s policy to simply shunt all the new arrivals on to the lands they were due to occupy as soon as they arrived. Nobody wanted a huge out-of-work population occupying the capital.

‘Thanks,’ Paula shouted back. ‘How do I get over to Jevahal?’

‘We have a plane waiting for you.’

Several of the nearby crowd paused to give them a look. A couple must have recognized Paula judging from the frowns. Or it could have been envy at her transport. They were all due up to a month on trains and ships and buses before they got to their promised patch of frontier dirt.

Wilson had laid on a ten-seat corporate hypersonic jet at the city’s single airport. Paula had to smile at that. He really was giving her mission top priority. Cruising speed was Mach eight, which gave them a flight time of two hours. Paula spent it reviewing the xenobiology team’s report on the Onid. After an hour’s reading she reluctantly concluded that the team’s original certification might have been correct — based on the research data provided. The Onid showed no sign of sentience, they were basic herd animals roaming the plains and forests of Jevahal. Each herd had its own territory, which they were fiercely protective of. They didn’t demonstrate even elementary tool-building, nor language. Their only communication was a few hooting sounds to alert each other of any danger. However, they did bury their dead. Each herd had an area set aside for their graves. They weren’t particularly neat, just holes scraped out of the soil. But the team had recorded them dragging bodies a long way from where they’d died to the herd’s burial ground. There were a lot of speculative notes on group identity, and rudimentary community awareness. A thesis backed up by the totem. Every Onid was buried with a totem: a stone or stick. They weren’t carved or shaped, but something was always dropped into the grave as the soil was scraped back over the corpse. It didn’t qualify as a presentience marker on any methodology the Commonwealth used to determine emerging awareness.

Paula didn’t know enough to make a judgement, but she certainly followed the tribal cohesion argument in the appendix. The conclusion was that the totems were simply instinct, like peeing on a tree, it marked territory.

The hypersonic landed on a field just outside Lydian’s latest boundary. The town had only been in existence for five months, its whole history could be measured in rings of construction activity like tree-years. Farndale had shipped in every building along a laser-straight highway of enzyme-bonded concrete that led all the way back to a port on the coast. The same colossal JCB roadbuilders that had extruded the highway had stayed on to lay out Lydian’s concentric grid. Silver-shaded housing was now erupting across the long curving blocks; bungalows whose walls and roofs had been flatpacked together in giant containers that could be assembled by a minimum number of bots. The larger civic buildings were also modular, clipped together to sprawl across the ground. Nothing was over a single storey high. Why bother? Land here cost next to nothing, and vertical assembly was an additional expense.

Lydian’s purpose, like a hundred other towns springing up across Jevahal, was a transport and market centre for the homesteads that were busy converting the plains to arable country. Soon there would be a railway for the prefabricated station already built on the western side; the tracks were only three hundred kilometres away now, and coming closer at the rate of two kilometres a day. With them would come a whole new level of prosperity. Concrete foundations for the grain silos were laid ready, with their metal load pins marking circular outlines where the giant cylinders would dominate the town’s skyline for decades to come.

Like a smaller version of the capital, it was supposed to receive the busloads of recently arrived settlers and ship them out across the eternal plains to their new lives. Paula had seen several roads radiating out from Lydian during the hypersonic’s approach, a simple spiderweb pattern of concrete that gradually devolved into thick dirt tracks. She hadn’t noticed much traffic on them.

The local Farndale office provided a marque12 Land Rover which they drove into town. Governor Charan was waiting in his territory administration building, the largest structure in Lydian.

‘No disrespect, Investigator,’ was his opening line, ‘but you weren’t what I was expecting the board to send me.’

‘And the last thing you wanted,’ she concluded for him.

Charan shrugged eloquently. He was one of Farndale’s senior political managers; two years out of rejuve which gave him the appearance of a healthy twenty-five-year-old. His build was large, emphasizing the image of a no-nonsense administrator who was accustomed to dealing with the kind of real physical problems which pioneer territories always threw up. He wasn’t going to waste his time with corporate bullshit. ‘Frankly, I don’t see what you can do,’ he said levelly. ‘I’ve got a whole herd of Onid kicking the crap out of my homesteaders, and they’re tough families.’

‘Just one herd?’ Paula queried. That wasn’t quite how Wilson had pitched it.

‘So far. They’re running loose somewhere over towards the Kajara Mountains, and that’s rugged country. Lot of valleys and forests, which gives the vermin plenty of space to hide. Maybe you can work out where their refuge is, track them down somehow. That hypersonic you came in on, does it have area denial weapons?’

‘No,’ Gary Main said hurriedly. ‘It’s an executive passenger jet.’

‘Then I’m sorry but you’re wasting my time as well as yours. I have a situation here which needs resolving, and fast.’

‘Violence isn’t the answer,’ Paula said.

‘So much you know,’ Charan snapped. ‘You’ve been here twenty minutes. Not even that old biology guy, Dino, has offered me anything worthwhile, and he’s been out there well over a week now. Look, again, no offence, but if the board isn’t going to help I’m going to put together a posse and issue them with some heavy-duty weapons. Something that’ll finish this permanently. I can’t afford other herds turning rogue on me.’

Paula shot Gary Main a look. ‘Who’s Dino?’

‘Bernadino Paganuzzi,’ Charan said. ‘He was working over in the capital when it hit the fan. Turned up right after the first few attacks.’

‘Why?’ Paula insisted.

‘He was part of the original xenobiology team that classified the Onid as non-sentient,’ Charan explained. ‘Went off after the herd ten days ago, saying he was going to try and find out what’s got them stirred up. Hasn’t been in touch since. Probably got himself bodylossed, silly old sod. Looked like he was due a rejuve a decade ago.’

‘I’d better get after him, then,’ Paula said, quietly enjoying the annoyance spasming across Charan’s face.

‘Investigator, as near as we can make out there’s over two hundred of them in that herd. You might want to consider some back-up. Why don’t I assemble the posse, and you can lead them. That way if there is no nice and quiet solution you’ll be in a place when you can eradicate the herd for us. With all your experience, you’d make a perfect commander for this kind of operation. Everyone respects you.’