Peter Hamilton: Manhattan in Reverse

She rode Hurdy round in a wide circle until she found the herd’s tracks. They led away towards the sprawl of forest dominating the foothills, which were at least half a day’s ride away. Hurdy started off down the path of battered grass, with Paula keeping an eye on the darkening clouds now twisting above the southern horizon.

After a couple of hours, the clouds were thick in the sky, with the front of the storm now visible as it slid in from the south. Paula had already got an oiled leather riding coat out of its roll at the back of the saddle, ready for the deluge. Then her e-butler received a weak emergency signal.

‘From where?’ she asked.

‘The Aleat homestead,’ her e-butler replied. A map slid up into her virtual vision. She was three and a half miles away.

‘Nature of the emergency?’ As if I don’t know , Paula thought excitedly.

‘Unknown. It is a high-power beacon emission. Standard issue to all homesteads.’

‘Come on girl,’ she told Hurdy. The horse began to pick up speed, galloping across the dark grass-equivalent.

She was still several hundred metres away when she heard the sound. The Onid were warbling away as loud as they could in a weird tenor mewling, a din which was frightening in its intensity. They might not have had a language, but the cries expressed intent with shocking clarity. They were angry. Very angry.

Hurdy cleared the last ridge. Ahead of Paula, what looked like a small dense typhoon of dark particles swirled through the air above the homestead. The Onid herd was circling round and round, moving at a startlingly fast run for a creature with so many limbs. And Charan had seriously underestimated their numbers; there must have been close to five hundred of them. As they ran they bobbed down in a smooth motion, high forelimbs ripping something from the ground every time, a stone or chunk of tough dried earth, and then flung it at the homestead as hard as they could.

‘Ho crap,’ Paula grunted. Hurdy had come to a stop, allowing her to scrabble round and extract the maser carbine from its saddle holster. Even now she was reluctant to shoot.

Then a human wail pierced the air, carrying above the Onid’s angry racket. Paula knew it was female, and probably quite a young girl. Her OCtattoo sensors helped her work out the direction.

The homestead’s tractorbot. Standing alone two hundred metres from the bungalow where it had stalled. Over twenty Onid were already circling it. Stones were tumbling down on the curving red bodywork. And Paula caught sight of the petrified girl, squeezing herself into the small gap between the rear wheel and the power casing.

Her OCtattoos were also telling her someone was firing maser shots out of the bungalow’s broken front door. Peripheral vision caught a couple of Onid falling.

‘Damnit,’ she yelled. She didn’t want to fire on the Onid around the tractorbot, because if they had anything like the herd mentality of terrestrial animals they’d probably charge her, which would leave her no choice. She did have enough firepower, but…

Then another horse was racing in towards the homestead from the opposite direction to Paula. Her OCtattoos tracked a couple of small objects streaking away from it, arching through the sky towards the herd. Then she could hear nothing. The soundblast which erupted was deafening. She had to jam her hands over her ears. No choice.

Hurdy reared up in fright. Paula lost the carbine in a desperate attempt to hang on. With her hands off her ears, the sound was like a lance hammering against her brain. The mare began to canter away from the homestead. Paula clung to Hurdy’s neck with one arm, trying to turn the mare’s head with the reins wrapped tight round her free hand.

She caught snatched views of the Onid herd. They’d broken from their circular stampede to stream away from the bungalow. In less than a minute they’d all gone, racing away in panic from the noise.

The vicious screaming cut off. It was like an implosion, sucking all sound from the plains. Paula couldn’t hear a thing. She tried to soothe the frightened mare as best she could. Eventually Hurdy had stilled enough to allow a reasonable dismount. Paula still couldn’t coax her closer to the homestead. She tethered her to the stem of a bush on the ridge, retrieved the carbine, and hurried off down the slope towards the bashed-up bungalow.

Away on the far side of the tractorbot Paula could see the other horse rider chasing after the fleeing herd. Bad idea , she thought and hesitated on her downward charge. She still couldn’t hear anything other than a nasty sharp buzzing in both ears. That meant the other rider wouldn’t hear any shout to stop. Retinal inserts zoomed in for a close-up, seeing the figure on horseback raise a small fat gun. OCtattoo sensors tracked the projectile he fired. It was a lot larger than a normal bullet, and considerably slower. It hit one of the Onid, who didn’t even seem to notice the impact.

The rider reined his horse in, and watched the retreating herd as he slotted the strange gun back into a holster. A man and a woman came sprinting out of the bungalow, heading straight for the tractorbot. The little girl sagged out of the narrow shelter and collapsed onto the ground. From what Paula could make out, she was about eight, and sobbing helplessly.

By the time she joined them, the girl was hugging her parents with wild strength. They were clutching her back, arms tight around her as all three of them wept.

‘Are you okay?’ Paula yelled at the Aleats. She could barely hear herself through the persistent buzzing in her ears.

The man nodded sharply. He glanced at the carbine in her hand. ‘Did you scare them off? Did the governor send you?’

She shook her head. That was when the second rider trotted up, and dismounted with a smooth practised motion that belied his age.

‘Dino?’ Paula shouted.

He plucked small green plugs from his ears. ‘What?’

‘You must be Dino, the biologist.’

‘Good guess. Xenobiologist, actually. But no need to screech.’ Biologically he was in his late fifties, shorter than average with thinning dark hair turning grey. When he grinned at her she couldn’t help but grin back, his face was that kind of happiness. When he was rejuved he’d probably be quite handsome, an errant thought flashed through her brain.

‘I’m Paula Myo,’ she said, trying to judge a normal volume. ‘What did you use to scare them off?’

‘Screamers. Standard issue for xenobiology exploration teams. Very humane. Most animals shit themselves when they go off; they can’t get clear fast enough.’

‘Ah. Right.’ Sonic weapons were hardly standard issue for Directorate field equipment packs.

Dino glanced back towards the Onid herd. ‘I should get after them.’

‘What!’

‘Will you stop shouting.’

‘I’ll try. Why? Why go after them?’

He gave her that grin again. ‘I want to know where I went wrong. I need to find out what’s going on.’

Paula eyed the shaken homestead family. ‘Humans provoked them.’

‘Okay. How?’ Dino’s hands swept round the land, gesturing at the solitary bungalow.

‘I don’t know. That’s…’ what I’m here to find out .

‘The Paula Myo, huh? I’ll enjoy working with you, Investigator.’

‘I work alone.’

‘Oh. So are you getting a signal from your tracer?’

Paula looked out towards the distant foothills, but the herd had vanished from view amid the folds in the land. She sighed. ‘You need to get back to town until this is over,’ she told the three Aleats. The girl pushed herself closer in to her mother, seeking comfort.

‘Town?’ the father spat. ‘Back to town! I’m getting off this whole bloody planet. And I’m going to sue Farndale. We nearly died out here. You’re my witness.’