Peter Hamilton - Manhattan in Reverse

‘Are you sure there are no native predators around here?’ Paula asked.

‘We never saw any. There’s a beast in the northern part of this continent, a Gruganat, which is close to a terrestrial lion, but a lot faster. They feed on Onids and other animals. But none have been spotted here.’

‘Could this be the first one? Humans are settling in the north, too; we could have driven them out of their traditional hunting grounds.’

Dino pulled a sour expression. ‘Gruganats prefer fresh meat. And they wouldn’t have any problem killing it here.’

Paula moved eyebird two to cover the burial ground in more detail, directing it down to hover over one of the opened mounds. It wasn’t a particularly deep excavation, the decomposing corpse was just visible at the bottom of the shallow oval hole.

‘It wasn’t a carnivore doing that, then,’ Dino said. ‘The body hasn’t been touched.’

‘Agreed,’ Paula said. ‘And look at the edges of the hole. They’re clean, straight. That was a spade. This is what those riders have been doing.’

‘The totems,’ Dino exclaimed in a shocked tone. ‘They’ve taken the totems. Each Onid is buried with the tribe’s totem. No wonder they’re so angry.’

‘Why? What would anybody want with the totems? Your report said they were just stones.’

‘They are. Pebbles, sticks, even a flower once; each herd has a different one. All they do is reinforce the herd identity, that’s what we thought.’

‘What does this herd use?’ Paula asked.

‘I’ve no idea. Each herd has something that’s abundant in their territory.’

Paula moved eyebird two over to an intact grave. Its sensors gave the mound a fast sweep. ‘There’s some kind of metal in there.’ She read off the results table that slithered across her virtual vision. ‘Definitely metallic, a small lump.’

‘Metal?’ Dino asked. ‘Are you sure?’

She sent the eyebird over to the next grave. Sure enough, it contained a lump of metal, the signature was almost identical. ‘Metal detecting is about the oldest science there is. I can’t determine the composition, unfortunately. There’s only so much you can pack into an eyebird.’ She raised her hand up in front of her face. The slim lines of an OCtattoo materialized across her skin, as if her veins were being invaded by quicksilver. ‘I need to get a bit closer for a decent readout. I don’t want to desecrate anything the way those riders have.’

‘Where does the herd get metal from?’ a puzzled Dino murmured.

‘I don’t know. But it’s got to be valuable to humans somehow.’ She couldn’t think how. ‘Maybe an alien starship crashed nearby, and they’re picking up the wreckage.’

‘Is that likely?’

‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘We’ll have to get down there to find out for sure.’

‘We can’t risk getting caught,’ Dino said. ‘The herd’s upset enough as it is.’

‘Are they heavy sleepers?’

Before Dino answered, eyebird six sent an alert; several solid objects were airborne below it. They weren’t large, and they didn’t rise quite high enough to strike it. They fell back to the ground, but not before the next barrage was rising.

Paula looked directly through the eyebird’s camera. A dozen or so Onid were clustered below it, flinging stones. She hurriedly instructed it to raise altitude. When it was thirty metres above the ground, she paused it. The Onid were still there, still throwing stones. More were joining them. Their hoots of alarm were slowly crossing the valley.

‘How the hell did they see it?’ she asked incredulously. ‘It’s silent, the fan balances on superconductor bearings, and the colour is dehanced-grey.’ She glanced up at the clouds scudding past the mountain peaks. ‘It’s practically impossible to see it against a sky like this. Do they have some kind of ultra-vision?’

‘No,’ Dino said. ‘Their eyesight isn’t even as good as ours.’

‘Then how…’

‘I don’t know.’ He looked back towards the edge of the forest. ‘We really need to know what’s in those graves.’

Paula focused back on the images from eyebird six. There were twenty Onid below it, scraping stones from the ground and flinging them up. She instructed the eyebird to fly slowly down the slope towards the fast river at the bottom of the valley. The Onid followed it as if it was their guru. ‘How?’ she whispered. The question would have to wait, this provided her with a perfect tactical opportunity. She quickly directed four other eyebirds to join up with number six, sending them low over the ground, weaving about so they passed close to various batches of Onid. After half an hour, with the creatures’ hoots and squeals echoing across the valley, the five eyebirds were together in a loose V formation. Below them now, and still hurling their ineffectual missiles, were over a hundred Onid, with what looked like every other member of the herd heading across the valley towards them.

The eyebirds drifted towards the end of the valley and the forest beyond. Holding station five hundred metres above them, the remaining three eyebirds watched the burial ground and the surrounding land. It was now devoid of any Onid.

‘If they were sentient they would have left guards,’ Dino said as they rode out of the forest close to the burial ground.

‘Yes,’ Paula conceded. Hurdy trotted along the base of the cliff, keeping to the thick shadow it was throwing. If the Onid did have poor sight as Dino claimed, they’d be hard to see in such shade. Even so, she eyed the fissures in the grey rock warily, holding the carbine ready for any ambush.

They dismounted as soon as they reached the first of the little mounds. The silver lines of Paula’s OCtattoo appeared again over her hand, spreading a delicate lacework back down her forearm. She knelt beside the first grave, and slowly waved her hand over the wispy grass-equivalent.

The results of the scan materialized in her virtual vision, tight bright graphics superimposed over what she was seeing. ‘Holy crap,’ she gasped.

It wasn’t difficult to track the riders’ trail across the open grassland. Paula and Dino took four hours to reach the thick woodland it led into. She sent another small flock of eyebirds flitting through the trees as they walked forwards cautiously. The airborne sensors scanned round for any sign of human activity. Three more of the little gadgets zoomed high above the wood, which produced an almost immediate result. The trees were crowded around a lake. Right in the centre was some kind of crude raft with a plyplastic tent for a cabin. Sensors saw a couple of people moving round. Paula hurriedly withdrew the eyebirds in case the riders had their own sensors.

‘Now what?’ Dino asked.

Paula put her force field skeleton suit on over her clothes and ran a fast integration and function check. ‘I go and deal with them,’ she told him, and pulled the carbine out of its saddle holster.

Dino gave her an uneasy look as she clipped more weapons hardware to her belt. ‘Deal with them how, exactly?’

‘Take them into custody, and fly them back to the capital for trial.’

‘Right.’ He eyed the janglepulse pistol she was checking. ‘Okay, so what do I do?’

‘Wait here. This is what I do. Trust me.’

‘And the totems?’

‘Once I’ve recovered them, we’ll return them to the herd. You might want to think about how we do that.’

‘Paula… I saw the eyebird images of the raft. That was a big tent, and there are four horses we know about. They’ll be armed. Maybe we should get Charan’s posse out here to help.’

‘I don’t need help, but thanks for your concern.’

For a moment it looked like Dino might object, but in the end he just threw up his hands and said: ‘Your area.’