Peter Hamilton - Reality Dysfunction - Emergence

There was a soft thud behind the dog. Vorix whipped round with electric speed. Lawrence Dillon stood on the track seven metres away, crouched on bloody feet as though he was about to spring at the dog, a fission blade in one hand, some kind of vine loop in the other.

The lad must have backtracked and scampered up one of the trees. Cunning little shit. But it wouldn’t do him any good, not against Vorix. His only chance had been to drop on the dog and plunge the knife in before either of them realized what was happening. And he’d blown it.

Powel laughed as the dog started its run. Lawrence twirled the length of vine around. Too late Powel realized it was weighted with oval stones. Vorix was already leaping as the supervisor’s mind bawled its warning. Lawrence let go of the bolas.

Insidious coils of vine snagged Vorix’s forelegs with a barely audible whirr , the spinning cord biting sharply into his fur. One of the stones knocked heavily against his cranium, sending a shower of pain stars down the affinity link to daze Powel. Vorix crashed into the ground, slightly groggy. He flexed round trying to reach the vine with his teeth. An incredibly heavy mass landed hard on his back, nearly snapping his spine. His breath was knocked out of his lungs, winding him. Several ribs cracked. Hind legs scrabbled frantically for purchase to try and buck the Ivet off.

An excruciating lance of pain fired into Powel Manani’s brain. He yelled out loud, stumbling around. He felt one knee give out, and pitched over. For a moment the affinity link wavered, and he saw a ring of villagers gazing down in dismay. Hands reached out to steady him.

Vorix had frozen in pain and shock. There was no feeling at all from one of his hind legs. The dog squirmed round on the rucked loam. His leg was lying on the bloody grass, twitching and jerking.

Lawrence cut the second hind leg off with his fission knife. Blood hissed and steamed as it bubbled over the radiant yellow blade.

Both of Powel’s legs were being squeezed by tourniquets made from bands of ice. He fell leadenly to sit on his rump, breath wheezing out of parched lips. His thigh muscles were spasming uncontrollably.

The fission blade penetrated Vorix’s left mandible joint, skewering through muscle, bone, and gristle. Its tip emerged into the back of his mouth, severing a large portion of the tongue.

Powel started to gag, fighting for breath. His whole body was shaking wildly. He vomited weakly down his beard.

Vorix was emitting a harrowing whining from his ruined jaw. Sallow eyes rolled round, glazed with pain, trying to find his tormentor. Lawrence aimed a blow at each of his forelegs, slicing clean through the knees, leaving the dog with stumps.

At the far end of a murky whorled tunnel, Powel saw the sandy-haired teenager walk round in front of the dog. He spat on Vorix’s squat muzzle. “Not so fucking smart now, are you?” Lawrence shouted. Powel could barely hear him, his voice sounded as though it was coming from the bottom of a deep rocky shaft. “Want to play chase again, doggy?” Lawrence did a little jig, laughing. Vorix’s stumps knocked feebly against the soil in a parody of walking. The sight sent him off into another bout of laughter. “Walkies! Come on, walkies!”

Powel groaned with helpless fury. The affinity bond was weakening, stretching the dog’s pain-lashed thoughts to a tenuous thread. He coughed some of the bile out of his mouth.

“I know you can hear me, Manani, you superfuck,” Lawrence called. “And I hope your heart’s bleeding out through these cuts. I’m not going to kill your hound, not all quick and clean and neat. No, I’m going to leave him here rolling round in his own shit and piss and blood. That way you’ll feel him dying the whole time, however long it takes. I like that idea, cos you really loved this dog. God’s Brother always takes his retribution on those who displease him. Vorix is kind of like an omen, see? I did this to a dog, think what Quinn’s gonna do to you.”

It was raining steadily when Jay led Sango, Powel Manani’s beige horse, from the lean-to at the back of the supervisor’s cabin which served as a stable. Mr Manani had been true to his word back on the Swithland , he had let her groom Sango, and help feed him, and take him for exercise. Two months ago, when the frantic urgency which governed Aberdale while the cabins were going up and the fields were being levelled had abated, he had taught her how to ride.

Aberdale wasn’t quite the dreamy rural existence she had expected, but it was pretty nice in its own fashion. And Sango played a huge part in making it right. Jay knew one thing, she didn’t want to go back to any arcology.

Or at least she hadn’t before today.

Something had happened out in the jungle this morning that none of the adults would talk about. She and all the other kids knew that Carter was dead, they’d been told that much. But there had been the awful fight down by the jetty, and a lot of the women had cried, the men too though they tried to hide it. Then twenty minutes ago Mr Manani had some kind of dreadful drawn-out fit, howling and panting as he keeled about.

Things had quietened down after that. There had been a meeting in the hall, and afterwards people had gone back to their cabins. Now though she could see them congregating in the centre of the village again; they were all dressed like they did when they went hunting. Everyone seemed to be carrying a weapon.

She knocked on the front stanchion of Mr Manani’s cabin. He came out dressed in navy-blue jeans, a green and blue check shirt, and a fawn waistcoat that held a lot of cylindrical power magazines for laser rifles. He carried a couple of slate-grey tubes fifty centimetres long, with pistol grips at one end. She had never seen them before, but she knew they were weapons.

Their eyes met for a moment, then Jay looked at the muddy ground.

“Jay?”

She glanced up.

“Listen, honey. The Ivets have been bad, very bad. They’re all funny in their heads.”

“Like waster kids in the arcologies, you mean?”

A sad smile flickered on his lips at the bright curiosity in her voice. “Something like that. They killed Carter McBride.”

“We thought so,” she admitted.

“So we’re going to have to catch them and stop them from doing anything like it again.”

“I understand.”

He slotted the maser carbines into their saddle holsters. “It’s for the best, honey, really it is. Listen, Aberdale’s not going to be very nice for a couple of weeks, but afterwards it’ll get better. I promise. Before you know it, we’ll be the best village on the whole tributary. I’ve seen it happen before.”

She nodded. “Be careful, Mr Manani. Please.”

He kissed the top of her head. Her hair was sprinkled with tiny drops of water.

“I will be,” he said. “And thank you for saddling up Sango. Now go and find your mum, she’s a bit upset about what happened this morning.”

“I haven’t seen Father Elwes for hours. Will he be coming back?”

He stiffened his back, unable to look at the girl. “Only to pick up his things. He won’t be staying in Aberdale any longer. His work’s done here.”

Powel rode Sango over to the waiting hunters, hoofs splattering in the mud. Most of them were wearing waterproof ponchos, slick with rain. They looked more worried than angry now. The initial heat of Carter’s death had abated, and the shock of killing the three Ivets was percolating through their minds. They were more scared for their families and their own skin than they were bothered about vengeance. But the end product was the same. Their fear of Quinn would compel them until the job was done.

He saw Rai Molvi standing among them, clutching a laser rifle beneath his poncho. It wasn’t worth making an issue over. He leaned forward from the saddle to address them. “First thing you should know is that my communication block is out. I haven’t been able to tell Schuster’s sheriff what’s been happening here, or the Governor’s office in Durringham. Now those communication blocks are more or less solid chunks of circuitry with all kinds of redundancy built in, I’ve never heard of one failing before. The LED lights up, so it’s not a simple power loss. It was working when I made my routine report three days ago. I’ll leave it to you to work out the significance of it failing today.”