If there is a God, and if somewhere my brother’s soul is intact, please look after him. He will be so alone.
Over a thousand tributaries contributed towards the Juliffe’s rapacious flow, a wrinkled network of rivers and streams gathering in the rainfall over an area of one and a half million square kilometres. They emptied themselves into the main course at full volume throughout the whole two hundred and ninety-five days of Lalonde’s year, bringing with them immense amounts of silt, rotting vegetation, and broken trees. The turbulence and power of the huge flow was such that the water along the last five hundred kilometres turned the same colour and thickness as milky coffee. By the time it reached the coast the river’s width had swollen to over seventeen kilometres; and the sheer weight of water backed up for two thousand kilometres behind it was awesome. At the mouth it looked as though one sea was bleeding into another.
For the final hundred-kilometre stretch, the banks on the northern side were non-existent; marshland extended up to a hundred and fifty kilometres into the countryside. Named the Hultain Marsh after the first reckless ecological assessment team member to venture a few brief kilometres inside its fringes, it proved an inhospitable zone of reeds and algae and sharp-toothed lizard-analogue animals of varying sizes. No human explorer ever managed to traverse it; the ecological evaluators contented themselves with Hultain’s sketchy report and the satellite survey pictures. When the wind blew from the north, it carried a powerful smell of corruption over the river into Durringham. To the city’s residents the Hultain Marsh had virtually assumed the quality of myth, a repository of bad luck and ghoulish creatures.
The land on the Juliffe’s southern side, however, rose up to twelve metres above the surging brown waters. Sprawling aloof along the bank, Durringham was relatively safe from the most potent of the Juliffe’s spring floods. Poised between spaceport and water, the city was the key to colonizing the entire river basin.
The Juliffe provided the Lalonde Development Company with the greatest conceivable natural roadway into Amarisk’s interior. With its tributaries extending into every valley in the centre of the landmass, there was no need to hack out and maintain expensive tracks in the jungle. Abundant wood provided the raw material for boat hulls, the simplest and cheapest form of travel possible. So shipbuilding swiftly became the capital’s principal industry, with nearly a quarter of its population dependent on the success of the shipyards.
Captains under contract to the LDC would take newly arrived colonist groups upriver, and bring down the surplus produce from the established farms to be sold in the city. There were several hundred boats docking and sailing every day. The port with its jetties and warehouses and fishmarkets and shipyards grew until it stretched the entire length of the city. It was also the logical place to site the transients’ dormitories.
Jay Hilton thought the dormitory was tremendously exciting. It was so different from anything in her life to date. A simple angled roof of ezystak panels eighty metres long, supported by a framework of metal girders. There were no walls, the LDC officer said they would have made it too hot inside. There was a concrete floor, and row after row of hard wooden cots. She had slept in a sleeping-bag the first night, right at the centre of the dormitory with the rest of Group Seven’s kids. It had taken her an age to fall asleep, people kept talking, and the river made great swooshing noises as it flowed past the embankment. And she didn’t think she would ever get used to the humidity, her clothes hadn’t been completely dry since she got off the spaceplane.
During the day the dormitory thronged with people, and the alleyways between the cots were great for chases and other games. Life underneath its rattling roof was very easygoing; nothing was organized for the kids, so they were free to please themselves how they chose. She had spent the second day getting to know the other kids in Group Seven. In the morning they ran riot among the adults, then after lunch they had all made their way down to the riverside to watch the boats. Jay had loved it. The whole port area looked like something out of a historical AV programme, a slice of the Earth’s Middle Ages preserved on a far planet. Everything was made of wood, and the boats were so beautiful, with their big paddles on each side, and tall iron stacks that sent out long plumes of grey-white smoke.
Twice during the day the sky had clouded over, and rain had fallen like a solid sheet. The kids had all retreated under the dormitory roof, watching spellbound as the grey veil obscured the Juliffe, and huge lightning bolts crashed overhead.
She had never imagined the wild was so wild. But her mother wasn’t worried, so she wasn’t. Sitting down and just watching had never been such fun before. She couldn’t think how wonderful it was going to be actually travelling on a river-boat. From a starship one day to a paddle-steamer the next! Life was glorious.
The food they had been served was strange, the aboriginal fruit was all odd shapes with a mildly spicy flavouring, but at least there wasn’t any vat meat like they had at the arcology. After the high tea the staff served for the kids in the big canteen at one end of the dormitory, she went back to the riverside to see if she could spot any aboriginal animals. She remembered the vennal, something like a cross between a lizard and a monkey. It featured prominently in the didactic memory which the LDC immigration advisory team at the orbital-tower base-station had imprinted before she left Earth. In the mirage floating round inside her skull it looked kind of cute. She was secretly hoping she’d be able to have one as a pet once they reached their allotted land upriver.
The embankment was a solid wall of bitek polyp, a dull apricot in colour, preventing any more of the rich black soil from being chewed away by the frighteningly large river. It was thrilling to see so much bitek being used; Jay had never met an Edenist, although back at the arcology Father Varhoos had warned the congregation about them and their soulless technology of perverted life. But using the polyp here was a good idea, the kernels were cheap, and the coral didn’t need constant repairs the way concrete would. She couldn’t see the harm. The whole universe was being turned upside-down this week.
She slid right down the sloping wall to the water itself, and started walking, hoping to see a xenoc fish. The water here was almost clear. Wavelets lapping on the polyp sent up sprays that showered her bare legs; she was still wearing the shorts and blouse that her mother had made her carry in the zero-tau pod. A lot of the other colonists in Group Seven had spent the morning chasing after their gear in one of the warehouses, trying to find more practical clothes.
Everyone had been envious and admiring of her and mother yesterday. That felt good. So much better than the way people back in the arcology regarded them. She pushed that thought away hurriedly.
Her boots splashed through the shallows, the water droplets slithering off the shiny coating. There were a lot of big pipe outlets venting into the river, along with the drainage gullies which were like medium-sized streams, so she had to be careful as she dodged under the pipes not to get splattered by the discharges. Up ahead was one of the circular harbours, six hundred metres in diameter, also made out of polyp; a refuge where the larger boats could dock in calmer waters. The harbours were spaced every kilometre or so along the embankment, with clusters of warehouses and timber mills springing up on the ground behind them. In between the harbours were rows of wooden jetties sticking out into the river, which the smaller traders and fishing boats used.
The sky was growing darker again. But it wasn’t rain, the sun was low in the west. And she was getting very tired, the day here was awfully long.
She ducked under a jetty, hand stroking the black timber pillars. Mayope wood, her eidetic memory said, one of the hardest woods found in the Confederation. The tree had big scarlet flowers. She rapped her knuckles against it experimentally. It really was hard, like a metal, or stone.
Out on the river one of the big paddle-boats was sailing past, churning up a big wake of frothy water as its bows drove against the current. Colonists were lined up along the rails, and they all seemed to be looking at her. She grinned and waved at them.
Group Seven was sailing tomorrow. The real adventure. She stared wistfully after the boat as it slipped away upriver.
That was when she saw the thing caught around a support pillar of the next jetty. A dirty yellow-pink lump, about a metre long. There was more of it underwater, she could tell from the way it bobbed about. With a whoop, she raced forwards, feet kicking up fans of water. It was a xenoc fish, or amphibian, or something. Trapped and waiting for her to inspect it. Names and shapes whirled through her mind, the didactic memory on full recall, trying to match up with what she was seeing.
Maybe it’s something new, she thought. Maybe they’ll name it after me. I’ll be famous!
She was five metres away, and still running as hard as she could, when she saw the head. It was someone in the water, someone without any clothes on. Face down! The shock threw her rhythm, and her feet skidded from under her. She yelled as her knee hit the rough, unyielding polyp. She felt a hot pain as she grazed the side of her leg. She finished up flat against the embankment, legs half in the water, feeling numb all over and sick inside. Blood started to well up in the graze. She bit her lip, eyes watering as she watched it, fighting not to cry.
A wave lifted the corpse in the river, knocking it against the support pillar again. Through sticky tears Jay saw that it was a man, all swollen up. His head turned towards her. There was a long purple weal along one cheek. He had no eyes, only empty holes where they should be. His flesh was rippling. Jay blinked. Long white worms with a million legs were feeding on the battered flesh. One oozed out of his half-open mouth like a slender anaemic tongue, its tip waving around slowly as though it was tasting the air.
She threw her head back and screamed.
The rain which came after the sun sank from the sky an hour later that evening was a big help to Quinn Dexter. Between them, Lalonde’s three moons conspired to cast a bright spectral phosphorescence on the night-time city: people could see their way quite clearly down the slushy streets, but with the thick clouds scudding overhead the light level was drastically reduced. Durringham didn’t have street lighting; individual pubs would floodlight the street outside their entrance, and the bigger cabins had porch lights, but outside their pools of radiance there was only a faint backscatter of photons. In amongst the large industrial buildings of the port where Quinn lurked there wasn’t even that, only gloom and impenetrable shadows.
He had slipped away from the transients’ dormitory after the evening meal, finding himself a concealing gap between a couple of single-storey outbuildings tacked on to the end of a long warehouse. Jackson Gael was crouched down behind some barrels on the other side of the path. Behind him was the high blank wall of a mill, slatted wooden planks rearing up like a cliff face.
There wouldn’t be many people wandering around this part of the port at night, and those that did would probably be colonists waiting for a boat upriver. There was another transients’ dormitory two hundred metres to the north. Quinn had decided that colonists would make the best targets.
The sheriffs would pay more attention to a city resident being mugged than some new arrival who nobody cared about. Colonists were human cattle to the LDC; and if the dopey bastards hadn’t worked that out for themselves, then more fool them. But Jackson had been right about one thing, the colonists were better off than him. Ivets were the lowest of the low.
They had discovered that yesterday evening. When they finally arrived at the dormitory they were immediately detailed to unload the lorries they had just loaded at the spaceport. After they finished stacking Group Seven’s gear in a harbourside warehouse a group of them had wandered off into town. They didn’t have any money, but that didn’t matter, they deserved a break. That was when they found the grey Ivet jump suit with its scarlet letters acted like a flashing beacon: Shit on me. They hadn’t got more than a few hundred metres out of the port before they turned tail and hurried back to the dormitory. They’d been spat on, shouted at, jeered by children, had stones flung at them, and finally someone had let a xenoc animal charge at them. That had frightened Quinn the most, though he didn’t show it to the others. The creature was like a cat scaled up to dog size; it had jet-black scales and a wedge-shaped head, with a lot of sharp needle teeth in its gaping mouth. The mud didn’t slow it down appreciably as it ran at them, and several Ivets had skidded onto their knees as the group panicked and ran away.
Worst of all were the sounds the thing made, like a drawn-out whine; but there were words in the cry, strangely twisted by the xenoc gullet, human words. “City scum,” and “Kid fuckers,” and others that were distorted beyond recognition, yet all carrying the same message. The thing hated them, echoing its master who had laughed as its huge jaws snapped at their running legs.
Back in the dormitory, Quinn had sat down and started to think for the first time since the police stunned him back on Earth. He had to get off this planet which even God’s Brother would reject. To do that he needed information. He needed to know how the local set-up worked, how to get himself an edge. All the other Ivets would dream about leaving, some must have made attempts to escape in the past. The biggest mistake he could make would be rushing it. And dressed in his signpost jump suit, he wouldn’t even be able to scout around.
He had caught Jackson Gael’s eye, and flicked his head at the velvet walls of night encircling the dormitory. The two of them slipped out unnoticed, and didn’t return till dawn.
Now he waited crouched against the warehouse wall, stripped down to his shorts, nerves burning with excitement at the prospect of repeating last night’s spree. Rain was drumming on the rooftops and splashing into the puddles and mud of the path, kicking up a loud din. More water was gurgling down the drainage gully at the side of the warehouse. His skin and hair were soaked. At least the drops were warm.
The man in the canary-yellow cagoule was almost level with the little gap between the outhouses before Quinn heard him. He was squelching through the mud, muttering and humming under his breath. Quinn peered out round the corner. His left eye had been boosted by a nanonic cluster, giving him infrared vision. It was his first implant, and he’d used it for exactly the same purpose back at the arcology: to give him an edge in the dark. One thing Banneth had taught him was never fight until you’ve already won.
The retinal implant showed him a ghostly red figure weaving unsteadily from side to side. Rain showed as a gritty pale pink mist, the buildings were claret-coloured crags.
Quinn waited until the man had passed the gap before he moved. He slid out onto the path, the length of wood gripped tightly in his hand. And still the man was unaware of him, rain and blackness providing perfect cover. He took three paces, raised the improvised club, then slammed it down at the base of the man’s neck. The cagoule’s fabric tore under the impact. Quinn felt the blow reverberate all the way back up to his elbows, jarring his joints. God’s Brother! He didn’t want the man dead, not yet.
His victim gave a single grunt of pain, and collapsed forwards into the mud.
“Jackson!” Quinn called. “God’s Brother, where are you? I can’t shift him by myself. Get a move on.”
“Quinn? Christ, I can’t see a bloody thing.”
He looked round, seeing Jackson emerge from behind the barrels. His skin shone a strong burgundy in the infrared spectrum, arteries and veins near the surface showing up as brighter scarlet lines.
“Over here. Walk forward three steps, then turn left.” He guided Jackson up to the body, enjoying the sense of power. Jackson would follow his leadership, and the others would fall into line.
Together they dragged their victim into the outhouse—Quinn guessed it had been some kind of office, abandoned years ago now. Four bare wooden slat walls and a roof that leaked. Tapers of slime ran down the walls, fungal growths blooming from the cracks. There was a strong citric scent in the air. Overhead the clouds were drifting away inland. Beriana, the second moon, came out, shining a wan lemon light onto the city, and a few meagre beams filtered through the skylight. They were enough for Jackson to see by.
Both of them went over to the pile of clothes they had left heaped on a broken composite cargo-pod. Quinn watched Jackson towelling himself dry. The lad had a strong body, broad shoulders.
“Forget it, Quinn,” Jackson said in a neutral voice, but one that carried in the silence following the rain. “I don’t turn on to that. Strictly het, OK?” It came out like a challenge.
“Hey, don’t lose cool,” Quinn said. “I got my eye on someone, and it ain’t you.” He wasn’t entirely sure he could whip the lanky lad from a straight start. Besides he needed Jackson. For now.
He started to pull on the clothes which belonged to one of last night’s victims, a green short-sleeved shirt and baggy blue shorts, waterproof boots which were only fractionally too large. Three pairs of socks stopped them from rubbing blisters. He was strongly tempted to take those boots upriver, he didn’t like to think what would happen to his feet in the lightweight Ivet-issue shoes.
“Right, let’s see what we’ve got,” he said. They stripped the cagoule from the unconscious man. He groaned weakly. His shorts were soiled, and a ribbon of piss ran out of the cagoule.
Definitely a new colonist, Quinn decided, as he wrinkled his nose up at the smell. The clothes were new, the boots were new, he was clean shaven; and he had the slightly overweight appearance of an arcology dweller. Locals were nearly always lean, and most sported longish hair and thick beards.
His belt carried a fission-blade knife, a miniature thermal inducer, and a personal MF flek-player block.