Abbado aimed his stinger at the nearby branch he’d marked for himself. His grenadiers sighted on more distant targets where pellets wouldn’t have sufficient kinetic energy to do enough damage. 3-3 had waited to eliminate threats till the last moment so that the jungle wouldn’t grow replacements.
“Tractor One, this is Admin One,” God ordered. “Move on!”
“Now, you see those trees that look like palms there, Mirica?” said Caius Blohm. “The fronds slant up, but look how sharp the tips are. You look at that and you know they’ll chop you like a meat-axe if you step in range.”
The ground here was marginally higher than that of the previous stretch. Instead of semi-swamp, the soil was firm and the forest again displayed full triple-canopy variety.
Blohm moved with easy caution outside the arc through which the fronds could pivot. Separate entities within the forest tended to observe boundaries so they didn’t destroy each other. Often the safest passage was just beyond the reach of a particularly dangerous element.
“Now, a lot of the guys,” Blohm explained, “they think the helmet can take care of that. Maybe yes, maybe no. The AI catches details, you bet. But you know, sweetheart, the machine doesn’t have any feel for this place. This isn’t a bunch of things, trees and suchlike. It’s a thing, a forest.”
He saw light through the undergrowth. Ribbon-like leaves hung from vines weaving an arbor through the middle canopy. They were translucent, shimmering in shades of indigo and violet because of the brightness beyond them.
Blohm worked his way around the high curtain instead of passing under it. He stepped through the middle of a clump of saplings that leaned outward. He was at the edge of a track cleared down to the clay and a hundred yards wide.
“Six, this is Six-six-two,” he reported. “There’s a road cut through the forest here. The only difference between it and what your bulldozer does is this is a hell of a lot wider. Over.”
The dirt was dry and cracking, well on the way to becoming crumbly laterite. That didn’t take long in this climate. The forest was trying to recolonize the track by means of runners from both edges. The scraped soil was poor in nutrients and couldn’t hold water. Swatches of moss and vividly colored lichen looked like chemical spills.
“Six-six-two, this is Six,” the major replied as quickly as if he’d been standing beside Blohm. “Do you think you can cross it safely? Over.”
Blohm looked at Mirica. She nodded solemnly. “Six, yeah,” he said aloud. “It’s a couple weeks old judging from the regrowth. Do you want me to see where it goes? Over.”
“Six-six-two, negative,” the major said sharply. “Get on with your mission. If you find anything that looks like a doorway—anything at all artificial—report ASAP. And Blohm? Watch yourself. I’d say that bare ground was a perfect killing zone if we were any damn place but this jungle where every damn thing is. Six out.”
“Six, this place isn’t so bad when you get used to it,” Blohm said cheerfully. “Six-six-two out.”
He looked at Mirica. “Now, are you ready, sweetie? We don’t want to waste any time crossing this stretch, but I don’t want you to run so fast you stumble either. See those two trees that the side’s been scraped off halfway up the trunk? We’re going to go between them and then wait a minute while we get our bearings.”
“I’ll be all right, Caius,” Mirica said. “You be very careful. There’s curled bamboo that’ll hurt you.”
Blohm dialed up his visor’s magnification. Damned if the kid wasn’t right. What seemed to be foot-high shoots were the tops of reeds twisted like helical springs. The tips were ice-pick sharp. Blohm didn’t doubt the shafts would drive to their full twelve-foot height even if they’d had the opportunity to go through his body first the long way.
“I guess we’d better go to the right of the right-hand tree instead,” he said. “Understand? Let’s go, then.”
Blohm jogged across the cleared track with his faceshield raised, pivoting his head in an effort to look in all directions. The panoramic display would have given him a shrunken vision of reality. He trusted it the way he trusted all aspects of the helmet’s sensors and processing algorithms—trusted them to do everything a machine could do. Machines didn’t have instincts.