The snake rippled down the right arm of the battlesuit and onto the gauntlet, where it shrank and started to vanish. Its single good eye began to glow like a starlit diamond. The tail continued to squirm toward the jewel until all hint of a serpent had disappeared.
"Get into your armor, Hansen," said the mechanical voice of the suit.
Hansen settled himself carefully into his armor. It was awkward to have to back into the suit . . . but thinking of the physical awkwardness took his mind off the real questions.
"Close it, close it," Walker said irritably through the suit.
Hansen was careful to twine the strand of blond hair around his finger rather than leave it to be found in the cubicle. The cold suede was clammy and smelled of the man who'd died in it.
Hansen's screen lighted with a view of the bedchamber. Across the top crawled the message:
take two steps forward, then turn right and step
"The bed's in the way," Hansen protested. Though he supposed he could smash through the frame if he needed to.
OBEY glared huge letters as the rest of the holographic display blanked.
Well, he'd taken orders like that when he was a junior, and he by god expected his own people to take orders when he gave them.
Nils Hansen, junior volunteer, took two steps forward. His armored legs didn't strike anything. It was disorienting to walk with no view but that of a command, worse than moving blind. He turned and took another step.
Hansen's display suddenly blazed with cold blue lines, branching and linking among themselves into faceted patterns. He no longer felt the pull of gravity, though there was something beneath his feet.
"Walker!" he said sharply. He didn't move either his arms or his legs. He felt as though he were standing in the schematic of a crystal lattice—
Or in a spider web.
A tiny red bead began to crawl along one of the blue lines. The pattern went on—forever, in all directions.
Hansen was alone in a universe of crisp, cold invariance, in which one spark moved.
He opened his mouth again to shout for Walker; closed it; and stepped as if the lines in his display were pathways and the red bead was his guide—
As of course they were, and it was.
Hansen stepped onto a wasteland. He faced a horizon silhouetted by the blur of a red sun. The skeleton of something gigantic lay a little distance from him, its ribs reaching toward the light like the fingers of a drowning man.
Hansen stood on a shingle beach, gravel separated out here by the waves in the unimaginably distant past when this planet had seas. Now there wasn't even an atmosphere: what air remained formed a rime on the pebbles.
The louvers on the battlesuit's air system clicked shut. Their sound reminded him that though the armor sealed for river crossings, it didn't have an air pack to supplement whatever was trapped within its volume.
A crystal the size of a house was trundling slowly toward Hansen on jagged spines. The bases of the spines twisted within the mass until the whole—creature—overbalanced forward, onto other tines which twisted in their turn. The effect was a combination of a sea urchin and an avalanche.
The spines and flats of the crystal reflected and diffracted light from the dying sun, but at the heart of the mass burned the spark of Walker's eye, with more life than the glow on the horizon.
"Was that the Matrix, Walker?" Hansen asked as though he were calm. "Is that what the smiths see when they build armor?"
Walker's laughter clicked in Hansen's earphones. "What you saw was a hologram, a pattern of light, nothing more," the voice said. It sounded . . . not human, but no longer mechanical either. "And what the smiths see, that is in their minds. Patterns also, reflections of the absolute."
Walker was staggering still closer. Light danced: on the fracture planes crossing the spines, and from lines of cleavage within the central mass.
Something that winked on the horizon might have been a form like that of Walker.
"There is a price for seeing the Matrix, Commissioner Hansen," Walker said. The spark in the crystal's core fluctuated as he spoke. "And for seeing through the Matrix, there is a very high price."
"This suit doesn't have much air, Walker," Hansen said. The great mass had halted just in front of him. Several of the spines, their glitter streaked by milky flaws, waggled slowly above Hansen.
"You're done with this suit," replied Walker, and the crystal toppled forward.
Hansen braced for the impact, but there was none—no contact, just the utter cessation of movement that he'd felt once before, when his intrusion capsule reached the point in space that should have been Northworld.
Was Northworld.
His display blanked. The only sound was the thump of his heart.
Walker's voice, no longer coming from the earphones, said, "You will keep the artificial intelligence and portions of the sensor suite. You will gain for me access to certain information which the androids have on the plane to which North sent them when they came to investigate. And you will gain the battlesuit which I promised you."
Hansen thought he could see glimmers of light, but perhaps they were merely his optic nerves firing in an attempt to save his sanity from the blackness. "I'll need weapons!" he said.
"You have your mind, Kommissar," Walker said dryly.
There was light and warmth and a splash of brown water as Hansen, limbs flailing, plunged feet first into a swamp.
The air was so saturated that the humidity took the edges off the light of the hot sun overhead. Hansen, wearing his coveralls and a dense skullcap sealed in black plastic—all that remained of a battlesuit that could've withstood anti-tank weapons—was waist deep in mud.
If he wore the entire suit, he'd still be sinking toward whatever passed for bedrock.
The surface was muddy hillocks and ponds—nowhere dry nor deep. Ferns and spike-branched reeds a meter high grew promiscuously across the terrain, but there was no ground cover. Every twenty meters or so sprouted what looked like low trees—but probably weren't, since the branches curling from their tops were lacework similar to the ferns.
Something rose from the squelching mud on the next hillock over. It was a four-legged reptile several meters in length, with a great knobbed sail on its back and a mouthful of fern fronds. There was a collar around its neck.
"And who would you be, friend?" muttered Hansen as he stepped out of the pond into which he'd fallen. The creature was obviously an herbivore, but so was a bull.
"It has no personal name," said a crisp voice in his ears, the AI Walker had said he was leaving; and which Hansen had forgotten, like a damned fool, till the machine intelligence stretched a point and recalled itself to his attention. "It is an edaphosaurus from the herd of the android Strombrand."
The edaphosaurus chewed with a sideways rotary motion of its jaws. The skull looked small in comparison to the bulk of the chest and belly, but the vast cone of greenery disappeared rapidly enough down the throat. The beast cocked its head at an angle and sliced off the next installment of ferns, keeping one eye focused on the intruder as it did so.
Hansen squinted, trying to pierce the thick atmosphere. He could only see a hundred meters or so, and the steamy air washed out colors at half that distance. Hot sun on open water and a vast expanse of transpiring foliage. . . .
Another edaphosaurus plodded from the gloom, continuing through the pond in which Hansen had landed. Its feet and belly sent water in all directions. Halfway up the bank the beast stopped, bellowed, and began to claw at its collar with a forepaw. The webbing between its toes was brilliant scarlet.
After a moment of scratching which rotated the collar a quarter turn without dislodging it, the beast resumed its clumsy amble. Something hooted angrily in the direction from which the edaphosaur had come.
"What are the col—" Hansen started to say when a lizard-headed biped carrying a staff and a radio handset bounded through the mud on the herbivore's trail.
"What's that?" he snapped instead.
The biped saw Hansen, halted in a crouch that splashed rippling semicircles in the pond, and bolted back the way it had come. In addition to the artifacts in its hands, the lizardman wore a short, off-the-shoulder tunic and a collar similar to that of the edaphosaurus.
"That is a Lomeri slave, one of the herdsmen of Strombrand," replied the artificial intelligence. "There are three herdsmen all told."
The shapes in the mist had mentioned the Lomeri, the lizardfolk, when they'd interviewed Hansen for this mission . . . or the mission that led to the mission which led to this mission. But those passing references had implied that the Lomeri were a race of the far past who—
"You are thinking of duration again, Commissioner Hansen," said the voice that was as surely Walker's as it was surely answering a thought Hansen hadn't spoken. "Ignore duration, because it no longer applies."
"Are the Lomeri slaves of the androids here?" Hansen asked. He heard a winding note that could have come from either a living animal or a signal horn. He could run, but the Lomeri obviously knew their way about this swamp better than he ever would.
"These Lomeri are slaves," said what was probably the AI, not Walker, "as some androids are slaves of the Lomeri on the plane they rule. There is passage across the Matrix through the Open Lands, and there is raiding from all sides."
Two different horns answered the first. Certainly signals.
"Is North on a plane?" Hansen demanded. "Can he be reached?"
The visible edaphosaur suddenly closed its jaws with a clop so abrupt that half-ingested ferns fell in a fan to the mud. The beast turned and ran off into the mist with an exaggerated side-to-side twisting of its heavy body.
Three lizardmen stepped into sight. Their radios were slung in belt pouches. The staffs they carried were sharpened on both ends.
There was a clicking of electronic laughter in Hansen's ears. "Kommissar, Kommissar," said Walker. "North and Rolls have formed an alliance and merged the planes on which they found themselves. But to visit them through the Matrix requires permission. Which will not be forthcoming if the Lomeri slay you now."
Hansen laughed. He lifted one of the reeds from the mud with a firm pull.
"Oh, they won't kill me, Walker," he said with the comfortable assurance of a man with a short-range task—for a fucking change! "My masters, they sent the best."
Hansen tried twirling the reed. The upward-pointing spikes were each about twenty centimeters long.
The balance changed as mud flew off the root ball. Hansen kept the reed moving as he walked toward the Lomeri by as direct a path as the muddy shore allowed.
"I'm your master now, Commissioner Hansen," Walker said with asperity.
"Translate for me," said Hansen.
"—and if we lose any more of the cattle," said a voice with startling clarity—the helmet excerpted from Hansen's battlesuit contained a first-rate parabolic microphone as well as the artificial intelligence— "then Strombrand'll flay us 'n no mistake."
The lizardmen had halted, chittering among themselves. The skirmish line in which they'd appeared drew together when their quarry started toward them.
"If he gave us decent equipment, they wouldn't fouling stray, would they?" snapped another Lomeri in reply. "So it's his fault."
"It's our hides," the first rejoined.
"Walker," Hansen said. "Can I fix their hardware with the equipment I've got?"
"Yes," said the AI. Its tone was subtly different from Walker's, even though both machine intelligences spoke through the same circuitry.
The Lomeri were slightly taller than Hansen. They were thin and had the dangerous look of figures wound from barbed wire. Patterns of red and orange scales beneath their singlets made them look as though they were on fire.
"Strombrand needs us," said the third lizardman decisively. "He'll let us off with a beating . . . and it's worth that to have red meat again!"
He measured the distance to Hansen—five meters and closing—with a grin on his toothy jaws.
Hansen grinned back. "Oh, but it's not worth trying something that'll get your all four limbs rammed down your throat, is it, boyo?" he said, listening to the speaker in his helmet hiss and clatter with lizardspeak.
He flicked the root end of the reed toward the hungry Lomeri. Water spattered the creature. Instead of blinking, nictitating membranes slid sideways across the large eyeballs.
"Or," continued Hansen, "you could be nice to me and I'll improve your equipment so you won't get a beating ever again."
He darted the reed out, spike-end first, like a Lomeri tongue. The nearest of the creatures flinched back, gripping his staff to his chest.
"Which'll it be, boyos?" Hansen asked.
The Lomeri hunched together, hipshot so that they could all three face the intruder. The AI fed Hansen their whispered words clearly: How could he . . . Look, he can't be that tough. . . . Did your mother hatch many such fools? He could be anything! Well let's—
One of the Lomeri—the first one—straightened, took his radio from its holster, and (after a moment's hesitation) tossed it to Hansen.
"Go on, then," the lizardman directed. "Fix it."
Hansen looked at the unit. Its black plastic shell had a dial and a miniature joystick with no other features. A short coil antenna poked from one end.
"Bring it up under your chin," Walker's voice directed. "But continue to watch the Lomeri."
"No fear that," Hansen said as he obeyed.
He grinned at the lizardmen. He'd poke the spiky end of his reed in the face of the first to come for him, grab away the creature's staff, and do a quick right and left with the points on the other pair. . . .
Of course, even if the move went precisely as planned, that left the third lizardman chewing Hansen's throat out with teeth made for nothing else.
Half a dozen narrow, jointed pseudopods grew past Hansen's face from the helmet. They were crystal, and it was easy to guess who—rather than what—had extended them.
The glittering tips prodded at the casing. Harsh light spluttered from a miniature laser cutter; then the faceplate lifted in the grip of one pseudopod while the others probed beneath.
The Lomeri backed another step away.
"Pft!" clicked the voice in Hansen's ears. "Junk, only junk."
Hansen's mind split between two realities. He could still see the lizardmen flicking their tongues in nervous pulses, but they seemed to be projected on a flat screen. The forepart of his vision filled with lines and shadows which Hansen's instinct told him were representations, not forms—but were closer to the concept of a Platonic ideal than anything his own senses could show him.
"Walker," he asked, "how does this unit work?"
The vision sharpened. Blotches of shadow broke into fans of lines or vanished.
"It transmits a signal to the collars of the edaphosaurs," Walker replied. "The dial controls the frequency—badly, but I'll improve that. And the joystick determines the amplitude of the signal which the creature's collar feeds to it as pain induced in the main nerve trunk. A goad of sorts, badly made and underpowered."
Hansen licked his own lips. Funny how dry your mouth could get, even in a saturated atmosphere like this.
"Walker?" he said. "Can you boost the power and expand the range that the unit covers?
"I'm tapping it into the Matrix as a powersource," Walker said. "And yes, Kommissar, while I'm at it I'm adjusting the frequencies so that the unit will also control the collars the herdsmen themselves wear."
There was another electronic chuckle. Hansen's vision returned to normal. The pseudopods resealed the unit and withdrew.
Hansen tossed the unit back to its owner. "Try it," he said. "But watch the power—and if you get to the end of the dial, it'll work on your buddies, too."
The lizardman toyed with the joystick. There was an agonized bellow from deep in the swamp. The Lomeri's finger released the stick.
Distant splashing continued for thirty seconds, then slowed. A second prod was followed by another bellow, much closer. An edaphosaur—the one whose wandering had brought the herdsman to Hansen to begin with—reappeared.
"It never worked like that on the cattle," the lizardman muttered in delight.
"Next?" said Hansen.
The Lomeri played with the first sending unit while Hansen worked on the second. Edaphosaurs seemed to have no herd instinct and a tendency to wander. Bleats of pain echoed in all directions as the lizardfolk drove the beasts closer—and, when they were in sight, tortured the sluggish sailbacks for the pleasure of watching them bleat and squirm.
"Now there's only one thing . . . ," Hansen said as he returned the second unit.
Two lizardmen grabbed for it. When one snatched it away, the other jabbed his staff toward his comrade's belly.
Both of the creatures straightened up in screaming pain. The third Lomeri had twitched first the dial, then the joystick of his repaired unit. His laughter had the brittle cruelty of a brick shattering stained glass.
Hansen took the remaining unit as its owner hopped on one leg, trying to raise his head even higher as his clawed hands plucked at the collar which controlled him. The third lizardman threw his joystick back to zero and let both his fellows collapse gasping in the mud.
"The only thing is," Hansen resumed while crystal limbs as angularly misshapen as those of a spider crab reached past his face, "is that in this swamp, the units are going to degrade again. This atmosphere—"
He waved his hand through the miasma of humidity and rotting vegetation "—is going to crud up what it doesn't eat, so you'll need to find somebody to fix your hardware again."
He tossed the third sending unit back to its owner.
The lizardmen looked at one another. The nearest shifted his grip on his pointed staff.
Hansen smiled at him. "I wasn't lying about feeding you yourself either, boyo," he said.
The lizardman shrank back.
"So I think I better leave this with whichever of you wants it," Hansen said. He lifted the helmet from his head, judged the distance, and lobbed it in a high arc that descended directly in the center of the three Lomeri.
Mud gouted as all three creatures jumped for the prize. One grabbed it with both hands and shrugged off the others with a quick twist of his shoulders. He squawked as one of his fellows stabbed him hard enough in the belly that the staff's modest point tented the scaly hide on the victim's back as it tried to exit.
The killer gripped his weapon an instant too long. His uninjured fellow leaped for his throat and clamped it with the jaws that had so impressed Hansen. Blood, as red as a mammal's, sprayed in all directions.
The killer let go of his staff. He tried to pry apart his fellow's jaw hinge, but the teeth had done their work, and his arms were already losing strength.
The surviving lizardman pitched aside the corpse his jaws had nearly decapitated and straightened. He was laughing.
The hideous glee turned in mid-cackle to a shriek that mounted the scale of audibility as the Lomeri struggled with his slave collar. The last sound he made was a clicking grunt, an instant before he toppled face down into the pond. His legs continued to thrash, but no bubbles rose from the water covering his nostrils.
The lizardman with the staff through his guts dropped his sending unit. He bent forward, trying to reach the fallen helmet. His fingers touched it, but he didn't have enough strength remaining to pick it up. His limbs splayed as he fell.
Hansen worked the helmet out from beneath the twitching body. Now that he wasn't wearing it, he could see that there was a single blue diamond where the plastic covered his forehead. "Hello, Walker," he said as he put the helmet on.
An edaphosaur grunted happily. The herd was separating again.
"That was unnecessary," said Walker tartly. "You could have killed them yourself with the first sending unit."
"I've done a lot of unnecessary things," Hansen said. His eyes had no expression, but his palms went cold with the thoughts that flamed through his mind.
"The only ones I regret," he went on, trying to control the sudden quiver in his voice, "are the people I've killed when I didn't have to."
Hansen looked at the bodies. All of them were still moving. He wondered if they'd squirm till it thundered. "If that lot needed to die," he said, "then they'd die. Their choice."
"Pft," said the voice in his earphones. "But so long as you succeed, I won't object to the technique."
"Can you guide me to Strombrand's place?" Hansen asked.
"Of course."
"Then let's go," Hansen said, rubbing his hands on his coveralls as if trying to burnish the feel of death from his skin. "I think he'll be in the market for somebody to round up his herd for him."