Machines of Eden Read online

  “It’s not a cargo number. It’s a personnel ID number.”

  John stood up. “Let me guess. You’re not carrying any coffins on board, are you?”

  “Nope. But you might need one if I dropped you here; we’re a long way from anything. Do you know why PACOM would want you to make a secret jump at night this long after the cease-fire?”

  “No, I don’t. And I don’t see how they know I’m on board, unless you told them.”

  “I recorded eighty-nine kilograms of additional cargo weight, that’s it. But if anyone was watching the hangar cameras they would have seen you board. We made no attempt to hide our little interaction. Freight pilots do it all the time, I didn’t think it would be a big deal. Now it is a big deal. And you have no idea why?”

  “No.”

  “Somebody want to get rid of you? You know something you shouldn’t?”

  John gave a tired smile. “Captain, every soldier in our army has seen things they shouldn’t. The question is, what are you going to do?”

  Mochizuki thought for a moment, then hit a button on the wall. A light began to flash, and with a hiss of hydraulics hidden under the roar of wind, the rear cargo door began to open. “I’ve got to drop something,” he shouted over the roar, “something that weighs about eighty-nine kilos. Come on.”

  The captain walked down the rows of strapped-in crates and then pointed at one. He and John unbuckled it and moved it toward the door.

  Outside, the moon made a silver path on the wrinkled surface of the ocean. Staring at it, John became aware of a dark mass in the water, black as pitch and unmoved by waves. He realized a second later that he was seeing an island.

  The crate slid off the edge of the ramp and disappeared into the night. Immediately the cargo door began to close, and the wind lessened. Finally, with a whine, the door closed. The captain seemed to relax.

  “Now stay out of the cockpit, Sergeant. There are cams up there, too. And keep quiet.”

  John nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Least I can do for a war hero,” Mochizuki replied. “I hate it when they mess with people, and you’re supposed to be free of it all now. We should hit the Philippines by 0950, assuming my refuel comes through.”

  The captain left the cargo area, but had just gotten the cockpit door open when the plane bucked hard, as if kicked in the stomach, accompanied by the boom of an explosion that dwarfed the engine drone. John saw a ball of fire flare past the little window; glass shattered inward and the wind became a scream. The plane pitched hard to the right, suddenly and viciously. John yelped as he was thrown through the air, crashing hard against the fuselage.

  He staggered to his feet and began lurching toward the cockpit door, gripping cargo netting to keep his feet. It took him a full minute to traverse the few meters, and when he got through the open door, he was dizzy from a rapid drop in altitude.

  Captain Mochizuki was in his chair, head bleeding, speaking rapidly into his headset mic. His voice was high, on the edge of breaking, face damp with perspiration. Lights flashed red everywhere on the instrument panel. The sky-bot’s cables were dancing this way and that, overcharged and vibrating.

  “What’s going on?” John yelled.

  Mochizuki ignored him. “ – say again we have lost our starboard engine and are losing altitude. Please advise on nearest airfield for emergency landing.”

  There was no reply. Mochizuki slammed his fist against a console. “Mayday, mayday, this is PAC-M-flight 339, our starboard engine is gone and we are going down. Engaged by hostile fire, coordinates – ”

  John stared. Hostile fire? The war is over.

  No, came the familiar voice of Sergeant Wiley, in his head. It’s never over.

  John grabbed Mochizuki’s shoulder. “What hit us?”

  “SAM. Came out of nowhere, not a word of warning from Lucky or the onboard systems.”

  John shot a look at the little sky-bot. A thin tendril of white smoke was drifting from a seal on the side of the cylinder. A small motor-driven hatch on top was opening and closing several times a second.

  “Your bot’s flipped!”

  Mochizuki shook his head, concentrating on hitting several switches and keeping his hands on the stick. “Lucky’s been with me for years, he’s solid.”

  “I’m telling you, your bot has flipped!” John reached over and yanked the sky-bot’s cables from the console in front of it. There was a shower of sparks and the smell of melted electronics, and the bot did an emergency shutdown that ended in a high-pitched whine.

  “Hey!” Mochizuki screamed in protest. “You killed my sky-bot!”

  “Can you manually set her down on the water?” said John.

  “I used to be able to.” Mochizuki’s knuckles were white on the controls. “Be a lot harder without Lucky.”

  John watched the ocean come up to meet them, moon glinting like silver on a thousand little waves.

  3

  First, pain.

  Thick pain, hammering just behind his eyes. He debated opening them, decided he would, and then squeezed them shut again with a groan.

  John was lying on a beach of brilliant white sand that stretched away in either direction to the horizon. The glare of the brief glimpse doubled the throbbing behind his eyes.

  How did I get here? And what day is it?

  A moment later, though, he opened his eyes again, this time in a miserly squint. It was beautiful. Before him lapped the turquoise water of a lagoon from paradise, as deep and blue as any pic or holo he’d ever seen. A dreamlike sense of lassitude crept over him. If this was a dream than it was a nice dream, and he’d had few enough of those to appreciate this one. He would wake up soon enough, probably back in Recovery, so it made sense to enjoy it.

  But behind the throbbing pain behind his eyes and the surreal beach was a nagging thought that shouldered its way into full consciousness. The sun was too hot for this to be a dream, the sound of the surf too wet, the sand too gritty in his teeth. This was real.

  That thought made his eyes open a second time, and stay open.

  He squinted against the glare, doubly bright off sand and water. His back was damp, and he rolled to one side and saw that the depression he’d been lying in was soaking wet. He licked his lips and tasted salt, not the metallic saline of blood, but the brine of the wide blue expanse in front of him. He sat up and rolled his head on his shoulders. There was no appreciable increase in pain. That was good. He gave both arms and both legs a shake. Other than a deep ache and incredible stiffness, he was intact.

  His physical discomfort reinforced the reality of his situation. He reached down to his ankles, stretching his back and hamstrings. That felt better. The surf around him was pleasantly cool, easing the hot glare of the sun, and a warm breeze made him want to slide back down into unconsciousness. Instead, he opened his eyes a little.

  It suddenly occurred to John that if he sat on a beach facing the open sea, there must be a landmass behind him, and he pivoted. A wall of dense tropical green met his gaze. A few coconut palms with slim gray trunks served as an advance guard ahead of the main jungle, looming out over the sand, but for the most part the foliage followed a set boundary down the beach in either direction.

  He was aware of an almost total silence. The ocean lapped quietly at the sand. Far out he could see the white crests of real waves, but they lost all power long before they reached the beach. There were no cries of gulls or other seabirds, and behind him the jungle was devoid of the usual faunal cacophony common to the tropics. That was enough to make him truly uneasy.

  Real. But not as it should be.

  He stood up with gritted teeth and hung there for a minute or two, letting his body reorient and fighting back a sudden swirl of nausea. His face felt puffy with sunburn and realized that he was intensely thirsty. He wondered how long he had lain there.

  He walked toward the nearest coconut palm. It jutted out at a low angle, almost horizontal for several meters, before rising sharply to a head w
ith broad leaves that cast a substantial shadow on the sand below. Scattered beneath were dried brown fronds and old coconut husks that made a dry rustling under his feet. He sat on the long trunk in the shade and tried to think.

  He was on a beach. The information his senses were giving him and his pain all seemed to indicate that this was real. He had experienced some incredibly persuasive dreams before, especially in Recovery when the meds were wearing off, but this wasn’t like that. This felt real. He dug his fingers into the rutted trunk.

  This is real. But where does that leave me? And how did I come here? He was having trouble remembering much at all about the last few days.

  Already the dreaminess was leaving him. Getting out of the sun and into the shade had something to do with it. His mind began to revive fully, and all his latent energies sent out feelers to feed the information his mind needed into the central cortex and up to the various lobes where the information built sequence on sequence into cause, effect, strategy, and action.

  That was the way it was. The mind was a computer, pure and simple, needing only water and carbon and a few other little necessaries just as its plastic and silicon imitations needed electricity. He knew computers. It helped to reduce the human mind into such accessible terms. It enabled him to get a handle on things, to control his situation, and to formulate plans of action.

  He studied the beach. It stretched far away before him, a white band with a green wall on one hand and a rippling blue glass on the other. At the very edge of his sight the beach bent away to the left and out of sight, kilometers distant. He turned and saw the same thing in the other direction. There were no tracks or marks of any kind on the sand, and no rocks jutted up from the beach or shallows. He was overwhelmed with a sense of artificiality. He told himself it was just a feeling, and he knew it was, but his mind retained the impression of repetitive monotony, as though it were a holographic that had run out of code and simply repeated itself endlessly.

  There was nothing to salvage in sight. He had the clothes he was wearing, a drab short-sleeved military shirt and cargo pants. An impulse born of habit caused him to pat his inner thigh, and he was relieved to feel the comforting profile of the slim mini-toolkit strapped there. At least he had something to work with beside his bare hands, although it would do him little good in the jungle.

  Things were coming back to him now. Discharge, flight, Mochizuki. And then… the last part was too chaotic in his memory to give him more than a vague picture of night-time danger and the fear that had accompanied it.

  Doesn’t matter right now. Right now I have to get out of the sun and get some intel. I’m here, like it or not. Wherever here is.

  He reached down and selected a heavy, dead palm frond, breaking off the blades from the central stalk until he had a thick, tapered club. It was flimsy, but for the moment it would do to help him bat aside the underbrush of the forest in front.

  Because the forest is where I have to go.

  The very distance of the beach, bare sand for kilometers in either direction, decided John against following it. He could see that there was nowhere to go that way, and the sea was empty behind. That left only the emerald tangle before him. The wild profusion and variety of the jungle growth was a sharp contrast from the monochromatic smoothness of the sand and sea. This was a three-dimensional environment that could be penetrated and occupied.

  He started forward into the trees. Instantly the heat and humidity engulfed him. Out of the direct sunlight the heat lost direction and came from all sides at once, even radiating down from the foliage overhead. Sweat burst out across his face. He breathed deep and inhaled the musky, earthy scents of mud, rot, chlorophyll, papaya, and sheer life. An insect whined against his cheek, and then there were hundreds and he staggered as he swiped at them. His feet slipped on the sodden brown layers of decomposition underneath. Vines and creepers slanted across his field of vision, diagonals to the verticals of the trees. The light was a deep green, filtered from above, only occasionally breaking through the canopy in dappled stripes of gold.

  He stopped fighting the jungle and stood motionless, ignoring the buzzing insects, the heat, the damp. He closed his eyes.

  Think.

  There was no way to tell where he was. It could be mainland, it could be an island, it could be anywhere. If it was an island, the only way to tell would be to follow the beach and see if it ended up at the beginning. If the island was large, that could take days.

  A better way would be to find some high ground and observe from an elevation. But there was no guarantee that there was any high ground, or that he could find it. In this steaming tangle of trees, he might head in the wrong direction and never see a hill.

  Trees. I need a tree.

  He scanned the jungle. A large tree trunk off to his right looked promising, and moving closer he saw that it was actually two trees, massive warty things that grew together in a writhing embrace. Enough creepers wrapped around the trunks to provide easy hand and foot holds. He started climbing.

  The light became a brighter green. The air grew fresher. He pushed upward through a cluster of spade-shaped leaves that smelled of licorice, and broke into sun. The canopy stretched away on all sides, but the trees he was climbing continued upward at least two more meters. He kept climbing until he found a fork to rest his knee in near the top, and studied his position.

  Seaward there was nothing but turquoise waves, and the beach was still as empty as it had looked from ground-level. He turned his attention to the land.

  Hills began rising from the jungle perhaps a kilometer distant, thickly forested and without any distinguishing feature beyond an abrupt crest. Past them he could see the jungle rise steadily toward what looked like cliffs, perhaps a gorge. A gorge could mean water. He shaded his eyes. It was impossible to tell at this distance what lay beyond the gorge, if anything. Perhaps another beach. His perch was not tall enough to reveal whether this was an island, but a view from the top of one of the hills would.

  John started back down the tree, analyzing the information. He still didn’t know where he was, but a view from the hills would fill in some of the pieces. It was midday; plenty of time to get there before evening.

  The thought of evening was sobering. He didn’t want to spend a night in the jungle. He needed to find shelter. But his training came readily to mind in the repetitive voice of his former sergeant. Shelter isn’t the primary concern, Fletcher! The first problem, the one that will kill you quickest, is dehydration.

  The tropics leached water out of you, and it was crucial to find clean water. He was already soaked in sweat, and his headache was worsening. He needed water soon. Shelter could come later.

  It took him longer than he’d anticipated to walk the kilometer. The going was slow and he dared not hurry. One slip on the sodden mulch underfoot and he could twist an ankle. He took the long way around fallen logs and thick brush. The heat increased and with it the insects, which buzzed in a frenzy around his neck and ears, settling into creases in his flesh for the salt. They stung, whizzed, and fluttered, and he slapped his neck until it was sore.

  Finally the ground began to rise, and despite his thirst and growing fatigue he eagerly pushed forward. There might be a breeze at the top to rid him of the insect plague. The slope grew steeper, and he paused for breath. Although his physical condition was by no means flabby, it was not in peak operational capacity either. The exertion and heat brought memories which he savagely pushed back down.

  After another twenty minutes he reached the top of the nearest hill. The jungle was thick but much lower, with fewer trees, and he could see in a wide radius. The bright sun was arcing to his left and behind him a bit, toward the beach he’d left. That meant that he was traveling north-east. He spun in a slow circle, taking in every hill and valley. There was a small gorge near him now, and he saw a glint of sun on the bottom.

  A river. Water.

  The hills rose to a series of craggy heights ahead of him, studded with green
ery. They rolled away to his right, marching down toward the east where he could see the ocean. To the west and north, beyond the hills and gorges, he could make out nothing more than a blue haze of open water. He was on an island, about thirty kilometers in length and not quite that far across in the direction he had traveled. Probably volcanic, judging by the central mountain heights and the way the top formed a semi-circular ridge that suggested an ancient, crumbled crater.

  Then he noticed an anomaly that set his heart racing. Rising from the highest of the series of hills along the eastern edge of the island was an antenna tower, poking up from the trees like a beckoning finger. It was an XC-88 Commstack, a type he recognized well despite the fact that it was obviously in a state of disrepair. It looked shaggy and unkempt, draped with something green that broke up its profile. That brought memories and questions to his mind, but he pushed them away. Probably just creepers – they grew freakishly fast in humid climates and covered everything that didn’t move.

  He would have to travel inland at least a klick or two to climb the slope that led up to the tower.

  Fine; now I know there’s some vestige of civilization here, I can afford an uphill hike. I'll probably meet the access road to the antenna, and then I won't have to bushwhack. With luck I’ll find a supply cache or some people, if any are still around.

  Feeling substantially relieved at the thought, he started toward the distant tower, whistling a tune.

  So what if the antenna is covered with camouflage netting instead of vines?

  The war is over.

  3.5

  Earth called to her children and begged us to stop using her. We laughed at her.

  We had Science, the Great God.

  Science would save us and save Earth, make it all right again. Science would feed our hunger, would glut us with everything possible, and our appetites would stretch to meet the stars. How we loved ourselves, our hunger, the limitlessness of it.

  The Used outnumbered the Users more than twenty to one, but what was that to us? We ignored them and cranked our auditory implants even higher and licked the grease from our fingers. When at last they rose against us in a swarm, bitter with the years and bloody-muzzled like hyenas with eyes glowing in the night, we sent Science to fight for us.