"We'll go around the trunks," Abbado said. "Seligman says he can't push trees over here because he'd lose traction, but we don't need to try. The dozer'll take care of the little stuff—it's all got thorns or edges like a razor, but that's no surprise. We've got branches marked to take down with grenades where we need to."
The major didn't speak for a moment as he compared an overlay of Abbado's action plan with the direct view through his faceshield. "Good," he said. "The big mother there, mark."
He'd careted a trunk with deep vertical grooves like the flutes of Ionic columns.
"Take the whole top off with a rocket when you're ready to start. It looks too much like the one that came apart into tentacles when we were just starting out."
"This one probably hinges out from root level," Manager al-Ibrahimi said. "The tips of the limbs are armed with spikes, so severing the trunk where it branches should do the job nicely."
God didn't look any different from the first time Abbado had seen him. You could just about shave on the bridge of his nose. He continued, "That tree, mark, that tree, mark, and that tree, mark—those three are designed to topple over. I assume they'll do so if the bulldozer comes within range."
"I'll be a son of a bitch," Abbado said. The noted trees didn't have any mutual similarities the sergeant could see. He'd planned to watch the seed pods dangling from the crown of the one whose bole was as straight as the shaft of a walking stick, but that was all.
"We're over a huge construct extending a square mile below ground," al-Ibrahimi added. "It begins twenty feet beneath the surface, but Tamara and I can't tell from echo shadowings just how far down it extends. Because the soil here is backfill, it's settled to a degree. It doesn't drain as well as the remainder of the forest, so the vegetation is adapted to high water levels."
Major Farrell looked at the manager. "Is this what we're looking for?" he said in a grayer, sharper tone than Abbado normally heard when the major talked to superiors. "Should we be digging instead of cutting through these trees?"
The tractor revved and moved forward ten feet before halting. The staff driver, Seligman, was still on the ground. He resumed his methodical inspection now that a new portion of track had been rotated beneath the road wheels. Essie's lawyer friend Lock was at the controls.
"We can't dig with our present equipment because of the swampy ground," God replied calmly. "There'll be an entrance, probably in the center of the tract. We'll find it, and we'll enter. And we'll find the way to turn off this Hell, Arthur, and escape."
"Sorry, sir," the major muttered. "I—strikers get used to the mushroom treatment. Kept in the dark and fed horseshit."
Seligman awkwardly mounted the bulldozer. Essie gripped the cab frame with one hand and helped pull the driver's armored bulk onto the deck with the other.
"Tamara says she talked with you, Arthur," God said. "Is there anything you want to discuss with me directly?"
The major shook his head. "Nothing that affects the mission, sir," he said. "Hell, nothing at all."
"Sarge, we're ready to go," Essie called from the tractor's deck. She wasn't ignoring the major. By directing the information as she had, she let the brass know the situation without formally breaking in on them.
Abbado extended the tube of a rocket. "Horgen, mark," he ordered, "Matushek, mark."
He was assigning rocket targets besides the one he was going to handle.
"At the base, three, two, one, fire!"
Abbado squeezed the bar trigger. Exhaust impulse kicked him as his rocket streaked into the trunk a hundred feet away. The warhead penetrated a yard or so before it detonated. The tree's own mass tamped the explosion and sent the bole toppling away from the line of march.
The three giants fell slowly, twisting and groaning like men clutching with angry desperation at a slope too steep to possibly support them. Clouds of varicolored splinters settled around the ragged stumps. Sap flickered into flame from Horgen's tree.
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."