Redliners(112)

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.

The track was marked by grooves parallel to the axis of movement, each of them a few feet long. They had the appearance of the drag marks made by a harrow lifted into travelling mode but not clearing all the bumps.

Judging from the weathering, the track probably had something to do with the Spook expedition. God would have liked to have a piece of ground-clearing equipment that big, Blohm knew. For his own part . . . well, the forest was no friend of Caius Blohm's, but it played fair. Ramming through it with a blade a hundred yards wide didn't seem right to him.

Blohm skirted the marked tree as he'd planned. The forest beyond the cleared strip was typical of what he'd seen ever since they landed: variations in the form of danger and hostility, but nothing exceptional and nothing that explained the track. The broad pathway meandered through the forest, utterly destroying everything in its path.

Six winged pods a yard across rotated out of the canopy a hundred feet ahead of Blohm. They slanted through the mid-growth toward him. The seeds were pointed and weighed several pounds apiece, but buoyed by their wings they fell too slowly for their effect to be purely kinetic.