Colony Read online

  Centuries?

  Whether it's the artificial drugs still flowing through his, presumably extremely truncated, circulatory system, or natural narcotics produced by what's left of his brain to deal with shock, Eddie's mind finds the concept very hard to assimilate.

  Centuries.

  How is that possible? It's not possible. Centuries? That's many, many years. It's hundreds of years, in fact. Is that not a textbook definition of centuries? Hundreds of years. Tens of decades. Several lifetimes. How can that be? That security commander, Styx, he's still alive, isn't he? The satyr? He doesn't even look slightly older, never mind a few hundred years. And the nymph. Eddie knows her, too. She's mid-twenties, tops. This is just a mistake, somehow. Some big, stupid bureaucratic error, like all the big, monstrous, stupid bureaucratic errors that dog Eddie's life consistently, that stalk him with relentless dedication, like lunatic fans about to go over the brink. It will all be fine in the end. It will all sort itself out and end with sheepish apologies and offers of compensation. Surely.

  But reality bites. The forest warps and collapses in on itself. The unicorn winks at him and is sucked off into oblivion. The birdsong deepens and becomes the steady background thrum of artificial lighting and a distant engine throb.

  And Eddie is in the operating theatre. He can see the observation gallery overhead, through the diffused glare of the operating lights.

  The nymph and the satyr are there, too. Only, they're no longer quite so mythical. They are in the vaguely familiar pilgrim uniform -- no flimsy slips, no cloven hooves. Extremely human.

  And oddly, very oddly, they are green.

  Actually, everything is green.

  And -- Eddie can't quite put this into words -- it's all... swirly, sort of. Swishy. Wavery, wibbly. Almost as if...

  Almost as if...

  As if Eddie is looking at the world through some thick, mucus-like green liquid.

  A strangely calm shock wave washes over him as the realization comes.

  This is because he is looking at the world through some thick, mucus-like green liquid.

  He opens his mouth and wiggles his tongue through gloop. His entire head is encased, submerged in the glutinous green gloop.

  Obviously, there is no point in screaming. Screaming is not a sensible option. It will achieve nothing, and it's not polite.

  But Eddie screams anyway.

  The scream doesn't emerge from his mouth, but from a speaker somewhere around the vee in his breastbone. Or, rather, from where the vee in his breastbone would be if he still had a breastbone.

  The ex-nymph is craning over him, greenly. She nods and says, 'Let it out, Piers, let it all out.'

  But Eddie can't let it all out. They'd all be here for the rest of their lives if he tried to let it all out. He'd need a bigger speaker, too. Several speakers. With woofers and tweeters and surround sound. He'd need a system that could handle a stadium rock concert.

  So, no. Just the single, token scream, a pointless bout of breathless gagging as he tries to accommodate the filthy sensation of viscous liquid purling through his ears, his eyes, his nose, and that's it. Tantrum over.

  Calm enough, now -- not happy, but calm enough -- Eddie asks, as nicely as he can, for someone to get him out of the gloop, and, not forgetting his manners, he adds the Magic Word.

  The erstwhile nymph forces her features into the dismal facsimile of sympathy which Eddie is quickly learning to loathe and explains how that particular course of action is currently impossible, and that, furthermore, it is unlikely to be a feasible option in the foreseeable future.

  Eddie's new electronic voice implores that, notwithstanding the foregoing, he would greatly appreciate having his head removed from the gloopy substance currently enveloping it, with some immediacy, and he punctuates the urgency of his point with a brisk sprinkling of sexual expletives.

  The woman, whose utter paucity of wood nymph qualities is becoming more blatant by the moment, abandons her impoverished attempts at a bedside manner and erupts into a molten invective admonishing her patient's reaction. She urges him to grasp the inescapable realities he is now facing and deal with them in the shortest possible space of time.

  This does the trick for Eddie. His head is in gloop. From now on, his entire head is going to be entirely submerged in green mucal gloop the entire time.

  OK.

  Green mucal gloop it is.

  How bad is that?

  It really isn't all that bad. There are probably millions of worse things for your head to be submerged in on a permanent basis. Diarrhoea, for instance. Diseased diarrhoea, even. Or chunky vomit. Radioactive waste. Sloppy, radioactive diarrhoea garnished with chunky, diseased dog vomit. Would you rather have your head dunked in that, Eddie? No sir.

  'I'm sorry.' Eddie apologizes. He's apologizing for reacting angrily to the prospect of being perpetually submerged in snotty slime. This is the Eddie we know. He's well on his way to recovery.

  The apology is so uncalled for, so pathetic, it even broaches the practically unassailably high embarrassment threshold of the non-nymph, and she looks away for an instant. When she looks back, her exasperation has dissipated, and her expression is as close to a representation of compassion as she could ever achieve without the use of prosthetics and very thick paint. 'You don't have to apologize. I'm well aware this is all...' she tries to find an appropriate word, but comes up short '... new to you. And like I said, in any other circumstances, you'd spend weeks in sedation, and we'd wean you off artificiality over several months, bit by bit. But we don't have that luxury. We don't have months. We probably don't have weeks. We need you, Dr Morton. We need you now. The existence of the entire colony is resting on your shoulders.'

  She looks away again, because, of course, he has no shoulders and, as best he can, Eddie looks away too, embarrassed for her.

  But this is something. Eddie is needed. For whatever reason, people are looking to him to save them. True, they're probably only looking to him because they think he's someone else, and undoubtedly he'll fall drastically short of expectations and let everyone down horribly, but for the moment he's untarnished. A hero, potentially. A saviour, even, in the making. An unaccustomed feeling.

  'OK.' Eddie's rallying. 'My head's in gloop. So what?' No need to consider the wider implications of that, such as how he eats, or what process is substituted for breathing. That's not important now. 'The big question: can I move?' Even the electronic synthesis of his voice can't keep the quaver of fear out of that question.

  'We think so.'

  They think so? There's only a possibility he can move?

  'Try raising your head.'

  Eddie tries, and achieves a very small advance on the horizontal.

  'I think you can do better.'

  Eddie tries. It's hard. It's very, very hard. He suddenly realizes the benefits, hitherto obscure to him, of lifting weights with your head. He's trying to ignore the slurpy sound of the sticky liquid slapping around his ears. He knows he can only be imagining the queasy sensation in the stomach he no longer has.

  He strains. He gets nowhere. He strains again.

  And suddenly, it works. His neck pivots, and he's looking down the length of what better hadn't be his new body, but almost certainly is.

  His heart can't be sinking. His guts can't be performing trapeze acts. They no longer exist.

  The body he's looking down at is metallic. The torso comprises lateral, tubular hoops that form a kind of oval stretched sphere, so it bulges where the stomach would be. The limbs conform to the metallic tubular hoop motif, broken at the joints by what looks like concertina'd rubber.

  It doesn't look much like a human's body. It looks like a giant ribbed egg with arms and legs. It looks like the body of Humpty fucking Dumpty.

  'That's good,' the un-nymph is saying inappropriately. 'Your motor functions are hooking up nicely.'

  Eddie hisses, 'What the hell is this below my neck?' but either he hasn't yet mastered the subtleties of his n
ew vocal system, or it's incapable of such finesse, because his voice comes out the same as usual.

  'It's your new body. We call it a "revival suit". Like it?'

  'Like it?'

  Obviously there's enough in the electronic interpretation of his inflection to convey Eddie's horror, because the ersatz dryad winces slightly and after much too short a pause offers the flimsy compliment: 'It's a very nice colour.'

  It's a nice colour?' Colour would not be very high on Eddie's list of desirable body characteristics right now, even if everything didn't look green to him, which it does, and always will. 'It's a nice colour?'

  'It's a deep, shiny blue.'

  'Oh, good. A deep, shiny blue. What a turn on. I'll be beating off naked supermodels with a large stick.'

  The Styx lookalike who used to be a satyr is shaking his head, astonished. 'I don't think so, pilgrim. Women are going to look at you and puke, my friend.' The woman draws back her clenched fist, and Styx flinches. 'Don't hit me again, Oslo.'

  She raises an eyebrow and takes a half step towards him.

  He backs away, hands up for protection, and adds a pathetic 'Please?'

  Eddie is still staring down at his body. It's not getting any more appealing. Instead of hands, he has large pincers. 'Look at me. I look like a giant beehive with limbs. I have pincers for hands. Pincers! This is the best you could do? This represents the pinnacle of centuries of scientific advancement by the finest minds the Earth had to offer? Pincers?'

  'Hey, Doctor; I shouldn't have to tell you this, but that is an extremely sophisticated piece of technology you're residing in. Can you imagine the complexities involved in linking that up with all your tiny little nerve endings to detect minute impulses from your surviving synapses to give you some semblance of mobility? To give you back some kind of life? Do you have any idea how lucky you are?'

  Lucky? Oh dear. She's saying he's lucky. This is going too, too far. This is pushing Eddie's biggest button. Lucky? Eddie?

  'Lucky,' his speaker stutters, whatever now passes for his spleen swelling to venting point. 'You're saying I'm lucky? You're calling me "lucky"?'

  'Yes, lucky. Certainly lucky. I don't want to get into the number of failed attempts we went through to reach this point, but there were a lot, mister. A lot. And if it weren't for the relentless dedication and perseverance of a whole bunch of well-intentioned pilgrims who were never trained in this field or anything close to it, you'd still be a head in a jar. I don't want to say the word "ungrateful" ...'

  'Ungrateful? Ooh, I'm not ungrateful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I always wanted to look like a genetically mutated potato being digested by an anaconda. This is a dream come true for me. I can't imagine why you bothered bestowing this blessing on mine humble personage. Why didn't you just hook me up to a child's battery-operated racing car and jam the remote control between my teeth?'

  'Would you like to go back in the jar? Is that what you want? Would you prefer to spend the rest of eternity looking like an inedible bar snack?'

  Back in the jar. It's true. That's all he is now: an oversized pickled winkle. Eddie sighs, which comes out as a long electronic groan, and tries to rest his head back on the operating table, but it's too much effort. He's vented. 'You're right. You revived me. It's not your fault I look like a squashed Zeppelin. It's a shock, that's all. I mean, how would you...? It's all happening so fast.'

  'It's an understandable reaction. Wimpy, but understandable. Now, can you move anything besides your neck?'

  'I can barely move that.'

  'Well, you're restricted by the helmet. Try an extremity. Your left foot.'

  Eddie stares at his left foot. It's a rectangular chunk of metal attached to the leg by an ankle of ribbed rubber.' He tries to remember the procedure involved in moving a foot, but it seems to involve a complex interaction of contracting and expanding muscles up and down the entire leg. Muscles which are no longer there. 'This is useless. I can't even...'

  'Try!'

  He concentrates hard. He feels something. A twitch. But the foot doesn't move. He wills it to move. He feels the veins on his temple bulge. And he gets a reaction. He feels the movement strongly. But the foot hasn't budged. Odd. He's vaguely aware of a loud, unpleasant sound. Screaming.

  He flicks his eyes towards the howling. The pincer of his right hand has grabbed hold of Styx's crotch and is squeezing remorselessly. 'My God! I...' Eddie panics. He tries to relax his right hand and feels his left knee jiggle. 'I'm sorry! I can't seem...'

  'Stop the pain!' Styx is screaming. 'Stop the pain!'

  Oslo is wrestling with the pincer. 'It's too strong!'

  'Stop the pain! Sweet mother of mercy, make it stop!'

  Eddie's trying to concentrate. Trying to get back in touch with the erroneous impulse and somehow reverse it. 'Just calm down, everyone. Just let me try and

  'Kill him!' Styx is yelling. 'For the love of God! Kill the son of a bitch before he snaps them off!'

  And with a mighty effort of will, Eddie does it. He wills his left foot to move in the opposite direction, and the pincers snap open. Styx crumples to the floor with a terrible groan, nursing his swollen testicles tenderly, as if they were brand-new baby twins.

  He's out of Eddie's field of vision, moaning softly, and Eddie thinks it's probably best not to try a manoeuvre as complicated as sitting up just yet. 'Is he all right?'

  'I don't think so.' Oslo's eyes flick down in Styx's direction. 'Are you all right, Mr Styx?'

  'All right? Look at them! They're like overripe water melons. Kill the bastard. Kill him anyway.'

  Oslo's eyes flick back. 'He'll be fine.'

  'Really?'

  'He'll be almost as good as new, once they stop actually glowing. Well, Dr Morton. Clearly we have one or two teething problems with your motor functions.'

  'Well, yes, in that I've been wired up wrongly. In that my right hand thinks it's my left foot, for example. That would qualify as a teething problem.'

  'Don't worry about it. You have to accept a small error margin. Those little nerve endings all look alike. You'll just have to re-learn how to use your body.'

  'And how long is that supposed to take?'

  'Well, best not to rush these things.' Oslo touches a control out of Eddie's vision, and the operating bench starts to tilt slowly forward on servos. 'So I'm going to give you a full hour.'

  19

  It's closer to two hours later by the time Eddie has mastered his new reflexes with sufficient dexterity not to be designated an actual Grade One death threat to any human within a thirty-metre radius, and emerges from the operating theatre.

  He locomotes with all the confident conviction of a newborn fawn who has been passed through a coffee grinder and put back together again by a blind watchmaker with Parkinson's disease. His right leg is wired up almost correctly -- the knee is really an elbow, though that's a very small gripe in the scheme of things -- but the rest of him...

  Those little nerve endings all look alike.

  It's like trying to walk backwards on his fingers with his head jammed up his backside.

  He has to concentrate on the tiniest detail of every movement, and the irritable Ms Oslo is not large on patience, urging him to speed up when he demonstrates the slightest hesitation.

  So he's travelled some considerable way before he actually notices his surroundings.

  As far as he can tell, everything looks the same. Green, naturally, but apart from that the same. Same corridors. Same doors. Same overhead lights. He's not sure what he was expecting. Some kind of change. Decorative style, maybe. New designs. Overt evidence of massive technological advancement. Moving walkways, perhaps. Force fields instead of doors. But no. The interior looks exactly as it did the last time he saw it.

  Can it be true, then, he's been away for centuries?

  As he approaches a bend in the corridor, Styx comes around it, heading towards them. This is puzzling, since he has only just left the man in the medical section recovery room
, sedated but whimpering, with coconut-sized ice bandages on his swollen love gourds. Yet here he is, hale and hearty, swinging free, without a mince in his step.

  Eddie calls out, confused, 'Styx?' and the man stops to look at him, scanning his metal body in growing bafflement.

  'What the hell are you, pilgrim?'

  'Styx? It's me. Remember?'

  'No. But I will remember you from now on, friend. You are somebody's idea of a nightmare. What are you for? Frightening children?'

  'How are your testicles? Are they all right now?'

  'My... testicles?' Styx lowers his eyeline towards his groin, then slowly raises it back to Eddie. He looks as if he can't decide whether to be angry or afraid, or something else entirely. He also looks as if the decision might well take up the rest of the day. Eddie notices through his green viscous haze that Styx has a large tattoo or burn in the centre of his forehead. The letter B.

  Oslo's exasperation breaks the deadlock. 'Mr Styx, carry on.' But it takes two attempts to snap Styx out of his gawk. 'Mr Styx!'

  'Ma'am! Yes, Ma'am!' And with a final disgusted head shake, he marches off.

  Eddie watches him go. 'I don't...'

  'They're drones.'

  'Drones?'

  'Drones. They're literally grown fully mature...'

  'I know the theory. But droning was abandoned as an unsound procedure a long time ago. There was no way to prevent intellectual deterioration with every batch. How did you get round the fundamental flaws?'

  Oslo turns in Styx's direction and, with a concerted effort, Eddie turns and watches, too.

  Styx is standing at a door marked 'Pull'. He is pushing against it, straining violently. When it positively refuses to budge, he takes several steps back and hurls himself against it, grunting with pain on the unyielding impact. Dazed, he gets to his feet, steps back and hurls himself forward again with renewed vigour.

  Oslo spins around and walks off. 'We didn't.'

  Eddie watches Styx's vain yet unrelenting struggle against the uncompromising door with growing admiration. Clearly, the man has no notion of surrender. True, he also clearly has no space in his mental armoury for lateral thought or reason. Still, his relentless persistence is admirable in its way.