Judas Unchained

Nothing else moved along Highway One now. South of Rob Lacey’s great avenue of redwoods the land rose steadily to be capped by low hills whose valleys interlocked in gentle curves. Bradley could remember traveling along a newly laid Highway One when this tableland had been barren territory. Today, nearly two centuries later, the rolling slopes were carpeted by rich emerald vegetation of shaggy grass and small verdant trees. Midday sun turned the crown of the sapphire sky to a white blaze-patch too bright to look at directly. Visibility was perfect. Looking over Stig’s shoulder through the thick glass of the armored car’s windshield he could see the mud-gray strip of enzyme-bonded concrete wind onward through the meandering vales for kilometers in front of them. There was nowhere for a Cruiser patrol to hide. Stig and the other drivers were piling on the speed.

Since Haville, they’d passed through four more small towns that the Starflyer had razed to the ground, ending with Zeefield, the southernmost settlement along Highway One. Word had obviously spread southward in time. The last three had been deserted; they’d seen no distraught victims nor lines of corpses amid the smoldering ruins. Wherever the residents had fled to, they were staying quiet. Keely had been unable to raise anyone on the local bands.

Right across the rolling tablelands, the fiber-optic cable that linked the Institute to Armstrong City supported a series of nodes to provide communications to anyone using the road. They were spaced five kilometers apart, protected from the elements inside meter-wide domes that sprouted from the ground beside the road like composite mushrooms. Every one had been masered, the high-density carbon turning to a slate-gray sludge surrounded by singed grass.

“I came up here for my first act against the Starflyer,” Stig said as Highway One began to dip down into one of the deeper vales toward the end of the tablelands. “We were always cutting the cable up here. It was easy.”

“Now they’re using that isolation against us,” Bradley said. “Though attacking every single node speaks of deep insecurity. A couple of simple cuts would be sufficient.”

“Why bother?” Olwen asked. “It knows we’re using short wave; it can’t block our critical communications.”

“In some respects it is remarkably unimaginative,” Bradley said. “If destroying the road net has caused us inconvenience before, it simply continues to perform the disruption.”

“That sounds more like an array program than a sentient creature.”

“In some respects its neurological functions are strikingly similar to those of a processor. What tactics it possesses it either determines by trial and error, or absorbs from other more intuitive sources. A fast-flowing situation like this chase will be difficult for it. There is no time for it to work through options to see which is the most effective.”

“You mean it gets its ideas from humans?”

“Yes, a lot of the time; though the longer they are under its control, the more their ability to think in an original or inventive fashion is reduced.”

“No wonder it wants to get rid of us. It can’t compete.”

“Not on our terms, no. But nonetheless it has brought us to the brink of destruction. Don’t underestimate it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bradley was moved by the level of determination in her voice. Returning to Far Away after so long he’d even been slightly disturbed by the unquestioning respect he kindled among the clans. It was almost as if the Commonwealth authorities were right to brand him a cult leader.

Highway One began its long descent out of the tablelands, tracking around the steeper gorges, then bending in great switchback loops down the final escarpment to deliver them onto the sweltering veldt. This was where Far Away’s first true rainforest was busy establishing itself, sweeping out from Mount StOmer at the northwestern corner of the Dessault Mountains away to the southern shoreline of the Oak Sea. The grasses had come first, seeded by the blimpbots, refreshing the soil before the trees and vines were introduced over a fifty-year period. The central core of rainforest was now thriving and expanding without any further human encouragement.