Nemesis

were being suppressed, and now as he stepped out of the craft they both flickered

back to life, giving him a moment of dizziness.

He glanced around; they stood on a landing pad at the top of a wide metal

ziggurat, just shy of the canopies of tall trees with thick leaves that shone like dark

jade. The jungle smells were stronger out here, and the olfactory processor nodes in

his extended braincase worked furiously to sift through the sensoria. Tariel guessed

that they were somewhere deep in the rich rainforests of Merica, but it was only a

speculative deduction. There was no way to know for sure.

A man in a pale green kimono and a domino mask emerged from a recessed

staircase on the side of the ziggurat and beckoned them to follow him. Tariel was

content to let Kell lead the way, and the three of them descended. The sunshine

attenuated as they dropped below the line of the upper canopy, becoming shafts of

smoky yellow filled with motes of dust and the busy patterns of flying insects.

A pathway of circular grey stones awaited them on the jungle floor, and they

picked their way along it, the man in the kimono surefooted and confident. Tariel was

more cautious; his eyes were drawn this way and that by bright, colourful sprays of

plants that grew from every square metre of ground. He saw small worker

mechanicals moving among them; what seemed at first glance to be wild growth was

actually some sort of carefully random garden. The robotics were ministering to the

plants, harvesting others.

He paused, studying one odd spindly blossom he did not recognise emerging

from the bark of a tall tree. He leaned closer.

“I would not, Vanus.” The man in the kimono placed a gentle hand on his

shoulder and reeled him back. Before he could ask why, the man made an odd

knocking noise with his lips and in response the blossom grew threadlike legs and

wandered away, up the tree trunk. “Mimical spiders, from Beta Cornea III. They

adapt well to the climate here on Terra. Their venom causes a form of haemorrhagic

fever in humans.”

Tariel recoiled and blinked. Looking again, he drew up data from his memory

stacks, classifying the plant life. Castor, nightshade and oleander; Cerbera odollam,

digitalis and Jerusalem cherry; hemlock and larkspur and dozens of others, all of

them brimming with their own particular strains of poisons. He kept his hands to

himself from then on, not wavering at all from the pathway until it deposited them in

a clearing—although clearing was hardly the word, as the place was overgrown with

vines and low greenery. In the middle of the area was an ancient house, doubtless

thousands of years old; it too was swamped by the jungle’s tendrils, and Tariel noted

that such coverage would serve well as a blind for orbital sensors and optical scopes.

“Not what I expected,” muttered Kell, as they followed the man in the kimono

towards an ivy-covered doorway.

“It appears to be a manse,” said the infocyte. “I can only estimate when it was

built. The rainforest has reclaimed it.”

Inside, Tariel expected the place to show the same level of disarray as the

exterior, but he was mistaken. Within, the building had been sealed against the

elements and wildlife, and care had been taken to return it to its original form. It was

96

only the gloom inside, the weak and infrequent sunlight through the windows, that

betrayed the reality. The Vanus and the Vindicare were taken to an anteroom where a

servitor was waiting, and the helot used a bulbous sensing wand to scan them both,

checking everything down to their sweat and exhalations for even the smallest trace

of outside toxins. The man in the kimono explained that it was necessary in order to

maintain the balance of poisons in the Orchard proper.

From the anteroom, they went to what had once been a lounge. Along the walls

there were numerous cages made of thin glassaic, rank upon rank of them facing

outward. Tariel’s skin crawled as he made out countless breeds of poisonous reptiles,

ophidians and insects, each in their own pocket environment within the cases. The

infocyte moved to the middle of the room, instinctively placing himself at the one

point furthest from all the cage doors.

A thing with a strange iridescent carapace flittered in its confinement, catching

his eye, and the sheen of the chitin recalled a recent memory. The flesh of the

Callidus had looked just the same when they had pulled Koyne out of the vacuum

over Jupiter; the shapeshifting assassin had done a peculiar thing, turning into a

deformed, almost foetus-like form in order to survive in the killing nothingness of

space. Koyne’s skin had undergone a state change from flesh to something like bone,

or tooth. Tariel recalled the disturbing sensation of touching it and he recoiled once

again.

He looked away, towards Kell. “Do you think the Callidus will live?”

“His kind don’t perish easy,” said the Vindicare dryly. “They’re too conceited to

die in so tawdry a manner.”