He would have to travel inland at least a klick or two to climb the slope that led up to the tower.

Fine; now I know there's some vestige of civilization here, I can afford an uphill hike. I'll probably meet the access road to the antenna, and then I won't have to bushwhack. With luck I'll find a supply cache or some people, if any are still around.

Feeling substantially relieved at the thought, he started toward the distant tower, whistling a tune.

So what if the antenna is covered with camouflage netting instead of vines?

The war is over.

3.5.

Earth called to her children and begged us to stop using her. We laughed at her.

We had Science, the Great G.o.d.

Science would save us and save Earth, make it all right again. Science would feed our hunger, would glut us with everything possible, and our appet.i.tes would stretch to meet the stars. How we loved ourselves, our hunger, the limitlessness of it.

The Used outnumbered the Users more than twenty to one, but what was that to us? We ignored them and cranked our auditory implants even higher and licked the grease from our fingers. When at last they rose against us in a swarm, bitter with the years and b.l.o.o.d.y-muzzled like hyenas with eyes glowing in the night, we sent Science to fight for us.

Science failed.

Science cannot kill rage.

Science cannot outwit hunger.

Nine billion prewar humans on the planet. Too many. Earth supported the burden until she could no longer do so, and then purged herself. Only so many, and no more. We forgot that law. We forgot only so many and no more, and we paid for the forgetting.

War came, war like nothing we'd ever imagined. The used died by the thousands, by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions. Like locusts they came, locusts with a hunger swollen and never satisfied, enraged at the devastation of the Earth. At the waste.

Science could not kill them all without killing the users as well, and we were not so far gone that we had forgotten that. Not so far gone as that. There were ways to end it all, end everything, but we wanted to live. In the end, we strove for survival like any animal.

Chemicals, bleak clouds that shriveled leaves from trees, burned lungs, blinded babies, choked and killed and maimed, poisoning the already groaning Earth with miasmic vapors.

Viruses, bacteria, the superbugs of a thousand sealed jars were let loose like the plagues of Egypt, dropped from the sky in silent bombs with silent detonations. Humans dropped like flies, vomiting blood, the Red Death tearing at Prospero's throat. The worms feasted.

The factories spewed forth their guns and cartridges by the billions. Tanks, choppers, planes, hovercraft. Mines. Grenades, missiles, rockets. Smartbombs. Cl.u.s.terbombs. Burrowbombs, bunkerbusters, laser guided precision systems, gunpowder giving way to particle beams, light energy weapons. The technology jumped ahead, spurred by the men in white coats who took such meticulous notes and sipped their coffee with such dedication.

Bots. Androids and gynoids. Cyborgs. Oceans of money evaporated into war clouds which rained down the bots and bombs. Joysticks clutched in chubby fists that steered death through the sky in streaks and never saw the starving things they vaporized.

We will win, they said. We will win. It is our right. Earth is ours. We are not the Earth's.

That was when I left them.

Sick with anger, I swore I would end them. Cleanse the earth. Take off the mask and breathe clean air again.

We wore them down, and spent ourselves like water doing it. We won. The Greens won. The Grays lost.

I wish it was that simple.

We all lost. When the Earth dies, no one wins.

And Earth is dying. Too little, too late. After all the killing, all the death, all the rot and waste and ashes, we may have past the point of no return when the Earth begins her swan song and we can do nothing but watch.

So we wait.

We watch.

We hope.

We ally Science with Nature, as we should have done from the beginning, and pray that together they can heal Earth.

Pray for a new Eden.

If we are given another chance, we will change, we will be different. Humanity can change.

The serpent has left the garden. Eden is safe.

Please.

4.

John almost ran into the fence. He had been moving fast, in as straight a line as he could manage, toward the antenna on the heights. The forest floor was dank and slippery and so he focused on his feet and where he was putting them. The fence was in his face almost before he could stop.

It was an old fence made of chain links, rusted in the humid air. Taller than he was by a good meter and a half, disappearing in either direction. There were the remains of some razor wire along the top. On the far side, he could see that the jungle was cleared in a meter-wide swath parallel to the fence; a maintenance track of some sort. He threw a stick against the fence to check for current. Nothing. The fence looked long abandoned, and the track was already choked with undergrowth.

The rusted links bit into his fingers as he clambered up awkwardly, fence bending inward with his weight. A distant memory of childhood, when his sneaker toes could fit easily into the links, crossed his mind. At the top he paused a moment, picking a landing spot, and then jumped. He landed with a grunt, brushed the moist earth off his hands, and straightened up. Through a break in the trees he could see the hill. He was much closer. The ground should start rising soon. He took a step forward.

A twig snapped somewhere in the trees. He froze. There was no movement from the jungle. His eyes raked the foliage.

He smelled it before he saw it, a mix of silicone, hot electrics, and plastic. A shape moved behind some palm fronds, and then it lurched from the jungle three meters away and paused, a.n.a.lyzing. The ASKALON-9 was obsolete these days, but you still saw them in the backwaters and sinks, and it enjoyed a reputation as a dependable service bot. The 9's were androids, humanoid in shape and size and designed to interact with humans.

This one was a mess. It hadn't been cleaned or serviced in a long time; moss and mud-stains covered its carapace, and he noticed exposed wiring at the joints where the rubber seals had torn away. Its sensory apparatus, located on the bulbous head, was damaged; one optical bulb was smashed and its antennae were snapped off half their length.

He raised his hand to hail it in the standard greeting, smiling for the benefit of whoever was monitoring its cams.

The ASKALON did not respond.

John felt a frisson of unease. Standard programming was either erased, or malfunctioning. Neither option inspired confidence.

The ASKALON remained motionless, coolant vents softly whirring, staring at him. He hailed it again, more slowly, pa.s.sing his hand clearly in front of its remaining optical sensor.

No response.

He forced himself to breathe calmly and focused on slowing his heart rate. It was difficult. The pre-war ASKALON units had been harmless enough, but the war changed everything and it was amazing what a techie with some nasty hardware and a blowtorch could add to even the most mundane bots. The ASKALON units weren't originally designed to kill, but they more than capable of doing so when programmed that way. Most machines were, and there was a chance this one was preparing to kill him.

Sweat trickled down his back as he studied it. There was no way to tell what it would do. It seemed stuck in a.n.a.lysis mode, and he hoped its sensory damage had limited or even disabled its logic centers. This one had no overt weapons systems, but there could be some concealed under the carapace, and even when unarmed the ASKALON-9's were incredibly strong.

Gnats whined in his ears. One bit dangerously close to his eardrum, and despite himself he flinched.

The ASKALON charged, arms outstretched.

John ran. There was nothing else to do; he had nothing in his hands and no time to find anything. He plunged into the jungle, leaping over fallen trees and bursting through nets of creepers. The maintenance track along the fence provided a clearer escape route, but he knew he couldn't outrun the bot on the straightaway.

The high rasp of Sergeant Wiley echoed in his head: Duck and dodge, and you can beat the bots. Sprint in the open, and you're dead. It's that simple.

And it was that simple. They said the day would come when bots could do anything a human could do and then some. Bots far outcla.s.sed humans in speed and strength, no question. Flesh and neurons couldn't beat steel and motherboards. But humans still had a few edges; superior agility and the ability to antic.i.p.ate enabled a human to navigate an obstacle course faster than any bot ever made. Before any were developed that could outdo humans in agility and intuition, manufacturing had ground to a halt. The war took care of that.

John's lungs were on fire. Behind him came the whine of servos and gears. The 9's were much lighter than their predecessors, but still weighed close to a hundred kilos, and he chose the most dense and difficult terrain to enhance his advantage. He was jumping like a gazelle over a fallen tangle of branches when he realized the sounds of pursuit had stopped, and he risked a glance over his shoulder. The bot was caught in some creepers, thrashing and kicking to free itself. It would only take seconds until it resumed the pursuit, but the opportunity was exactly what he'd been waiting for.

The ASKALON units were not armored, but you still had to know where to hit them if you wanted a sure kill. He'd lost more than a few friends to partially disabled bots. You had to be sure. This one ran on power cell technology, but access to the cell was protected by its carapace.

John scrambled four-legged across a patch of open ground and got behind a banyan tree. The machine freed itself from the last of the creeper and went still, its sensor array moving back and forth. With its optical lens broken, it was reliant on infrared, and infrared had limitations.

He couldn't be sure what the exact capabilities of this bot were. He knew the specs of the ASKALON series by heart, but modifications were so common it was more realistic to a.s.sume it had been upgraded than not. He carefully peered around the edge of the banyan trunk.

The bot was motionless except for its head, which was in a slow, 360 degree scanning pattern; it was likely to remain that way until it reacquired its target or until its recall programming activated. That could take anywhere from ten minutes to ten days. Sergeant Wiley rasped in John's mind: the bots' predictability is their greatest weakness.

He searched the ground, found a half-buried stone, and gently tugged it loose. The bot's head was cycling away from him when he sprinted from behind the banyan, praying that this one wasn't baiting him with a sophisticated decoy routine. Three quick steps, noiseless in the damp leaf mold of the jungle floor, and he brought the rock down hard on the bot's head with crushing force.

It jerked under the impact, all sensory equipment destroyed, and he struck again, this time at the base of the neck where its wiring was exposed. In a crackle of sparks and ozone, the bot lurched forward and collapsed, facedown. Instantly he was on it, hands ripping away the carapace to get at the power cell and the brainbox. Only after they were torn free did he relax.

Not bad for just bare hands and a rock.

John didn't consider himself a violent person, but he enjoyed the rush from his quick victory. He didn't feel the slightest trace of regret at the violent destruction of the bot. He had taken out far too many of them in his time for it to bother him.

Some people liked bots too much. They were so helpful, clean, and polite. Totally subservient. Reliable. And although they had no personalities unless programmed that way, people projected personalities onto them, said thank you when a bot performed a service, viewed them as if they were sentient. It was harmless most of the time, but he had heard stories. A woman ran back into a burning house to save "Kenny" and they found her charred body embracing the red-hot house bot. Stuff like that.

And bot-love could get you killed when the bots were your comrades in arms. When you'd been fighting alongside a bot for weeks, calling it by a nickname, and had your life saved by it, it was surprisingly difficult to let it die, or refrain from running under fire to drag an injured one to safety. You felt loyalty to it in spite of yourself. It was a psychological phenomenon that took some mental discipline to overcome.

Not a problem for me. This bot had it coming.

Now that he was up close, John could see that the bot was even older and less maintained than he'd supposed. He looked for other distinguishing features, but there were none visible. He had no time for deeper examination. The bot had been patrolling the fence, and he had tripped a sensor it was monitoring when he climbed it. It was an even bet that someone somewhere was monitoring the bot in turn. There was no telling what kind of response might be sent out.

Time to go.

John grabbed the power cell, noticing that it was much newer and cleaner than any of the bot's other components, and hurled it far into the trees. Then he headed back toward the fence. Despite the risk of discovery, there was something else he needed to know before he moved on.

From the cover of the trees, he followed the rusty fence line until he found what he was looking for a laser projector situated a meter off the ground on one post, pointing down the fence line toward a receiver fifty meters away. There was a second laser line half a meter apart from the first, a corollary beam for greater reliability. Insects and birds could interrupt one and not set off any alarm, but if both were broken it meant something large was in the area.

He studied the equipment carefully. It was a surprisingly good setup. Unlike the bot he'd destroyed, the security laser box was clean and well-maintained. So was the power cable that fed it, and the four-meter-high solar panel pole. The panel itself was half-hidden in the tree canopy above. He scanned the maintenance track, noticing wheel tracks where a mower had come through not too long ago.

His mind raced. The war had left a lot of the more remote island groups in chaos, and Restoration hadn't completely pacified Australia yet. It would be decades before they reached the South Pacific, if that was where he'd ended up. The war had been officially over for a while and it was hard to conceive of a place that hadn't heard the news. But if this was an island it was theoretically possible that this place had never been demilitarized.

Another possibility was that they had heard and refused to demilitarize. Some of the more fanatical Grays had ignored the armistice and fought on. But he'd heard they were mostly isolated in the temperate zones. He'd never heard of Gray holdouts in the tropics. On the other hand, this could be a refugee camp. He'd heard that the islands were full of them, scattered to winds during the war by choice or by necessity and now grown accustomed to autonomy. Some had carved out nice little kingdoms for themselves and resented outsiders.

John shook his head. Without hard data on his position it was useless to speculate. It could have been just one more malfunctioning bot in the wrong place at the wrong time, a defunct machine running on outdated programming. The disposal teams collected thousands of them each year.

Or...

But he pushed the last thought from his mind. There were other possible explanations, much more upsetting. He didn't want to consider those.

The ASKALON-9 that attacked him hadn't displayed any upgrades, from what he had been able to observe. No armor. No sophisticated subroutines. No weapons systems. Minimal AI. No maintenance, but that told him little. The ASKALONs were pre-war models spare parts were rare. The unit's sheer age might have caused its failure. He shook his head again, and headed for the hill.

After twenty minutes John noticed the sound of water at the edge of his hearing, but the noise of the incessant insects and his own heavy breathing made it difficult to judge the size or precise location of the waterway. Pa.s.sing through some thick trees, he emerged into the open along the bank of a river, blinking in the sudden sunlight.

The river was perhaps ten meters wide. Although it moved slowly at his current position, upstream it exited a gorge between the hills from which he could hear the roar of whitewater. The milky brown water gave him no way to tell how deep the river was. He threw a stick into midstream and watched it float, noting the point at which the current sped up around a bend.

He could probably swim it, but he didn't like the idea for several reasons. The murky water made it impossible to tell if there were submerged rocks or snags. He'd heard awful stories of aquatic snakes, as well. But his greatest concern was the lack of cover. Once he entered the water, he would be helpless if another bot appeared. Just standing on the banks made him uneasy, and he backed into the jungle again to think.

Finally he decided to follow the riverbank from just inside the jungle, close enough to the river to notice a bridge or shallows if there were any. It was the safest bet, and the ASKALON-9 had made it clear that the safest option was the only option here.

He started walking, thirsty from the sound of water gurgling at the banks. The humidity was oppressive, and he knew he was losing too much water from sweat. He needed to find some clean water, and soon. There seemed to be a faint path among the trees and creepers and he followed it, grateful to make better time. He kept an eye on the river, but checked his route every few seconds for laser sensors.

As he stepped over a fallen log a dark shape in the trees caught his peripheral vision, and he froze. It was a good-sized log, hanging from thick cables tied around trees branches above. He slowly scanned the area, noticing a tripwire on the ground in front of him that had already been loosed, its pin lying on the trail ahead. The wire tripped the log, which had swung down, continued across, and become tangled in some creepers at the far end of its swing. But why have a random log here?

Then John saw the pit. He wouldn't have noticed it if it hadn't been for a dark patch on the ground, something not quite right, a corner of the pit where the palm fronds littering the path had fallen in. When he realized what he was looking at, his eyes traced its dimensions. Three meters by three, placed directly across the path. Mentally he cursed himself for his stupidity. Paths were made for a reason. Just like fences.

He crouched at the edge and lifted off one of the palm fronds still covering the pit. Down the hole in the darkness, he could see vertical sides carved from the dark soil, with some small vines already growing across the shaft. It was deep. He ripped off more fronds, letting in the dim green light. There was something at the bottom. He leaned down for a closer look, wrinkling his nose at the smell.

Bones.

They were browned from the rot clinging to them. He saw a ribcage and mandible, then a partially buried skull. The clothing had long since rotted away. The bottom of the pit was lined with upright stakes driven into the earth and shaped to sharp points. The angle of the skeleton's rib cage, pierced by two stakes, made him wince. A bad way to die. I'm going to have to be very careful on this island.

He stood. The path was no longer an option, but he still needed to follow the river. His thirst made him instinctively reluctant to leave the water. He'd just have to chance discovery by walking along the banks. The air would be better, and perhaps a breeze would rid him of the insects.

Five minutes later he found the crossing.

A road spanned the river at a narrow point, raised slightly above the water level on pontoons. The water slid underneath in a sheet as smooth as gla.s.s before tumbling down in a small waterfall that stretched from bank to bank, perhaps half a meter high.

There was no sign of activity on either bank, but he waited for ten minutes, crouching behind a dense stand of gra.s.s. The road came out of the jungle from the west. He wasn't sure if it was the same maintenance track that followed the fence. It disappeared into the jungle on the far side and seemed to skirt the bottom of the hill with the antenna, now clearly visible from where he sat.

He gave it five more minutes, studying the area and a.s.sessing the risks. Finally he decided it time to make a move, and he started for the crossing, ready to sprint across. Just as his foot stepped onto the packed earth, he heard something coming down the road behind him. A bend ten meters away hid whatever approached. He darted back into the jungle, rolled into a swath of gra.s.s, and lay still.