can see the marker stone at the edge of the woodlands, the henro path itself wending into the trees—but among the golf karts puttering and stuttering over the grass is a blue and white buggy adorned with ToSec’s thunder-eagle. The angularities of light-power armor beneath Adidas trackwear are visible from our position on the edge of the rough. I cannot see enforcers who tear off a trespassing akira’s head taking kindly to two henro leaving tire tracks across the apron of the par three Number Thirteen.
We are effectively stymied. We cannot go forward, we will not go back, not twenty kilometers through Clint Eastwood country to the Tourist Route again. Therefore, we go around. Golf courses only seem to go on forever. A hundred or so meters back, past the dark shrine, we find a path—little more than trampled vegetation—headed in what seems like generally the right direction. After twisting and turning through riotous vegetation running wild in expectation of summer the trail plunges headlong into a vast sugarcane plantation. The rain patters on the alien cane. We have no idea where we are going; we trust that a straight path must have a destination. After ten minutes—not so much a plantation, this, as a monoculture—we hit a wide access route and come out of the claustrophobic cane on top of the cane farmer himself engaged in some cannicultural activity involving standing in the back of a Nissan pickup.
Guilty both legally and spiritually of trespass we accelerate past him before he can protest. At the sound of a shouting voice I glance over my shoulder. The farmer is waving something in his hand—I cannot be certain at this distance but it has the hard glitter of electronics. What is he shouting? Dogs? What about them?
Hydrogas shocks notwithstanding, the bike rattles as it takes the ruts, and I glance back again, just for an instant. The farmer is in his pickup now, driving after us. I shout to Mas but he has already seen and, one foot thrust out as a brake, skid-turns ninety degrees into a narrow file where no pickup can follow.
Dogs?
Somethings. Fragments of movement Discordant patterns of light and shade within the regularity of the head-high sugarcane. Glimpses. Glances. Flickers. More than five, I reckon, less than twenty. And not human. Too low, too fast, too relentless to be human. Mas too senses them; a glance is the signal for us to flick into high gear. The hunters in the cane match us without a flicker of hesitation. I hear Mas swear. I glance back. Dogs. A hunting pack of ten, closing on us. Cancerous bulbs of bioprocessor implants blister their skulls; each wears the unmistakable ToSec logo spray-painted on its chest.
That hint of electronics I had seen in the farmer’s hand was a command unit.
That time, in Marrakech, Luka took me to a dog pit in the old city. Under the white heat of the kilowatt floods we watched the augmented dogs tear and rip and spray red arterial blood over the front rows. We watched them die on the bloody sand and still they tore at each other, enslaved even beyond death to the commands pouring from their sweating, screaming masters’ control gloves.
Except this man was not threatening us. He was warning us.
Mas’s sudden brake and swerve almost sends me into him. A hundred or so meters ahead, a second pack of augmented dogs is bounding toward us with elegant deadly fluidity.
I have seconds. Only seconds…
“Close your eyes!” I shout to Mas and they are on us. The lead dog leaps. I meet it with my naked left hand. It spins into the cane, neck broken, writhing, yelping hideously.
If the right hand is truth, what is the left?
Answer: destruction. Keter: the Void, Annihilation, the shock fracter. Animal, human, artificial intelligence: whatsoever has eyes to see, it will destroy.
Wherever I turn my left hand, dogs jerk and spasm and fall. They are savage, they are deadly, but those are not enough, not against an enemy that attacks on sight. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
We are effectively stymied. We cannot go forward, we will not go back, not twenty kilometers through Clint Eastwood country to the Tourist Route again. Therefore, we go around. Golf courses only seem to go on forever. A hundred or so meters back, past the dark shrine, we find a path—little more than trampled vegetation—headed in what seems like generally the right direction. After twisting and turning through riotous vegetation running wild in expectation of summer the trail plunges headlong into a vast sugarcane plantation. The rain patters on the alien cane. We have no idea where we are going; we trust that a straight path must have a destination. After ten minutes—not so much a plantation, this, as a monoculture—we hit a wide access route and come out of the claustrophobic cane on top of the cane farmer himself engaged in some cannicultural activity involving standing in the back of a Nissan pickup.
Guilty both legally and spiritually of trespass we accelerate past him before he can protest. At the sound of a shouting voice I glance over my shoulder. The farmer is waving something in his hand—I cannot be certain at this distance but it has the hard glitter of electronics. What is he shouting? Dogs? What about them?
Hydrogas shocks notwithstanding, the bike rattles as it takes the ruts, and I glance back again, just for an instant. The farmer is in his pickup now, driving after us. I shout to Mas but he has already seen and, one foot thrust out as a brake, skid-turns ninety degrees into a narrow file where no pickup can follow.
Dogs?
Somethings. Fragments of movement Discordant patterns of light and shade within the regularity of the head-high sugarcane. Glimpses. Glances. Flickers. More than five, I reckon, less than twenty. And not human. Too low, too fast, too relentless to be human. Mas too senses them; a glance is the signal for us to flick into high gear. The hunters in the cane match us without a flicker of hesitation. I hear Mas swear. I glance back. Dogs. A hunting pack of ten, closing on us. Cancerous bulbs of bioprocessor implants blister their skulls; each wears the unmistakable ToSec logo spray-painted on its chest.
That hint of electronics I had seen in the farmer’s hand was a command unit.
That time, in Marrakech, Luka took me to a dog pit in the old city. Under the white heat of the kilowatt floods we watched the augmented dogs tear and rip and spray red arterial blood over the front rows. We watched them die on the bloody sand and still they tore at each other, enslaved even beyond death to the commands pouring from their sweating, screaming masters’ control gloves.
Except this man was not threatening us. He was warning us.
Mas’s sudden brake and swerve almost sends me into him. A hundred or so meters ahead, a second pack of augmented dogs is bounding toward us with elegant deadly fluidity.
I have seconds. Only seconds…
“Close your eyes!” I shout to Mas and they are on us. The lead dog leaps. I meet it with my naked left hand. It spins into the cane, neck broken, writhing, yelping hideously.
If the right hand is truth, what is the left?
Answer: destruction. Keter: the Void, Annihilation, the shock fracter. Animal, human, artificial intelligence: whatsoever has eyes to see, it will destroy.
Wherever I turn my left hand, dogs jerk and spasm and fall. They are savage, they are deadly, but those are not enough, not against an enemy that attacks on sight. Five. Ten. Fifteen.
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