None of the sensors here in Ozark One would report his presence, since he had long ago instructed them to ignore him. He pushed himself down in an angled trajectory he was well accustomed to, and after a few moments of weightless flight closed his fists on the hand bar positioned before the transparent end-cap of the Ozark canister. Now, without an imaging system intervening between him and the Worm itself, the effect upon him was distinctly more powerful, as was the effect of that muttering madness called bleed-over. It almost felt as if something was reaching out physically from within the canister, to push the patterns shimmering before him through his eyes and deep into his head. His customary response was instant: a solid mulish stubborn resistance. This was his parents trying to shape him into what they envisaged was a more perfect version of themselves. This was his political teacher trying to impress on him some ideology obviously at variance from reality. This was the constant pressure of Sudorian society showing him the easy path to conformity. And it was Combine society trying to deform his mental shape to fit a particular niche. He resisted with the flat negativity of an iron wall.
Gneiss remained obstinately himself.
Gneiss accepted that this conflict prevented him from being anything else.
McCrooger
While studying my erstwhile captors I remembered how their body chemistry was weirder than their appearance. They could breathe atmosphere such as once killed soldiers in the trenches of ancient Earth battlefields, and could eat bivalve molluscs and worms containing enough sulphuric acid to burn through hull plating. But, as I saw it, their main difference to 'normal humans' was a mental one, stemming from the hive-like set-up of their society and the consequent ways they had of communicating. It seemed as if, when together, their minds partially conjoined.
This sort of thing had happened back in the Polity once or twice, when certain groups using cerebral augmentations tried to set up gestalt societies, which never lasted since each individual had been originally raised an individual. Such societies would inevitably break apart, often with many of their members needing psychiatric help for a long time afterwards. I wondered if here the formation of a gestalt had been a matter of necessity, or just resulted from their severe genetic modifications. It may even have been planned by some or all of the original settlers, but I would probably never find out for sure.
After about an hour the sound of an engine alerted me to another fan-driven boat approaching across the lake. As it drew closer, I saw that it was another four-man vessel like the one waiting by the jetty, but with only three individuals aboard. Turning hard, it slowed by the beach and then drew up to the jetty. I noticed that the two in the front seats were very different from those waiting alongside me, and this difference became even more evident as they climbed out—one quickly securing the mooring rope to a bollard.
These were bigger, heavier, more stooped and apelike. Their heads seemed like boulders and what I at first took to be helmets I shortly realised were chitinous plates. Then I noticed similar growths extending over the rest of their bodies. The new arrivals were armoured, not by artifice but by biology, or rather by the artifice of genetic manipulation. Both of them lacked spur fingers, had eyes sunk into hollows, and were wearing green dungarees. They carried heavy carbines suspended across their stomachs, from which cables extended to packs resting on the near horizontal part of their backs just behind their shoulders. Their mandibles were huge and, upturned like tusks, were obviously intended for more than simply gustation.
Standing up, the four with me in unison announced, "Quofarl." I glimpsed hand signals implying both trepidation and amusement.
Soldiers, I realised, created by a society dependent on genetic manipulation and under the intense pressure of war. I wondered if these two creatures had been fashioned back then, or if the Brumallians still created them.
One of the quofarl remained by the boat, while the other one, dropping down onto all fours in the disconcerting way of these people, accompanied the third figure as she headed towards us. She proved to be a Sudorian woman clad in some kind of tight-fitting envirosuit.
Halting within a pace of me she inspected me from head to foot from behind a flat visor, then said in Sudorian, "Remain standing right there until I come back for you." At her beck my four companions followed her to the edge of the forest. I couldn't hear what was being said, nor could I see any sign language, for the quofarl stood directly in the way, glaring at me. Even when I tried to shuffle to one side to see more, he shuffled across to block my view.
"How are you?" I signed to him.
"I have a headache and it makes me tetchy," he immediately replied.
"Is she a Consensus Speaker?"
"She is," he replied.
"I couldn't help noticing she's Sudorian," I signed.
"You got a problem with that?" he asked.
"Why should I have a problem?"
"Just checking."
The woman returned, while the other four headed down to their boat and climbed in. Tozzler leapt in last, lying across the laps of the two sitting in the rear seats. The fan started and they pulled away. I raised a hand and four hands were raised in return. Strange people, these Brumallians, but I felt I could get along with them.
"Consul Assessor David McCrooger," said the woman, "I am to take you to the ReconYork. Meanwhile I would like you to explain to me how you came to arrive on Brumal."
"You're what they describe as a Consensus Speaker, yet you're Sudorian," I countered.
A hint of a wry smile crossed her features. "My race has not prevented me becoming a member of Brumallian society. Are things very different in your Polity?"
"No," I admitted.
She led the way down to the boat, the quofarl falling in behind us. "Perhaps if you would continue?"
"Well," I began, "my intended destination was Sudoria…" and then related to her the events resulting in my presence here on Brumal, though omitting Tigger's part in it all, merely saying that the escape-pod had washed into the shallows. As our boat pulled away, the fan became too noisy for me to be heard, so I then tried Brumallian signing, to which she responded easily. I had finished relating my story by the time we approached the far shore, where the quofarl at the helm shut off the fan, then turned on some grumbling electric motor within the boat's hull to chug us into the mouth of a canal.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Rhodane," she replied.
"You already knew my name when you met me, so I'm presuming you know a fair amount more about me and where I come from. Perhaps you can tell me what you've learned so far, and I can fill in the gaps?" I suggested.
"We've known for some time that my former people have been communicating with the Polity, but we learnt only recently that a Consul Assessor was being sent. Only within the last day did we hear what you've now confirmed."
"Your former people? Do you now consider yourself a Brumallian?"
"I do."
"That's…unusual."
"Not as much as you might think. Many Sudorians have come here, abandoning their old allegiances to join the Brumallians. This place is an oasis of sanity. Now, perhaps you could explain the exact purpose of a Consul Assessor?"
On considering my own experiences before arriving here, I wondered if 'oasis of sanity' might be more than just a throw-away comment.
The canal cut its way through land cloaked with tough thorny bushes of gnarled grey twigs laden with red and green spheroids which were either berries or something equivalent to leaves. Ahead squatted two pylons, rising either side of where the watercourse cut through a ridge. They were topped with elliptical structures rimmed with windows—likely either watchtowers or weapons platforms. To my right something suddenly rose squalling from the bushes. It looked like a huge headless bat with a whip tail and light blue skin. I briefly glimpsed a folded-in mouth pouting horribly from its forequarters, before it dropped from sight again.