“This looks like a dried-up wetland,” Lander said to Rei as he caught up with him. “A runway made from mud hardened by a chemical agent.”
That was indeed what it looked like. Yellowish brown earth and scraps of plant matter were encased in a translucent, plasticlike substance that looked almost like glass. Judging from the construction method, Rei thought that maybe this hadn’t been intended to be a proper runway. As they walked toward the forest, the glossy surface gave way to damp mud, and before long they passed into the dark forest itself.
It was quiet, yet the atmosphere seemed noisy somehow. The ground was soft, cushioned with accumulated bark that had peeled off of the trees. All of the vegetation surrounding them was dark green.
It was completely unlike the strangely hued forests of Faery, which were so dense that you needed a tunnel excavator rather than a machete to get through them. Because of that impenetrable density, the animals that inhabited the forest were small, and either lived in burrows under the forest floor or had evolved to live on top of the canopy; as far as Rei knew, no larger creatures inhabited the forest proper. And any humans that had entered it, whether accidentally or deliberately, had been swallowed up by it and never seen again. It was almost as if the forest itself were one enormous life-form.
This place was different. There was quite a bit of space between the trees. But Rei wasn’t so sure the things surrounding them actually were trees. He started listening to what Lander was dictating into his recorder.
“They almost seem made out of metal,” Lander was saying. “Beneath a greenish outer layer, they shine like copper, and they’re shaped like… The little ones are cone-shaped. Cones that look more like they were designed and manufactured than like natural forms. The big ones stretch up vertically, with thick branches that spread out from the top and then droop down, encircling the trunks.”
The branches wrapped around the trunks symmetrically, like precisely wound coils. To Rei, it seemed like they weren’t part of the trees at all but were instead some species of symbiotic plant. Several trees he touched felt warm. There were a few withered ones as well. Some were split, as though struck by lightning, and their exposed cross-sections were blackened as though carbonized, and yet they didn’t seem to have actually burned. Some trees had a golden mold growing on them as well. He couldn’t be sure that it actually was mold, but it was definitely some species of parasite. It looked like fine lace, and the trees that were wrapped in it didn’t seem to be alive.
The overall effect was just as Lander had said: the forest really did look like something somebody had made. It was almost as if some entity had tried to tackle the problem of creating life and had only managed the external appearance of it. Were these trees actually made by some vast intelligence? And if so, what sort of unimaginable power would it possess to be able to do so?
Then, suddenly, Rei knew why Yukikaze’s electronics had malfunctioned. It had to be the result of a powerful electromagnetic interference. The kind that could be generated by a forest of transmitters.
Yukikaze’s resistance to EM jamming should have been perfect. She was protected by a multilayered 120 dB shield, and her electrical components themselves had anti-EMI processing capabilities. Common sense said that his conclusion was highly improbable. Yet he couldn’t rule it out.
He felt his hair standing on end. It was fear of the unknown. A powerful fear born of instinct. He knew they had to get back to Yukikaze, and fast.
Lander wouldn’t hear of it.
“A little longer, Lieutenant. Just a little further on is—”
“That cornfield of yours? Get real. We don’t have time for this. We have to go back, now.”
“Look, it’s right over there.”
He pointed to a yellowish area ahead of them. Rei looked to where Lander was pointing. A sudden sick feeling curdled his stomach. It wasn’t a field. It was a swamp. Involuntarily, the two men exchanged glances. A bizarre, carnal stench wafted from the scene that spread out before them, completely different from the sterile, inorganic environment they had just been in.
“Corn?” said Rei. “This is more like soup.”
As they approached, the increasingly foul odor triggered such a violent physiological disgust that Rei was sure he was going to vomit. The muddy liquid moved in sluggish swirling patterns. No matter how hard they strained their eyes to look, they couldn’t see anything below the surface of the sickly stew. The swamp was further veiled by a light opalescent haze.
Lander continued to narrate excitedly into the recorder.
“You’re wasting your time,” Rei said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think your recorder got anything. It’s probably just picked up radio frequency interference, which means there’ll be nothing but static.”
“What?”
Lander started to play back the recording. It was just as Rei guessed. Nothing but white noise.
“What do you suppose this is?” Lander asked as he switched the recorder off ruefully. He gestured at the swamp, seeking Rei’s opinion.
“It looks like the material the runway is made out of. I think this planet—although it may not be a planet, so let’s say area—is probably made of the same stuff.”
“Do you think it’s connected with the JAM?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s some sort of raw material they use to build. Or maybe it’s waste material. I wonder…” Rei trailed off.
“What?”
“No, nothing.”
Rei had had a sudden, inexplicable impression that people had been melted down into the stuff in the swamp, or perhaps were formed from it. He struggled to understand why such an absurdly grotesque image would come to him, and then thought about the equally absurd leap of imagination he’d made in thinking that those trees were antennas. He considered the contrast of the two impressions and realized that it was the inorganic versus the organic, machines versus people…
“Stop!” he shouted.
Lander was reaching out to touch the yellow liquid, and Rei felt as though he were watching the other man reach out to touch a rotted corpse. But the sense of danger and revulsion was even more extreme, and as he realized this, Lander’s body jerked backwards and he screamed out in pain.
“What happened?”
“My hand…”
Rei ran over to him and looked down. There was nothing below Lander’s left wrist. Blood was pouring from the stump.
“The… the haze… above the liquid… it’s vibrating like a saw. God damn it… What the hell is this place?!” Lander gasped.
“We’re getting out of here,” Rei said and began tying off Lander’s wound, using the recorder’s carrying strap as a makeshift tourniquet.
“We can’t get… the engines… started on that damn fighter of yours… We can’t get out of here.”
“I’ll figure something out. If we can take off, we can find a way out of here.” Rei finished tying the tourniquet. “Okay, that’s got it. I’ve got painkillers in the first aid kit back at the plane. Keep your arm elevated.”
He picked up the survival gun and helped Lander get unsteadily to his feet. Sweat beaded on Lander’s forehead, his pale face contorted with the pain, but he didn’t pass out.
Rei wanted to get back to Yukikaze as soon as possible, but he couldn’t hurry the other man. Progress was slow. Lander’s huge shoulders heaved with each breath, step by painful step, but he refused Rei’s offers of help. Neither man spoke. The atmosphere was oppressive.
The space between the trees grew narrower. Their distribution seemed irregular, with denser areas coming in undulating waves. From above, Rei thought, it would look just like an energy distribution chart.
The straight-line distance they’d walked before must have been around 700 meters, half of which was in the forest, so there shouldn’t have been more than 500 meters to go. But there was no sign that the forest was ending. They may have been lost. Lander leaned against a thick tree to rest.