Appeals Court Read online

  The swamp rushes up to meet him in a confusion of green, buffeting him with superheated steam as he descends toward it, so that by the time the chute punches him through the canopy he feels like a dim-sum bun. Bonnie’s chute is speeding ahead of him, breaking branches off and clattering from tree to tree. He tries to follow its crazy trail as best as he can, but eventually he realizes, with a sick falling sensation in his stomach, that she’s no longer strapped into it. “Bonnie!” He yells, and grabs at the throttle control.

  “Danger! stall warning!” the parachute intones. “Danger! Danger!”

  Huw looks down, dizzily. He’s skimming the ground now, or what passes for it — muck of indeterminate depth, interspersed with clumps of curiously nibbled looking water hyacinth. The tree line starts in another couple of hundred metres, and it’s wall to wall petroleum plants. Black-leafed and ominous looking, the stunted inflammabushes emit a dizzying stench of raw gasoline that makes his eyes swim and his nose water. “Fuck, where am I going to land?” he moans.

  “Please fold your tray table and return your seat to the upright position,” says the parachute control system. “Extinguish all joints, switch off mobile electronics, and prepare for landing.” The engine note above and behind him changes, spluttering and backfiring, and then the damp muck comes up and slaps him hard across the ankles. Huw stumbles, takes a faltering step forward — then the nanolight’s engine drops down as the ‘chute rigging collapses above his head and thumps him right between the eyes with a hollow tonk.

  * * *

  “What you’ve got to understand, son,” says the doctor, “is it’s all the fault of the alien space bats.” He holds up the horse syringe and flicks the barrel. A bubble wobbles slowly up through the milky fluid in the barrel. “If it wasn’t for them, and their Jew banker patsies, we’d be ascended to heaven.” He squeezes the plunger slightly and a thick blob of turbid liquid squeezes out of the syringe and oozes down the needle. “Property speculators.” He grins horribly, baring gold plated teeth, and points the end of the needle at Huw’s neck. Huw can’t seem to move his eyes from Doc’s moustache: it’s huge and bushy, a hairy efflorescence that twitches supiciously as the barefoot medic inhales with sharp disapproval.

  “Property speculators?” Huw’s voice sounds weak, even to himself. He stares past the doctor at the peeling white paint on the wall of this sorry excuse for a medical centre. “What have they got to do with …”

  “Property speculators.” Doc nods emphatically as he rams the blunt end of the quarter-inch needle against Huw’s jugular. Tiny machines whine and click and the side of Huw’s neck goes numb. “They bought up all the beachfront property, right? Hurricane alley. Then they vanished taking their mortgages with ‘em and all the locals who’d put their savings into bank accounts and stocks and bonds were left holding the sack. Then the seas rose on account of globular incendiarism, and we got the double-whammy of the insurance corporations going bust.”

  Huw tries to swallow. The plunger is going down and white goo is flooding into his circulatory system, billions of feral redneck nanochines bouncing off his fur-lined arteries in search of damaged tissue to fix. His mouth is dry, his tongue as crinkly and musty-dry as a dead cauliflower. “But the, the alien —”

  “Alien space bats, son,” says Doc. He sighs lugubriously and pulls the syringe away from Huw’s neck. “With their fancy orbital fresnel lens. They’re behind the global warming thing, y’see, it’s nothing to do with burning oil. It dates to the fifties. Those commies, they were smart — using their ballistic missile radars to signal the space brothers! We live in a strongly anthropic universe, it stands to reason there must be aliens out there. It’s a long-term plot, a hundred year Communist plan to bankrupt America. And it’s working. All those deserters and traitors who upped and left when the Singularity hit, they just made it worse. They’re the savvy ones we need to make this country great again, rebuild NASA and Space Command and go wipe those no-good Ruskie alien space bats and their Jew banker patsies from the dark side of the moon.”

  Oh Jesus fuck, Huw thinks incoherently, lying back and trying to get both eyes to focus simultaneously. He still feels sick to his stomach and a bit dizzy, the way he’s been since Bonnie found him neatly curled up under a gas tree with a huge lump on his head and his parachute rigging draped across the incendiary branches. “Have you seen my teapot?” he tries to say, but he’s not sure it comes out right.

  “You want a cup of Joe?” asks Doc. “Sure, we can do that.” He pats Huw’s shoulder with avuncular charm. “You jes’ lie there and let my little helpers eat the blood clots in your brain for a while.”

  “Bonnie —” Huw whispers, but Doc is already standing and turning towards the door at the other side of the surgery, out of his line of sight. The blow from the motor did something worse to him than concussion, and he can’t seem to move his arms or legs — or neck. I’m still breathing, so it can’t be that bad, he tells himself hopefully. Remember, if you break your neck during a botched parachute landing and then a mad conspiracy-theorist injects black market nanomachines into you, it’s highly unlikely that anything worse can happen before sundown, he tells himself in a spirit of misplaced optimism.

  And things were, indeed, looking up compared to where they’d been an hour or two ago. Bonnie had found him, still unconscious, lying at the foot of a tree that was already dribbling toxic effluent across his boots. The teapot was screaming for help at the top of its tinny electronic lungs as an inquisitive stream of brick-red ants crawled over its surface, teaming up to drag it back to one wing of the vast sprawling supercolony that owned the continent. The ants stung, really, really hard. And there were lots of them, like a tide sweeping over his body. It was Bonnie who’d called Doc, using some kind of insane spatchcock mobile phone jury-rigged from the wreckage of her parachute harness to broadcast for help, and it was Bonnie who’d sat beside him, whispering sweet nothings and occasionally whacking impudent formicidae, until Doc had arrived on his half-rusted swamp boat. But she’d vanished immediately afterwards, not sticking around to explain to Doc how come she and Huw were at large in the neverglades — and Doc seemed mad about that.

  After a couple of hours on the operating table Huw has begun to realise that half an hour can be a very long time indeed when your only company is a demented quack and you can’t even scratch your arse by way of entertainment. And his arse itches. In fact, it’s not all that itches. Up and down his spine, little shivers of tantalizing irritation are raising goose-flesh. “Shit,” he mumbles, as his left hand begins to tremble uncontrollably. The nanobots have reached the swollen, damaged tissues within his cervical vertebrae and are busily reducing the swelling. They’re coaxing suicidal neurons back into cytocellular stability, laying temporary replacement links where apoptosis has already proceeded to completion, and generally wreaking the wonder of the Christopher Reeve process on Huw’s supine spinal cord. For which Huw is incredibly grateful — if Doc was as nuts as he seems he might have injected a auto engine service pack and Huw might at this very moment be gestating a pile of gleaming ceramic piston rings — but it itches with the fire of a thousand ants crawling inside his veins. “Arse, bugger, fuck,” he moans. And then his toes begin to tremble.

  By the time Doc reappears Huw is sitting up, albeit as shaky as an ethanol addict in the first week of withdrawl. He moans quietly as he accepts a chipped ceramic Exxon mug full of something dark and villainous enough that it resembles a double-foam latte, if the barrista substituted gulf crude for steamed milk. “Thanks,” he manages to choke out. “I think. Do you know where Bonnie’s going to be back?”

  “That evil woman?” Doc cranks one eyebrow up until it teeters alarmingly. “Naw, son, you don’t want to be going worrying about the likes of her. She’s bad company, her and her crew — between you and me, I figure she’s in league with the space bats.” He chuckles humorlessly. “Naw, you’ll be much better off with me’n’Sam. Ade told us all about you’n’what you’re here f
or. We’ll set you straight.”

  “Ade. Told you.” Huw’s stomach does a backflip, which feels extremely strange because something is wrong with his body image. It feels all wrong inside. He clears his throat, and almost chokes: the alien whistle-thing-communicator is gone! Then his stomach gives a warning twinge and his momentary flash of hope fades. The godvomit has simply retreated deeper into his gastrointestinal tract, hiding to bide its time like a robotic extra in a Ridley Scott movie. “How’d you know him?”

  “‘Cause we do a bit of business from time to time.” Doc’s eyebrow relaxes as he grins at Huw. “A little light smuggling, son. Don’t let it get on your nerves. Ade told us what to do with you and everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “Just fine —” Huw stops. “What are you going to do with me?” he asks suspiciously.

  “Ade figures we oughta deliver you to the Baptist temple in Glory City — that’s Charleston as was — in time for next Thursday’s memorial service. It’s the sixteenth anniversary of the Rapture, and they get kinda jumpy at this time of year.” A meaty hand descends on Huw’s shoulder and he looks round, then up, and up until his newly fixed neck aches at the sight of an enormous and completely hairless man with skin the colour of a dead fish and little piggy eyes. “Son, this is Sam. Say hello, Sam.”

  “Hello,” rumbles the human mountain. Huw blinks.

  “You’re going to hand me over to the baptists?” he asks. “What happens then?”

  “Well.” Doc scratches his head. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

  “But this anniversary. What do you mean, they get jumpy?”

  “Oh, nothing much. Jes’ sacrifice a bunch of heretics to make God notice they still b’lieve, that kinda thing. You got a problem with that?”

  “Maybe.” Huw licks his lips. “What if I don’t want to go?”

  “Well, then.” Doc cocks his head to one side and squints at Huw’s left ear. “Say, son, that’s a mightly nice ear you’ve got there. Seeing as how you’ve not paid your medical bill, I figure we’d have to take it off you to cover the cost of your treatment. Plus maybe a leg, a kidney, and an eye or two. How about it?”

  “No socialised medicine here!” rumbles Sam, as a second backhoe-sized hand closes around Huw’s other shoulder.

  “Okay! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!” Huw squeaks.

  Doc beams amiably at him. “That calls for a shot of corn likker,” says the medic. “I knew you’d see sense. Now, about the alien space bats. We’ve got this here telescope what Sam acquired, but we don’t know how to work it proper. Have you ever used one? We’re looking for the bat cave on the moon …”

  * * *

  Welcome to the American future, at the dusk of the twenty-first century.

  The ant-colony has taken the entire Atlantic coast of the US, has marched on Georgia and west to the Mississippi. It is an anarchist colony, whose females lay eggs without regard for any notional Queen, and it has entered its eighth year of life, which is middle-aged for a normal colony, but may be just the beginning for the Hypercolony.

  The God-botherers have no treaty with the ants, but have come to view them as another proof of the impending end of the world. Anything that is not contained in chink-free, seamless plastic and rock is riddled in ant-tunnels within hours. They’ve learned to establish airtight seals around their homes and workplaces, to subject themselves to stinging insecticide showers before clearing a vestibule, to listen for the tupperware burp whenever they seal their children in their space-suits and send them off to Bible classes.

  The ants have eaten their way through most of the nematode species beneath the soil, compromised all but the most plasticized root-systems of the sickening flora (the gasoline refining forests are curiously symbiotic with the colony — anarchist supercolonies like living cheek-by-mouth-part with a lot of hydocarbons). They’ve eaten the bee-hives and wasp-nests, and they’ve laid waste to any comestible not tinned and sealed, leaving the limping Americans with naught but a few billion tons of processed food to eat before their supply bottoms out.

  The American continent is a fairy tale that the cloudmind tells itself whenever it doubts its collective decision to abandon humanity. The left-behinds there spent their lives waiting for an opportunity to pick up a megaphone and organize crews with long poles to go digging through the ruins of civilization for tinned goods. Presented with their opportunity in the aftermath of the Geek Rapture, they are happy as evangelical pigs in shit — plenty to rail against, plenty of fossil fuel, plenty of firearms.

  What more could they possibly need?

  * * *

  Once it becomes clear that Huw is prepared to go to Glory City, the Doc comes all-over country hospitality, seeing to it that Sam gets him properly lubricated. They watch the sunset through the tupperware walls of the Doc’s homestead, watch the thick carpet of ants swarming over the outer walls as they chase the last of the sun across the surface. When the sun finally sets, the sound of a billion tromping feet keeps them company.

  “Well,” says Doc, nodding at Sam. “Looks like it’s time to hit the road.”

  Huw sits up straight. Glory City is not on his agenda, but if he’s going to make a break for it, he wants to do it somewhere a bit more crowded and anonymous than here, right in the middle of Doc’s home turf. Plus, he’s still weak as a kitten from gasoline-tainted corn mash and the nanos’ knitting at his guts.

  “We’ll take the bikes,” Doc announces with an affable nod. “Go get ‘em, Sam.”

  Sam thuds off towards an outbuilding, the plasticized floors dimpling under his feet.

  “He’s a good boy,” says Doc. “But I figure I used too many cognitive enhancements on him when he was a lad. Made him way too smart for his own good.”

  Sam returns with a serious-looking anime-bike dangling from each hand. “alt.pave-the-earth,” he says, setting them down. His voice is bemused, professorial. “I’ll go get the sidecar.”

  “He’ll need a spacesuit,” Doc calls after him. “What’re you, about a medium?”

  Huw, staring wordlessly at the stretched and striated bikes with their angular mouldings, opens his mouth. “I’m a 107 centimeter chest,” he replies vaguely.

  “Ah, we don’t go in for that centimeter eurofaggotry around here, son. Don’t really matter much. Spacesuits never fit too good. You’ll get used to it. It’s only six hours.”

  Sam returns with a low-slung sidecar under one arm and a suit of Michelin-Man armor over his shoulders.

  “It’s very ergonomic,” he rumbles tectonically as he sits the suit down next to Huw’s folding lawn-chair, then goes to work attaching the car to one of the bikes.

  Huw fumbles with the michelin suit, eventually getting the legs pulled on.

  “Binds a bit at the crotch,” he says, hoping for some sympathy.

  “Yeah, it’ll do that,” says Doc.

  Huw modestly turns his back and reaches down to adjust himself. As he does so he fumbles with the familiar curve of the brass teapot. Peeking down he sees a phosphorescent miniature holographic Ade staring back up at him.

  “Sharper than a trouser-snake’s tooth,” Adrian hisses.

  Huw puts his hand where he’d expect to find a pocket and a little hatch pops open, exposing a hollow cavity in the thigh. Quickly, he slips the teapot into it and dogs the hatch shut. “I’m ready, I think,” he says, turning round again.

  Doc and Sam have already suited up; they’re waiting impatiently for Huw to catch up. The bikes are bolted either side of the sidecar, and Doc waves Huw into the cramped seat. Waddling in the suit, clutching a portable aircon pack, Huw has a hard time climbing in. Everything sounds muffled except the whirr of the helmet fans, and a pronounced smell of stale gotchis and elderly rubber assaults his nose periodically, as if the suit is farting in his face. “Let’s go,” Sam rumbles, and they kick off towards the doorway, which irises open to admit a trickling rain of ants as the bikes roar and spurt gouts of flame against the darkness.

&n
bsp; The jet-engine roar of the engines doesn’t die down, nor does the laser-show strobing off the organic LED pixelboards on the outsized fuel-tanks, but still, somehow, Huw snoozes through the next couple of hours in a moonshine-assisted haze. Doc is rambling at length about some recondite point of randite ideology, illuminating his own rugged self-reliance with the merciless glare of A-is-A objectivist clarity, but after a few minutes Huw discovers two controls on his chest plate that raise his opinion of the suit designers: a drinking straw primed with white lightning, and the volume control on the radio. As his sort-of jailers pedal away, driving him along a pot-holed track lined with the skeletons of dead trees, he kicks back and tries to get his head together. If it wasn’t for the eventual destination he could almost begin to enjoy himself, but there’s a nagging sense of weirdness in his stomach (where the godvomit still nestles, awaiting a communicative impulse) and he can’t help worrying about what he’ll do once they get to Glory City.

  * * *

  An indeterminate time passes, and Huw is awakened by a sharp prodding pain near his bladder. “Uh.” He lolls in the suit, annoyed.

  “Psst, keep it quiet. They think you’re sleeping.” The prodding sensation goes away, replaced by a buzzing voice from just north of his bladder.

  “Ade?” Huw whispers.

  “No, it’s the tooth fairy. Listen, have you seen Bonnie?”

  “Not lately. She went for —” Huw pauses. “You know I landed bad?”

  “Shit.” Ade pauses. “So that’s what you’re with Doc for. Have they got her?”

  “I don’t think so.” Huw desperately wants to scratch his head in puzzlement but his arms are folded down inside the sidecar and he doesn’t dare let Sam or Doc figure he’s awake. “Look, I woke up and the doctor — is he a real doc? — was trying to fix my neck. A motor fell on my head. Bonnie got him to help but then she left and I haven’t seen her. Went off on an errand or something.”