by Neal Asher
‘All slow. Locked in!’
Veltz slammed back on the turbine and the AG controls. There came a crump from underneath the cabin, and a black line cut from there, across waves like translucent iron, to the apex of an arch of flesh. The cable motor shrieked as their brakes went on, and a vague smell of something burning permeated the cabin. Pelter watched the cable go slack, then tighten again, as the motor went into reverse and that arch folded down. A great froglike head broke the surface and its black maw opened and bellowed. The egg-carrier thrashed and stirred up a bluish spume. Each time it thrashed, the cable motors whined as they gave or took accordingly. The catamaran was tugged sideways across the swell, waves beating flat against it till it seemed the boat might break. Veltz studied Pelter, expecting him to ask if the craft could take this sort of pounding. Inexperienced people usually did, yet Pelter did not. Instead, he stared at the thrashing of the dark otter, and the spreading stain of its inky blood, with a horrible avidity.
‘It’s slowing now,’ said Geneve.
Veltz nodded and flipped over a heavy antique switch on his console. Under the floor of the cabin there came another sound that started low and quickly cycled up to a high pitch, then apparently moved beyond human audio range. Veltz watched the antique dial next to the switch climbing slowly. He heard Pelter’s belt unclip and glanced round, always nervous whenever the Separatist was moving about. Pelter then pushed himself from his chair and stepped across. Geneve disconnected her targeting grid and swung it aside. She watched Pelter warily.
‘That’s an old U-charger cycling up,’ he said. ‘Where the hell did you get allotropic uranium?’
‘Came with the junked shuttle I bought. U-chargers were more efficient than a fusion lump then. It comes in handy,’ said Veltz and, so saying, reached for the button next to the switch. Pelter’s hand snapped forward and closed on Veltz’s wrist. Veltz was riveted by that single violet eye. He could smell antiseptic strong over a faint whiff of corruption.
‘Let me,’ said Pelter, and then slowly released his wrist. Veltz drew his hand back and placed it back on the steering column. With venom Pelter slammed his hand down on the button and watched the effects.
The line from the vessel to the struggling dark otter momentarily glowed a dull red. The otter exploded from the water, then crashed down again, small lightnings webbing across its smooth black skin. After it hit the water, it sank, then bobbed to the surface once more, completely inert. Pelter sighed, and Veltz saw the expression on his face go from avidity to disappointment.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Now we tow it to the Banks. They should be exposed now, and should remain exposed for the next eight hours,’ Veltz replied.
‘How long till we get there?’
‘An hour, give or take.’
Pelter nodded and returned to his chair. Veltz turned away from him and hit controls on the more modern touch console. The cabin, on gimbals at the ends of its support struts, silently turned until it was facing the other way. Now they could see the turbine ahead of and below them, between the hulls. The line to the dark otter had remained in place as Veltz slowly applied thrust. It was a careful acceleration this time; he did not want to tear the harpoon out of their prize.
* * *
Cormac had a brief view of Cheyne III through the elliptical portal as the shuttle decelerated and banked. Like any living world seen from this distance, it was a jewel pinned to the blackness of space and bore no hint of the flaws to be found on a closer inspection. Opalescent clouds swirled over blue sea, and partially concealed a continent mottled brown and purple, which he had always felt resembled a man stooping to do up his shoelace. Soon the planet slid from view and the shuttle was coming in over a plain of rock formations that resembled the surface of a human brain. He understood why the first settlers had named Cheyne III’s largest moon Cereb.
‘I’m not going to shut down your link,’ Blegg said.
Cormac nodded as the runcible installation came into view. He noted the sudden surge of excited talk from the other passengers. There, on the plain of rock, stood a city of glass and light. On clear nights it was something you could actually see from the surface of the planet. He drew his eyes away from the vision only when a soft chime announced a message.
‘Please fasten your seat belts,’ said the soft voice of the shuttle AI. Cormac did as instructed. The message was very different in executive class.
‘Who will shut it down, then?’ he asked.
‘Any runcible AI will do so when you request it to,’ Blegg replied.
Retros fired and the gravity inside the shuttle was slowly adjusted to that of Cereb’s. Cormac felt his weight decreasing, but that gave him no lift.
‘Am I ordered to disconnect?’ he asked.
Something roared and the shuttle vibrated. It dipped down towards the shuttleport on the outskirts of the installation. Here was a webwork of glowing lines, almost like some huge circuit diagram, which painted the artificially levelled rock. The shuttle decelerated on retros and clawing AG fields. It tilted and sank down towards a boxed area beside a cluster of towers like perspex cigars. As it descended, Cormac caught a glimpse of the walkway snaking out across the rock.
‘You are not ordered to disconnect. We do not order people to desist from actions that are killing them, just so long as they know it, and harm no one else,’ Blegg replied.
‘The link is killing me?’
‘I did not say that. It would kill you if you were to continue in your present line of work. You have to decide if you want to continue.’
Cormac got the picture. He grimaced as he listened to the shuttle’s skids extend and crunch on stone. While passengers were unclipping their belts and grabbing up for their hand luggage in a manner unchanged in centuries, he considered his options. He had been gridlinked for thirty years. He had been with ECS for ten years longer than that. Perhaps it was time for a change. He thought about the things he had seen and the things he had done. Many of the latter were not admirable, but they had been necessary. Perhaps it was time for him to retire, buy a nice little residence beside a sea on some nice peaceful planet? He unclipped his belt and stood. Time for a change? Like hell it was.
Runcible AI.
I wish you to disconnect and completely shut down my gridlink.
Yes.
Cormac lurched where he stood, felt a hand seemingly made of iron grip his arm and steady him. He felt a hundred connections shutting down one by one. Huge frames of reference dragged themselves from his skull down to infinitesimal dots and just blinked out. A deep ache dug its claws into the base of his skull and suddenly, all around his head, there was only empty air.
‘You do not delay once you have made a decision,’ said Blegg. ‘It is why we are glad to have you working for us, Agent Cormac.’
A voice, just a spoken voice: soundwaves vibrating hair-cells in his auditory canal. How the hell could he manage with such an inefficient system? As he disembarked and walked into the connecting tunnel, Blegg silent at his side, Cormac had never felt so empty.
* * *
The Banks, two of them exposed by the receding tide like giant beached flounders, consisted of heaped penny oysters and trumpet shells. The former were an adaptation that had taken to the Cheyne III environment with alacrity, but only after an unexpected mutation. Though elsewhere they were appreciated for their distinctive, nutty taste, here they were noted only for their lethality. The latter was a native mollusc that grew up to a metre long and had an appearance much as its name implied. They were also poisonous to humans, but had been the dark otters’ main food source. It had come as a surprise to ecologists to discover that penny oysters had also become a favourite.
‘OK, Geneve, wind it out,’ said Veltz, more for Pelter’s benefit than her’s; she knew what she was doing.
The cable motor went into reverse, so the dead e
gg-carrier remained where it was as Veltz turned his vessel to come athwart one of the banks.
‘That should do us,’ said Veltz.
The motor brake squeaked on and Veltz watched the cable as it dragged up the slope of the bank. He kept going until the Meercat was on one side of the bank and the corpse on the other, then he slewed the boat round to face the bank itself.
‘Wind it in,’ he said.
The motors came on again, drawing the cable taut and pulling both otter and vessel in towards the bank. Eventually the Meercat grounded and, a moment after that, so did the corpse. Veltz eased up the thrust on the turbine as the motor continued to whine, keeping the Meercat in position. The dark otter slowly slid up the bank, ripping its skin on the sharp edges of the penny oysters and breaking the trumpet shells off at their stems. Soon it was clear of the water and draped over the central ridge formed of shellfish.
‘OK, that’s enough. Close off the barbs and get our knife back,’ said Veltz.
Geneve hit another control, then increased the speed on the cable motor. The ceramal harpoon was pulled from the body of the dark otter, leaving a wound like obscene blue lips. It clanged to the ground and the motor rapidly wound it in.
Pelter stood. ‘Let us take a look then,’ he said.
Veltz and Geneve unclipped their belts and also stood up. Geneve strapped the sheath of a long chainglass boning knife across her back. Veltz took a similar instrument from his seat and strapped it on. Pelter looked at both of them for a moment, then turned his back and stepped through the bulkhead door. Veltz saw Geneve’s questioning expression and shook his head. Not a good move. They both wanted to get out of this alive.
Pelter lowered a metal roll-ladder from the hatch in the floor of the galley section of the cabin. He was first down to the mollusc-bound island. Geneve followed, then Veltz.
‘This is where you always bring them?’ asked Pelter.
‘Yeah,’ Veltz replied. ‘Every high tide their kin dispose of the evidence. The bones would be indigestible, but, of course, there are never any left.’
Pelter nodded. ‘Otter bone still gets a good price?’ he asked.
Veltz studied the mounded corpse. It was over six metres long and two wide. There had to be a good ton of hard copper-impregnated bone under that slick black skin. The price would have been something just over 10,000 New Carth shillings. Would have been. Veltz doubted Pelter would allow them time to proceed with their butchery. This corpse would be lost in the next tide. He looked at Pelter and wondered what the hell the Separatist was delaying for. Pelter returned his look for a moment, then turned away.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Cut it open.’
Geneve drew her chainglass blade and held it up in the watery sunlight for a moment. She then stepped up onto the ridge and walked to where the otter’s huge and eyeless frog head lay sideways on the ground, its maw agape. She drove the tip of her knife into its baggy throat, then, taking the handle in both her hands, she walked backwards and drew the blade down the length of the creature’s body. The body unzipped with the pressure of its bulk, spilling blue and purple offal down the ridge and across the bank. The offal did not steam, as Pelter had expected it to. He turned and looked at Veltz. Without a word the captain drew his own knife and joined Geneve. He began sorting the offal with the blade of his knife, then swore quietly. He had to ask, so he turned to Pelter.
‘We really need to know what we’re looking for,’ he said.
‘Who, not “what”.’
It was all the reply Veltz needed and he continued his search. After a moment he said, ‘This is the main intestine. Similar set-up to an Earth mammal.’ Pelter just stared, only displaying any reaction when Veltz split the intestine and spilled its contents. Masses of bile-bound shellfish spilled across the bank. From these there rose a little steam into the air, and a coppery tang of decay.
‘Not there,’ said Veltz. ‘Have to try its stomach.’ He and Geneve pulled a long-veined sack the size of a sleeping bag from the offal spread at the head end of the creature. Geneve stabbed her knife into one end of this sack.
‘Careful!’ Pelter shouted.
They both turned towards him, then Geneve looked to Veltz.
‘Not so deep,’ he advised.
Geneve pulled her knife out so that only the tip was inserted into the skin of the stomach. She drew it down, then across in an L. Veltz stood on one side of the stomach to press its contents out of the slice. More shellfish squeezed out across the bank. Then the headless body of Angelina Pelter tumbled out with them. Her brother, his face seeming dead round its mutilation, stepped up onto the ridge and gazed down at her.
‘Where’s her head?’ he asked.
Veltz and Geneve looked at each other.
‘Was the transponder in her head?’ Veltz asked hesitantly.
Pelter said nothing for a long moment as he stared at what remained of his sister. When he looked up, his expression was puzzled and vulnerable. ‘I asked you where her head is,’ he said.
‘How the fucking hell are we supposed to know?’ Geneve snapped. ‘It could be at the bottom of the ocean, in another otter. Whoever killed her could have taken it as a trophy!’
Pelter’s hand snapped out and Geneve screamed. Her boning knife spun through the air and she staggered back with both hands to a face now pouring blood. She slipped on intestines and fell. Pelter turned on Veltz.
‘Where’s her head?’ he shouted. He had a short, wide blade in his right hand. Yellowish fluid was seeping out round his optic link. Veltz moved back, though careful where he stepped, his boning knife held ready at his side.
‘You didn’t have to do that. Why’d you do that?’ he said, ashamed of the whine that was coming into his voice.
‘Her head!’ Pelter yelled, and he waved his right arm almost in dismissal. Veltz buckled. It felt like he had been punched in the stomach. Pelter’s knife was imbedded up to its hilt in his guts. His legs went weak and he went down on his knees.
‘You took her fucking head!’ Pelter raged at the sky. When he looked down again his expression had regained its avidity. Veltz tried to stand, but couldn’t. He watched Pelter kicking at the spread offal, then striding over to pick up Geneve’s boning knife. That Veltz knew what to expect was no comfort. The next high tide would take away what Pelter left there.
As he carried the body of his sister to the Meercat Pelter looked up again. ‘You’re dead. You’re a walking dead man.’
His expression was flat and blank, and now the fluid ran clear from where his left eyelid was sealed to metal. Perhaps the fluid was tears.
* * *
The Cereb runcible installation had, over a period of sixty years, turned into a small city. Originally there had been only the runcible itself, sitting inside a fifty-metre sphere of mirrored metal, which in turn was clamped between the curved grey monoliths of the runcible buffers and sealed under an airtight dome a quarter of a kilometre across. These constructions remained unchanged at the heart of the city. The city itself had grown up to cater for the huge transient populations of travellers. As a consequence of this, it mainly consisted of hotels, hypermarts and leisure facilities. There was little in the way of residential building. All of these buildings had at first been linked together with tunnels; now the areas between them were roofed over. The main building material used for this roofing was chainglass, so to any visitor it appeared they had walked into a giant conservatory.
Cormac stepped through the shimmer-shield airlock into a reception area hundreds of metres wide and floored with the cut stone of the moon. Walled off in the centre of this area were small groves of palm trees and other more exotic tropical plants. All around were shops, restaurants and more dubious leisure facilities. Some of the buildings were only a couple of storeys high. Those any higher than four storeys penetrated the diamond-patterned roof through which the Cheyne III sun glared down.
‘You will of course need to register your testimony,’ said Blegg, as they set out across the sto
ne floor.
Cormac observed the slightly amused expression on Blegg’s face. He considered commenting on the obvious implication, rejected it for a moment, then decided, What the hell?
‘Would this be because there’s a chance I might not be coming back?’ he asked.
‘That is a possibility, though I was thinking it would be an idea for the local police to deal with the cell here before it goes to ground.’
‘Very neat,’ said Cormac. ‘Best I pay a visit to the local constabulary.’ He altered his course across the stone floor to a gap between buildings, and to a moving walkway beyond, but Blegg clamped a hand on his shoulder to stop him. Cormac turned and looked at him. Blegg seemed to have changed. He no longer appeared so old and he now had a distracted air about him.
‘I will leave you now, and you will make your way with suitable efficiency and logic.’
‘Going inscrutable on me again, are you?’ Cormac asked.
‘Do not accept things as they appear to be, Ian Cormac.’
‘Have I ever?’ Cormac asked.
‘Yes, you are right for this.’
It was a parting statement. Blegg turned and walked away across the stone floor. Cormac watched him for a moment, then he sighed and rubbed at his weary eyes. When he looked again Blegg was gone. He swore to himself and set off again. It was all so bloody typical of him. Why couldn’t he have just said goodbye and walked away normally?
* * *
The lading docks cut a swathe through the band of papyrus fields. Here the bales of compressed plant matter were loaded onto robot barges and sent inland by canal to the processing plants. Doug Pench had worked on Dock A for most of his life. He enjoyed it there. He earned enough to pay for his big apartment on the edge of the South Arcology of Gordonstone, and enough to run a Model T replica AGC and a cabin cruiser, for which, incidentally, he had a free mooring. He also did not have to put up with too much lip from his workforce, that workforce being a crew of five ancient auto handlers.
He was working on Handler Three again when he first heard it. He had the handler’s casing open and was keying in, by hand, a control code, the original of which had corrupted. Fifth time that week. If it happened again he swore he would kick the thing into the sea and let it join the bales it had taken to tossing there as if intent on loading an invisible barge. The sound was a vaguely irritating buzz. He looked up and saw only the four bales that were now floating out to sea, swore, and returned to his task. The sound grew and became even more irritating.
