by Neal Asher
‘They’ll want us to fight again,’ Imhran observes.
Petod collects his folded clothing from a rock. He pulls on underwear, heat-weave combats and heavy boots, an ever-white shirt and a chromic jacket with many pockets – its colour set to match the beige and green camouflage of the combats. Imhran dresses too, but in a simple toga and sandals.
‘We defy convention by our actions but first with our biology,’ says Petod. He then tilts a head to the wild-side border of the village. ‘What’s this?’
‘Primitive,’ says Imhran, but there is doubt in his voice.
The woman is completely naked, very attractive and silver haired. Something nags at Petod and a surge of feeling like nostalgia runs through his body. A smell, at once familiar and alien reaches his nostrils. Peripherally he sees villagers turning, dropping packages or ceasing their tasks and beginning to walk towards the woman. She continues in as the first of them reaches her, goes down on his knees and touches her arm as she passes. Others do the same, but all stand afterwards and follow her in. He can see expressions of joy, fear and awe, while tears run from many eyes. Intellectually he sees only the woman, but the half of his bastard biology that is this world recognises her first, his intellect slowly catching up.
‘It is Yoon,’ says Imhran, voicing what Petod accepts only a moment later.
Her gaze swings towards them and she walks over. She looks them up and down. Imhran she both dismisses and accepts with a touch that leaves him shaking with his head bowed. She turns to Petod.
‘You live in the city,’ she says.
He nods mutely.
She does not raise her voice but it carries now. ‘I have been assaulted by off-worlders. I am raising Bosch and must go to the city.’
A muttering angry rumble passes through the crowd which, Petod sees, is now the whole of the village. Bosch? Legendary monsters? Assaulted? She turns back to him.
‘I will need clothing, weapons and whatever other accoutrements of their civilization are required to pass amongst them unnoticed.’
‘You have no power over me,’ Petod manages, rebellion rising from the genome of his off-world mother, and he sees hostile gazes turn towards him. ‘I don’t believe the legends.’
‘But. . .’ she says, and that is all.
She smiles and holds out a hand. A woman has brought her a skin-tight heat-weave bodysuit, which she takes and hangs over her shoulder. A man brings a case of weapons. Other items appear around her, laid at her feet like offerings. She makes her selections, exchanges badinage as if she is a villager herself. Thanks them and dispatches them away from her with a touch. She pulls on the suit, straps a Cougar on her hip, and drops spare clips for the gun and gifts of food into a pack.
‘The Bosch will be rising soon,’ she says, as villagers drift away. ‘I must see them and accept them, then I go into the city to hunt down my attackers. I understand their world, but a guide and a companion may bring me focus.’
She gazes at Petod expectantly, but he does nothing. She nods and, turning, heads out of the village. There, thinks Petod. You have no power over me. He returns to the cyst house he has shared with Imhran during this visit home. Imhran is peeling blue potatoes and staring out the window.
‘Well that was interesting,’ says Petod.
Imhran turns to him, his smile beatific. Petod recognises a sense of something. He feels he is facing one of the villagers rather than his brother. The cyst house seems suddenly claustrophobic and he can feel some truth, sliding out of his compass. He turns and heads to his room, gathers his things and puts them in his backpack – swiftly done because he is always ready to leave on short notice when those he grew up with come, as they always do, to baffle him.
‘You are going back to the city?’ Imhran asks.
‘I am. She can find someone else.’
‘Who can find someone else?’ Frown lines appear. Perhaps he thinks he has forgotten some anecdote Petod related about the city. This is common because Imhran shows only polite interest.
Petod waves vaguely. ‘It’s not important.’
The frown lines disappear. ‘Stay safe.’
‘Yes, that’s always best.’ Petod steps to the door knowing the sarcasm is lost on his brother.
Outside, Petod huffs cool air, then brushes one arm to bring up a screen in the tattoos there, briefly scans messages then checks the time. Two hours to sundown, so he can reach Trelland Station well before and be in his favourite bar before darkness. Legends of monsters intimate that bright light and company might be a good choice. He begins walking, that image in his mind to cheer him, then slowly fading as reality impinges. He’s following her, of course.
Yoon sits on the beach where the mercenaries first found her and watches the lake. Its surface is boiling with activity. A giant salmon leaps only for a long double-jointed arm to spear up and snatch it in a clawed hand. It disappears out of sight when she feels him come to the low cliff at the back of the beach, and the sensation is too familiar. A flash of emotion, parts anger, fear and humiliation raises hot sweat on her skin. She reaches down and touches the Cougar at her hip, gains some control but does not withdraw her hand. The weapon is a vicious thing with a clip of one thousand metallic hydrogen micro-beads with cores of diamond-pressed super-oxide. Each bead has devastating penetrating power and is explosive. She knows the weapon as intimately as much Old Polity technology, having been long acquainted with it. Had she such a gun to hand things would have gone very differently with the mercenaries. Had she the awareness then that she has now, the weapon would not have been necessary at all. He jumps down, landing clumsily and walks out to stand next to her.
‘I am a bastard by-blow of base-format and your people,’ he says. ‘My mother was a xenobiologist and my father a man who denied the tenets. I am an abomination.’
She gazes at him, taking in his youth and naivety, the biology at war within him, and at last, mentally separating him from her attacker, withdraws her hand from the gun and pats the sand at her side. ‘Sit down.’
She senses rebellion rise inside him, precisely countered by his tie to her world. Neither wins the battle and, as expected, it is curiosity that brings him down by her side.
‘We originals came here to make our biotech paradise,’ she says, ‘and incorporated our rules and our ways into our biology. Natural law. By and by my fellows died through mischance and boredom, while their children, and mine, grew and flourished. Some live for centuries, some do not, all are in tune with the world so see no problem in returning to it. I returned once but need recalled me when the Polity came. I perforce had to make rules of engagement with the outsiders. While reacting to them, my people made their own rules and mores.’
‘I don’t understand.’ He gazes at her, frown lines deep.
‘The mores of the society that raised you are their own, not mine. They may call you bastard, by-blow or abomination, but I do not. And even now the people question those mores in the face of change.’
He grimaces, then points out to the lake. ‘What’s there?’
‘Bosch,’ she replies.
Something is now swimming towards the shore and she can see his fear. He may well have inserted himself into the society of the city, but his genetic memory remains uncorrupted by additional biology.
‘When the Polity went away others, of a rougher kind from other places, came here and still come. I had to meet their violence with my own and gave them a lesson in fear. From time to time the lesson must be reinforced.’
A walnut brown head breaches the surface followed by wide muscular shoulders. In the shallows the swimmer heaves itself up and stands. Bird eyes blink in the bird skull, long ibis beak protruding. Of course it must be the Plague Doctor first, it always is. This is a form she favours though it doesn’t strictly arise from the art of an ancient painter. It walks up the beach on bird feet to stand before her. She touches its small mind briefly and it moves off to one side to crouch in the sand where it picks up ammonite shells in cla
wed fingers and then breaks them.
‘I never believed, not really,’ says Petod. His arms are wrapped around his knees and he is shivering, though the evening is not cold.
The Cowfish leaves the lake, white as ivory, hooves thumping, two stunted bat wings flapping behind an armless torso, tongue the tentacle of an octopus writhing in a carp’s gape around which barbles dangle. It hisses, folds its wings and goes to its fellow, there to sketch strange shapes in the sand with its tongue. Catape then comes – a thin humanoid with fingers like spider legs, clad in beige fur, fanged ape mouth and cat’s eyes in an earless head. The Bird comes last, a striding shoebill with a mouth so much wider and lined with blunt teeth, feathers ragged and oily. Yoon assesses them all as they squat on the sand. Even though the memories of the act remain blocked, she knows their respective sources. The last three are the offspring of the Batian mercenaries while, of course, the Plague Doctor she has engendered from the seed of the mercenary Ibruk. She has nothing for the albino woman, and everything. These creatures are hers to command and will kill who she chooses, in whatever manner she chooses. They will just not reach completion in the act if the victim is not their father.
‘The Bosch,’ she says.
‘You’re going to walk into the city with those?’ Petod asks shakily.
She waves a hand and, responding to the pheromone instruction, the Bosch draw the night in around them. She can see them, as if through a lens darkly, but knows that to Petod they have faded into shadow.
‘Now we will go to the city,’ she says. ‘And you will show me where to search.’
Petod walks at her side shooting occasional glances at her. So utterly normal to him – in a glance just a human woman of ancient Asiatic descent with long silver hair – but viscerally her mere presence nags at him. He feels he must be aware of her needs and ready to respond, or at least, acknowledge them, and it all seems like a demand for obeisance. Yet, when he manages to step back from the feelings they seem like love, and he hates that. He knows what drives this: she is the expression of the world of which he is part. She calls to his very biology, to elicit deep responses: arousal engendered from the perfect mate, the hunger of a starving man, but also the prey’s fear of a predator and its feeling of inevitability once captured. He turns away, confused and groping for rationality.
Away from the village and the lakes they now walk the gloom of deep Fen. The sun sets in amber fire and the stars blink crystal spider eyes. Stands of rat-tails and tree fern loom over them while ball moss and grass soften the edges of the flaked stone path. Here and there grow fungi – their bright colours muted by the twilight. He sees bald rabbits scuttling away, eyes wide with panic, because of the things that walk off the path. He cannot see the Bosch clearly for they shift shadow, and is glad not to. Just the hiss of skin or fur against plants and the squelch of damp moss, elicits a primal fear arising from his genetics, and from legend. The Bosch are punishers of aberrant children, monsters lurking in the night, soul suckers and diners on human flesh. In the villages they truly believe in them, but also in the justice of them so, oddly, fear is diminished there. In the city where tough urbanites dismiss fable, many wear ward charms and check the shadows in the night. Real fear lives in the alleys and tenements because those same urbanites feel maybe they are unjust, and deserving of the punishment of the Bosch.
‘They won’t harm you,’ says Yoon, ‘unless you stand in the way of their purpose.’
‘If you say so.’ He tries to be sarcastic but finds, in his heart, he means it.
The path winds on through the Fen as night falls. The Green Moon rises, lighting their way with reflection from the labyrinthine ruins that wrap it. Talk of reoccupying the place has led nowhere, for its haunted reputation makes people reluctant to sign up for the chore. Yoon and Petod climb a low hill in the Spineland between curved lines of lakes and gaze down from a flat stone slab,
‘Trelland Station,’ he says, almost proudly.
She turns and smiles. ‘I know – I did give my permission for this.’
He nods, remembering school time histories of when the Polity came. Establishing their space station they began their explorations and interventions on the surface, but Yoon ejected them and it seemed used the Bosch then. By and by she allowed an embassy on the surface. Trade, useful to her people, ensued, and the embassy acquired a space port, then further land for expansion, which in time resulted in the walled city. She next, this being five hundred years ago, allowed the railway, running through the Spinelands and webbing around the city for a thousand miles. He supposed she felt it a small intrusion on an entire world. The city, named Foothold, is only called The City by its dwellers. It unlikely they will see another one in their lifetimes they feel no need to give it distinction.
They take the winding path down towards the terminal building – two long low structures like a barrel split lengthwise and folded down on the ground. Lights shine out of the open ends to reveal the line itself, or rather two lines – like pipes split lengthwise and cupping upwards. To prevent growth or wildlife encroaching and being damaged, and not to prevent problems for the trains, she specified this style of maglev all those centuries ago.
Soon the path widens, pin-lights on slim poles marking its way through a stand of pineapple cycads. Flaked stone gives way to plasticrete as they approach the arched doors to the first building. Petod can hear the hum of the lev and knows, as per the schedule, that a train is inside. Through the archway now he can see it – a long slim vehicle with its ramp doors closed up – departure not imminent. He pauses at one of the ticket posts then looks round at her.
‘We must buy tickets.’ He peers back at vaguely seen shapes in the gloom. He throws his hands up, not sure what she will do now, then waves a tattoo over the reader. ‘The City,’ he says.
‘Number of passengers?’ the post enquires. He turns to her again.
‘Don’t concern yourself. I will buy my own,’ she tells him.
‘One ticket,’ he tells the post, and it extrudes a small slip of paper etched with circuitry like the runes of a mathematical deity. He walks through, up to the base of the steps leading to the platform, and turns to watch.
Yoon gazes at the post for a moment whereupon it issues five tickets. Organic circuitry, he realizes, and falls into speculation on that. In so many ways she is this world and exerts control all around her of its biology, but also of the degrading technology of the city and the space station. She walks through to join him and shadows slide in from the Fen. The Bosch lose part of their disguise, perhaps because it cannot confuse the strong lights here. All speculations flee his mind as the Plague Doctor steps out of the night. It now wears clothing of a sort: a long cape from neck to foot. The others come similarly attired and somehow, because of this and because of the remaining shadow that clings around them, binding them together as one, they seem all the more monstrous.
‘Where did they get those?’ he asks.
‘I cast ahead to maker fungi,’ she replies. ‘They dug up their garments while we travelled.’
‘Oh, right.’
Her connection with the world. Cloth, made from the tough mycelia of certain fungi, is an item of trade, but the villagers nurture the fungi, program them with pheromones and run the mycelia through growing-looms. Here she has made something with a thought, through the organic circuitry of her body.
Stooped down and trailing shadow the Bosch follow as she and he mount the steps. Petod moves quickly ahead, looking each way along the platform. Villagers here carry packs or stand by wheeled carts, waiting until cleaning robots have made their sweeps of each carriage. Also here are some from the city – easily identifiable by their clothing. On the opposite platform the same mix of people is making its way towards the middle exit from the two buildings.
‘This is going to be interesting,’ he opines, spine crawling with the Bosch at his back.
He heads towards the train, halting behind the line that marks where the ramp doors come dow
n. People turn towards them and he hears exclamations of surprise and fear. Some villagers begin to approach, drawn as they were back in his home village, but their pace loses impetus, and they halt with hands raise to mouths or clutching amulets. They begin to fade back. In a group of four city dwellers, one in body armour swears at a fellow and pushes him away, then turns and resolutely begins striding down the platform. But his belligerent pace loses impetus too as what he dismissed as foolish fable gradually reveals its truth. He becomes hesitant, but pushes himself on. The Plague Doctor rears up with claws protruding from its fungus robes. The man’s mouth gapes and he pales as he halts. After a moment, he waves a dismissive arm and heads back to his fellows.
‘Best we get on.’ Petod steps to a lowering ramp now the cleaning robots stow themselves under the train seats. Others here move as far away from this carriage as they can. He climbs the ramp and looks back, in time to see Yoon handing out tickets to each of the Bosch. Two of them do not have hands, but clamp them in, respectively, a mouth and a beak. She follows him in and the creatures flow up behind her. He sits and she sits next to him while the Bosch move to occupy the carriage area designated for trade goods and other luggage. With the rattle of aged hydraulics the ramp doors close. A low hum crescendos and the train pulls out into the dark, lights spearing ahead to scare away anything on the maglev. He waits, watching the green glint of the lakes in the moonlight, and notes hints of blood as Red Moon begins its rise. Fen speeds by for some while, during which Petod again questions his choices and motivations.
‘She is taking her time,’ he eventually says.
‘Who?’ Yoon asks.
‘The ticket collector.’
‘Ah.’
Tickets are not needed, nor ticket collectors or any human staff. This peccadillo of some city official centuries ago gave employment and, to a certain extent, oversight of machines that sometimes do not run so well. Eventually the back door of the carriage opens. A woman in a green uniform, with the cap pulled tight over blond hair, makes a determined approach.
