by Neal Asher
She draws opposite Yoon and Petod. ‘Tickets please.’
They oblige and she runs them over her reader, her gaze firmly on the tickets and nothing else. Her hands shake as she passes them back, swallows noisily and moves on. At the Bosch she repeats her mantra, and the Plague Doctor holds out its ticket first. Now as white as salt she can hardly control the palsy of her hands. Ticket scanned, she returns it, then reaches out to take the ticket from the Bird’s toothed beak. She takes and reads the next two, then muttering to herself turns back along the aisle. She halts by Yoon and Petod again.
‘They were tickets for people. Livestock is much cheaper,’ she advises, then moves on down the carriage. Petod admires her resolve not to break into a run to get away.
‘Now,’ says Yoon. ‘Your thoughts on how we must proceed in the city?’
It seems too prosaic to discuss, but he makes an effort.
‘First I need to know who you are hunting,’ he says.
‘Three Batian mercenaries, an albino ophidapt woman and a big Krodorman with a stone skull. They will, I am sure, be in hiding.’
He remembers she had been assaulted – it had passed out of his mind during recent events. He studies her, thinking she does not look like a victim.
‘Very well,’ he begins. ‘First you must acquire hard currency. They will be hiding in the areas of the city where the surveillance system is down, and that usually means where people do not like to be watched and want to keep their transactions secret.’
‘The less salubrious quarters?’
‘Exactly. You need money for bribes . . . How long do you think this will take?’
‘Some days, I imagine – maybe longer.’
‘Then you will need to pay for accommodation in such a place too.’
‘You do not have any?’
‘I rent a room whenever I am in the city, but let it go when I leave.’
‘You will join me, then.’
He finds this disconcerting – the idea of living in close proximity with both her and the Bosch. He glances at them again. The Plague Doctor squats by one wall holding a flat slab of rock it scribes with one claw with a sinister clicking and screeing. Cowfish and Bird stand face to face, heads pressing together as if communing, while Catape grooms itself, licking its fur and making a sawing sound like a purr, but like one from the darkness where a big cat is watching.
‘A landlord might be a bit reluctant to take you in,’ Petod observes.
‘The Bosch will not be with us – they will be hunting.’
He nods, seeing just how that will play out in the city. The passengers here will spread the news, if the ticket collector has not already called ahead. People will be understandably fearful.
The train follows the curve of the Spineland giving Yoon a good view of the City through the side window. It rises up out of the landscape, in appearance like a fortified town from unimaginably ancient times. Its population has grown and, because of limits she placed on the city’s extent, buildings are packed tightly inside its walls, the streets narrow between and on many levels. She notes that the station now lies outside the walls and other buildings have spilled out around it. She frowns, realizing she has not been paying much attention here over the last century or so. Perhaps she now needs to. She will see.
Briefly now she turns her attention inward, wincing with the effort. Her physical wounds have all but healed but they psychic wounds are still raw and open: five acts, five holes in her mind, four of them extending to the Bosch their closure dependent on the fulfilment of her creatures. The fifth – that of the snake woman – connects them and she senses some truth in that. It will be revealed by and by. She turns her attention outward again.
Beyond the city, half concealed by it, sits the platform of the space port. Numerous gantries and warehouses are scattered there between many ships of various design. Some stand like rockets of old, others are whales beached down on their bellies while the shapes of others defy comparison. She recognizes one grey object, smaller than the rest, as the shuttle of the Krodor ambassador. That presence seems to affirm her need for more involvement here, much as she resents the idea.
The train sweeps round and down its lev line converging with many others entering the station. Another train pulls out of the arch of one half-barrel building and heads away. Numerous platforms lie bright inside where the Bosch will not achieve complete concealment. Almost certainly city officialdom will react, so she must dispatch the Bosch on their way as soon as possible. As the train pulls in towards its own platform, confirmation is the presence of a large crowd, while other platforms stand empty. The train slows and she eyes these people – city dwellers mostly but also many of her own. A man hung in expensive robes and platinum chain must be Mayor Gralson, who has been in office for two decades. She only knows him through her updates from the world. Around him cluster officials in baroque businesswear, but also police in tight grey uniforms, bearing hammer guns and screamer batons.
‘This is inconvenient,’ she says to Petod.
‘The ticket collector must have told them,’ he replies. ‘They’ll want to assist you, while taking the opportunity to use you as an excuse for urban redesign and renewal, which usually means going heavy-handed into those less salubrious areas.’
‘I understand.’ She reaches out to the Bosch, who immediately put away concerns that are strange artefacts of their tightly-woven mental structures and, as one, turn to face her when she stands.
The train jerks to a halt and ramp doors clatter and wheeze their way to the platform. She considers the utility of these officials and their policemen. Their interference will likely drive her prey deep underground, and confuse an issue that until now had been so clear to her. It has been so long time since she visited here that most of the population, though perhaps born and raised here, are not part of her biology. They may have forgotten, and will resent and possibly rebel against her will. Time to remind them. She instructs the Bosch and they loosen and part internal structures while emitting pheromones. These will at least key into her people and, she realizes when glancing at Petod, those who are partially hers.
‘Oh no.’ He shrinks down in his seat, his gaze fixed on the Bosch as they expand, bone sliding and cracking against bone, muscles stretching and inflating as their meta-materials reconfigure and mesh. Already the Plague Doctor is stooped over to accommodate his increased height in the carriage. She reaches over and presses a hand against Petod’s face, emitting a counteragent to the chemical terror. He slumps, bewildered.
‘Go and show them,’ she instructs the Bosch.
The Plague doctor heaves itself towards the ramp emitting a shriek across the sound spectrum from ultrasound to infrasound, tuned to clench a fist around fight or flight, driving a surge of adrenaline that tips towards terror. Seeming to slide rather than walk it flows down onto the platform, and out. Already her people are screaming in response and push away in the crowd. The mayor staggers back and goes down on his backside. Hammer guns thump, their shots passing through the Doctor and starring the glass down the side of the carriage, but not penetrating. The Bird reaches the head of the ramp next, wings spread to the full width of the exit, eyes burning as it too shrieks. The Doctor is now amidst the retreating crowd. It picks up one of the shooters and tosses him twenty feet to hit a station pillar and slide down. Guns hammer fire again and again, but the police now guard the retreat of officials. Two policemen haul up the mayor by his armpits and drag him away as the Cowfish slides down, mouth agape. It shoots towards one cop guarding the retreat as he fires into it to no effect. It comes down on him with that mouth and rears up, his legs kicking as it swallows him.
‘They are killing,’ Petod manages.
She turns to him. ‘I am reminding them of the rules. Attack a Bosch and you pay the penalty. Show violence towards me and you pay it too.’ She gestures towards the crazed windows even as one of them collapses into pieces. He looks sickened and she cannot understand why this bothers her s
o.
The Catape is out last, bringing down a straggler and clawing him, shredding his uniform. She links again and delivers instructions. The Catape pulls back and the policeman escapes, bloody but alive. The Plague Doctor releases the two it is holding by their throats up off the ground and they collapse to the platform. After a moment the least injured helps the other away. To one side the Cowfish heaves and regurgitates. The one it swallowed crawls away covered in white slime to where a woman of Yoon’s own people helps him up and they too retreat. She eyes the woman, surprised at this control of terror. Something else she must investigate, like much here.
By the time Yoon walks down the ramp all have fled the station, but for one prone figure. Petod follows her, scanning the empty platform – the abandoned belongings and weapons.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
She shrugs and gestures to the Bosch. ‘They will behave similarly with any who turn against them, perhaps this will prevent further injury or death.’ But even as she speaks she feels uncomfortable under his gaze. She waves a hand, pheromone instruction already keyed. The Bosch, returned somewhat to their previous scale, pull together mated in shadow. Rather than head for the platform exit they slide across it towards the front of the train, over the edge and along the cupped track towards the end. From there they can gain access to tunnels leading into the city – towards their prey.
Yoon watches them go then walks over to the fallen policeman and stoops down next to him. He is still alive but she can sense him dying. His ribs are crushed and a lung collapsed. She drives a claw into his side, hearing the sharp intake of breath from Petod. With a hiss the man’s lung re-inflates. She drives in other claws, injecting her biologicals, killing his pain, spreading repair mechanisms packed into bacteria, tailored viruses and healing chyme. With a heave she shifts him so his back is up against the pillar. He coughs some blood, opens his eyes.
‘You are real,’ he manages.
‘You will live,’ she says, and stands. To Petod she says, ‘We must go.’
The bank room was without people, the central pillar responding to her touch. She wears her hair tucked up inside a wide-brimmed hat he snatched from the platform but, even so, he can see her hair changing colour – black streaks appearing in the silver he can see. He had suggested concealment with hair dye and new clothing. She told him the dye was unnecessary but the clothing a good idea, but first they needed untraceable currency. His feelings about her are still mixed. At the station she displayed a frightening callousness in someone so powerful, but then, he felt sure in response to his reactions, compassion of a kind.
‘I must pay you,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ he agrees. ‘You must.’
The touch screen is organic, rippling to her fingers. Organic circuitry runs around the walls like lichen, connecting to nodes of city tech – the whole system integrated. All use her bank because her currency does not fluctuate while the bank’s resources are ever growing. Not only does she have godlike powers over the biology of her world, but the power of wealth.
‘I have placed a million Clare in your account, but now, as you say, we need hard currency. What is preferred now in those less salubrious areas?’
A million!
He swallows dryly and initiates a connection in the tattoos on his arm, gapes at the truth of his sudden fortune.
‘Clare is good,’ he manages, ‘but also the ReCarth Shilling if you need to pay off-worlders for anything.’
She caresses the screen and a turn box opens in the pillar. This reveals ten one hundred shilling tubes and five one thousand Clare pouches.
‘This will be enough?’
‘Yes. More than.’
He leads her from the lamp-lit streets of the trade and banking quarter – its bright buildings with their red, green and yellow lights looming above – to a stair winding down into the alleys of the Basement. In a mall lit by fluorescent vines he finds a clothing shop he knows. Eighty Clare buys city wear hooded cloaks with shimmer masks and other garments besides. Suitably concealed they head through the Basement to the stair up into Shadsville. More money spent in a small supermarket on food, drink and other necessities and, loaded down with bags, they move on. He had thought to take her to his home territory but perhaps he was recognized at the station, and perhaps some will be looking, if they dare.
Shadsville lies two levels up from the Basement, but still doesn’t open to the sky. The foundations of buildings above are the angled scaffolds of a roof where night birds and gargoyle bats roost – their droppings an ever present annoyance in the streets below. It is a place of tenements, bars, gaming rooms, curiosity shops and those for illegal biologicals. The tenement he chooses leans out at an angle into the street – six floors of dusty oval windows and doors behind a complex matrix of platforms and stairs all tangled in blue ivy and sweet peas from numerous pots and troughs. They enter a foyer and approach a service window. A morose fat man stands up from an array of circular soft screens and comes to the window.
‘Your best apartment – two beds please,’ says Petod.
‘Pay up front,’ says the man. ‘Cash only – fifty Clare a night.’
‘Three nights.’ Petod places the money in the sliding tray.
The man pulls it in, looks marginally happier and drops a key stick in the tray to slide it out. ‘Room 26, second floor.’ He gestures to stairs at the back of the foyer. They climb dusty spaces lit by the sugar-bag bodies of luminescent aphids clinging to a half dead light vine, enter a corridor and, counting out the numbers, find their apartment. Petod inserts the key stick in the slot beside the oval door, which clicks open. As they enter he inserts it in the activation portal and the lights come on. Two sofas lounge in the first room, detachable soft screens are scattered and a wall screen painted. In a kitchen area off to one side he abandons bags of comestibles. Doors open into two bedrooms each with en suite. He has never stayed somewhere so luxurious before. He walks over to two large upright oval windows. One is fixed but the other opens as a door onto a metal grid balcony rimmed with overflowing plant pots. A flight of bats flaps away above.
‘This will do?’ he asks.
She shrugs. ‘Of course.’
In the night whose light is no different from the day, Petod wakes. Sensing a presence in his room, momentary terror assails him. A fist to the control on the bedpost ignites star lights in the ceiling, revealing the figure just inside the door.
After a moment, he manages. ‘You could not sleep.’
Yoon is wearing only knickers and the short top she wore under her city clothing. Though he has seen her naked the sight is now intensely erotic. Her nipples jut against the material and with her right hand she is stroking her stomach. A smell, musky, permeates the air and seems to leech into his skin and head, to make a path directly to his genitals. He feels embarrassed by the immediate physical reaction, because of the attack upon her, and how he must not see her as he now sees her.
‘Sleep is only a matter of choice for me,’ she tells him, and walks round to stand beside the bed. She reaches down and gently takes hold of the blanket. She pulls at it but he holds on, trying to find a route through his sudden confusion.
‘You were raped,’ he manages.
‘It was violence, assault, and this is not.’
His will breaks and he releases the blanket. She pulls it back, exposing his naked body and complete readiness.
‘You have a good body,’ she says, ‘considering the mix that made you.’ She steps back and pulls off the top, then slides her knickers down to her ankles and steps out of them. ‘But do you have control?’
He is mute until she closes a hand around his penis. He groans and tenses his buttocks. Yes, he damned well has control. He can last for as long as he chooses and ride the waves of pleasure to exhaustion, while his refractory period is short enough to continue play until the next wave. Even so, when she squats down and slides her mouth over his penis and begins tickling the base of his glans with her tongue he n
early comes. The feelings have never been so intense before and he knows her pheromones and the sheer reality of her are affecting him on many levels. She plays with him for a time, slowly working down until he is deep in her throat, then withdraws. He panics thinking she is now just going to walk away, but she moves to the base of the bed and grabs his ankles to drag him further down. The ease with which she does this tells him something of her strength.
Next she climbs onto the bed and up beside him, straddles his chest with her back to him, slides her arse up to his face and offers a wet slot, before going down on his penis again. He kisses the lips, loving the pure taste of sex, runs his tongue around her anus then laps at her like a dog at a water bowl. He inserts his tongue, frees an arm and works in a finger too. She groans and rides his face, rubs his penis with one hand while licking and sucking the head. She shudders, pressing hard down on his face and grinding, very wet now. He keeps working her and struggles to retain control. She comes again, and then a third time. It then becomes too much and he thrusts up into her mouth and lets it go, yelling as he does so. The pleasure passes through him in a wave as of a drug and momentary dizziness assails him.
Yoon dismounts, turns round and slides up beside him. Her elbow on the bed and head on her hand she studies his face, reaches out with her other hand to wipe the fluid from it and inserts a finger in her mouth.
‘We have only just begun,’ she says.
‘You have to give me some time,’ he replies.
‘Really?’ she asks, sliding a hand down his body to grasp his flaccid cock.
‘Yes, really, I need. . .’ He cannot believe it because he is rising again. In a small and still functional part of his mind he knows she is asserting control over him that goes beyond mere touch, but he does not care. He is ready. He pushes himself up, grabs her and drags her below him. She fights him but without the strength he knows she has. This bothers him, considering what has brought them here, but his control is sliding away. He forces her legs open and she claws his back and though he feels actual damage, even that is pleasure. He sinks into her, and into hours where his intellect shrinks to a minuscule point.
