The Bosch: A Novella (Polity Universe)

by Neal Asher

  Yoon rises out of sleep she does not require but has indulged through convention. Petod sleeps on in exhaustion and she knows he is not yet even capable of waking. Pain and pleasure flow around each other in her mind like immiscible fluids. The mixture is unhealthy but she acknowledges her need to have asserted dominance over at least this man.

  She climbs out of the bed, picks up her underwear and heads to her room, where she showers and dresses, and then out into the main room of the apartment. It is day out in the world, but no concession to that down here, for the lighting outside is unchanged. Adjusted to the shadow, she does not turn on lights as she goes in the kitchen area where she makes coffee whose flavour she had forgotten until last night. She drinks and lounges on a sofa. An hour passes, perhaps two. She makes another coffee, now hearing Petod moving about, taking a shower, smiles and stands. He is hers now, utterly. She walks out onto the steel balcony and with all her senses studies the plants, taking in their chemical output. They are highly adjusted to survive in the meagre light from street lamps, and from the faded sun globes in the tangled roof of this place. She finds an old chair of wood toughened with the organic metal wires of its initial growth, and sits.

  This place is much changed since last she was here, but also, so much is the same. The humans strive for the same concerns and have the same needs as before, just dressed up in different clothes. Power, love, sex and survival are all as they have always been. She reaches out now to the Bosch but can only catch a brief sense of them. Hidden and skulking in shadow they seek the scents of their respective fathers. She sips coffee and waits, knowing one will soon enough find a trail. Then something new draws her attention: shouting from below. She stands and moves to the edge of the balcony to peer down. Four policemen are beating someone on the ground. Finally satisfied their victim is either unconscious or dead, they turn to the door of a tenement block and go inside.

  ‘They’re searching the city for you,’ says Petod, walking out with his own beaker of coffee.

  Now studying his expression she sees a lost look – one almost of betrayal. Yes, he is hers, but he also understands she has chemically bound him. She questions her impulse last night and feels shame. His reaction to her actions at the station affected her like this too, so did she bind him because of that criticism?

  ‘Why?’ She belatedly registers his comment, realizing he has checked public feeds while in his room.

  ‘You committed an assault against the mayor and city officials. It’s a loss of face they cannot countenance.’

  She gazes at him steadily. ‘I should perhaps have been more diplomatic.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He moves over to look down into the street. ‘But their search is, coincidentally, of those places under gang control and so not paying the mayoral levy. It’s just an excuse to . . . stir things a little.’

  She nods and moves back into the apartment, hungry now and needing to prepare, for now she has touched the mind of one of her creatures. He follows her inside, grimacing at the link that draws him in her wake. Rather than eat the raw and fresh things he bought in the supermarket, this time she eats sweet bread and preserved meat. She is swallowing the last mouthful when she senses the approach above and, shortly afterwards, hears a shout of panic and slamming doors.

  ‘I don’t think they’re in this building.’ Petod is puzzled, referring to the police.

  A shadow occludes the glass and shortly afterwards comes a harsh tap tapping. Petod, his back to the balcony, freezes momentarily then shrugs and puts down the remains of his sandwich, fighting the fear that has winged in.

  ‘It’s one of them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Open the door,’ she instructs.

  He stands, turns and heads over, trying not to see what is outside as he opens the door. The Bird ducks in and moves past him, briefly eyeing him and flicking out a sharp tongue, its musky stale odour filling the place. She senses it absolutely now: its eagerness for completion. The scent trail is its father’s. The others are still following that but it has returned for her, as is the way, so she can observe the final act. Petod heads to his room to get ready, acknowledging by his actions what he only knows unconsciously. Yoon collects her Cougar handgun and concealing cape. The Bird moves out onto the balcony and takes flight with a whoomph of great wings, sailing up into the rafters. Yoon and Petod descend vined exterior stairs to the street. Her connection remains firm as the Bird launches again winging along above, and they follow on foot below.

  ‘It’s found them?’ Petod finally manages.

  ‘Just the one,’ she replies.

  At the end of the street they climb a spiral stair marked by one greasy feather. Further streets ensue, and alleys where the Bird looms to send people shrieking and fleeing. Soon they come to where semi-automated industry blocks and warehouses sit under open sky. The Bird takes to the air again, drifts across like a giant vulture to come down in a flurry of feathers before the entrance into a factory. Sounds of mechanical movement issue from within, as of a hive of giant metal bees. The Bird stalks through into the oily racketing darkness.

  They follow the creature to where machine arms shift and conveyors convey, while techs in long white leather observe shifting displays. Unrecognisable engine components drop smoking from moulds and others hammer form under presses overseen by techs in enclosed booths, thick goggles blackening their eyes. A lathe screams, ejecting a ribbon of swarf that could cut a man in half, coolant sprays and hisses. Yoon feels such old industry is a sign of decline.

  While the Bird moves on, the Plague Doctor waits in the greasy shadow of some looming machine. It waves a claw for them to follow as it slides out. A man in a rubber apron rounds the machine and sees it face on. He holds up hands in thick gloves and closes his eyes, expecting an end, but it simply moves round him. As they skulk through the shifting machine-scape, Yoon sees workers and techs gathering and closing in. Some are drawn by her presence, some by curiosity, while a few pick up tools perhaps for violence or defence. Sparks rain down, perhaps from some ancient welder. Yoon looks up as Petod grabs her arm and drags her to cover. No, not a welder. Someone has just taken a shot at them.

  ‘Up there.’ He points up to a figure fleeing along a gantry. She gestures to the Plague Doctor and it moves away. She senses Catape and Cowfish close too, but cannot see them.

  They reach a stair, the Doctor flowing up ahead, and climb. People in clean city wear goggle from behind windows comprised of hexagonal crystals, some rising from desks. The gantry shakes as she steps out onto it – others mounting the stair below. Ahead, shadow slides through a door, briefly revealing a white carp head glancing back at her. As the Doctor goes through next, shots ring out, throwing burning metal from the jamb. She crouches beside the door checking her weapon, but does not want it to be necessary. Petod has drawn a gun too. She sees he has brought an antique slammer. Good – it does not kill. Abruptly she throws herself through the door, taking in her surroundings in a glance, then scrambling behind a stack of crates. Petod comes through next to hide behind a smaller stack, which begins exploding into splinters. He scrabbles away from that behind a metal mantis loading machine.

  ‘Come on you fuckers!’

  The Batian stands on a large fluid tank, backed up against pipework running up towards the ceiling. The Cowfish obliges, sliding into view and rolling across intervening floor. He pumps his weapon and fires a grenade. The blast opens out the Cowfish like a great mass of sheets, and sends it tumbling and burning. It begins to collapse together again and reconstitute as another shadow flees it, arriving below the tank. The Catape climbs, digging claws into the metalwork. The man above shoulders the strap of his weapon and climbs too – looking for handholds on the mass of pipes. He ascends fast, but not fast enough to avoid the Catape’s claw around his ankle. Drawing a sidearm he shoots down at it, just as the ibis head of the Plague Doctor peers around from the other side of the pipes. He shrieks, loses grip, as the Bird swoops down on him and the Doctor flows round. Wrapped in sha
dow and the terrible embraces of the Bosch, he falls screaming, but slow as a dandelion seed. Yoon stands and steps out from cover, lesions in her mind twisting together like threads and shrinking, but one opening out wide. A moment later Petod follows and they advance towards frenetic shadow difficult to encompass, but which spills the Batian’s weapons, and then his armour and his clothing.

  ‘Maybe more trouble,’ says Petod, looking back.

  Yoon glances round, seeing the factory inhabitants crowding through doors and walking out onto gantries in this place. She makes an effort to think – to step out of the process. Yes, some hold makeshift weapons but she understands these are more for comfort than intent. These people are as much here to witness as is she. With Petod dogging her footsteps, then pulling back at the last, she steps into the Bosch shadows and they clear around her. The Batian is naked on his knees and now she recognizes him. A portion of memory begins to open ready to shed it load of pain. He struggles but the Plague Doctor’s grip is firm, claws digging into the flesh below his shoulders.

  . . . the Batian looms into sight. He has stripped down to a padded undersuit. Holding a cylinder to his nose he sniffs and his eyes start shivering in his skull. A moment later he is kneeling between her legs and freeing his erect penis. He leans forwards and punches her hard in the face but this does not distract her from giving the internal instruction and making herself wet. He drives in, determined to hurt, grabs her throat and chokes her as he pumps at her. Finally he comes and she feels the wet warmth flowing inside.

  Do they know? She wonders. . .

  The intensity of it hurts and then begins to fade as it incorporates with the full extent of her mind. Emotions lock as she segues into practicality.

  ‘Where are the others?’ she asks him.

  He is shaking his head and squirming, caught in a fever dream, seemingly dragged into a supernatural world in a milieu that has long dismissed that idea. Finally he focuses on her.

  ‘Fuck you,’ he says, inevitably.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Far away and over the hills,’ he mutters.

  ‘You will die,’ she says, not prepared to lie by adding, ‘If you don’t tell me.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why did Ibruk want you to do what you did?’

  He just stares and she realizes she is procrastinating, because that answer he knows was given just before this man raped her. Further delay will gain no answers. She looks around. Witnesses, with Petod among them, have drawn closer, the scene now visible through the shadow. The Cowfish has drawn itself together. It will need to feed for full strength, but is ready to move again. Looking to the Bird she raises her hand and affirms with a gesture the instruction she sends directly to its mind. It has grown now and looms ten feet tall, bloated and loose. It heron steps forwards with its greasy wings spread, and opens its toothed beak wide, looming over the man as the Plague Doctor releases him. He gazes up into its wet maw and crazy revolving eyes and sees his future, and screams as it lungs down like a stork on a frog. It raises him high, shoulder and torso in its beak, legs kicking, arms flailing. It crunches and mauls him until his head is pointing down its throat, blood spattering and a loop of intestine dropping from a split. His screams grow muffled as it begins to swallow, then turn to weird groans through its neck as he slides inside. He is still kicking when only his feet can be seen and its neck bulges. Then swallowed at last he fights inside like a rabbit in a sack. He must have an anoxia adaptation, for it takes him a long time to die. And as he dies that lesion in her mind closes down to a thread.

  Many of the crowd are now down on their knees, while Petod has covered his face with his hands. She nods, for this is as it should be, and walks over to stand before the Bird. It sinks down, its body shrinking to the tune of crunching bone. It bows its head – a hunger now satisfied in the only way possible. She rests a hand on that head – permission granted. The Bird shudders and collapses further, splits opening in its body and spilling putrid internal organs, feathers dropping away. Pieces of the man fall out too, for he has been broken apart in the same accelerated decay. The whole mass sinks and settles, vile juices spreading across the floor, a foul vapour rising. Eventually there is nothing left but a great pool of organic decay.

  ‘You have reached completion,’ says Yoon.

  The streets stink of fear. People rush about their business and head home as quickly afterwards. Four days have passed since the events in the factory, but the Bosch, though finding scent trails, have followed them to dead ends. The other two Batians, the Krodorman and the albino woman, have disappeared. Two days have now passed since Yoon made her demand through the city media, but the police, no matter how many doors kicked in or suspects beaten, have found no sign of her attackers. Yesterday, a protest at the mayor’s offices, driven by terror of roaming Bosch, turned into a riot. None of this has been directly helpful. The city officials and the police are inept but, as he opined when he suggested she make her demand, it has put pressure on others. Sieving through reports and paying where necessary, he has at last found a name.

  Petod walks into the bar, sees the man drinking alone, a soft screen stuck on the table before him. He walks over, noting three rough boardapts – huge men with piggish heads and tusks – observing him. Fender likes to drink alone, but Fender always stays protected. Standing at the table, he notes how it grows darker in here, and that others have arrived. One of the boardapts sees, with confusion, a tall cloaked figure stooped over the bar next to him. The barman serves a drink, eyes wide and staring beyond the figure, his subconscious forcing his rational mind to ignore what is in front of him.

  ‘What do you want?’ Fender looks up.

  Petod pulls out a chair and sits. He would never have been so brave before. The boardapts shift hands to bulges in their clothing, grunt preparation for violence.

  ‘I need to know the location of the people Yoon is seeking,’ he says.

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘I am prepared to pay one hundred thousand a head for the Batians and two-hundred-and-fifty thousand each for the other two.’

  Fender puts his elbows on the table, makes a cage of his fingers and rests his chin on them. He sits there for a long time observing Petod.

  ‘You’re from the mayor’s office?’ he enquires, but the question seems insincere.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Private contractor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I see,’ says Fender. ‘Leave now and you get to stay alive.’

  ‘You’re saying you don’t know where they are? My information says otherwise.’

  ‘Your information is wrong. And now you have tried my patience to the limit.’

  He sits back and snaps his fingers. One of the boardapts begins to move away from the bar towards their table, but the large figure beside him turns, stoops and comes up again. The movements are difficult to track, but the effect is easy to see. The big heavy man, jerks up, leaves the floor and hurtles across the room with arms windmilling. He crashes into the street window of the bar, shattering many of the numerous small panes but fails to break their composite frame, and crashes down onto a table, collapsing it.

  Another of the heavies begins shrieking and squealing, staggering across the room seemingly surrounded by shifting shadow containing hints of fur, claws and teeth. The place grows darker and the squealing recedes. Heavy weights thump against the floor. A yell, and another crash. More squealing and the sound of someone running through rooms and crashing through door. Squealing turns to whimpering in the darkness, then terminates with a horrible wet swallowing sound. Petod looks around. It is as if the place has slid into another dimension – a darker place, a Hellish place. Out of the shadows to one side the Cowfish looms and tastes the air with its octopus tongue. Petod studies it for a moment.

  ‘One of your men is gone,’ he says. ‘The others may recover.’

  ‘Gone?’ Fender inquires, and Petod admires his apparent calm.

  He gest
ures to the Cowfish. ‘It needed to feed and, since your bodyguards are multiply guilty of murder.’ He shrugs.

  Fender is facing straight forwards then, as if his neck is corroded by age, he slowly turns his head to look at the creature looming by the table.

  ‘I never believed, even when there were pictures,’ he says. ‘I suppose that’s because what is simply biology is now perceived as something supernatural, and I can never believe in that.’

  Yoon now steps out of the shadows, walks over and pulls out a chair. She turns it and sits astride it.

  ‘Allow me to introduce –’

  ‘I know who she is,’ Fender interrupts, turning towards her. ‘Seems I am in a bad situation and must renege on promises made and services provided.’

  Petod notes something in the tone and does not like it.

  ‘You must tell me where they are,’ says Yoon.

  Fender spreads his hands, accepting this apparently bad situation. ‘The two you put the higher price on . . . I cannot tell you where they are. I helped them all disappear as per their instructions, which I now see entailed breaking some kind of trail.’ He studies Yoon for a moment. ‘A scent trail? Are they like bloodhounds?’

  She nods agreement and he continues, ‘Those two properly disappeared. But the two Batians are rather more careless – employing urchins to buy the things they need and who, as you may know, also like to sell information.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Yoon asks.

  He begins to reach into his pocket and in response the Cowfish surges closer.