by Neal Asher
‘May I?’ he asks.
At Yoon’s nod he extracts an antique notebook and pen. In decorous cursive script he writes down an address, carefully detaches the leaf of paper and slides it across to her. She picks it up, studies it briefly and inserts it in her pocket.
‘I now have to decide if you are lying about the other two and whether it will be necessary to use persuasion,’ she says.
‘What can I say to convince you?’ Fender asks and, for the first time, Petod sees real fear in his expression. ‘I know you’re real now.’ He gestures to the Cowfish. ‘And that they are too. I would be a fool to lie now.’
‘Very well.’ She stands, gestures to her pocket. ‘If this turns out to be correct I will move money into your account. If not. . .’
Fender gestures to his surroundings. ‘You know where to find me.’
As they depart, the shadows flowing out of the bar and scattering to the darker portions of the street around them, Petod feels something is wrong.
‘We must have a care,’ he says. ‘That all seemed too easy.’
‘I know,’ Yoon replies.
The apartment blocks built against the inner face of the city wall are constructed one atop another like columns of haphazardly stacked books. Closely crowded buildings opposite delimit a street resembling a canyon, within which an open air market has been sited. Yoon studies the blocks as they walk, counting in from the one nearest the gate tower. Having tuned down her pheromone output, people here only stare at her in curiosity, puzzled as to why. She and Petod are nearly to the sixth block when Catape’s eagerness is a flurry of shadowy movement flitting between stalls then disappearing into an alley between looming edifices. The trail is fresh – only minutes old.
‘Come on!’ She hurries after the creature.
Petod runs beside her as other shadows enter the alley ahead. She glances round, seeing the people now converging. The excitement of the chase has ramped up her output and now those who are hers, or partially hers, begin to really notice of her. A shriek issues from ahead when they are deep into the alleyway. They follow it to a small square where stone mermaids vomit water into a surrounding pool of water lilies. A man staggers past in the opposite direction, terrified, trying to close a case spilling drug bulbs and packets. She knows, in an instant, why the Batian has strayed from cover – the remembered smell of addiction on skin during the act of rape.
By the fountain, a bulky figure fights shadow. A sawing beam of energy stabs out flaking stone from one mermaid. It stabs again lifting cobblestones like hot fish scales. The figure crashes down as the Catape tears at him, stripping away the heavy atmosphere suit he wore to conceal his scent. The weapon flames again, cutting up through the body of the Catape just as the other two Bosch arrive. The Ape knocks the weapon away, hissing smoke from its mouth. As the shadows close round, the Plague Doctor looming up for a moment, impossibly tall, Petod picks up the weapon and turns to her. She nods acknowledgement and moves into the shadow.
This Batian is a real scrapper and this is appropriate really, since he fathered the Catape. The Doctor and the Cowfish hold back as the Batian and Catape brawl – the man wielding a curved knife, then plucked away and discarded. Soon the Ape denudes him of his suit and attacks his inner clothing. Both leak blood, though the Ape’s is yellow like pus. Finally the man can fight no more and, bleeding and naked, crawls along the ground to the edge of the fountain, while the Catape tracks along behind him, licking its wounds. The Plague Doctor now strides in to flip the man over and push him back against the fountain wall. Yoon steps closer and looks down at him.
The memory this time is of fevered speculation after the last raped her. In the cave she was aware that for every attack on her people a price is exacted – some form of biological revenge. The thought is incomplete and without language as her new attacker comes. Pain memory arises for this man has a penis ribbed with keratin and no amount of moisture stopped the damage and he stepped away from her bloody. Logic ensues and now with the mind for it her speculation continues. They did not attack one of her people but her and the price therefore is consequently high and certain. Was it coincidence that they found her out of the millions of those who live on her world?
‘Where are Ibruk and the albino woman?’ she asks.
He smiles crazily up at her and opens his mouth to reveal a packet of white powder, already spilling its contents. The Doctor snaps a claw down to catch his jaw, but it is already too late for he bites and chews. He groans, face twisting in ecstasy, and then his back arches, his eyes rolling up in his head. There will be no answers here. She gestures to the Catape to affirm her mental signal, and the creature leaps on him.
The Catape tears at him in a frenzy, stripping flesh from bone, opening his torso and strewing viscera, but every blow, every injury simply makes the man writhe with pleasure. The Ape shrieks its objection to this road to completion. With the man eviscerated yet still clinging to life, it hauls him up and over the low wall into the lily pool and shoves him under, where perhaps drowning is a pleasure too. Eventually it is done and the Catape sits up to its chest in bloody water. This time Yoon does not touch to give permission, simply nods. The Ape sinks into the pool, the water bubbling around it, lily pads curl and turn yellow. It is out of sight for a minute when objects begin floating to the surface: here a mass of fur attached to slimy skin, there the stripped skull of the Batian. The stink rises as a green smoke and soon liquefying body parts scum the whole pool. The Catape rises up for a moment, skeleton intact yet all but bare of flesh, then that too falls apart as it collapses back down again.
‘The other one,’ says Yoon, turning away, bitter with the Catape’s dissatisfaction and her own feeling that the attack on her had not been as simple as she thought.
The people witness and Petod’s expression is one of inured horror. She walks through the crowd, some reaching out to touch her, but losing their nerve at the last. Petod follows, trying to catch up but failing in the press. Out in the market she feels a surge of rage and instructs the Bosch. They move through the crowd shoving people aside and issuing chemical terror. At once people are screaming, crying and fighting to get away. They clear around her leaving Petod alone – already immunized to this. He comes up beside her.
‘None of this feels right to me,’ he says.
‘Then leave,’ she replies.
‘I cannot.’
She crosses the market, the Bosch moving quickly ahead on the back trail of the man the Catape just killed. They mount a stair zigging and zagging up the side of an apartment block. Five apartments up they arrive at a studded and armoured door. She gestures them aside and points her Cougar at one side of it and fires, but the beads, though exploding with viciousness that drives her and Petod back to the stair, just create glowing dents. The weapon is too dangerous for this task, she decides.
‘Let me try.’ The Batain weapon burns deep around the lock like a thermic lance. After a moment he kicks the door, but it does not budge. He burns away the rest of the lock and is about to try again when the Plague Doctor moves in his way, reaches a claw through the red hot hole and heaves. The door tears away with a high, almost female shriek, and the creature tosses it down the stairs. Yoon feels a moment of disquiet. She knows the durability of this kind of door and realizes this version of the Doctor is uncommonly strong. Something about the genetic addition from its father perhaps, or an errant mutation?
She and Petod follow as the two remaining Bosch enter strewing shadow and confusion around them. Luxuries abound here with sofas recessed in a gemstone floor. Computer links include a virtual sphere, while the kitchen is automated. She expects gunfire again, but the man by the wide window, thought armed, does not open fire on them.
‘So you are here,’ he says bitterly. ‘Velch was a fool. I told him that suit wouldn’t work, that the atmosphere seals were too old.’
The apartment continues to darken, and becomes a world encysted in shadow, the Bosch only half-seen presences. She recognizes the man as
the one, beside the albino, who caused her the most pain. His rape ensuing on that of his damaging fellow, he could not cum until he had bitten one of her breasts so hard he had nearly detached a nipple.
‘Where are Ibruk and the albino?’ she asks.
‘And if I tell you?’
She just stares at him, desperate for information but unable to promise him his life. She holds up a hand, stilling the two Bosch and studies the scene. This man must have been aware of the uproar below, yet has not fled. He is in full armour, with its shock absorbing facility, and he is over by the window. Her thought goes out and the Bosch comply – the Plague Doctor weaving further shadow and spreading murk to cover the Cowfish’s retreat.
‘You die quickly,’ she finally says.
‘Oh wonderful. How nice for me.’
‘Why did you do what you did?’
‘Because I was paid.’
‘Why did Ibruk pay you to do this?’
‘Why why why? Are you a child?’
She studies him again. His life is just a blink of time to her and he calls her child. He seeks to distract. The resources available to a man trained in arts martial give rise to possibilities. Her thought goes out to the doctor. It will have to be fast and, of course, the Batian already knows the fastest route. The Doctor expands itself, insinuating out into shadow, tightening sinews and charging muscle.
‘I have not been a child in a very long time,’ she says, glancing over to Petod. Can he survive this? She thinks he can, but he needs to be closer. ‘Petod, come over to my side.’ He looks puzzled but complies. ‘Now stay by my side.’ She begins to walk forwards scanning about herself. It could be anywhere in here, but there is no advantage to her finding it.
The Batian’s watchfulness betrays that he is marking their position in the room. Just a slight change in his features and she knows.
‘Far enough,’ he says, and shoots out the window behind him.
Now, she tells the Plague Doctor.
Her senses accelerate, slowing the procession of events. The Batian turns to the window as the Doctor folds in out of shadow, embracing both herself and Petod in greased darkness, a claw folding around her waist and another around his, fungus robes and expanded body closing up. The Batian jumps – his armour sufficient for him to survive the fall. The Doctor springs forwards, taut muscle burning sugar and oxygen in a flare of energy. Its acceleration towards the window cracks her joints and jounces air from her lungs. Behind, the explosive device in the apartment detonates, a wave of fire pursuing them. They go over the edge, the Batian falling ahead, feet downwards. The blast from the apartment window clips them, burning fabric and flesh peeling from the Doctor. They tumble in flapping sheets of darkness, then slow to the descent of a pricked balloon. Below the Batian hits the ground and rolls, suit joints jetting steam cooling. He comes up between stalls but it seems a shadowy place in the market. He turns to look back as the Cowfish surges out of nowhere and bites down on him, taking his head and upper body into its maw.
The Plague doctor hits and unravels, spilling them on the ground. She goes down on her hands and knees and looks across at Petod. The man is not moving and she can sense injury, but his breath and heartbeat are still strong. The Batian shrieks as the Cowfish tries and fails to crunch his armour. As she rises she gives consent and it takes him down armour and all.
Her joints creaking, she internally accelerates repairs, and walks over to Petod. Reaching down she touches his chest, then parting his shirt gently presses in her claws to read him. He is unconscious, ribs and other bones cracked – the radius in his forearm broken. Internally she tailors a package for him and injects it – maintaining his unconsciousness and speeding healing, sending specially-loaded vesicles to his skull to search out and stop the potential for a haematoma.
When done she turns back to see the Cowfish experiencing problems. She walks closer as the man inside the creature fights to survive – the air supply of his suit keeping him alive. It must be the armour blocking the Cowfish. Closer still she reaches out, pushing claws into pallid flesh. No, it has penetrated his armour and sent in its connections to its father, ready to integrate them both in dual accelerated decay, but the feedback is all wrong, as if the man inside is not its intended victim. The Cowfish begins shivering and she steps back, baffled. It heaves and shudders and then in a great flood of bile shot through with the connection fibres, vomits him out onto the ground. It howls then in frustration and pain.
Yoon steps over to the man to peer down at him. He is still alive and crawls out of the flood, turns over and looks up at her. He opens his suit mask.
‘You are not the father of my child,’ she says.
He gazes at her puzzled for a moment, then glances to the Cowfish.
‘So it’s true,’ he says.
‘Why are you not the father?’
He focuses on her again. ‘Let me live and I will tell you why.’
She finds room for manoeuvre in her driving purpose – her method. It is actually possible for her to step back and not be the final arbiter of his fate.
‘I will let you live if you also tell me where the other two are,’ she states, and casts her thought to her two remaining Bosch.
‘I am told that you do not lie and your word is adamantine,’ he says. He heaves himself up into a sitting position. ‘I had time to prepare for Ibruk’s chore when the others did not, or did not care to. We were to rape you and, though I did not believe all Ibruk said, I was not so foolish as to spill my own seed in you since it could be traced to me.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I raped you with another man’s balls.’
She is suddenly curious about this. ‘And your own?’
‘In storage should I want them back. I don’t plan on fathering—’ He pauses and looks at the Cowfish again, then spits out, ‘children.’
She nods. ‘Now tell me the location of Ibruk and the albino.’
He stands, unsteadily, blood leaking through gaps in his armour. ‘You’ll find him tucked away in the Embassy, heavily defended. I don’t know if even your creatures can get to him there.’
‘Thank you,’ she says, and turns away.
A stall crashes aside because from the free will she has granted the Plague Doctor it has made its decision. The Cowfish, free to make its own decisions too, does not move. It is wounded inside by the failed completion and now little inclined to violence. Behind her she hears the man’s, ‘You promised!’ and then his shriek of pain. Something bloody and clad in armour thumps down to one side as she goes back to Petod and squats beside him.
Petod dreams that shadows carry him, their cold bloody claws around him. He slides through the under-city and hears the creak of iron steps, sees vines threading through darkness. Chemical terror waxes and wanes, bats flit above ill-lit foamstone that is clad in blue lichen. Now softness engulfs him and he feels cold and wet wrap over the pain in his arm while it seems a fever of microscopic bees hum busily inside him. And then he opens his eyes.
He is in his bed in the apartment they rented. His body feels sticky and hot and aches and, pushing back the blanket, he sees a biocast moulded around his forearm. Only a moment later does he turn and see Yoon sitting in a chair beside the bed, wrapped in a large towel.
‘What . . . happened?’ he manages.
‘The Batian mined his apartment intending to kill us. The Plague Doctor got us out, but it was rough. Your injuries are near healed, however.’
‘Did they get him?’
‘Yes.’ She stands and walks over beside the bed. Instantly he is reminded of the last time this happened and, despite his aches feels a similar reaction to before.
‘How did I get here?’ he asks, trying to delay what he knows his coming.
‘The Plague Doctor carried you.’
Shuddering at the half memory of cold claws around him he asks, ‘So now we must search again for the other two? Perhaps they got away somehow – off-world?’
He hopes s
o and that this is the end of it. Her presence compels him and he cannot just walk away from her as she suggested, but her actions horrify him. On a deep level he feels anger at her attackers and sees the punishment of their crime as necessary. But must the punishments be so grotesque? Do her attackers need to die when they did not commit murder? Yet he knows that the Batians, for it is their trade, and probably those who employed them, must be guilty of taking lives.
She presses a hand down on the bed, staring at him, then pulls the blanket down and sits astride him, to begin rubbing herself against his belly. He has a sudden horrible thought. What if she is holding his seed inside her and intends to make something with it, something like the Bosch? He half expects the thought to kill his erection. It does not, especially when she casts the towel aside. She then stops moving.
‘I know where they are,’ she finally says, and starts moving again.
‘How?’
She grimaces. ‘The Batian told me.’ There is something else she is not telling, but her grinding hips blow the thought out of his mind.
‘Where are they?’ he manages.
‘Not yet – we have something else to do right now.’ She lifts up and slides back.
‘I don’t know if I can,’ he says.
‘You can.’ She reaches between her legs and guides him inside her.
This time she orgasms once, then tells him to let go. He does, arching his back as if trying to reach her heart, emptying and emptying until it seems his balls are clenching dry. She dismounts and steps off the bed.
‘Remove that cast and ready yourself,’
She leaves, picking up her towel on the way. Petod feels calmer now – the oldest cure having worked for him. He lies there gathering further calm, then sits upright and studies the cast. This biotech made here on this world is red when applied and now, with the bone healed underneath it has changed to a dull blue. He pulls off a tag at the top and the thing softens. An inserted finger opens out a developing split and he peels it away exposing an interior like the underside of a starfish. His skin is red from nano-needle punctures but that will soon fade.
