by Neal Asher
‘Who don’t? We know whose toes she stepped on,’ said the cop, turning to inspect the corpse.
‘So we can be expecting an arrest soon then?’ said Salind.
The cop snorted then glanced over as another car pulled up. ‘Yeah, there’ll be an arrest.
Some other toe-stepper’ll get shat on. And here comes the biggest shitter of ‘em all.’
Salind also watched as Callus and two of his thugs climbed from the car. Behind the car a van pulled up. He supposed that this must be Banjer’s equivalent of a medical examiner or some such. He started to move in their direction, but Geoff caught hold of his shoulder.
‘Not a good idea. Best to just watch,’ he said.
‘I only want to ask a reasonable question or two,’ said Salind.
‘Don’t,’ said Geoff. ‘Callus is never in his best mood when he’s clearing up after Soper. It won’t just be a slap next time. It’ll be a stiletto in your back followed by polite enquiries after your health for the benefit of your aug recording.’
Salind desisted. He turned to the uniformed cop. ‘You realize her augmentation will have recorded everything she saw?’
The cop glanced at him and shook his head. ‘That won’t be much then.’
The man walked back to join his companions. On closer inspection Salind saw Merril’s eyes had been gouged out. A treel worked its way out of one socket. Salind took out his pill container, clicked out a pill, and swallowed it dry.
From the van, two overalled figures bearing a stretcher approached the banoak. They conducted no forensic examination of the area, no careful search for evidence. After they deposited the stretcher on the ground, one of them took a crowbar from his belt and levered out the nails pinning the corpse to the tree. When it slid to the ground the two rolled it in a plastic sheet then passed a heating unit over this wrapping to shrink and seal it. As they carried the neat parcel back to the van Salind could still see treels moving about inside. While they loaded into the van he noted Callus spot him and start walking over with his thugs and two uniformed policemen in tow.
‘We better be leaving,’ said Geoff.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Salind.
‘I’ve warned you. That’s all I can do.’
‘Fine,’ said Salind, but he did step back to put himself up against the car.
Callus came up before him and his two thugs moved round to either side of the inspector.
They stood with their hands clasped before them. Salind had seen that pose before from other people who served the same purpose on other worlds — immediate testicle protection.
‘Well, well, Mr Salind, what do you have to say for yourself?’
Salind was momentarily distracted from replying, for another car had pulled up. The third plain-clothes cop who stepped out seemed familiar. Someone in the Tronad probably — someone about whom Salind had read a file. Was this one of Soper’s associates? He looked the part — a shaven-headed thug with slightly more muscle than necessary.
‘Sorry. . what?’
Callus went on, ‘I suppose it was professional jealousy that made you do it.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Geoff.
Callus glanced at him. ‘I imagine your accomplice will be able to tell us.’
‘You have got to be kidding,’ said Salind.
‘I’ll need your aug for evidence of course.’
Now the two thugs moved up on either side of Salind.
‘My aug is internal and backs up to the Tarjen AI every four minutes. It doesn’t retain a recording itself, but that backed-up information will prove I was nothing to do with this.’
Shit, get me some help out here. This fucker is going to kill me.
Message received: the legal department is onto it right now.
I don’t need the legal department! I need Polity monitors!
Polity monitors do not have jurisdiction here.
Callus smiled. ‘Here on Banjer we are aware how it is possible to interfere with computer-stored information.’
‘Argus is encryption-sealed! Nothing less than a major AI could interfere with it! And it’s internal — you haven’t got the facilities here to remove it!’
Callus gave the nod to his two thugs. ‘Mr Gem Salind, in the name of the Banjer Council I arrest you for the murder of Merril Torson, and with the powers vested in me by said Council, seize all evidential material. Please do not resist arrest.’
A fist like the bony end of a ham crashed into the side of Salind’s head. He slid along the car and the second thug hook-punched him twice in the gut.
‘I said “Please do not resist arrest” Mr Salind.’
Hazily he realized just what they intended. He would either die whilst resisting arrest or when they attempted to remove Argus. Case closed.
For a little fat guy Geoff could move very fast. He had jumped up on the bonnet of the car and slammed his recorder down on the second attacker’s head before Salind thought to react.
Salind punched the one on his right then fervently wished he’d used his boot. That hamfist came down again and the next thing he knew he was lying dazedly on the floor watching Geoff, his face covered with blood, being held by the scruff of the neck and having his head repeatedly pounded against the car’s wing.
‘That’s enough!’ someone bellowed.
Salind tried to stand as his attacker loomed over him. He saw the shaven-headed one moving up behind. Shavehead took hold of the thug by the shoulder and just threw him. The man hit the car then the ground, bounced and lay still. The second thug released Geoff in time to walk into a backhander that lifted him clean over the car. Salind staggered groggily to his feet. He glanced back and saw the two uniformed officers standing dumbfounded. Callus was on his knees holding his wrist. He looked up as Shavehead came up beside Salind, and real fear twisted his features. Scrabbling inside his coat he produced a nasty-looking pulse-gun.
‘You gonna do it to me, Mikey?’ asked Shavehead.
Callus did. The pulse-gun flashed. There came a thud and burst of smoke from Shavehead’s chest.
‘I just love this body.’ Shavehead strode forward and drove his fist down into Callus’s face.
Salind felt that familiar churning in his stomach: one hell of a story and now he knew the punchline, so to speak. One of the uniformed officers drew his own weapon — a similar pulse-gun to Callus’s.
‘Drake, put that away will you,’ said Shavehead.
The cop looked at his weapon in bewilderment, then he holstered it.
‘Inspector Garp,’ he said.
With Argus now set to record only, Salind observed, ‘So that’s how you looked.’
The uniformed police had been in disarray, and let them leave without protest, though Salind wondered what they could have done to stop them with their ex-boss, firmly uploaded to a Golem chassis, there to facilitate matters.
‘Yeah,’ said Garp, ‘ten years ago. Geronamid managed to piece together enough information to have this made.’ Garp touched his face and chest.
They sat in Garp’s car, Geoff in the back holding a med-patch to his head and groaning sporadically.
‘When I looked like this I was the big man who was a royal pain to the Tronad. Callus was my partner until Soper bought him off. I think he slipped praist into my tea.’
‘He won’t be doing that again,’ said Salind.
Garp gave him a slightly indifferent glance. Salind wondered if he was fully aware of the capabilities of the body he now occupied. He’d checked on Callus and the two others while Garp spoke to the uniformed officers. Callus and the one behind the car were dead. The third thug was not far from it.
They dropped Geoff at the Tarjen offices.
‘I’m gonna keep my head down now. Soper is not going to sit on her hands after this.
She’ll want us all nailed to banoaks,’ Geoff said, and with that disappeared inside.
‘What now?’ Salind asked. Without thinking he took out his pill container and clicked out a pill. Ga
rp’s hand clamped on his wrist and the pill fell to the floor. Salind fought the grip, suddenly unreasonably angry.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Garp asked.
Salind stared at him. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He was sure someone was scratching on the glass behind him.
‘I. . they’re to stop me. .’
‘I know what they are. How long have you been a user?’
‘Soper dosed me when I interviewed her. Didn’t you see that on the net?’
‘So a few days. She used pure derivative?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nightmares during the day?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so. You’re on fifteen strength. You’re already at the level of a seven-year addict. You’re losing it already.’
‘I’ll get a detoxicant treatment when this is over.’
‘Be sure you do or I’ll off you myself.’
Garp released his hand. Salind picked up the pill from the floor and quickly swallowed it.
The feeling, like a looming wave of black chaos ready to fall on him, slowly receded. Not taking the next needed dose was unthinkable, as briefly he had seen how thin was the veneer over reality for him. Garp started the car and pulled away.
The ceramal mesh fence stood three metres high, carried a killing current and sported beam-break alarms set along the top. Beyond it, banoaks stretched up the hill in neat rows.
Between the rows the ground seemed in constant motion, and in the distance a discshaped vacuum harvester, towing a collection tanker, worked its way down.
‘They must have to empty those tankers quite often,’ said Salind.
‘Not as often as you might think. That’s a Massey Vacpress. It sucks up the treels, presses out the juice and shoots the pressings into the tanker — almost pure treelskin.’
As it drew closer Salind observed the waste juice pouring from pipes in the side of the harvester. The machine left the ground behind it completely clear of treels, but there were plenty yet to be sucked up. This had to be the first run of the morning. A driver sat in a bucket seat on the main harvester disc steering it with two levers. He wore blue armoralls and a sphere helmet.
‘Why that gear?’ he asked.
‘The helmet’s to prevent narcosis from the vapour, and it’s their uniform.’
‘Whose?’
‘Soper’s people.’
Salind nodded and wondered what the hell they were going to do now. No way were they going to get through that fence without setting off a mass of alarms, even if they managed not to fry themselves.
‘Boring job,’ he said, nodding at the driver. ‘That’ll be one to go with the Polity running things. They’ll stick a submind in the harvester and that’ll be that.’
‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Garp.
They stepped out of the car and Garp popped the boot. From it he removed his rail-gun and walked over to the fence. The red sun breaking over the horizon cast his shadow behind him.
He held the weapon out of view and waved. The driver raised a hand in return and continued down the row. Some minutes later the harvester neared the fence. Salind couldn’t figure what Garp intended. Was he going to hold up the harvester? Garp showed him. As the machine reached the point where it had to turn to go down the next row Garp raised his weapon and fired a short burst. The driver disappeared in a cloud of red.
‘Jesu! What the hell are you doing!’
Garp glanced at him. ‘Well you said he’d be redundant.’
‘You just killed him!’
‘Yeah, I did didn’t I. Come here.’
He took hold of Salind’s shoulder and walked him to one side. Salind felt himself shaking.
He’d seen some horrible things, but he’d never seen someone killed in such cold blood. The harvester kept going, from where it should have turned, and crashed into the fence. Electricity shorted through its body as it tore out a hundred-metre length of fencing and dragged it into the highway. Hitting the bank on the other side of the road it ground to a halt, its vacuum still roaring. Salind saw that the driver was still sitting in the bucket seat, though only from the waist down.
‘You killed him,’ he repeated.
‘They all know what’s going on in here. You’ve seen nothing yet. Come on, we’ve got to move fast now. The guards’ll be here soon.’
Garp led him back to the car and started it up. He carefully drove it off-road and through the gap made by the harvester. Then he floored the accelerator and the turbine soon had them up to a hundred kloms up the cleared lane between the banoaks.
‘They always come at a breach from the outside. We’ll be too far in by then for them to do anything about us,’ said Garp.
‘What about getting out?’ asked Salind.
‘I shouldn’t worry unduly about that.’
In a few minutes they reached the end of the grove and Garp dumped the car in an irrigation ditch. He gave it one shove to get it there, leaving a dent in the metal.
‘You still recording?’ he asked as he checked his rail-gun.
‘Yes,’ said Salind, wondering if that was the right thing to say.
‘Good. Let’s go take a look at the factory.’ He hung the gun at his belt and turned his back to Salind. Looking over his shoulder he said, ‘Hop on.’
This being his first piggy-back ride on the back of a psychotic Golem android, Salind did not know what to expect. He swore, after they covered four or five kilometres, it would be his last. In minutes they reached rocky terrain cut through by gravel roads. Banoaks grew in wild profusion here, with a low scrub of adapted thyme and spherule grass below them. On the higher ground the banoaks were bigger and older than in the grove. Perhaps they had been growing since before humans arrived on Banjer.
How long do they live?
Oaks on the north continent have been dated at over five thousand years in age.
Garp peered at him, and he wondered if the ex-policeman could listen in on these aug conversations. Garp pointed to a ring of pots strapped round one of the nearby oaks.
‘Sap drains. You’ll see how they use the sap in a bit. Still recording?’
‘Yes,’ Salind replied, prepared to give no more than that. He dry-swallowed another praist pill before following where Garp led. Soon they came to a rise overlooking a sprawl of warehouses. Garp pointed to the four trucks parked before the largest building.
‘See, they’re unloading cropsters,’ he explained.
Salind’s vision did not extend so far, for he did not have a Golem’s eyes. He could just about see some activity.
Argus, give me a visual feedback, magnification x10.
Processing.
After a moment his vision nickered and suddenly he could view the scene up close.
Trussed in straitjackets and with bags over their heads, people were being led from the trucks.
One of them tried to run and soon fell flat on his face. The men doing the unloading, men dressed in armoralls like those worn by the one Garp had killed, stood laughing. One of them walked over to the fallen man and proceeded to beat him with a length of wood, only desisting when one of his companions called to him. He then dragged his victim to his feet and with more blows drove him back to the rest.
Cut feedback.
Salind’s vision returned to normal.
‘What the hell is going on down there?’ he asked.
‘They’re all people who’ve done something to piss off Soper or one of her lieutenants. Or they’re other disposable members of society. It’s noticeable how few occupants our asylums and gaols have,’ replied Garp.
‘What are they going to do to them?’
‘That’s what you’re here to see. Come on.’
Using banoak copses, scattered boulders and the occasional natural gully as cover, they worked their way closer to the buildings. Salind worried about the footprints they were leaving in the spherule grass as its little glassy bubbles burst under their feet, unt
il he looked back and saw how quickly the footprints faded. When they were within a hundred metres of the main building Garp stopped in a low gully.
‘Wait here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.’
True to his word Garp soon returned. He carried two pairs of armoralls and two helmets.
The helmet with a crack in it dripped blood. Salind selected the other one.
Garp told him, ‘Just follow me and keep your mouth shut. You’re going to see some pretty horrible things in there. Don’t react. These people see it every day.’
