by Neal Asher
Jonas watched the Golem stand, extend the head of his scanner on a telescopic arm, and begin swinging like a metal detector.
“I upload,” he observed.
“Yes, on top of your fifty-three years of experience.”
“Granted,” he said. “So you get a lot like this?”
“Certainly-there’s a great deal here to study.”
Jonas knew that. Prior to twenty years ago, this world had been Out-polity and ruled by a vicious theocracy. With the help of undercover ECS agents, rebels managed a ballot of the planetary population, the result of which was the Polity subsuming this world. But events had been somewhat complicated. During that time, some biophysicist had come here in a stolen Polity dreadnought and caused all sorts of mayhem. Jonas did not know the details-all he knew was that it had taken ECS twenty years to clear up the mess, and that some areas of the planet were still under quarantine. Also, at about the same time, one of the four spheres of a transgalactic alien bioconstruct called Dragon had arrived and suicided on the planet’s surface, and, in the process, out of its mass, created a new race: dracomen. These creatures alone were worthy of centuries of study. They used direct protein replication rather than some form of DNA transcription and could mentally control their body growth and substantially alter their offspring.
Their initial shape was based on a human thought-experiment: what might dinosaurs have been like if there had been no extinction and they had followed the evolutionary path of humans. But, besides these, the planet boasted much weird fauna: the tricones forever churning the soil, a multitude of herbivores, mud snakes, siluroynes, heroynes, hooders, and the decidedly strange gabbleducks. And those were only the larger wild creatures.
“Do you know if there are any instructions concerning his remains?” Jonas asked.
“We will know, soon enough,” said the Golem. He was squatting down now, digging at the ground with a small trowel. After a moment he stood, holding up some item about the size of a little finger.
“Memplant?” Jonas suggested.
The Golem nodded.
Jonas turned back to Mary. “I’d like to make some recordings and measurements, and take a few samples. That okay?”
“That’s fine. And if he has no special requirements concerning his physical remains I’ll have Gryge,” she gestured to the Golem, “box them up for you.”
“And a copy of the sateye recording?”
“Certainly.”
“Thanks.”
Jonas headed back to the aerofan for his holocorder and sampling equipment. He did not suppose he would learn anything new here, or from the recording-it would just be more information to feed Rodol’s appetite. The AI was already digesting everything the locals knew about hooders, plus twenty years of ECS data, but its hunger was never satisfied.
Shardelle noted that within the last hour another forty-three linguists had come online, but that hour had also seen off sixty-two. Their number, now standing at just over seven hundred thousand, was in steady decline in the network. Comparative analyses with just about every language on record had been made. New languages had been generated for comparison-still no joy. Syntactic programs ranging from the deeply esoteric to the plain silly had been employed, but they had not come close to cracking one word or a hint of a morpheme, of what was now being called The Gabble.
What precisely did Yaw-craggle flog nabble goop mean, or Scrzzz-besumber fleeble? Even the AIs seemed to be failing, and they were making comparative analyses across a huge range of data: an enormous list of environmental parameters including the creature’s location, the ambient temperature, variations in air mix, what the creature was looking at, hearing, smelling, or otherwise sensing; the time of the day or night, what objects were in the sky; variations in the speakers themselves including size, sex, number of limbs and what they happened to be doing with them at the time, what had happened to them earlier. Occasionally concurrence did occur.
Two gabbleducks had said yabber, while peering into the distance and gesturing with one clawed limb. There had been other concurrences too. But utterly bewildering was that, statistically, if the five hundred creatures under scrutiny had been generating random noise, there should be more concurrences than this. It was a maddeningly negative result. Shardelle, however, felt this was a negative that must indicate something.
Shardelle disconnected her aug from the linguistic network and at once her sight and hearing returned. Plumped in a comfortable chair, she glanced around inside her ATV, but inevitably her gaze centered on the screen that was presently showing the view from holocam 107. This one was her favorite gabbleduck-the biggest and weirdest of them all. The creature was sitting in a stand of flute grass and in this pose its body was pyramidal. Its three pairs of forelimbs were folded monkishly over the jut of its lower torso, one fore-talon of one huge black claw seemingly beating time to some unheard song. Its domed head was tilted down, its duck bill against its chest. Some of its tiara of emerald eyes were closed. Obviously it was taking time out to digest its latest meal, the bones of which lay neatly stacked beside it.
What was known about this creature? Its double helical Masadan equivalent of DNA was enormously long and contained coding enough for every species on this planet. But the sheer quantity of coding material did not necessarily mean the creature was complex-most of this could be parasitic and junk DNA. The first researchers into human DNA had been somewhat surprised to discover that lizards, lungfish, and ferns possessed substantially more DNA than themselves, and that they had no more than common grass. What it did mean, however, was that as a species the gabbleducks were very old.
They were omnivores; often supplementing their diet with flute grass rhizomes, fungi, and, oddly, anything shiny on which they could lay their claws. They possessed complex voice boxes, and as was already demonstrable, there seemed no reason for this. Also, on the whole, they were solitary creatures and spoke only to themselves. When they met it was usually only to mate or fight, or both. There was also no reason for them to carry structures in their skulls capable of handling vastly complex languages. Two thirds of their large convoluted brains they seemed hardly to use at all. In short: they were a puzzle.
Shardelle stood, walked along the metal floor of the ATV and climbed up into the chainglass bubble of the cockpit. Checking the map screen, she noted the transponder positions for the two hooders in the area, then chose a route to take her back to the Tagreb complex that avoided them completely. She had seen what had happened to an ATV and its four occupants when they had ignored this simple rule and driven close to one of the creatures for a look-or rather, she had seen the torn and very small fragments that remained of both people and vehicle.
Taking up the joystick she drove herself rather than be guided in by Rodol. As an afterthought, she mentally sent the detach sequence to her aug and removed the chrome slug of sophisticated computer hardware from the side of her head. She had some thinking to do and found that easier while driving, bare-brained.
Taxonomic and genetic research bases, or Tagrebs, looked like giant iron tulip flowers when stored in the vast hold of the research vessel Beagle Infinity. Launched, a Tagreb maintained its shape during entry into a planetary atmosphere while its AI came online. The AI then slowed the Tagreb in lower atmosphere with fusion thrusters before finally descending on the chosen location using gravmotors. Upon landing, the flower opened, folding four petals down to the ground. From this, five plasmel domes inflated-one at the center and one over each petal.
Their internal structures-floors, ceilings, walls, and stairs-were inflated at the same time. The AI then took a look around to decide how best to continue.
Rodol, aware of the problems Masada might present, first injected a thick layer of a resin matrix into the boggy ground below to protect the base from the depredations of tricones-molluscan creatures that, given time, could grind their way through just about anything-before injecting the same substance into the hollow walls and floors of the structure itself
. Next the AI woke its telefactors, which immediately took the requisite materials outside the base to construct an electrified perimeter fence and four gun towers. Unusually, these towers were supplied in this case with proton cannons capable of punching holes through thick armor, for some of the natives were anything but friendly. After three days the base was ready for the next stage. Automated landers descended inside the fence and the telefactors began bringing in supplies: food, bedding, nanoscopes, full immersion VR suites, soaps and gels, nano micro and submacro assembler rigs, an aspidistra in a pot, autodocs, autofactories, holocams, coffee makers…. Every item was slotted into its place or plugged in.
On day five a hooder came to investigate, attacked the fence, then retreated leaving its rear segment behind-incinerated by one of the cannons. On day six Rodol brought the fusion reactor fully online, supplying power to the multitude of sockets throughout the base. Lights, embedded in the ceilings, were ready to come on. Sanitary facilities were ready to recycle waste.
Rodol stabbed filter heads down into the ground to suck up water, which was first cracked for its oxygen to bring the internal atmosphere to requirements, and thereafter pumped into holding tanks. The humans, haimans, and Golem arrived shortly afterward; disembarking from shuttles with massive hover trunks gliding along behind them. Only a few days after was it discovered that the five gravplatforms were not nearly enough for those who wanted to do field work.
Grudgingly, Rodol cleared Polity funds to pay the local population for twenty aerofans and five fat-tired all-terrain vehicles.
Jonas arrived on foot, having been on the planet for six months getting to know the locals and many of the ECS monitors still assigned here. Six months later he raised in celebration a glass of malt whisky to the scene beyond the panoramic window of his upper dome apartment and laboratory. It was in a befuddled state that two hours later he received the message through his aug.
“Hi Jonas,” said Mary Cole.
She was standing in the middle of his apartment-to his perception, for the augram was being played directly into his mind.
“Hello Mary.” He toasted her with his glass.
“This is not real time or interactive so don’t bother asking questions. I just want you to know that one of our coastal survey drones picked up precisely what you want, here…” The location downloaded into his aug. “That’s only five hundred and thirty kilometers from you. Have a nice one.”
As the image blinked out Jonas was already groping for his aldetox. “Rodol, I need the field autopsy gear, the big stuff, and I need it now!” he bellowed.
“What you require is available, but unfortunately the transport situation has not improved. All the gravplatforms are out and aerofans will not suffice,” the AI replied.
Jonas gulped water to wash down the pills. He was already starting to feel sober even though the aldetox had yet to take effect. “What about the ATVs?”
“There are three here. Two require new drive shafts, which one of the autofactories is currently manufacturing. The other is assigned to Shardelle Garadon. Perhaps you should speak with her.”
Jonas returned to his chair while the aldetox took effect. One of the ATVs had room enough to carry all the equipment he would require, initially, then came the problem of bringing specimens back. Perhaps he could get some help there from ECS? Something for a later date, he thought-plenty of work to do before then. After a moment he made a search for Shardelle’s aug address, found it, and tried to make contact. Annoyingly her aug was offline. Instead, he found her apartment address within the Tagreb, stood, and unsteadily headed for the door.
Fifteen hundred and thirty-two linguists remained: the hardcore. The rest dismissed The Gabble as having less meaning than the sounds lower animals made. At least those sounds had a reason, some logical syntax, some meaning related to alarm, pain, pleasure, or the basic “I’m over here, let’s fuck.”
Unfortunately only a third of that hardcore consisted of linguists who Shardelle felt had anything meaningful to contribute. Of those, one Kroval-a haiman based on Earth who, in the silicon part of his mind, held nearly every known language in existence-had the most to contribute. His analysis fined down to, “The phonemes are 80 percent the anglic of Masada, and their disconnection from coherent meaning seems almost deliberate. I can say with certainty that they are not parroting the language, and perhaps a degree of understandable human paranoia engendered by the unknown, or possibly unknowable, leads me to feel they might be deriding it.”
The latest offering from a small group of the others, who Shardelle labeled the lunatic fringe, had been, “It must be what is not said: meaning can be attributed to the synergetic whole of negatives. We just need to isolate the network of dissaffirmative monads in a…” and so it had continued until the speaker in question seemed in danger of disappearing up his own backside. It was this last that had led Shardelle to disconnect her aug and cast it aside.
They seemed to be getting nowhere. In fact, over the last six months, more imponderables had entered the equation. On the biological front little more was known than had been obtained by close scanning and sampling, and that had cost them fourteen mobile scanners and seven beetle-sized sampling drones-gabbleducks swatted them like flies and then, if they were shiny, ate them. What Shardelle had been waiting for, like so many others in the Tagreb, was a death. Other researchers had obtained their corpses: a siluroyne, a heroyne, and loads of mud snakes. But it seemed gabbleducks were in no hurry to die, and not one corpse or any remains had been picked up by the vast number of ECS drones constantly scanning the planet.
Shardelle wondered about that: why so much scanning activity, why the quarantine areas still, what was it that ECS was keeping quiet? No matter, she had enough puzzles to concern her at present. Perhaps she should slip out one night with a pulse rifle and solve the corpse problem.
The Gabble, and its source, frustrated her that much.
Time to sleep, she decided. Thinking like that was a sure way to get her expelled from the Tagreb and the planet. Nothing gets killed, unless in self-defense, until its sentience level has been properly assessed. Just then, as she was about to head for her bed, there came a hammering at her door. Shardelle grimaced and considered ignoring it, but there was urgency in that hammering-maybe the corpse? She opened the door expecting to see one of the others on her team. Who was this?
He held out a hand. “Jonas Clyde … hooders. May I come in?”
Shardelle stood aside and waved him into her apartment. He looked younger than she had expected, but that meant nothing. His blond hair was cropped and he moved with athletic confidence. His face was tanned and his eyes electric green. His hands looked … capable. He scanned around quickly, his gaze coming to rest on her screen. The big gabbleduck was lolloping through the flute grasses.
“Moves like a grizzly bear,” he observed.
She, of course, recognized his name. Jonas Clyde was something of a legend in Taxonomy and usually studied exactly what he wanted on any new world. It had come as a pleasant surprise to Shardelle, upon hearing he was on this mission, that he had not chosen the gabbleducks.
“Substantially larger, though,” she said, closing the door.
He obviously auged through to her screen control, for figures appeared along the bottom.
“Eight tons-not something you’d want to be standing in the path of.” He turned to her. “I hear they eat people.”
“Chew, certainly … coffee?” She walked over to her coffee maker-an antique almost three centuries old-and began making an espresso.
“Yes please-same for me. You say ‘chew’?”
“Humans obviously disagree with their digestion, but if someone annoys them sufficiently they chew them up and spit out the pieces. But of course, like everything else with them, their behavior is puzzling. Gabbleducks have pursued human prey across hundreds of kilometers, for no particular reason, and killed them. There was one case of a hunter shooting a clip from an Optek into one creature an
d it ignoring him completely. A recent one we observed via holocam: a gabbleduck abandoned its territory, crossed five hundred kilometers, and drowned a pond worker in her squirm pond. We don’t know why.” Bringing two cups of espresso over, she nodded to her sofa. He sat down. Placing the cups on the table between, she took the armchair opposite. “I was surprised you did not choose them as your subject for study.”
He grimaced. “They were my initial choice, but I have experience with dangerous fauna so it was suggested, rather strongly, that I choose the hooders. Obviously gabbleducks are dangerous, but not so lethal that it was felt necessary to fit every one with a transponder to know their locations.”
“I see,” Shardelle nodded, sipped her espresso. “So what can I do for you?”
“I want your ATV,” he replied.
“Nothing if not direct. What for?”
“Hooders are long-lived and practically indestructible.” He paused. “That’s a puzzle too-we were told by the locals that when hooders reach a certain age they break into separate segments and each segment grows into a new hooder. This planet should be overrun with them
