by Neal Asher
Ansel was off his bed in an instant. The door was locked, but he turned the handle until something broke with a dull thud. Easing the door open, he peered through, just in time to see the bearded man rushing outside. On the table in that room rested his rucksack, which he stepped in and grabbed, before retreating to the bedroom. From outside came another explosion, and he could hear yelling. He did not speculate about the cause since he would find out once outside. In his rucksack he found his thin-gun, which he holstered, before opening the bedroom window and stepping through.
‘It’s the shuttle,’ said the woman.
He spun to see her squatting in the darkness a few paces behind him. Automatically he drew his thin-gun and aimed it at her. Then he looked ahead and saw that the barn was burning.
What the hell?
‘Where’s the monitor?’ he asked.
‘In the shuttle,’ she replied.
Ansel made no comment about that.
There were villagers running out of the houses, hastily clothed, yelling questions to each other. Ansel stayed where he was. The woman moved closer and he saw that she wore a pack on her back and held her cutting laser.
‘You can drop that,’ he said.
After she did as he instructed, he snatched the device up and put it in his belt. He then gestured with his gun for her to move where he could see her more clearly, before turning most of his attention to the fire and the villagers. Silhouetted against flame came a striding figure.
‘Jesus,’ said Ansel.
‘Who is it?’ the woman asked.
‘Not a who, a what.’
Ansel suddenly had a very bad feeling about all this.
Two villagers ran towards the dark individual. One of them went in close as if to grab him, but was grabbed in turn by his throat and hoisted into the air. Whilst holding him there, the figure drew a weapon and fired it at the other villager. The second one flew backwards with smoke and flame trailing from where his head had been. The first villager the figure dropped to the ground. He did not get up again.
‘What is that?’ the woman hissed.
‘Cybercorp Golem. Series Nineteen.’
‘But Golem don’t kill.’
‘They do when the Company gets hold of them. They crack the moral governors by giving them a full sensorium download from the mind of a psychopath. This one’s probably a Serban Kline.’
‘It’s probably here for you,’ she said.
Ansel chewed that over. He could not understand why the Company might want him dead. It seemed more likely to him that the Golem was here after her and the monitor. But he had an inkling of doubt – the kind of doubt that had saved his life more than once. He could of course go and ask the Golem, but knew that if its answer was yes, it would be brief and non-verbal. He needed time, and he needed to know what this woman and the monitor had been on about earlier. He gestured for her to move into the darkness behind the house ahead of him.
‘What’s your name and what are you?’ he asked her.
‘Erlin. I’m an xenobiologist, mostly,’ she replied.
‘Do you have another shuttle, or a way of calling one in?’ asked Ansel.
‘Hendricks had a comlink.’
Hendricks. So that was his name.
‘Hendricks is toast. Keep moving. Head for the jetty.’
As Erlin led the way down to the river, Ansel gazed back towards the village. The Golem was calmly entering each house. Each time it came out, that house would burst into flame. It quite dispassionately shot anyone who came within a few hundred metres of it. The villagers were beginning to get the idea, and they too were running for their lives.
‘Move it!’ Ansel yelled at Erlin.
They reached the jetty ahead of some of the villagers. Ansel quickly untied a skiff powered by a hydrodyn outboard of Company manufacture. He saw that only two other skiffs bore outboards. He drew his gun, adjusted a setting on the side, and fired at each of the motors. The gun itself made not a sound, but the casing of the first outboard cracked open and leaked smoke, and the second motor blew in half, then fell off its boat and sank.
‘What are you doing?’ Erlin asked.
‘It’s after you or me, not your precious colonists. I’m slowing it a little,’ he replied.
They scrambled into the boat. Ansel started the motor, turned the boat out into the river and headed upstream. As he wound the throttle round he looked back towards the village. All the houses were now burning and the villagers streaming down to the jetty. Behind them, silhouetted against the fire as it stepped over corpses, came the Golem.
‘We won’t get away. It won’t stop,’ said Erlin.
Ansel ignored that.
‘Where exactly did Kelly go?’ he asked.
‘Why do you want to know? Do you think completing your mission will put you into favour?’
‘Two reasons: first to complete my mission and second to get out of here. Maybe you’re right, maybe the Company wants me dead for some reason. I’ll find out. I’ll get off this shit hole and find out. Kelly must have had access to a shuttle to get to the Strine Station.’
Erlin sat up straight.
‘You don’t want to kill him,’ she said.
‘I’ll be the judge of that. Now, will you tell me where exactly Kelly went or do I have to pose my questions a little less pleasantly?’
Erlin stared at him for a long moment then shrugged. ‘You’ll change your mind when you get the full story. When you find out what’s been done to you.’
Ansel stared at her.
Been done to me?
‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ he said.
Erlin shrugged. ‘For what it’s worth, he’s gone to the mountains. They’re a day away. There’s a waterfall with a trail going up beside it, which leads eventually to the place where their Book of Statements is kept. The place has religious significance to them, which was why Kelly wouldn’t let Hendricks take him there in the shuttle.’ Erlin paused then went on. ‘Serban Kline … he’s the one who went to the frame for multiple murder wasn’t he?’
He replied, ‘In total Serban Kline killed a hundred and eight women. He was clever and it took ECS years to track him down. They found him with his hundred and ninth victim. He’d had her for two weeks. They managed to give her back her face and body, but they never managed with her mind. In one of her more coherent moments she chose euthanasia.’
They motored on through the darkness.
When the morning sun broke the sky into its striated patterns, they had reached an area where the river widened and low trees with leaves big as bedspreads grew on the banks. Erlin woke from where she had made herself as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the boat, stretched, and gazed around. Ansel peered at her gritty-eyed and said nothing. She returned his look for a moment then opened her pack. Ansel had his gun pointed at her in a second. She ignored him and took out a food bar which she munched on contemplatively.
‘What does ECS want with you?’ Ansel asked eventually.
‘I specialize in parasites. After they got Kelly’s deposition they wanted it checked in a hurry. I suppose I was the best they could get hold of at short notice.’
Deposition?
Ansel felt too tired to work it out. What possible evidence did Kelly possess, and of what?
‘Take the tiller,’ he told Erlin.
While she obeyed, Ansel lay down in the bottom of the boat and, clutching his thin-gun, closed his eyes and cued himself for light naps. No way would she get the drop on him. Anything untoward and he would be instantly awake. The engine was off and the sun high in the sky when Erlin shook him awake.
‘We’re at the waterfall,’ she told him.
Ansel lay there with his head aching and that foul taste in his mouth. The last time this had happened he’d put it down to being hit by Hendricks’s stunner. Now he wondered if it was a result of the symbiont in his stomach. He sat up carefully and blinked until his vision cleared. He looked at the waterfall, then
turned to study Erlin. His gun was still in his hand.
‘Why didn’t you take it?’ he asked her.
‘There is no need. Will you listen to what I have to say now?’
‘I’ll listen, but not just yet,’ said Ansel. He holstered his weapon and studied the waterfall.
It descended from the mountains down a giant’s staircase, each step no more than five or ten metres. It bore the appearance of something constructed, but a glance at the surrounding mountains showed they bore the same shape, being naturally terraced. Pointing at a small jetty projecting into the deep pool below it, he said, ‘Take us over there.’
Erlin switched the motor back on and took them slowly towards the jetty. It soon became evident that there was another boat moored there.
‘Kelly’s,’ said Erlin as she finally brought their boat athwart the jetty.
The boat was the twin of theirs. As they moored next to it Ansel peered inside, noting stains on the boards and the distinctive smell of putrefactor. Taking up his rucksack, he followed Erlin across the jetty. The path from there was easy enough to follow: there was only the one and it led straight up into the mountains.
As Ansel now led the way up the first slope he said, ‘Okay, tell me.’
‘A hundred and eighty years ago THC bought the mineral rights here,’ she explained.
‘Oh really,’ said Ansel.
Erlin ignored his comment and continued. ‘The life here is incompatible with human life, highly toxic in fact. When THC established a mining colony they miscalculated. Removing the toxins from the soil so food could be grown in it turned out to be unfeasible and they were soon incurring huge costs from shipping food in. Company biologists got round that one by adapting a Fores life form into a symbiont for the miners. It lived in their stomachs just as it now lives in yours, and in the stomachs of the miners’ descendants – it’s passed on in the womb. It breaks down Fores’s proteins, sugars and carbohydrates into forms the human gut can digest.’
‘Look, I know all this. I’ve got one. You mentioned a deposition earlier. What was that all about?’ asked Ansel.
‘The symbiont is an adapted putrefactor,’ Erlin told him.
Ansel halted and turned to her. The Company medic had neglected to mention this. The knowledge made him feel slightly sick.
Watching him steadily, Erlin went on, ‘Unfortunately, after a period of approximately thirty-seven years, it was found that the symbiont changed and began to digest its host.’
‘What?’ said Ansel. What she’d just told him did not seem to gel. He was sixty years old, and with antiagathics had an expected lifespan that had not yet been measured. Now this madwoman was telling him he would be digested in thirty-seven years. It made no sense. He had only been sent here for a brief search-and-destroy mission. The symbiont was merely a convenience to help him digest the local food.
‘That makes no sense – the Company would have known.’
‘Yes, of course they would have.’
And then it did make sense to him. He was suddenly angry as he gazed past her to the river below. After a moment he realized what he was seeing down there. Just coming into sight was a rowing boat being rowed along so fast it was leaving a foaming wake. He pointed.
‘Oh hell,’ said Erlin.
‘Let’s move it,’ said Ansel, and they set out at a faster pace.
‘Can you stop it?’ Erlin gasped as they climbed.
‘Yeah, funny,’ said Ansel. Thirty-seven years. What did that matter when he was likely to be killed within the next few hours? He now understood that first conversation he had overheard between Erlin and Hendricks, and he knew the Golem was here for him as much as for them. The Company had done something nasty here, and they had done it again to him, but why had they done it? He glanced upslope, then back again. The Golem had reached the pool. He picked up the pace and shortly they reached a stairway cut into the rock.
‘Look!’ Erlin shouted.
Ansel glanced at her, then to where she was pointing. A shuttle was limping through the sky above them.
‘It’s Hendricks. He’s alive. He’s going for Kelly!’
‘Climb,’ said Ansel. The Golem was on the jetty now and it was gazing up at them. There was a chance now. If they could get to the shuttle … He noted that Erlin was flagging. She was an Earther and her legs could not match his. He considered leaving her behind, but decided not to. Fuck the Company. He halted.
‘You keep going,’ he said. ‘I’ll slow it.’
She watched him unshoulder his pack and open it.
‘Go!’ he shouted.
Erlin went.
Ansel ran through his mind all he knew about Golem Nineteens. They possessed a ceramal chassis wrapped round their more delicate components, so with the munitions he carried he could not hope to destroy it. Raking through his rucksack he pulled out a short cylindrical carton, out of which he tipped four flat discs each bearing digital displays. Studying the Golem’s progress, he set the display on the first disc and left it on a step. After climbing for a minute, he set another disc, then the third higher up. He was setting the last disc when the first blew with an actinic white explosion, showering stone across the mountainside. He glanced down.
It had missed, but an area of the stairway had been converted to rubble. This slowed the Golem, but only a little. Ansel ran up after Erlin, reaching her as she reached the head of the stairway. Cut into the face of the mountain was an area of level stone.
‘Drop the weapon, assassin!’
Hendricks leant against the back of the shuttle, between the two thrusters. The man’s face was twisted with pain, for his left arm was gone at the elbow and through the charred holes in his clothing burnt skin showed. He had placed an emergency dressing over the stump and some sort of cream on the burns, but Ansel supposed the man had not wanted to dull his senses with painkillers. Erlin stood to the right of him, and another figure stood nearby with his face turned away from Ansel.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ said Ansel.
Hendricks fired once between Ansel’s feet, erupting splinters of stone that smacked against Ansel’s legs. Ansel went down on one knee, then very carefully he removed his thin-gun from its holster and tossed it down.
‘I’ve told him,’ Erlin told Hendricks. ‘I think he’s with us.’
Ansel did not know if the monitor had heard her. Despite avoiding painkillers the man seemed out of it, his attention wandering. An explosion from below brought that attention back to Ansel.
‘The Golem is coming up here,’ said Ansel.
‘It’s true,’ said Erlin.
Hendricks glanced at the third figure. That figure turned towards Ansel and exposed the horror of his face. One side of it was eaten down to the bone; the man’s eye on that side a lidless ball in its socket. Kelly. There came a third explosion from below.
‘We have to get out of here,’ said Ansel.
‘No can do, assassin,’ said Hendricks. ‘AG burnt out when I landed.’ Hendricks closed his eyes for a moment and his head dipped. Ansel stood and took a step towards his gun. He had to resolve this, and fast. The fourth explosive disc blew. He wondered if the Golem had been near any of them. Even if it had been right on top of one, the blast would only have stripped its covering.
‘Am thirty-seven,’ slurred Kelly. He held a thick book pressed to his chest.
‘Where’s your shuttle?’ Ansel asked him.
Hendricks’s head came up and he stared at Kelly. Kelly returned the look then pointed up the mountain. Just then Ansel heard a scrambling on the stair behind him. He dived and rolled, snatching up his thin-gun as he went past, turned and fired. The Golem was up on the edge. It seemed a fairly normal man with a shaven head, and carried a weapon similar to the one Hendricks held. Ansel’s first shot hit it in the chest as it stepped forward. The explosion ripped a hole to expose gleaming ribs underneath. It tried to aim at him, but he hit it again and again. Abruptly pulsed-energy fire hit it from Hendricks’s weapon. Th
e Golem staggered then leant into the fusillade. Its face became a blackened pit and syntheflesh fell burning from its arm. Its weapon was trashed and it threw it aside, but it continued to advance. All Ansel could do was keep firing, even though he knew his and the monitor’s combined fire would not be enough.
‘Get down, assassin!’ Hendricks yelled.
What the hell for?
Instinct took over before Ansel could think of an answer to that question. All fire ceased and the Golem was running towards them. Suddenly there came a roar and blue fire speared above Ansel. The heat of it seared his back and he saw the Golem take that fire full on. It was stripped down to its metal chassis in an instant. It leant into flame then started to bend and distort. Abruptly it was coming apart and the blast picked it up and flung it over the edge. When the thruster motor cut out Ansel stood and glanced round at Hendricks.
‘AG was out,’ said the monitor. ‘Not the thrusters.’ He dropped the remote control he held, but managed to holster his pulse-gun before he fainted.
