by Neal Asher
“You move quickly,” he said.
Straben was a slightly fat man with a bald rounded head. He was clad in busi-nesswear and looked like some Polity executive styling his appearance on some antediluvian fashion. I ignored him for a moment, carefully studying my surroundings.
A glass-fronted case along one wall contained a variety of ghoulish antiques: a spider thrall and a full-core thrall, a couple of slave collars and an old automatic pistol. These were all the kind of objects you could obtain from dealers out of Spatterjay I watched a nano-paint picture transit to its next image—a painting of a hooder coming down on some man in ECS uniform. Then I strolled over to the desk, round it, and stood facing Straben.
“I move quickly?” I inquired mildly.
“You arrived in the Graveyard only a few days ago,” said Straben, then with a shrug. “I didn’t expect you to act so quickly.”
I looked at the desk, noting a flimsy screen up out of the surface, and the holographic virtual control Straben had been using a moment ago. The screen was blank. I tried my hand in the control but it wouldn’t respond to me.
“It’s genetically coded to me,” he said.
“I could always cut off your hand,” I suggested.
“That won’t work either,” said Straben, for the very first time showing some sign of anxiety.
I gazed at him for a second, then waved him out into the main office space. He nodded congenially and walked over to where the window had been and stepped through.
“Questions now?” he asked.
“Yes, questions,” I replied.
Straben halted and turned toward me, tilted his head irritatingly like Harriet, and waited.
“So,” I said, “was it your intention to try and seize the Coin Collector?”
Straben gazed at me in apparent puzzlement. “Certainly not. It was my intention to sell you some valuable artifacts I have obtained.” He turned slowly to survey the wreckage around him. “But it seems I was mistakenly under the impression that you were a reasonable man I could do business with.”
I fought down another surge of irritation. We couldn’t stay here much longer. John Hobbs might have decided to look the other way, but he wouldn’t do so for much longer. There would be reports going in of an incident here and he would have to respond. “From Penny Royal’s planetoid?” I suggested.
“Yes,” said Straben. “I have them in a secure location and, despite this unfortunate mess,” Straben gestured about himself, “I am still prepared to do business.”
“So which of your vessels salvaged them?” I asked.
“The Cadiz—it got there before Hobbs or any of the other vultures.” Straben smiled as if in pleasant recollection. He was certainly a cool customer and was now growing more confident. “The objects concerned seem to be part of something larger and certainly contain U-space tech, though precisely what they are for is a puzzle.” The objects sounded precisely like what the Client was seeking, which was beyond suspicious. It was also the case that before coming down here I’d thoroughly checked the relevant details Tank had taken from the Layden’s data store. Straben was lying, though to what degree and precisely what his aims were was unclear.
“Wrong answer,” I said. “The Cadiz was in the prador Kingdom at the time.” Straben hid his shock well, but it was evident. “Do you honestly think I keep precise records of my ship itineraries?”
“Possibly not.” I shrugged. “But apparently you shut down your salvage operation decades ago.” I paused contemplatively for a moment. “In fact, as I understand it, John Hobbs would be the best to ask about artifacts from the planetoid since it seems his salvagers were the only ones that went there before everything of value was obliterated by some sort of chain reaction, and the artifacts he did obtain were routed directly to the Polity.”
“So John Hobbs might tell you,” said Straben, obviously thinking quickly now. “He was trying to nail down the market—make it exclusive.”
He paused, searching for further excuses and lies, so I quickly interjected, “Perhaps you could tell me about the warehouse you’ve been renovating—the one located on an asteroid in this system.” He definitely couldn’t hide his shock now. “Perhaps you might like to tell me why you felt the need to kit out the place with so much armament along with a hardfield caging system?”
“How can you—”
“You set the bait and that’s the trap,” I said.
Now he was lost for words. I gave him a little while, but he lost the struggle as Harriet moved up to stand beside him, leaned her head down and gave him a long sniff.
“No more lies,” I said, turning to Harriet. “Usual method: if he lies again I give you the nod and you bite off his right hand.”
Harriet danced from foot to foot, champed her jaws, then as usual licked round her mouth with her long red tongue.
“Now,” I continued, “what exactly is all this about?”
Straben just stood staring at Harriet for a long while. He shrugged, then sighed. “It’s about the reward,” he said.
“What reward?”
“I will need guarantees,” the man replied.
“You can guarantee that if you don’t answer my questions Harriet will first eat your hands. If that doesn’t work she’ll start on you from the feet up.”
“You are rather brutal and uncivilized in your dealings,” Straben observed primly. That was it; that was the limit. A man who cored and thralled human beings to sell to the prador was calling me uncivilized? I reached down to my thigh, opened the patch in my trousers, then mentally unlocked the hatch in my leg there. I took out the other gun and weighed it in my hand. Harriet, noting this, look a pace back. It didn’t look like much—just a heavy chromed revolver.
‘"Your last chance,” I said mildly.
Straben could obviously see I was feeling a bit testy. He quickly said, “A fortune in any form required, a Polity amnesty for all crimes, and a free fifty year pass into the Kingdom ratified by the King himself.”
Puzzling. The Polity never gave amnesties to the likes of Straben, and that the Kingdom and the Polity had agreed on some joint reward seemed just as unlikely.
“There’s some heavyweight action behind it,” Straben continued, now taking a step back and resting his weight against one of the desks. “I couldn’t believe it at first, but it really checks out.” He gestured vaguely upward. “Polity agents out there and direct confirmation from one of the watch station AIs. The King’s Guard are involved, too. I don’t know what you are mixed up in but both the prador and the Polity desperately want to get hold of you.”
“It is feasible that such rewards might be offered to negate some very serious threat.” It took me a moment to realize that Harriet had spoken. I eyed her carefully. Once we were back aboard the Coin Collector I felt we needed to have a long talk, and I needed to scan what was going on inside that reptilian skull of hers. However, I knew precisely what she was implying.
“I need to talk to the Client,” I said.
“Yes, I think you do,” Harriet agreed. “Shall we finish up here?” She tilted her head slightly, directing her gaze toward the gun I held.
There was nothing more to be learned from Straben. I returned my attention to the man and fired once, the kick jerking the barrel up and the shot going into his stomach and flinging him back across the desk. Despite that, the impact of the bullet had been toned down for the human form, since this gun had been designed to punch bullets through a prador’s natural armor.
The man lay gasping, then abruptly jerked, stretched out flat and went into convulsions. Black threads spread across his skin and his flesh began to swell. He emitted a gargling scream then slumped into stillness just as brown sprouts broke out of his skin like spear points, then began to inflate at their tips. These swellings, each rapidly growing to the size of a tennis ball, turned a darker brown and acquired widely scattered black scales.
“Fascinating,” said Harriet. “So it doesn’t take control of the h
ost—just kills quickly?”
“It’s weaponized,” I replied. “There’s no advantage in keeping the host alive since it’s spread by sporulation—and at a point of growth the host cannot survive.” Harriet glanced round at me.
“But sporulation has been retarded, I presume?”
“It has—I don’t want to kill off the whole colony here.”
She nodded thoughtfully, then asked, “I am right in assuming that this is based on ophiocordyceps unilateralis or as it is known on Earth, the ‘zombie ant fungus’?”
“It is,” I said, slightly stunned by her sharpness.
“And that is just one of your bullets?”
“Yes.”
“Fascinating,” she repeated.
This sharp new Harriet would be, I thought, fascinated to know that this particular weaponized parasitic fungus would also be an effective way to kill another creature, a multiply renewing one. But that wasn’t something I wanted to think about too much, especially with another conversation due with the Client....
Upon returning to the Coin Collector I delayed and delayed, but the Client was not to be denied—always testing its connections to my mind, always pushing.
Time.
The stabbing sensation in my head told me I had delayed too long. I closed my eyes and began numbing all the nerve connections to my artificial body, highlighting the other intrusive connections in my skull. The link between me and the thing sitting in the tank, which in turn connected to the ship’s U-space communicator, opened up. And all at once I returned to hell.
Rage and suspicion came first, with that forever present undercurrent of loss. I stretched a hundred feet tall; a conjoined chain of insect forms reaching toward the roof of the deep volcanic chamber, a boiling wind blowing across the nearby lake of lava raising the temperature just enough. Hive creature and hive, perpetually dying and giving birth, immortal, the Client clung now to ersatz trunk of a giant tree being fashioned of silica crystals by one of its exo-forms—a thing like a giant horseshoe crab suspended from the roof by a long jointed tail. It read me, and peeled its upper section from the tree in its fear, emitting a pheromone fog, distributing it with the beating of glassy wings. Exo-forms down below like manta rays on spider legs, hoovering up and crunching down old fallen husks from past renewals, bleated and bumped against each other in bewilderment.
Synaesthetic interpreters finally cut in as I contained a scream in my skull, and turned complex organic chemicals to something I could truly understand. Then came a pause, with a scene replaying in my mind: my killing of Gad Straben. I felt an avidity, then came words.
“It is time for you to come to me,” the Client told me, a whole avalanche of meaning falling in behind the words. “The danger is too great.”
The connection faded. Time passed and I reconnected to my artificial body. I sat for an hour in my chair feeling as if on the point of death and slowly, ever so slowly, brought myself back to my world.
“Harriet,” I said, my voice grating.
“I’m here,” she replied from very close by.
“It seems our search must end because the Client thinks the danger from the Polity and the Kingdom is too great,” I said, testing the words out loud for their veracity.
“The search is over,” said Harriet, and there seemed a lot more meaning behind her words than plain parroting. She asked, “You have the coordinates?”
I looked around at her. She was standing right beside my chair and seemed far too eager and interested for my liking. I suddenly knew, with absolute certainty, that to supply her with those coordinates would put me in immediate danger. How did I know? I’m not sure, but it seemed to me the old Harriet was right back—the one I trusted to complete a mission for pay, but no more than that.
“The coordinates have been sent, but not to me,” I lied, now sitting upright. “Tank has them.”
Harriet swung round to gaze at the object concerned and seemed about to say something more when the drag of the ineffable took us, and the Coin Collector entered U-space. I stood up, Harriet swinging her attention back toward me. I did not know how far we would have to travel to reach the Client’s location but, this being an ancient prador vessel, I knew it would probably have to drop out of U-space to cool off, and I felt that on those occasions I would have to watch Harriet very closely.
During the first time the Coin Collector surfaced from U-space I was prepared, but Harriet seemed to go into that childlike lost puppy phase and showed no sign of acting against me in any way. I even gave her some very dangerous openings—ones that might have resulted in me ending up in pieces on the deck—but she ignored them. Perhaps I had been deluding myself about her? Perhaps I was so used to what had seemed to be her mental decline that my suspicions had only been aroused by it ceasing and reversing? I decided thereafter to take some simple precautions when around her, like always carrying my two weapons, but no more than that. She deserved at least some of my trust, and I had work to do.
The Client had summoned me to it and perforce I had to go, but its orders were no more complex than a summons, and that gave me some freedom of action. I started with the thetics, wiping their base programming and designing something of my own. I needed them to be able to carry out certain instructions and, most difficult of all, I needed them to be able to continue carrying out those instructions even if I ordered them to do otherwise. The simple reality was that in close proximity the Client would be able to seize complete control of my mind and thus, through me, the thetics. I needed them to continue, to give distraction, to give me a chance....
The second time we surfaced from U-space Harriet came and found me in the Captain’s Sanctum, deeply internalized, trying to gauge what resistance I had to the Client’s control of me, if any at all. She could have killed me then because I was completely vulnerable what with most of my nervous system shut down. Instead she just walked over to stand before me and, as I returned to a normal state of consciousness and responsiveness, she spoke.
“There’s something you need to see,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
She just turned around and headed back toward the door. I weighed pros and cons as I stood up, then I decided to follow her. It struck me as unlikely she was leading me somewhere so as to attack me, since she could have done the job just then. She waited outside the sanctum beside the scooter I had last used to get here, dipped her head toward it, then turned and set off along the corridor. I mounted up and followed, and with a glance back she increased her pace. She led me into the cargo section of the ship, which was a place I did not often visit, then to a wide square door into a particular hold space. As I dismounted I recognized this door at once, but kept my own counsel as she nosed the control beside it to send it rumbling and shuddering to one side.
I followed her in and surveyed my surroundings as the lights came on. The space was enormous and the cargo it contained had not changed much over the years since I had last been here. The large first-child who had been the captain of this ship rested in one corner like a crashed flying saucer, most of its limbs still intact but now one of its claws having dropped away. Further along one wall from this prador corpse, second-children had been stacked like, well, crabs on a seafood stall. This stack had collapsed on one side and, noting some movement there, I walked over. As I approached an eight inch long trilobite louse scuttled out, heading straight for my legs. I kicked it hard, slamming it into the wall above the stack of second-child carapaces.
“It’s because of the ship recharging with air,” I said. “There must have been ship louse eggs somewhere, and moisture in the air must have reversed the desiccation of these.” I gestured to the dead before me, including a mass of third-children and smaller prador infants piled in the further corner.
I hadn’t seen anything but dead ship lice aboard when I returned to consciousness here a century ago. Then the ship entire had been almost in vacuum, and when I first ventured down here the erstwhile crew had been vacuum dried. G
radually the ship’s automatic systems had recharged the whole vessel with air, but it had taken decades.
“The lice are unimportant,” Harriet intoned, her seriousness undermined when she had to kick away a louse trying to crawl up her leg.
“I’ve seen all this,” I said, gesturing around. “I know that the Client slaughtered the prador aboard. So what, the prador slaughtered its entire species.” I didn’t mention how the way the corpses had been sorted and neatly stacked always bothered me. Had the Client kept these as a food source? Could it actually ingest this alien meat?
“You’ve seen all this,” Harriet parroted.
She abruptly turned away and paced across the hold to the far wall. I sighed and walked after her, but as I drew closer I suddenly realized that there was another square door in this far wall. I paused, scanned about myself, then realized I had never spotted it before because I’d never felt any inclination to walk this far into this dim mausoleum. Harriet nosed a control beside this new door and, rumbling and shaking, it too drew open. I followed her inside.
More dead, I realized, and more ship lice. I gazed at the neat heap—stacked like firewood—for a couple of seconds before reality caught up with me. These weren’t prador; they were human corpses. I stood staring for a long drawn-out moment, then forced myself into motion and walked over to inspect them more closely. The corpses here were also vacuum dried and many of them had suffered the depredations of ship lice and in places had been chewed down to the bone. I turned my attention to one nearby that had obviously been dragged from the stack by lice and completely stripped of flesh. The lice had ignored the uniform, obviously getting inside it to dine on the meat. I recognized the uniform at once. I was looking at the skeleton of an ECS commando.
Moving closer, I saw further uniforms, but also a lot of casual dress, a high proportion of clean-room labwear, and the occasional spacesuit and vacuum survival suit. There had to be over a hundred people here.
