by Neal Asher
‘Boris! Up anchor!’ Ambel bellowed. Then to his fellows he said, ‘I think we should… run.’ He really had no need to say that last word, as by then they were all sprinting off ahead of him. Shortly they reached the ship, and while the juniors scrambled up on deck, Anne and Sild threw up to them the sacks of clams. Ambel dropped his own sacks for them to deal with, braced himself against the side of the Treader, and pushed, hard. The woodwork before him creaked and groaned, and he sank down into the sand up to his thighs. Heaving himself out again, he found another spot and pushed again. The last sack now up on deck, Sild and Anne climbed aboard as the ship slowly drifted out from the sand bank. It was already a few metres clear, Galegrabber unfurling and turning into the wind, when Ambel leaped the gap, caught a ladder, and scrambled aboard.
‘Not too close to the wind,’ he said casually, striding over to take up his blunderbuss from its hooks. Boris was now loading the deck cannon while Anne turned the helm.
‘Quickest way,’ Anne replied.
Ambel shook his head. ‘We need deep water. This breeze’ll take us straight over there.’ He gestured towards where the remains of the leech were disappearing into the sea. Anne nodded and swung the helm back a little. Galegrabber turned both himself and the fabric sails to the optimum angle.
A tense few minutes passed as the Treader eased out into deeper water.
‘ ‘Bout now,’ said Ambel.
Anne swung the helm over, and the ship turned full into the wind to take it past the grey beaches. As they drew athwart the groove left in the grey sand where the leech had lain, something groped stonily along the hull for a moment and slapped the rudder so that the helm spun from Anne’s grip. She quickly grabbed hold again and straightened up. A tentacle, more rounded in section this time, and with a pallet-knife tip, speared into the air behind them and slammed down on the sea, spraying them with spume.
‘Easy now,’ said Ambel.
Further long minutes passed and then, as the packet-worm corals dropped behind them, they began to breathe easier.
‘Same one?’ asked Peck, hugging his shotgun.
‘I reckon,’ said Ambel. The Captain then eyed the deck, which was scattered with sacks spilling amber-clams. ‘Best we get them shelled quick and into vinegar,’ he said. Later, when Sild opened a particularly large amberclam, yelled delightedly and held up a pearl to show everyone, Ambel grunted noncommittally.
* * * *
So bloated with leech flesh she was ballooning from her shell, the giant whelk slapped her tentacles in frustration against the edge of the underwater cliff. Behind her the seabed sloped up steeply to the beaches and packet-worm corals. She could feel the constant vibration of the long tubular worms boring their burrows into the rock as they sought the minerals they required, and felt a sudden surge of anger. She wanted to slide back to dig them out and rip them to pieces, as if it were their fault. But still she clung to the edge, watching the ship’s hull moving away above her. When it at last became difficult to discern, she directed her dinner-plate eyes downwards.
The cliff dropped hundreds of metres into a rocky terrain scattered with forests of kelp trees, tangled with vine wracks, and prowled by pods of glisters. Though the glisters would be unable to actually hurt her, their constant probing attacks could prove very irritating, and this would slow her down just as much as the terrain itself. She might easily lose the scent; lose the ship.
The giant whelk knew that her own intelligence had increased due to her previous efforts and requirements. She could feel the increasing heaviness of the organ inside her that was the source of that increase. Now also available to her were memories she had never before needed, and one of them was of gliding through the depths like a heirodont. This further frustrated her: the knowledge that at one time she had swum, rather then dragged herself along the bottom. She strained away from the cliff edge, yearned for that ability again.
Her guts rumbled, their load of leech flesh churning acidically, and she began to pump them. After a moment she lifted on a massive fart. Huge bubbles of gas boiled out around her, and she felt the rush of nutrients pumping around her ichor-stream. Then something inside her wrenched open painfully, up and back into her shell, some occlusion. Her shell crackled and, turning one eye, she observed flakes of deep encrustation peeling away from her living shell and falling off. Pressure grew and again she lifted up trying to expel it, but this did not pass through its usual route. The pressure dropped and the occlusion wrenched further open. Still watching her shell, she saw noxious clouds squirting from hundreds of raw little orifices that had opened up in it. Her guts continued rumbling and sloshing, until eventually gas began bubbling from her shell itself, and the orifices then closed. Realizing she was now much lighter, she rose up on her tentacles, lifting her fleshy skirt off the ground. She spread her skirt, engulfing cubic metres of sea water, then slammed it closed again, driving herself up and out, over the cliff edge. She began to fall, but shrugged her shell again and tonnes of encrustation slewed off it into the depths. Her shell now possessed the colouration, pattern and shape of a juvenile. Engulfing more sea water she tilted towards the distant ship’s hull, and jetted on.
10
Land Heirodont:
there are many thousands of species of this creature catalogued, and probably more yet to find. They range in size from creatures as small as a pinhead to the wood pig, which can grow as large as an elephant. All of them are herbivores. Fossil evidence proves that there were once carnivorous varieties, and that heirodonts dominated the biosphere before the rise of the leeches. Their overall appearance is vaguely mammalian, with heirodonts being comparable to many Terran animals, though possessing the mandipular mouthparts of insects. There are two sexes, and the females give birth to fully developed young carrying a thick layer of back meat. No other kind of offspring would survive to adulthood, for the land heirodont spends a life of pain feeding upon foliage and bark, while perpetually being fed upon by falling leeches. This lifetime of pain is little different for the ocean heirodont -
Since the spaceship had stopped moving and shut down what sounded like large turbines, the weird Prador had been coming to fetch its captives regularly. In the last five hours it had taken four more of them. Now just Lannias, his wife Shalen, and himself were left and, by sitting as far from the door as he could, Orbus hoped it would be the other two that the Prador would come for next. They seemed ready—almost anxious to join their fellows in whatever hell the monster provided. Even so, that would only delay matters for Orbus. There would be no escape from this. By the way the drone had come at them from the sea, the pressure changes he had felt, the sounds and the movements of this spaceship, he surmised they were deep in Spatterjay’s ocean.
Captain Orbus sighed and leant back against the rough wall, transferring his gaze to a big leaf-shaped louse creeping towards his leg. A couple of these had already nipped him, and he supposed they had developed a taste for human flesh—their main purpose being to clean up food scraps the Prador dropped. He waited until the louse’s front end began to rear, antennae waving and tri-hooked mandibles opening, then snatched the thing up. Its back curled around his hand as it tried to stab him with its ovipositor. Counting the large outer legs and the short spiky inner legs, he wondered for a moment how close a kin it might be to the monsters after which it kept house, then he drew his knife and began hacking away those multiple legs. Shortly he was left with just its flat armoured body, still bearing mandibles and antennae. Now being quite proficient at this, he thrust in behind the mouthparts and levered. With a crunch the mandibles popped out, and he tore them away from gristly flesh and tossed them aside. He then worked his knife in along the carapace edge, stuck his thumbs in, and folded the body open like a book. The green sac at the back was edible, as one of the now removed crewmen had discovered, though it smelt of shit and naphtha. Orbus cut it out and discarded it before using the tip of his knife to winkle out the soft bits from the creature’s many internal compartments.
They tasted something like raw hammer whelk, and there was just enough to stave off his hunger.
Lannias and Shalen, Orbus noted, had not eaten in some time, and showed no inclination to dine on the lice coming near them, rather waiting until the creatures first bit, then crushing them with their fists. The two were apparently competing to see which could end up with the most sets of louse mandibles embedded in their legs. This, Orbus felt, was adequate demonstration of how twisted his own crew had become, and how twisted he himself had become to encourage it. It almost seemed that what would soon happen to him was a deserved punishment.
He tossed away the empty shell and heaved himself upright, noticing how deeply blue the other two looked, and how their ridiculous giggles kept growing louder. He himself was not so blue yet; his diet of ship lice must be staving off the change in just the same way as did dome-grown food. Stretching his aching limbs he realized the other two were now staring at him.
‘Ca’in,’ said Lannias, smiling brightly, unable to articulate the ‘pt’ because of what was now growing in his mouth.
Orbus just looked away and tried to ignore him, not liking the immediate urge he felt to go over and kick the man insensible. Shalen started giggling uncontrollably. She thrust her hand down the front of her trousers and began playing with herself. She seemed unable to keep her eyes still and her chin was wet with drool.
‘Captsss!’ she hissed.
Lannias stood up. Orbus recognized the man’s expression as one possessed to a lesser extent by all his old crew. But now it turned the man’s features grotesque. Lannias drew his own skinning knife and began stabbing its tip into his own chest as if to test it. Surely he didn’t think himself capable of taking on an Old Captain? Apparently he did for, when mutilating himself abruptly became too much of a bore, he suddenly rushed towards Orbus.
Orbus crouched, and slashed his own knife in an arc before him as a warning. But Lannias did not even slow. Orbus straight-armed him in the face with a flat hand, snapping the man’s head back and flinging him to the floor, then circled round.
‘Want a little tussle do you?’ he asked nastily.
The hell with it, he thought; this might not improve their situation, but it would make him feel better.
Lannias rose quickly, his tongue wagging as he spat out a couple of teeth. Grinning, he jumped forward, slashing at his Captain’s face. Orbus swayed back and cut up, opening the man’s forearm. Then there came a sound that sent a shudder through him. The door was opening again.
‘Ca-a ca-a ca-a!’
Lannias tried to bury his knife in Orbus’s guts.
‘Fucking idiot!’
Orbus slapped down Lannias’s knife hand and cut hard across his face, bursting one of the man’s eyes and feeling his knife crunch through the gristle of Lannias’s nose.
‘Urg,’ said Lannias, staggering back.
Suddenly a weight came down on Orbus’s back, arms and legs wrapping around him, and something wet licked round his ear.
‘Nicesss Captainsss,’ said Shalen.
He reached back, grabbed clothing, ducked, and slammed her down on the floor.
‘Damned bitch! You…’
A huge claw closed hard around his waist. He felt several ribs breaking and he vomited a stream of louse meat.
‘Fuck you! Fuck you!’ he kept repeating as the Prador retreated with him to the door. He snapped his knife trying to puncture the adamantine claw, struggled to no avail, and wished with all his heart that he had some sprine.
* * * *
The third day’s Intertox injection immediately stopped her struggling against the braided monofilament restraints. Janer was glad about that—her bonds had been stretching alarmingly. Her breathing became stentorian, rattling that horrible flaccid tongue in her mouth. For a second she looked at him with tired sanity, before her eyes started rolling again. He uncapped a bottle of supplement and watched her speculatively, not liking what he must do next and wondering if the clamp gripping her head would hold. He stepped forwards, thrust the bottle neck deep into her mouth, and pinched her nose closed. She struggled at first, thrashing like a beached turbul, then abruptly started swallowing. Once she had drained half the bottle, her eyes opened wide and she stared at him directly. He withdrew the bottle, recapped it, and wiped her chin. Enough for now. As she closed her eyes and slept, Janer moved away.
Having now had time to look around, Janer fully realized what tasks awaited himself and Erlin—if she did not decide to throw Bloc off the side of the ship when she recovered. Four rows of chainglass tanks extended for hundreds of metres in both directions, two rows on either side of a wide aisle interspersed with three wide pillars which enclosed mast stairwells, and the same arrangement on the deck above. With each tank came a set of equipment similar to that they had used on Sable Keech himself: a chrome autodoc, diagnosticer, sets of body probes with optic connections, and a voice generator with an assortment of connections for the varying kinds of reification hardware. Pipes ran along the floor beside the tanks, and connected into each. Others ran along the ceiling, also with spurs leading down to each tank. These were obviously for filling and draining them, but he wondered what with? They had used sea water as an amniot for Keech. It contained microbes as hardy as any other Spatterjay life form, and had been a nightmare to sterilize. There were also stretchers and trolleys here—no doubt intended to bring in the half-dead half-alive reifs after their religious experience on the Little Flint—and there were restraint tables like the one Erlin currently occupied, for holding reifs should they go into conflict with their own cybermotors, as had Keech.
Janer turned back to Erlin, wondering how long he should leave it before administering yet another injection. He watched her for a while, then went out to take a turn around the outside of the deckhouse as the sun set. He next took the stairwell down to the crew quarters in the stern, obtained food in the galley, and chatted for a while with some bored Hoopers sitting around in the mess; before returning to the Tank Rooms to sleep the night away on the table next to Erlin. The following morning he administered more Intertox. The day after that she tried to talk, but her tongue still got in the way. It did, however, seem to be shrinking, and her colour was less blue. Another night and the best part of the next day passed before he dared consider freeing her.
‘What the hell is this?’ Erlin asked, as she shakily stepped out across the main deck towards the port rail. The sea stretched endlessly before them, the dark green of laurel with not an island in sight, but the vista divided by ratlines and stay cables. She eyed some reifications standing a short distance away, scanned around the ship, then turned and peered up at the forest of masts, spars, cables and fabric sails in which lurked the three sentient sails, two living and one debatably so. ‘Bastards,’ she added.
‘This is the Sable Keech,’ said Janer. ‘I was willingly recruited. I gather you did not come of your own free will?’
‘Damned right I didn’t, though the alternative at the time didn’t seem so good.’ Erlin suddenly looked uncomfortable and added, ‘At least that’s what any sane person would think.’
Janer glanced at her questioningly, then wondered if he had released the restraints too soon when she went on to describe her nearly terminal encounter with a giant whelk.
‘Why weren’t you with Ambel?’
‘I needed a break,’ was all she allowed, then went on, ‘What’s this all about here?’
‘You’re on a ship full of reifications sailing towards the Little Flint—sort of following in the footsteps of Keech. A pilgrimage.’ Janer stabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the Tank Room. ‘I think you can guess what happens when we reach that destination.’
‘Whose bright idea is this?’ Erlin asked.
‘A reif called Taylor Bloc. He was financed by Lineworld—’
Erlin snorted at that.
Janer continued, ‘Yes, I know. But with a little help from a hooder he now has them off his back.’
‘Hooder?’
‘So objecting to being kidnapped, and demanding I be released, might not be too bright. Anything else I need to know?’
Janer shrugged. ‘Some things going on here I haven’t quite fathomed yet, but that’s about it.’ He grimaced. One of those things concerned Isis Wade, but he was not about to complicate matters by telling Erlin about that. He gazed back along the deck, observing a group making its way down an outer stair from the bridge. Soon the group was close enough for him to recognize some of its members. He pointed. ‘Here comes Bloc and a few others.’
‘Damn me,’ said Erlin, as they drew closer.
‘Erlin!’ bellowed Captain Ron. He was the first to reach them and he swept Erlin up in a hug.
‘Put me down, oaf.’ After he did so she continued, ‘Janer here neglected to mention you. Last I heard you were off-planet. So what are you doing here?’
Ron waved a hand about. ‘I’m the Captain.’
Erlin glanced at Janer and raised an eyebrow, before turning to the others. ‘And Forlam’s here, too,’ she said, her tone neutral. ‘How are you doing, Forlam?’
‘I do well enough.’ Forlam looked slightly guilty, for some reason.
Erlin turned to the reifs. ‘And one of you three is Taylor Bloc.’
Bloc stepped forwards, from between Aesop and Bones. ‘That would be me.’
Janer could tell nothing from his tone, but doubtless he was wondering what Erlin’s immediate reaction would be to being kidnapped and hauled all the way out here. He wanted to warn her to be very careful, but need not have worried.
