by Neal Asher
All around robot arms terminating in intricate hardware twitched and shifted in anxious anticipation. Tanks held variously coloured fluids. One tank held something that looked like a human spine sculpted in metal and wound with cords of washed-of-colour muscle. Another tank held a similarly constructed human arm. Janssen surveyed all of this through the clean room window then switched his attention to the technician seated at her complex console with its displays for the indicators of human life.
Everything was flat-lined.
‘You don’t get much deader than this,’ she said.
‘I disagree, Lily,’ said Janssen. ‘True death is when there’s nothing left.’
She conceded that with a shrug.
‘You can begin,’ he said.
Lily nodded once and began working her consoles. Screens flickered and changed, loading bars expanded. After a moment, she sat back and crossed her arms.
‘Automatic now,’ she said, ‘unless it finds something that needs my attention.’
Numerous robots arms folded in to Trepanan’s corpse and began cutting, pulling and levering. These arms began conveying away burned flesh and organs, chunks of charred bone like the detritus from some grotesque barbecue. If was fast, AI fast, and soon the body was a completely empty cavity. Another arm brought in a bar trailing skeins of wires and pressed it down on the exposed spine. This issued thousands of connector-like insect legs that folded in and pushed between the vertebrae.
‘When can I go in?’ asked Janssen.
‘Any time now,’ Lily replied. ‘There’s no need for an aseptic environment in there, nor will there be.’
Janssen moved over to a door beside the window, palmed the reader on the wall beside it and stepped in as it opened. He walked up to the surgical table, robotic arms shifting out of his path and folding away.
‘Enders Trepanan,’ he said.
‘One moment,’ said Lily via the intercom. ‘Okay. Now.’
‘Enders Trepanan,’ Janssen said again.
The corpse opened its eyes, the head tilted further with the pipes feeding in underneath it shifting as they took pressure. Trepanan saw his body and groaned, bloody fluid flying from his mouth. This then cut off, air hissing from his mouth, and his eyes rolled up into his head.
‘Just some adjustments,’ said Lily. ‘Oh yes – didn’t shut off the afferent nerves. You can try again now.’
‘Enders?’
Trepanan’s eyes came back down again and he focused on Janssen.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘You’re dead,’ Janssen explained. ‘However, your services are still required.’
Enders just moved his mouth wetly, fluid running from one side.
Janssen walked closer and sat on the edge of the table, arms folded. ‘Now, tell me about Trader John…’
Part 2
Logan gazed through his monocular out across the flats. A crawler, just running on solar and moving slowly across the mudstone, had stone people walking along on either side, probing for potential wash holes, which showed on the surface only as dimples or smaller punctures in the rock. They were looking for star gems – sapphires, rubies, diamonds and other precious jewels.
They were a family unit, a trailer behind the crawler containing their equipment and their self-inflating tents for this expedition. But it wasn’t them Logan had been tracking. He swung his monocular to the side. The janglers had halted, four dismounting from Flat scooters and more stepping out of their crawler. Of course, all of them were heavily armed. Perhaps they had stopped for a beer or two before getting down to business. Logan lowered his monocular and walked back to his scooter. He unbuttoned his long coat, folded it and put it in one of the panniers. Now he could easily reach the pulse gun on his right hip and the rail-beader on his left, its power cable plugged into its battery on his belt. He mounted his scooter, made sure his laser carbine was free in its holster beside the pure water fuel tank, and started the vehicle.
Caterpillar treads biting into the rock, he shot out across the Flat, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him. A short while later the stone people saw him coming, but they did not react much. They thought they were perfectly safe.
As he drew closer, he spied the patriarch of this family. He was easy to spot: a tall thin man with long lip tendrils and grey skin. Old and tough, but gentle. Logan slowed and pulled up nearby. Climbed off his scooter and walked over.
‘What are you?’ asked the man.
‘I’m Logan – I am the new monitor,’ he replied.
The old man shook his head. ‘Earth lawman?’
‘Yes, and you’ve got janglers ranging further from Godrun. There’s a hunting party of them here now and they’ve been watching you.’
The old man tilted his head and gazed at Logan suspiciously. ‘Janglers here… So what good is an Earth lawman to us?’
‘Earth law again applies in the city and out here, and in Godrun,’ Logan stated.
‘For how long?’ the old man looked bitter. ‘Can we return to our homes in the mountains?’
‘It’s different now,’ said Logan tightly. ‘The prador have agreed to Earth law applying here so long as there is no big military presence. That agreement has been locked in for a century.’
‘Tell that to Monitor Trepanan.’ The old man eyed Logan carefully. ‘Or what you can find of him after Trader John fried him with a laser.’
‘It will be different now,’ Logan insisted.
‘We will see…’
Logan cooled. ‘Whatever way it goes, you should stay off the Flat for a while.’
The old man dipped his head in grudging acquiescence. ‘And you?’
‘I’m going to talk to those janglers.’
The man turned and whistled, waved his three-fingered hand above his head and his people started heading back towards to crawler.
‘Luck,’ he said.
Logan smiled without humour. ‘It’s not me that needs it.’
The janglers were packing up their temporary camp. They seemed in no hurry, knowing their vehicle could catch up with their prey quickly. They’d set up a table and yes, there were bottles of beer on it, a cooler on the ground beside it. Three sat in deck chairs by this table, others sat on the mudstone checking over stun guns.
Logan drove in slowly, aware of hands on or reaching for weapons. He halted, climbed off his scooter and pulled off his goggles, pausing for a moment in introspection. Then he sauntered over, assessing them. A thickset guy, with Marsman tattoos on his face, sat at the nearest the table, while the woman sitting nearby clad in a modern envirosuit he knew had been born on Earth. Others were local humans and one a stone man hybrid who had cropped his tendrils and had some cosmetic work to build him a nose.
‘Do you know why you are called janglers?’ he called as he approached the table. He came to a halt, hands on his hips.
‘Because of ancient slaving techniques,’ replied the woman.
He studied her. Deela was tough and pretty with an envirosuit that clung to her curves. She was the boss here, but he’d known that for a long time, just as he knew her name.
‘Quite.’ He nodded. ‘The chains you use to manacle your victims… they jangle.’
‘We don’t use chains,’ she replied.
‘No, nor will you use inducers or slave collars today, or ever again.’
Deela stood up from her deckchair. Meanwhile the Marsman drew a pulse gun from his hip and put it on the table before him. Logan tracked all this, just as he was aware of the two moving round behind him.
‘Says who?’ she asked.
‘Says Polity monitor Logan.’ He paused and looked around at them. ‘That would be me.’
The Marsman cleared his throat. ‘Last lawman didn’t do so well. And Earth has no jurisdiction here.’
Logan smiled. ‘You haven’t been keeping up on events. That changed precisely one hour ago. This world is now under the jurisdiction of Earth. It was just
a case of a little negotiation with the prador. They don’t really care what happens here – they just don’t want a big military presence this close to their border.’
‘So Earth sent one monitor,’ said the woman, grinning at this madness.
‘Seems so,’ said Logan.
‘Dreyfus,’ Deela said the Marsman, ‘shut this idiot up.’
‘Predictable,’ said Logan.
Dreyfus snatched for his pulse gun.
Logan tipped his left holster forwards so the weapon pointed behind him, and pushed it back. It hummed and spat, shooting out of the bottom of the holster as he turned, drawing his pulse gun with his right hand. He heard the fleshy impacts and oomphs of surprise from behind as he fired his pulse gun three times. Dreyfus flew back, following the back of his head to the mudstone. The hybrid in the other deckchair similarly followed part of his head to the ground. Logan dropped and rolled, automatic fire cutting above him. He shot under the table taking out the Deela’s kneecap, shot twice and brought down another jangler. Then he came up with a weapon in each hand. Short bursts from the bead gun had two twirling in atomised blood. Another ran for his scooter. Logan was about to open fire again when three shots hit him in the chest. He staggered back, but fired once with his pulse gun, blowing away Deela’s elbow. She shrieked, dropping her weapon. He walked round. One man was crawling along the ground leaving a slime trail of blood. He shot him through the back of the head, then glanced over at Deela. ‘Don’t go away now.’
‘Body armour,’ she spat.
Logan probed the bullet holes through his shirt. There was no blood.
Returning to his scooter, he drew his laser carbine and calmly checked it over. After a moment, he flicked up the sight, shouldered it, and aimed at the now distant escaping jangler on his scooter. He shot twice, the carbine crackling, impacts to the right of the scooter. He adjusted and shot again. A short burst. The scooter and its rider tumbled, shedding debris in a cloud of dust. He put the carbine away and returned to Deela.
‘Now, time for us to chat.’
‘Fuck you,’ she replied, obviously in a lot of pain.
‘Medicate yourself,’ he said.
She stared at him for a long moment then reached to take an ampule from her belt pouch. She stabbed it into her biceps and after a moment sighed with relief.
‘Again. We chat.’
‘Why should I? You’ll kill me anyway.’
Logan shrugged. ‘You’re a jangler. You know the routine. Do you want me to torture you and pump you full of serum?’
‘Just let me live.’
‘Okay, why not.’ He waved a dismissive hand, apparently not bothered. ‘You answer my questions and I let you live. Now, where exactly is Trader John?’
‘He’s out at Riverside – at his house.’
‘But I guess if his operation starts falling apart he’ll be back soon enough?’
‘You guess right.’
‘How many stone people enslaved in the jewel mines now?’
Deela shrugged, then wished she hadn’t. ‘’bout a thousand.’
‘Where is Emily Trepanan?’
‘What?’
‘Emily Trepanan – the wife of the previous monitor. You know. The monitor who shot John in the chest but didn’t finish the job. The one he laser-burned and threw in the river.’
‘What?’
‘Where is Emily Trepanan?’
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘Okay.’ Logan stood.
‘You said you wouldn’t kill me.’
‘Quite.’ He drew his bead gun and fired short burst into the jangler’s remaining scooters, one of which caught fire. He fired a longer burst into the crawler and shuddering and spraying debris it seemed to deflate on its treads. He must have hit a battery because power also arced to the ground.
‘You might survive.’ He shrugged. ‘People have survived much worse.’
He headed back to his scooter.
Logan gazed at Godrun and frowned. Only one way to do this, and that was to just go on in and take the long vacant position of monitor – the lone lawman, the sheriff of this town.
He started up his scooter and continued along the road, entering Godrun, studying the people on the pavements. Many janglers were evident, also town residents and workers from the top end. He slowed by a party of stone people trudging along in a line. They were clad in heavy but ragged work clothes and all wore induction thrall devices attached to their temples. Their handler strode ahead of them – a big ugly brute with a cattle goad he really did not need. That, Logan decided, would be stopping very soon, but he needed to prepare.
Finally, he arrived at a single cylindrical building with wide chainglass windows and bullet holes in the walls. As he drew up, it surprised him to see the front door still intact, but then it was armoured. He dismounted, took a rucksack out of one pannier and walked up to the door. Looking up he saw the security drone dangling from its power cable, one of its lasers hanging out and bullet holes through its crablike body. However, it activated as he drew close. Red eyes ignited on its rim, it swivelled as best it could to face him.
‘Good morning,’ it grated.
‘Good morning, drone,’ he replied. ‘Polity monitor Logan reporting for duty. I’ve come to fill E. L. Trepanan’s shoes.’
After a long pause, the drone said, ‘Yeah… right.’
‘Has this station been breached?’
‘Nah, some janglers used me as target practice but otherwise weren’t interested.’
‘Very well… open.’
Locks disengaged all around the door and it swung inwards. Logan entered a reception area: seats all around, a chainglass window and an office lying beyond. Though only one monitor had ever attended, the station could take more staff. He headed to the door at the back, placed his hand against a palm reader and it opened for him. He climbed the stairs, entered a large apartment and dumped his rucksack on the sofa. Walking over to the window while stripping off his shirt and gazed out. Already gawkers had appeared. The news of an arrival here would travel fast.
His shirt off revealed his naked chest. He inspected circular scars on his skin then folded his forefinger in to touch one of four skin controls on the palm of his hand. The bullet marks just faded away. Next entering the bedroom, he opened a wardrobe and studied the clothes inside. He took out a uniform in blue and white and inspected it for a moment, then shook his head and put it back. He found a T-shirt and put it on. Another wardrobe revealed woman’s clothing.
‘Like you never left, Emily Trepanan,’ he said, closed the wardrobe and turned away. Over at a wall he gazed at a picture. Here stood Monitor E L Trepanan in military uniform, Emily at his side with her arm linked through his.
He reached out and touched the picture, then closed his eyes for a second. His face rippled and his cheekbones and jawline shifted, his nose sagged a little and his eyes changed colour. But for his dusty blond hair he now looked exactly like Trepanan. He smiled.
‘Hello Enders,’ he said.
After a moment, the smile faded. He took his fingers from the picture and turned away, his features shifting again and returning to their earlier setting. Seating himself at a console, he turned it on. A film screen rose out of the top and flicked on to show the monitor logo. He passed his hand across in front of it and it flicked to the image of a chrome face.
‘Logan,’ it said.
‘You,’ he said.
‘Evidently,’ it replied
‘I expected Janssen, not the Embassy AI – is your oversight necessary?’
‘The situation is complicated here,’ said the artificial intelligence. ‘Earth law needs to be established, but we cannot be too heavy handed, since that might aggravate the prador.’
‘Very well.Monitor Logan reporting in.’
‘Yes, your arrival has been noted,’ replied the AI. ‘The woman you left alive called for help and other janglers picked her up. Now,
Trader John is aware that his profit margins might be threatened, and has put a price on your head.’
‘Then all is as it should be.’
‘Do you require back-up now?’
‘No more than I asked for. You’re sending me a deputy?’
‘Yes, I am sending you someone who was in the service – from the heavy infantry.’
‘That’s interesting. Who?’
‘He’s an armoured antipersonnel unit.’
Logan said nothing for a moment, then, ‘I asked for something a little less… effective.’
‘You asked for a deputy.’
‘You also said you did not want to get heavy-handed and annoy the prador.’
‘There are innocent people to be protected.’
Logan raised an eyebrow. ‘In Godrun?’
‘I am aware of your opinion of this town and its people,’ said the AI. ‘When I say innocent people, I am talking about the stone people.’
‘Very well,’ said Logan. ‘But this drone must stay covert. I need time. I need Trader John to come out here…’
‘I know what you need. But I must make my own cold calculations.’
‘Very well. Speak to you later.’ Logan cut the connection.
The offices of the town council stood out from the foamstone houses all around. The ugly block with wide marble steps leading up to a colonnaded entry looked out of another century. Wearing the monitor uniform, Logan strode up to the panelled double door, noting a security drone depending inside the colonnade. He tried the door but found it firmly closed, so he stepped to a com panel beside it and hit the buzzer. The screen came on to show a mousy blonde-haired woman.
‘How can I help you?’ she asked.
‘Polity monitor Logan,’ he replied. ‘I am here to serve notice of jurisdiction. Net notice has already been served so you are aware of this.’
‘I’m sorry, but the Council is in session with the Mayor – they cannot be interrupted.’
‘Under net notice you will be aware that I have right of entry into all public properties. I suggest you open the door.’
