Lockdown Tales

by Neal Asher

  A great fleshy tail ran along one wall, steadily growing thicker as we progressed until it filled half the tunnel. Thereafter it developed splits and webs of flesh running like bird bones across the tunnel. This looked like damage to me. We were close. Then, ahead, we saw a thick wormish body, its hue dark brown in the surrounding pale flesh. So what now? I hadn’t really thought much beyond this point. We needed to kill this thing. Before I could do anything, Smurk pushed past and through gaps in the fleshy web to drive his vibro knife into that body. He sliced across, opening up a big split in thick fibrous skin to expose shifting guts, yellow ichor like that from a squirt bubbling and jetting out. The whole worm thing writhed, hoops of it shifting through our surroundings. It was a chore – we needed to get on with it.

  I started firing at the exposed coils using up the last of my explosive slugs. They blasted fist-sized holes in the thing as Smurk kept on carving, but no sooner had I thought to be making some headway than the coils shifted to expose new undamaged ones. Then, abruptly, the whelk shuddered, its movement throwing me back against some fleshy mass, feet slipping in pools of yellow slime. I crawled to a point between two of the flesh growths and braced myself as the shaking continued, switched over to the laser and began burning the coils. Hot smoke boiled and I soon stopped that, wheezing and panting and my vision blurring. Soft beads next, but they just opened shallow hand-sized craters that did not seem to penetrate the outer tegument. All I had left was a few hundred hard beads that punched deep inside and I began using them, but the coils were disappearing around us and I saw a spiked saurian tail whip from sight. All at once there were no more targets left.

  Smurk stood panting, soaked from head to foot in yellow slime. He appeared crazy again as he looked round at me, but joyfully so.

  ‘Reckon we’ve pissed it off enough?’ he asked.

  A deep hissing chattering sound replied from where the thing had disappeared, then something began pushing into view through the fleshy webs. The wide head was blunt at first – smoothed down for pushing through flesh. It paused, questing here and there before zeroing in on us. It seemed blind but now somehow sensed us – I did not have the time to check the data on this thing. A momentary stillness ensued, because even the whelk had stopped moving.

  ‘Well,’ said Smurk.

  In the still smoky air a red laser cut through from behind us, hit the head and tracked round leaving a smoking burn. I glanced back to see SM17 there, floating in a hole through those webs. The shot seemed ridiculous. The head was fully five feet across and the laser shot seemed like squirting a water pistol at an elephant. It shook itself, and then it opened like a flower bud into four jaws and emitted a stinking chattering shriek. I’d thought that leech mouth at the end of Smurk’s tongue bad enough and the actual mouths of leeches too, but this seemed an order of magnitude worse. Back-facing teeth lined the thing, jointed hooks opened out from the jagged lips, deep in its hellish throat what looked like workings of some ancient clock, rendered in bone and red flesh, turned against each other.

  It surged forwards and I opened fire, switching the Spartech to automatic. Beads slammed into the thing, shattering teeth and cutting away hooks. Knowing the captain’s craziness I expected him to then attack, but instead he turned round, pushed through to come opposite me.

  ‘We get out,’ he said.

  We backed through the damaged body of the whelk and I kept firing, SM17’s occasional stabs of laser lost in the chaos. The head advanced and retreated as we stumbled clear of the whelk’s living body into more open tunnel. Hard beads ran out and I switched to soft. Then something surged through underneath the head. I felt Smurk grab the back of my suit and he jerked me aside with bone-crunching force. A long black tube a foot wide, on the end of worm body, passed where I had been crouching and slammed into the tunnel wall, tearing up nacre. I’d forgotten about the ovipositor. With this is laid its eggs inside the whelk’s guts – away from the sprine in its stomach – they doubtless went through it elongated and soft then expanded to their normal size in those guts. I fired at that body, but then the Spartech ran out. Laser now, I thought, but Smurk pulled me aside again.

  ‘Time to run,’ he said.

  We turned and headed upslope, SM17 shooting along ahead of us. I glanced back, only vaguely seeing the parasite past the glare of the floater light. The thing was coming after us – of course it was, this was Spatterjay.

  ‘We will need to rethink this,’ said SM17.

  ‘We won’t…get up…that last slope,’ I managed to wheeze out.

  ‘We will,’ Smurk replied easily.

  It seemed a lot further up than it did down with that monster chattering and shrieking behind us. We went through the walls I had earlier shot down, up and up, and then, beyond another ridge, I slipped over on my face. I felt a hand close on the back of my suit and then I was sliding along the floor, different light beginning to impinge on my surroundings. I managed to look up to see Smurk sliding along ahead of me. I really hoped his new hand had a good grip on me because it was with his old hand he clutched SM17’s tail. I looked back, seeing the parasite was having problems with the slippery shell surface, but was managing to progress through sheer squirming rage. Then all at once I was in the air, then out into daylight.

  Smurk discarded me on the outer shell. I slipped on weed until slamming up against something, raised my weapon set to laser and aimed at the hole, but then scrabbled at my visor to get it open and gasp at fresh air. I realised Bad Boy was on the move, trundling along the beach again. Smurk crouched near the edge of the hole, still holding SM17’s tail.

  ‘If you must,’ I heard the drone say, and saw it seem to contract a little and tighten up.

  The monstrous head surged out of the hole a moment later. I opened fire on it, burning it where I could but to seemingly little effect.

  ‘Now y’bugger!’ Smurk bellowed, and hit the thing with SM17. The crashing blow split one of its jaws and it retreated a little as if stunned, that chattering shriek stilling. Smurk hit it again, then again, but now it recovered and pushed towards him. He retreated up the outer spiral, still hitting it, but slipping on weed and struggling not to fall. Its thick body oozed out after its head and I fired on that, still burning it, but hardly penetrating. It seemed we simply could not kill the creature and in a depressing moment I realised that though the primary of this creature did not have much of the virus in it, this thing was probably loaded. We probably could not kill it. Smurk would eventually fall and, quite probably, it would turn on me. I would fall too, since I had more chance of surviving that than this thing. Then I saw movement to one side and glanced over.

  One of Bad Boy spatula tentacles rose up like a cobra, hooped over and in. In one swift movement it wound around the body of the parasite behind the head like a tightening hawser. It then pulled. The head snapped away from Smurk, out and down. I saw him slip and fall, hurtling towards the sea, but halfway down SM17 shrugged and, jetting smoke and sparks, applied grav. Obviously not functioning correctly it did still manage to slow their descent, swing them in from the sea they had been heading for and both crashing down on the beach. Smurk could survive that. I turned my attention back to the parasite.

  Bad Boy kept on pulling, drawing out the parasite’s body like guts being pulled from a torso. Frilled slabs of muscle came out of the hole and stumpy limb-like protuberances. A bulbous section came out to with another wormish body branching from that, terminating in that ovipositor. This whipped out and stabbed into the spatula tentacle, actually penetrating the tough flesh. But the parasite was now in reach of shorter tentacles that coiled up around it, pulled the egg-laying tube out and snapped it. Finally the tail of the thing I had seen earlier came out too and the giant whelk had in its grasp a parasite that had probably occupied its shell for millennia – a parasite that had driven it to the brink of suicide.

  The whelk raised the thing up then brought it down hard, and now seeing our location I saw its target: that
rocky promontory, now devoid of land heirodonts. It took maybe half an hour of repeated blows against the rocks, worrying and tearing, before the parasite lay in shreds over the rock and in the sea. In that time I saw Smurk stand up and go over for a closer look, but SM17 just sat down there jabbed into the sand. Finally it was over and Bad Boy could not find anything large enough to shred further. But Smurk and the drone were down there and I was up here. I turned to look for a way down, not much liking the idea of having to get past the whelk’s tentacles if I managed to get down there without falling. I then saw what had stopped me falling when Smurk released me: Bad Boy’s other spatula tentacle.

  I stared at the thing, wondering what the hell to do now. Before I could decide, the thing folded in around me and hoisted me from the shell. It then lowered me down to the ground and deposited me beside SM17.

  Another night passed and Bad Boy kept trundling around the island eating and shitting, but I soon saw it was inspecting its own excrement. The thing certainly seemed intelligent for I felt sure it was waiting until it passed the last of the squirt eggs before it returned to the sea. Peering out from the beach I watched two ships approaching, but the grav rafts arrived first.

  ‘So we did actually help to kill something that was very old?’ I enquired.

  SM17 sat with its tail jabbed in the sand. Every now and again the drone leaked a little smoke, but it continued self-repairs and would soon have its grav engines back online.

  ‘That scar tissue was ancient,’ it replied. ‘It seems likely the giant whelk acquired its parasite when young and the thing grew with it and very slowly – only recently attaining sufficient mass to lay so many eggs.’

  ‘Unless the egg laying is cyclic in nature and shuts down after a period.’

  ‘The data indicate otherwise,’ SM17 said dismissively. ‘The captain comes.’

  I looked back in towards the island to see Smurk strolling towards us. Carrying a large chunk of wood he’d decided to track the whelk, and had spent most of yesterday and the night killing squirts. I didn’t quite understand why, since the things would die anyway. I noted that now his new arm was about the same length as the old.

  ‘Still, we did help kill something that was quite ancient.’

  ‘And unintelligent,’ said the drone.

  ‘Oh, so it’s not some snobbery about the lives of parasites having less value?’

  ‘You are bored and looking for an argument.’

  I grimaced. I guess I was.

  A large raft settled on the beach, guided down by a hooper woman in ratty blue overalls. Most of the space aboard was taken up by a large tank running a pipe to a thing like a gun mounted on one rail. Further around the rail another gun-like object had been attached and could be classified as such. Exactly to my specifications, I thought, as I stood up.

  ‘Soon be heading away from here,’ said Smurk strolling up. He pointed to the two ships then added, ‘But I want to see this done.’

  ‘Killed all the squirts?’ I enquired.

  ‘No more coming out,’ he replied. ‘Bad Boy’s just stopped over there.’

  I gestured to SM17. ‘The drone tells me reinfection is unlikely due to the age of the whelk and its concentration of viral fibres.’

  ‘But it’s still more likely while that hole stays open,’ said Smurk.

  ‘Quite.’

  He reached down and picked up SM17 and tucked the drone under his arm where it vibrated for a moment making a sound like a bee in a can. We walked over to the raft.

  ‘All you need,’ said the hooper woman. She leapt from the raft and headed towards where another settled to the beach. Talkative sort. I climbed aboard and the captain came after, held the drone down by the rail where with a buzz and a clang it stuck itself, head peering over the top rail. Smurk took hold of the pedestal-mounted joystick and pulled the platform into the air.

  We were soon passing over the devastated island, but it had not been completely denuded, for dingle still stood to the left and the right – Bad Boy had just taken out a strip across the centre. Ahead, the giant whelk had reached the far shore. As we drew closer I could see its tentacles splashing in the sea and again wondered just how intelligent the thing might be. Was it waiting? It then slowly turned, grinding up the beach and tilted to look up at us. A moment later those two spatula tentacles rose up and I just knew that through them it was inspecting us too.

  ‘Take us down in front of them,’ I said.

  Smurk looked at me with a raised eyebrow, but complied. The tentacles stretched towards us as he took us closer and brought the raft to a halt. I let them inspect us for a while then walked over to the gun device, tilted it to point to part of the beach free of tentacles and just beyond Bad Boy’s skirt, and triggered the thing.

  The jet that shot out was pure white, like milk. Where it hit the beach it formed a pool then began bubbling and expanding, turning yellow as it did so. Within just a minute it had expanded into a large globe and solidified. Bad Boy reached out and probed it with one tentacle, set it rolling, then snared it and bashed it with another tentacle. It didn’t break and when the whelk bashed it again even harder the thing escaped it grasp and bounced out into the sea. It looked ridiculously like the giant whelk was playing with a ball. In the sea it started to sink, because this ceramic-base crash foam expanded with a hexafluoride gas almost the same density as water.

  ‘Okay, I guess that’s the best we can do. Take us in,’ I said.

  Smurk complied, bringing us over the area of shell where we had entered, close to the hole he had cut. The whelk’s two spatula tentacles followed us in, watching intently. Peering down into that darkness, I thought about how close I had come to dying, then pointed the crash foam gun at it and triggered. A white line disappeared into dark. I kept firing it for a few minutes, glancing at the gauge on the tank, then stopped and waited, timing it. When it all should have expanded and hardened I fired again, because now that tunnel inside must be blocked and further foam would come up to the hole. When the tank read three-quarters empty I saw the foam bubbling and expanding inside and shut off the jet. After minute or two it began expanding out of the hole forming a great globule that eventually hardened.

  ‘Closer now,’ I said, moving over to the other gun – in fact an industrial laser.

  Smurk positioned the platform just right over to one side of the globe. I fired up the laser, the beam punching into the globe then revealed as bright green by vapour. I began cutting, slicing through the thing close to the shell, hexafluoride gas running like water down the shell. The thing took a lot of energy to cut through such being the resistance of this foam, but eventually I got through and the globe slid away, tumbled down shell, bounced off the whelk’s skirt and rolled out onto the beach. Behind it left a clean glossy face – the laser having melted the ceramic into something like glass there. Smurk backed us up.

  ‘So that’s it,’ he said.

  With a clunk, SM17 detached from the rail and rose up – grav obviously back online. ‘I will stay with this creature,’ it said. ‘I have permission to remain and study it while the Warden has permission to intercede immediately should another of its kind come to the surface like this.’

  ‘So we’re all happy,’ I said, looking out at those two tentacles. And then, just to dismiss any uncertainties about its intelligence, Bad Boy applauded us, slapping the spatula ends of those tentacles before turning and heading back into the sea, SM17 floating along behind.

  Smurk departed the platform on the beach to watch a rowing boat coming in from one of the now moored ships.

  ‘What next for you?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘I’ll find something.’

  He clapped me on the shoulder and wandered off. I flew back to what could be called civilization on Spatterjay, my shoulder aching.

  Far future Polity again where digging things up might be helpful and might not. You could say this is an sfnal take on Robinson Crusoe. I never thought that
while writing it – only in retrospect. In The Bosch I depicted a far future biotech world and here we get a look at another one. What to say about it? As with them all I just started writing and used what my subconscious delivered. In this case it delivered some on the delights of getting older, the destructive squabbles of humanity and how perspective changes ultimate goals.

  PLENTY

  A whickering sound cut the night, followed by a long drawn-out hiss. Ben rolled onto his back but could not summon the energy to get up. What could he do, anyhow? If the Stalker attacked the house again and managed to break inside, he had his carbine within reach and, if that didn’t work out, he simply was not well enough to fight in any other way. He stretched out his hand to the weapon, but then realised how light the room was. It wasn’t night time and the sounds he had heard had been yet another nightmare. He sighed and, like so many times before, drifted back into haunted sleep.

  His house stood on the edge of the plain with low hills rolling behind towards the haze-green mountains whose name had been long forgotten. The location was good since potable water rose in a spring nearby, the stream from that running down into the plain and disappearing, while easy sources of food lay all around him. Sack bats hanging in the turtle tree copses in the hills provided a ready source of meat while edible mushrooms grew in the carapace shade of the trees. Wide varieties of greens and roots could be found all around, the occasional gnapper snake and of course his main source of protein: the mantids. On the plain grew other edible plants and fungi and, most importantly, that’s where he found podules always filled with a cornucopia of delights. Even without his almanac and Snooper, food was no problem here. But it seemed likely other problems would curtail his survival.

  Ben woke again but this time to the sound of distant mantids scraping together their serrated forelimbs. He lay in his cot summoning up the courage to move, then slowly tipped himself out of bed, his back and his joints aching and creaking, his stomach roiling and nausea hitting him. Sitting upright with his feet down on woven rugs on the stone floor, he congratulated himself on having got to this position without his back popping and the agony that had made getting himself moving after sleep an hours’ long task. He looked to the end of his bed for his clothes, but then realised he was wearing his battered envirosuit – he often went to bed wearing it now because of the problems he faced putting the thing back on when he woke. He stood, pain stabbing his back, and walked past the low divider into his kitchen area. Opening his fridge – one of the many items salvaged over the years from the crashed shuttle – he took out a bowl of mantid meat and a couple of large pea pods containing peas that tasted of orange. As he sat at his table eating these, and washing them down with cold coffee, he knew he needed to head out collecting again. The fridge was all but empty, and in another twenty hours the three hundred hour night would arrive, and he didn’t want to be outside then, not with the mantids out hunting, and definitely not with the Stalker.