The Gabble p-13

by Neal Asher

  ‘The motors are ceramic nanofacture,’ said Harbing.

  Simoz supposed they must be — biotech ship motors made a sound he usually associated with wet sex.

  ‘Where from?’ he asked, not allowing the internal bickering to affect his outward demeanour.

  ‘Nanofactured on the Outlink Station Ooerlikkon and transmitted via Circe,’ Harbing replied.

  Simoz studied the Mate with interest, consciously not focusing on the man’s more obvious augmentations and adaptations, which was difficult. From his two-toed feet to the hairless white dome of his head the Mate was a full choudapt with numerous cyber implants. His mouth was the worst; with its feeding palps moving across his chin to emphasize his words.

  Simoz looked him in the eye and showed no evident reaction to the flickering of his nictitating membranes.

  ‘You’ve had no rejection problems?’ he asked.

  This question puzzled Harbing. Simoz allowed his gaze to drop to the scanner link Harbing had grafted just above his hip. There were pustules around the disc of bright metal and a slight leakage of pus from behind it.

  ‘I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at,’ said Harbing.

  Simoz nodded to himself.

  Sharp drop in IQ a couple of weeks after infection.

  Obviously … I am ready now.

  Simoz concentrated his gaze on the link and Harbing glanced down. His puzzlement increased when he saw the signs of his own body rejecting its technology. Simoz let things go no further than that. He quickly reached out and put his right hand behind Harbing’s head. His left hand he clamped across the Mate’s mouth and he winced as the palps pinched at his palm.

  Harbing struggled, but to no avail, then his eyes grew wide in shock as Mike extended its nano-mycelium body from the palm of Simoz’s hand down the man’s throat.

  Are you in?

  I am in … cutting motor functions.

  Harbing dropped as if someone had cut his strings. Simoz knelt with him as he collapsed, his hands still in position.

  Can you link?

  Parasitic fungus is primitive form. Aggression. Fungal form, dead.

  What happened?

  No link established.

  ‘Damn!’

  You are vocalizing.

  I was aware of that. We’ll try again in the Wrack. Withdraw from him and blank out the last minute or so.

  Withdrawn.

  Simoz removed his hands and cradled Harbing’s head. After a moment Harbing opened his eyes.

  ‘What. . what happened?’

  Simoz gestured to the generator.

  ‘You were showing me the generator then you just keeled over,’ he said.

  ‘I feel sick,’ said Harbing.

  Understandable. The fungus is breaking down in his lymphatic system.

  Will he be all right?

  He will not notice as soon as he is reinfected.

  How long till that happens?

  It has probably already happened. I have noted a high degree of spore incursion on this ship.

  And that means?

  The spores are in the air of this ship. Forty per cent of my function at present is keeping them from infecting you. They are especially prevalent in here.

  I thought they wouldn’t infect me.

  Not a primary infection, but they could make you ill.

  What about the retrovirus?

  I am keeping it in somnolent form until I have made sufficient alterations.

  What?

  The fungal form here shows extreme divergence and I am altering the retrovirus to suit.

  A mutation? Could that be it? Something the original virus missed?

  There is that possibility.

  Simoz helped Harbing to his feet then pointed to the scanner link at Harbing’s waist.

  ‘It might have something to do with that,’ he said.

  Harbing gaped at the signs of rejection. ‘Yeah. . yeah, I gotta do something about that.’

  ‘Perhaps you should see the ship’s doctor.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll do that.’

  Somewhat bemusedly Harbing turned and tottered from the engine room. After casting a glare of suspicion at the generator, Simoz followed.

  Here was a city enclosed in a translucent bubble, steady on a copper-coloured sea. It could have been mistaken for something built had it not been for the veins in the surface of the bubble. The crosstech ship, apparently the bastard offspring of a dredger and a manta ray, circled the bubble to where a split developed in the meniscus and it drew aside like stage curtains. On the deck of the ship Simoz noted the stench of decay wafted to him on the sea breeze, then glanced aside to where a cluster of smaller, house-sized bubbles surfaced and were drawn away by the tide.

  These bubbles were mostly opaque but with inset glass windows. Through some of these he saw human faces staring out — faces blank of human expression.

  They keep washing up at the mouth of the Thranx.

  It is where the currents take them.

  Some of the other Wrack cities have taken to burning any that get close.

  A perhaps understandable reaction.

  The ship motored in through the opening and drew in to docks in the shape of lily pads clustered around the organic city. Ramps terminating in spiked hooks lowered from the crosstech ship and punctured the pads, securing the vessel in place. Simoz picked up his kitbag and quickly moved to one of them, but before he reached it, Harbing and another crew member moved in on him.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Harbing asked.

  Simoz studied him. ‘I told you: I have some biotech samples I hope to sell here. There some problem?’

  ‘There’s problem,’ said the other crew member.

  ‘I don’t see it,’ said Simoz, moving to go past the two men. As he did so he kept a wary eye on the other crewman. This man was shorter than Harbing, but heavily muscled. A computer link below his right ear was leaking pus and a suppurating hollow above his hip indicated where a scanner link had once been seated.

  Late stages of infection.

  I know.

  The man reached out and caught hold of Simoz by the biceps, his expression alternately puzzled and blank.

  ‘Problem,’ he said leadenly.

  Simoz caught hold of the man’s wrist, pulled him in and thumped him hard under the sternum. The man went down coughing and wheezing.

  Harbing stood back gazing at the scene in bewilderment. ‘I don’t … I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will,’ said Simoz, and quickly headed for the ramp. Two other crewmen were watching him from the bows of the ship. They too were without expression.

  We’ll have to move fast. There’s a defensive reaction here. I guess I don’t smell right.

  It was predicted.

  Once on the queasy surface of the docks Simoz quickly headed for an entry portal, meanwhile passing a female choudapt walking a pet on a lead. This pet was a sea louse a metre long, its ribbed black shell painted with flowers and rococo patterns, its mandibles and saw-toothed mouth grinding and dripping foamy saliva.

  Choud.

  I see through your eyes.

  Simoz felt there to be something quite perverse about these people keeping as pets the creatures whose genome they had spliced into their own bodies. He increased his pace as the choud turned to watch him with its glowing eyepits. He was through the entrance portal and moving quickly into the alleys and precincts when the creature started to fight its leash and show an inclination to come after him.

  This could get ever so slightly lethal. Can’t you do anything?

  I can try to copy the pheromonal signature.

  Do so.

  You will not know right away if it is working.

  Simoz found himself in a dank alley free of choudapts or chouds. The floor and walls of the alley were dead biofacture and for a moment he felt safe enough to open his kitbag and quickly remove the tools of his trade. At his belt he holstered a thin-gun. Over his shoulder he slung the strap of a
laser carbine. In his pockets he placed various smaller implements of destructive potential. Then he stood and kicked his bag to one side.

  Chouds. Jesus. Some idiot must have brought in a wild one. What other explanation is there? Probably full of fungal spores. I’d bet it was found in a freed bladder.

  People quickly forget. And there are other explanations.

  Yes, I know. I’d imagine you find the life-cycle interesting, there being certain similarities with yourself.

  I do find it interesting though I would dispute that it is similar to myself. The parasitic fungus here is without sentience; the subminds it develops are of the level of an ant or a bee. It is also worth noting that it is wholly natural and was here long before humans arrived and turned seaweed into living accommodation and spliced themselves with native life-forms.

  Do I detect disapproval?

  Only of incompetence. The original bioengineers should have detected the choud parasite and its method of transmission. Subsequent generations should have been given immunity to it by taking on a different adapted form.

  Should haves and should haves. We’ve a job to do. Will you try not to kill it this time? We need that location.

  I will try.

  Simoz moved to the mouth of the alley and studied the crowds. On the other side of the flattened pipe of a street he saw the choudapt woman walking her choud. It showed no reaction to him, so his body must now be emitting the pheromone. As he stood there watching the people of the Wrack, and trying to decide who to go for and how, a young choudapt woman walked past him and turned into the mouth of the alley. He nodded to her, but she did not acknowledge his presence. He silently turned and followed her. Halfway into the alley she realized he was behind her and abruptly turned, opening her mouth, perhaps to say something, perhaps to scream. He slammed his hand over it, tripped her and forced her back against the ground. Mike went in.

  Parasitic fungus primitive form again. I try to…

  Come on Mike — just do it gently.

  Fungal form, dead.

  Oh for chrissake.

  It would seem that the fungus is unable to achieve adult form in humans and in juvenile form cannot survive my… inspection. I would suggest that we take an actual choud next.

  Oh great idea.

  Simoz removed his hand and the woman abruptly opened her eyes.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked. ‘You just keeled over.’

  ‘It’s dead. You killed it,’ she said.

  ‘You got me there,’ said Simoz, reaching into his pocket for a shock stick.

  ‘How did you do it?’

  The woman sat upright. She was a choudapt without evident augmentations. Her hands and feet were two-toed and her skin a bluey green with the angular hardness of exoskeleton. She had retained her hair, which was long and anaemic blonde and spilled all the way down the plastimail slip she wore. She had used iridescent paint on her mouth palps so that they looked like some curious item of jewellery.

  ‘I have a doctor mycelium inside me,’ Simoz replied.

  ‘Then you must be ECS.’

  She is showing surprising acuity in the circumstances.

  Not surprising.

  Mike’s reply had a hint of dry sarcasm behind it.

  I suggest you elaborate.

  She is Earth Central Security as well. She is a Monitor. Her boosted immune system must have resisted infection for a long time and it is helping her recover very quickly now.

  Simoz left the shock stick in his pocket and helped the woman to her feet.

  ‘Simoz,’ he said.

  ‘Haline,’ the woman replied.

  What a gas.

  Simoz frowned. It was very unlike the mycelium to make jokes. Perhaps it was feeling the strain.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ Haline asked.

  Nodding to the mouth of the alley and heading in that direction, Simoz said, ‘I’ll tell you while you lead me somewhere I can, without interference, get hold of a choud.’

  Haline stared at him then turned to the left as they departed the alley.

  ‘Something was controlling me,’ she said.

  ‘A parasitic fungus,’ said Simoz. ‘It was here when only chouds lived in the bladders of the wracks. Fairly simple vector: it lives in the choud’s body and drives the creature to climb into a bladder and cut it free. That bladder drifts to another wrack where there are uninfected chouds.

  There it makes the choud find a secure place to encyst. . cocoon itself. It then feeds on the choud’s body and produces spores which spread through the wrack and infect other chouds. The set-up in the wrack is then something like that of social insects on Earth — the main fungus has a primitive mind and it controls the others by means of pheromonal messages. Those other chouds, once infected for a number of years, then act like new queens leaving a bee’s nest; they climb into a bladder and cut it away to start the cycle all over again. They start their own colonies. Only the fact that infected and uninfected chouds can detect each other has prevented a complete takeover by the fungus, but then that’s evolution for you.’

  ‘But. . us?’ said Haline.

  ‘Come on, you’re a choudapt. Ninety per cent human and ten per cent choud. It’s why you like the horrible things as pets.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, but. . how is it I don’t know about this. . this fungus?’

  ‘It was supposedly wiped out two centuries ago by a manufactured retrovirus.’

  ‘Then how has this happened?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I’m here to find out,’ said Simoz as he gazed around, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the centre. You can buy a choud there.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What else do you need to know?’

  ‘I need to know where the encysted choud is hidden. That’s why I need to lay hands on another one. Mike can winkle the location of the “mother” fungus from one of its mature kin. We tried it with you but the fungal form apparently doesn’t mature in human hosts and is a bit delicate.’

  And while I’m thinking about it, Mike, how the hell am I going to put my hand over a choud’s mouth.

  Unfortunately there is not enough seal in such mouth parts.

  What?

  You will not have to put your hand over its mouth, but in its mouth.

  Oh great.

  As they walked down the flattened artery of a causeway, beyond whose translucent walls bubble houses clustered like giant eyeballs, Simoz watched the folk around him. Many of them had obviously been having problems with their augmentations — the cyber implants and links that joined living human to his technology. None of the humans showed any reaction to him, but the few chouds he saw turned and fought their leashes, foam dripping from mouth parts like slime-coated cutlery sets.

  How long will she hold out?

  Her immune system is boosted but not as efficient as myself. She has been reinfected already, but the fungus will not be well established for an hour or so.

  Efficient as yourself?

  Mere fact.

  Okay, what about the pheromonal signature?

  She is giving it off.

  So she can go buy us a choud and bring it to a suitable location.

  Very practical of you.

  Improvisation my friend. Improvisation.

  The centre was the point from which branched all the main causeways of the Wrack.

  Those causeways ran down the sepals of the giant pseudo-flower of the plant, which was also the city. Here the bubble buildings were stacked in profusion like berries heaped over a spread hand. Myriad tubeways connected these separate bubbles, some of which were houses and some of them offices, shops, restaurants — all the usual paraphernalia of that entity called a city.

  By way of these tubes and through some of the bubbles, Haline led Simoz to her home. Then she went alone to make the required purchase. Simoz made himself comfortable in a chair fashioned from the scales of a giant fish and scanned his surroundings. He noted the veins in the c
eiling at which a couple of biolights were feeding, and on the floor the slow traverse of a tile-cleaning slime mould. He saw that she had a food plant of old biofacture and one he recognized as producing a fruit that in its ancestry had both apples and pigs. He only gradually became aware of how dim it was in the place and how few biolights Haline seemed to have. The sudden simultaneous agony at his shoulder and calf told him abruptly where the other biolights had gone.