The Gabble and Other Stories

by Neal Asher

Returning to the other chamber, I stripped Gene of her spacesuit and donned it myself. I wasn’t concerned about whether she lived or died.

  ‘Ulriss, we can talk now.’

  ‘Ah, you are still alive,’ the AI replied. ‘I was already composing your obituary.’

  ‘You’re just a bundle of laughs, you know that?’

  ‘I am bursting with curiosity and try to hide that in levity.’

  I explained the situation, to which Ulriss replied, ‘I have put out a call to the Polity dreadnought we sighted and given it this location.’

  ‘Should we hang around?’

  ‘There will be questions ECS will want to ask, but I don’t see why we should put ourselves at their disposal. Let their agents find us.’

  ‘Quite right,’ I replied.

  I bagged up a few items, like that Golem weapon, and was about to head back to my ship when I glanced back and saw the gabbleduck crouching in the tunnel behind.

  ‘Sherber grodge,’ it informed me.

  Heading back the way I’d come into this hell-hole I kept checking back on the thing. Gabbleducks don’t eat people, apparently – they just chew them up and spit them out. This one followed me like a lost puppy. Every time I stopped it stopped too and sat on its hindquarters, occasionally issuing some nonsensical statement. I got the real weird feeling, which went against all my training and experience, that this creature was harmless to me. I shook my head. Ridiculous. Anyway, I’d lose it at the air-lock.

  When I did finally reach the airlock and began closing that inner door, one big black claw closed around the edge and pulled it open again. I raised my gun, cross hairs targeting that array of eyes, but I could not pull the trigger. The gabbleduck entered the airlock and just sat there, close enough to touch and close enough for me to fry if it went for me. What now? If I opened the outer air-lock door the creature would die. Before I could think what to do, a multi-jointed arm reached back and heaved the inner door closed, whilst the other arm hauled up the manual handle of the outer door, and the lock air pressure blew us staggering into the pipe beyond.

  I discovered that gabbleducks can survive in vacuum … or at least this one could.

  Later, when I ordered Ulriss to open the door to the small hold of my ship, the gabbleduck waddled meekly inside. I thought then that perhaps something from the memstore had stuck. I wasn’t sure – certainly this gabbleduck was not behaving like its kind on Masada.

  I also discovered that gabbleducks will eat raw recon bacon.

  I hold the fried memstore and think about what it might have contained, and what the fact of its existence means. A memstore for an Atheter mind goes contrary to the supposed nihilism of that race. A race so nihilistic could never have created a space-faring civilization, so that darkness must have spread amidst them in their last days. The Atheter recorded in the memstore could not have been one of the kind that wanted to destroy itself, surely?

  I’m taking the gabbleduck back to Masada – I feel utterly certain now that it wants me to do this. I also feel certain that to do otherwise might not be a good idea.

  6

  ACEPHALOUS DREAMS

  Having no head, or one reduced, indistinct, as certain insect larvae … Such things he considered as the pool spread to his foot and melded round the rubber sole of his boot. He would leave distinctive footprints: Devnon Macroboots, fifty-seven New Carth shillings a pair; they were only sold from one place and there was not much of a turnover in them. Carth was somewhat off the tourist route, religious fanaticism not being much of a draw in such enlightened times.

  No resistance at all.

  Daes stepped back from the pool and walked slowly round the corpse – the grub – his right boot leaving a bloody ribbed imprint and the incomplete DEV at each step. He was not a tall man, Daes, and his weightlifter’s physique made him appear shorter. He was exceptionally physically strong, and this strength had been sufficient to drive the carbide-edged machete through the flesh, bone and gristle of Anton Velsten’s neck. No resistance. The machete had not even slowed, and Daes had not even felt a tug. The head, Anton’s head, had not tumbled away spouting blood as it would have in most holodramas. It had remained balanced on Anton’s neck, displaced by only a fraction, unmoved by the hydraulic pressure of the blood that spurted out sideways until the head became fully detached when Anton, unstrung puppet fashion, collapsed to the floor in the shroud of his priestly robes.

  Daes smiled to himself when he reached a position giving him clear sight of the severed neck. There was always plenty of blood flowing in the holodramas, but they did not often show this sort of thing: in the pool of blood there was a second immiscible pool of well-chewed Carthian prawns, special fried rice, that piquant sauce they made at the Lotus Garden, and bile. Sniffing and wrinkling his nose, Daes was also made aware that Anton had emptied his bowels in his last moments.

  ‘Are you with your god now, Anton?’ Daes asked. The bowl of night over the roof-port made his voice sound flat and meaningless as it drank his words. Daes surveyed the ranked gravcars for any sign of movement, any sign that he had been observed, but there seemed to be none of either. It was late and the faithful were always early to bed and early to rise. Witnesses were not a requirement though, and few people got away with murder. He dropped the machete onto the corpse, turned, stooped, and picked up Anton’s head. It was surprisingly heavy. Holding it by the dark blood-soaked hair Daes studied Anton’s face. Nothing there. In death terror had fled and all that remained was the expression etched there by Anton’s vicious and debauched life. Daes dropped the head into the bag he had stolen from a ten-pin bowling alley – perfect for the task, waterproof too – then he squatted down by the corpse.

  ‘All done, but for one last sign,’ he said.

  Reaching out, he dipped his finger in blood and drew on the ground a figure ‘8’ turned on its side. It was the sign for infinity, but meant so much else to him. He then took up the bag and headed for his own gravcar, quickly stepped inside, and with the turbines at their quietest and slowest, lifted the car from the roof.

  Eight hours maximum. The corpse was sure to be discovered in the next two hours. Fingerprints and DNA would be identified at the scene within the following hour, and access to runcible transport denied directly after. He reckoned the search would first be centred at the runcible facility. They would expect him to try to get off planet, to one of the Line worlds – expected it of any murderer. He smiled to himself as he directed his cleverly stolen Ford Nevada gravcar out of the city and away from the facility, to a glow on the horizon that was not where the sun rose.

  It was a place where godless Carthians came with mylar glide wings to have fun in the thermals above the volcano. This activity was frowned on by the Theocracy and attempts had been made to ban the sport, but the Theocracy only had power over those who voluntarily subjugated themselves to it. Polity law ruled on Carth and the monitors of Earth Central were never far away. With the Ford set on hover, Daes opened the door and dropped the bowling bag and its grisly contents into the caldera. As a necessity he was very high up and only able to discern a pinprick, near subliminal in its brevity, as the head struck the lava and incinerated.

  ‘Resurrect the fucker now,’ said Daes, and wondered if he might be going insane. Perhaps a plea of insanity…no, he felt completely and utterly sane, as always. When they finally caught him he would be tried with all fairness and sympathy. His memories would be read by an AI; his life rolled out, dissected, and completely understood by a mind quite capable of such. What made him what he was would be discovered, recorded, and perhaps be the subject of lengthy study. He would be gone by the time that study reached any conclusions; taken to a disintegrator and in less than a second converted into a pool of organic sludge and flushed into the Carthian ocean for the delectation of its plankton. There was a kind of poetry to such an ending. Daes didn’t like poetry. He closed the door of the Ford, his eyes watering from the sulphur fumes, then turned the vehicle back towards the city
.

  ‘Do you want to live?’

  The Golem Twenty-seven that had entered his cell was only identifiable as an android by her deliberately flawed perfection. The artificial skin and flesh of her right arm was transparent and through it Daes could see her gleaming ceramal bones, the cybermotors at her joints, and the tangles of optic cables. Otherwise she was completely beautiful; a blonde-haired teenager with wide amber eyes and a pertly nubile body clothed in a short silk toga. Daes remained on his bunk and waited for her to continue.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, and turned to go.

  Daes sat up. ‘Wait, wait a minute. Of course I want to live.’

  She turned. ‘Then please be civil enough to reply when I ask a question.’

  ‘Okay. Okay.’ Daes waved her to a seat.

  She sat and smiled briefly at him before continuing. ‘Your memcording has been analysed and those memories you attempted to conceal have been revealed and intensively studied. We even know why you drew the sign for infinity beside his body.’

  Daes stared at her – he had not expected this.

  She continued. ‘Yet, despite the years of abuse you suffered at the hands of Anton Velsten while in the theocratic college, you are still considered sane and culpable, simply because you could have later reported him and had him sent for readjustment.’

  ‘I preferred how I readjusted him.’

  ‘Apparently.’

  ‘And so, nothing can stop me going to the disintegrator,’ said Daes.

  ‘The intervention of the AI Geronamid can.’

  Daes shivered at the mention of the name. Geronamid was the sector AI. What the hell interest would it have in a minor criminal like himself?

  ‘Why would Geronamid want to get involved?’

  ‘AI Geronamid has need of a subject for a scientific trial. This trial may kill you, in which case it would be considered completion of sentence. Should you survive, all charges against you will be dropped.’

  ‘And the nature of this trial?’

  ‘Cephalic implantation of Csorian node.’

  ‘Okay, I agree, though I have no idea what Csorian node is.’

  The Golem stood and as she did so the door slid open. Daes glanced up at the security eye in the corner of the cell and stood also. She nodded to the door and he followed her out. In the corridor a couple of policemen glared at him with ill-concealed annoyance but showed no reaction beyond that. Outside the station she led him to a sleek gravcar styled after one of the twenty-secondcentury electric cars. He thought, briefly, about escape, but knew he stood no chance. His companion might look like a teenage girl but she was strong enough to rip him in half. Once they were seated in the gravcar it took off without her touching the controls and sped away at a speed well above the limit. He wondered if some minuscule part of Geronamid was controlling it.

  ‘You didn’t tell me. What’s a Csorian node?’

  ‘If we knew that with any certainty we would not be carrying out this trial,’ replied the Golem.

  ‘You know it’s some sort of implant.’

  ‘We do, but only because it was found in the body of a Csorian.’

  ‘A Csorian has been found?’

  ‘Oh yes, underneath the ruins on Wilder. The body is about a hundred thousand years old. The node was attached to its hindbrain.’

  Daes turned that over in his mind. The Csorians were one of the three dead stellar races: the Jain and the Atheter being the other two. They supposedly died out a hundred thousand years before the human race had set out for the stars. All that remained of their civilizations were a few ruins of coraline buildings and the descendants of those plants and creatures to survive from their biotechnology.

  ‘It was one of the last of them then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He considered for a moment before going on. ‘Surely Geronamid should have been able to work out what this node is.’

  ‘Perhaps he has. Who can tell?’

  Daes noted that the gravcar was well above the traffic lanes and still rising. He heard the door seals lock down and wondered where the hell they were going. When he turned to the Golem to ask her, he saw that she had called up something on the screen. Here was a creature much like a praying mantis only without the long winged abdomen. From the back of its thorax extended a ribbed tail that branched into three. At the branch point was a pronounced thickening from which grew a second pair of insectile legs.

  ‘It was about a metre long. We think the hindbrain had something to do with reproduction,’ said the Golem.

  ‘That’s a Csorian?’ asked Daes.

  ‘It is. We are reasonably sure that their society was much like that of the social insects of Earth; wasps, ants, hornets and the like.’

  ‘They had hive minds just the same?’

  ‘This is what we suppose.’

  Daes smiled to himself. It had come as one shock in many when arrogant humanity had discovered it wasn’t the only sentient race on Earth, it was just the loudest and most destructive. Dolphins and whales had always been candidates because of their aesthetic appeal and stories of rescued swimmers. Research in that area had soon cleared things up: Dolphins couldn’t tell the difference between a human swimmer and a sick fellow, and were substantially more stupid than the animal humans had been turning into pork on a regular basis. Whales had the intelligence of the average cow. When a hornet built its nest in a VR suit and lodged its protests on the Internet it had taken a long time for anyone to believe. They were stinging things, creepy crawlies, how could they possibly be intelligent? At ten thousand years of age the youngest hive mind showed them. People believed.

  ‘So a hive mind got into space long before we did. I find that gratifying to hear,’ said Daes.

  The Golem gazed at him speculatively. ‘Your misanthropy is well understood. You do realize that if you’d had it corrected you would not be in the situation you are now in.’

  ‘I liked my dislike of humanity. It kept me sane.’

  ‘Very amusing,’ said the Golem, turning back to the screen. The picture she now called up was of a small ovoid with complex mottling on its surface. Daes noted it, then gazed through the windows and saw the sky becoming dark blue and stars beginning to show. The planet had now receded. He pushed his face to the window to try and get a look down at it and saw only a shuttle glinting like a discarded needle far below.

  ‘This is the node. We know that it contains picotech and likely biofactured connections to its host’s brain. We first thought it some kind of augmentation.’

  ‘Well that seems the most likely,’ said Daes, turning back.

  ‘Yes, but this node is three centimetres long, two wide and has a density twice that of lead.’

  ‘So?’

  The Golem looked at him. ‘Every cubic nanometre of it is packed with picotech. Under scan we have so far managed to identify two billion picomachines with the ability to self-replicate. They also all cross-reference. There is a complexity here that is beyond even Geronamid’s ability.’

  There was a sound, slightly like a groan, from within the workings of the gravcar. Daes felt the artificial gravity come on and when he gazed out the windows now saw nothing but starlit space. As he turned to fire another question at the Golem his seat slapped him lightly on his back and the gravcar surged towards a distant speck. He decided to be annoyed.

  ‘Am I supposed to be impressed by all this?’

  ‘No,’ said the Golem. ‘You are just supposed to be thankful that you are still alive.’

  Daes grimaced and peered ahead at the speck as it drew closer. ‘When can I speak to Geronamid?’

  The Golem looked at him.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You never told me your name.’

  ‘It is my conceit to name this part of myself Hera,’ said a very small part of the AI Geronamid.

  The speck resolved into a flat disc of a ship whose size did not become evident until they drew very close. What Daes had first taken to be panoramic windows set in th
e side of the vessel soon resolved into bay doors the size of city blocks. The ship had to be at least two kilometres in diameter.

  ‘This is where you are,’ said Daes.

  ‘Yes, the central mind is here,’ replied Hera.

  The bay doors drew aside and the gravcar sped in then landed on a wide expanse of gridded bay floor. The moment the doors closed behind there came a boom of wind as atmosphere was restored in the bay. The car’s seals automatically disengaged and Geronamid’s Golem opened her door. Daes quickly opened his door and followed.

  ‘Is the node here?’ he asked as they approached a dropshaft.

  ‘It is, as are the remains of the Csorian, and much of their recovered technology.’

  They stepped into the irised gravity field and it dropped them down into the ship. Ten floors down they stepped out into a wide chamber filled with old-style museum display cases. Hera led him past an aquarium containing corals in pastel shades of every colour, past a tank containing plants that bore translucent fruit like lumps of amber, a case containing pieces of coral with something like circuitry etched or grown on their inner faces. She brought him finally to the tank containing the remains of the Csorian – whole and almost lifelike.

  ‘It wasn’t in this condition surely?’ he said.

  ‘No, only four per cent of it was recoverable.’

  ‘What about DNA?’

  ‘Scraps only. Not enough to build up a large enough template.’

  ‘AIs did it with dinosaurs.’

  ‘In that case there was more material to work with. What is in this case is all we have of the Csorians … Here, this is what we have come to see.’

  She led him past the Csorian to a small bell jar over a jade pedestal. Underneath the jar lay the node – in appearance a simple pebble. Daes stepped closer. As he did so he felt a slight displacement, a sense of dislocation, and from this he knew that the ship was on the move.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A living world without sentient life. You must be isolated while the node does whatever it does.’