The Gabble and Other Stories

by Neal Asher

  ‘What?’ Daes turned to her to protest. Her hand moved so fast he hardly registered it moving. Fingertips brushed his neck and from that point he felt his body turning to lead.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be with you,’ said Hera, as he slipped into darkness.

  *

  Something huge was poised on the edge of his being, not inimical, but dangerous and vast and ready to drown him out of existence. Anton was a small and insignificant thing on the ground at his feet even though armies were marching out of his severed neck. Daes decided to laugh and leap into the sky, and this being his wish he did so, for he knew this was a dream. When he woke, though, that huge something was still there.

  ‘How do you feel?’ asked Hera.

  Daes opened his eyes and stared at the domed ceiling. He turned his head aside and saw the Golem sitting in a form chair beside the sofa he lay upon. They were in a comfortably furnished house of some kind. Greenish light filtered in through the wide windows.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘The world only has a number.’

  ‘I thought you said this was uninhabited,’ said Daes, sitting up and studying their surroundings.

  ‘Geronamid prepared this place for you some time ago,’ said Hera.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Well, for the next person under a death sentence when it decided to implant the node.’

  ‘I was lucky that time occurred when it did.’

  ‘Yes, five seconds later and someone else would have been chosen.’

  Daes stood and stretched his neck. ‘It’s in me then?’

  ‘Yes, you will not know it is there until the picotech starts to work.’

  ‘And when will that be?’

  ‘We do not know. It is not working at the moment, though.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’

  ‘I am taking readings from numerous detectors implanted in your body.’

  ‘I didn’t give permission for that,’ said Daes.

  Hera shrugged. ‘To put in a suitable parlance,’ she said, ‘tough.’

  Daes stared at her for a long moment. It was all perfectly clear to him: Geronamid could do with him what it liked now.

  ‘What do I do while I wait for this node to … activate?’

  ‘Explore, sleep, eat, all those things you would not be doing had your sentence been passed either five seconds later or earlier.’

  ‘Do you need to continually remind me?’

  ‘Yes, it would seem that I do.’

  Without responding to that Daes turned and walked to the window. He gazed out at a wall of jungle twenty metres away. The intervening area had been scorched to grey ash, but even there the ground was scattered with reddish-green sprouts, and fungi like blue peas. A bewildering surge of feeling hit him: he wanted to be out there, to drive his fingers into the black earth, and to see and feel growing things.

  ‘You say that picotech isn’t working yet?’ he said.

  When Hera did not reply he turned to her.

  ‘No, I said it wasn’t working, now I say that something is happening,’ she replied.

  Daes swallowed a sudden surge of fear. What the hell was he doing here? He should have gone to the disintegrator. At least that would have been clean and quick, and right now he would know nothing, feel nothing.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Hera. ‘The node is reduced in size and picomachines are diffusing through your body. What they are doing will become evident in time.’

  Daes pressed his hands against the thick glass of the window, and noted that the skin on the backs of them was peeling.

  ‘I want to go outside,’ he said.

  The air was frigid in his mouth. He had expected it to be warm and humid.

  ‘This equates to the Jurassic period on Earth,’ said Hera.

  ‘How do you work out that equation then?’ Daes asked sarcastically.

  ‘Quite simply really. The ecosystems have not evolved to the complexity of mutualism between species.’

  ‘And that means?’

  ‘No flowers and no pollinators. The equations are more complex than that, obviously, but my explanation stands.’

  ‘You mean it will do for a stupid human like me,’ said Daes. ‘Why the hell is it so damned cold?This looked like jungle from in there.’

  ‘It is jungle, and for this place it is unseasonably hot.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have chosen a warmer planet?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? You are Geronamid.’

  ‘I am a part, and now a separate part.’

  Daes turned to study her, then damned himself for a fool. If she gave anything away in her expression that would be because she wanted to. It was so easy to forget what she was.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘Because my direct link has been severed, it being possible to use such a link for direct informational attack on Geronamid itself. This planet is in quarantine for the duration of this trial. The only link we do have is a comlink to a second isolated submind of Geronamid’s in orbit.’

  ‘Is Geronamid that scared then?’

  ‘Cautious, I think would be a better term.’

  Daes turned away from her and regarded the cold jungle. There was a path of sorts, probably beaten by one of the AI’s machines. He headed for it, ash caking his boots, and little fungi bursting all around where he stepped. The vegetation on either side of the path sprouted from thick cycad bodies and bore a hard and sharp look. On the slimy root-bound ground scuttled arthropods like skeletons’ hands, which he watched hunting long black beetles that sobbed piteously when caught and eaten alive. He had gone only ten metres into the jungle when he suddenly felt sick and dizzy. He went down on his knees and before he knew what he was doing he was pushing his fingers into the black and sticky earth. Immediately his dizziness receded and he suddenly found himself gazing about himself with vast clarity of vision. On the bole of a scaled trunk nearby he observed an insect bearing the shape of a legged stiletto with a head in which eye-pits glinted like flecks of emerald. Then he found himself gazing up the bole of the tree; vegetation looming above him. Then he was feeling his way along the ground with a familiar heat shape ahead of him. He leapt on it before it could escape and bit down and sucked with relish, filling himself but never assuaging the constant hunger. Then … then he was back.

  ‘What the hell is happening to me?’ he said, blinking to clear strange visions from his eyes as he stared into the jungle.

  ‘You would be the best one to answer that question,’ said Hera. ‘Tell me what you are feeling.’

  Daes stumbled to his feet and turned back towards the residence Geronamid had provided. He saw now that it was one of those instant fold-out homes used by ECS for refugees and the like. It seemed sanctuary indeed for him.

  ‘I want to go back,’ he said, walking quickly towards it.

  ‘What happened?’ Hera asked, quickly moving to his side.

  Daes gestured to the creatures that swarmed on the jungle floor. ‘I saw through their eyes, and when they didn’t have eyes, I felt what they felt.’ He stepped through the door that opened for him and moved to a sink unit before one of the panoramic windows. Resting his hands on the composite he saw that the skin on the back of them had ceased to peel, but when he lifted those hands up to inspect them more closely he saw that his palms left, along with the black mud, white smears on the edge of the sink. He was about to say something about this to Hera when he saw that the smears were fading. Also, something bulked behind his eyes and he felt himself almost stooping under its weight. Involuntarily he turned and surveyed the room. Centring on the Golem he strode towards her and grasped her transparent wrist, and of course she easily pulled away. Now she held up her arm and observed the white smear on her wrist as it faded.

  ‘Picotech leeching from your body. Outside it—’

  Hera froze and Daes found himself gazing out of
her eyes at himself. He lifted her arms and opened and closed her hand, sensing as he did so the surge of optic information packages and diffusing electrons in her solid-state core. And he understood it all.

  ‘—was obviously sending out probes to sample and test its environment.’

  He was back in himself as Hera paused. She tilted her head.

  ‘By my internal clock I can only presume I went offline for fourteen seconds.’ She looked at Daes queryingly. But he had no reply, for now he was closely studying and understanding the workings of his own mind – taking apart all his memories and all his motivations and sucking up every dreg of information it was possible to find. A flower he had seen as a child, named as an adolescent, and found dried and pressed in the pages of a book in the theocratic college library, was tracked in all its incarnations through his life as a straight line of information. And there were millions of these lines. He felt an analytical interest whenever he encountered anything in his mind that related to the Csorians, and anything related to the prehistory of Earth. At the last he experienced the bleed-over of alien memory, and its huge logic and utterly cold understanding terrified him. Then suddenly it was all over and he was standing in a room, on a planet, being watched by a Golem android.

  ‘I know what the node is,’ he said to Hera.

  Anton Velsten never sneered. He left that to the others, just as, in the end, he left it to them to hold Daes across the table. That he used a gel on Daes’s anus was not indicative of any concern for the boy. Velsten just found it more pleasurable that way, and less likely for him to hurt himself. When the others took their turns, Velsten stepped back and gave a running commentary – his voice devoid of emotion.

  ‘And Pandel is at the gate. And he’s in and getting up to speed. Oh dear, Pandel loses it in the first ten metres. What’s this? What’s this? Damar is leading with a head …’

  So it went on, and when they were all done, Anton scrawled the sign of infinity on Daes’s forehead, with Daes’s own semen-diluted shit.

  The others who watched, beyond this room and beyond this incarnation, dissected every increment of every moment and understood the event utterly. They saw that it was the culmination of Velsten’s power game. Of course Velsten had to die at Daes’s hand. The shame could not be admitted – the shame of being unable to fight. How could he expose those memories to AI inspection? Then there was vengeance, and that was oh so sweet.

  ‘Hello, Anton,’ said Daes, strolling from his gravcar out towards the man.

  Velsten was tall, and with his mild ‘I am listening to you’ expression, and dressed as he was in his flowing robes, he was – it could not be avoided – priestly. He halted and regarded Daes estimatingly before moving his hands into a supplicating gesture, perhaps to apologize and explain about pressing business.

  ‘You don’t even recognize me, do you?’ Daes asked.

  Velsten now put on the pose of deep thoughtfulness as he watched Daes come to stand before him.

  ‘I feel we have met,’ said Anton, pressing his hands together as if in prayer. ‘But I’m afraid I have a terrible memory for names and in my ministry I meet so many people. What was it? Amand? Damar?’

  ‘I was one of the first to receive your ministry, Anton,’ said Daes.

  Velsten now started to become really concerned.

  ‘I’m so sorry, but as pleasant as this meeting is I do have pressing business,’ he said turning away.

  ‘It’s remiss of you not to remember someone you buggered, Anton.’

  Velsten froze, and slowly turned back. The transformation in his expression surprised even Daes. Now Velsten gazed at Daes with superiority as he folded his arms. He nodded his head as he no doubt wondered what to do with this inconvenient little roach.

  ‘Daes,’ he said, and sighed.

  Daes watched him for a moment then he unzipped the bag he had stolen from the bowling alley and took out the machete. Velsten’s expression changed to one of contempt.

  ‘Do you really think you would get away with using that?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh no, you wrong me. I don’t expect to get away with this. I don’t really care.’

  Velsten’s expression changed once again and his fear showed. He held out his hand as if to push Daes away. Daes swung the machete across and the hand thumped to the plascrete a couple of metres away. Velsten stared at his jetting wrist and made a strangled whining sound before capping his other hand over it.

  ‘That probably doesn’t even hurt yet, and it won’t get a chance to,’ said Daes, relishing the expression of horror on Velsten’s face. He stepped in and pirouetted with the machete and for one strange instant thought he had missed, that was until he once again faced Velsten. The man was a statue for a moment, before blood jetted out sideways from his neck, then he went over, his head separating from his body as he fell.

  No resistance at all.

  Daes inspected his hands for the nth time and saw that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Now, when he touched objects, he left no white smear. He reached out for his coffee cup, took it up, and sipped.

  ‘Restful night?’ Hera enquired.

  ‘Not really. I had some very strange dreams when I wasn’t being woken by those weird noises. What the hell was that?’ said Daes.

  ‘It doesn’t have a name as yet. It’s a large arthropod that deposits its egg-sacs high in the trees. It is apparently a painful process,’ Hera replied.

  ‘Apparently.’ Daes sipped some more coffee and wondered at the Golem’s seeming impatience. All emulation, but it did need to know.

  ‘You said you knew what the node is,’ said Hera. ‘Then, having grabbed my attention, you claimed great weariness and just had to go to bed.’

  ‘That is very true.’

  ‘Perhaps, now you are rested, you can tell me what you know.’

  Daes shook his head. ‘Sorry, can’t do that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I cannot.’ By stressing the personal pronoun he hoped Hera would really get the picture. There were things he simply could not do and things he could not say. That his mind had been reformatted he had no doubt, but he was not too upset by this. There were the things he could do … Looking out of the window he surged up high and gazed out through a cluster of eyes at spiky treetops. Scanning round he found another example of the creature he had hunted, clinging to a flower spike like an upright bunch of giant blue grapes. This creature was a white spider with a dagger of a body and mouthparts that appeared complex enough to dismantle a computer…and put it back together again. It clung with those mouthparts as its body heaved and strained and dripped transparent sacs on the foliage. The creature he was in could not hear the sounds the one in view nor itself made, but through other ears he could hear the hootings and raspings. Fleeing on with his awareness he found it diffusing into an ice-crusted sea in which finned silver footballs fed on air-plant sprouts of weed.

  ‘Will you ever be able to tell?’ Hera asked.

  An island chain revealed to him multilegged creatures like the skeletal spider-things, but these possessed bat wings and the superb vision of aerial predators. But they were no good – their simple light bodies would take millennia of adjustment to carry a greatly enlarged brain-case. His awareness now snapped back to something on the other side of the continent he presently occupied. Here he observed a herd of grazing beasts: six-legged and reptilian. The braincase below the three eye-stalks possessed complexity in control of the creatures’ complex digestive system – a chemical laboratory in itself. It would be necessary to push them into a predatory lifestyle, thus freeing up cerebral space – again a task taking millennia. However, near the house, he had observed a better option than this. And of course, inside the house was the best option of all. He would continue to search though – for the moment. The smallest fraction of his awareness studied the Golem.

  ‘I want you to contact the second Geronamid sub-mind.’

  ‘I am in com—’

  Daes wholly
occupied all her systems in an instant. He found the open comlink to the submind in orbit and probed up to it, tried to widen that link. In seconds he had created computer subversion routines and used them to try and get a hold, to control. The comlink immediately shut down. Within him there was a calmness – this had been expected, and in the process he had learnt much. Next time he would not be so brutal. He withdrew from Hera.

  ‘—munication with the … I see … I hope you understand now that your quarantine is total. You have no way of leaving this planet without Geronamid’s intercession.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Daes, and everything else that he was. ‘I want information.’

  ‘You realize that if you do manage to take control of the submind above, it will be instantly obliterated?’

  ‘I require information,’ was all he said.

  ‘What information?’

  ‘Everything you have on the Csorians and all related research.’

  ‘That is a lot of information.’

  ‘I have the capacity.’

  ‘Then link to me again, but do not drown me out this time,’ she said.

  Daes eased into her, carefully circumventing those areas from which her awareness evolved: her ego, self-image – what she was.

  Through the comlink Hera spat the request into orbit, and the response was immediate. Daes realized that this had been expected as there was no delay whilst the information was trawled from the AI net. As he scanned and sorted this information, calmly noting that all of the Csorian civilization discovered was but archaeological remains, he realized that whilst he could be just Daes, in truth he was now some other entity. Daes was in fact now a submind of himself, and his whole self was centred on the node in which he felt a crammed multitude. However, through vast and spreading awareness he observed picotech chains of superconductor spearing across the surface of the planet, spreading their informational network through the ocean depths, and flailing in the air like cobwebs as they connected with every life-form, insinuated themselves into every niche of the biosphere. One third of the planet now lay under this net, this awareness, and within hours only this network would meet on the other side and he would be able to observe all, and be ready. That was it though. He felt a flush of fear that was his own and the crying of that multitude. Upon completion of the network, dispersion and implantation became a necessity, for thereafter the network would begin to degrade as does all life – with the accumulation of copying errors, the degrading of the basic templates – only faster, because of its complexity, and the delicacy of its picoscopic strands. One time only: one chance.