by Neal Asher
‘You conscious?’ she asked.
Of course, I couldn’t reply.
The raft slowed and dropped, then slid into a narrow bay. The woman climbed out and, after a moment, Brack peered over the seat ahead. He reached down and prodded me in the eye with an armoured finger. That eye began watering, then blinked once. He smiled nastily, looked over his shoulder for a second, then reached down again with both hands. He put one hand over my mouth and closed my nostrils with the other. All I could do was just lie there, suffocating. But then a hand came in from the side and slapped Brack across the head.
‘Come on, Racher,’ he said, releasing me and putting his hand up to his skull. ‘I had to see if he’s faking.’
‘Yeah, sure you did,’ the woman replied.
Brack climbed out after her and disappeared from sight. I didn’t pant or take any deep breaths. My breathing continued as evenly as it had before, so it took some moments for the oxygen deprivation to pass. But then I thought I must be hallucinating as another face moved into view and peered down at me. I got the strong stink of garlic from it.
He had lost all his canines now and what had previously been a muzzle seemed to be collapsing back into his face, while the rudimentary shape of a nose had appeared. In this state Marcus looked even less human than before, but that would pass. His diet was doing its work.
‘’ith you,’ he said, and moved away.
I heard something break and a clattering sound, then no more. How had Marcus got aboard what I presumed to be the ship Suzeal had sent to collect me? He didn’t reappear, and I wondered again if I’d imagined him. I just lay there breathing evenly and blinking with machinelike regularity, drifting mentally until I heard the distant roar of fusion engines. We’d probably taken off before that on grav but I didn’t feel the ship moving until those engines kicked in. A while later, the woman returned and heaved me out of the raft. She leaned me against it, holding me up by the neck and looked into my face.
‘I’m putting you in my cabin,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how much you understand but know this: Brack would like to see you dead, there’s no honour in him, but I’m SGZ and do what Suzeal tells me to do.’
She slung me over one shoulder and I wanted to scream. All I saw then was her arse, legs and corridor floor as she carried me. A door opened and she threw me down on a bed, straightened me out and departed. Still I could do nothing, locked inside my own body. I spent time thinking through events and kept coming back to Suzeal. From the start, she hadn’t seemed too concerned about whether or not I survived yet, in that last conversation with her, she’d suddenly appeared anxious to stop me dying. Also, from the recent memory that had arisen, I’d begun to realize that the connection between her and the original Jack had … complications. Right then I just couldn’t parse them. My mind began wandering. How might Marcus have hidden himself? Perhaps in the air ducts? No, this wasn’t a prador ship. A hooder sliding past in the corridor outside terrified me, the device on my back jerking in response because they were akin, while droon acid raised a steam all around me as it burned through the floor. Only retrospect told me I had slid into a state somewhere between the nightmares of wakefulness and those of sleep, until finally I did sleep.
12
The woman called Racher picked me up off the bed and put me on a gurney, run by grav, while Brack watched from the door. As the thing followed her out, slaved to her control, Brack stared down at me, his hand straying to the handle of his machete. But he did nothing. I mentally replayed what Racher had said before she dumped me in her cabin and it struck me that it’d been a precaution. She thought I might be able to talk again and didn’t want to be associated with Brack’s open intentions to harm me. This made me realize how absolute a ruler of the Stratogaster station Suzeal must be, feared by those who worked under her and, perhaps, worshipped.
Racher took me out of the ship, then down through a dropshaft and out into bright light. I saw two other tough-looking individuals walking along with the gurney. They wore uniforms of black and white, and carried weapons I recognized as slammers – guns that could fling out a bolus of metal dust to devastating effect on a human but didn’t have much penetration. Perfect weapons for keeping order in a space station where you didn’t want to make holes. A moment later I got my first glimpse of the hub of the station. A geodesic glass roof ran above, and through it I could see the curve inside the hub where spaceships were docked, perhaps including the one I’d been inside.
We entered a much wider dropshaft and the journey down this seemed interminable. A boulevard ensued and I could hear people all around me, with someone peering down at me before one of the guards pushed him away. We carried on down corridors, then arrived in another room.
‘Put him in the frame,’ said a man’s voice.
As they did this, I felt my hopes rising on seeing the autodocs, scanners and other medical equipment all around. Racher heaved me up.
‘Some help here,’ she said.
The frame sat inside gimbals. They clamped my arms and legs spread-eagled, putting a strap about my waist. I noted then that there was no grav below the gimbals as they turned me horizontal. A mechanical arm unfolded from one of the pillars over to one side and inserted a sensor head and, as it traversed my body, I felt the wave of heat I’d felt aboard the King’s Ship when first deep-scanned. It withdrew and folded up against the pillar again once it was finished. The gimbals then turned me upright to face a man who’d just come in through the door – the others had gone now. This odd-looking homunculus didn’t seem to have any eyes, just flat skin there underneath a sensory band running an optic plugged into his skull. He grinned maniacally, exposing snaggle teeth stained by some red chemical.
‘No bombs,’ he said.
‘I doubt even they would be so unsubtle,’ said Suzeal, presumably through an intercom. ‘There might be something else.’
‘Not as far as I can see,’ he said, tugging at his bottom lip. ‘But I can only see so far. There’s some nanotech distributed throughout his body, attached to his vagus nerve, but it just looks like quantum storage, so it’s not a weapon.’ He shrugged, loose boned. ‘I don’t think that’s anything the prador made.’
‘Never mind about that,’ said Suzeal. ‘As you said, just information storage.’
He nodded and continued, ‘No other nanotech beyond what a thrall usually produces, and no concealed compartments in its hardware. There might be a virus somewhere in him, but no chance of detecting that since I’m not a forensic AI.’
‘So what else can you tell me?’
‘His back is broken, just as Racher said, but the damage should only have paralysed him from the waist down. Vrasan used what maps as a segment of thrall hardware to stabilize his injury and keep autonomics running, but also to paralyse him above the waist too.’
‘Higher functions?’
‘Oh he’s conscious but unable to respond to anything. Doesn’t seem to be any brain damage.’
‘So tell me what you can do.’
‘I’ll have to go in from the front to get to the spine. If I go in from the back I’d have to take off that segment and that might kill him. I’ll need to repair the damage while detaching the thrall fibres – only once they’re all gone can I remove the thing itself.’
‘Can you reprogram the thrall now?’
‘No – I’m familiar with normal prador software but Vrasan used his own version of that. I’ve no idea what he’s put in there.’
‘Could the thing still kill him?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Ensure it does not.’
The man rubbed at his mouth. He looked agitated. ‘Okay.’
‘Is there anything else I need to know?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
‘Keep me updated.’ An artificial click ended the conversation.
The man moved closer to me. Just for a second, bright blue light blinded me, then as it faded the air seemed full of white shifting cobwebs. This then blank
ed out and I smelled burning.
‘My name is Bronodec Variclear Schultz. I’m going to repair your spine and remove that thrall. Vrasan made an effort to ensure you continue to feel the pain of your injury, but I think I can shut it down.’
I put together ‘think I can shut it down’ with ‘go in from the front’ and panicked but, of course, none of this was visible to him. He walked over to a pedestal autodoc nearby – I could see him just out of the corner of my eye. There he opened a hatch and unravelled an optic. Reaching up, he pulled out the one plugged into his skull and inserted the new one before returning to me. Then he sat cross-legged on the floor. With a low hum the autodoc moved in, then another came from the other side. The one on the left reached in with one glittering arm and pushed something against my neck. Sharp grinding pain arose there as an object cut me.
‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘The neural blocker cannot overcome Vrasan’s programming until it makes its attachment.’
It shortly seemed to find a switch, and all my pain then went blissfully away. Further arms swung in, attaching dishes and other containers to the gimbals, extended on brackets so they could be close to my body. Still others began inserting tubes: into my neck, my forearms and torso.
‘I think you should see this,’ he stated. ‘I like people to appreciate my work and this chore is going to be complicated.’
Something pressed against the back of my head, tilted it forwards and with a sucking click held it there so I was looking straight down at my torso. This was just in time for me to see the autodoc on my left use a glowing scalpel to slice me from crotch to neck, sizzling as it went.
Thanks, I thought.
Did he really want me to appreciate his work or did he have a ghoulish impulse to torture someone under his power? I realized he was probably loaded with pride and all sorts of other problems. His appearance, in an age when people could look however they wanted, indicated so. Also, if he’d wanted to torture me, he could have neglected to turn off the pain.
Hooks came in and pulled back the skin and muscle over my intestines, then heavier arms with spatulas on the ends sank into my chest, where it was apparent the scalpel had gone through the cartilage. The scalpel, meanwhile, sliced across the top of the first cut to form a T. The spatulas pulled open my chest and I gazed down at my insides. I could see my heart pumping, blood flowing in the veins, my intestines shifting like great worms. Blood and other fluids began to pool and a small suction head started to vacuum them up.
‘It’s a fascinating engine, the human body,’ he said. ‘Now to disassemble it while maintaining its function.’
More cutting ensued. Cage hands lifted out my intestines, severed behind the anus and still attached higher up, and deposited them in a big dish. Other things began to go, tubed and wired as they went. My breathing abruptly stopped and then my heart, but I felt no discomfort from this beyond a mental one – the blood droning in my skull was propelled by some other pump. The docs took out my heart and lungs along with other paraphernalia and inserted them into a tank of fluid. My liver into another. The machines then scattered my stomach and other organs in various containers, all artificially attached by tubes and wires, small pumps intervening. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my heart start beating again and my lungs breathing, the trachea hissing above the fluid they sat in and looking like a leech mouth.
‘In a previous age infection would have been a problem,’ he informed me. ‘However, perhaps you noted the light display before I started work?’ He nodded as if I’d replied positively. ‘First was a spectral flash that kills most bacteria and viruses, followed by nanolasers that kill off anything more rugged. I am also running a surgical nanosuite through you to hunt down and kill anything you yourself brought in. Also, you need have no worries about anything on me, since my nanosuite maintains me utterly free of foreign microbes.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Within limitations.’
Finally, Bronodec Variclear Schultz had everything out of the way. I lay there utterly eviscerated down to my back muscles and spine. He then cut away muscle to expose fully a section of spine. There I could see the inward dent of my vertebrae with pieces of broken bone and, on either side of this, silvery metal lines like rows of staples. Bigger surgical heads, but with smaller protruding instruments, now moved in, thankfully blocking my view. All I could do was listen as they worked: the slither of cutting, the hum of a bone saw, sucking and sizzling. I did, however, see pieces of flesh, broken bone, along with a mixture of blood and spinal fluid, sliding up a transparent pipe.
‘You cannot see what I am doing at the moment,’ he continued. ‘I have exposed the damage to your spinal cord and am now making temporary fixes while I detach Vrasan’s hardware.’
I drifted off into a half-sleep as the procedure went on and on. At one point it all ceased and Bronodec abruptly stood up. He detached the optic from his skull and plugged the one from his sensory band back in, then wandered over to the door and out. I’d slid back into half-sleep by the time he returned with a cup of coffee and sat on the floor again. The light flash and the ensuing operation of the nanolasers woke me up fully. I wanted to ask him why he didn’t have a chair, but couldn’t.
The sounds continued while he drank, then ceased. He picked up the optic on the floor while unplugging the other, and reattached himself to the hardware. The surgical heads abruptly retracted, exposing the work they’d done. I gazed down at my spine, its vertebrae opened out to expose the cord and all the metallic staple things of the thrall folded back. I suddenly felt as if the room was spinning, then realized the gimbals were flipping me over. Numerous tubes and wires shifted round me in a seemingly chaotic tangle, but none of them detached. I noted a lid closing down on my detached guts to stop them spilling from their dish. I supposed a grav side-wash from the floor plates might cause that.
‘Now to get that nasty thing off!’ said Bronodec.
He put on a pair of silky-looking gloves which were mottled with quadrate patterns and veined with black wires. He then set to work at something apparently in the air in front of him and I felt the autodocs busy on my back – their tugging and cutting and sizzling, but no pain. I felt the thrall part company with me and, in the open cavity of my torso, saw the metal sink out of sight. He meanwhile took the invisible object from in front of him and put it to one side. Telefactor gloves, I realized. Afterwards he moved his hands back and held them upright. A new sound started from behind me – a low buzzing and droning. As this continued, he just sat there with his hands held up as if in some strange meditative pose. Eventually the sounds stopped and the gimbals revolved me back into position. He set to work again, bringing his fingertips together and down. New heads moved in, which I recognized as bioprinters. They had decals on their main bodies behind the long black spears and objects like chromed sea urchins. There I read ‘CellweldTM’ and ‘BoneweldTM’ and knew that he must now be permanently repairing the ‘temporary fixes’.
‘Repairing nerve damage is always intricate,’ he explained. ‘I like to be hands-on for this while others usually leave it to a program. I find they tend to miss out on excising some of the scar tissue.’
I could hardly see what the things were doing to my spinal cord, other than that the kink in it slowly disappeared and swelling deflated. The bone welders folded the pieces of vertebra back in and deposition welded them whole again. They filled various gaps with artificial bone too, and then retreated.
‘The rest we can leave to the program,’ he said, stripping off his gloves and returning them to his belt.
The machines speeded up. They wove muscle back around my backbone and cell welded it. My lungs and heart went back in next, with the Cellweld head blurring around and in them. I watched my heart begin beating again, even as cage hands transferred over my liver and other mechanisms attended to its plumbing. I breathed a liquid breath, fluid coming out of my mouth only to be sucked away before it got further than my chin. My lungs continued to bubble, but only briefly, as long thin
needles penetrating them drew off the fluid. I saw my intestines running through a pinch, snaking down to my torso and welded at the anus. The machines intricately coiled them, welders working all the time.
‘Putting it all back, surprisingly, is not the greatest task,’ he said conversationally. ‘Getting everything aligned, and working as it should, is difficult. Autonomics must be retuned while bacterial and vagus nerve signalling must be re-established. I find it easier to establish new bacterial colonies.’
The smell was pretty disgusting as a worm of shit and half-digested food exited my back-inflated stomach. A mist of astringent arose around the whole process, while needles injected what I presumed were new bacterial colonies into my intestines. Through the blur of machine movement, I saw my torso steadily refilling, even as hooks closed across my folded-out ribcage. More long needles went in, perhaps dealing with the damage caused to the rib attachments at my spine and the bonewelder came in to close the sliced-open cartilage. In layers, the machines closed across the muscle and skin.
‘Not much fat there,’ he said. ‘High gravity combined with malnutrition.’
I wanted to reply, and now found that suddenly I could.
‘Was it … necessary for me … to be conscious?’ I asked.
He looked up with a delighted smile made grotesque by his lack of eyes. ‘Why, of course it was. I am not without sensitivity to the psychological effects here. You will note that though the procedure is apparently traumatic, you do not feel it. The neural shunt has maintained you in a state of calm. I would normally have taken a patient down to minimal function, a form of biological stasis, but, unfortunately, that would have interfered with the readings required to deal with the thrall segment.’
‘You’ve removed the thrall segment,’ I noted, now able to talk with a lot less bubbling. I turned my head and looked, clenched and unclenched one of my hands. The thrall segment sat in one of the dishes, seemingly pinned by a series of glassy rods from one of the many limbs of an autodoc.