Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

She tugged him through the cervix in a fleshy wall and into her cabin.

Once within the narrow confines Janer looked around. Slime coated the floor and walls and no personal objects were visible. The floor was soft under his feet. He sensed the curiosity of the mind and it voiced no objections when he removed the box from his shoulder and placed it on ridge of hard flesh protruding from the wall. Eller stood at the middle of the cyst for a moment inspecting him from head to foot.

“I was to be with Ableman,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I like the exotic.”

This was hardly how Janer classified himself, but at that moment he was almost without thought. She stepped forward, took hold of his trunks, and pulled them down to his ankles.

“Ah,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his penis, then scraped her nails down his thighs. He grabbed for her and she slid away. He grabbed again and she allowed it, then tripped him to the floor. The slime was warm. She sat astride his chest, slid back, then reached between her legs and slid his penis inside herself. Janer did not last very long and was immediately aware that something else was operating here. He had never reacted like this before. That he had come did not seem to affect her as she rode him, her eyes rolled up in her head. He was hard again in a moment, but not inside her. She didn’t stop. He got hold of her and threw her down on the floor, mounted her, her legs locking behind him and her ankle spurs scraping his skin. His mind was a white blur of pleasure into which the hivemind spoke a few unheeded words.

“Aphrodisiac in the slime. How interesting.”

The hornet scuttled back into its box and fastidiously cleaned itself. The substance had no effect on a creature without gender.

They rested in an oozing tangle, foamed slime all about them. At last able to think Janer reacted to the hornet’s words.

“Why? Why is it in the slime?”

Eller sat upright, glanced from him to the box, then lay back with a squelch, a dreamy smile on her face.

“It is not normally there,” the mind replied. “Rumours of increased sexual activity during storms are greatly exaggerated. This activity does come during a time of slime production, this production being for other reasons.”

“And what are they?”

The mind was silent. Janer looked to Eller for an explanation, but she was looking at him in a particular way and he quickly lost interest in the subject. He reached for her but she caught his wrists in her rough palms.

“Slowly now,” she said.

Janer nodded mutely then glanced around as he felt the cabin shift. The storm; it was buffeting the snairl. He hoped it wasn’t just a squall as Eller took hold of his head and pressed it down between her legs. The slime didn’t matter. But for a faint peppery taste he hardly noticed it. He hardly noticed anything but what he was doing. Eller moaned and dug her nails in his head, hooked her leg over his shoulder and dug her spur in his back. Abruptly she pushed him away and it was her turn to sink down and take his penis in her mouth. She worked on him with her lips and white tongue, brought him near to coming then stopped and backed away. They were both panting harshly. She slid away from him and lay back with her legs widely parted, rubbing at herself with both hands, her moans louder. Janer saw that slime was actually being generated by the segmented flesh on the front of her torso. It didn’t matter. He pulled himself over her, entered her yet again, his fists against the floor either side of her hips. As he started to move he lifted one hand from the floor and ran it over that ribbed flesh. She went wild, writhing and yelling underneath him. Hardly in control himself he used both hands, pressing and caressing, and something gave. She yelled with ecstacy. Janer came unendingly. He felt as if she were draining him, as if his head would burst, as if his guts were spurting out of his penis.

As the wave subsided Janer looked down and saw with growing horror that his hands had sunk between the segments of her torso. He felt a sudden panicky revulsion and pulled away. She lay limp on the floor, her eyes glazed. Was she dead? Oh no, no… He glanced to the hornet on its fleshy shelf, unmoving in its box, an ornate piece of jewellery, all-seeing.

“It’s all right,” said Eller, and he stared at her with relief. The segments of her torso were open, exposing organs under glassy slime. Janer swallowed bile and had just enough presence of mind to grab up the hornet box before fleeing through the fleshy door. In his cabin he used the small shower unit then viciously dried himself with a towel. Once clean and dry he felt suddenly exhausted and collapsed on his bed.

“The geneticists did more than create the snairls, they created the crews as well,” the hivelink told him.

“I didn’t realise how much… so much.”

“They are like us — all one,” it told him.

He heard it and slept, but he didn’t understand.

“We will go to Upper Shell now,” said the hivelink.

Still feeling bleary Janer glanced from the shirt he was holding to the hornet on the bedside stand. It was drinking from the dispenser Janer had placed there. The device contained a sickly sweet protein-laced syrup that was all the hornet needed to sustain it. Janer stared at it blankly for a moment then returned his attention to his clothes. He couldn’t put two thoughts together. Should he dress or shouldn’t he? He dropped the clothing he had been putting on then selected a monofilament overall from his wardrobe. It was guaranteed impervious to anything and its outer surface was frictionless — the slime wouldn’t stick to it. He found gloves and slip-on shoes of a similar material. In the neck pocket there was a hood and mask. He possessed no goggles and no respirator so would have to do without. Was he overreacting?

He thought not. Suitably attired he made coffee and checked through his food supplies. The hyperclam he ignored, as it was supposed to have aphrodisiac qualities, and instead chose a meatfruit, which somewhere in its ancestry had a pig and a peach tree. Real pigs were a protected species now. There were two of them outside his cabin. A young man was vigorously buggering another young man while a young girl lay on the floor to one side playing with herself and looking annoyed. As soon as she spotted Janer she became hopeful, but he shook his head and moved quickly away. He would have to watch that in case anyone grabbed him. The hornet box had not stuck to the monofilament overall, and the hornet was in his top pocket peeking out at everything. He could feel it moving against his chest occasionally, but was too drained in every way to find any reaction to that. Quickly he strode along the artery, then along another that spiralled up through snairl flesh. Whenever he saw crew he saw sexual activity or its aftermath. Most of them were oblivious to him. With almost clinical detachment now he observed bodies opened at the front and oozing, men thrusting into women or other men in any position from genitals upward. It was as if the white wormflesh was an extension of their sexual organs. He saw and he moved on, not unaffected, aware that the substance in the slime was also in the moist air taken into his lungs. At one point, when a woman slid across a floor to him, he had to grit his teeth and stride on. He really wanted to stay with her.

At length Janer came to drier areas where shell material stabbed the walls and ran in reefs along the floors. He peered through doors half organic and half manufactured, into cargo areas and beyond them saw translucent shell thrashed by rain and lit by flashes of lightning. Only seeing this did he realise how he had grown used to the halflight in the snairl — the muted blue glow of the bioluminescent globes pinned to every wall.