Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

The orboni reached into the stream and fumbled around for a while. Eventually it withdrew its hand, holding a snail the size of an ash-tray. Mark watched it intently as it inspected its prize, and felt a momentary flush of excitement. Could it be that all the evidence he needed would be on these memory crystals? He noted a number of rocks laying nearby. Would Paul make the connection? The way he was inspecting the snail looked very much as if he was satisfying his curiosity. Mark willed Paul to pick up a stone. If there was no evidence here then he would have to go outside. He shuddered at the thought and turned the sound up again.

“—Again he was in error. This ‘turning’ of the nautiloid is not due to aesthetic appreciation. It is an instinctive behaviour that mimics the tumbling of the mollusc in the current of the stream when it has been dislodged from its hold on the bottom. Shortly we will see the reason for this.” Abruptly Paul darted his ‘long’ finger inside the snail, twisted it, and pulled out the white squidlike body it contained. With relish he pecked this up, tipped his head back and shook it to get the morsel down. He discarded the shell.

“There. A study of nautiloid behaviour shows they open the clypeus of their shells to re-attach themselves to the bed of stream after about thirty seconds ‘tumbling’. This is what Paul was after. Other studies have shown that the Orbonnai still follow this instinctive behaviour even with empty nautiloid shells taken from the beds of the streams. Empty or otherwise, these shells are always discarded after thirty seconds. It is well to note that the blue nautiloid, which has a tumbling response time of fifty seconds, has displaced the green nautiloids in the Graffus island chain, as it is slowly doing here, and that there are no Orbonnai there.”

“Stupid woman,” said Mark, and ran the recording forward.

“—the miracidia of the so-called ‘brain fluke’ parasite are caused to break secondary encystment by the heating of the faeces. Their vector here is—”

“—once in nautiloid waters they begin their cyclic swimming patterns. This greatly increases their chances of finding a host—”

“—a matter of conjecture. If green nautiloids are the infested form of blue nautiloids then—” Mark swore and jerked the memory crystal from the machine. He looked at the label in disbelief.

He closed his eyes and tapped his cross for luck, then reinserted the crystal and ran it to near its end. When he turned it on the scene presented to him froze him in his seat.

“—but of course the thrake has no need to be this mobile. It is my opinion that this is a throw-back to the tumbling delay, and a time prior to such widespread infestation. This is, of course, based on tenuous evidence. There may be a cyclic—”

Mark was not listening. He was staring in horror at the creature on the screen. It bore the appearance of a giant metallic wood-louse bent into an L. It had four short insectile legs on the ground, and six of what could only be described as arms. They were long, had two joints. The pair nearest its head ended in crablike pincers, and the pair below ended in clubs. The final pair Mark could not see because they were the ones holding down the orboni, while the thrake dismembered it with its pincers, and conveyed it piece by piece to its nightmare, machine-like mandibles and grinding mouth.

“My God!”

He had never been more sincere in that exclamation. He felt sick. He jerked the crystal from the viewer and tossed it to one side as if it were infectious. He then took up the next crystal. SOME XENOETHNOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF THRAKE…

“Barbarians!”

He tossed the crystal aside and took up the next.

“Let me get this right. You wish to go out alone to study the Orbonnai. I do hope you are aware of the… difficulties,” said Carmen.

“I saw that obscene recording of the thrake creature,” said Mark. Carmen looked askance at him then shook her head.

“They’re no problem—”

“I beg to differ.”

“You can beg all you like, but no amount of begging is going to get you near the Orbonnai. They move very fast when they want to… well, in most cases. Most of the recordings we’ve managed to make have been by remote chameleon drone. Paul was the exception. He came close to the station to feed because he was old and had been driven away from his group by a younger male.”

“Then perhaps he is the one I should seek. In that other,” Mark pursed his lips in distaste, “recording, I noted that Paul had been radio tagged.”

“Which crystal was that?”

“You are well aware of the one I am referring to.”

“Oh yes, ‘Sexual Dynamics In Orbonnai Family Groups’. I remember it — a most definitive study.”

“I still wish to make my own observations.”

Carmen stared at him in annoyance for a moment. “I will do everything I can to prevent you. You were foisted on us here at Seventeen by the New Christian Church at Carth. It is unfortunate that Earth Central have not seen fit to keep the likes of you off our backs.”

“I resent your inferences, Madam.”

“And I resent your beliefs. I find the practising of your particular brand of pseudoscience here, where real science is being carried out, most distasteful, and quite possibly damaging. I know why you are here. Your Church knows there are creatures of near-human appearance and all of a sudden they’ve got the missionary bug. When are you going to learn—”

“I do not have to tolerate this. Creation Science has its basis in the most sublime of works. The New Carth Bible is — Where are you going! Come back here!”

Carmen ignored him.

Once back in his room Mark picked up a memory crystal at random and smashed it against the wall. Then he dropped to his knees. “Oh Lord, give me the strength to go on. Give me the will to bear this ignorance of your plan and your presence.” He bowed his head and clasped his hands below his chin. Didn’t they understand? What worth had their universe of facts without a binding deity? How could they believe the magnificent complexity and pattern of the universe was not created by God? He hated so-called ‘true’ scientists. Where would the human race be without God to guide it? He unclasped his hands and stood up. As a Christian in the face of adversity, he would do what he had to do. It had always been so. Their science was irrelevant. He opened his case and removed some things he would need.

Carmen slammed the door to her office. She was angry because she had allowed him to get to her. But what other reaction was there in the face of such pig-headed stupidity? She sat down at her desk and stared blindly at the papers before her.

He had not studied the crystals fully, else he would have realised the futility of his mission. But then that was always the way with people like him. They based their ‘science’ on a false premise and discarded anything that did not fit. They rambled on about watchmakers and complex construction and gave simplistic explanations: a human being is complex therefore it was made, because conventional science does not have all the answers, the ones it does have are wrong. For his kind facts were twisted to match theories, rather than theories proven or disproven by facts.

Carmen repressed the urge to smash something and reached across and pressed the button on her intercom. “Davidson?”

“Here, lab twelve.”

“If you’re not on anything important can you come up to my office.”

“Just running some computer models. The AI can handle it. I’ll be up in about a quarter of an hour. What’s up?”