Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“Thank you, Lord,” he said, and filmed the pyramid before continuing to follow Paul. This was proof that the Orbonnai respected their dead. Better than tool using, as good as the act of worship. Mark walked on with the light in his eyes.

The third time the orboni went down the light seemed to turn to a heavenly glare. Mark nearly fell over the creature, but instead fell to his knees at its side. He clasped his hands before his chest just as the creature was pulling itself upright. He gazed at it, searching for some sign of fellow feeling, of an understanding of the mystery of worship. The orboni made a squealing sound and he felt something rake his face.

“No, wait! I understand!”

Paul was staggering away. Mark stood to go after it when a silvery sphere materialised in the air above him. He glanced up at it then ignored it, for he had more important things to do. It was a chameleon drone with its emulation field off. He wiped blood from his face and went after the orboni. Paul stumbled along ahead of him. But for some reason he could not catch up. He felt slightly drunk. His legs did not seem to be obeying him.

“Wait! Come back… please.”

He stopped and took a breather. Liquid bubbled in his chest and his stomach heaved again, but he was retching dry.

“Wait… ”

When he finally got the retching under control he looked for Paul again. And saw horror. Paul was bowed to the ground again, and rearing above him was a thrake. Mark froze, his brain working sluggishly. He had not realised they were so big. The thrake towered over Paul — it must have been over ten feet tall.

No, not that, that is not The One.

Mark unhitched his pack and removed from it a small glassy pistol. He fired once, but his hand was shaking too much, and scrub began to smoke beside the thrake.

“Get back! Get away from him!.. Paul, that creature is no god. It is… an icon… God is…” The thrake turned its nightmare mouth and convolute sensorium towards him. He swallowed bile and fired again. This time his shot hit and it emitted a bubbling scream as part of its hide gusted smoke, then turned and ran.

“God is… ”

A dark shadow blotted out the sky above. He looked up and saw someone looking down at him.

“God?” he said, and fainted.

“Feeling better?”

Paul nodded to the kind-faced man and took another drink from the pure water in the flask. He tried not to look at Carmen Smith, who was standing beside the raft with her arms folded and a look of disgust on her face.

The man said, “We would have taken you back, but your condition is not too bad. Those injections will keep you going until they can give you a transfusion at Seventeen. The cut on your face should cause no problems. Anyway, I believe Professor Smith has something to show to you.” Mark nodded and got unsteadily to his feet. He was feeling better. He may have been delirious, but he had seen what he had seen. He looked to Carmen.

“Please, come with me,” she said, all politeness.

When he saw where she was leading him he said, “Paul…” Paul, still frozen in an attitude of prayer.

“Yes, Paul. He is quite dead, though you did not make his dying any easier.”

“The thrake… ”

“The thrakai feed on the Orbonnai. They always have done.”

With more certainty he said, “That does not make it right.”

Carmen smiled with nasty relish. “You know, we picked up on you by the stream when you first saw this orboni. What did you think you saw there?”

Mark straightened up. “I saw a reasoning creature taking the first steps toward tool using.”

“And this attitude? An attitude of worship?”

Mark nodded, less sure. He glanced around at the man and noticed for the first time that he was clothed in the workmanlike gear of an agent from Earth Central. He was not sure if the man’s expression was one of sympathy or contempt. He turned back to Carmen and saw she now held a small surgical shear.

“I suppose you saw that this orboni’s God was the thrake — a monster. I wonder what it saw?” She stooped to the orboni and sliced off the top of its skull. A writhing ball of flatworms spilled out. “In the end it saw nothing at all. It was blind.” She prodded at the worms with the toe of her boot. “You know what I saw at the stream? I saw an animal with a brain so badly damaged it had lost the use of its normal instinctive abilities. When it fell to its knees, it did so, not to worship, but because its inner ear was full of parasites and it kept losing its sense of balance. Look at them. Look at them, Mark Christian.” Mark stared at the writhing mass of worms as they broke apart and began to die on the bluish dirt. Carmen continued, relentlessly. “Tell me, did your God that made the lion and the lamb make the worms that eat them from the inside out?”

“I have faith.”

At that point the monitor stepped between them and stared down with clinical detachment at the opened skull of the orboni.

“I presume,” he said, “that the thrake has its place in this parasite’s life cycle.” Carmen looked to him. “Yes, the thrake shits their eggs. The parasite goes from there to the water and into the nautiloids. The Orbonnai ingest them and become so riddled they’re easy prey.” As she finished the anger drained out of her.

“Are the thrakai damaged in any way by these parasites?” asked the monitor. Carmen shook her head. “It’s difficult to tell. The life-cycle is so interlinked that you cannot make—” They are ignoring me.

“—an easy assessment based on—”

Suddenly angry, Mark interrupted. “Do you think you’ve won? Do you think that somehow you have proven to me that the Orbonnai are not pre-ascension! I will return to Carth and report my findings. Those skulls… On the basis of them, a mission will be sent here for the…” He trailed off when he noticed they were not listening to him. They were looking past him into the scrub. He turned and saw the thrake he had shot at, standing no more than ten yards away.

“My God! Shoot it! Drive it away!”

He turned and saw the monitor and Carmen looking at each other.

Carmen said, “We can’t have that… a mission here.”

The monitor nodded. “It won’t happen.” He turned to Mark. “You will not be returning to Carth. You will be coming with me to Earth Central to answer to the charge of attempted unlawful killing.”

“What?… Who?”

The monitor pointed at the thrake. “You attempted to kill a grade three sentience. That is a serious offence.”

Carmen said, “The Thrakai were the ones you should have been studying for your spurious proofs. They’re the ones that build those mounds of skulls. Perhaps they worship the Orbonnai. Members of the prehistoric societies of Earth used to worship the animals they ate.” They turned from him then to watch the thrake. It started to move in, slowly, like an animal stalking its prey. Mark could see it had its many joined arms opened out ready to grab any of them that tried to escape. He started to back away, but the monitor’s hand came down on his shoulder with the finality of a guillotine.

“There’s no need for panic,” the monitor said to him, then to Carmen, “What should we do now?”

“Back away slowly, towards the raft. It only wants the orboni. They’ve tried human flesh before, and found it distasteful.”

Mark wanted to shout out how wrong she was as they moved away from the body of Paul. He wanted to run, but the hand on his shoulder seemed to suck the will out of him. It was all he could do to keep his legs moving. Soon, the three of them were backed up against the raft and the thrake had reached the corpse. Mark watched in horror as it severed Paul’s head, then continued to advance on them, with the head held in its lower appendages.