Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

Tamsin knew that he would, and that he had more than one lifetime in which to do so.

I have to say this is one of my favorite stories and surprise surprise here I am again having a go at religion, getting wrapped up in a weird planetary ecology involving a nasty parasite, and liberally sprinkling it all with some gratuitous violence. This story was another casualty of Tanjen folding, for Anthony had started his own magazine called Night Dreams in which he published the first half of this in ’96. The mag did not last long enough for anyone to see the second half. However, in ’98 Graeme Hurry came to the rescue and published the complete story in Kimota .

Either side of the door to this church of the Fish, two iron-scaled creations gaze down from posts of heather wood. They are representational of Gurnards only in that they are readily identifiable as fish. Church artisans, like the Clergy, have never allowed anything so irrelevant as fact to get in the way of their calling.

On the iron scaling of the door itself, Sirus Beck knocked with the butt of his gun, then holstered the weapon. Whilst waiting impatiently, he gazed out at hills like pregnant seals below the falling box of the moon. Beyond the hills, snow-clad mountains faded into green sky and could be mistaken for cloud. There flowed the Changing Waters. He knew this just as he knew so much else about the Church, for his teachers had driven it into him with a leather strap. It was his conceit that he would have fled this place even without the feel of the strap across his back. At an early age, he had learnt to read, and absorbed much from the church library that the other acolytes had missed. It was his conceit that he had left because he had not been stupid enough to believe, and he had not expected to come back. Returning his attention to the nearby hills, he noted a flock of sheep flowing across the land, and dropped a hand to the butt of his gun before turning at the sound of the view-hatch grating open.

“Yes?” asked the belligerent face beyond the grid of thick wires. Beck recalled that someone had ordered the grid fixed there after a sheep had knocked on the door then ripped off the face of the acolyte who had opened the hatch. This sort of thing often happened.

“I am summoned,” said Beck, not trying too hard to hide his irritation.

“Hah!” came the informed reply.

When there was no further reaction, Beck felt the impetus build. It frightened him. If this fool did not let him in on request, he would have to attempt bribery, or scale the lichenous wall, or pick the lock. The only other option would have him throwing himself against the door and clawing at the iron.

“Will you let me in or will you explain to the Wife of Ovens why you turned away a Baptiser?” That brought a frown to the bristly visage and Beck then saw, by the broken teeth and scars, that this man had already run contrary to Church law.

“You know what’ll happen if you’re lying?”

Beck nodded. Of course he knew. He did not want them to seal him in a drowning jar, but he had been summoned. Choice did not come into it, for the voice of the Gurnard had spoken to him on a cellular level and he did not have the knowledge to resist it. Bolts and latches clacked and rattled inside before the door was quickly drawn open. Scarface stood there in stiffened hide armour, a crossbow across his arm, cocked and loaded with a barbed quarrel. With a glance over his shoulder, Beck quickly stepped inside.

The inside of the church was all dank stone across which biolights crept in search of the bladders of blood that were hung to feed them, and as a consequence of that nourishment, the glow of the genfactored creatures was red. The algal life coating the floor in patterns as of frost on a window, was scuffed by the passage of many feet, but still regrowing in places it all but concealed the mosaics. On the ceiling these mosaics were clear behind translucent stone. They depicted strange hoofed animals with woolly pelts, the like of which Beck had never before seen — though their heads were similar to those of sheep. Other just as unlikely herd beasts crowded the ceiling along with birds and fishes, plants, insects. The doctrine of the Church had it that these were creatures of Earth. And as real , thought Beck.

“Come with me,” said Scarface, and led Beck down corridors he remembered from what he considered the most grey and miserable time of his life. As an orphan he had not been given any choices. As one of the Trindar Becks he had fled before they broke his will. Scarface led him into an area to one side of the entrance hall. He wanted to go straight ahead and down as he was impelled to do, but the pressure wasn’t so bad now he was inside the church and he could handle a detour or two. He immediately recognised the door he was brought before. Often he had stood outside it shivering with fear and anger. Scarface knocked and opened the door.

“We have one here who claims he is summoned,” Scarface said.

“Sirus Beck,” said Morage, looking up from the paperwork on his desk. Beck stepped past scarface into the office and the door was closed behind him. He walked to the desk, pulled out a chair and sat.

“I did not give you leave to sit.”

“I don’t really care.”

Morage glared at him. He has not changed so much , thought Beck. After ten years his beard was greyer and his red robes faded, but the man’s eyes were still the malicious focus of his face. Morage enjoyed power — enjoyed meting out punishments.

“I could have you beaten and hung from the walls.”

“You would do that to a Baptiser?”

Beck tried not to smile. He knew enough about Church structure and doctrine to know that, as a summoned Baptiser, he was the province of the Wife of Ovens only, not the Inquisition of the Church. Should Morage seek to exert authority over him he risked his own drowning jar. Thinking on this, Beck’s gaze strayed to the corner of the room where a spherical glass jar a metre in diameter contained the remains of Morage’s predecessor. The man was naked, his wrists tied to his ankles, his head lodged between his knees, his skin bluish and his eyes sunken away — the preservative he had been drowned in not being sufficient to prevent all decay. Baptiser or not, it wouldn’t do to push Morage too far. Beck stood.

“I think it best I see the Wife,” he said.

Morage sat back. “What proof do we have that you are summoned?” He’s starting to play , though Beck. I should have been more circumspect , “You know the proof as well as I.”

“Yes, but perhaps before you are brought to the chamber I should hold you for a while. It would be easy for a potential assassin to claim to be summoned… ”

Beck felt a sudden surge of anger and fear. Petty — that was Morage. Beck rested a hand on the butt of his holstered gun and leant across the desk.

“A lot of years have passed, Morage, but I haven’t forgotten you,” he said. Morage glanced at the gun. He obviously had not seen it until then, and just as obviously the doorman would be in for a beating for not relieving Beck of this weapon. Morage tried to sneer as he waved his hand at Beck.

“Go to the Wife,” he said. “I have no time for this.” Beck went, the anger and fear slewing away as he was once again on course, and being replaced by faint amusement in that the gun made it even more likely he was an assassin. Even then he could feel the presence of the Gurnard in his emotions. In a moment he was on a main corridor leading into the centre of the church where the Wife of Ovens tended her fires. Already he could feel the increase in warmth and smell from flames of marsh gas. And as he walked the impetus took hold of him, drove him. He was vaguely aware that he was accompanied as the corridor he followed dropped down into the earth by sections of stairway, each marked by decorous drowning jars. At the end of the corridor he entered the huge central chamber, hot from the mouths of the ovens set in the walls. At the centre of this room, on a pedestal of heather wood decorated with sheep skulls, rested a wide glass pot, big enough to bathe in, and containing water the colour of bilge from an iron boat. Beck ran across the crumbling floor and thrust his hand into the pot. Something moved there. Spines entered his fingers and fire travelled up his arm. He vaguely noted two of the Clergy moving quickly forward to prevent him spilling the pot as he pulled away.