Neal Asher: The Engineer Reconditioned

“The sheep don’t attack Baptisers, so the Church tells us. I don’t believe everything the Church says.” With that Beck drew his gun and checked it, as he had done a number of times since leaving the church. He also made sure the shells in his belt were easily accessible, despite the Gurnard pot hanging at his side.

“Isn’t that a bit awkward?” asked Erlin, indicating the pot.

“The discomfort would be greater if I did not carry it,” said Beck. “Let’s keep moving.” He gestured with his gun and then kept it in his hand as they continued walking.

The sun was a blue-green ellipse on the horizon with the box moon in silhouette just beside it, when they saw their first sheep close to. A flock of twenty of them had trapped a ground skate and were levering up its wings with their claws and biting off chunks of fishy flesh.

“Sheep are nothing like this on Earth,” said Erlin, then regretted speaking when two sheep turned their curled-horned heads towards her and exposed yellow fangs.

“Quiet. Keep walking,” Beck whispered.

The sheep returned to their easy meal and did not pursue.

“Their heads are like the heads of Earth sheep and they have hooves on their feet, but on Earth, sheep are quadruped. They don’t have claws.” Erlin shivered. “They’re like something out of Christian fable: Satan, or satyrs.”

“You’ve never seen our sheep before?”

“No.”

“Surely, when you came to the church?”

“I was dropped off there by air transport directly from the port.” Beck was vaguely aware that somewhere there was a spaceport, and he had often seen the transports flying overhead and the occasional flash of a star drive starting up out beyond the moon. It had been his intention to find out about these things. Then the impulse had taken away all his choices. It made him sad and it made him angry. I am only just become a man , he thought, and my life is not to be used to my purpose . He considered suicide and awoke pain in his guts.

“Tell me about parasites,” he said.

“Will you listen?”

“I will there,” he said, pointing at a low stone sheep sanctuary — a building that in another place might have used for protecting sheep from predators, but not here.

Within the sanctuary, coke was provided for a fire but there was no kindling to set it burning. Erlin started the fire with something that flared red and left burning bars of afterimages in Beck’s eyes. He placed the Gurnard pot near the fire and removed the bung. A dead-fish smell filled the sanctuary, but movement in the pot showed that the Gurnard was not dead. Thankfully the smell of the burning coke soon displaced that smell. Beck and Erlin sat then before the fire and ate from their respective provisions.

“You know, any fish from Earth would have died in such a container.”

“Why?”

“Earth fish require oxygenated water. Your Gurnards require no oxygen whatsoever. Oxygen is in fact deleterious to them, which is why they seek out still water at the end of their journey.”

“Journey?”

“I was going to tell you about parasites.”

“Do so, then.”

“I am not entirely sure of some aspects. I don’t know why there is only one Baptiser for each church. I can only presume messages are passed by pheromones or some such.”

“This is about me,” said Beck.

“Yes.”

He nodded and Erlin continued. “I’ll describe to you a life-cycle. You know what I mean when I say that?”

“I am not a complete idiot.”

“Very well. As I said: The eggs hatch out in the mountain springs. After that males and females travel downstream, in water and on land, to the richer feeding grounds in the lowlands… where the churches are. After it has reached first maturity the female finds a pond — usually recently vacated by another female — and there starts laying unfertilized eggs out of which hatch the neuter parasites. These infect the water supply and end up being ingested by most life forms that drink from the pond. These neuters grow inside their hosts and can, to a certain extent, control them. The neuters are in turn controlled by the females, though I’ve yet to work out the mechanism of that… Second maturity for the female impels it to return to the hatching grounds to lay more eggs there. It is carried by a neuter-controlled host to do this. I believe that at one time the only hosts were sugar dogs, though I am relying on someone else’s research for that information.”

“I’m a sugar dog,” said Beck. He wanted to explain to Erlin that it felt too dangerous to say outright that he understood.

She nodded and continued her narrative."Sugar dogs vomit food into the ponds. The Clergy bring consecrated offerings to the tank room. All are infected.”

Did that relieve them all of responsibility , Beck wondered, but he said nothing.

“All this while the males had been feeding in the same areas. The males have a higher resistivity to oxygen and feed mainly on land, on the various blanket funguses. When they reach maturity — they only have one kind — they head for the hatching grounds as well. Males and females from the same hatching do not return at the same time, which prevents interbreeding. Upon arriving at the hatching grounds, the females get their neuter carriers to place them in the waters. In those waters they lay eggs, usually attaching them to the bottom, to rocks, in the sand. The males, by the time they are mature, are usually averse to water and too big to get all the way to the hatching grounds. They release sperm packets which travel alone to the mountain springs to burst in the water in which eggs have been laid.”

“Water worms,” said Beck. “No one I know ever had a reasonable explanation for that. In some places they call them suicide worms. It never made any sense to me.”

“Well, you have the sense now. They have one purpose in their brief lives and that is it.”

“What are the males?”

“We saw one today.”

Beck nodded. “Of course — ground skate.” He felt slightly sick. So there was something inside him, jamming its spines into his guts. He realised some other things as well.

“The Eucharist, that’s when we get infected.”

“Quite likely.” Erlin slipped into her sleeping bag and rested her head back against her pack. “I imagine that right about now the Wife of Ovens is having the ponds around the church netted in search of the Reborn Gurnard. Of course it won’t be found until that one,” she pointed at the pot, “is out of the area. Adolescent Gurnards don’t encroach on a mature Gurnard’s territory. Perhaps in the past they were killed, or perhaps it is because the hosts are all used up. I don’t know.” Beck rolled himself in his blanket. He had the answer; the eighth moon netting of the ponds and the killing of the Gurnard Ghosts. That then was just the killing of immature Gurnards. He told Erlin about this.

“Yes, that makes sense,” she replied. “Once established in its territory the new gurnard sends out the neuter-controlled hosts to kill off the competition, and keeps killing off the competition. I take it this netting and killing is continuous?”

“Every eighth moon,” Beck confirmed. Then he asked, “What about the neuters left behind — from the old gurnard?”

“They die, their purpose served. Most of their hosts survive it, and survive to become hosts to the next Holy Gurnard.”

Beck thought about the priest coughing up blood in the church and it took him a long time to get to sleep. He lay there listening to the sheep sharpening their claws on the stone walls and tried to come to terms with harsh truths.

There were no windows for morning light, but it did filter through cracks in the walls. Beck was beginning to feel discomfort as the impetus to move on grew in strength, when the door crashed open and figures crowded into the single room. For a moment he thought that sheep had learned to operate the locks and in panic groped for his gun. A heavy boot came down on his wrist and the butt of a heather wood staff pressed on the centre of his chest to hold him down.