Neal Asher - The Gabble

What the hell?

‘Where’s the monitor?’ he asked.

‘In the shuttle,’ she replied.

Ansel made no comment about that.

There were villagers running out of the houses, hastily clothed, yelling questions to each other. Ansel stayed where he was. The woman moved closer and he saw that she wore a pack on her back and held her cutting laser.

‘You can drop that,’ he said.

After she did as he instructed, he snatched the device up and put it in his belt. He then gestured with his gun for her to move where he could see her more clearly, before turning most of his attention to the fire and the villagers. Silhouetted against flame came a striding figure.

‘Jesus,’ said Ansel.

‘Who is it?’ the woman asked.

‘Not a who, a what.’

Ansel suddenly had a very bad feeling about all this.

Two villagers ran towards the dark individual. One of them went in close as if to grab him, but was grabbed in turn by his throat and hoisted into the air. Whilst holding him there, the figure drew a weapon and fired it at the other villager. The second one flew backwards with smoke and flame trailing from where his head had been. The first villager the figure dropped to the ground. He did not get up again.

‘What is that?’ the woman hissed.

‘Cybercorp Golem. Series Nineteen.’

‘But Golem don’t kill.’

‘They do when the Company gets hold of them. They crack the moral governors by giving them a full sensorium download from the mind of a psychopath. This one’s probably a Serban Kline.’

‘It’s probably here for you,’ she said.

Ansel chewed that over. He could not understand why the Company might want him dead.

It seemed more likely to him that the Golem was here after her and the monitor. But he had an inkling of doubt — the kind of doubt that had saved his life more than once. He could of course go and ask the Golem, but knew that if its answer was yes, it would be brief and nonverbal. He needed time, and he needed to know what this woman and the monitor had been on about earlier. He gestured for her to move into the darkness behind the house ahead of him.

‘What’s your name and what are you?’ he asked her.

‘Erlin. I’m an xenobiologist, mostly,’ she replied.

‘Do you have another shuttle, or a way of calling one in?’ asked Ansel.

‘Hendricks had a comlink.’

Hendricks. So that was his name.

‘Hendricks is toast. Keep moving. Head for the jetty.’

As Erlin led the way down to the river, Ansel gazed back towards the village. The Golem was calmly entering each house. Each time it came out, that house would burst into flame. It quite dispassionately shot anyone who came within a few hundred metres of it. The villagers were beginning to get the idea, and they too were running for their lives.

‘Move it!’ Ansel yelled at Erlin.

They reached the jetty ahead of some of the villagers. Ansel quickly untied a skiff powered by a hydrodyn outboard of Company manufacture. He saw that only two other skiffs bore outboards. He drew his gun, adjusted a setting on the side, and fired at each of the motors.

The gun itself made not a sound, but the casing of the first outboard cracked open and leaked smoke, and the second motor blew in half, then fell off its boat and sank.

‘What are you doing?’ Erlin asked.

‘It’s after you or me, not your precious colonists. I’m slowing it a little,’ he replied.

They scrambled into the boat. Ansel started the motor, turned the boat out into the river and headed upstream. As he wound the throttle round he looked back towards the village. All the houses were now burning and the villagers streaming down to the jetty. Behind them, silhouetted against the fire as it stepped over corpses, came the Golem.

‘We won’t get away. It won’t stop,’ said Erlin.

Ansel ignored that.

‘Where exactly did Kelly go?’ he asked.

‘Why do you want to know? Do you think completing your mission will put you into favour?’

‘Two reasons: first to complete my mission and second to get out of here. Maybe you’re right, maybe the Company wants me dead for some reason. I’ll find out. I’ll get off this shit hole and find out. Kelly must have had access to a shuttle to get to the Strine Station.’

Erlin sat up straight.

‘You don’t want to kill him,’ she said.

‘I’ll be the judge of that. Now, will you tell me where exactly Kelly went or do I have to pose my questions a little less pleasantly?’

Erlin stared at him for a long moment then shrugged. ‘You’ll change your mind when you get the full story. When you find out what’s been done to you.’

Ansel stared at her.

Been done to me?

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ he said.

Erlin shrugged. ‘For what it’s worth, he’s gone to the mountains. They’re a day away.

There’s a waterfall with a trail going up beside it, which leads eventually to the place where their Book of Statements is kept. The place has religious significance to them, which was why Kelly wouldn’t let Hendricks take him there in the shuttle.’ Erlin paused then went on. ‘Serban Kline. .

he’s the one who went to the frame for multiple murder wasn’t he?’

He replied, ‘In total Serban Kline killed a hundred and eight women. He was clever and it took ECS years to track him down. They found him with his hundred and ninth victim. He’d had her for two weeks. They managed to give her back her face and body, but they never managed with her mind. In one of her more coherent moments she chose euthanasia.’

They motored on through the darkness.

When the morning sun broke the sky into its striated patterns, they had reached an area where the river widened and low trees with leaves big as bedspreads grew on the banks. Erlin woke from where she had made herself as comfortable as possible in the bottom of the boat, stretched, and gazed around. Ansel peered at her gritty-eyed and said nothing. She returned his look for a moment then opened her pack. Ansel had his gun pointed at her in a second. She ignored him and took out a food bar which she munched on contemplatively.

‘What does ECS want with you?’ Ansel asked eventually.

‘I specialize in parasites. After they got Kelly’s deposition they wanted it checked in a hurry. I suppose I was the best they could get hold of at short notice.’

Deposition?

Ansel felt too tired to work it out. What possible evidence did Kelly possess, and of what?

‘Take the tiller,’ he told Erlin.

While she obeyed, Ansel lay down in the bottom of the boat and, clutching his thin-gun, closed his eyes and cued himself for light naps. No way would she get the drop on him. Anything untoward and he would be instantly awake. The engine was off and the sun high in the sky when Erlin shook him awake.

‘We’re at the waterfall,’ she told him.

Ansel lay there with his head aching and that foul taste in his mouth. The last time this had happened he’d put it down to being hit by Hendricks’s stunner. Now he wondered if it was a result of the symbiont in his stomach. He sat up carefully and blinked until his vision cleared. He looked at the waterfall, then turned to study Erlin. His gun was still in his hand.

‘Why didn’t you take it?’ he asked her.

‘There is no need. Will you listen to what I have to say now?’

‘I’ll listen, but not just yet,’ said Ansel. He holstered his weapon and studied the waterfall.

It descended from the mountains down a giant’s staircase, each step no more than five or ten metres. It bore the appearance of something constructed, but a glance at the surrounding mountains showed they bore the same shape, being naturally terraced. Pointing at a small jetty projecting into the deep pool below it, he said, ‘Take us over there.’