Neal Asher - The Gabble

Erlin switched the motor back on and took them slowly towards the jetty. It soon became evident that there was another boat moored there.

‘Kelly’s,’ said Erlin as she finally brought their boat athwart the jetty.

The boat was the twin of theirs. As they moored next to it Ansel peered inside, noting stains on the boards and the distinctive smell of putrefactor. Taking up his rucksack, he followed Erlin across the jetty. The path from there was easy enough to follow: there was only the one and it led straight up into the mountains.

As Ansel now led the way up the first slope he said, ‘Okay, tell me.’

‘A hundred and eighty years ago THC bought the mineral rights here,’ she explained.

‘Oh really,’ said Ansel.

Erlin ignored his comment and continued. ‘The life here is incompatible with human life, highly toxic in fact. When THC established a mining colony they miscalculated. Removing the toxins from the soil so food could be grown in it turned out to be unfeasible and they were soon incurring huge costs from shipping food in. Company biologists got round that one by adapting a Fores life form into a symbiont for the miners. It lived in their stomachs just as it now lives in yours, and in the stomachs of the miners’ descendants — it’s passed on in the womb. It breaks down Fores’s proteins, sugars and carbohydrates into forms the human gut can digest.’

‘Look, I know all this. I’ve got one. You mentioned a deposition earlier. What was that all about?’ asked Ansel.

‘The symbiont is an adapted putrefactor,’ Erlin told him.

Ansel halted and turned to her. The Company medic had neglected to mention this. The knowledge made him feel slightly sick.

Watching him steadily, Erlin went on, ‘Unfortunately, after a period of approximately thirty-seven years, it was found that the symbiont changed and began to digest its host.’

‘What?’ said Ansel. What she’d just told him did not seem to gel. He was sixty years old, and with antiagathics had an expected lifespan that had not yet been measured. Now this madwoman was telling him he would be digested in thirty-seven years. It made no sense. He had only been sent here for a brief search-and-destroy mission. The symbiont was merely a convenience to help him digest the local food.

‘That makes no sense — the Company would have known.’

‘Yes, of course they would have.’

And then it did make sense to him. He was suddenly angry as he gazed past her to the river below. After a moment he realized what he was seeing down there. Just coming into sight was a rowing boat being rowed along so fast it was leaving a foaming wake. He pointed.

‘Oh hell,’ said Erlin.

‘Let’s move it,’ said Ansel, and they set out at a faster pace.

‘Can you stop it?’ Erlin gasped as they climbed.

‘Yeah, funny,’ said Ansel. Thirty-seven years. What did that matter when he was likely to be killed within the next few hours? He now understood that first conversation he had overheard between Erlin and Hendricks, and he knew the Golem was here for him as much as for them. The Company had done something nasty here, and they had done it again to him, but why had they done it? He glanced upslope, then back again. The Golem had reached the pool. He picked up the pace and shortly they reached a stairway cut into the rock.

‘Look!’ Erlin shouted.

Ansel glanced at her, then to where she was pointing. A shuttle was limping through the sky above them.

‘It’s Hendricks. He’s alive. He’s going for Kelly!’

‘Climb,’ said Ansel. The Golem was on the jetty now and it was gazing up at them. There was a chance now. If they could get to the shuttle … He noted that Erlin was flagging. She was an Earther and her legs could not match his. He considered leaving her behind, but decided not to. Fuck the Company. He halted.

‘You keep going,’ he said. ‘I’ll slow it.’

She watched him unshoulder his pack and open it.

‘Go!’ he shouted.

Erlin went.

Ansel ran through his mind all he knew about Golem Nineteens. They possessed a ceramal chassis wrapped round their more delicate components, so with the munitions he carried he could not hope to destroy it. Raking through his rucksack he pulled out a short cylindrical carton, out of which he tipped four flat discs each bearing digital displays. Studying the Golem’s progress, he set the display on the first disc and left it on a step. After climbing for a minute, he set another disc, then the third higher up. He was setting the last disc when the first blew with an actinic white explosion, showering stone across the mountainside. He glanced down.

It had missed, but an area of the stairway had been converted to rubble. This slowed the Golem, but only a little. Ansel ran up after Erlin, reaching her as she reached the head of the stairway. Cut into the face of the mountain was an area of level stone.

‘Drop the weapon, assassin!’

Hendricks leant against the back of the shuttle, between the two thrusters. The man’s face was twisted with pain, for his left arm was gone at the elbow and through the charred holes in his clothing burnt skin showed. He had placed an emergency dressing over the stump and some sort of cream on the burns, but Ansel supposed the man had not wanted to dull his senses with painkillers. Erlin stood to the right of him, and another figure stood nearby with his face turned away from Ansel.

‘We don’t have time for this,’ said Ansel.

Hendricks fired once between Ansel’s feet, erupting splinters of stone that smacked against Ansel’s legs. Ansel went down on one knee, then very carefully he removed his thin-gun from its holster and tossed it down.

‘I’ve told him,’ Erlin told Hendricks. ‘I think he’s with us.’

Ansel did not know if the monitor had heard her. Despite avoiding painkillers the man seemed out of it, his attention wandering. An explosion from below brought that attention back to Ansel.

‘The Golem is coming up here,’ said Ansel.

‘It’s true,’ said Erlin.

Hendricks glanced at the third figure. That figure turned towards Ansel and exposed the horror of his face. One side of it was eaten down to the bone; the man’s eye on that side a lid-less ball in its socket. Kelly. There came a third explosion from below.

‘We have to get out of here,’ said Ansel.

‘No can do, assassin,’ said Hendricks. ‘AG burnt out when I landed.’ Hendricks closed his eyes for a moment and his head dipped. Ansel stood and took a step towards his gun. He had to resolve this, and fast. The fourth explosive disc blew. He wondered if the Golem had been near any of them. Even if it had been right on top of one, the blast would only have stripped its covering.

‘Am thirty-seven,’ slurred Kelly. He held a thick book pressed to his chest.

‘Where’s your shuttle?’ Ansel asked him.

Hendricks’s head came up and he stared at Kelly. Kelly returned the look then pointed up the mountain. Just then Ansel heard a scrambling on the stair behind him. He dived and rolled, snatching up his thin-gun as he went past, turned and fired. The Golem was up on the edge. It seemed a fairly normal man with a shaven head, and carried a weapon similar to the one Hendricks held. Ansel’s first shot hit it in the chest as it stepped forward. The explosion ripped a hole to expose gleaming ribs underneath. It tried to aim at him, but he hit it again and again.

Abruptly pulsed-energy fire hit it from Hendricks’s weapon. The Golem staggered then leant into the fusillade. Its face became a blackened pit and syntheflesh fell burning from its arm. Its weapon was trashed and it threw it aside, but it continued to advance. All Ansel could do was keep firing, even though he knew his and the monitor’s combined fire would not be enough.