Neal Asher - The Gabble

At the centre of the park stood a monolithic quartz crystal into whose lattices had been recorded the names and personal histories of the thousands who had died during the civil war here a century earlier. The deeply translucent crystal ran in its depths holograms taken randomly from those personal histories. Positioned all around it were seats for spectators, though they were unoccupied today and, studying the figure standing with his back to the crystal, Salind could understand why.

This man’s clothing resembled an antique acceleration suit with its webwork of veins sandwiched in metallic fabric. Pipes were also visible at his joints and curved up from the neck ring, and fluid vessels were affixed here and there on the suit’s surface. This clothing was not of great note though. Others dressed more exotically and few would so much as blink an eye at them. However, this man seemed ill: his face greyish and his eyes containing a sickly yellow tint.

When he turned to gaze up at the crystal, it became evident that the tubes from the neck ring entered the base of his skull. As Salind drew closer he noted fingertips frayed down to the bone, eye irrigators at the man’s temples, skull exposed through holes in shaven scalp. Closer still and he caught the first whiff of putrefaction. For what Garp suffered there was no cure — him being dead.

As soon as the Tarjen Network picked up on the story, Salind knew that it had to be his. It was a perfect footnote to the big story on Banjer at the moment: the imminent arrival of the Arbiter of Transition, the awesome AI Geronamid, and subsumption of this world into the Polity.

Since the civil war, during which a theocracy had been bloodily usurped then replaced by more conventional government, there had been plenty of murders solved, or not, by the usual methods. However, there had not been a reification of a murder victim in a hundred years.

When the strange cult of Anubis Arisen governed Banjer, every viable murder victim had been reified and sent after his murderer. The victim’s dead brain was decoded and the essential mind and memory downloaded into an augmentation. Cybermotors at the joints moved the body, which was partially preserved by chemicals. Obviously more complex than this, the system utilized, in some reifs, surviving brain tissue, and historians argued that such were still alive.

Others argued that reifs possessed self-determination and even whilst running fully on the augmentation were AI. For a century the whole argument had been moot, that is, until Garp came on the scene.

Salind had scanned the files at stopovers while en route to Banjer. Garp had been an inspector in the Banjer police force. The last five years of his life had been spent trying to convict a woman by the name of Deleen Soper, who had allegedly made a fortune manufacturing a drug called praist, somewhere on this world. During those five years he had made enough headway to become an annoyance to the Tronad — a criminal organization reputed to be close to seizing power on Banjer and of which Soper was, again allegedly, the head. Several ensuing attempts on his life impelled him to make a will specifying that should he die within a certain period he wanted to be reified, and for this purpose transferred funds to what was left of the Church of Anubis Arisen. Shortly after doing so, he revealed himself to be a praist addict going into terminal psychosis, turned up at the Church’s headquarters, and after presenting the relevant documentation, shot himself through the heart.

‘Hello, I’m Salind. I’m glad you agreed to speak to me.’ Salind held out his hand.

Garp stared at this member for a moment, but made no move to take it. After a clicking gulp deep in his throat he said, ‘I won’t shake your hand. I don’t yet know the strength of the cybermotors in my finger joints, also I shouldn’t think it very pleasant shaking hands with a corpse.’

Salind forced a grin and dropped his arm to his side.

‘Are you recording now?’ Garp asked.

‘I am, and obviously I have a lot of questions to ask you. .’

Garp held up one hideous palm. ‘One moment.’

At his throat he made an adjustment to a recessed control plate. There came a faint hissing sound. When he spoke next his voice was smoother. ‘That’s better. My vocal chords are decaying despite the vascular balm. Airborne bacteria.’

‘An unusual experience, I’d imagine,’ said Salind, feeling foolish.

Garp said nothing for a moment. Salind wondered if he was being given an annoyed look.

Perhaps he was, only Garp’s mummified features revealed nothing.

‘I’m a reif,’ was all he said. And with that he took a handgun from his belt and held it up for Salind to see.

‘Ah.’ Salind held off from putting a call for help through Argus. Banjer being out-Polity for the present, Polity monitors could do nothing, and it would take at least ten minutes for the Tarjen staffers to get to him. Anyway, episodes like this made a story. The weapon — an old station-developed rail-gun — was the sort of thing that carried a twenty-round box and had a range measured in metres rather than kilometres. Salind thought it better suited to a museum.

‘What exactly is that for?’ he asked, keeping his voice level.

‘I’m attached to it. You know that a reif’s only protection under Banjer law is as part of the estate of the deceased? Only property laws apply.’

‘Yes, I knew that. Tell me, why did you choose to be reified?’

‘Because I needed more time than what remained to me to get her.’

‘Ah, I see. You refer to Deleen Soper. Why were you so determined to prosecute her?’

‘Because I was a detective,’ said Garp.

‘I note you use the past tense. You no longer work for the Banjer police?’

‘I do not. I no longer have to get a court order for searches and I no longer have to present cases to a corrupt judiciary. The interesting thing is that I cannot commit a crime either.

You have to be a person to commit a crime.’

Salind watched as Garp hooked the rail-gun back on his utility belt.

‘There’ve been rumours of corruption but none have yet been proven,’ he said. The presence of the gun was making him nervous and undermining his usual smooth technique. Garp pointed towards one of the far entrances of the park and began to stroll in that direction. Salind fell in beside him.

‘Soper has been indicted for drug trafficking four times and for murder three times. Every time the case was brought before the same judge and then thrown out. In any Polity court the evidence would have been sufficient to have her mind-wiped or executed. I checked. She has, to my knowledge, three of the five city judges and most of the Council in her pocket, and that’s only in this city.’

‘Those are serious accusations. What proof do you have?’

‘I had full sensorium recordings of conversations and bribes, documentation, and eighteen witnesses. When I. . died, my files were dumped. Of the witnesses, four went offworld, and seven suffered fatal accidents while I was alive. Two more made official withdrawals of their statements, and the remaining five were hit while I was being reified.’

‘Is Soper implicated in all this?’

Garp looked at Salind. ‘What do you think? There’s no admissible evidence and the judiciary is refusing the investigators permission to investigate.’

‘What then are your intentions?’

Garp remained silent for a moment. He halted at a spill of treels before speaking. ‘I saw the look you gave this gun. It’s not what you think. It’s the only piece of hard evidence I possess.’

He turned and gazed directly at Salind, his eye irrigators hazing the air around his face with spray. ‘You know, they wiped me out. All my files, even my personal files, were dumped from the system. It was an accident they said. I might well have not existed.’ Garp walked on, crunching treels underfoot.