Neal Asher - The Gabble

‘That’s enough!’ someone bellowed.

Salind tried to stand as his attacker loomed over him. He saw the shaven-headed one moving up behind. Shavehead took hold of the thug by the shoulder and just threw him. The man hit the car then the ground, bounced and lay still. The second thug released Geoff in time to walk into a backhander that lifted him clean over the car. Salind staggered groggily to his feet. He glanced back and saw the two uniformed officers standing dumbfounded. Callus was on his knees holding his wrist. He looked up as Shavehead came up beside Salind, and real fear twisted his features. Scrabbling inside his coat he produced a nasty-looking pulse-gun.

‘You gonna do it to me, Mikey?’ asked Shavehead.

Callus did. The pulse-gun flashed. There came a thud and burst of smoke from Shavehead’s chest.

‘I just love this body.’ Shavehead strode forward and drove his fist down into Callus’s face.

Salind felt that familiar churning in his stomach: one hell of a story and now he knew the punchline, so to speak. One of the uniformed officers drew his own weapon — a similar pulse-gun to Callus’s.

‘Drake, put that away will you,’ said Shavehead.

The cop looked at his weapon in bewilderment, then he holstered it.

‘Inspector Garp,’ he said.

With Argus now set to record only, Salind observed, ‘So that’s how you looked.’

The uniformed police had been in disarray, and let them leave without protest, though Salind wondered what they could have done to stop them with their ex-boss, firmly uploaded to a Golem chassis, there to facilitate matters.

‘Yeah,’ said Garp, ‘ten years ago. Geronamid managed to piece together enough information to have this made.’ Garp touched his face and chest.

They sat in Garp’s car, Geoff in the back holding a med-patch to his head and groaning sporadically.

‘When I looked like this I was the big man who was a royal pain to the Tronad. Callus was my partner until Soper bought him off. I think he slipped praist into my tea.’

‘He won’t be doing that again,’ said Salind.

Garp gave him a slightly indifferent glance. Salind wondered if he was fully aware of the capabilities of the body he now occupied. He’d checked on Callus and the two others while Garp spoke to the uniformed officers. Callus and the one behind the car were dead. The third thug was not far from it.

They dropped Geoff at the Tarjen offices.

‘I’m gonna keep my head down now. Soper is not going to sit on her hands after this.

She’ll want us all nailed to banoaks,’ Geoff said, and with that disappeared inside.

‘What now?’ Salind asked. Without thinking he took out his pill container and clicked out a pill. Garp’s hand clamped on his wrist and the pill fell to the floor. Salind fought the grip, suddenly unreasonably angry.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Garp asked.

Salind stared at him. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He was sure someone was scratching on the glass behind him.

‘I. . they’re to stop me. .’

‘I know what they are. How long have you been a user?’

‘Soper dosed me when I interviewed her. Didn’t you see that on the net?’

‘So a few days. She used pure derivative?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Nightmares during the day?’

‘Yes.’

‘I thought so. You’re on fifteen strength. You’re already at the level of a seven-year addict. You’re losing it already.’

‘I’ll get a detoxicant treatment when this is over.’

‘Be sure you do or I’ll off you myself.’

Garp released his hand. Salind picked up the pill from the floor and quickly swallowed it.

The feeling, like a looming wave of black chaos ready to fall on him, slowly receded. Not taking the next needed dose was unthinkable, as briefly he had seen how thin was the veneer over reality for him. Garp started the car and pulled away.

The ceramal mesh fence stood three metres high, carried a killing current and sported beam-break alarms set along the top. Beyond it, banoaks stretched up the hill in neat rows.

Between the rows the ground seemed in constant motion, and in the distance a discshaped vacuum harvester, towing a collection tanker, worked its way down.

‘They must have to empty those tankers quite often,’ said Salind.

‘Not as often as you might think. That’s a Massey Vacpress. It sucks up the treels, presses out the juice and shoots the pressings into the tanker — almost pure treelskin.’

As it drew closer Salind observed the waste juice pouring from pipes in the side of the harvester. The machine left the ground behind it completely clear of treels, but there were plenty yet to be sucked up. This had to be the first run of the morning. A driver sat in a bucket seat on the main harvester disc steering it with two levers. He wore blue armoralls and a sphere helmet.

‘Why that gear?’ he asked.

‘The helmet’s to prevent narcosis from the vapour, and it’s their uniform.’

‘Whose?’

‘Soper’s people.’

Salind nodded and wondered what the hell they were going to do now. No way were they going to get through that fence without setting off a mass of alarms, even if they managed not to fry themselves.

‘Boring job,’ he said, nodding at the driver. ‘That’ll be one to go with the Polity running things. They’ll stick a submind in the harvester and that’ll be that.’

‘Okay, let’s go,’ said Garp.

They stepped out of the car and Garp popped the boot. From it he removed his rail-gun and walked over to the fence. The red sun breaking over the horizon cast his shadow behind him.

He held the weapon out of view and waved. The driver raised a hand in return and continued down the row. Some minutes later the harvester neared the fence. Salind couldn’t figure what Garp intended. Was he going to hold up the harvester? Garp showed him. As the machine reached the point where it had to turn to go down the next row Garp raised his weapon and fired a short burst. The driver disappeared in a cloud of red.

‘Jesu! What the hell are you doing!’

Garp glanced at him. ‘Well you said he’d be redundant.’

‘You just killed him!’

‘Yeah, I did didn’t I. Come here.’

He took hold of Salind’s shoulder and walked him to one side. Salind felt himself shaking.

He’d seen some horrible things, but he’d never seen someone killed in such cold blood. The harvester kept going, from where it should have turned, and crashed into the fence. Electricity shorted through its body as it tore out a hundred-metre length of fencing and dragged it into the highway. Hitting the bank on the other side of the road it ground to a halt, its vacuum still roaring. Salind saw that the driver was still sitting in the bucket seat, though only from the waist down.

‘You killed him,’ he repeated.

‘They all know what’s going on in here. You’ve seen nothing yet. Come on, we’ve got to move fast now. The guards’ll be here soon.’

Garp led him back to the car and started it up. He carefully drove it off-road and through the gap made by the harvester. Then he floored the accelerator and the turbine soon had them up to a hundred kloms up the cleared lane between the banoaks.

‘They always come at a breach from the outside. We’ll be too far in by then for them to do anything about us,’ said Garp.

‘What about getting out?’ asked Salind.

‘I shouldn’t worry unduly about that.’

In a few minutes they reached the end of the grove and Garp dumped the car in an irrigation ditch. He gave it one shove to get it there, leaving a dent in the metal.

‘You still recording?’ he asked as he checked his rail-gun.