Neal Asher: The Gabble

I tried not to let my anxiety show. Tholan didn’t want any of Myral’s AIs finding out what he was up to, so, as a result, he’d provided all our com equipment, and it was encoded. I was beginning to wonder if that might be unhealthy for me.

“You’re telling me you have no communicator up there?” She pointed up at the blimp.

“I won’t report it,” I said, then climbed, wishing I could get away with pulling the ladder up behind me, wishing I had not stuck so rigidly to the wording of the contract.

Midark is that time when it’s utterly black on Myral, when the sun is precisely on the opposite side of the world from you. It comes after five hours of blue, lasts about three hours prior to the next five hours of blue-the twilight that is neither day nor night and is caused by reflection of sunlight from the sub-orbital dust cloud. Anyway, it was at midark when the screaming and firing woke me. By the time I had reattached my oxygen bottle and was clambering down the ladder, some floods were lighting the area and it was all over.

“Yes, you warned me,” Tholan spat.

I walked over to Tameera’s tent, which was ripped open and empty. There was no blood, but then the sheq would not want to damage the replacement. I glanced at Anders, who was inspecting a palm com.

“She’s alive.” She looked up. “She must have been using her own oxygen supply rather than the tent’s. We have to go after her now.”

“Claw frames in midark?” I asked.

“We’ve got night specs.” She looked at me as if she hadn’t realized until then how stupid I was.

“I don’t care if you’ve got owl and cat genes — it’s suicide.”

“Do explain,” said Tholan nastily.

“You got me out here as your guide. The plan was to set up a base and from it survey the area for any signs of the gabbleduck-by claw frame.”

“Yes…”

“Well, claw frames are only safe here during the day.”

“I thought you were going to explain.”

“I am.” I reached out, detached one of the floods from its narrow post, and walked with it to the edge of the slab. I shone it down, revealing occasional squirming movement across the cliff of vegetation below.

“Octupals,” said Anders. “What’s the problem?”

I turned to her and Tholan. “At night they move to new pools, and, being slow-moving, they’ve developed a defense. Anything big gets too close, and they eject stinging barbs. They won’t kill you, but you’ll damned well know if you’re hit, so unless you’ve brought armored clothing…”

“But what about Tameera?” Anders asked.

“Oh, the sheq will protect her for a while.”

“For a while?” Tholan queried.

“At first, they’ll treat her like an infant replacement for the one she killed,” I told him. “So they’ll guide her hands and catch her if she starts to fall. After a time, they’ll start to get bored, because sheq babies learn very quickly. If we don’t get to her before tomorrow night’s first blue, she’ll probably have broken her neck.”

“When does this stop?” He nodded toward the octupal activity.

“Mid-blue.”

“We go then.”

The claw frame is a sporting development from military exoskeletons. The frame itself braces your body. A spine column rests against your back like a metal flatworm. Metal bones from this extend down your legs and along your arms. The claws are four times the size of human hands, and splayed out like big spiders from behind them, and from behind the ankles. Each finger is a piton, and programmed to seek out crevices on the rock-face you are climbing. The whole thing is stronger, faster, and more sensitive than a human being. If you want, it can do all the work for you. Alternatively, it can just be set in neutral, the claws folded back, while you do all the climbing yourself-the frame only activating to save your life. Both Anders and Tholan, I noted, set theirs to about a third-assist, which is where I set mine. Blister tents and equipment in their backpacks, and oxygen bottles and catalyzers at their waists, they went over the edge ahead of me. Tameera’s claw frame scrambled after them — a glittery skeleton-slaved to them.

I glanced back at my blimp and wondered if I should just turn round and go back to it. I went over the edge.

With the light intensity increasing and the octupals bubbling down in their pools, we made good time. Later, though, when we had to go lower to keep on course after the sheq, things got a bit more difficult. Despite the three of us being on third-assist we were panting within a few hours, as lower down, there was less climbing and more pushing through tangled vegetation. I noted that my catalyzer pack was having trouble keeping up-cracking the CO7

atmosphere and topping up the two flat body-form bottles at my waist.

“She’s eight kilometers away,” Anders suddenly said. “We’ll not reach her at this rate.”

“Go two-thirds assist,” said Tholan.

We all did that, and soon our claw frames were moving faster through the vegetation and across the rock-faces than was humanly possible. It made me feel lazy- like I was just a sack of flesh hanging on the hard-working claw frame. But we covered those eight kilometers quickly, and, as the sun breached the horizon, glimpsed the sheq far ahead of us, scrambling up from the sudden shadows in the valleys. They were a seven again now, I saw: Tameera being assisted along by creatures that had snatched the killer of one of their own, mistaking her for sheq herself.

“Why do they do it?” Anders asked as we scrambled along a vertical face.

“Do what?”

“Snatch people to make up their sevens.”

“Three reasons I’ve heard: optimum number for survival, or seven sheq required for successful mating, or the start of a primitive religion.”

“Which do you believe it is?”

“Probably a bit of them all.”

As we drew closer, I could hear Tameera sobbing in terror, pure fatigue, and self-pity. The six sheq were close around her, nudging her along, catching her feet when they slipped, grabbing her hands and placing them in firmer holds. I could also see that her dark green slicksuit was spattered with a glutinous yellow substance, and felt my gorge rising at what else she had suffered. They had tried to feed her.

We halted about twenty meters behind on a seventy-degree slope and watched as Tameera was badgered toward where it tilted upright, then past the vertical.

“How do we play this?” Tholan asked.

“We have to get to her before they start negotiating that.” I pointed at the lethal terrain beyond the sheq. “One mistake there and…” I gestured below to tilted slabs jutting from undergrowth, half hidden under fog generated by a nearby waterfall. I didn’t add that we probably wouldn’t even be able to find the body, despite the tracker Tameera evidently wore.

“We’ll have to run a line to her. Anders can act as the anchor. She’ll have to make her way above, and it’s probably best if she takes Tameera’s claw frame with her. You’ll go down slope to grab Tameera if anything goes wrong and she falls. I’ll go in with the line and the harness.”

“You’ve done this before?” Anders asked.

“Have you?” I countered.

“Seems you know how to go about it,” Tholan added.

“Just uploads from the planetary almanac.”

“Okay, we’ll do it like you said,” Tholan agreed.

I’d noticed that all three of them carried fancy monofilament climbing winders on their belts. Anders set hers unwinding its line, which looked thick as rope with cladding applied to the monofilament on its way out. I took up the ring end of the line and attached the webbing harness Tholan took from one of his pack’s many pockets.

“Set?” I asked.