Neal Asher - The Gabble

They both nodded, Tholan heading downslope and Anders up above. Now, all I had to do was get to Tameera through the sheq and get her into the harness.

As I drew closer, the creatures began to notice me and those insectile heads swung toward me, proboscises pulsating as if they were sniffing.

“Tameera… Tameera!”

She jerked her head up, yellow gunk all around her mouth and spattered across her face.

“Help me!”

“I’ve got a line here and a harness,” I told her, but I wasn’t sure if she understood.

I was about three meters away when the sheq that had been placing her foot on a thick root growing across the face of stone abruptly spun and scrambled toward me. Tholan’s Optek crashed and I saw the explosive exit wound open in the creature’s jade green torso — a flower of yellow and pink. It sighed, sagged, but did not fall — its eight-fingered hands tangled in verdancy.

The other sheq dived for safer holds and pulled close to the rock-face.

“What the fuck!”

“Just get the harness on her!” Tholan bellowed.

I moved in quickly, not so much because he ordered it, but because I didn’t want him blowing away more of the creatures. Tameera was at first lethargic, but then she began to get the idea. Harness on, I moved aside.

“Anders!”

Anders had obviously seen, because she drew the line taut through greenery and began hauling Tameera upward, away from sheq who were now beginning to nose in confusion toward their second dead member. Stripped-off line cladding fell like orange snow. I reached out, shoved the dead sheq, once, twice, and it tumbled down the slope, the rest quickly scrambling after it.

Tholan was moving aside, looking up at me. I gestured to a nearby mount with a flat top on which we could all gather.

“Got her!” Anders called.

Glancing up, I saw Anders installing Tameera in the other claw frame. “Over there!” I gestured to the mount. Within a few minutes, we were all on the small area of level stone, gazing down toward where the five remaining sheq had caught their companion, realized it was dead, and released it again, and were now zipping about like wasps disturbed from a nest.

“We should head back to the blimp, fast as you like.”

No one replied, because Tameera chose that moment to vomit noisily. The stench was worse even than that from the glutinous yellow stuff all over her.

“What?” said Anders.

“They fed her,” I explained.

That made Anders look just as sick.

Finally sitting up, then detaching her arms from her claw frame, Tameera stared at her brother and held out her hand. He unhitched his pack, drew out her Optek rifle, and handed it over. She fired from that sitting position, bowling one of the sheq down the distant slope and the subsequent vertical drop.

“Look, you can’t-”

The barrel of Tholan’s Optek was pointing straight at my forehead.

“We can,” he said.

I kept my mouth shut as, one by one, Tameera picked off the remaining sheq and sent them tumbling down into the mist-shrouded river canyon. It was only then that we returned to the slab campsite.

Blue again, but I was certainly ready for sleep, and felt a surge of resentment when the blimp cabin began shaking. Someone was coming up the ladder, then walking round the catwalk.

Shortly, Anders opened the airtight door and hauled herself inside. I saw her rioting with some surprise how the passenger cabin converted into living quarters. I was ensconced in the cockpit chair, sipping a glass of whisky, feet up on the console. She turned off her oxygen supply, tried the air in the cabin, then sat down on the corner of the fold-down bed, facing me.

“Does it disgust you?” she asked.

I shrugged. Tried to stay nonchalant. What was happening below didn’t bother me, her presence in my cabin did.

She continued, “There’s no reason to be disgusted. Incest no longer has the consequences it once had. All genetic faults can be corrected in the womb…”

“Did I say I was disgusted? Perhaps it’s you, why else are you up here?”

She grimaced. “Well, they do get noisy.”

“I’m sure it won’t last much longer,” I said. “Then you can return to your tent.”

“You’re not very warm, are you?”

“Just wary-I know the kind of games you people play.”

“You people?”

“The bored and the wealthy.”

“I’m Tholan’s PA. I’m an employee.”

I sat there feeling all resentful, my resentment increased because, of course, she was right. I should not have lumped her in the same category as Tholan and his sister. She was, in fact, in my category. She had also casually just knocked away one of my defenses.

“Would you like a drink?” I eventually asked, my mouth dry.

Now I expected her righteous indignation and rejection. But Anders was more mature than that, more dangerous.

“Yes, I would.” As she said it, she undid the stick seams of her boots and kicked them off.

Then she detached the air hose from her throat plug, coiled it back to the bottle, then unhooked that from her belt and put it on the floor. I hauled myself from my chair and poured her a whisky, adding ice from my recently installed little fridge.

“Very neat,” she said, accepting the drink. As I made to step past her and return to the cockpit chair, she caught hold of my forearm and pulled me down beside her.

“You know,” I said, “that if we don’t report what happened today, that would make us accessories. That could mean readjustment, even mind-wipe.”

“Are you hetero?” she asked.

I nodded. She put her hand against my chest and pushed me back on to the bed. I let her do it-laid back. She stood up, looking down at me as she drained her whisky. Then she undid her trousers, dropped them and kicked them away, then climbed astride me still wearing her shirt and very small briefs. Still staring at me she undid my trousers, freed my erection, then pulling aside the crotch of her briefs, slowly slid down onto me. Then she began to grind back and forth.

“Just come,” she said, when she saw my expression. “You’ve got all night to return the favor.” I managed to hold on for about another thirty seconds. It had been a while. Afterward, we stripped naked, and I did return the favor. And then we spent most of the blue doing things to each other normally reserved for those for whom straight sex had become a source of ennui.

“You know, Tholan will pay a great deal for your silence, one way or another.”

I understood that Tholan might not pay me for my silence. I thought her telling me this worthy of the punishment I then administered, and which she noisily enjoyed, muffling her face in the pillow.

We slept a sleep of exhaustion through midark.

Tameera wanted trophies. She wanted a pair of sheq heads to cunningly preserve and mount on the gateposts on either side of the drive to her and Tholan’s property on Earth. Toward the end of morning blue, we ate recon rations and prepared to set out. I thought it pointless to tell them of the penalties for possessing trophies from class C sentients. They’d already stepped so far over the line that it was a comparatively minor crime.

“What we need to discuss is my fee,” I said.

“Seems to me he’s already had some payment,” said Tameera, eyeing Anders.

Tholan shot her a look of annoyance and turned back to me. “Ten times what I first offered. No one needs to know.”

“Any items you bring back you’ll carry in your stuff,” I said.

I wondered at their arrogance. Maybe they’d get away with it-we’d know soon enough upon our return to the citadel-but most likely, a drone had tagged one of the sheq, and, as the creature died, a satellite eye had recorded the event. The way I saw it, I could claim to have been scared they would kill me, and only keeping up the criminal fagade until we reached safety. Of course, if they did get away with what they’d done, there was no reason why I shouldn’t benefit.