Neal Asher - The Gabble

Beyond the next door was a pillared hall containing a market. Strolling between the stalls, she observed the usual tourist tat sold in such places in the Polity, and much else besides. There, under a plasmel dome, someone was selling weapons, and beyond his stall she could hear the hiss and crack of his wares being tested in a thick-walled shooting gallery. There a row of food vendors were serving everything from burgers to alien arthropods you ate while they were still alive and which apparently gave some kind of high. The smell of coffee wafted across, along with tobacco, cannabis, and other more esoteric smokes.

All around the walls of the hall, stairs wound up to other levels, some connecting above to the tunnels leading to the arena itself, others to the pens and others to private concerns. She knew where to go, but had some other business to conduct first with a dealer in biologicals.

Anyway, she didn’t want the man she had specifically come here to see to think she was in a hurry, or anxious to buy the item he had on offer.

The dealer’s emporium was built between four pillars, three floors tall and reaching the ceiling. The lower floor was a display area with four entrances around the perimeter. She entered and looked around. Aisles cut to a central spiral stair between tanks, terrariums, cages, display cases, and stock-search screens. She spotted a tank full of Spatterjay leeches, “Immortality in a bite! Guaranteed!” a cage in which big scorpion-like insects were tearing into a mass of purple and green bones and meat, and a display containing little tubes of seeds below pictures of the plants they would produce. Mounting the stair, she climbed to the next floor where two catadapts were studying something displayed on the screens of a nanoscope. They looked like customers, as did the thin woman who was peering into a cylindrical tank containing living Dracocorp augs. On the top floor Jael found who she was looking for.

The office was small, the rest of the floor obviously used for living accommodation. The woman with a severe skin complaint, baggy layered clothing, and a tricorn hat, sat back with heavy snow boots up on her desk, crusted fingers up against her aug while she peered at screens showing views of those on the floors below. She was nodding-obviously conducting some transaction or conversation by aug. Jael stepped into the room, plumped herself down in one of the form chairs opposite and waited. The woman glanced at her, smiled to expose a carnivore’s teeth and held up one finger. Wait one moment.

Her business done, the woman took her feet off the desk and turned her chair so she was facing Jael.

“Well, what can I do for you ?” she asked, utterly focused. “Anything under any sun is our motto. We’re also an agent for Dracocorp and are now branching out into cosmetics.”

“Forgive me,” said Jael, “if I note that you’re not the best advert for the cosmetics.”

The woman leant an elbow on the table, reached up, and peeled a thick dry flake of skin from her cheek. “That’s because you don’t know what you’re seeing. Once the change is complete my skin will be resistant to numerous acids and even to vacuum.”

“I’m here to sell,” said Jael.

The woman sat back, not quite so focused now. “I see. Well, we’re always prepared to take a look at what … people have to offer.”

Jael removed a small sample tube from her belt cache, placed it on the desk edge and rolled it across. The woman took it up, peered inside, a powerful lens clicking down from her hat to cover her eye.

“Interesting. What are they?”

Jael tapped a finger against her right-hand aug. “This would be quicker.”

A message flashed across to Jael giving her a secure loading eddress. She transmitted the file she had compiled about the seeds gathered on that dusty little planet where she had obtained her real prize. The woman went blank for a few minutes while she ran through the data.

Jael scanned around the room, wondering what security there was here.

“I think we can do business-once I’ve confirmed all this.”

“Please confirm away.”

The woman took the tube over to a combined nanoscope and multispectrum scanner and inserted it inside.

Jael continued, “But I don’t want money, Desorla.”

Desorla froze, staring at the scope’s display. After a moment she said, “This all seems in order.” She paused, head bowed. “I haven’t heard that name in a long while.”

“I find things out,” said Jael.

Desorla turned and eyed the gun Jael now held. “What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me where Penny Royal is hiding.”

Desorla chuckled unconvincingly. “Looking for legends? You can’t seriously-”

Jael aimed and fired three times. Two explosions blew cavities in the walls, a third explosion flung paper fragments from a shelf of books, and a metallic tongue bleeding smoke slumped out from behind. Two cameras and the security drone-Jael had detected nothing else.

“I’m very serious,” said Jael. “Please don’t make me go get my doctor’s bag.”

Broeven took one look at me and turned white-well, as pale as a Kro-dorman can get. He must have sent some sort of warning signal, because suddenly two heavies appeared out of the fug from behind him-one a boosted woman with the face of an angel and a large grey military aug affixed behind her ear, the other an ophidapt man who was making a point of extruding the carbide claws from his fingertips. The thin guy sitting opposite Broeven glanced round, then quickly drained his schooner of beer, took up a wallet from the table, nodded to Broeven and departed. I sauntered over, turned the abandoned chair round and sat astride it.

“You’ve moved up in the world,” I said, nodding to Broeven’s protection.

“So what do I call you now?” he asked, the whorls in the thick skin of his face flushing red.

“Rho, which is actually my real name.”

“That’s nice-we didn’t get properly acquainted last time we met.” He held up a finger.

“Gene, get Rho a drink. Malt whisky do you?”

I nodded. The woman frowned in annoyance and departed. Perhaps she thought the chore beneath her.

“So what can I do for you, Rho?” he inquired.

“Information.”

“Which costs.”

“Of course.” I peered down at the object the guy here before me had left on the table. It was a small chainglass case containing a strip of cha-meleoncloth with three crab-shaped and, if they were real, gold buttons pinned to it. “Are those real?”

“They are. People know better than to try cheating me now.”

I looked up. “I never cheated you.”

“No, you promised not to open the outer airlock door if I told you what you wanted to know. My life in exchange for information, and you stuck to your side of the deal. I can’t say that makes me feel any better about it.”

“But you’re a businessman,” I supplied.

“But I’m a businessman.”

The boosted woman returned carrying a bottle of ersatz malt and a tumbler that she slammed down on the table before me, before stepping back. I can’t say I liked having her behind me. I reached down and carefully opened a belt pouch, feeling the tension notch up a bit. The ophidapt partially unfolded his arms and fully extended his claws. I took out a single blue stone and placed it next to the glass case. Broeven eyed the stone for a moment, then picked it up between gnarled forefinger and thumb. He produced a reader and placed the etched sapphire inside.

“Ten thousand,” he said. “For what?”

“That’s for services rendered-twenty-three years ago-and if you don’t want to do further business with me, you keep it and I leave.”

He slipped the sapphire, and the glass case, into the inner pocket of his heavy coat, then sat upright, contemplating me. I thought for a moment he was going to get up and leave. Trying to remain casual, I scanned around the interior of the bar and noticed it wasn’t so full as I’d remembered it being. Everyone seemed a bit subdued, conversations whispered and more furtive, no one getting shit-faced.