Neal Asher - The Gabble

“Very well,” he said. “What information do you require?”

“Two things: first, I want everything you can track down about gabbleducks possibly in or near the Graveyard.” That got me a rather quizzical look. “And second, I want everything you can give me about Jael Feogril’s dealings over the last year or so.”

“A further ten thousand,” he said, and I read something spooked in his expression. I took out another sapphire and slid it across to him. He checked it with his reader and pocketed it before uttering another word.

“I’ll give you two things.” He made a circular gesture with one finger. “Jael Feogril might be dealing out of her league.”

“Go on.”

“ Them … a light destroyer … Jael’s ship docked with it briefly only a month ago, before departing. They’re still out there.”

I realized then why it seemed so quiet in the bar and elsewhere in the station. The people here were those who hadn’t run for cover, and were perhaps wishing they had. It was never the healthy option to remain in the vicinity of the Prador.

“And the second thing?”

“The location of the only gabbleduck in the Graveyard, which I can give you without even doing any checking, since I’ve already given it to Jael Feogril.”

After he’d provided the information I headed away-I had enough to be going on with, and, maybe, if I moved fast … I paused on my way back to my ship, seeing that Broeven’s female heavy was walking along behind me, and turned to face her. She walked straight past me, saying,

“I’m not a fucking waitress.”

She seemed in an awful hurry.

On the stone floor two opponents faced off. Both were men, both were boosted. Jael wondered if people like them ever considered treatment for excessive testosterone production.

The bald-headed thug was unarmed and resting his hands on his knees as he caught his breath, twin-pupil eyes fixed on his opponent. The guy with the long queue of hair was also unarmed, though the plate-like lumps all over his overly muscled body were evidence of subcutaneous armor. After a moment they closed and began hammering at each other again, fists impacting with meaty snaps against flesh, blows blocked and diverted, the occasional kick slamming home, though neither of them was really built for that kind of athleticism.

Inevitably, one of them was called “Tank”-the one with the queue. The other was called

“Norris.” These two had been hammering away at each other for twenty minutes to the growing racket from the audience, but whether that noise arose from the spectators’ enjoyment of the show or because they wanted to get to the next event was debatable.

Eventually, after many scrappy encounters, Tank managed to deliver an axe kick to the side of Norris’s head and laid him out. Tank, though the winner, needed to be helped from the arena too, obviously having over-extended himself with that last kick. Once the area was clear, the next event was announced and a gate opened somewhere below Jael. She observed a great furry muscular back and wide head as a giant mongoose shot out. The creature came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the arena and stood up to the height of a man on its hindquarters.

Jael discarded her beer tube and stood, heading over toward the pens. The crowd were now shouting for one of the giant cobras the mongoose dispatched with utterly unamazing regularity.

She wasn’t really all that interested.

The doors down into the pens were guarded by a thug little different from those who had been in the ring below. He was there because previous security systems had often been breached and some of the fighters, animal, human, or machine, had been knobbled.

“I’m here to see Koober,” said Jael.

The man eyed her for a moment. “Jael Feogril,” he said, reaching back to open the door.

“Of course you are.”

Jael stepped warily past, then descended the darkened stair.

Koober was operating a small electric forklift on the tines of which rested the corpse of a seal. He raised a hand to her, then motored forward to drop the load down into one of the pens.

Jael stepped over and peered down at the ratty-looking polar bear that took hold of the corpse and dragged it back across ice to one corner, leaving a gory trail.

Koober, a thin hermaphrodite in much-repaired mesh inlaid overalls, leapt off the forklift and gestured. “This way.” He led her down a stair into moist rancid corridors, then finally to an armored door that he opened with a press of his hand against a palm lock. At the back of the circular chamber within, squatting in its own excrement, was the animal she had come to see-thick chains leading from a steel collar to secure it to the back wall.

A poor looking specimen, about the size of a Terran black bear, its head was bowed low, the tip of its bill resting against the ground. Lying on the filthy stone beside it were the dismembered remains of something obviously grown hastily in a vat-weak splintered bones and watery flesh, tumors exposed like bunches of grapes. While Jael watched, the gabbleduck abruptly hissed and heaved its head upright. Its green eyes ran in an arc across its domed head.

There were twelve or so of them: two large egg-shaped ones toward the center, two narrow ones below these like underscores, two rows of small round ones arcing out to terminate against two triangular ones. They all had lids-the outer two blinking open and closed alternately. Its conjoined forelimbs were folded mummy-like across the raised cross-hatch ribbing of its chest, its gut was baggy and veined, and purple sores seeped in its brown-green skin.

“And precisely how much did you want for this?” inquired Jael disbelievingly.

“It’s very rare,” said Koober. “There’s a restriction on export now and that’s pushed prices up. You won’t find any others inside the Graveyard, and those running wild on Polity worlds have mostly been tagged and are watched.”

“Why then are you selling it?”

Koober looked shifty-something he seemed better at doing than looking after the animals he provided for the arena. “It’s not suitable.”

“You mean it won’t fight,” said Jael.

“Shunder-club froob,” said the gabbleduck, but its heart did not seem to be in it.

“All it does is sit there and do that. We put it up against the lion,” he pointed at some healing claw marks in its lower stomach, “and it just sat there and starting muttering to itself.

The lion tried to jump out of the arena.”

Jael nodded to herself, then turned away. “Not interested.”

“Wait!” Koober grabbed her arm. She caught his hand, turned it into a wrist lock forcing him down to his knees.

“Don’t touch me.” She released him.

“If it’s a matter of the price…”

“It’s a matter of whether it will even survive long enough for you to get it aboard my ship, and even then I wonder how long it will survive afterward.”

“Look, I’ll be taking a loss, but I’m sure we can work something out….”

Inside, Jael smiled. When the deal was finally struck she allowed that smile out, for even if the creature died she might well net a profit just selling its corpse. She had no intention of letting it die. The medical equipment and related gabbleduck physiology files aboard Kobashi should see to that, along with her small cargo of frozen Masadan grazers-the gabbleduck’s favored food.

I was feeling slightly pissed off when, after the interminable departure from Paris station, the grabship finally released

Ulriss Fire

Even as the grabship carried my ship out I’d seen another ship departing the station under its own power. It seemed that there were those for whom the rules did not apply, or those who knew who to bribe.