Neal Asher - The Gabble

Daes pressed his hands against the thick glass of the window, and noted that the skin on the backs of them was peeling.

‘I want to go outside,’ he said.

The air was frigid in his mouth. He had expected it to be warm and humid.

‘This equates to the Jurassic period on Earth,’ said Hera.

‘How do you work out that equation then?’ Daes asked sarcastically.

‘Quite simply really. The ecosystems have not evolved to the complexity of mutualism between species.’

‘And that means?’

‘No flowers and no pollinators. The equations are more complex than that, obviously, but my explanation stands.’

‘You mean it will do for a stupid human like me,’ said Daes. ‘Why the hell is it so damned cold? This looked like jungle from in there.’

‘It is jungle, and for this place it is unseasonably hot.’

‘Couldn’t you have chosen a warmer planet?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean? You are Geronamid.’

‘I am a part, and now a separate part.’

Daes turned to study her, then damned himself for a fool. If she gave anything away in her expression that would be because she wanted to. It was so easy to forget what she was.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Because my direct link has been severed, it being possible to use such a link for direct informational attack on Geronamid itself. This planet is in quarantine for the duration of this trial. The only link we do have is a comlink to a second isolated submind of Geronamid’s in orbit.’

‘Is Geronamid that scared then?’

‘Cautious, I think would be a better term.’

Daes turned away from her and regarded the cold jungle. There was a path of sorts, probably beaten by one of the AI’s machines. He headed for it, ash caking his boots, and little fungi bursting all around where he stepped. The vegetation on either side of the path sprouted from thick cycad bodies and bore a hard and sharp look. On the slimy root-bound ground scuttled arthropods like skeletons’ hands, which he watched hunting long black beetles that sobbed piteously when caught and eaten alive. He had gone only ten metres into the jungle when he suddenly felt sick and dizzy. He went down on his knees and before he knew what he was doing he was pushing his fingers into the black and sticky earth. Immediately his dizziness receded and he suddenly found himself gazing about himself with vast clarity of vision. On the bole of a scaled trunk nearby he observed an insect bearing the shape of a legged stiletto with a head in which eye-pits glinted like flecks of emerald. Then he found himself gazing up the bole of the tree; vegetation looming above him. Then he was feeling his way along the ground with a familiar heat shape ahead of him. He leapt on it before it could escape and bit down and sucked with relish, filling himself but never assuaging the constant hunger. Then. . then he was back.

‘What the hell is happening to me?’ he said, blinking to clear strange visions from his eyes as he stared into the jungle.

‘You would be the best one to answer that question,’ said Hera. ‘Tell me what you are feeling.’

Daes stumbled to his feet and turned back towards the residence Geronamid had provided. He saw now that it was one of those instant fold-out homes used by ECS for refugees and the like. It seemed sanctuary indeed for him.

‘I want to go back,’ he said, walking quickly towards it.

‘What happened?’ Hera asked, quickly moving to his side.

Daes gestured to the creatures that swarmed on the jungle floor. ‘I saw through their eyes, and when they didn’t have eyes, I felt what they felt.’ He stepped through the door that opened for him and moved to a sink unit before one of the panoramic windows. Resting his hands on the composite he saw that the skin on the back of them had ceased to peel, but when he lifted those hands up to inspect them more closely he saw that his palms left, along with the black mud, white smears on the edge of the sink. He was about to say something about this to Hera when he saw that the smears were fading. Also, something bulked behind his eyes and he felt himself almost stooping under its weight. Involuntarily he turned and surveyed the room.

Centring on the Golem he strode towards her and grasped her transparent wrist, and of course she easily pulled away. Now she held up her arm and observed the white smear on her wrist as it faded.

‘Picotech leeching from your body. Outside it-’

Hera froze and Daes found himself gazing out of her eyes at himself. He lifted her arms and opened and closed her hand, sensing as he did so the surge of optic information packages and diffusing electrons in her solid-state core. And he understood it all.

‘-was obviously sending out probes to sample and test its environment.’

He was back in himself as Hera paused. She tilted her head.

‘By my internal clock I can only presume I went offline for fourteen seconds.’ She looked at Daes queryingly. But he had no reply, for now he was closely studying and understanding the workings of his own mind — taking apart all his memories and all his motivations and sucking up every dreg of information it was possible to find. A flower he had seen as a child, named as an adolescent, and found dried and pressed in the pages of a book in the theocratic college library, was tracked in all its incarnations through his life as a straight line of information. And there were millions of these lines. He felt an analytical interest whenever he encountered anything in his mind that related to the Csorians, and anything related to the prehistory of Earth. At the last he experienced the bleed-over of alien memory, and its huge logic and utterly cold understanding terrified him. Then suddenly it was all over and he was standing in a room, on a planet, being watched by a Golem android.

‘I know what the node is,’ he said to Hera.

Anton Velsten never sneered. He left that to the others, just as, in the end, he left it to them to hold Daes across the table. That he used a gel on Daes’s anus was not indicative of any concern for the boy. Velsten just found it more pleasurable that way, and less likely for him to hurt himself. When the others took their turns, Velsten stepped back and gave a running commentary — his voice devoid of emotion.

‘And Pandel is at the gate. And he’s in and getting up to speed. Oh dear, Pandel loses it in the first ten metres. What’s this? What’s this? Damar is leading with a head. .’

So it went on, and when they were all done, Anton scrawled the sign of infinity on Daes’s forehead, with Daes’s own semen-diluted shit.

The others who watched, beyond this room and beyond this incarnation, dissected every increment of every moment and understood the event utterly. They saw that it was the culmination of Velsten’s power game. Of course Velsten had to die at Daes’s hand. The shame could not be admitted — the shame of being unable to fight. How could he expose those memories to AI inspection? Then there was vengeance, and that was oh so sweet.

‘Hello, Anton,’ said Daes, strolling from his gravcar out towards the man.

Velsten was tall, and with his mild ‘I am listening to you’ expression, and dressed as he was in his flowing robes, he was — it could not be avoided — priestly. He halted and regarded Daes estimatingly before moving his hands into a supplicating gesture, perhaps to apologize and explain about pressing business.

‘You don’t even recognize me, do you?’ Daes asked.

Velsten now put on the pose of deep thoughtfulness as he watched Daes come to stand before him.

‘I feel we have met,’ said Anton, pressing his hands together as if in prayer. ‘But I’m afraid I have a terrible memory for names and in my ministry I meet so many people. What was it? Amand? Damar?’