Neal Asher - The Gabble

“I’ll just keep watch. If it goes for you maybe I can drive it off, though seeing it now I realize it might just ignore this popgun.”

Shardelle nodded, and brought the ATV to a halt ten meters away from the monstrous creature. Turning on her shimmer-shield visor, she maneuvered past him and headed for the door. When she finally stepped down onto the rhizome mat and began pushing her way through the flute grasses, she heard The Gabble.

“Umbel shockadisc po frzzzt,” the gabbleduck grumbled to itself.

A few paces took her out of the standing flute grasses to where the creature sat. She recognized the stack of grazer bones beside it. The gabbleduck had returned to a previous location.

“Pthog,” the gabbleduck intoned, “Erb scugalug.”

It just made Shardelle angry. She marched forward and round until she was standing directly in front of the creature. It was indeed massive: folds of flesh hanging down from its body and almost concealing its powerful rear limbs. When it moved through the flute grasses its three sets of two forelimbs slotted neatly together to form two composite forelimbs so it seemed to run on all fours like, as Jonas had observed, a bear. Now those forelimbs were folded on its chest, and, sitting like this, it seemed some immense alien Buddha. Shardelle glared up at it.

“I’ve listened to over a thousand hours of that crap!” she shouted. “What the fuck are you saying?”

“Frogijig unth,” it observed.

All so close to meaning, but no meaning there. Returning her attention to its fleshy torso she saw that it had acquired a whole ecology all its own. The gabbleduck was crawling with prawnlike crustaceans. These were most numerous around wet looking sores, and the occasional lumpish growth leaking milky fluid.

“Shardelle! Shardelle! Get back here quick!”

Those crustaceans…

A sudden excitement filled her. It was the very same species they had seen crawling around the dead hooder: carrion eaters, they never fed on living flesh, but, like vultures, possessed an instinct for death.

“Shardelle!”

This gabbleduck was dying! She would have her corpse!

Then, through her aug: “This is Rodol. You must flee your current location at once. A hooder approaches.”

What?

Shardelle turned and gazed out across the plain the gabbleduck viewed. A black train was heading toward her, weaving back and forth. The hooder bore some resemblance to a giant millipede with its segments and many paddlelike legs. It also moved with the fast oiled smoothness of that insect. Shardelle froze to the spot, not out of fear, but through incredible angry frustration. She could not have this taken away from her, not now. It just was not fair.

“For fuck sake get in here! Maybe it’ll ignore us!”

The ATV was parked right next to her. She had not heard it arrive.

“Brogon ahul bul zzzk,” said the gabbleduck.

She suddenly realized how jealous and stupid she had been, and that both she and Jonas might pay for that. She ran for the door of the ATV and piled inside, hauled herself forward. Jonas was in the driving seat trying to get the thing into reverse. He did not take the power off and with a crunching shudder the vehicle stalled.

“Fuck fuck fuck.”

They both looked through the screen. The hooder was close, its front end rising off the ground like the striking head of a cobra. Inside its cowl was a mass of glittering knifish movement through which two vertical rows of red eyes glared. It was not focused on them. It was focused on the gabbleduck. Surely it would respond to this. Shardelle looked at the exterior intercom Jonas had been calling her through to check it was still on. No need really. She could hear the hard oily clattering of the hooder’s movement.

“Brogon,” the gabbleduck repeated, waving a black claw in the air.

The hooder froze. The gabbleduck turned its bill toward the ATV. It blinked some of its emerald eyes, then returned its attention to the hooder. After a moment it reached out with one claw and made an unmistakably dismissive gesture. The hooder sank down, turned in a gleaming arc and sped away.

“How do I get this damned thing started again?” Jonas asked.

“There’s no need. It’s gone.”

He snorted a harsh laugh. “Yeah, right. Well, when you’ve quit having your moment of epiphany, perhaps you’d like to take a look at the map screen.”

Shardelle did so, and for a moment could not make much of the graphics displayed there.

They did not seem to make much sense.

“About thirty of them,” said Jonas.

Then it did make sense. There were thirty hooders scattered all around them. They were moving, but seemed to be holding off for the present.

“You say the bill of a gabbleduck was found in the mountains?” Jonas asked.

“Yes.”

Jonas turned off the ATV’s engine. Moving the vehicle back into a stand of flute grass had been the best they could do. Hopefully the hooders would attack the gabbleduck and be too sated by that to attack them. There was no way to hide completely. He had studied the hooder sensorium and knew it would pick up body heat even through the skin of the ATV. Leaving the engine running would generate more heat to further attract attention.

“Nothing else?” he asked.

“It’s damned annoying. There should be more-bones at least.”

They were having a perfectly sensible conversation, sitting in the ATV, waiting to die. The nearest monitor force had sent a transport, but that would not be here for another hour. The hooders, it now seemed evident, were holding off until the gabbleduck finally expired. That could happen at any moment.

“But the tricones grind away all remains, which was why that bill was found in the mountains.”

Jonas wondered for just how many millions of years the tricones had been grinding stuff away. He auged through to the Tagreb and directly into the database maintained by those researching the mollusks. It did not take him long to discover that the tricone genome was just as concise and devoid of rubbish as that of the hooder. He connected then to the AI.

“Rodol, are you listening in?”

“I am.”

“Good.”

To Shardelle he said, “Three ancient races, the physical technological remains of which probably would not fill the back of this ATV.”

She glanced at him, seemed about to say something, then abruptly returned her attention to the gabbleduck. He thought she was swallowing tears.

“Tricones are biogenetic artifacts as well,” he added.

“I think it’s nearly dead,” she said.

The gabbleduck seemed a sleepy old man, its head nodding, bill lowering to its chest, then jerking up again. Removing his QC laser, Jonas laid it on the console before him. They both stared at it. He guessed she understood his intent. They both knew how hooders fed.

“But of biogenetic artifacts left by those races there are many: plants obviously made to refine metals from soil, worms made to accumulate radioactives in their bodies, and perhaps many others we don’t recognize. You know there are theories that even some Terran life forms are such artifacts? Why do some creatures carry a venomous punch so far in excess of that required to kill their prey? Why the chalk builders, the coral makers, why this, why that? Much was attributed to Gaean theories. Now there is some doubt.”

“You’ll be getting to a point sometime soon,” said Shardelle. “I think we are running out of time for discussion … Oh hell.” She leant forward.

The gabbleduck held out a claw.

“Kzzz lub luha Brogon,” it stated, its voice clear over exterior com, then it abruptly sagged and its bill came down to rest upon its chest. The light went out of its eyes.

Jonas lowered his gaze to the map screen.