Neal Asher: Zero Point (Owner Trilogy 2)

‘Bream’s own stock – the seeds and stones had all been carefully treated, freed of any fungal or other infections and primed for immediate germination, so they were ready for planting quickly. All the other stuff we have is being carefully nurtured in my clean-room.’ He gestured again, jerkily, towards an airtight door at the far end of the laboratory. ‘What we have here,’ he stabbed a quivering finger at the seedlings before them, ‘are from various berries, and one quince pip I didn’t spot the first time round, along with two plum and two cherry stones.’ He gazed at the plants with something approaching awe, and certainly that would be the reaction of many others here at Antares Base.

Unlike most of them, Var was herself the daughter of parents high up in the Committee Executive, so she had eaten blackberries, raspberries, plums . . . in fact she could think of nothing Gunther was growing here in his laboratory that she hadn’t tried at one time or another. It was only when her parents were dead, and her status dropped to that of a valuable societal asset rather than an asset with connections , that Var found out just how luxurious her earlier life had been. Thereafter, like most people on Earth, she had necessarily become accustomed to highly processed foods, tank-grown carbs and proteins artificially flavoured, black-market sausages containing meat you didn’t really want to know about, GM beans with odd physical effects and bread that was more wood pulp than anything else – all flavoured by such occasional luxuries as much-diluted mercury-laden fish paste from one of the offshore fish farms, or the odd gull’s or crow’s egg.

‘I understand that you’ve had some other successes too?’ She felt it necessary to keep this conversation running; necessary for her personnel to know she appreciated what they were doing; that she enjoyed their successes and commiserated with their failures.

‘After finding those seeds, we decided to have a brain-storming session to see if we could come up with other places to search. We found a large collection of fungal spores in some of the air filters, from which I’m now growing some edible mushrooms.’ He paused to scrub at his unshaven face, then gazed about himself in bewilderment.

‘Gunther,’ said Var, ‘you need to get some sleep. You’re no use to me if you start making mistakes.’

He nodded in full and complete agreement, took one step forward and steadied himself with one hand resting on the edge of a trough. ‘Not been feeling so . . .’ he started, then he clutched at his chest, leaned forward and vomited blood all over his precious plants.

He was the first.

Earth

When the readerguns turned on the guards along the South Cray sector fence, the zero-asset population held back. Only when an aero crash demolished a section of that fence did they finally react. Chingly had been in the middle of the crowd that poured out into the adjacent government district, where he and his fellows had found the world utterly changed. They had found freedom first, and now they found possibility. So much blood and so much death, and Chingly instantly recognized those who had lived high on the hog while his own kind starved, if not by their clothing then by the thickness of the flesh on their bones.

The orgy of looting that followed seemed part nightmare, part wet dream. He found it difficult to accept what he had found in some of their homes, and his stomach ache reminded him of what he had found in various kitchens, cupboards and warming refrigerators. He and his twenty or so companions had separated from the main crowds, made their looting more methodical, and dubbed themselves the Cray Zees. They ate whatever would spoil, and all now carried heavy rucksacks full of food that could last. They’d taken weapons, too, from dead Inspectorate guards and soldiers, and in one case torn a readergun from its mounting. But they had used these guns to do no more than scare other ZAs away from their pickings. When they found any surviving Inspectorate or other government employees, they used other methods.

‘Cray Zee!’ Chingly bellowed, trying to be comfortable with the horrible images in his mind. The rest of the gang, sprawled around the fire over which they had previously been roasting an odd papery-tasting sweetcorn, responded in kind. They were all as drunk as him on the stash of raw spirit they’d found in containers alongside a still in one of the houses they’d recently broken into.

Chingly tried to accept that what they had done to the government employees they had found was well deserved, but still remained uncomfortable with his own actions. After filling his belly, he had found his libido returning in full force, and it seemed right to butt-fuck that stuck-up bitch wearing her grey power suit. He preferred that method, since the rest of her had already been well used by the other Cray Zees, and she was bleeding quite badly. She’d stopped bleeding about an hour later; about ten minutes after Denk slit open her guts.

Man, that corn was rough. Chingly rubbed his stomach, which felt tight and a little painful. He tossed away his roll-up and moved back a bit from the fire, because the smoke seemed to be bothering him now. His lungs felt raw.

‘Fucking shit!’ said Mills, tossing spirit into the fire so it flared. ‘I feel like shit.’

Maybe that was the cause – just a rough stash of bootleg liquor. It was certainly potent because Chingly felt numb, couldn’t even feel his feet, and now his hands were shaking. He put his own drink aside and tried to stand. Very drunk. Then, as he finally gained his feet, he felt a niggling in his chest. He coughed up something warm and salty into his mouth and spat it out, then gazed in bemused dread at the red phlegm spattered across the crushed-down corn, before abruptly falling on his backside. Shit, one of the new TBs! He needed to enjoy what he could now, before he died like so many in the sector, drowning in phlegm and blood.

‘Hey, Mills, wassup?’

Mills was lying on his back now, convulsing, a bloody foam about his mouth.

‘Y’know, I don’t feel so good,’ said someone behind Chingly, but his neck felt suddenly stiff and sore and he didn’t want to turn to look. A pain began growing behind his eyes and his right cheek started shivering as if just that portion of his body had grown cold. Across the fire, he saw Denk stand up and lurch forward.

‘Where is it?’ he shouted, then fell into the fire. He started screaming, but just lay there burning.

‘Help . . .’ Chingly began, then coughed violently, bringing up a great gobbet of bloody phlegm. But that didn’t seem to clear it. He was wheezing and bubbling now, coughs erupting as often as Mills’s convulsions. On the other side of the fire someone else stood up, and then just went down again. The screaming continued, and the smell of burning flesh permeated the air.

‘Bad . . . corn,’ Chingly managed. He tried to stand again, but found himself lying on his side, unable to get enough oxygen into his lungs while staring into a burning face. Beyond the face, and beyond the flames, he could see no one standing – all of them felled like . . . like the corn. Blackness edged his vision, just for a second, then it swamped him completely.

The first reports arrived with the passengers of the next fleet of aeros to land. Serene expressed horrified surprise, and then shed a brief tear on subsequently learning that the plague that seemed to be spreading across the world had also taken Simeon Anderson and Sheila Trondheim. But she was evidently far too busy to let it affect her much.

‘Apart from some tragic exceptions, this malady seems to be killing off zero-asset citizens,’ she told her Oversight staff and, via intercom, the small town of Administration survivors at the Complex. ‘It seems likely to be some form of super-flu, against the like of which many societal assets and government staff members have been inoculated.’ She had already run a search on that – to select a few million SA and Administration ID-implant codes in those whose inoculations were not up to date, and activated the biochips in those implants, just to make casualties less specific. ‘It seems that the rebels and subversives that attacked us are quite mad, and that this Alan Saul, their leader, is not just a revolutionary but a nihilist.’