The Gabble

Velsten gazed at Daes with superiority as he folded his arms. He nodded his head as he no doubt wondered what to do with this inconvenient little roach.

‘Daes,’ he said, and sighed.

Daes watched him for a moment then he unzipped the bag he had stolen from the bowling alley and took out the machete. Velsten’s expression changed to one of contempt.

‘Do you really think you would get away with using that?’ he asked.

‘Oh no, you wrong me. I don’t expect to get away with this. I don’t really care.’

Velsten’s expression changed once again and his fear showed. He held out his hand as if to push Daes away. Daes swung the machete across and the hand thumped to the plascrete a couple of metres away. Velsten stared at his jetting wrist and made a strangled whining sound before capping his other hand over it.

‘That probably doesn’t even hurt yet, and it won’t get a chance to,’ said Daes, relishing the expression of horror on Velsten’s face. He stepped in and pirouetted with the machete and for one strange instant thought he had missed, that was until he once again faced Velsten. The man was a statue for a moment, before blood jetted out sideways from his neck, then he went over, his head separating from his body as he fell.

No resistance at all.

Daes inspected his hands for the nth time and saw that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Now, when he touched objects, he left no white smear. He reached out for his coffee cup, took it up, and sipped.

‘Restful night?’ Hera enquired.

‘Not really. I had some very strange dreams when I wasn’t being woken by those weird noises. What the hell was that?’ said Daes.

‘It doesn’t have a name as yet. It’s a large arthropod that deposits its egg-sacs high in the trees. It is apparently a painful process,’ Hera replied.

‘Apparently.’ Daes sipped some more coffee and wondered at the Golem’s seeming impatience. All emulation, but it did need to know.

‘You said you knew what the node is,’ said Hera. ‘Then, having grabbed my attention, you claimed great weariness and just had to go to bed.’

‘That is very true.’

‘Perhaps, now you are rested, you can tell me what you know.’

Daes shook his head. ‘Sorry, can’t do that.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I cannot.’ By stressing the personal pronoun he hoped Hera would really get the picture. There were things he simply could not do and things he could not say. That his mind had been reformatted he had no doubt, but he was not too upset by this. There were the things he could do. . Looking out of the window he surged up high and gazed out through a cluster of eyes at spiky treetops. Scanning round he found another example of the creature he had hunted, clinging to a flower spike like an upright bunch of giant blue grapes. This creature was a white spider with a dagger of a body and mouthparts that appeared complex enough to dismantle a computer… and put it back together again. It clung with those mouthparts as its body heaved and strained and dripped transparent sacs on the foliage. The creature he was in could not hear the sounds the one in view nor itself made, but through other ears he could hear the hootings and raspings. Fleeing on with his awareness he found it diffusing into an ice-crusted sea in which finned silver footballs fed on air-plant sprouts of weed.

‘Will you ever be able to tell?’ Hera asked.

An island chain revealed to him multilegged creatures like the skeletal spider-things, but these possessed bat wings and the superb vision of aerial predators. But they were no good -

their simple light bodies would take millennia of adjustment to carry a greatly enlarged braincase. His awareness now snapped back to something on the other side of the continent he presently occupied. Here he observed a herd of grazing beasts: six-legged and reptilian. The braincase below the three eye-stalks possessed complexity in control of the creatures’ complex digestive system — a chemical laboratory in itself. It would be necessary to push them into a predatory lifestyle, thus freeing up cerebral space — again a task taking millennia. However, near the house, he had observed a better option than this. And of course, inside the house was the best option of all. He would continue to search though — for the moment. The smallest fraction of his awareness studied the Golem.

‘I want you to contact the second Geronamid submind.’

‘I am in com-’

Daes wholly occupied all her systems in an instant. He found the open comlink to the submind in orbit and probed up to it, tried to widen that link. In seconds he had created computer subversion routines and used them to try and get a hold, to control. The comlink immediately shut down. Within him there was a calmness — this had been expected, and in the process he had learnt much. Next time he would not be so brutal. He withdrew from Hera.

‘-munication with the … I see … I hope you understand now that your quarantine is total.

You have no way of leaving this planet without Geronamid’s intercession.’

‘I understand,’ said Daes, and everything else that he was. ‘I want information.’

‘You realize that if you do manage to take control of the submind above, it will be instantly obliterated?’

‘I require information,’ was all he said.

‘What information?’

‘Everything you have on the Csorians and all related research.’

‘That is a lot of information.’

‘I have the capacity.’