The Gabble and Other Stories (5 page)

The putrefactor was not the most pleasant of creatures. Ansel had heard descriptions of them and of the smell that often surrounded them, and thought nothing of it. The Almanac justly pointed out that the creature had its place in the environment of Fores, just as the maggot has its place in the environment of Earth. The putrefactor was the mortician of this world.

The ‘factor was stretched out over the upper branches of a huge goss thorn. It looked like a great spread of drying grey-green mucus deposited there. Ansel guessed that this one had not fed in quite a while, as it was possible to walk close to it without gagging. He knew the creature would have a territory covering about a square kilometre, and that anything that died in that territory would immediately become its property. Only death would motivate it. The ‘factor had a store of patience to make a vulture look frenetic, often staying unmoving for periods of ten years or more.

Ansel closed his eyes for a moment to more clearly see the images and text scrolling down his visual cortex from the Almanac download:

With a death in its territory the putrefactor will immediately tense, cracking away its hard
outer covering, then ooze from its perch or hide. Its rate of travel is not much faster than a slug’s,
a creature it does resemble. On its arrival at the corpse, the factor spreads out and engulfs it
completely, even should the corpse be ten times its size. Digestion is quick: the corpse broken
down into simple organic compounds. Very little is wasted.

Ansel opened his eyes and grinned to himself. He felt that the colonists’ name for it was the most appropriate. It was called a ‘shroudbeast’ here.

Between the goss thorns, cornul bushes and areas overgrown with purple-stemmed briars, dark-green mosses blanketed the ground, and from this seed-stems with bulbous red heads sprouted like grass. The covering was soft but firm underfoot and made walking a pleasant experience even though he was heading uphill. Soon Ansel came upon tracks where the seed-stems were crushed down and he knew he was getting closer to the village. Farther in, these tracks were worn down to bare sandy ground that eventually brought him to a wider track, which in turn led to a gate in a goss-thorn fence. The thorns had not been removed from the posts and rails, and acted as a barrier to the wildlife. Beyond the fence the track wound between strip fields, some ploughed and some containing crops of tall plants with trumpet flowers.

Passing between these fields, Ansel came quickly to the brow of a hill and looked down on Troos.

He crouched next to a field ditch and, through his image-intensifier, surveyed the village.

Like many villages on many worlds where there was a surrounding wilderness, this was built at the edge of the river - the low wooden houses huddled together as if for comfort. To one side, large barns clustered, and beyond these projected a jetty to which several skiffs were moored.

There seemed to be some activity around the barns, a couple of women at a well, but little else going on. Ansel clipped the intensifier at his belt then drew his thin-gun. He studied the display on the side of the weapon, grunted his satisfaction, holstered it, then stood and headed on down.

First, he must be polite, he decided. He would ask very considerately after the whereabouts of Kelly. He would find Kelly’s daughter and two sons and ask them if they had seen their father. If it transpired that he was getting no cooperation, he would have to use stronger tactics. This he expected, as the colonists were a cantankerous and ungrateful bunch. When THC

staff had returned here after the hundred years of the Corporate Wars they had discovered the descendants of the original miners lapsed into primitivism. For these people they brought in technology, education, contractual employment with its prospect of wealth and the chance to travel offworld. Their repayment had been a refusal of all contracts, obstinate mulishness, damage claims for the abandonment of their ancestors, and steading claims on land the Company had bought mineral rights to a hundred and eighty years ago. Ansel suspected he might have to get a little rough.

Ansel strolled into the village and down what he supposed must be the main street, to where the two women were standing at the well. As he approached, they took one look at him, hoisted up their skirts and headed towards the barns.

‘Wait,’ Ansel called, but they ignored him.

He calmly walked after them, round a two-storey building with a wide arched doorway through which he could see a scattering of tables and a bar with bottles racked behind. On the other side of this place, he came face to face with the two women, now accompanied by two men. None of these people looked happy to see him.

‘What do you want, Company man?’ asked the elder of the two men.

Ansel studied the bearded face and saw there the obstinacy he had expected.

‘I want Kelly Segre Janssen,’ he said.

‘And why do you want him?’ asked the younger man.

Ansel studied the two men. They both looked to be in their thirties, and as this place was without antiagathic technology that probably was their age. They were infants to him. He appeared to be the same as them, but was twice their age.

‘I would prefer to speak to someone in charge,’ he said.

‘I am the elder here,’ said the bearded one.

Ansel doubted that, but thought he would let it ride for the moment.

‘Okay, it’s a simple enough matter. The Company owes Kelly a substantial sum for information he provided for the Almanac. I’m here to make sure he gets it.’

The two men looked at each other.

‘He’s here to be my father’s good friend,’ said one of the women.

Ansel looked at her. ‘You’re Annette Segre Janssen?’

‘I am.’

‘You’re right - I want to be your father’s good friend.’

She said, ‘You’re here to kill my father because he smuggled cornul fruit aboard the Strine Station and used it to poison the Director and some Company officials.’

Obviously ‘good friend’ meant something different here, Ansel thought, and he stood no chance with subterfuge. He reached for his thin-gun then paused when he heard deliberate movement behind him. Whoever it was, was good. He had heard nothing until then. For a moment he hesitated, then in one motion he drew his gun, squatted and turned. A bright light flung him into darkness.

* * * *

Ansel woke with his head throbbing and a foul taste in his mouth.

Stunner.

He reached to his belt and found his holster empty. His pack was gone as well. Carefully opening gritty eyes, he stared up at a plasmel ceiling. Underneath him he felt the cold pattern of metal decking.

‘You won’t find your gun, nor will you find any of those other lethal little devices you had concealed about your person, assassin,’ someone said.

Ansel rolled and sat upright. He was in the cargo hold of a small shuttle. Sat on a plasmel crate was a grey-haired man of indeterminate age. He held a stubby pulse-gun pointed casually at Ansel’s face. Ansel felt a sinking sensation in his gut when he recognized the grey uniform the man wore. He was Security - a monitor from Earth Central.

Shit.

‘We’ve been expecting you for some time now. We knew the Company wouldn’t let Kelly’s actions go unpunished. Their sending you here was ill-considered though. They did it before Kelly’s deposition was registered at ECS and before they realized their need to cover up. I would guess that about now, other agents are on their way here to deal with you.’

What the hell is he talking about?

The monitor went on, ‘You’re our evidence. They can claim the symbionts here mutated over the last century, but they can’t claim that of yours.’

While Ansel tried to make sense of that, the back door to the hold slid open and a woman walked in. She had black skin and blue eyes and wore an orange and grey suit. Ansel was struck at once by her assurance and the level calm of her gaze. Like himself she seemed to be about thirty years old. By her air he guessed her to be many times that. In one hand she carried a notescreen and in the other a short-range surgical laser. People of her age took precautions.

‘Have you got it?’ the monitor asked the woman.

‘I have it,’ said the woman. ‘It’s exactly the same so there has definitely been no mutation. It’s a deliberate alteration to the ‘factor’s genome.’

‘The time-scale the same?’

‘Yes: thirty-seven years after implantation. Here, of course, that means thirty-seven years after conception. They’ve got a right to be angry,’ she said.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ asked Ansel.

The woman and the monitor looked at each other.

‘He doesn’t know?’ asked the woman.

‘You think he’d have agreed to implantation if he had?’ asked the monitor.

They both looked at Ansel.

The monitor said, ‘It’s enough for you now to know that THC will want you dead.’

The woman glanced at the monitor then shrugged.

Yeah, right.

Ansel had been with the Company for many years and done a lot for them. He was not the kind they had killed - he was the kind who did the killing.

‘Okay, get up,’ said the monitor.

He sounded angry. Ansel stood up and, as he stretched his legs and arms, the snout of the pulse-gun did not waver from his face.

The monitor nodded towards the door. ‘Out of here.’

* * * *

The shuttle had been manoeuvred into one of the large barns, which was why Ansel had not seen it from the hill. He followed the woman and the monitor out into orange sunset where the bearded villager and Kelly’s daughter waited. The two of them glanced questioningly at the monitor.

‘He’ll give evidence. He is evidence,’ said the monitor, prodding Ansel in the back with his pulse-gun.

As he walked ahead, Ansel noted that the bearded villager carried his pack. Perhaps his thin-gun was in there, along with those other lethal devices to which the monitor had referred.

When they reached one of the houses the monitor leant close in behind him. ‘Remember this, assassin: you’re just as much evidence dead as alive.’

Ansel nodded. Whatever this bullshit was he knew he would never testify in an EC court.

The Company had too much pull and he would be bailed and gone in an instant. But he had no intention of it coming to that. The pistol snout nudged him in the back again and he entered the house.

‘Where’s Kelly now?’ Ansel abruptly asked.

Before the monitor could stop her Annette answered, ‘My father is upriver getting the Book of Statements.’

Ansel noted the reverence in her voice. He smiled to himself as the monitor shoved him forward.

‘Secure him,’ said the monitor tightly.

They tied him in a back bedroom, rough ropes securing his wrists and feet to the bedposts. He guessed the monitor did not want him aboard the shuttle where he might get free and have access to whatever weapons might be there. As soon as the door closed he tested the tension of the ropes. Steady flexing did not loosen them, it only drew them tighter on his wrists and ankles, but the frame of the bed moved. Its creaking brought the bearded one to the door.

Ansel closed his eyes and decided to rest. Later.

When he woke he checked the timepiece set in the nail of his right forefinger. Two hours had passed and he hoped everyone in the house was asleep. He steadily pulled on the ropes securing his wrists and managed to slide himself far enough down the bed to hook his feet under the bottom rail. There was one weapon the monitor had been unable to remove, and perhaps had been unaware of: Ansel’s home planet had a gravity of one and a half gees, and though he looked just like an Earthman, he was much stronger. He gripped the ropes around his wrists and pulled hard with his feet. There was a loud crack and he lay still, listening. No movement. He pulled again, steadily, until the tenon holding the bottom rail to the bottom bedpost broke through and the rail pulled away. With the toe of his boot he levered the rope that secured that leg up and over the post. Lying still, he listened again. Nothing. He levered the rail back and forth with his foot until the other tenon began to work free, finally pulling the rail all the way back onto the bed so that when it came out of its mortise hole it did not drop to the floor. With both legs free it was then a simple task to snap the top rail and get his hands free. He was removing the rope from his wrist when an explosion rattled the windows and fire seared the darkness.

Ansel was off his bed in an instant. The door was locked, but he turned the handle until something broke with a dull thud. Easing the door open, he peered through, just in time to see the bearded man rushing outside. On the table in that room rested his rucksack, which he stepped in and grabbed, before retreating to the bedroom. From outside came another explosion, and he could hear yelling. He did not speculate about the cause since he would find out once outside. In his rucksack he found his thin-gun, which he holstered, before opening the bedroom window and stepping through.

‘It’s the shuttle,’ said the woman.

He spun to see her squatting in the darkness a few paces behind him. Automatically he drew his thin-gun and aimed it at her. Then he looked ahead and saw that the barn was burning.

What the hell?

‘Where’s the monitor?’ he asked.

‘In the shuttle,’ she replied.

Ansel made no comment about that.

There were villagers running out of the houses, hastily clothed, yelling questions to each other. Ansel stayed where he was. The woman moved closer and he saw that she wore a pack on her back and held her cutting laser.

‘You can drop that,’ he said.

After she did as he instructed, he snatched the device up and put it in his belt. He then gestured with his gun for her to move where he could see her more clearly, before turning most of his attention to the fire and the villagers. Silhouetted against flame came a striding figure.

‘Jesus,’ said Ansel.

‘Who is it?’ the woman asked.

‘Not a who, a what.’

Ansel suddenly had a very bad feeling about all this.

Two villagers ran towards the dark individual. One of them went in close as if to grab him, but was grabbed in turn by his throat and hoisted into the air. Whilst holding him there, the figure drew a weapon and fired it at the other villager. The second one flew backwards with smoke and flame trailing from where his head had been. The first villager the figure dropped to the ground. He did not get up again.