Gridlinked (7 page)

'How do you know it's still in this area?' asked Pelter.

'They're territorial. They always stay put,' replied Veltz.

'Unless they're driven off by a younger contender,' interjected Geneve.

Pelter turned and glared at her. 'I'm speaking to Veltz. When I want your opinion I'll ask for it, otherwise keep your mouth shut or you will find yourself wearing a very special smile. Is that clear?'

Geneve seemed set to rebel until Veltz gave her a panicky warning look. She subsided and he quickly began speaking to fill the uncomfortable silence.

'That doesn't happen very often. Only when the egg- carriers are getting old. This one here is in its prime, as far as I can recollect.'

He had actually no idea what the egg-carrier in this area was like, as he concentrated his hunting activities further out to sea. He just kept envisioning that 'smile' Pelter had referred to. It was what they normally did to traitors: cut away their lips and cheeks, before bringing them out here to throw them alive into the sea. Again, Veltz had seen the evidence.

'Let's hope your recollection is not in error,' warned Pelter.

Veltz turned back to his controls, re-engaged AG, and turned on the turbine. It was more for something to do than to serve any purpose. Sod the power wastage. He could understand how Geneve wanted to join in, sitting there with her thumb up her arse, and eager to use the sophisticated targeting equipment run by the console in front of her. Abruptly she stood up.

'I'll make us some coffee,' she said, and ducked through the bulkhead door into the rear half of the cabin. Pelter watched her go with that dead expression on his face. Veltz could feel sweat pricking his forehead. He almost cried out wim relief when the device Pelter clutched let out a beep and drew the Separatist's attention to its narrow screen.

'East,' he said, 'about two kilometres.'

'Geneve! Get back in here!' Veltz bellowed as he wound the turbine up to full power. The catamaran slammed forward with enough force to press Veltz and Pelter back into uieir chairs. In the galley Geneve swore, and tüere was a clattering sound. Veltz eased off on the acceleration when the catamaran was at a speed he felt comfortable with. He had never found the top speed. Just as the AG was insufficient for the Meercat, the turbine was far too much. Two such turbines had been capable of boosting into orbit a shuttle weighing ten times as much as the catamaran.

Geneve hurried back into the cabin, all dioughts of coffee forgotten. She plumped down in her chair and fixed her lap strap across, before hinging a targeting mask across her face. She took hold of the control handle on her console. A low droning came from below the cabin as the harpoon gun lowered. Cable-feed motors quickly cycled up to speed.

'You should be getting sight of it shordy,' she said.

Veltz could see the ribbed wake of the carrier. He too secured his lap strap, men looked at Pelter until he had his attention before nodding towards the distant disturbance. Pelter got out of his seat and walked up to stand behind the two of them.

'I see it,' he said. 'Just don't miss.'

Veltz decelerated as they closed on the visible signs of the egg-carrier. Pelter stumbled, men quickly got back into his own seat and strapped himself in. Veltz made sure the Separatist did not see the satisfied grin he allowed himself at that moment.

'Go port and past,' said Geneve.

Veltz eased the Meercat over and followed her instructions. He reduced AG so the water acted as a brake. The harpoon whined and thumped as Geneve moved the control handle.

'No good. Come back on the other side,' she said.

Pelter glared out at the monstrous creature as it breasted the swell in what seemed the slow-motion leaps of a giant slug. The core of hate and explosive anger in him seemed to be reaching a nexus. He would have some satisfaction here with at least some kind of kill, some kind of pain, in recompense for the pain he felt. Here he would find something to damp out the image, which kept replaying in his mind, of the narrow barrel of that thin-gun only centimetres from his face.

'All slow. Locked in!'

Veltz slammed back on the turbine and the AG controls. There came a crump from underneath the cabin, and a black line cut from there, across waves like translucent iron, to the apex of an arch of flesh. The cable motor shrieked as their brakes went on, and a vague smell of something burning permeated the cabin. Pelter watched the cable go slack, then tighten again, as the motor went into reverse and that arch folded down. A great froglike head broke the surface and its black maw opened and bellowed. The egg-carrier thrashed and stirred up a bluish spume. Each rime it thrashed, the cable motors whined as they gave or took accordingly. The catamaran was tugged sideways across the swell, waves beating flat against it till it seemed the boat might break. Veltz studied Pelter, expecting him to ask if the craft could take this sort of pounding. Inexperienced people usually did, yet Pelter did not. Instead, he stared at the thrashing of the dark otter, and the spreading stain of its inky blood, with a horrible avidity.

'It's slowing now,' said Geneve.

Veltz nodded and flipped over a heavy antique switch on his console. Under the floor of the cabin there came another sound that started low and quickly cycled up to a high pitch, then apparently moved beyond human audio range. Veltz watched the antique dial next to the switch climbing slowly. He heard Pelter's belt unclip and glanced round, always nervous whenever the Separatist was moving about. Pelter then pushed himself from his chair and stepped across. Geneve disconnected her targeting grid and swung it aside. She watched Pelter warily.

'That's an old U-charger cycling up,' he said. 'Where the hell did you get allotropic uranium?'

'Came with the junked shuttle I bought. U-chargers were more efficient than a fusion lump then. It comes in handy,' said Veltz and, so saying, reached for the button next to the switch. Pelter's hand snapped forward and closed on Veltz's wrist. Veltz was riveted by that single violet eye. He could smell antiseptic strong over a faint whiff of corruption.

'Let me,' said Pelter, and then slowly released his wrist. Veltz drew his hand back and placed it back on the steering column. With venom Pelter slammed his hand down on the button and watched the effects.

The line from the vessel to the struggling dark otter momentarily glowed a dull red. The otter exploded from the water, then crashed down again, small lightnings webbing across its smooth black skin. After it hit the water, it sank, then bobbed to the surface once more, completely inert. Pelter sighed, and Veltz saw the expression on his face go from avidity to disappointment.

'What now?' he asked.

'Now we tow it to the Banks. They should be exposed now, and should remain exposed for the next eight hours,' Veltz replied.

'How long till we get there?'

'An hour, give or take.'

Pelter nodded and returned to his chair. Veltz turned away from him and hit controls on the more modern touch console. The cabin, on gimbals at the ends of its support struts, silently turned until it was facing the other way. Now they could see the turbine ahead of and below them, between the hulls. The line to the dark otter had remained in place as Veltz slowly applied thrust. It was a careful acceleration this time; he did not want to tear the harpoon out of their prize.

Cormac had a brief view of Cheyne III through the elliptical portal as the shuttle decelerated and banked. Like any living world seen from this distance, it was a jewel pinned to the blackness of space and bore no hint of the flaws to be found on a closer inspection. Opalescent clouds swirled over blue sea, and partially concealed a continent mottled brown and purple, which he had always felt resembled a man stooping to do up his shoelace. Soon the planet slid from view and the shuttle was coming in over a plain of rock formations that resembled the surface of a human brain. He understood why the first settlers had named Cheyne Ill's largest moon Cereb.

'I'm not going to shut down your link,' Blegg said.

Cormac nodded as the runcible installation came into view. He noted the sudden surge of excited talk from the other passengers. There, on the plain of rock, stood a city of glass and light. On clear nights it was something you could actually see from the surface of the planet. He drew his eyes away from the vision only when a soft chime announced a message.

'Please fasten your seat belts,' said the soft voice of the shuttle AI. Cormac did as instructed. The message was very different in executive class.

'Who will shut it down, then?' he asked.

'Any runcible AI will do so when you request it to,' Blegg replied.

Retros fired and the gravity inside the shuttle was slowly adjusted to that of Cereb's. Cormac felt his weight decreasing, but that gave him no lift.

'Am I ordered to disconnect?' he asked.

Something roared and the shuttle vibrated. It dipped down towards the shuttleport on the outskirts of the installation. Here was a webwork of glowing lines, almost like some huge circuit diagram, which painted the artificially levelled rock. The shuttle decelerated on retros and clawing AG fields. It tilted and sank down towards a boxed area beside a cluster of towers like perspex cigars. As it descended, Cormac caught a glimpse of the walkway snaking out across the rock.

'You are not
ordered
to disconnect. We do not order people to desist from actions that are killing them, just so long as they know it, and harm no one else,' Blegg replied.

'The link is killing me?'

'I did not say that. It would kill you if you were to continue in your present line of work.
You
have to decide if you want to continue.'

Cormac got the picture. He grimaced as he listened to the shuttle's skids extend and crunch on stone. While passengers were unclipping their belts and grabbing up for their hand luggage in a manner unchanged in centuries, he considered his options. He had been gridlinked for thirty years. He had been with ECS for ten years longer than that. Perhaps it
was
time for a change. He thought about the things he had seen and the things he had done. Many of the latter were not admirable, but they had been necessary. Perhaps it was time for him to retire, buy a nice little residence beside a sea on some nice peaceful planet? He undipped his belt and stood. Time for a change? Like hell it was.
RuncibleAI.

Yes, Ian Cormac.

I 
wish you to disconnect and completely shut down my gridlink
.

You wish me to do this now?

Yes.

Goodbye to you, Ian Cormac.

Cormac lurched where he stood, felt a hand seemingly made of iron grip his arm and steady him. He felt a hundred connections shutting down one by one. Huge frames of reference dragged themselves from his skull down to infinitesimal dots and just blinked out. A deep ache dug its claws into the base of his skull and suddenly, all around his head, mere was only empty air.

'You do not delay once you have made a decision,' said Blegg. 'It is why we are glad to have you working for us, Agent Cormac.'

A voice, just a spoken voice: soundwaves vibrating hair-cells in his auditory canal. How the hell could he manage with such an inefficient system? As he disembarked and walked into the connecting tunnel, Blegg silent at his side, Cormac had never felt so empty.

The Banks, two of them exposed by the receding tide like giant beached flounders, consisted of heaped penny oysters and trumpet shells. The former were an adaptation that had taken to the Cheyne III environment with alacrity, but only after an unexpected mutation. Though elsewhere they were appreciated for their distinctive, nutty taste, here they were noted only for their lethality. The latter was a native mollusc that grew up to a metre long and had an appearance much as its name implied. They were also poisonous to humans, but had been the dark otters' main food source. It had come as a surprise to ecologists to discover that penny oysters had also become a favourite.

'OK, Geneve, wind it out,' said Veltz, more for Pelter's benefit than hers; she knew what she was doing.

The cable motor went into reverse, so the dead egg-carrier remained where it was as Veltz turned his vessel to come athwart one of the banks.

'That should do us,' said Veltz.

The motor brake squeaked on and Veltz watched the cable as it dragged up the slope of the bank. He kept going until the Meercat was on one side of the bank and the corpse on the other, then he slewed the boat round to face the bank itself.

'Wind it in,' he said.

The motors came on again, drawing the cable taut and pulling both otter and vessel in towards the bank. Eventually the Meercat grounded and, a moment after that, so did the corpse. Veltz eased up the tfirust on the turbine as the motor continued to whine, keeping the Meercat in position. The dark otter slowly slid up the bank, ripping its skin on the sharp edges of the penny oysters and breaking the trumpet shells off at their stems. Soon it was clear of the water and draped over the central ridge formed of shellfish.

'OK, that's enough. Close off the barbs and get our knife back,' said Veltz.

Geneve hit another control, then increased the speed on the cable motor. The ceramal harpoon was pulled from the body of the dark otter, leaving a wound like obscene blue lips. It clanged to the ground and the motor rapidly wound it in.

Pelter stood. 'Let us take a look then,' he said.

Veltz and Geneve undipped their belts and also stood up. Geneve strapped the sheatü of a long chainglass boning knife across her back. Veltz took a similar instrument from his seat and strapped it on. Pelter looked at bodi of them for a moment, then turned his back and stepped dirough the bulkhead door. Veltz saw Geneve's questioning expression and shook his head. Not a good move. They botü wanted to get out of düs alive.

Pelter lowered a metal roll-ladder from the hatch in the floor of the galley section of the cabin. He was first down to the mollusc-bound island. Geneve followed, then Veltz.

'This is where you always bring them?' asked Pelter.