Eldene. ‘I’d rather you left now.’
She looked hurt, but he doubted she would relish the prospect of seeing him open like a gutted fish on this table any more than he relished the prospect of being that way. Mika then tapped out something on her console, and Apis felt a cold spreading through him from where the probes penetrated his flesh. As his consciousness faded, he saw Eldene turning to go. The surgical robot bowed like a geisha, and opened out its glittering tableware.
* * * *
The man halted and studied their surroundings, and Marlen found himself slavishly tracking the man’s gaze.
The chequer trees had shed their square leaves, which now lay like badly applied gilding over the mossy ground, or else caught in layered clumps on spiky sedges. Fallen from the adapted oaks, the blue acoms that punctuated these surfaces like discarded half-sucked sweets were being nibbled at by creatures like birth-defect rabbits, hopping and bouncing as if ever on the point of coming apart. Marlen noted the old damage to the trees, and the occasional lumps of metal protruding from the ground. There had been a battle here between agents of ECS, accompanied by Viridian soldiers, and the Separatist Arian Pelter—this had been one of the first bits of information the man had ripped from Marlen’s mind. Glancing at his accomplice in their recent disastrous robbery attempt, Marlen saw that Inther was drooling. What the man had done to them both through their biotech augs must have damaged Inther’s brain. Marlen returned his attention to their captor.
He appeared perfectly ordinary: stocky, brown-haired and dressed in a cheap environment suit—not noticeable. But closer inspection revealed that he sank deeper into the soft ground than he should, and that his gaze held a silvery shimmer as if lizard-scales were moving in the sclera of his eyes. What was he, then? Both Marlen and Inther were big men, and boosted too, yet he had tossed them about as if they massed no more than origami sculptures before . . . doing what he did.
The man turned on a scanner. Marlen glimpsed on its screen a translucent image of the ground, in which were buried stones, wood, jags of metal and more macabre objects.
The man pointed to a sunken area. ‘Dig there,’ he ordered. Marlen and Inther could only obey—the biotech augs behind their ears were grey, as if seared, and something was poised inside their skulls like a reel of fishhooks.
The two men took up their spades and picks, and immediately set to work. Marlen concentrated on the task in hand—was unable to concentrate on much else. He didn’t slack; didn’t stop to rest until his muscles were burning from lactic overload, and then he didn’t rest for long. He and Inther were a metre down into the soft ground when Marlen’s spade sheared up a layer of decaying fabric, exposing rib bones and ah intricate line of vertebrae. Marlen noted that long-tailed slugs, the undertakers of Viridian, had eaten away all the flesh and skin, and that a nest of them was balled up in the skeleton’s ribcage. They were skinned over with hardened slime while they made the slow transformation to the next stage of their life cycle: a hard-shelled chrysalis that burrowed to the surface to protrude like a tubeworm, its end opening to release the flying adult form of the creature. He poked at this ball with the edge of his spade, fracturing the coating to reveal slithing movement.
‘I want the skull,’ said their captor.
Inther dug at one end of the spine, and Marlen at the other. Marlen hit the pelvis, then turned as Inther unearthed the skull, took hold of it in his big hand and twisted it away from some remaining tendon, before passing it up out of the hole.
‘Okay, now dig over there, where I’ve marked out.’ As he scrambled from the hole and over to another sunken area—marked out by four twigs shoved into the ground—Marlen glanced at the skull. Its
She looked hurt, but he doubted she would relish the prospect of seeing him open like a gutted fish on this table any more than he relished the prospect of being that way. Mika then tapped out something on her console, and Apis felt a cold spreading through him from where the probes penetrated his flesh. As his consciousness faded, he saw Eldene turning to go. The surgical robot bowed like a geisha, and opened out its glittering tableware.
* * * *
The man halted and studied their surroundings, and Marlen found himself slavishly tracking the man’s gaze.
The chequer trees had shed their square leaves, which now lay like badly applied gilding over the mossy ground, or else caught in layered clumps on spiky sedges. Fallen from the adapted oaks, the blue acoms that punctuated these surfaces like discarded half-sucked sweets were being nibbled at by creatures like birth-defect rabbits, hopping and bouncing as if ever on the point of coming apart. Marlen noted the old damage to the trees, and the occasional lumps of metal protruding from the ground. There had been a battle here between agents of ECS, accompanied by Viridian soldiers, and the Separatist Arian Pelter—this had been one of the first bits of information the man had ripped from Marlen’s mind. Glancing at his accomplice in their recent disastrous robbery attempt, Marlen saw that Inther was drooling. What the man had done to them both through their biotech augs must have damaged Inther’s brain. Marlen returned his attention to their captor.
He appeared perfectly ordinary: stocky, brown-haired and dressed in a cheap environment suit—not noticeable. But closer inspection revealed that he sank deeper into the soft ground than he should, and that his gaze held a silvery shimmer as if lizard-scales were moving in the sclera of his eyes. What was he, then? Both Marlen and Inther were big men, and boosted too, yet he had tossed them about as if they massed no more than origami sculptures before . . . doing what he did.
The man turned on a scanner. Marlen glimpsed on its screen a translucent image of the ground, in which were buried stones, wood, jags of metal and more macabre objects.
The man pointed to a sunken area. ‘Dig there,’ he ordered. Marlen and Inther could only obey—the biotech augs behind their ears were grey, as if seared, and something was poised inside their skulls like a reel of fishhooks.
The two men took up their spades and picks, and immediately set to work. Marlen concentrated on the task in hand—was unable to concentrate on much else. He didn’t slack; didn’t stop to rest until his muscles were burning from lactic overload, and then he didn’t rest for long. He and Inther were a metre down into the soft ground when Marlen’s spade sheared up a layer of decaying fabric, exposing rib bones and ah intricate line of vertebrae. Marlen noted that long-tailed slugs, the undertakers of Viridian, had eaten away all the flesh and skin, and that a nest of them was balled up in the skeleton’s ribcage. They were skinned over with hardened slime while they made the slow transformation to the next stage of their life cycle: a hard-shelled chrysalis that burrowed to the surface to protrude like a tubeworm, its end opening to release the flying adult form of the creature. He poked at this ball with the edge of his spade, fracturing the coating to reveal slithing movement.
‘I want the skull,’ said their captor.
Inther dug at one end of the spine, and Marlen at the other. Marlen hit the pelvis, then turned as Inther unearthed the skull, took hold of it in his big hand and twisted it away from some remaining tendon, before passing it up out of the hole.
‘Okay, now dig over there, where I’ve marked out.’ As he scrambled from the hole and over to another sunken area—marked out by four twigs shoved into the ground—Marlen glanced at the skull. Its
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