Lockdown Tales Read online

  I shook his head. ‘I’m not sure. I would need AI analysis of the genomic data. Inside both the heirodont and the whelk things are complicated.’ I peered up at SM17. ‘Here is the genomic data.’ I sent a link.

  SM17 blinked, opened the link and the parasite’s genomic data flooded across. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. Did the drone have the mental capacity to analyse the data or would it send it to the Warden, who, apparently wanted to delay things as long as possible?

  ‘I’ll need that other whelk scan you downloaded to make comparisons,’ I added.

  A link arrived in my mind and I opened it to begin running comparisons with the scan of Bad Boy.

  ‘Something here doesn’t quite make sense,’ I said. ‘Parasites had a difficult time of it with the rise of the virus. Their purpose at each stage of their life cycle is to produce huge amounts of offspring to offset predation and the likelihood of not reaching their preferred host, but the virus kills off competing parasites. I submit that in the heirodont they do not venture out of the intestines but encyst on the wall of the throat – anywhere else and sprine or the virus will kill them.’

  ‘And in the whelk?’ SM17 asked.

  I held up a hand and closed my eyes for a second, trying to get it all straight. ‘It’s complicated. You said the parasites are weakly infected by the virus…’

  The scan data was rendering results. Bad Boy’s insides were scarred, with lines of damaged tissue leading away from its gut, tightly wrapped with viral fibres. But most of these terminated somewhere in its flesh. I decided these must be the paths of the parasite stages that had come out of a consumed heirodont. And it occurred to me then that I might be seeing scar tissue millions of years old.

  ‘Looks like it kills most of the next parasite stage,’ I said.

  ‘Which doesn’t explain the quantity of eggs this whelk has been excreting,’ said SM17.

  ‘Do you have anything for me yet…or does the Warden.’

  ‘I am doing this myself. I don’t think the Warden would be helpful.’

  I nodded an acknowledgement as an image came through the link. I saw a larger version of the squirt, with longer jaws, bigger fins and sensory spicules down its back. This was the creature the heirodonts would eat extrapolated from the genomic data.

  ‘As expected,’ I said.

  ‘We’re getting to an explanation of the parasite,’ said SM17. ‘But that is not our most immediate problem.’

  I glanced back seeing a massive tentacle slam down on the beach. Bad Boy loomed huge now, closer than I had expected. It turned, its stony skirt rippling across the sand and observed us. Then it came in pursuit.

  ‘Maybe time to run,’ I suggested.

  ‘It won’t stop,’ said Smurk.

  ‘Why the hell is it after us?’ I complained.

  The captain looked back at me. ‘It knows,’ he said.

  The comment seemed to drop into my mind like a lead weight into mud. I didn’t know what to do with it for a moment but, still in analytical mode, started to put things together.

  ‘The squirts die up here,’ I said. ‘It came up here so they would die.’

  ‘Why would it do that?’ asked SM17.

  I fell into confusion for a moment, then said, ‘It’s maybe a Class Four intelligence or upwards the Warden told me. That might mean some altruistic motive. If it dumps its squirts up here they will not reinfect it or infect it or its fellow’s prey…’ But that did seem a stretch.

  Another image arrived in my mind. This was of a sharp headed worm with fins turned to blades down its sides. I mapped this across to the image of the whelk and saw that in size and form it matched those scar tissue tracks. However, the virus killed these so where were the eggs coming from?

  Smurk broke into an easy trot and I copied him. This was crazy. We would end up running round and round the island to keep from the whelk’s clutches until I finally collapsed from exhaustion. Could SM17 carry me as far as another island? I guessed this was something I would be finding out unless…unless Bad Boy decided to return to the sea… I now set about building a small program to run over the whelk image, tracking every one of those scars, but even at that moment another image arrived in my mind. This one was large: coils of wormish body, a variety of tubes protruding, closer images of boring mouths, a long hard tubular spike labelled as an ovipositor.

  ‘That’s the final egg-laying stage?’ I asked, to be sure.

  ‘It is,’ SM17 replied.

  My program now showed its results. One scar tissue path arrowed up through the whelk’s body without a terminus, and exited through the muscular mantle in its upper shell. Because the image had not completed before the whelk shit out the scanner I had only seen a portion of the structure up there, but had no idea what it was. Now I knew. I overlaid the final form of the parasite on this and got a match. The egg-laying portion of the parasite lived in the creature’s upper shell. I shivered, remembering my earlier speculation about millions of years. Had the thing got there before the whelk was fully infected? Had it been there so long?

  ‘I think I know what’s happening with it,’ I said, incidentally sending the matched images to SM17. ‘And I don’t see this ending anytime soon.’

  ‘Why no time soon?’ asked Smurk, looking back at me. He now appeared about as sane as he had when he brought me out here.

  ‘There’s a large egg-laying parasite lodged in its upper shell,’ I explained. ‘The whelk is eating fast and excreting fast to rid itself of the eggs that thing is laying in its guts.’

  ‘Killing the squirts,’ the captain opined.

  Yes, it seemed the captain’s mind was working better now.

  ‘Exactly: it’s killing the squirts,’ I replied. ‘Unfortunately, extrapolation from the genomic data tells me this is a vicious circle. The parasite feeds on the whelk’s chyme supply around its intestine to make more eggs it then injects with its ovipositor. This process, perhaps in some past age before the Spatterjay virus, would have resulted in the whelk eventually dying. It won’t die. I don’t see this process ending.’

  ‘Bad Boy does,’ the captain replied.

  Before I could pick the bones out of that comment, a tentacle with an end like a spatula slapped down hard on the beach behind, throwing sand and debris over us. Just like a squid, the whelk had two of these longer tentacles, yet it had misjudged its reach? I thought about how easily it had snatched up those animals that had come close to it, and I thought about its complex eyes and evident spacial awareness. Now when I looked at those eyes I did not see menace, but intelligence.

  ‘Time to run,’ said Smurk.

  We did that thing, putting a good distance between us and the whelk before slowing to a walk, but I hardly noticed my surroundings as all sorts of facts competed for my attention. The whelk had attacked an atoll where hooper ships had been anchored and destroyed three of them, but it had killed none of the crews from those ships, instead heading ashore again. It had attacked other atolls. I’d seen recordings of hurried evacuations of inhabitants, seeming near misses and narrow escapes, yet still the whelk had killed no one. It had here knocked our platform from the air and destroyed it, grabbing Smurk in the process. Yes it had taken his arm, but then, oddly for a thing with such an appetite, released him.

  ‘How intelligent is Class Four?’ I wondered out loud.

  ‘About that of an uplifted dog,’ SM17 replied. ‘Though assessments are difficult when it comes to alien life forms.’

  I thought about that. An uplifted dog could use language and understand somewhat of its world, but would have seemed quite thick to even a pre-Quiet War human of half a millennium ago.

  ‘But Class Four is also the minimum classification for the giant whelks,’ SM17 added. ‘More of a guess really.’

  I turned to the captain. ‘Why did you volunteer to bring me out here?’

  ‘To witness the ending – one of us has to do it.’

  The capta
in hadn’t spoken much on our way out to this island and had seemed to show little interest in what I might discover. I thought about what it meant to be an Old Captain. He was centuries old, probably very wise and had ‘managed to live into the calm’, as they say on this world; that is, had managed to achieve great age without taking a sprine overdose and killing himself. Had he seen all of this before, or otherwise known about it? I thought he had. I thought about some of his odd comments and data began combining into a complete whole in my mind.

  ‘It knows what’s happening to it, doesn’t it?’ The captain merely shrugged. I turned my attention to SM17 as if I might be able to read some expression on its face. ‘The Warden knows too, and the Conclave. That whelk is deliberately threatening the human population here because it knows that by doing so that population will eventually respond. It’s committing suicide.’

  ‘The other one did a lot of damage,’ said Smurk. ‘But we had off-world trade by then and bought a nuke.’

  After this confirmation I stared at him. There had been another whelk like this they had killed with a nuclear weapon. Did the Warden know this?

  ‘And now, because of what we have learned here, that might not be necessary in this case,’ said SM17 before I could fully absorb the implications. The drone bobbed in the air as if excited. ‘And now you understand, beyond the politics, both the Warden’s and the Conclave’s reluctance to act.’

  That ticked the last box for me.

  ‘It’s not killing anyone.’

  ‘Yup,’ said Smurk. ‘The other one didn’t, but it also didn’t know we could end it. This one knows different.’

  I looked back at the whelk again, still trundling along the shore towards us, but now stopping occasionally. I looked closer. Yes, each time it stopped it tilted back to peer up at the sky. The whelk knew that threatening the humans here could result in its death, and it knew precisely where that death would come from. I turned back to SM17.

  ‘Are you capable of lifting the both of us?’ I asked.

  We again ran to put some distance between us and Bad Boy, then halted. I emptied out my pack and inspected the contents. Thankfully I’d made my choices based on survival. I took out some items to reduce the weight but left in the short range atomic sheer and a floater lamp, which I would certainly need. I handed a vibro-blade over to the captain, who took it with his new small hand. He grimaced, fumbling the grip, then took it in his other hand to insert it into his belt. He then eyed SM17 in a way I could only describe as acquisitive. I didn’t know what that was all about until later. I then pulled out the strap for the Spartech and hung the weapon over my neck and shoulder, secure at my side.

  ‘Aim for the top,’ I said. ‘That’s where it will be thinnest.’

  I moved closer to the captain and looked across at SM17. The drone was vibrating and I noted a red gleam showing through between the ribs of its shell. The thing had powered up to maximum for this task. It floated in above us and I could feel the strong backwash of grav from its engine as it hooked its tail above us. Smurk reached up and closed a hand around it, solid as a spaceship docking clamp. He would not fall. I reached up and grabbed, the tip of the tail closing over one of my hands and roughening for grip. With his other yet adult hand, Smurk reached out and grabbed the front of my suit, pulling me close. With a deep thrumming sound, SM17 rose into the air. As my feet came off the ground I did not feel so sure about my grip so wrapped my legs around the captain. Close to, I saw his tongue peek out and it still hadn’t closed up. I swallowed dryly.

  We sailed up into the sky and then along the beach. One of those spatula tentacles reached up towards us then halted twenty feet below, the end snapping open and closed. We passed over this then down towards the giant shell. The spiral of this thing was ridged and caked with coralline growths and blooms of limp blue seaweed. I hoped that stuff wasn’t slippery as we rapidly descended. SM17 brought us in to the top part of the spiral curving and sloping down at fifty degrees.

  ‘Let go of me,’ said Smurk, as he released his grip on my suit. I unwrapped my legs and he simply released his hold, dropping to the sloping surface. He hit then began to slip on the weed, but then just slammed his fist down into the surface, sending porcelain chunks tumbling, and got a grip. SM17 got me in closer, in over an area free of weed, and loosened its grasp on my hand. I landed, my boots gripping, then fell forwards to sprawl against the surface scrabbling to find a grip. The peak of the shell lay twenty feet above. The fear that had initially tightened my guts began to fade and I realised this was no worse than my earlier climb, in fact easier and with a lot more handholds.

  ‘A little higher,’ I told Smurk. ‘The older the shell the thinner it should be.’

  We worked our way up with SM17 hovering just out from us and finally reached an area I deemed appropriate.

  ‘Here.’ Even as I said that the shell’s steady shift under us changed. The whelk shrugged, nearly dislodging me, dropped and jerked up again. When this movement ceased the whelk was no longer traversing the shore.

  I took out the atomic shear and turned it on – the thing extruding its emitter, starting to vibrate and then the shear field shimmering into existence about the emitter. Next, peering down towards the ground, I saw tentacles rippling against the sand. It wouldn’t take the whelk long to realise something was going on up here and we weren’t out of its reach.

  ‘You watch,’ said Smurk, holding out his hand.

  I passed the shear over and readied the Spartech, crosshairs in my vision, laser and explosive slugs selected. One-handed, Smurk drove the shear into the shell below us, dust exploding out all around the thing, clouding out and down, settling white and nacreous nearby. Down below the tentacles stopped moving for a moment, then started again, like someone rattling their fingers against a table top in impatience.

  Smurk had cut a circle when the two spatula tentacles curled up off the ground and back to grope around the shell lower down. Of course the whelk could not see us, and surely had no idea where we were or what we were doing. It searched around as Smurk swore, realising the shear had not cut through to the inside. He began slicing out chunks so he could cut deeper, them bouncing down the side of the shell to the ground. As pieces of these hit below, the two tentacles abruptly began to track higher.

  ‘Perhaps I can distract it,’ said SM17, abruptly dropping.

  The drone hurtled down towards the two tentacles and came to an abrupt halt opposite them, backwash from its grav engine tearing out a cloud of weed fragments. The drone hung there for a moment and I saw flashes of red, only revealed as a laser by the steam they raised from one of the tentacles. The drone was armed, I thought with annoyance, then reconsidered. This was probably only a spectroscopic laser ramped up to maximum output. I hoped SM17 would retain enough power in storage to get us back to the ground.

  ‘There,’ said the captain in satisfaction.

  He’d broken through, pieces of shell falling into a dark cavity, and began to cut around the circle again. Below, still flashing that laser, SM17 dropped into the whelk’s line of sight. The thing began to thrash at it with its other tentacles while the two that had been coming up towards us just paused in place.

  ‘Damn and bugger,’ said the captain. Looking over I saw that where he had broken through had been a thin spot merely a foot and a half thick.

  Smurk started carving out further chunks sending them tumbling down after the others. This set those two tentacles in motion again, but only tentatively. I continued watching SM17’s antics until one tentacle whipped in from the side unexpectedly and hit the drone. I watched it, trailing smoke, tumble end over end to splash into the sea.

  ‘That’s not so good,’ I said, but felt the urge to giggle, as if, though uninfected by the virus, the madness of this place was getting to me. Behind me Smurk swore again as the whine of the shear dropped to a low grumbling. I looked round as he held the device up, showing me its small diagnostic screen. The battery was flat
. He discarded the thing then began bashing the cut circle with the flat of his hand. I was about to assist – using my weapon’s laser – but now those two tentacles were coming up towards us. I fired explosive shells that hit one of the spatulas, but the blasts just raised fibrous splinters like bullets hitting a tree. Laser shots next set one of the spatulas smoking as the two tentacles zeroed in on me, as if they had some form of vision. A hollow crash resounded behind. A big hand closed on my shoulder and dragged me back. As I fell into darkness I had one last glimpse of the tentacles – they had stopped, poised just out from the shell. I only remembered then that they could have come straight for us right at the beginning because they did have sight – they were covered with an equivalent to retinal cells.

  A brief slide over slick shell took us down into darkness until we hit a ridge in the floor. I looked up at the opening now twenty feet away and maybe ten feet up. I shed my pack then hooked the Spartech strap over my head so as not to lose it. Delving inside, I took out the floater lamp and initiated it. The light flared off beautiful nacre all around us. Setting the lamp to float just a yard behind us, it cast our shadows down into the depths.

  ‘Down we go,’ I said.

  Smurk now held the vibro knife and looked decidedly piratical. We clambered over the ridge and slid down further to another one, the space we occupied growing steadily wider and the slope not so steep. After the third ridge we could no longer slide and so crouched our way down until we could stand upright. Though the tunnel grew wider the ridges grew bigger all around the inside of the tunnel. We crawled through the hole at the centre of one only to find the next one along closed across completely.

  ‘Protect your eyes,’ I said, closing up my visor. Smurk dipped his head as I opened fire. Explosive slugs shattered the nacre wall, but it took a lot of them, as did the next, and the next after that.

  ‘Air is not good,’ said Smurk.

  Yes, it was getting difficult to breath and I damned myself for not wearing a full environment suit here with its own air supply. We kept on around another curve, the spiral tunnel now twenty feet across, and then we saw the back end of the whelk.