Neal Asher - The Departure

The Departure

The Owner, Book 1

Neal Asher

For all the readers out there

the silent ones, those who say hello on the internet,

and those who demand I write faster!

The People Rule

Throughout the early years of the twenty-first century, Internet blogsand news groups displaced the slow, moribund and politically tribal newspapers.As Internet technology became easier to use, TV news incorporated itself intoit to survive, thus also sliding out of political control. However, aspoliticians worked diligently to weld together the main blocks of world nationsinto a coherent and oppressive whole, and their grip on peoples everyday livesgrew steadily tighter, governments increasingly monitored, censored and stifledthe Internet. Consequently, the stories appearing on the main news servicesonly infrequently strayed out of approved bounds. The news returned to beingeither a mouthpiece for the main parties or else one hundred per cent tabloidpap. The twenty-fifth Mars mission, in 2124, of course got plenty of airtime,as the then slightly antiquated Mars Traveller VI sped on past Mars to becannibalized within the asteroid belt, its fusion engine dismounted andattached to an asteroid consisting almost completely of metals, and that wasblasted back to near-Earth orbit. In that time, the nations of the two mainpolitical blocks were steadily sacrificing individual power to a massive,corrupt and hugely wasteful centralized government, so what didnt make it tothe main news was that funding for further Mars missions had meanwhile driedup, as the steadily expanding bureaucracy of what developed into the Committee a totalitarian world government leached up increasingly scarce worldresources.

The gene banksquatted next to the Leuven monorail: a fat cylinder half a kilometre tallsitting just on the fringes of the government sub-city comprising 90 per centof the Brussels urban sprawl. Because of its supposedly apolitical purpose, thebank didnt warrant Inspectorate guards its security system consisting ofold-style palm and retinal scanners. However, if there was a problem here theInspectorate could get a unit of enforcers on site within minutes and, AlanSaul noted while he swept past crowded pavements in his stolen car, other morefrightening security patrolled the area.

The three tall shepherds strodeinto view from behind the gene bank just as he turned into a slipway leading upto the staff car park. These sinister machines were fashioned of gleaming metaland white plastic. They each stood on four spider legs, their knee jointsrising a metre above their inverted teardrop, tick-like bodies. Saul spottedthat while two of them had their crowd-control gear neatly folded in belowtheir smooth bodies, one of them had a man bound up in its adhesive tentacles,his arms and legs hanging slackly. Obviously the robots were on their way backfrom a food riot, and this one had yet to deliver its captured subversive tothe Inspectorate. They moved on out of sight, stepping delicately throughcrowds cramming an urban pedway over that way.

Saul pulled up at the entrance tothe car park, fingers tight on the steering wheel. The woman to whom thiscrappy old Ford Hydrovane had been allotted for no such thing as ownershipexisted in the New World Order was off on sick leave, dying in an All Healthhospital after picking up MRSA6 during contraceptive implantation, so Saul didnot expect any problems at this stage, but the sight of those shepherds hadburnt a hole in his calm. The cam installed at the entrance read the bar codein the lower corner of the stolen cars screen before sending the signal toopen the razormesh gates. He drove in, shut down the turbine and, picking uphis holdall, paused for a moment just to breathe and dispel the tightness inhis stomach.

After restoring a modicum ofcalm, he exited the vehicle and headed at an easy pace towards the entrance,checking his surroundings as he went. The razormesh fences enclosing this placehardly seemed necessary, since only a few people were gathered outside, andthey did not seem inclined to break in, instead having encamped on an abandonedbuilding site. There they seemed intent on growing some kind of crop on a patchof ground where carbocrete had been torn up to expose the underlying soil. Thiswas not an uncommon sight, since many zero-asset citizens were forever insearch of some way to fill their bellies.

Within the parking area, squatconifers growing from narrow islands of soil between the rows of cars wereevidence of one of the Gene Bank organizations many successes. They were of aspecies extinct for ten thousand years, then resurrected from DNA extractedfrom the mummified gut of a ground sloth raised out of the La Brea tar pits. Itwas a success that would never be repeated under the Committee. Now that one oftheir numerous focus or assessment groups had ostensibly deemed it a waste ofresources, the leaders of Earth had publicly denounced Gene Bank. But thatbeing an announcement primarily for public consumption, Saul felt the realreason had to be something more complicated.

At the entrance to the buildinghe stepped over to the retinal scanner and paused for a moment while its redlaser flickered in his right eye. The screen of the palm scanner lit up next,so he placed his right hand up against it and waited for the beep ofacceptance. This procedure seemed to take a little too long, and he felt sweatbegin to prickle down his spine. Maybe Janus, the comlife hed remotely loadedinto their security system, had not penetrated, or his artificial iris hadmalfunctioned, or maybe hed accidentally scraped some of the multi-refractivenanoskin off his palm the coating that reflected back into the scanner justwhatever it sought. Or just maybe an X-ray scanner he did not know about hadidentified the contents of his holdall. But no, with a click the locksdisengaged, the green light came on, and he pushed his way through therevolving doors. Once in the lobby, a waft of air-conditioning cooling thesweat on his face, he realized precisely what must have happened: seldom usedlayers of security had been reinstated because someone important was coming here, and that had just slowed things a little.

Pausing for a moment to clip on abar-coded name tag, he studied his surroundings. Numerous potted plants stoodalong the walls, piped into a water and feed system, while stretching up theside of one of these, an agribot like an iron centipede was busily clippingaway dead matter with its forelimbs, to be then fed into its maw and mulched upinside, subsequently fermented, then shitted back into the pots. Havingnecessarily taken a great interest in the burgeoning population of robotsoccupying the world, Saul knew that microscopic manipulators extruded from thetips of its second set of limbs would be picking off even the smallest pests,pin-lasers burning off blooms of fungus, microscopic spray heads on itsunderside targeting whatever remained with very specific fungicides andinsecticides. But even technology like this, employed out on usable farmland, hadbeen failing to produce enough food for thirty years.

Doors opened behind him.

Saul turned to watch a womanenter, then pause to wait as her male companion underwent the securityprocedure and came through to join her. They both looked subdued and, like allbut high-end government officials, ragged and worn, thin-faced and with darkshadows under the eyes. They ignored him as they hurried through to the officeslocated on this floor reception staff aware they were due a visit likely toshut them down and tip them out onto the streets, which was a fate they justmight not survive.

Once they were out of sight, Saulpressed a fingertip to his temple to call up a menu within his iris. Itappeared as a small screen apparently floating off to one side ahead of him,and he scrolled down it by sliding his finger lower, selected something withanother press of his fingertip and continued searching. Skin nerves at histemple, linked to the processor embedded in the bone lying underneath, actedlike a fine-tuned ball control. Finally he found the blueprint of thisbuilding, the diagram appearing to him on a large square virtual screenseemingly rising out of the floor just a few paces ahead. After remindinghimself of the layout, he shut the thing down and quickly headed for a nearbybank of lifts, which took him down into the basement.