Lockdown Tales by Neal Asher

Author:Neal Asher [Asher, Neal.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912950744
Google: 0qTLzQEACAAJ
Publisher: NewCon Press
Published: 2020-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

‘I have initiated fusion,’ she said.

He stared up at her, utterly baffled, his eyes open but nothing going on behind them. He blinked, then remembered he had supposed she must have a fusion node in her capacitor battery. A good job thought arrived a moment later when he realised how dark it had become and how this would affect his solar panels. Panic arrived on top of that and he pushed himself up to swing his legs round to sit on the edge of the bed. He could hear a steady rumbling and hissing sound and could only think of hordes of mantids as dizziness and nausea arose driving a brief dry heave that set his eyes watering.

‘The shutters,’ he managed. ‘The door…’

‘I have closed them.’

He sat there baffled again until realising he had thought it night time – hence his panic.

‘The rain, you know,’ he said, not wanting to admit his confusion.

The monsoon came every day. Obviously she had closed the shutters to prevent water getting into the house. He sometimes did that, sometimes not. The torrent always came straight down and never really splashed through the windows and door. Often he took a chair and sat in the doorway to watch it – especially when the thunder and lightning commenced.

As his vision cleared to its usual crappy condition, he saw she held his cup. The thought of drinking what it obviously contained did not please him, but he took it anyway and gulped, only managing half a cup at first, then the second half while his body broke out into a hot sweat.

‘We must begin now,’ she said. ‘Remove your clothing and come and sit at the table.’

‘You should at least buy me lunch first.’ He surprised himself by managing to find that much humour.

‘I don’t suppose you feel very hungry.’

‘No, not really.’

As he pulled off his clothes he just felt tired and ill, but when he came to his underclothes he felt suddenly bashful. She was a Golem android but now, with the skin back in place on her face, she had the appearance of an attractive woman. It then occurred to him that despite the nausea and the weariness, perhaps some things in his body had changed, because his mind had ceased to wander into that territory more years ago than he could remember. He left on his pants and, painfully aware of his gaunt stringy frame, pale loose skin and leaf-covered lesions, walked over and plumped down in the chair.

Now he saw that the table looked paler than it had been. She must have scrubbed it down with something. Laid out on its surface were numerous items: the contents of podules, a selection of his tools – also cleaned until they gleamed – containers of various fluids and pastes.

‘Looks like some ancient surgeon’s table,’ he observed.

‘There will be no gross surgery, if that is what concerns you.’

He felt slightly reassured, but that went away when she picked up an object she had obviously fashioned. It was a bloody great big syringe with a needle as long as his hand.

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