Free Gridlinked by Neal Asher Page B

He no longer appeared so old and he now had a distracted air about him.
    'I will leave you now, and you will make your way with suitable efficiency and logic'
    'Going inscrutable on me again, are you?' Cormac asked.
    'Do not accept things as they appear to be, Ian Cormac.'
    'Have I ever?' Cormac asked.
    'Yes, you are right for this.'
    It was a parting statement. Blegg turned and walked away across the stone floor. Cormac watched him for a moment, then he sighed and rubbed at his weary eyes. When he looked again Blegg was gone. He swore to himself and set off again. It was all so bloody typical of him. Why couldn't he have just said goodbye and walked away normally?
    The lading docks cut a swathe through the band of papyrus fields. Here the bales of compressed plant matter were loaded onto robot barges and sent inland by canal to the processing plants. Doug Pench had worked on Dock A for most of his life. He enjoyed it there. He earned enough to pay for his big apartment on the edge of the South Arcology of Gordonstone, and enough to run a Model 'I replica AGC and a cabin cruiser, for which, incidentally, he had a free mooring. He also did not have to put up with too much lip from his workforce, that workforce being a crew of five ancient auto handlers.
    He was working on Handler Three again when he first heard it. He had the handler's casing open and was keying in, by hand, a control code, the original of which had corrupted. Fifth time that week. If it happened again he swore he would kick the thing into the sea and let it join the bales it had taken to tossing there as if intent on loading an invisible barge. The sound was a vaguely irritating buzz. He looked up and saw only the four bales that were now floating out to sea, swore, and returned to his task. The sound grew and became even more irritating.
    Pench stood and stretched, walked to the edge of the compacted papyrus jetty and tilted his head. The sound was like that of one of the old shuttles taking off. After a moment he nodded to himself. Of course: Veltz's boat. Sounded like he was thrashing it. Perhaps one of those bastard ECS Monitors was onto his operation.
    He squinted out to sea and scratched at his bushy beard. Nothing in sight yet. He walked to the end of his dock and looked back down the swathe of other docks. Parel had walked out on Dock B to see what was going on as well.
    'Thrashing it a bit, ain't he?' Parel shouted.
    'Monitor after him, guaranteed,' Pench shouted back, and then turned to squint out to sea again.
    The drone was deep, with an undertone that told him something was working at its limit. Pench could only pick out the Meercat because of the flashes of white water behind it. It was really moving. It wasn't properly a boat, but a very low-flying aircraft, and it was now coming straight at him. Pench glanced along the cluttered dock, then back at the rapidly approaching catamaran. He should dive into the water and get down as deep as he could. That was his only chance, but somehow he just couldn't get his legs moving. Paralysed, he stared straight into the blurred eye of the turbine and knew it was just going to eat him up. His gaze flicked up to the cabin, and he knew for a moment that feeling of displacement that comes with nightmares. The Meercat, ten metres from Dock A, hit a floating papyrus bale and cartwheeled. Pench watched it scream above him and felt the draught of the turbine intake tugging at his overalls. He watched it take out Docks B to F as it disintegrated, and he watched the turbine, free at last, leap into the sky and arc out over the papyrus fields.
    Pench walked back down his own dock, his legs weak, and a strange taste in his mouth. He went into his litde hut and called in an emergency. The police and various members of the emergency services that turned up ten minutes later found him sitting on his dock with his back against Auto Handler Three. None of them believed his story about the headless woman driving Veltz's