The Skinner

2

Ambel had nightmares of a sea of shifting leeches, and dreams of a thousand years of better days. The wind from Deep-sea bulged the sail, and the sail was content with the lumps of rhinoworm it had eaten that evening. Dawn’s green light threw those lumps into silhouette, where they were being digested in the sail’s transparent gut, and it brought Peck hammering at Ambel’s door.

‘There’s turbul coming under! Turbul coming under!’

Ambel sat upright and distinguished the distinctive thumping coming from the hull, as the shoal of turbul passed under it, from the usual ratchet and clack of the ship’s mechanisms. In something of a daze, he gazed around his cabin and inspected the meagre requisites of his existence. His blunderbuss was secured with hide straps in one corner, next to the cupboard containing powder, shot, and the extensive toolkit for the weapon’s maintenance. A narrow wardrobe contained his plasmesh shirts, trousers, and reinforced boots — the only clothing that satisfied his requirements of durability. Below the oval brass-rimmed portal was a shelf on which he had stuck a few ornaments with clam glue: an ancient piece of re-entry screen polished like a gem, a miniature human skull of faceted flint, and a cut slave collar. His gaze slid across his desk strewn with maps held down with a satlink position-finder fashioned in the shape of a preruncible calculator, and came to rest on his sea-chest. So easy to accumulate so much in the course of a long life. He stared long and hard at the chest then gave a half-shrug as he tossed his covers back.

‘Turbul!’ shouted Peck again. ‘Turbul!’

‘One moment,’ Ambel replied.

He put his feet over the side of his bunk, stood and walked to the wardrobe to take out his neatly folded clothing. Back at the bed, he dressed, then sat down and carefully pulled on and laced up his boots. Standing once again, he walked to the door and carefully opened it. He had to do everything carefully, did Ambel. A moment’s inattention could have him inadvertently ripping off someone’s arm or putting his elbow through the ship’s hull.

Peck was hopping from foot to foot in his excitement to get back to the lines. He had a piece of rhinoworm in one hand and a bait-plug cutter in the other. Purple blood was dribbling from the meat and in his agitation he was spattering his long hide coat, canvas trousers, and the surrounding woodwork. Ambel gestured for him to get on. Peck eagerly nodded his bald head, a crazy look in his greenish eyes, and then he turned back to his fellow crewmen on the deck. Here there was much yelling and swearing, and there were many heavy wet creatures thrashing about. Ambel looked past Peck just as Pland hauled in a turbul the size of a canoe and leapt on top of it to stop it from flicking itself over the side again. The turbul was much the shape of a canoe, in fact. Its head was the head of a caiman, and all around its dark-green body, bright-blue fins seemed to have been scattered at random. Its tail was a whip ending in a fin that resembled a hatchet.

‘Yahoo!’ yelled Pland as the turbul bucked underneath him and tried to throw him off, then, ‘Keep still, yer bugger.’ He was indifferent to the wide gash the turbul had opened in his back with the lashing of its tail. Ambel stepped over and caught hold of the turbul’s snapping jaws in one hand, then with his other hand reached over and flicked it firmly between the eyes with his forefinger. There was a dull thud as of an iron bar hitting a log. The turbul’s eyes crossed and its body went limp.

‘Thank you, Captain,’ said Pland as he dismounted. ‘Reckon you can pull this’n? He’s a bit big for me.’

Ambel shrugged, took a firmer grip on the turbul’s jaws with his right hand and put his left hand on the flesh behind its head. He pulled, and with a ripping sound the head pulled out of its socket with the spine following. As he continued to pull, the tail and fins drew into the turbul’s body, finally to disappear. When Ambel repositioned his grip halfway down the turbul’s spine for one last heave, the creature’s flesh came off like an old sock, leaving him holding a straggly mess of head, spine, a baggy sack of internal organs, and the fins and tail — all still joined. He held this up in front of himself for a moment and gave it a couple of shakes. The eyes uncrossed and the spine, fins and tail began to writhe. The end of the tail whipped at Ambel’s face but he easily caught it.

‘Naughty,’ he said, then tossed the turbul over the side. In the water the skeletal creature swam around for a moment before sticking its head out above the surface and issuing a noisy, snorting neighing. It then dived and swam onwards with the rest of its shoal.

‘Remember, lads, we only need enough for fifty pickle barrels!’ Ambel shouted to the rest of his crew as they hauled in smaller turbul and pulled them similarly. One after another, stripped turbul swam away making those indignant snorting noises. Soon the deck was scattered with slippery tubes of meat sliding about on the acrid turbul chyme. While baiting a gleaming hook Ambel contemplated how so very slowly Polity technology was filtering into their lives. Ceramal hooks that never seemed to get blunt now, when he could remember the days of carving them out of bone. At least the bladder floats were still the same. Stepping back a little so that he had room to cast his line out, he nearly tripped over on a sliding turbul body.

‘Anne! Barrels and vinegar!’ he bellowed — but not too annoyed as he knew his crew tended to get distracted at moments like this.

Anne shot him an irritated look, reeled in her line and hung it on a hook fixed to the rail, then called a few of the junior crew to join her. Hopping over turbul bodies, she led them to the hatch leading to the rear hold, slid it aside then swiftly climbed down. Two others followed her down into the hold, and two remained on deck to swing across a winch arm and feed the rope down.

‘Reckon that’s it,’ said Pland, holding up his latest catch. This turbul was long and thin, its body pocked with leech holes. The thumping against the hull of the ship was abating now and becoming difficult to distinguish from the clunking of the mast chains. Ambel pulled up his own latest catch, inspected it for a moment, then unhooked it and tossed it back.

‘End of the main shoal now,’ he said. ‘Just the leech-hit.’

Peck reluctantly pulled in his own line and coiled it, then, from a locker below the rail where most of the ship’s hunting gear was stored, he removed a long and lethally sharp panga. Ambel moved over to join the juniors and help them swing across the barrels Anne and the others had loaded into a cargo net. Once the net was on the deck, they rolled the empties to one side. Ambel then broke open a sealed barrel and the rich smell of spiced vinegar wafted out, almost drowning the acrid smell of turbul. Meanwhile, Peck had started cutting the turbul tubes into neat rings of flesh.

‘Good run,’ he said, sawing away enthusiastically.

‘Good run,’ agreed Ambel, taking up the lacework of rhinoworm steak, which was all that remained of their bait, and heading towards his cabin. Peck watched him go, his knuckles whitening around the handle of the panga. When he returned his attention to the turbul meat, he hacked at it savagely.

The line, in this case, was a glassite strip set in the ground, running across under the arched exit from the Dome. Janer had a puzzled expression as he stood staring at this strip, his identification card held loosely in his hand.

‘No real barrier here, nor any form of customs. All that was at the runcible installation on Coram,’ said Keech.

‘But what about the other side — the Spatterjay side?’

‘The Hoopers don’t give a shit about things like that,’ said Erlin.

On the Polity side of the Line, a neatly slabbed path ran between fields of giant maize and plantations of pomegranate trees. Janer looked round at the trees, then down at the line again. On the black earth of the Spatterjay side lay the burnt husks of this planet’s equivalent of vermin: the stinking remains of some kind of bird, a spiral shell the size of a man’s head, and some flat decaying remains the size of a man’s leg, which had to be one of the famous leeches. Janer took this all in. He glanced up at the small laser mounted in the apex of the arch, then at the hornets in their carry-case on his shoulder.

‘It’s monitored,’ said Erlin. ‘I don’t think an AI would like to end up indentured to a Hive mind, do you?’

‘The mind has never viewed this world before,’ said Janer. ‘Its worry was not about its units crossing the Line now, with me, but about them returning across it, should the mind wish to send one back alone.’

‘I would think the automatics could distinguish, but you can ask at the gate. There’s sure to be one of the Warden’s subminds in attendance.’ Erlin gestured to the side of the arch as the three of them advanced. At the gate itself, Janer looked up in the air, as most people did instinctively when addressing a non-visible AI.

‘Warden, my Hive mind has expressed some reservations about your automatic bug-zapper. Will it distinguish between hornets and Spatterjay life forms?’ he asked.

‘Of course it will,’ replied a somewhat irritated voice. ‘Only humans make that mistake.’

Janer muttered something obscene and stepped out of the Polity. With her amusement barely concealed, Erlin followed him. Keech had no expression on his half face, even when the laser and attached eye swivelled to follow his progress.

Beyond the gate was a wide street lined with peak-roofed wooden buildings, many of which were shops and drinking dens. A market sprawled across the earth road, and Hoopers were enthusiastically hawking their wares to other Hoopers, and to the Polity citizens who had dared to come across the Line. Erlin gestured to a stall where wide green-glass terrariums contained the writhing and glistening shapes of leeches.

‘You can buy the bite of a leech there for a few shillings. Cheap immortality you’d think, but a bit of a rip-off when all you have to do is walk into the dingle and stand under a peartrunk tree for a while.’ She glanced round at Keech. ‘I don’t suppose it would work for you though.’

Keech clicked dryly for a moment before speaking. ‘That is debatable,’ he said.

‘Would you try it?’ asked Janer. He was giving the stall a strange look.

‘To become immortal I would first have to become alive,’ Keech replied.

Janer glanced round at him again and wondered what he meant by that, but of course the reif s face was unreadable. Erlin led them on.

‘That’s the place we want,’ she said, pointing at the plate-glass window of a shop set between a bar and a cooper’s establishment almost concealed behind the stacked barrels. Over the window of the middle shop was mounted a long barbed harpoon.

‘Big fish they’ve got round here,’ observed Janer.

‘You could say that,’ said Erlin, pausing at the shop entrance. As she pushed open the door, a dull bell clanked and two Hoopers inspecting something in a glass cabinet glanced up before turning back to each other and continuing their conversation.

‘You can pay in stages, Armel,’ said one. ‘I’ll trust y’ on a ship oath.’

‘I’ll think ‘bout it,’ replied Armel, and with one last wistful glance at the case he hurried past the three newcomers and out of the shop. The shopkeeper rubbed his hands on his shirtfront before coming over to them. He grinned widely.

‘Polity?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Erlin cautiously, ‘but we’ve been here for some time.’

The man’s grin lost some of its exuberance at this.

‘How can I help?’ he asked.

Janer surveyed the wares in the shop. In the glass case was a neat selection of projectile guns the like of which he had only ever seen in museums. Around the walls were also sharp-edged weapons of every description. There was enough armament here to equip a small medieval army.

‘Stun guns and lasers,’ said Erlin.

The shopkeeper’s grin widened again and he gestured to the back of the shop.

‘Are you sure we need this?’ asked Janer.

‘You saw that shell at the gate?’ Erlin asked him.

‘Yes…’

‘It was the shell of a frog whelk. One of those sees you, it’ll try to take a chunk out of you. It could take your hand off with one bite. Hoopers view them as amusing little pests. And there’s much worse.’

From a locked cabinet the shopkeeper produced three hand weapons with belts and holsters.

‘Y’ can have lasers and stunners separate, but I got these,’ he said.

Erlin picked up one of the weapons and inspected it dubiously. Keech stepped beside her and took up another weapon. He knocked back a slide control, opened the bottom of the handle and peered inside, then slammed it shut.

‘QC laser with slow burn, wide burst… the lot,’ he said. He glanced at Erlin. ‘These’ll do all you need.’

‘QC?’ Janer queried.

‘Quantum cascade; standard solid-state,’ Keech replied.

‘What about stun?’

Keech tapped the stubby barrel set below — and off-centre of — the main mirrored barrel. ‘Ionic burst — good for up to about five metres,’ he said. ‘And,’ he studied the three weapons, ‘J will not be requiring one of these.’

Erlin eyed him thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to the shopkeeper.

‘How much?’

‘Two hundred shillings each.’

Janer thought he must have got it wrong: surely he meant two thousand shillings?

‘You’re a robber and a thief,’ said Erlin. ‘I’ll give you two hundred for two of them.’

‘I’m a thief! I’m a thief! One seventy-five each, with the belts and holsters.’

‘Seventy-five each and I’ll tell no one how you robbed us.’

‘One hundred and fifty each, and for that I make no profit at all.’

‘One hundred, and may the Old Captains forgive you.’

‘I have a family! I have mouths to feed!’

‘One hundred.’

The shopkeeper’s expression was one of outrage, but that expression swiftly disappeared when Erlin turned to leave. He caught hold of her arm and she turned back to him.

‘One hundred and twenty-five and you must tell no one how you have robbed me,’ he said.

‘Agreed,’ said Erlin with a smile.

Janer opened his wallet, but before he could remove any money, Keech laid one bony hand over it. ‘You neglected to mention the required power cells. Does your price include them as well?’ he asked.

‘You are all thieves!’ shouted the shopkeeper.

Keech stepped back and left the bargaining to Erlin.

With the door to his cabin firmly closed, Ambel sat on his bed and stared over at his sea-chest, the bait meat held in his right hand like a bloody hankerchief. He tilted his head as if listening to something, then shook it in annoyance, before abruptly rising and stepping across his cabin to stand before the chest itself. With his free hand he opened the lid and took out an oblong box a metre long and a third of that wide and deep. This he placed on his table then took a key for the lock from his top pocket. After unlocking the box, he returned the key to his pocket, then stepped back a bit before flipping up the lid. The thing inside did not leap out, though there were signs of movement.

It was blue and filled the box. It was a head. Once it had been a human head, but now it was so horribly enlarged, stretched out and distorted that it was difficult to recognize it as such. It was more like the head of some bastard offspring of a baboon and a warthog. Ambel stood and glowered at it as it shifted in its box, and one of its insane black eyes blinked open and returned his look. It was still alive, and he questioned the impulse that made him keep it so. That the historian, Olian Tay, had offered him a fortune for it, he now knew as incidental — he wasn’t keeping it for her. Perhaps he kept it out of sadism. No one could be more deserving of punishment than this… individual. Ambel dropped the piece of bait meat in the box and slammed the lid shut. Next time he looked, he knew the meat would be gone, as the Skinner retained a tenacity for life. After wiping his hand, Ambel locked the box then placed it back in his sea-chest before slamming and locking the lid of that. He left his cabin speedily, as one glad to be away from some unpleasant but necessary task. Peck was standing just outside, gazing at him strangely. He held the panga in his right hand and was spattered with purple blood and flecks of turbul meat. Even to Ambel he was a disquieting sight.

‘Turbul all chopped, Peck?’ Ambel asked.

The crewman took a moment to reply. ‘How… is the bugger?’ he asked.

‘Alive,’ said Ambel. ‘Still alive.’

Peck nodded slowly. ‘Can still hear ‘im muttering,’ he said.

‘We’ll always hear that,’ said Ambel, reaching out and carefully slapping Peck on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get that turbul pickled and stowed, man.’

As Ambel walked past Peck, the crewman stared at the door to the cabin with his face screwed up in an expression that might have been remembered pain or might have been longing.

‘How many barrels?’ Ambel asked Anne as she lowered a full net down to the hive of activity in the hold.

‘Twelve in all, with enough spare to do us for a week or so. Good run,’ she added.

Ambel studied her face. The leech scars there had not detracted from her rugged attractiveness, and her long black hair showed not a speck of grey despite her many years. The virus affected different people in different ways. Some became wrinkled prunes with grizzled hair; some, like Anne, stayed at their peak; others lost all their hair and sometimes their teeth too. Ambel himself had been like Anne, long in the past. Over the numerous years since, he had, like many of the Old Captains, incrementally increased his muscular bulk. Now he had cropped white hair, a young-looking but wide face, and the overall appearance of someone who could snap deck timbers between his fingers — and it wasn’t a deceptive appearance.

‘We going after another run?’ Boris asked from below.

‘Nope, lad,’ said Ambel. ‘It’s a night moon and we’ve still got time to get to the sands. I don’t want all our barrels filled with turbul. It only pulls down a few skind and the market’ll be flooded.’ He looked up. ‘We go east,’ he spoke loudly so the sail could hear him.

‘Amberclams?’ asked Pland, picking bait meat from under his fingernails with a skinning knife.

‘Amberclams,’ Ambel confirmed.

‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘I thought you were thinking of a hunt.’

Ambel grinned at him, then went below to help Boris and the juniors stow the barrels.

The voice from his Hive link had a hint of buzzing behind it but Janer reckoned that was just showmanship. Hornets did not communicate by buzzing, and Hive minds certainly did not. He suspected that this ersatz buzzing was the mind’s idea of a joke.

‘I would like you to travel with this Erlin. I find her interesting,’ the mind told him.

It wasn’t an instruction any more. The mind had ceased to issue instructions when his indenture had run out two decades back. The request, though, was backed by the promise of unlimited credit, travel and lack of boredom, and for Janer boredom could be a problem, as it was for so many Polity citizens now.

‘I thought you wanted me to stick with the reif,’ he whispered, conscious of the people all around him.

‘The reification, I suspect, will go with her. If he does not, he will find her again in the future. His story and hers connect.’

‘You haven’t told me his story yet.’

‘In good time, in good time. Let us watch this fight for the present.’

The two Hoopers facing each other in the dirt ring had stripped naked and oiled themselves from head to foot. The crowd was baying for blood, yet there seemed an insincerity about their shouting.

‘You note that they strip off their clothing first,’ said the mind.

‘So?’ said Janer.

‘Their bodies repair themselves. Clothing has to be repaired.’

Janer absorbed that and nodded to himself. A passing tout assumed the nod was for him and he turned to Janer.

‘Domby or Forlam? Shillings, yen, dollars — or skind if you have to. What bet?’

The man was short and powerfully built. He seemed to have none of those distinctive Hooper leech marks visible on him. Janer recognized his accent as off-world.

‘What are the odds?’

‘Domby’s a three-fifty and Forlam a one-fifty, with an impressive list of recent wins. Thirteen to one on Domby for an E, and ten to one on Forlam for a pop. Either of them drops from a vaso, and you lose. The fight is two hours limited.’

‘I’ll put ten shillings on Domby for an E,’ said Janer.

‘Very good, sir.’ The tout looked worried as he wrote out a betting slip and accepted Janer’s ten-shilling note. Others in the crowd were eyeing Janer speculatively.

‘That was a high bet here,’ said the mind. ‘Your average Hooper would have to work half a year for such a sum.’

‘Really. If you know that much, perhaps you can tell me what Es, pops and vasos are,’ said Janer.

‘An E is an evisceration and a pop is a burst eye. A vaso is when one or both of the contestants collapse through loss of blood,’ the mind replied succinctly.

‘Oh, very nice. What are my chances of winning?’

‘You heard the odds.’

Janer glowered at the two hornets in their case then returned his attention to the fight. Domby, whom Janer presumed to be the one showing the most leech scars, had stepped into the ring with a long curved dagger in each hand. Forlam then stepped in to face him. His weapons consisted of a stiletto and something that looked like an ice-axe. As soon as they were face to face, someone rang a dull-sounding bell. The volume of the shouting immediately increased as the opponents began to circle and feint. Domby was the first to get a hit. He opened Forlam’s arm through to the bone, and blood jetted for a moment before abruptly ceasing to flow. Forlam backed away then leapt forward to jam his stiletto in Domby’s stomach. In reply, Domby cut Forlam’s ear so it was hanging by a thread. Forlam managed a low blow that cut Domby’s scrotum in half. Five or six more blows followed before the two parted and circled again. Janer stood with his mouth open and a sick feeling in his gut as he watched Forlam shake his head in irritation and with his forearm press his ear back into place. When the Hooper moved his arm away, the ear remained in position again, if slightly askew. On the other side of this dusty arena, the crowd had parted round an off-worlder who was spewing vomit on to the dirt. Janer was a little harder than that. He’d seen some horrible things in his time, but this…

Domby and Forlam went at each other again. There was blood all over the ground. Not huge amounts, as all their wounds bled for only a short time. Janer noticed that the wound on Forlam’s arm had nearly closed and that Domby’s scrotum was back together.

‘Illuminating, isn’t it,’ said a voice at his shoulder which he first took to be the mind’s until he turned to see Keech standing next to him. He was also glad to notice that those who had shown interest in him earlier when he had opened his wallet were now nowhere in evidence. The crowd had parted round Keech just as it had around the vomiter.

‘That’s one way of describing it,’ said Janer. ‘Erlin found her Captain yet?’

‘He’s not here, but she’s still trying to find out where he went,’ the reif said. He nodded towards the fight as another hideous wound was inflicted — and ignored. ‘It takes little imagination to visualize the damage these people could do off-world, had they the inclination,’ he said.

‘But they don’t,’ said Janer.

‘No, most of them don’t.’

It took an hour for the fight to reach its climax. By that time, there were pools of blood everywhere in the dirt and Forlam was heading for a vaso. Janer did not see the move that ended the fight. Forlam had his back turned so Domby was hidden. The roar of the crowd alerted him before Forlam turned, dropping his weapons as he tried to prevent his intestines dropping out.

‘I think I’ve won some money,’ said Janer as the crowd began chanting ‘Full! Full!’

‘What does that mean?’ Janer asked.

The Hive mind replied. ‘It means full evisceration, though I believe that to be a misnomer. According to the rules of this kind of match there only has to be one clear loop of intestine,’ it said.

‘What?’ said Janer, not quite taking in what he was being told.

Domby continued after Forlam, and Janer soon found out precisely what the mind had meant. He came close to losing the beer and sandwiches he had consumed a couple of hours before. It wasn’t so much the sight as the smell that did it. When he finally felt sure he had his nausea under control, the crowd was heading off in pursuit of various touts, and Keech was watching him impassively.

‘You’d better hurry if you want to collect your winnings,’ the reif suggested.

Janer nodded, looked around for the tout, whom he now saw surrounded by a small group of winners, and clutching his ticket he went over to collect. As he drew close, two ugly-looking Hoopers suddenly stepped in front of him. Both of them had knives like Domby’s.

Janer halted, then stepped back. ‘OK. OK, I don’t mind,’ he said. A hundred and forty shillings was not worth the risk of suffering what had happened to Forlam. Nevertheless, the two thugs kept coming at him. For half a second Janer considered running, then he swung a fist at the nearer of the thugs. The man’s head turned with the force of the blow, but otherwise he seemed unaffected. He grinned at Janer as if to indicate that the blow had now freed him of any restraints.

‘Fuck,’ said Janer. This was going to get nasty. He stepped back slightly, spun on his heel and drove a thrust-kick straight into the man’s stomach. He might as well have kicked a tree for all the effect it had. He backed off, trying not to put too much weight on a knee that was already beginning to ache. The thug was still grinning that same grin. Behind him, his companion just stood with his arms folded, and was smiling with nasty expectation.

‘Can’t we talk about this?’ Janer suggested.

The thug slowly shook his head, and then abruptly moved in. Janer readied himself for the fight of his life. Suddenly there was a flash and a low thud. The leading thug staggered back and sat down. He peered with perplexity at the smoking hole in his stomach then glared past Janer. Janer glanced round as Keech stepped up beside him. He was holding in his skeletal hand a chromed gun similar in appearance to a Luger, only heavier, and with a longer barrel. He next shot the second thug, and put him on the ground too.

‘I’ll go for headshots if either of you tries to get up,’ warned the reif. The first thug, who had been considering just that, sat back down again.

‘Get your winnings,’ said Keech. ‘I hate people reneging on bets.’

Janer stared at Keech, then at the weapon the reif held. This was why he had not required one of the QC lasers; what he held was a JMCC military-issue pulse-gun. Janer now cast his eye over the two thugs. One of them was poking a finger into the hole in his body, to see how deep it went. The reality of Spatterjay was rapidly coming home to Janer. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea to put the weapon he had purchased earlier in his backpack.

He took out his slip and advanced on the tout, who stared at him for a moment then began to reach into his jacket. A hand, deeply cicatrised with leech scars, reached down and caught the tout’s wrist.

‘Now now,’ said a pleasant voice.

Janer gaped at the owner of that hand. This Hooper was big, shaven-headed, and blue with leech scars. He wore hide trousers and a thin shirt. Even his muscles had muscles. Janer wondered if he would even notice a punch delivered by an off-worlder. This one looked as if bullets would bounce off his skin and knives would bend and break on him. There was a boulderlike solidity about him, and a stolid assurance.

‘Captain Ron,’ said someone in the crowd, and there was almost reverence in the voice.

‘I think you should pay the man,’ said Captain Ron.

‘Yes, yes.’ The tout dropped his moneybag in his eagerness to get the money out. He stooped and quickly retrieved it before counting out notes and change with shaking hands. Janer accepted the money while keeping half an eye on the Captain, who was gazing with ponderous insouciance back at the ring.

‘You all right there, Forlam!’ the Captain suddenly bellowed.

A groan came from that direction.

‘Soon have you back together,’ said the Captain. He gazed round at the crowd. ‘Anyone found his fingers yet?’

‘Got ‘em, Captain,’ someone yelled.

‘Get ‘im back to the ship then and tell Roach to thread ‘im up.’

Janer just could not take in what he was hearing. He knew Hoopers were very hard to kill, but this was ridiculous. He glanced round to see Keech approaching, while the two Hoopers he had shot had moved off into the background. They seemed unperturbed by wounds that would have killed an off-worlder, but were now pensively watching Captain Ron. Janer guessed they were hoping the tout wouldn’t call for them. It did not require much imagination to guess what the result of such an encounter would be.

‘I’d like to buy you a drink,’ Janer said abruptly.

With a vague smile, Captain Ron turned back to him.

‘Now that could work out expensive,’ he said.

There was laughter from the other Hoopers.

‘Well, I’ve had a bit of luck today,’ said Janer.

‘All right,’ said the Captain. ‘I’ll see you in the Baitman.’ He cast a baleful look at the tout, then at his thugs, who ducked their heads and tried to appear unconcerned. ‘And he better get there safely,’ he said loudly. Then he sauntered off.

With Keech at his side, Janer surveyed the people around him. All he could find were friendly expressions. The two thugs had already gone. The tout was slinking away, as if hoping not to be noticed.

‘Obviously not someone to mess with,’ said Janer.

‘You remember what Erlin said?’ asked Keech.

‘Remind me.’

‘He, I would guess, is an Old Captain, and has authority by dint of the simple fact that he could tear your arms off.’

‘Yes, I remember now.’

The Baitman was a ship-Hoopers’ drinking den, and no other off-worlders were present when Janer and Keech entered. Looks of vague curiosity were flung in their direction, before conversations resumed. Keech and Janer walked up to the bar, behind which sat a Hooper who seemed only skin and bone, with white curly hair. He was bending over a board on which chess pieces and small model ships were positioned. That he seemed to concentrate even harder on the board when they entered was obvious to Janer. He rapped on the bar with his knuckles. The barman glanced up at them with an albino’s pink eyes.

‘This place is for ship Hoopers,’ he said, and returned his attention to the board.

Janer was at a loss for a moment, then he started to get angry. Before he could say anything, Keech spoke up.

‘Then we are in the right place to meet Captain Ron for a drink,’ said the reif.

The barman stood upright, and only then did Janer realize how tall he was.

‘Ron invited you?’ He was studying them carefully.

‘I invited him, and he suggested here,’ said Janer.

The barman’s gaze flicked from Janer’s face to the two hornets, in their box on his shoulder, then to the reif. He inspected Keech for a long while, with a puzzled expression, then clearly decided not to ask. He put two pewter mugs on the bar, uncorked a jug, and filled them both. Then, from a rack behind the bar, he took down a two-litre mug and filled it with the same liquid. The vessel had ‘Ron’s Mug’ engraved on it. Janer picked up the mug in front of him and took a gulp.

‘It is best to approach such things with caution,’ said Keech, removing a glass straw from his top pocket and stooping to take a careful sip of his own drink.

‘Ung,’ Janer managed.

‘Sea-cane rum,’ added Keech.

‘You can drink it?’ Janer said, once he had his breath back.

‘My stomach is atrophied but I have a filter system which can remove impurities from high-alcohol beverages. What is pumped round my veins is alcohol based,’ replied Keech.

‘Why do you always use a straw?’

Keech gestured towards his mouth. ‘My lips, though having enough elasticity to mimic speech, do not have enough to form a seal.’

‘You’d dribble,’ said Janer.

Keech gave a measured nod.

Janer went on, his curiosity piqued, ‘How do you speak, then?’

Keech tapped his half-helmet augmentation. ‘It’s generated from here. With what little movement my mouth does have, the illusion is completed,’ he said.

Janer nodded, then took another, more cautious sip of his drink. He noted how the barman had not made a move on his chessboard since the commencement of their conversation. Understandable, as this had to be a fascinating interchange.

‘What about taste?’

‘A saporphone imbedded in the roof of my mouth transmits taste information to the mimetic computer in my aug and to what remains of my organic brain.’

‘But you can’t get drunk?’ said Janer.

‘No, I cannot, but I don’t feel that to be a disadvantage. In most situations I find it advisable to keep a clear head.’

Keech imparted this information with clinical detachment. Janer studied the reif as he thought carefully about his explanation. Keech was partially alive, since he had some functioning organic brain. The part that was not functioning was made up for by a recording of his previous living mind being run as a program in his augmentation. Thus it came down to the fact that Keech was a corpse made motile mainly by AI-directed cyber systems.

‘Why don’t you implant in a Golem chassis?’ Janer asked.

‘This is my body,’ said Keech, as if that was answer enough, and returned his attention to his drink. As Janer watched him, the Hive mind took the opportunity to interject. ‘The cult of Anubis Arisen believes physical life to be sacrosanct and that the life of the body is the only life. Perhaps Keech believes that too, though I doubt it.’

Janer did not get a chance to ask the mind to explain that comment, as Captain Ron just then crashed into the Baitman like some stray piece of earth-moving equipment.

‘Good sail to you!’ said the Captain, stomping up to the bar and taking up his mug to drain it in one. He slammed the mug down on the bar so hard the timbers leapt. The barman waited for dust to settle before refilling the mug. As it was being refilled, Janer noted that it had a bloom on its metal surface identical to that left on ceramal after it has been case hardened. Obviously simple pewter would not prove suitably durable.

‘That hits the spot,’ said the Captain.

Janer looked on in awe, wondering about the durability of this man’s intestine, before carefully taking another sip from his own mug.

‘I have to thank you for your intervention back there,’ he said, blinking water from his eyes.

‘Don’t like cheats.’

Janer gestured to Keech. ‘You and him both,’ he said.

Ron looked at the reif and nodded, his expression slightly puzzled. Keech, Janer supposed, would be a puzzle to most Polity citizens, let alone the denizens of an Out-Polity world like this.

Ron drained just half his mug this time and Janer dropped a ten-shilling note on the bar.

‘Got anything smaller?’ asked the barman.

‘Just keep pouring,’ said Janer. He felt drunk already, but warily slid his mug back on to the bar. ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘drinks all round.’

‘You told me to remind you if you ever did this again,’ the Hive mind whispered to him.

‘Shaddup,’ said Janer and Captain Ron gave him a puzzled look. ‘Sorry, not you.’ He pointed at the hornets on his shoulder. ‘Them.’

‘Hornets,’ said Ron. ‘Insects don’t do so well here.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘The filaments clog up their air holes.’

Somebody laughed at this, and when Janer looked around he found that others in the Baitman had gathered behind them, and that the barman was pouring more drinks. He drank some more from his own mug and noticed subliminally that Keech had retreated into the background and was now carefully seating himself at one of the tables. The reif might appear fragile in this company, but Janer now knew how deceptive that appearance was.

‘Not as clogged as your air holes, you old bastard.’

Janer glanced to one side to see Erlin standing at his shoulder.

‘Erlin!’ bellowed Ron. He reached past Janer and picked her up, but carefully. Janer noticed that the Hooper showed not a trace of effort. He might as well have been lifting an origami sculpture.

‘Careful, Ron,’ said Erlin. ‘I’m only a ninety Hooper.’

‘You’ve come back for Ambel?’ said Ron, still holding her off the ground. After a moment, he realized what he was doing and carefully put her down.

‘I have. We’ve unfinished business. Do you know where he is?’

‘Last heard, he was out at the Sargassum.’

‘Who’s going out there?’

Ron grinned at her. ‘The turbul’s good out there this season,’ he said.

Much of the rest of the evening was a blur to Janer. He remembered Keech joining in a conversation about Jay Hoop, the ancient piratical founder of Spatterjay after whom the planet was named, and he remembered later finding himself lying under a table. There was also a vague memory of being slung over Ron’s shoulder, a long walk through darkness, then puking over a wooden rail into an oily sea. Then blackness.