The Skinner

5

‘Atoll GCV 1232, beginning census scan,’ said SM13.

‘You only say that to irritate me,’ said Sniper, as they hovered above an atoll like a huge apple core thrust down into the sea.

‘The Warden’s right, you know,’ said the iron seahorse drone. ‘You’re getting cranky in your old age.’

‘And you think counting snails is a worthwhile pastime?’

‘No, but it’s amazing what interesting items you can find out here and what they’ll fetch in the auctions on Coram, and it beats subsumption every time,’ replied Thirteen.

‘I don’t have to be wary of that. I’m a freed drone. I worked off my construction fees and indenture centuries ago. If I want to become part of the Warden, I can. I don’t want to, yet.’

‘Planting stealth mines on Prador dropbirds was how you paid your way out, as I recollect. You consider that a worthwhile pastime? Some of us are not so inclined to the martial occupation. Perhaps you should try subsumption at least once, it’d straighten out a few of your kinks.’

‘I’ve got kinks?’ Sniper paused for a moment. ‘What interesting items?’

‘Amberclam pearls, fossilized glister shell. I even found a vein of green sapphire once,’ replied Thirteen.

‘You never told me about this before,’ said Sniper.

‘Well, after the trouble I got into through snatching thrall units for you, I thought it best to keep quiet for a while.’

After a contemplative silence Sniper said, without heat, ‘We gonna count these fucking snails or what?’

The little drone turned towards Sniper with light glinting in its amber eyes, then it turned its nose and tilted it in the direction of one side of the atoll.

‘I’ll go this way round and you go the other. We’ll meet on the other side. This is the last one in sector fifty-two, then we can move on to fifty-three, which should be more interesting. There’s molly carp there.’

‘Oh joyful day,’ said Sniper. ‘You know why the Warden wants this census?’

‘The way I got it was “A study to assess the long-term impact of runcible heat pollution and on which to base any future plans for environmental restructuring”.’

‘Make-work,’ said Sniper, drifting down to the surface of the sea and lowering his back two legs into the water. The scanning probes in his feet now operating, he slowly began to trawl around the atoll. A subprogram he was running, now counted hammer whelks and catalogued them according to size and species. Sniper then ran one of his military programs to work out the minimum size of charge required to smash certain shells and kill their occupants. He did not test his theories until SMI3 was out of sight. The trail of small underwater explosions the war drone left behind him was also undetectable. Five hours later, the two drones met on the other side of the atoll.

‘You know, I don’t get why you came here to work with the Warden,’ said Thirteen, as they cruised on to pastures new.

‘Easy enough. I wanted to spend time on a Line world like this: more chance of some sort of action. Nothing’s got out of hand in the Polity for a long time now, and things are boringly peaceful. The few Separatist actions are normally flattened by ECS agents before there’s any need to deploy war drones.’

Below them the water was the colour of jade, fractured by the occasional white wake from some cruising sea leviathan. The sky was a lighter green shading to blue, and steel-grey clouds held the setting sun as if in a broken pewter vessel. Sniper remembered a day when, above seas very like this, he had been engaged in hunting down two inferior Prador war drones. They had been of old utile design: just flattened spheres of armour wrapped around an AG unit, a mind, and magazines for the antipersonnel guns they had welded underneath. Such was the way of things: when a technology had been taken to its limit of efficiency and utility, you could make it look pretty. This flying brooch next to him was definitely one of the latest examples of that. But those Prador war drones had not reached that point.

Still with a feeling of satisfaction, Sniper remembered catching both Prador drones against the cliff face where they had been hiding. He had spent an hour carefully herding them until he could take them both out with one high-penetration missile. Of course, no one but himself had appreciated the poetry of that moment. The humans and big-fuck AIs running the clean-up operation had posited it as yet another example of Sniper’s flagrant individualism during organized conflict. Sniper had always been the odd one out — from when his mind had been incepted by a dying AI warship, up to and including his choice of a body-shape that scared the shit out of most humans.

‘You’re ugly inside and out, AI,’ said a man who had been passing information to the Prador, just before Sniper had snipped his head off.

‘Remembering the good old days?’ said Thirteen.

‘Yeah,’ said Sniper, and then began to hum a tune.

‘What’s that?’ asked Thirteen.

‘“Ugly Duckling”,’ said Sniper then, gesturing ahead with its heavy claw, continued, ‘That one ain’t on the map.’

Surrounded by white water was a grey atoll poking out of the sea like the head of a man tilted to one side.

‘Shit,’ said Thirteen.

Out of habit, Sniper studied the little drone to try and read its expression, but obviously to no effect. That use of an expletive had been very un-submindish, but then SM13 had not been subsumed by the Warden for quite a while, the last time being when it had been caught snatching thrall units from the shore of one of the Segre Islands. Contemplating this, the war drone followed Thirteen down when it changed course to sweep in around the atoll.

‘Packet-worm coral,’ said the little drone. ‘Must have been shoved up in the last year.’

The edifice had the appearance of something on the facia of a Hindu temple, only subtly distorted until nothing was recognizably complete, just a wormish depiction of indefinable life: limbs and bodies chaotically tangled in organic stone.

‘This mean another census?’ asked Sniper.

‘It does. We have to count whelks around every above-surface structure — that’s what the Warden said.’

‘Great, I really look forward to it.’

‘Of course,’ said Thirteen, a laser projecting from its neck ridges to flash a gridded overlay on areas of the atoll, ‘this structure is unstable. You note how top-heavy it is and how the sea is wearing through that edge lower down?’

‘Yeah, I see it,’ said Sniper.

‘Not long before it collapses back into the sea, really.’

Sniper tilted in midair, smiled, and spat two cylinders from his square mouth. The cylinders slammed downwards drawing black lines through the air, and hit into the sea under the edge of the atoll. Underneath, the sea was lit by two deep-red detonations before spuming into the air in a globular cloud. The atoll lurched sideways and with a growing hiss it slid into the waves. Water flooded into the remaining hollow and all around the sea went opaque with disturbed silt.

‘Now that is what I call environmental restructuring,’ said Thirteen.

‘Drone bonding, as I neither live nor breath,’ said Sniper, and they flew on.

Erlin leant on the rail shading her eyes against the green sunlight as she studied the distant shapes on the sea. When she heard someone come up behind her, she expected to see Captain Ron — but it was Janer. She checked to see if he was carrying his weapon, since she’d found, over the short period they had been on board, that he tended to forget it. He grinned at her, drew his QC laser from his utility belt, spun it round his forefinger, and then holstered it again. She shook her head and gazed out to sea.

‘Here,’ he said, ‘try this.’ He handed her an image-intensifier from the other side of his belt. She studied the device, noting that it had auto-tracking lenses and a magnification setting beyond anything she would be likely to use. She nodded her thanks and brought the device up to her eyes.

The nearest shape on the sea Erlin identified at a glance as a large clump of sargassum — all decaying arm-thick stalks, translucent bladders, and wadded yellow sheets of foliar material. Centering on the next shape out, she targeted it for the intensifier’s auto-tracking, and focused on it — the intensifier now automatically correcting for shake. This shape was another clump of sargassum, but moored to it was a ship. After a moment of study, she lowered the intensifier, the chameleon-eye lenses whirring as they tried to keep the distant sargassum centred, and handed it back to Janer. Janer clicked it off and held it in his right hand as he leant his elbows on the rail.

‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘There’s a ship out there, but it’s not the Treader. It’s two-masted and a bit smaller. Perhaps they’ll know exactly where it is,’ she replied, then turned to Captain Ron, who stood up on the forecabin watching them, and pointed out the distant ship. Ron nodded and gave instructions to his helmsman and to the sail. The sail muttered imprecations as it twisted its body on the spars to match the rapid spinning of the helm. It seemed as if there was some kind of ongoing competition between the helmsman and the creature. As the ship quickly heeled over, Janer studied the sail as it performed its duties, the movable spars and mast clonking in their greased sockets. He realized now that there were both fixed and movable spars that the creature utilized, and earlier he had been shown the mechanisms that moved the two other masts: long hardwood chains and hardwood sprockets, cog wheels and shafts running in bronze bearings. When he’d asked the junior greaseboy why their ships didn’t have engines, the man had looked at him as if he’d gone quite mad.

‘Why are they so low-tech here?’ he asked Erlin. ‘I mean… I haven’t seen a single aug, wrist comp… anything. Everything’s made of wood, solid metals, hide and organic fibres. Are they tech breakers, New Luddites, or what?’

Erlin turned and studied the ship as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Money,’ she explained. ‘This is an Out-Polity world so doesn’t qualify for any assistance other than free medicare, but that’s mostly not needed, and for reasons I don’t have to explain to you.’

Janer nodded. He’d not be forgetting that fight between Domby and Forlam for a long time.

Erlin went on, ‘There’s also very little industry here, because there’s so few places to site it and no easily accessible resources, and because of that this place is poor. You already know what the exchange rate is with the skind. What we could buy for small change, a Hooper has to work for months to acquire.’

‘Yes,’ said Janer. ‘You said something before about how difficult it is for them to leave this place: they have to work for years to buy passage.’

‘And that’s the only reason. I don’t think the rumours of Polity suppression are true.’

Janer regarded her questioningly.

‘It’s been said that the Polity is scared of Hoopers,’ continued Erlin. ‘That ECS prevents technological growth here, and makes it difficult for Hoopers to leave.’

‘Plausible though. Keech was saying about how much damage they could do off-planet if they felt so inclined,’ said Janer.

‘True,’ Erlin nodded. ‘But an AI like Earth Central wouldn’t look upon them as an unhuman threat. It certainly doesn’t look at Golem and boosted or augmented humans that way. Its usual recourse is to recruit them.’

‘Hooper monitors; what a thought.’

‘No doubt an option that’s been contemplated. No, the reasons are mainly fiscal, and I’d also say that ECS hasn’t tried to change that simply because noninterference is the safest option. Trying to shove a culture up the technological ladder mostly leads to social and environmental catastrophe. That lesson was learnt on Earth centuries ago.’

‘So they’re in a trap here?’ said Janer.

‘We might think so, but I don’t think they do. When the Polity finally reached here two and a half centuries ago, a ground-base was immediately established, but the Hoopers have been in no hurry to take advantage of the technologies on offer. They’re poor, but seem happy enough.’

Janer nodded, reflecting on how that was always the blinkered view of the wealthy. He glanced about at the few crew-members as they went about their tasks.

‘What sort of money do they earn?’

Erlin nodded towards Roach. ‘Your average senior seaman like Roach there gets about two hundred skind as his share of a three-month trip out, and only then if the trip proves a profitable one. That being said, they can buy the technology.’

‘So,’ said Janer, calculating, ‘something like a wrist comp, something your average autohandler tech could buy for ten New Carth shillings, maybe an hour’s wages, would cost a Hooper three months’ wages.’

‘Not quite, they can get them cheaper here: about a hundred skind,’ said Erlin.

‘Still a lot of money to them. What about the Captains? What do they earn?’

‘Their share is two to three times as much. Though even then they don’t seem inclined to spend the money on Polity tech. Ambel could quite easily afford something like that.’ Erlin nodded at the QC laser holstered at Janer’s belt. ‘He doesn’t bother though. He sticks with a huge muzzle-loading weapon like a portable cannon. I’ve never really understood why.’

With the conversation turned to Ambel, Janer contemplatively studied Erlin’s profile. ‘Why so desperate to find this Ambel?’ he asked.

‘I’m not desperate. If I don’t run into him on this trip I’ll head back to the Dome and wait for him to turn up. It’s just a decision I’ve made,’ said Erlin tightly.

She glanced at him and he shrugged, bringing the intensifier up to his eyes. Obviously this was a subject Erlin did not want to pursue.

‘There’s things that look like crabs running about all over that weed,’ he said.

‘Prill,’ she replied. ‘If we get attacked by them you’d best get below.’

‘Really,’ said Janer. Not being reckless was one thing, but he’d be damned if he was going to spend all his time quivering in his cabin. That wasn’t life.

Erlin watched him as he rehung the intensifier at his belt, before reaching up to the shaped transparent box on his shoulder. He gave the box a tug and it came free. With care not to rattle about the two hornets inside, he lowered the box to the rail then ran his finger along the side. The box flipped open. Erlin could not help feeling horrification as the two hornets took off. She watched them fly and hoped they did not try to land on her. She looked at Janer queryingly.

‘The mind wants a look around,’ he explained.

One hornet shot off over the sea while the other buzzed around the ship. The crew ignored the insects yet the sail was instantly curious; raising its head from the deck and tracing the progress of the hornet that had remained with the ship.

‘Knowing that insects don’t live long here I wonder why the mind had you come,’ said Erlin.

‘Now there’s a question,’ said Janer.

‘One, I take it, that you asked?’

‘Oh yes. I ask the mind all sorts of questions, and in return I get all sorts of answers. Not always the answers I’m after, though.’

‘Could these hornets be… different?’ Erlin asked.

Janer was thoughtful for a moment as he gazed in the direction of the hornet that had flown off over the sea.

‘They don’t live very long as individuals,’ he said. ‘These two are new ones — replaced before they should have been.’ He tilted his head and listened. Erlin did not interrupt the unheard conversation that was obviously taking place. After a moment, he turned to her again.

‘Altered,’ he said.

Erlin nodded. Hive minds had no compunction about such things. There were stiff penalties for killing hornets, but they did not apply to minds killing their own hornets. This would, after all, be like imposing a penalty on a human for killing a few of his own brain cells. She looked at the hornet buzzing round the ship and noted how much attention the sail was still giving it.

‘The crew know about hornets, but the sail doesn’t,’ she said.

‘It will learn,’ said Janer, uninterested, as he again took his intensifier from his belt and raised it to his eyes.

Later that day the sail did learn, when it snapped at the passing hornet. It howled and rolled itself up to the top of the mast. The crew spent the rest of the day trying to coax it down again.

This time, the humped shape in the water was no drifting mass of sargassum, but a living creature in search of prey. It was ten metres long and, judging by its girth of only a couple of metres, it had not fed in some time. On its glistening ribbed back rode prill as hungry as itself. Theirs was a parasitic relationship. When the giant leech attached to prey, the prill swarmed on to it as well to slice off lumps of meat with their sickle legs. When the leech had fed and was therefore unlikely to pursue more prey, the prill went in search of another mount. Ambel had his blunderbuss resting on his shoulder as he gazed out at the creature. The rest of his crew had armed themselves again.

‘Bugger ain’t picked us up,’ said Peck, and immediately the leech turned and started heading for the Treader.

‘I wish you’d keep your bloody mouth shut,’ said Boris, rolling one end of his walrus moustache between forefinger and thumb, before taking a firmer grip on the helm.

‘We may as well take this one,’ said Ambel. ‘It’s not going to leave us alone.’

His crew-members looked up at him dubiously, then Anne and Pland crouched to unstrap the five-metre harpoons from where they were attached below the rail. Peck went over to the opposite rail where Pland had hung the neatly coiled ropes, and came back with a couple. He attached one end of each coil to one of the rings set in the deck. The other ends of the ropes Pland and Anne shackled to the harpoons. Boris heeled the Treader over and the leech drew closer. The prill leapt about excitedly on the monstrous creature’s back.

‘Pland, up here at the helm!’ Ambel shouted. Pland dropped the harpoon he had been weighing and scuttled to obey. Boris released the helm to him and quickly moved to the deck cannon. Glancing farther along the deck, Ambel shouted, ‘Gollow, send the young ‘uns below. Could get a bit frantic up here!’ He watched as the junior crewman did his bidding, then frowned as he and Sild returned to the deck. Their contracts had them down as working twenty years on the boxy boats and only a few years out on harvester ships like his own. He considered sending them below as well, then rejected the idea. They’d learn harsh realities soon enough.

‘Keep us just ahead, nice and easy,’ Ambel said, hefting his blunderbuss and sighting it on the back of the leech. The crash of the ‘buss was shockingly loud and it released a great gout of smoke. Three prill exploded into fragments. Others fell from the back of the leech then swam to catch up with it.

‘Boris!’ Ambel bellowed, and the deck cannon bellowed in reply. More prill flew to pieces and more fell in the sea. There were, however, still plenty left clinging to the back of the leech, and it had slowed not at all. Ambel carefully rested his ‘buss against the rail before climbing down to the lower deck and taking up one of the harpoons. He looked up at Pland and nodded. Pland steered the ship into the path of the leech and the sail, at his nod, turned itself out of the wind and hauled in the reefing cables for the fabric sails. The Treader slowed. With a couple of thrashes of its long flat tail the leech was up beside the ship, and there was a grating engine-sound as it tried to take a lump out of the hull. Ambel knew that it would rapidly lose interest, and either dive or swim away. He leant over the side and stabbed half the length of the five-metre harpoon into its body. Held out his hand for another, then another. Before any of the prill could clamber on to the deck, he had put five harpoons into the leech so it stood no chance of escaping. When it tried to rear up out of the water, Peck and Ambel drew the harpoon ropes taut so it could rise no higher than the side of the ship.

After lashing the helm, Pland looked down as one prill clattered on to the deck. The creature was the size of a dinner plate and had ten sickle legs sprouting from underneath it. Eyes like red LEDs zipped around the edge of its carapace as it crouched for its next leap. Pland snorted, and leapt before it could. His hobnail boots came down squarely on top of it, collapsing it underneath him with a liquid crunch. Its spread legs quivered against the wood as he stepped away knocking the mess from his soles. The next prill to leap aboard landed right in front of him. He booted the creature towards Anne, who shot it once. The hollow-point bullet made just as much mess as Pland’s boots, but by then the sailor did not need his boots as he had grabbed hold of his hammer and cauldron lid and could do some real damage. Peck was taking the prill at the rail with his pump-action shotgun. Ambel just used his fists and feet, and soon had a morass of prill insides and shattered carapaces all about him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gollow and Sild standing back to back, thwacking at prill with their pangas. They seemed to be doing well enough. The sail had rolled to the top of the mainmast and was keeping a wary eye on proceedings. All the crew made certain no prill made it to the mast, as the sail would flee if the horrible creatures started to climb toward it.

‘Ah yer bugger!’ was the limit of Pland’s exclamation when a prill jammed one of its sickle legs into his thigh. He knocked it down on to the deck and, before it could recover, kicked the creature into the rail where Ambel got it on the rebound and stamped it to slurry — before turning to another balancing on the rail and punching it from the ship. Just then, Boris had managed to reload the deck cannon and fire. The shot fragmented another load of the creatures on the back of the leech.

‘Ahah!’ Boris yelled and frantically set about ramming another powder charge down the spout, followed by handfuls of stones.

‘We’re winning, lads!’ Ambel yelled as he chased another creature down the deck and jumped on top of it.

‘Boris! You bloody idiot!’ yelled Pland.

‘What!’ shouted Ambel, turning from another pool of quivering slurry.

‘He got two o’the ropes!’ yelled Pland.

Ambel turned toward the rail just as the spout-like head of the leech lifted into sight. This head was just a long tube with a metre-wide mouth at the end. Inside the mouth was a red hell of revolving rings of teeth and reels of chitinous cutting-disks.

‘Oh bugger,’ said Ambel as the top half of the leech oozed over the rail and went after Anne. Anne leapt back and the leech cornered her against the wall of the forecabin. There was real fear on her face. This was something no Hooper could survive. With her automatic held out in both hands, she emptied the weapon’s magazine into the leech’s mouth, shell cases clattering to the deck around her feet. Shortly after the empty magazine hit the deck and she was groping at her belt for another one, sure she would have no chance to reload.

‘I’m coming!’ yelled Ambel. Anne saw him behind the leech with a harpoon in his hands. The weapon came down in an arc behind the creature’s head just as it reached for her. The point of the weapon went through. She saw it pass through the grinding mouth, out through the bottom of the head, and punch through the solid deck timbers as she slapped her second magazine into place. The leech heaved against the harpoon and the timbers creaked, but by then Ambel had another harpoon, then another. By the time he was finished, the part of the leech that had oozed over the rail had been stapled to the deck with three harpoons. With shaking hands Anne recocked her weapon and quickly moved away from the cabin wall.

‘Thanks,’ she said to Ambel.

‘Think nothing of it,’ the Captain told her.

The last of the prill were those that had been knocked off the back of the leech earlier. Boris sank most of them before they even reached the Treader and Peck continued to pick off the rest. Pland went below decks and came back with a knife half a metre long, a bar of the same length with flat pads at each end, some sets of hooks, and crampons. Behind him came the four juniors who had been sent below earlier. They gazed about themselves at the mess on the main deck, at the huge pinioned leech, and nervously fingered their clubs and pangas. Peck, while reloading his shotgun with cartridges, glanced at them, then with a shout and a gesture directed their attention to the rail locker containing the mops and brooms.

Pland and Ambel tied the crampons on their feet, and using these and the hooks, climbed down along the slippery body of the leech to where it was widest. In true pirate fashion, Ambel carried the knife clamped between his teeth. When the two of them reached their destination, the rest of the crew moved to the rail to watch. Peck kept his attention on the water around the great body, just in case any prill had been missed.

When Pland was firmly secure with his hooks, Ambel raised the knife and brought it down to drive it deep into the glistening flesh he stood upon. The leech bucked and writhed, but could not throw him as he held on to the handle of the knife and steadily pulled it back. In moments he had opened a gash three metres long, to expose the leech’s innards. Pland quickly dropped into the gash and braced it open with the bar. Ambel passed the knife down to him and looked up at the spectators.

‘Where’s the rope then, y’slugs!’ he bellowed.

Gollow left his mop against the rail and scurried to get a coil of rope and hurled one end down to them. The other end he tied to one of the deck rings. Anne stood over him as he did this, then, satisfied with his knot tying, returned her attention to the sea. Pland, meanwhile, was industriously hacking away with his knife. After a little while he reached up out of the gash and Ambel placed the end of the rope in his hand. He took this and disappeared for a while longer.

‘Move it, laddy,’ said Ambel, just then noticing a glistening hump out at sea, turning and heading in their direction.

‘Ready,’ said Pland.

Ambel reached down and hauled Pland out by his gore-soaked jacket. They retrieved their tools and quickly climbed back on to the ship. Once on deck, Ambel reached over the side and pulled the harpoons still imbedded in the body of the leech. The barbs tore out great lumps of flesh, but it seemed as if Ambel was merely pulling corn stalks. He then pulled the harpoons from the deck and the leech slid over the side, all the fight gone out of it.

‘Sail!’ Ambel yelled.

The sail unfolded and spread its wings, gripped spars and cables and with much ratchetting and clacking, unreefed the fabric sails and turned the rig into the wind. The ship slowly began to move. The rope Gollow had secured grew taut and the ship shuddered as the leech struggled on the end of it. Abruptly the rope went slack and they left the maimed leech behind. The second leech quickly closed in on it, the prill leaping up and down on its back in anticipation.

‘Haul it in,’ said Ambel, and the crew got on with what he could have easily done himself. On the end of the rope was something bulky, soon revealed, as they hauled it up the side of the ship, as a greenish fringed organ with the end tied off with the rope, and veins hanging from it like string.

‘That’s a good un,’ said Ambel with a grin, as the leech’s bile duct sagged over the rail and flopped on to the deck. Then he looked contemplatively out across the sea. ‘No more today. Get the deck cleaned and we’ll sort it in the morning.’

The reply to this was a concerted sigh of relief.

The sun had become a green dome nested in turquoise clouds on the horizon and the temperature was dropping very quickly. As he went to his cabin to find his thermal suit, Janer saw that no one else on the ship seemed to notice this cooling. The hornets were torpid in this cold, but the Hive link was alive with speculation and interest. The main part of the Hive, and hence the Hive mind, was many light years away on a planet that remained constantly warm and comfortable for the insects. It was a world the hornets had claimed as their own and given the simple name of Hive. People occasionally made the crack that it would be better referred to as New Israel — while other people often asked them what they were talking about.

‘I would say that they were once lovers and that she has come back to renew their relationship. Beyond that I have no idea,’ said Janer in reply to the mind’s question.

‘But surely this must stem from dissatisfaction?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘But Erlin has heretofore led a most interesting and satisfying life,’ said the mind.

‘How can you know that?’

‘I have studied records of her travels and the places to which she has been, and this place is only one of many. She has been at the forefront of xeno-studies for more than a century and has made many important discoveries.’

‘All you’ve told me,’ said Janer, ‘is that she has led an interesting life.’

Thankfully the mind remained silent for a while, so he took the opportunity to pull on his thermal suit.

When it spoke again the mind spoke with less certainty. ‘Interesting does not equate to satisfaction?’ it asked.

‘Perhaps it does to you, but that is not necessarily the case with humans. I think you hit the nail when you said she’s been at the forefront for more than a century, she’s probably bored, looking for something she thought she once had, trying to return to a happier time.’

‘I see,’ said the mind. ‘It is said that the human condition is one of striving. This then is the case. Success does not equate to satisfaction.’

Janer had gone at this discussion from every angle since he had been indentured to this mind. It knew all his answers, but he had yet to know all its questions. It kept asking them in different ways to try and gain a further nuance of understanding. He noted the change of ‘interest’ to ‘success’.

‘Satisfaction, for us, is only a brief thing. The man who acquires wealth does not reach a point where he has enough. Success for us is more like acceleration than speed. Interest cannot be maintained at a constant level.’

Let it wrap its antennae round that one, Janer thought. But the mind was quick with a reply.

‘You cannot stop, then?’ said the mind.

‘No,’ said Janer. ‘Except to die.’ He climbed the ladder back up on to the deck.

On the other ship, lanterns and braziers had been lit and the smell of roasting meats was drifting tantalizingly across the sea to them. As the sun finally drowned behind the horizon, the pale orb of Coram slowly became visible through thin cloud, and everything turned to shades of green and silver blue.

‘You ready?’ Erlin asked him as he moved to the rail to stand between her and Captain Ron. Janer nodded, and watched Ron as the Captain snorted in the air and licked his lips.

‘I smell roasting turbul, boiling hammer whelk and, best of all, I smell barbecued glister. Captain Drum lays on a good spread for his guests.’ Ron looked at Janer. ‘I’ll bet he’s got a barrel of sea-cane rum on board as well.’

Janer grinned at that and ignored the muttering that came over the Hive link.

Roach and two other crewmen lowered a rowing boat to the sea then quickly scrambled down a rope ladder to get into it. Ron turned to another crewman who had come out on deck.

‘Keep an eye on things, Forlam. I don’t want us back drunk to a shipload of prill.’

‘Aw, Captain,’ Forlam protested.

Janer studied him. He appeared perfectly fit and able only days after having half his hand cut off and his intestines pulled out.

‘You do it, Forlam,’ said Ron. ‘I lost money on you this time and I reckon we might have to go after sprine to compensate.’

There was a sudden silence after this comment.

‘Is that a good idea?’ asked Erlin, eventually.

‘Probably not,’ said Ron, turning to the rope ladder and clambering down.

‘What’s sprine?’ Janer asked Erlin before she followed Ron down to the boat.

Quickly Erlin said, ‘What’s most valuable on a planet is what’s most rare. Think about Forlam and what happened to him.’

Janer halted where he was for a moment while he put the question to the Hive mind. Hopefully he would get a straight answer from it.

‘OK, what’s most valuable here,’ he whispered.

‘I would have thought that obvious,’ replied the mind.

‘Well it isn’t to me. What is it?’

‘Death.’

Janer climbed down to the boat, sat down, and gazed over the side at the oil-dark water. Glisters and prill bedamned.

‘Death,’ he said to Erlin.

Erlin turned and looked at him. She said, ‘Sprine is a poison that can kill Hoopers very quickly. As such it is the most valuable substance on the planet to them.’

Janer nodded in agreement. He was old enough to understand the reasoning behind that. What he wondered about was the reluctance of the crew to go in search of it.

‘Where does sprine come from?’ he asked the mind, for some reason not wanting to ask these questions out loud with Captain Ron sitting so near.

‘It comes from the bile ducts of giant leeches,’ the mind replied.

‘Giant? What, like those ones I saw the other day?’

‘Bigger than that. They can grow up to thirty metres long in the sea.’

Janer gazed at the sea again and shook his head. It occurred to him that in some situations the weapon on his belt would be of no use whatsoever.

The remarkable hostility of the life forms he found, wherever he managed to land his scooter, was at first a source of amazement to Keech, but it was now becoming a source of extreme irritation. It was not that he had any physical need to rest or cook himself something to eat. What he had was a mental need to stop and take stock; to consider his future moves from a still point. It seemed to Keech that there were no still points on Spatterjay.

Then he saw the rock glinting silver in the light of the moon. The edifice of stone looked like a tower block displaced from a city into the sea. It stood a hundred metres above the waves: a monolith of dark stone, flat-topped and sheer-sided. When he checked the map on his screen he saw that the icon representing himself was now almost upon the ‘Big Flint’. He turned his scooter towards it and boosted higher into the air. Here, through his aug, he initiated a light-intensifier program — he did have the option of infrared, but there was no need for that in the light of Coram. Around the rock’s base, he could see the usual clusters of frog whelks and prill on steep beaches of flaked stone and shell. In the surrounding sea, leeches glistened in weed-choked water. As he drew closer he saw that the stone of this edifice was indeed a deep glossy black, and felt almost appalled at what this must mean: for a piece of flint this size to form out of chalk beds would take an unimaginable period of time. There was nothing like this on Earth.

Through his aug, he spat a very specific question at the local server. ‘How much longer than Earth has Spatterjay had life?’

‘One point seven billion solstan years — approximate.’

Keech absorbed that as he circled the Big Flint. After two circuits he slowly, observantly, brought his scooter in to land.

Pink shapes were gathered on the flat top of the monolith and a hundred heads on top of long necks turned to watch him as he approached. He hesitated to land in a clear area to one side of this gathering, until he drew closer. He then recognized these creatures as the strange sails the ship Hoopers used. As far as he was aware, these creatures were harmless, so he landed.

A hundred pairs of infernal eyes glinted at him in the darkness but, beyond this observation, the sails showed no immediate reaction to him. He studied them more closely. They were big; their bodies, with spined wings folded around and behind them, stood at well over two metres and probably massed the same as at least three humans, and their ribbed necks and long flat heads stretched another three metres above that. Below their bodies were splayed large six-fingered foot-talons with which they gripped the rock to hold them secured against the wind. Their necks swayed in that wind like stalks of grass, and the heads that topped them were vaguely crocodilian with perhaps just a hint of praying mantis. Keech supposed that these creatures had as much trouble as did he when they landed anywhere lower, hence their occupation of the top of this rock. Also it explained their arrangement with the ship Hoopers. He put them out of his mind and thought about what he must do next.

He must get to talk to one of the old ship captains, and to do that he must either return to the Dome or seek one out here. Obviously these captains were reticent about their dealings with Hoop, or rather the creature he had become, else Tay would have known more, or at least been certain of her facts. He needed a friendly captain, then, and the nearest he had to that was Captain Ron — or perhaps, through Erlin when she found him, Captain Ambel. In his aug, Keech loaded four names into a standard search program and uploaded it to the local server. The immediate response was two unknowns for the Captains, and the two last-known locations of Janer and Erlin. He dumped this information, then reached out to his touch-console and put the satellite comlink online. The connection was suspiciously quick and confirmed for him who was curious about his activities.

‘How may I help you. Monitor Keech?’ asked the voice of Warden.

Before Keech could reply, a shuffling movement amongst the sails distracted him. All the heads had turned inward to one of their number; one that appeared bigger than the rest. He kept half an eye on them as he replied to the AI.

‘I’m trying to get in contact with Erlin Tazer Three Indomial, who at present is out on one of the Hooper ships.’

‘Erlin Tazer Three Indomial does not carry a personal transponder at this time, and has not filed intended destinations with me,’ came the reply.

‘How about Janer Cord Anders. He is with her at the moment.’

‘Janer Cord Anders does not carry a personal transponder either, and likewise has not filed intended destinations with me.’

Keech paused for a moment, realizing, by the characterless tone, that he was not in direct contact with the Warden itself, but that it obviously had one of its subminds monitoring his transmissions. He was not sure if this was any more reassuring.

‘Janer Cord Anders is indentured to a Hive mind. Would it be possible to get in contact with him through his Hive link?’ he asked.

‘Hive links are for privileged use only. I can put you in communication with the Hive concerned, but it is up to that entity how you might proceed from there.’

‘Please do so.’

There was a pause and a strange buzzing issued from the com-link. During this pause, Keech observed the bigger sail leave the group and begin to waddle over to him. The observing heads of the others were swaying from it to him like spectators at a tennis match.

‘Yes,’ said an echoey buzzing voice from the link.

‘My name is Keech. I travelled with one Janer Cord Anders for a short time then recently lost contact with him. I’m trying to get in contact with him again. Can you tell me his present location?’

‘I could,’ said the Hive mind.

Keech hesitated for a moment, trying to work out what to say next. The sail creature was only a few metres away from him. He drew his pulse-gun and rested it in his lap, as he had recently returned the guard spheres to their case for recharging.

‘What is his present location?’ he asked.

‘I want something in return,’ said the mind.

‘And what would that be?’

‘On the next shuttle from Coram a package will be arriving for Janer. I wish you to pick it up. When you have this package, I will give you his location at that time.’

‘What is in this package?’

‘This is none of your concern.’ The buzzing ceased and the link with mind clicked off.

‘You’re on our rock,’ said the sail, now looming over Keech.

Keech just stared up at the creature. He’d heard a little about sails, but not that they were sentient. When he had been here before, there had been no ships and the sails had only ever been distant shapes in the sky. As this sail now glanced back to its fellows, he noticed that it had a silvery aug on the side of its head. He didn’t know quite what to make of that.

‘You’re on our rock,’ said the sail again, louder this time.

‘I take it you don’t want me here,’ said Keech.

‘That’s right,’ said the sail, nodding its head.

‘Then I’ll leave,’ said Keech.

‘Last human come here I chucked him over the side,’ said the sail.

‘A bit drastic, don’t you think?’

‘He thought so,’ said the sail. ‘Climbed back up and threw a rock at me.’

More evidence of the indestructibility of Hoopers.

‘What happened then?’ asked Keech.

‘Threw him off again and he buggered off,’ said the sail, nodding its head. It squatted down with a slight sigh and tilted its head to one side. ‘You smell wrong,’ it said.

‘That’s because I’m dead.’

‘Dead?’ asked the sail, then, ‘But dead is… dead.’

‘I am a reification,’ said Keech.

The sail tilted its head and its eyes crossed slightly. ‘Oh,’ it said, obviously having accessed its aug for information on the subject. A sudden thought occurred to Keech.

‘If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’

‘Dunno,’ replied the sail.

‘Did you know a human called Hoop?’

‘Yeah,’ said the sail. ‘He bounced.’

Keech just stared at it, and seemingly having made its point it rose up again, turned, and waddled away from him. This sail then was at least seven hundred years old and could be ten or a thousand times that. Keech holstered his gun and engaged the scooter’s AG. Soon he was back in the air and heading for the Dome.

Captain Drum was another big thickset man like Ron, though he had a full head of hair that he tied into a ponytail. He ebulliently welcomed them on board and told them to tuck into the food provided. Over a large brazier, Janer noted a large lobster-like sea creature strapped to a metal frame. It was moving as they roasted it, and making low gobbling sounds.

‘Not like a boxy,’ he said to Erlin.

‘Some creatures have evolved defences against the leeches. A leech cannot get through a glister’s shell. Glisters in fact feed on leeches,’ she replied.

‘Do they have the virus in them?’

‘No, they’ve evolved in such a way as to exclude it. I think it’s connected to the fact that the fibres normally only enter through wounds, and they don’t get wounded too often. Their shells are very thick, and anything that’s going to break through is going to kill the creature.’

‘Why didn’t they kill this one before cooking it?’ Janer asked. The sound the glister was making was beginning to make him feel a little ill. He accepted the mug proffered by one of Drum’s crewmen and took a gulp. His eyes didn’t water this time. He took another gulp.

‘Glisters have psycho-active chemicals in their mouths and brainpans. The only way to kill one, other than by roasting, is to smash its skull. Doing so releases these chemicals into its flesh. Hoopers only kill glisters that way when they really want a party,’ said Erlin.

‘I think I’ve lost my appetite,’ said Janer.

‘That’s not the worst of it,’ said Erlin, pointing.

A cauldron had been set over a wide brazier filled with glowing charcoal. Fishy steam drifted from this receptacle, and peering through that steam were many stalked eyes. Only on seeing those eyes and how they were vibrating did Janer become aware of the hammering sound.

‘What…’ he began.

‘Hammer whelks,’ said Erlin. ‘Not such good news to any other slow-moving mollusc. They’ve got a kick that can crack plascrete. It can also snap human bone easily enough, if you’re incautious around them. They have to use a cast-iron pot to cook them.’

That was it then: the molluscs were trying to batter their way out of the cooking pot — if ‘batter’ was the best term to use. Janer took another gulp of his rum to quell the sudden queasiness he felt. Erlin moved away with a fixed smile.

‘You told me to warn you the next time,’ the Hive link reminded him.

‘Yeah, but this time I really need it,’ he replied.

Walking past carrying a stack of platters, the crewman who had earlier handed him a drink, glanced at him questioningly.

‘Eh, what’s that?’

‘Private conversation,’ said Janer, tapping the box on his shoulder.

The man grunted and moved on. Janer brought his attention back to the hammer whelks as the first set of stalked eyes drooped and sank out of sight. The hammering was getting louder now. He turned away, only to see crewmen swinging the glister’s frame from its brazier and knocking out the manacle pins. One of the men used a large pair of tongs to haul the creature from the metal and drop it on to the deck. It was Ron who stepped forward with a large mallet and large flat chisel.

‘I get first dibs on the tail-meat,’ said the big man.

‘All yours,’ said Drum.

Janer ate some of the white fragrant flesh of the glister after Ron finally broke it open. When a crewman presented him with a plate piled with steaming purplish body of a whelk, he demurred. This fleshy thing had a large pink foot, ending in a lump of bone, and its flaccid eye-stalks hung over the side of the plate. Thereafter, Janer stuck to the cane rum and tried to avoid seeing the Hoopers gobbling down hammer whelks liberally sprinkled with spiced vinegar, and tossing the foot bones over the side. He was thankful when it was all over and time to return to Ron’s ship.

‘You all right?’ Erlin asked.

‘Fine,’ said Janer, getting unsteadily to his feet.

She and Ron helped him to the rail then down the ladder to the rowing boat. Once he was in the boat he felt queasy again and leant over the edge in readiness to be sick. The lights from the braziers aboard the ship glinted on the oil-dark wavelets. Janer’s nausea subsided and he trailed his hand in the cool water. When he went to take his hand out, he found that it seemed to have stuck.

‘Janer!’ Erlin shouted.

A glistening body half a metre long came up with his hand and he could feel something grinding through his tendons and bones. There was a horrible keening coming from somewhere and his hand hurt very badly. Ron had hold of him and suddenly he was in the bottom of the boat, the glistening thing writhing beside him. Ron’s boot came down on his wrist and Ron’s hands closed like vices on the leech. It came off stripping skin and Janer saw pink flesh and abraded bone before the blood welled up. I should faint now, he thought, but there was no relief until they got back to the ship and Erlin slapped a drug patch on his neck.

‘You know what this means?’ she asked as he went under.

Janer didn’t know what she meant. All he knew was that the pain was going and that he felt kind of funny.

A hornet came to his bedside as he slept and it watched him with its compound eyes.

The ship was dark and it stank, and it was crawling with the teardrop lice that fed on the scraps Prador dropped when feeding. Her own cabin had extra lights, but these only made the lice hide in her bedding and amongst the few belongings she had brought with her, and still there was the smell and the pervading marine dampness. Knowing what to expect, Rebecca had dressed in a full-body environment suit and, on the few occasions that she slept, she slept with her helmet on. Shortly after the launch she had hunted down all the lice she could find and burnt them with a small QC laser, but soon they had returned and she became bored with the chore. Now she was just plain bored. Time to see Ebulan.

The service corridors of the ship were wide enough for second-children and blanks to pass each other — though she noticed some of the blanks had healing wounds on their bodies where Ebulan’s children had passed too close and sliced them with the edge of a carapace or some other lethal piece of shell. When she came face to face with Vrell, a first-child and consequently a larger Prador, Frisk ducked into a wall recess while he passed. The adolescent turned slightly towards her as he clattered by, with some chunk of putrefying human meat held in one of his claws. She stepped out behind him and followed, as no doubt the meat was for Ebulan. Only Prador of his age and status got to sample such delicacies, as not many humans were still bred for meat, it now becoming passé. Adolescent Prador ate only the decayed flesh of the giant mudskippers that were farmed along the seashores of their home world.

Soon Vrell came to one of the main corridors which were wide enough to allow Ebulan himself passage. A second-child saw Vrell coming and dodged to the wall, pulling itself down flat so the first-child would have to extend himself to cause any real damage. Vrell clouted the top of its shell in passing but, obviously on an errand for his father, did not linger to pull off a leg or two. It was this society — utterly stratified and utterly devoid of beneficence — that Frisk most admired about the Prador. The slightest sign of weakness was punished in the extreme. No member of the society deserved any more than it could take. And there was no right to life. She felt there was something clean and pure about it, and it was the antithesis of all those things she detested in the Polity.

Vrell drew to a halt at a huge doorway that was a slanted oval in a weed-coated wall. The doors themselves were a form of case-hardened ceramal; unpolished and still retaining its rainbow bloom from the heat treatment. They cracked in an arc off-centre of the oval and slid, turning as they went, into recesses above and below. Beyond was a chamber lit with screens and control panels that in the Prador fashion had something of the appearance of luminous fungi, and perhaps of rock-clinging insects. On a gust of warm air, rolled out the smell of sea-life, decay, and the sickly musk that only issued from adults like Ebulan. Frisk quickly stepped through the doorway after Vrell, and moved to one side, further studying the chamber as she did so.

Ebulan hovered before a collection of screens, on most of which scrolled Prador glyphs and computer code. A couple of screens showed scenes from the Third Kingdom, and were probably U-space transmissions from Ebulan’s agents there. The adult turned as Vrell crouched down to one side of him, holding up the piece of meat, which Frisk now identified as a human leg, then slid forwards, only to halt before presenting his mandibles.

‘Why are you here?’

The voice came from Frisk’s right, where three human blanks were lined up in readiness to do Ebulan’s bidding. He had spoken through one of these. It did not matter which one.

‘I’m here because I need one of your blanks to assist me,’ said Frisk.

Ebulan slid forwards and presented his mandibles to Vrell. The adolescent dropped the meat across them and scuttled back. It was well for adolescents to be cautious: adult Prador were not averse to, in fact very much enjoyed, eating their own young, as this was the way they thinned-out the weaklings. As Ebulan sliced the meat and chewed on it, Frisk noted a number of screens fading behind him. Was there something the Prador did not want her to see? She turned her attention to Vrell as the adolescent backed up to the side of the chamber, his carapace scraping along the wall.

‘One of my blanks?’ said the blank to her right.

Frisk returned her attention to Ebulan. Bits of flesh were dropping to the irregular floor and lice were scuttling in to gobble them up. There were also lice clinging around his mouthparts.

‘I have my library console and crystals here with me and I need some help with some cataloguing,’ she said.

‘Which of these units do you require?’ asked the blank.

Frisk studied the four mindless humans and then walked over to a heavy-set male. She ran her hand down this one’s bare and heavily tattooed chest then into the front of the elasticated trunks he wore. The blank farther to the right had no need of trunks like these to prevent certain items flapping about, having been neutered some time in the past, probably because he was not good breeding stock. After a moment, she slid her hand out and nodded in satisfaction.

‘This one will do,’ she said.

‘He is fully functional,’ said Ebulan. ‘You may take him, but be sure he is returned to me fully functional.’

‘Come with me,’ said Frisk to the blank, and headed for the oval door. The blank followed her, doglike, as she went through. Ebulan watched her go then turned slightly towards Vrell and waited. The adolescent shifted nervously, picking his legs alternately from the floor before finding the nerve to speak.

‘Why does she require a blank for cataloguing?’ he asked in the humming Prador tongue.

‘She does not. She is bored and requires a male blank for the purposes of recreation,’ Ebulan replied.

‘Sexual recreation?’ Vrell asked hesitantly.

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you allow her such liberties?’

‘You would find, Vrell, should you attain adulthood, that one gains a certain affection for tools one has had for some time. Also, you would understand and sympathize with the needs for… recreation.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Vrell, understanding not at all.