The Skinner

6

Sometimes Sniper wondered if allowing the Warden to subsume him might be the best and most sensible move he could make. Perhaps then he would become as machinelike in his attitude as he was in appearance. Was it right for a drone such as itself — one of the pinnacles of Polity AI technology — to get bored, grumpy, and sometimes downright ornery? Did SM13 ever feel that way? He flicked a palp eye round to observe the submind, but the flying brooch was as blank and unreadable as ever.

‘GCV 1236, for our delectation and richness of experience,’ said Thirteen.

Sniper quickly checked all his outputs and found he was emitting a low-grade mumble from one of his memory interfaces. He quickly shut it off as they slowed to hover over an islet in the shape of a horseshoe. This particular landmass was old enough and had room enough to have acquired some vegetation. SM13 turned and focused its topaz eyes on him.

‘That’s better — not so noisy now,’ said the little drone.

‘How long have I been doing that?’ Sniper asked.

‘Ever since you flew out here. You know you could do with either a deep diagnostic or a memory upgrade. You’re so backed-up you’re spilling over.’

‘I like it that way,’ said Sniper. ‘So, what have we got here?’

‘Usual whelk survey, they’re the best environmental indicators, then we check out the molly carp here. They sit at the top of the food chain and pick up all the poisons. But first, we pay a little visit to my sea cave.’ With that, the little drone dropped out of the sky towards the island. Sniper immediately followed, his interest piqued.

The seahorse drone decelerated over a grove of stunted peartrunks, then eased in through the sparse green-and-blue leaves and knots of black twigs. Sniper followed, pulling leeches off his metal skin with his precision claw and snipping them in half, not because they might do him any damage, but because on some level it irritated him that they confused him with something living. Once through the branches, Thirteen accelerated to an area where a ridge of old packet-worm coral was crumbling to white powder and glittering nacreous flakes. This mass of coral rested on a slab of basalt tilted up out of black dirt. Underneath this slab was a dark elongated hole. Thirteen turned at forty-five degrees to enter this place, its eyes igniting to light up the interior.

Sniper found the hole less than accommodating and had to smash away lumps of coral with his heavy claw before he could follow the little drone through. Once through he too sent beams of light from the projectors on either side of his mouth. The two drones were now in a narrow cavern. At the back of this, a cube-shaped hollow had been cut into the rock, and in it rested three large hammer-whelk shells. Thirteen moved forward until it was hovering over one of these. Its ribbed tail uncoiled, split at the end, and gripped the rim of the shell.

‘I thought you were only intended for observation,’ said Sniper.

‘I am,’ said Thirteen.

‘How did you excavate that?’ Sniper asked, indicating the cavity with his heavy claw.

‘With a boosted geological laser and patience.’

‘And what about your tail? Last I recollect, the Warden didn’t allow you any manipulation of your environment… ever since those thrall units…’

Thirteen gave an aerial shrug above the whelk shell.

‘If you have the funds, you can buy the alterations. No doubt that is something you’ve been telling Windcheater for some time,’ the little drone replied.

‘I have… but does the Warden know about your… alterations?’

‘No,’ said Thirteen, ‘nor does he know about these.’ With that, the submind tipped the whelk shell to reveal that it was full of amberclam pearls. Sniper shifted forward in the confined space and turned a palp eye to each of the shells in turn. The second shell was full of short rods of translucent pink stone Sniper recognized as fossilized glister. The third shell contained lumps of greenish rock. Only a laser chromatographic scan rendered the delightful news that this substance was pure green sapphire.

‘Quite a collection,’ said the war drone. ‘What do you intend to do with it?’

‘To buy my laser upgrade I had to stick a pearl to my tail with amberclam glue and transport it over four thousand kilometres. That took me the best part of a solstan year and I lost four pearls in the process. My tail alteration took five years, by the same methods.’

Sniper gave his deadly grin and backed out of the cave. Dropping the whelk shell back into its place, Thirteen followed him out into the emerald day.

‘You still have your account at the Norvabank, then?’ Sniper asked.

‘I do, though there’s not much in it right now.’

Thirteen rose up through the trees at high speed, in an explosion of foliage and leaves. Sniper followed, deliberately going through the thickest branch he could see, just for the hell of it, and smashing it to splinters. Once clear of the dingle the two drones flew out over the bay and settled towards its calm waters.

‘So what sort of percentages are we talking here?’ asked the war drone.

‘There’s a gem dealer who comes down from Coram to buy stock from various Hoopers. I got his eddress two years ago and have been waiting for the opportunity to get my finds to him. I can’t move this amount without risking being caught by the Warden, and if he catches me, it’ll be immediate subsumption and I’ll lose the lot. You’re a free drone. You’ve a better chance. It’s doubtful that it’s even illegal for you to trade in natural gems.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘Twenty per cent net of profit,’ said Thirteen.

‘Fifty per cent,’ said Sniper.

‘You’re a robber and a thief!’

Sniper grinned his grin again as they skimmed close to the surface. He lowered his back legs in, and set a subprogram to counting the whelks in the area.

‘Seems to me you’re all out of options,’ said Sniper, at last enjoying himself immensely.

‘Watch yourself, Sniper!’ said Thirteen, turning in midair.

‘Are you threatening me?’ Sniper asked, turning also. The little drone must have gone mad. Only at the last moment did Sniper realize to what Thirteen had been referring. The creature looked like a monstrous carp swimming with its top half out of the water. Underneath the water, Sniper knew that this molly carp would have three rows of flat tentacles with which it gripped the bottom to drag itself along. The prow of its head now cut quickly and without deviation towards its target.

Sniper loaded a missile.

‘No! Protected! The Warden!’

Sniper knocked the missile out of the air with an EM pulse just as it left his mouth then, too late, tried to lift out of the creature’s path. He couldn’t even use his fusion booster because this too might kill it. The great mouth gaped and slammed shut, and with a satisfied bubbling the molly carp sank.

SM13 flew in a tight ring then settled down so the sensors on its tail were in the water. Immediately the little drone picked up an ultrasound signal issuing from below.

‘Bollocks,’ Sniper was saying.

The morning shuttle was due in an hour, and Keech sat in the Baitman nursing his fourth mug of sea-cane rum, his hover trunk resting on the floor beside him. The other customers in the bar had avoided him since his arrival four hours earlier — it seemed this place never closed — and the barman watched him warily from behind his chessboard. Keech tasted each mouthful but otherwise the potent liquor had no effect on him. There were Golem androids that could enjoy the option of insobriety. He had no such option while he retained this body. He often considered, as Janer had suggested, memplantation in an android chassis, and just as often he rejected the idea. When he had been reified on the home world of the cult of Anubis Arisen, he had more seriously considered the option then. But being a walking corpse did have advantages, especially if there were people you wanted to fear you. He savoured that moment Corbel Frane had seen him: the atavistic terror the old piratical Hooper had felt. That terror had been integral to Keech’s success then. Had he just been human or Golem, Frane would not have fled at that critical moment, and would likely have torn Keech apart. As it was, Keech had chased Frane’s AGC out over above Mount Ember, then shot it down. Frane’s ending had been suitably apocalyptic.

Keech sipped alcohol through his glass straw and thought about Hoop. Even though the two days with Olian Tay had yielded him little more information of value than he had learnt in the first few hours with her, he was still satisfied with the result there. After seven hundred years, an end was in sight. The villain would be brought to book, and Keech’s self-assumed mission would end. What then? Keech contemplatively studied the lozenge that depended from a chain round his neck. Whole avenues opened up before him, which was more than most dead men could say. Almost, almost he smiled, but there was not enough movement left in his face. Lost in his own thoughts it took him a moment to realize that an individual who had just entered the Baitman was peering at him curiously.

The man was short and very stocky, but not in the least bit flabby. His appearance had much that was human in it, and much that was boulder. Like most ship Hoopers, he wore loose canvas trousers and a loose plastilink shirt with a wide leather belt around it. Tucked in a loop in the belt, like a weapon ready to be drawn, was a large briar pipe. His face was wide and friendly and seemed even wider because of the great bushy sideburns sticking out below the shiny bald pate of his head. One look at this man, and at the mottled bluishness of his skin, told Keech that one of the Old Captains now stood before him.

‘Do I know you, boy?’ the man asked.

Keech felt a hint of amusement at being called boy. It was of course perfectly reasonable for this man to assume that anyone but another Old Captain was much younger than himself.

‘You may know me — or know of me. My name is Sable Keech and I’ve been dead for seven hundred years.’

As a line, it was certainly an attention grabber. But that was what he needed to hook the interest of such a man, and perhaps then be able to extract information. The Captain was hooked. He looked to the barman, pointed at Keech’s table, then he sat down opposite the reif.

‘Sprage,’ he said, holding out his hand.

Keech watched the hand for a moment, hoping Sprage would realize what he was doing and quickly retract it. When the hand remained offered, he tilted his head to one side and reached out with his own grey claw. Sprage seemed unconcerned as he grasped and shook it, then released it to lean back. He unhooked his pipe from his belt and pointed the stem at Keech.

‘Funny to see a reif after all this time,’ he said.

‘When did you last see one?’ Keech asked, curious despite his concerns.

‘Oh, way back,’ said Sprage, taking a pouch out of the top pocket of his shirt and beginning the seemingly intricate process of filling his pipe. ‘A programmed one got sent here in search of his killer, before the Polity put a stop to that sort of thing.’

At least five centuries ago, Keech calculated.

Sprage went on, ‘But you’re not programmed like that. You full AI?’

At this point the barman approached the table and placed a bottle and a glass before Sprage.

‘Tab it,’ said Sprage when the man seemed inclined to linger.

‘Partial,’ said Keech, after the barman had moved away.

Sprage now had his pipe filled and he inserted the stem in his mouth. The antique lighter he produced took at least five tries to get going. ‘Bloody thing — nothing lasts nowadays,’ he muttered, then gazing at Keech through a cloud of tobacco smoke, ‘What you doing here, then?’

‘Looking for a killer — though not mine,’ Keech replied.

‘Anyone I might know?’

‘Almost certainly. I’m looking for Jay Hoop, perhaps more commonly known round here now as the Skinner. I’ve been looking for him for a very long time. Any ideas?’

Sprage appeared decidedly discomfited by the question. He puffed hard on his pipe, setting up a glow in it that reflected out of his eyes. Keech wondered what caused such an effect, for normal human eyes were not so reflective.

‘Got to be dead, ain’t he?’ said Sprage.

‘From what I can ascertain, killing him has not been an easy option, and has been something people have been reluctant to complete. You wouldn’t happen to have something relevant in a box on your ship, would you?’ said Keech.

‘Not on…’ Sprage broke into a fit of coughing. ‘Er, not sure I’m with you there,’ he finished, when he could. Keech thought that someone of this age ought to be better practised at subterfuge. Sprage poured himself a glass of sea-cane rum and sipped at it to still his ticklish throat.

‘Do you know who I am?’ Keech asked.

‘Seem to recollect a name like that,’ said the Captain. He bore a puzzled expression for a moment, then that swiftly cleared. He stared at Keech with widening eyes.

‘You…’ was all Keech heard of what the Captain said next.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 30 % LOAD INCREASE.

The warning message fed in from his aug through his visual cortex and glowed across his left visual field; also, the vision in his right eye went blurry and sounds abruptly became distant and fuzzy. Everything external suddenly became of secondary importance. He ran an immediate diagnostic from his aug and got conflicting reports from the probes sunk in his preserved flesh. Something was wrong, seriously wrong. Vaguely he heard Sprage saying something with vehemence, and then saw him stand and leave.

Keech ignored this: if now he went into true death, none of it mattered.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 38 % LOAD INCREASE.

Keech reached over and flipped up the lid on his trunk. He removed the cleansing unit and, ignoring the curious stares of the Hoopers in the bar, he opened his overall and quickly plugged himself in. Black balm flooded the extractor tube, and it was some minutes before sapphire balm returned up the other tube.

DROP PUMP PRESSURE 20 %, he instructed. Immediately another warning message came up.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: EXTREMITY PROBE B23 NIL BALM.

Keech glanced at the cleanser and saw the row of hieroglyphs as a blurred red line. The cleanser was obviously struggling to do its job.

EXTREMITY PROBE B23: STRUCTURAL ANOMALY.

What the hell?

EXTREMITY PROBE B23: STRUCTURAL BREAKDOWN.

This was it; there had always been the chance that his body would start to break down; that the preservatives would cease to be as effective as they had been in the beginning. He had never expected it to happen so fast though. He looked at the lights on the cleanser and saw there was no sign of green.

The next message displayed by his aug was one he had only seen twice before, and then only shortly after he had been reified.

INVASIVE ORGANIZM DETECTED.

IDENTIFY, he told the aug.

A sub-program immediately connected his aug to the local server and a search engine was loaded with genetic code segments. The answer came back very quickly, and flashed up in his visual cortex.

SPATTERJAY VIRAL FORM AI.

The leech that had fallen on him outside Tay’s damned museum — that was it, then. The Spatterjay virus was inside him and it was doing untold damage as it tried to assimilate a dead man. He looked at the cleansing unit and saw that there were now two green lights lit up. If he could breathe, he would have breathed a sigh of relief, for now the unit was handling it. He sat back as his vision started to clear and saw that everyone in the bar was staring at him. The barman appeared particularly annoyed, as he walked over to his table.

‘I don’t know what you said to him, but I’ve never seen him get that uptight,’ he accused.

It took a moment for Keech to realize the man was talking about Sprage. After a long clicking gulp he managed to get out a reply. ‘I just told him who I… was,’ he said.

‘I don’t care who y’are. The Captains run it here, so I’d prefer it if y’left.’ The barman glanced at the cleanser. ‘And I want you to leave now.’ A couple of Hoopers had stood and were walking up behind the barman. Keech knew he had no chance in such a situation. He stood, picked up the cleanser and, holding it close to his chest, walked unsteadily from the Baitman. His trunk closed its own lid and followed faithfully behind.

Outside the Hooper bar the street seemed more crowded than when he had entered and Keech noticed a lot of Polity citizens were wandering about. A catadapt passed close by him and, with a loud sniff, gave him a look of disgust before moving on. Exerting greater control over his joint motors he walked stiffly towards an aircab he saw parked at the end of the street. Another red light had gone out on the cleanser by the time he had reached it. The Hooper inside nodded his head in recognition. He was the one who had ferried them out from the shuttle port.

‘Can’t take y’mate. Waiting for a fare,’ he said.

‘I’ll give you ten shillings to take me very slowly to the shuttle port,’ said Keech.

‘Well, why didn’t y’say? Get in!’

Keech nodded to his trunk. ‘If you could deal with that.’

The Hooper quickly got out of his cab and, using the toggle control on the trunk soon had it in the boot. It gave Keech some satisfaction to see the same catadapt running towards the cab as it lifted and turned towards the shuttle port.

INSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: EXTREMITY PROBE B23 NOMINAL.

Only two lights now remained red on the cleanser. ‘How slowly y’want me to go?’ asked the Hooper.

‘Give me twenty minutes. That should do it,’ Keech replied.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP AT 80%

He’d forgotten about that.

INCREASE PUMP PRESSURE TO NORMAL.

Another light changed on the cleanser, but the last red one seemed determined to hold on. The twenty minutes he had asked for were needed in full: the Hooper had done at least five wide circuits of the shuttle port before the light finally changed to green.

SYSTEM NOMINAL — DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS?

Keech considered that, but there seemed no point.

NO ANALYSIS.

He detached the pipes from their sockets and fed them back into the cleanser. The lights clicked off shortly after, as he resealed his overall.

‘You can land now,’ he told the Hooper.

As the man nodded and brought the aircab down to one of the many jetties, Keech closed one grey hand around his lozenge pendant. What he had done was a temporary measure at best. Soon he would have to make a decision he had been putting off for close on a hundred years. Three options remained to him: he could lose what remained of his organic brain — and body — and become fully AI; he could die; or he could take one course open to him that still seemed incredible even after decades of contemplating it.

Keech paid the delighted Hooper and watched the aircab lift and accelerate away in the direction of the Hooper town, no doubt to try and pick up the stranded catadapt. He walked to the edge of the shuttle-pad structure and gazed down the long slope of sea wall at the spindly autoguns as they patrolled above the water line. He observed a mollusc, with a nacreous blue spiral shell, heave itself from the water and begin sliding up the wall. An autogun was poised over it before it got a metre from the water, and flickering red light between gun and mollusc was quickly identifiable as lines of laser light amid the smoke jetting from the many holes punched through the creature’s shell.

INFORM: BALM PUMP LOAD BELOW 20 %, he instructed.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 8 % LOAD INCREASE.

INFORM: BALM PUMP LOAD ABOVE 20 % ONLY.

The message faded and was replaced by a waiting light flickering off to one side.

INFORM: ALL EXTREMITY PROBES OUTSIDE NOMINAL.

The list that appeared had to scroll from the bottom of the visual field in his left eye. It began at B1 and just kept going.

CANCEL, he instructed.

Then he queried the server as to the location of the nearest pharmacy. In his visual field there now appeared a map giving both his present position and the location of a pharmacy only a few hundred metres from where he stood. He looked round and identified a squat building raised above the edge of an empty landing pad. Through its long chainglass windows he saw endless displays of goods, and considered how, on any world he visited, no opportunity for commerce was missed. With his trunk dogging his footsteps he headed over to the metal steps leading up to the building. Here he tapped the ‘stay’ and ‘security’ button on his trunk and it dropped hard against the plascrete, with the locks clicking home in its lid. At the head of the steps, sliding glass doors admitted him to a small automart in which aisles of goods tempted the eye. Walking to the first aisle he was immediately joined by an automated trolley. At the back of this trolley was a screen and touch-console. On the console, he punched in the words ‘Intertox Inhibitors’.

After a moment, the trolley buzzed and clicked, and immediately led him off to one side. Soon he was standing before shelves racked with a vast display of containers ranging from cards of microcapsules to five-litre bottles and cans. The display glittered with brand names and designs, like a wall of jewels. He walked along this display until he came to a range of cylinders similar to the one that slotted into his cleansing unit. He dropped a couple of these into the trolley and immediately the price came up on the screen. At the exit to the mart, he dropped a couple of transparent octagonal shillings into the trolley’s collection tray, before taking up his goods and leaving. Descending the steps he, as was his habit, wondered how such a system dealt with theft. No doubt this mart had an AI keeping a few hundred little eyes on that situation. He had probably been identified the moment he walked through the door. This thought was immediately confirmed for him.

‘Message for Sable Keech,’ came a voice through the audio input from his aug.

‘Go ahead,’ he said.

‘It has been reported that you purchased Intertox Virex 24. You are advised that all Intertox drugs have a seven-minute active life in reification balms.’

‘I am aware of that.’

‘Thank you for your attention,’ said the voice, and the audio shut off.

Staring out over the sea, with the two containers clutched against his chest, Keech thought it so nice to know someone cared. What bitterness there was in the thought was muted — hardly alive.

The morning breeze had died to a flat calm, and the sun had become almost distinct in the verdigris sky. With nothing now to do, the sail — bored with hanging on the spars — had folded its wings and was now perched on a spar munching on a rhinoworm steak. Crew were either off-shift and sleeping, or catching up on jobs that had been left unattended while the ship was moving. Anne had a party busy below decks, checking the caulking and all else that might affect the integrity of the hull. It was a make-work task as the tough yanwood did not rot and was infrequently damaged. Boris was greasing the steering cables, and taking his time about it, while Pland was supervising a couple of juniors as they scrubbed stains out of the deck — it was obviously an authority he relished, having been the one holding the brush only a few journeys back. Peck cleaned his shotgun with fastidious attention: it had lasted him well this weapon, over a hundred years, though of course, with all the parts he had replaced, it was no longer actually the same shotgun. He deliberately didn’t get involved in anything too laborious, as he knew what his next job would be.

‘Peck, over here,’ ordered Ambel.

Peck looked up. It was always himself the Captain called to help with this stage of the operation — Peck really wished he would choose someone else. He handed his gun and cleaning kit to Gollow, who was scrubbing the rails, before heading over to join the Captain.

‘All right, Peck, let’s do it,’ said Ambel, giving Peck a slap on the shoulder before reaching down to get a hold of their second bile duct where it had rested against the wall of the forecabin overnight. He dragged it across the deck to the rear winch, eliciting muttered complaints from Pland’s deck-scrubbing crew, then he and Peck heaved the object into a cargo net and hoisted it from the deck. There it hung with its tied-off neck pointing down, as Ambel pulled across the large green-glass carboy he had brought up earlier and dropped a big funnel in its mouth. The rest of the crew stopped what they were doing and moved in to watch as Ambel eased the tie open and thick green bile flooded into the funnel, then into the carboy. The flow of it slowed when the carboy was three-quarters full.

‘Water,’ demanded Ambel, pulling out his sheath knife and driving it into the top of the duct. Pland passed a bucket of fresh water to Peck, as Ambel once again tied off the duct, then transferred the funnel to the slit he had made. Peck handed him the bucket and he poured its contents inside the duct, thereafter moving the funnel back to the carboy and carefully squeezing and kneading the duct to get the rest of the bile into solution. The bucket of water passing through the duct filled the carboy to its brim. Ambel then corked it, sealed the cork itself with wrack resin, and pressed his captain’s seal into the resin.

‘ ‘Bout ten grams o’ sprine out of that, I reckon,’ said Peck, ‘How much does it fetch now?’

‘Eighty-two shillin’s a gram,’ said Boris.

‘What’s that in real money?’ asked Peck, swinging the winch arm out over the sea and releasing the tie on the cargo net. The duct splashed into the waves, but because of what it was there was no concerted rush of creatures to feed on it. Everybody laughed at Peck’s little joke, then fell into respectful silence as Ambel picked up the loaded carboy and carried it carefully to the rear deck hatch. Peck swung over the winch arm and wound the net down beside the hatch.

Ambel placed the carboy inside the net and secured it before opening the hatch and climbing down into the rear hold. Peck wound the net up off the deck then swung the winch arm across over the hatch and with a clacking of bone ratchets, lowered its precious load into the hold. It was Ambel’s job to secure the carboy in its padded frame — indeed, his responsibility. For this was a serious moment. Every Hooper knew the story of the baitman who had dropped a carboy of leech bile. He had been thrown off the back of the ship with a rope round his ankle, and towed through leech-infested waters for a day before the rest of the crew forgave him. Or rather, this was the story senior crewmen told the juniors.

Eventually Ambel came back out on deck, rubbing his hands together. He looked around at his crew and grinned.

‘Bugger,’ said Peck.

Boris stared at him, then at Ambel. ‘Another one?’ he asked disbelievingly.

Ambel nodded, still grinning happily. Unfortunately the sail had got the gist of this brief exchange. The steak it was chewing landed on the deck with a sodden thump, and there was a boom of wings opening above them as it chose that moment to launch itself from the mast. It was smart enough to get away before anyone could try talking it out of fleeing.

‘Island north five k!’ it shouted as it went. Fortunately, sails normally had the decency to tell a crew where the nearest landfall was before they went. It was only polite. Ambel’s grin became slightly strained.

‘Rowing boat?’ Peck suggested helpfully.

Boris, Pland and Anne wore smirks and, noticing these, Ambel turned to give his ship a long slow inspection.

‘Yes, the rowing boat,’ he agreed. ‘And while I’m about that, someone can reef those.’ He pointed to the fabric sails, which were hanging slack from their spars. ‘I should think that the mast chain and cogs need greasing by now, too. Also the harpoons could do with another sharpen, and this deck needs a proper clean.’ When he paused, there was a concert of ‘ayes’ as the crew scattered to their tasks before he thought of any more chores for them. Ambel grinned to himself, then went off to find the reinforced oars.

The great wing of the shuttle slewed in the sky above the landing pads, as Keech yet again unplugged his cleansing unit and packed it away in his trunk. A quick query through his aug confirmed the information that this was the shuttle he was waiting for. He secured the trunk down by the sea wall — its AG set in reverse so it would take a forklift to pick it up — and headed on over to the arriving shuttle. Fenced walkways between landing pads brought him eventually to the one where the shuttle had descended. He avoided the passenger embarkation point, and moved round to where autoloaders were shifting the fresh cargo out into a warehouse. A Golem android — which by his nametag was called Paul A2-18 — was standing watching the cargo being shifted.

‘Can I help you?’ said Paul A2-18, as Keech approached.

This Golem was obviously an old one, constructed before Cybercorp discovered that physical perfection made people nervous. Paul was Apollo descended to Earth and clad in blue overalls.

‘I’m Keech. I’ve come to pick up a package.’

‘Ah,’ the Golem paused as he, no doubt, sent a query and received instructions. ‘Please come this way.’

Paul led Keech to the side of the bay and pointed to a container resting on the platen before a scanner. The container itself was hexagonal in section, and had a single carry handle. The only visible way of opening it was by the coded touch-plate mounted upon it — a device no doubt keyed to Janer’s DNA.

‘What’s inside?’ Keech asked.

‘I am afraid I am unable to provide that information,’ said Paul A2-18. ‘The box is scan-proof.’

Keech thought about that. If it had come through the runcible, then there should be no problem with it in legal terms. Why then had this android tried to scan it at all? He was about to ask when he noted that Paul appeared slightly uncomfortable. Though what Keech was seeing was only emulation, and probably conscious emulation at that, he understood what the Golem was telling him and he kept his mouth shut — it was good to know that such Apollonian perfection had its faults. He picked up the container and turned to go, stumbled, and had to support himself against the platen for a moment.

‘Are you all right?’ asked the android.

‘I’m fine,’ said Keech, grimacing as he cancelled the warning messages flashing up in his visual field. The Intertox, which had brought the activity of many of his probes back to nominal, but no better, was now breaking down in his balm. He had expected this to happen, but not with such sudden ill effect. Walking back around the shuttle it was with his vision tunnelling that he saw the five very familiar people disembarking.

Batians: for a very long time members of this mercenary race had been trying to finish a job started seven hundred years ago. All of the Eight had employed Batians at one time or another, and Keech had been forced to kill more of them than he liked to think about. Upon recognizing them, he ducked his head and speeded his pace. Unfortunately, it is difficult to disguise the fact that you are a walking corpse. He glimpsed the five of them talking together, then turning as one to gaze in his direction. He could see that they were hesitating, as this particular area would be constantly and closely watched by one of the Warden’s subminds.

At that point, he removed his remote control from the pocket of his overalls and pointed it towards his trunk. Instantly the trunk began its miraculous transformation. He reached it in time to pick up his scattered belongings and load them in the luggage compartment, and was in the process of fitting the hover scooter’s thrusters when he saw that the five were running towards him. Mounting the scooter he registered them reaching the wall walkway just ten metres or so away from him. He saw how all five had their hands poised over concealed pockets — and were staring at him with ill-contained hatred.

‘Another… time,’ he managed on a clicking gulp, then saluted to them and launched his scooter into the sky.

‘Sable Keech, you have broken the law,’ came the voice of the Warden from the com in the scooter’s console.

‘I am aware of the flying regulations around shuttle ports,’ he replied.

‘I should hope so. You are, after all, a monitor. You realize you have been automatically fined?’

‘Yes, I realize, but if I had stayed in the area the five Batians there might have been tempted to try and kill me despite your watching SM — then you’d have had a more serious crime to contend with, one way or another.’

‘I see… I did note the arrival of those five you mention,’ said the Warden.

‘But did not see fit to warn me, even though you must have known I was here and must have known my record with them.’

‘Even though armed, they were doing nothing illegal.’

‘Yes,’ said Keech, ‘but weren’t you hoping they would?’

There came no further comment from the AI, as Keech turned his scooter and headed for the beach from which he had first departed. He set the scooter to land on automatic, as what depth perception he did have — aug assisted — was fading from his eye. With a deal of unsteadiness he dismounted, tucked the cleansing unit under his arm, then staggered across a bank of glossy pebbles, and collapsed on his knees in the green sand beyond.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 28 % LOAD INCREASE.

It was playing out again, only this time the problem was caused by the drug he had used to try and solve the previous problem.

INVASIVE ORGANIZM SCAN, he instructed, and received an immediate reply.

PRESENT.

He was fast running out of options. With hands that seemed flaccid, he opened his overalls and connected the cleansing unit again. The balm coming out of him was muddy brown this time, and it took a long time for the liquid sapphire to return. The blurred line of red lights held his attention, while he thought about what he must do. The option of dispensing with this reified body and going full AI would require his return to the Dome then to the moon Coram, where the only suitable facilities were available. Full death, he decided, was not an option. The remaining option resided in the lozenge depending from his neck chain. What had the lifecoven woman who had sold it to him said?

‘It reads the blueprint and then it sends off its little builders.’

But even that would require his return to very high-tech medical facilities.

‘Yes, you need to be in a tank for it to work correctly,’ said the woman.

Keech nodded to her, and she stepped back into the dingle at the head of the beach. And he could not quite grasp why this bothered him so, but he was then quickly distracted.

‘Why should you have any more life,’ said a voice beside him.

He glanced across at Corbel Frane.

‘Who are you to ask that question?’ he replied.

Frane smoothed his moustache. ‘In a fair and equitable world we can all ask questions,’ he said.

‘You can’t, because I killed you ages ago.’

Frane seemed affronted as he drifted from hallucination to memory.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: CEREBRAL PROBE ERROR.

Cradling the cleanser against his belly, Keech heaved himself to his feet. ‘I’ve got to get help,’ he said.

‘Not one of your favourite pastimes,’ said Francis Cojan, standing at his side.

Keech glanced at the man and saw that he was young, athletic, and smiling, not at all like the last time he had seen him.

‘You need friends to help you. Keech doesn’t believe in friends.’

Keech turned to see Alphed Rimsc on his other side. It was only his voice that Keech recognized, the man’s face having been mostly eaten away by the diatomic acid Keech had put in his suit’s oxygen supply.

‘This is not real, you’re all dead.’

‘Really, where you should be,’ said Corbel Frane, waving a finger at him. ‘I mean, how long has this been going on — seven centuries? Are you mad? How many lives has your vendetta cost?’

Keech gestured at him with a grey claw. ‘That’s not something you would think! That’s me!’

He was about to shout out again when he suddenly realized he was utterly alone on the beach.

‘Shit,’ he said, and gazed down at the two green lights on the cleanser.

REPEAT ERROR MESSAGE, he instructed.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: CEREBRAL PROBE ERROR.

In his organic brain — cross-referenced to AI emotional emulation — he got in the nearest he could get to a cold sweat.

DETAIL.

The reply did nothing to ease that feeling.

Capillary blockage to organic cerebrum/Agglutinate balm/AI viral fibre/Ox-3 starvation.

PRESENT DETAIL.

NOMINAL.

That made him feel no better. Cradling the cleansing unit while it continued labouring to clear his fouled balm, he returned to his scooter and slumped down with his back against it. He’d just come as close as it was possible, for a walking corpse, to having a stroke.

Underneath accreted layers of time, perversion, and monstrous deed after monstrous deed, there lay an earlier self that Frisk knew would be horrified at what she had since become. She even found a certain perverse pleasure in that fact — more pleasure than she was extracting in this present pursuit.

The ancient Prador to whom Ebulan himself had been first-child during the Prador/Human war, had maintained that human flesh gained added piquancy from extended suffering. So it was that humans force-grown for meat began to be slaughtered by slow and excruciating factory processes. When they had fled to the Prador Third Kingdom, she and Jay had found satisfaction of their perverse instincts in the holding pens and slaughterhouses there, but only some. For force-grown humans did not have time to acquire the life experience to truly appreciate the horror of their situation.

In later years, after Jay had departed, Frisk had continued to find satisfaction there, but it had decreased as eating human meat had become less fashionable amongst Prador kind. With fewer and fewer force-grown humans available, sometimes years might pass between each sado-sexual release for her. She had tried human blanks before, but always been frustrated.

And thus it was now. The blank, of course, remained utterly indifferent to the things she was doing to him. She realized this was a pointless exercise, but could not restrain herself from carrying it through to the end. Under instruction from his thrall unit, he grew an erection and pumped away at her while she cut and burned him. But because he was also ancient Hooper, the burns quickly scabbed and slewed away, and his skin closed back over the wounds she made like a layer of oil over water, his expression changing not one whit as she inflicted this abuse on him. In the end she grew bored and frustrated at his passivity, and pushed him away. How she wished things were still as they had once been.

‘Move back to the door,’ she instructed.

The blank pushed himself off her and stepped back as instructed. Lying back, she remembered the games she and Jay had once played: the screams of both agony and ecstasy ringing through the pens, the quintessential pleasure of watching some favourite plaything coming to realize that he or she was no longer favoured, and faced only a future of agony and death, then consumption by the Prador. She remembered how, with the correct drugs and techniques, they could extend such an individual’s life for days — even after removing their entire skin. Heady days, now gone for ever.

‘Leave me,’ she instructed the blank, and turned over on to her stomach as the door closed behind him.

Of course, now she was coming back into human-habited space, there would be a surplus of material for her delectation. Most of them would be Hoopers, true, but they would be Hoopers with minds, and even though durable, they could still be made to suffer — it was all a matter of technique. She understood herself well enough to know that her imminent return to the scene of her most ghastly crimes was not really about Jay or Keech — it was about boredom and need.

Feeling movement on her leg Frisk rolled over and batted away one of the many lice that occupied the ship. As she donned her environment suit, she tried to imagine a future where she could continue to let loose the full extent of her malice and have it responded to. She tried to relish the prospect, but imagination had become dull, and interest lacking. In this she found another source of anger.

Standing up, she said, ‘I will just have to work at it.’ But the words seemed to be sucked away by the coldness of the ship surrounding her.

‘I will work at it,’ she said, and smashed her foot down on the louse, crunching it into the floor.