The Skinner

8

Keech shook with fever. His nerves were regenerating very quickly and when he could stand the pain no longer, he shut down some of the connections to — and in — his organic brain. He did want life, but he wanted sanity too. Even so, with connections closed off, he felt like a diseased wreck. His entire body was delivering to him the message that he was full of infection and decay, and that he was falling apart. The physical evidence of this was how he had swollen, and the plasma leaking from his skin and a creamy fluid oozing from his nose. The cleansing unit was humming now as it worked hard following the nanofactory programme. A pool of volatile balm had puddled on the rock around his knees, having leaked from the holes lasered in his torso. These holes were now filled with nubs of veined, purplish flesh, and a messages light was clamouring for his attention. He decided to view the said messages and turned the system back on.

N-FACT MESSAGE: BALM DRAINED. WATER REQUIRED — 8 LITRES.

The nano-changer program was fully online. Keech got unsteadily to his feet, picked up the cleansing unit and walked down to the edge of the rock. He stared out across the slow dark roil of the sea and thought for a moment that something further was wrong with his vision, until he realized that night was descending. He looked down and saw below the water’s surface, whelks of one kind or another, clinging to the stone, their shells seemingly formed of coiled gold and veined jade. He drew his pulse-gun before kneeling and dropping the unit in the water. No reaction from the whelks. Perhaps they became somnolent in darkness — or perhaps they did not consider him edible.

Immediately the unit began taking in water. He could feel it suffusing his flesh and cooling him. Was his bone marrow producing red blood cells now? What would happen first? In seeming answer, his arms began to itch intolerably. As he scratched at them, grey skin began to slew away. His hope of seeing pink skin underneath was dashed when flesh as white as fish meat was revealed. He stopped scratching and inspected his fingernails. Two of them were bent right back. He shook his hand and they fell out, pus now leaking from the ends of his fingers.

N-FACT MESSAGE: DANGER — TANK AMNIOT UNSUITABLE. ELECTROLYTIC REQUIREMENTS…

Keech turned the message off. He wasn’t in a tank. The nearest electrolyte he could immerse himself in was this sea, and that seemed a suicidal idea. He’d just have to pray that Erlin could help him. When his irrigator automatically moistened his already wet living eye, he reached up and unplugged it. Some things seemed to be working, anyway. Once the unit stopped drawing in water, he stood, picked it up, and headed unsteadily for his scooter. The nanites could still work on his body while he was in the air, so there was no point in waiting here any longer. He mounted his scooter and dropped the unit between his thighs. From the comlink came that familiar strange buzzing the instant he turned it on.

‘Yes?’ said the Hive mind.

‘I have your package, and I will deliver it,’ said Keech, the liquid in his mouth and throat distorting his synthesized voice. A set of slowly changing coordinates flicked up on the screen map, and Keech lifted his scooter from the stone. Once in the air, he keyed the autopilot and sat back. He didn’t want to fly manually while he was dripping on the controls.

Through thousands of eyes the Warden observed the people in the base on Coram and on the planet below. When a situation hinted at ramifications that might impinge on its remit, the AI observed it with greater attention, or assigned a submind to watch it develop. When an SM could not be spared from its particular vehicle: be that an iron seahorse, floating cockleshell, or some other more esoteric sea-shape, the Warden loaded a copy or created one for that specific purpose. Sometimes it allowed these new minds to continue. At other times it resubsumed them. After all, they were only a pattern of information — as was all life.

At present, through one of its eyes, the AI was observing with interest the arrival of an amphidapt from the runcible in the core ocean of Europa, in the Sol system. The attachment that came with this woman had her noted down as a separatist terrorist who might be attempting to smuggle leeches to the strange dark sea that was her home. After only moments of observation, the Warden lost interest and assigned SM24 to observe instead, as it did not understand how she believed she might bypass the bio-filters of the runcible. Not a molecule got through that the Warden was not prepared to allow through. Now it let its attention wander to a fight occurring just beyond the Dome gate. Just for the hell of it, it placed a bet for an E with the submind in charge of Dome security, and got odds that made it wonder if it was time to subsume said mind — for it obviously knew something the Warden did not. Shortly after that, the AI received a signal from a direction whence nothing had come in decades — in fact from one of its deep-space eyes. It gave the new matter almost a quarter of its attention.

The ship emerged out of underspace, leaving a coruscating trail as antimatter particles struck the disperse local hydrogen. Two of the Warden’s deep-space eyes flared out in an EM shockwave, so of necessity it had to observe from a distance. Around the ship the stars distorted, as if seen through a lens, as it fell into the system seemingly out of control. Braking on ram scoop motors, it threw out a torus of radiation as it dumped velocity and came down to half the speed of light.

‘Please identify yourself,’ sent the Warden, as it noted the pilot was experiencing difficulties. A jumbled theta-block of pictographic computer language then overloaded all the Warden’s receivers for two microseconds. It took the AI another three seconds to discover that there was little information of value in this communication, other than its form. By now the vessel had the Warden’s full attention.

‘Prador ship. Please identify yourself.’

The ship was tumbling, using ram scoop and ion drive intermittently, as it tried to slow. Leaving a long trail of fire behind it, it arced around the sun. Another block of information overloaded the Warden’s receivers. Four seconds later the AI got the gist.

‘Nature of U-space generator fault?’

The garbled reply lasted for a couple of seconds, then cut off as the ship went into U-space.

The people in the Coram complex were baffled at the sight of all the exterior windows immediately becoming shrouded in something like an undulating wall of sun-glinting water as shimmer shields slammed into place across them. Internal doors closed — just slowly enough for people to get out of the way. Deep inside the moon, energy buffers went online to take any surge from the arm-thick superconducting cables linked to every essential system in the complex. Through the shimmer shields, ugly weapons turrets could be seen rising out of sulphur and ice.

‘Attempting to land,’ was the gist of the next transmission.

The Warden immediately direct-linked to the runcible it controlled, ready to transmit itself away should that action be necessary. It knew that if this was an attack, it would itself be the main target. A few seconds later the ship resurfaced in an explosion of antimatter half a million kilometres from Spatterjay, and on the opposite side of the planet from the moon.

Through its satellite eyes the Warden watched as the craft managed to get down to a speed of ten thousand kilometres per second. It skipped atmosphere then tried some sort of aero braking. There was a momentary U-space signature, then a flat antimatter explosion in the stratosphere. After the initial flash and detector overload, the Warden detected a scattering of debris blown into orbit around the planet. It picked up a brief whistling-bubbling sound on com which it tentatively identified from its library as the sound of a Prador getting fried by a high-intensity microwave burst. It considered the event for a whole six seconds before contacting one of its subminds.

‘SM Twelve, you saw?’

‘I saw it. I didn’t know any visitors were scheduled.’

‘They weren’t. It was some sort of Prador vessel, but I couldn’t get close enough to identify it. Check that orbital debris and report back.’

‘OK, boss,’ said SM12.

From one of its satellite eyes the Warden observed a meagre dot accelerate away from the planet at hypersonic speed, before flicking its attention elsewhere.

‘SM13, I want you moving into your last sector immediately. You are now on full crisis alert.’

With a degree of peevishness the Warden then opened up its next communication channel.

‘Sniper, I do know that a molly carp is not capable of travelling at seven hundred kilometres per hour. If it dies, you understand you’ll be charged with killing a grade-three intelligence?’

‘I understand. The carp’s fine. What’s happening up there?’

The Warden transmitted a condensed information package to the war drone. Sniper might be a pain sometimes, but did have his uses, especially in any situation that might involve explosions and sudden death. The Warden then flicked away from the drone to another focus of attention. Now linking through the local server, it accessed a very particular aug on the planet below. The actions it was pursuing were initiated from a program within itself which it labelled ‘nasty/suspicious’. The blueprint for that program had, in fact, initially come from Sniper.

Sniper scanned around inside the molly carp for breakages. Dropping it five metres into the sea the moment the Warden had contacted him had not been a clever idea. Surprisingly the carp was undamaged, just a bit twitchy. He relinquished all control of it as he scanned the information package.

Prador…

Some very old and unused programs initiated in Sniper, and as a result he came as close to excitement as it was possible for him to get. He immediately began running systems diagnostics and checking his inventory: 121 smart missiles with coiled planar loads, an assortment of mines, plenty of carbide fingers for his rail gun, and of course his APW. He was well armed, but his big problem was his power supply. Hauling a molly carp all that distance on AG had depleted his batteries, so his allotropic uranium generator was struggling to bring them up to charge, and his microtok was struggling to keep the generator running. In drone parlance, he was knackered. He decided the best thing for him to do now was sit tight until everything was up to charge.

He did a quick ultrasound scan beyond the fleshy vessel he was in and saw that a sailing ship had just come into range. No matter to him unless they decided to hunt down this carp and cut it open, so he settled down to wait. He was now in what he supposed might be called the carp’s small intestine, and had quite a way to go to reach the final exit.

Using two ceramal-composite oars with blades as wide as a man, Ambel towed the Treader with a rowing boat. Each time he dipped those oars in and heaved, the hawser connecting the boat to the ship creaked and stretched, and the ship slowly slid on through the water. The boat itself was heavily reinforced, especially about the rowlocks. The first time Ambel had used these oars in an unreinforced boat, his exertions had torn the sides out of it, and the crew had to quickly haul him back before the leeches got him. Just in case of that eventuality, Pland and Anne kept an eye on their Captain while they supervised work on the deck, and Peck was in the nest keeping an eye elsewhere.

‘What’s he doing?’ asked Pland.

Ambel had shipped his oars and was staring off to one side. Both Pland and Anne followed the direction of Ambel’s gaze, towards the horizon. A spreading disk of red fire grew behind cloud like a skin cancer. It broke and dispersed as they watched, but it took a long time for the colour to leave the sky.

“What’s that?’ Pland asked.

‘Big meteor?’ Anne suggested doubtfully.

They both stared contemplatively at the coloration in the sky and only returned their attention to Ambel as he started rowing again.

‘Molly carp to starboard!’ yelled Peck from the nest.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ said Pland.

He and Anne both stared at the creature as it rose out of the water and came down with a huge splash, seemingly trying to bite the waves. After pausing for a moment it swam round in a couple of tight circles, then rocked backwards, apparently examining the boat, before setting off at a frantic pace to do one circuit of the ship. Those who had been scrubbing the deck stopped to watch the show, glad of an interruption to their tedium. Once back where it had begun from, it settled down now to blow bubbles and make strange grunting sounds.

‘That’s one confused beasty,’ said Anne.

‘Bit of a mad moment, maybe? We all get those,’ said Pland.

Anne snorted and gave him a look.

‘They used to follow the boxy boats… never cause no harm,’ said Sild, leaning on his mop.

Immediately on his words, the carp reared up and suddenly sped towards Ambel’s reinforced rowing boat.

‘Now that’s normally what Peck does,’ said Anne.

Gollow and Sild eyed each other in confusion, turned to watch as she and Pland sped away along the deck, then abruptly dropped their cleaning utensils and followed.

They all ran around the forecabin to the foredeck and began winding in the cable that joined ship to rowing boat. Boris joined them, from the helm, but even with his help, they knew they would not be quick enough. Ambel shipped his oars and, holding one like a club, he stood and waited for the carp. The carp reached the rowing boat when the boat was only four metres from the ship. The creature hesitated in its approach, then, as if coming to a decision, it lunged. Ambel chopped down on its head with all the force he could muster. There came a sound as of a sledgehammer hitting a block of wood. The carp itself immediately stopped, but its bow wave continued on to hit the boat, almost tipping it over. Ambel kept his feet and used all his weight to bring the boat back on an even keel. When the carp nosed in again, hesitantly, as if not sure what had happened to it, he hit it again, this time high on the hump of flesh located behind its head. Again that solid bang. Ambel inspected the bend in his oar, then swivelled it in readiness for another blow, perhaps hoping to batter it straight again. The carp shook itself once, then lifted its head out of the water and turned an accusing eye on Ambel.

‘That’s it! You show the bastard!’ yelled Peck from his perch. Anne, Pland, and Boris stared up at him, trying to decide which of the two contestants Peck was addressing.

Ambel rested the butt of his oar in the bottom of the boat as he stared eye to eye with the creature. After a moment, the carp opened its mouth and issued a deep whooshing hoot, then it turned and moved slowly away.

‘Captain got its attention, then,’ said Boris.

‘I thought it was going to try for him,’ said Anne.

‘Nah,’ said Boris, eyeing the junior crew gathered round. ‘It knew it couldn’t get the Captain down in one gulp, and what’d happen to it if it tried. Molly carp are smart. Remember Captain Gurt’s carp? He fed it on leeches, and trained it to catch even bigger leeches for him.’

‘He made a lot of skind,’ agreed Pland.

‘Then there was Alber’s carp — used it to tow his ship around,’ Boris went on.

Anne said, ‘Could be it just didn’t want to eat the Captain. That was only a lick on its head it got, no more than an itch.’

‘Remember what happened to Captain Gurt?’

‘Oh, yeah, they only found his leg, didn’t they?’ said Anne, then, ‘Why they called molly carp? I’ve always wondered.’

Boris appeared thoughtful for a moment. ‘They look a bit like a fish from Earth called a carp. Then there was this Hooper who had a wife called Molly who kept on carping at him.’ Boris ignored Anne’s wince at this and soldiered on. ‘He went out one day and saw this big fat carp and thought it looked like his wife. And that’s how they got their name.’

The junior crewmen attended Boris’s explanation with dubious expressions, before being shepherded back to their tasks by Pland, now the excitement was over. Anne leaned close to Boris and muttered, ‘You don’t really know, do you?’

Boris scratched at his moustache. ‘Nah, haven’t a clue.’

Peck chose that moment for another yell. ‘That’s it, y’bugger!’

He was waving his fist, but it was still unclear at whom or what he was gesturing.

‘Never been the same since,’ said Boris, shaking his head.

‘Oh, he only goes a bit funny sometimes,’ said Anne. She pointed at the island to which Ambel was again towing them. ‘It’s islands — they remind him of the Skinner’s Island. He never feels safe near them.’

‘He knows he can’t be got again,’ said Boris, looking meaningfully towards the Captain’s cabin.

‘Not the point. It ain’t logical, but he’s convinced it’s going to happen again.’

‘Well it can’t,’ said Boris, looking towards Ambel as the Captain continued to tow the ship on in.

In Ambel’s cabin the Skinner’s head lay still in its box; still and silent, and attentive.

The remaining hornet had been gone for two days now, and the mind had not spoken to him much since his voicing of his concerns about Erlin. Quite dryly, it had asked him just what he found so unbelievable about her story and, when he had tried, it had pointed out all the clues that pointed to the ‘extremity’ Erlin had described. Since then Janer had been contemplative and had nothing to ask it. Since then the mind had very little to say to him either. It was almost as if an embarrassed silence had fallen between them. When it was broken, Janer jerked as if he had been slapped.

‘Now, there’s an interesting sight,’ said the mind.

‘Mind, where are your eyes now?’ Janer asked, confused as to why he should have been surprised at the voice. After a pause came a flat reply, without the usual complementary buzzing. He realized this was the reason he had jumped: the buzzing had always served to forewarn of a communication.

‘I’m on a rock in the sea. Sails live on it,’ the mind said.

‘Why are you there?’

There was no reply for a long time and, standing at the rail, Janer started to fidget uncomfortably. He glanced up at Ron, who had a telescope to his eye, then at Erlin, whom the sail had lifted to the nest. Other members of the crew were slowly moving about their business on the deck: Roach, Forlam, a thickset blonde called Goss, who kept giving him the eye, and others he had no name for. Janer studied Goss speculatively. This journey was starting to get a little boring. Perhaps it was time to spice things up a little. Just then, the Hive mind came back to him, but this time the buzzing had returned.

‘Look to the north,’ it said.

Janer did so, and observed a red glow sheeting up behind cloud, wavering like an aurora.

‘What is it?’

‘An antimatter explosion. The Warden is most reticent about its source,’ said the mind.

‘Antimatter?’

The mind was silent for a while before continuing.

‘I will be with you soon. Keech is coming. Tell Erlin to prepare her equipment.’

‘What do you mean, Keech?’ Janer looked in confusion from the light in the sky back to the activity on the deck.

Others were gazing out at the redness and talking to each other in muted tones. But already the light was beginning to disperse, to fade. The buzzing that had accompanied the mind’s message faded also, and it gave no reply. Janer looked at Goss again, then he looked up at Erlin. He called to her.

‘What did it mean “Keech is coming”?’ Erlin asked him, once Janer had related the mind’s message.

‘I can only think he’s in trouble, if it means you’ll need your medical equipment,’ said Janer.

‘What the hell am I supposed to be able to do for him?’

‘He is a little past your services, I have to admit.’ Janer shrugged and grinned at her. ‘Perhaps we should prepare anyhow. The mind doesn’t normally get things wrong.’

‘OK. I suppose you’re right.’

Erlin headed for the deck hatch and Janer watched her for a moment.

‘Let me help you. I’m a bit of a spare wheel here anyhow.’

Erlin gestured for him to follow.

Once below decks, Erlin pulled one of her cases from a storage locker, then put it on the floor and opened it. Janer looked at the mass of gleaming apparatus neatly packed inside. He recognized a nanoscope, portable autodoc, and one or two other items.

Erlin pointed at the autodoc. ‘You know how to assemble that?’ she asked.

Janer pulled the doc out of the case and proceeded to clip together the hooded cowling and the insectile surgical arms. Erlin allowed a little surprise to enter her expression, nodded an acknowledgement to him, then turned to something else. She took out a flat box with a gun-shaped object fixed in its upper surface. Janer immediately identified the ‘gun’ as a hand-diagnosticer, and the box it was plugged into as a portable drug-manufactory.

‘Oh hell,’ said Erlin. ‘I haven’t got a clue.’

‘Let’s just be as ready as we can,’ said Janer.

They got ready.

Windcheater flew in a world constructed of information. Eyes crossed and toes clenched he gazed with wonder on a virtual galaxy dwarfing the incontestably vast Human Polity. There was so much to know, so much to see — great minds moved past the sail like sun-bright leviathans, and the financial systems of worlds were complex hives he could lose himself in for centuries. It was wonderful: there was so much to do, so much to have. But Windcheater, with a self-discipline and intelligence beyond that of his brothers and sisters, gradually shut all that out and concentrated on the specific. He curled his lip and growled when he located the minuscule antiquities site based on Coram and surveyed the price list. Perhaps Sniper believed the sail would be too dazzled to pick up on things like that.

‘Windcheater.’

The voice came from close by and Windcheater uncrossed his eyes and looked around. His fellow sails were all gathered at the other side of The Flint, watching him warily. It had not been one of those that had spoken.

‘Sail, I’m speaking to you through your aug. Do you understand me?’ asked the voice.

‘I hear you,’ said the sail. ‘But I don’t know who you are.’

‘Of course… you’ve never heard my voice. I am the Warden.’

‘Ah,’ Windcheater managed. He noticed then that his fellows were edging even further away from him and were observing him all the more warily. There was nothing he could do about that just now.

‘Well, what do you think of the human virtual world?’ the Warden resumed.

‘It is… useful,’ replied the sail. ‘What do you want?’ it then asked, thinking it might be less disconcerting for his fellows if he quickly terminated this conversation. He did not want them thinking him any crazier than they did already.

‘Like yourself I want many things — and like yourself I understand that there is little to be had without paying a price,’ said the Warden.

Windcheater showed his teeth and waited. The Warden continued.

‘I see that your business arrangements with Sniper have provided you with some income. I see no reason to prevent that arrangement continuing. It could easily be argued that any artefacts accessible to you are legitimately the property of your people…’

‘Our property?’ Windcheater asked.

‘You are, after all, the autochthons of this world,’ the Warden observed.

‘Does that mean we own it?’ the sail asked, a couple of strange ideas occurring to him all at once.

‘That is something we can discuss at a later time,’ said the Warden. ‘For now I just want to know if you would like to augment that minor income.’

Windcheater considered the offer for all of a couple of seconds, quickly forgetting his concerns about how his fellow sails might view him. That ‘minor income’ was the only income he had, and there was so much to have.

‘Tell me about it,’ the sail said.

‘I need a pair of eyes, but a pair of eyes in a natural form of this world. Not so much undetectable as unnoticed.’

‘What for?’

‘You saw the light in the sky to the north?’

Windcheater nodded, then realizing the Warden would have no way of seeing this, replied in the affirmative.

The Warden continued, ‘I want you to go and take a look in that area and report to me anything unusual.’

‘Like what?’

‘Just anything unusual.’

Windcheater considered again: Why not? He could do with the extra credit.

‘How much?’ the sail asked.

‘One thousand shillings for each day.’

By the time the Warden had reached the word ‘day’, Windcheater was already airborne. His fellows, after watching him depart, turned to each other in great puzzlement and there was much confused shrugging.

As Ambel rested, the Treader drifted up behind and nudged the back of the rowing boat. As it did this, he dipped the oars and rowed again for a few minutes. Slowly the ship drifted into a sheltered cove whose visible bottom was smeared with leeches and pinioned by the stalks of sea-cane, which at the surface opened into tangles of reddish tendrils that were kept afloat by chequered gourd-like fruits. An islet, no bigger than the ship itself, slid past to the right of them, and from this the stalked eyes of frog whelks tracked their progress, their grey and yellow shells clattering together in their agitation. Boris turned the helm so that the ship drifted away from these, and Ambel allowed the rowing boat to come back against the side of the ship.

‘All right, Pland!’ he shouted.

At the bows, Pland, Sild and Gollow heaved the anchor over the side and dropped it into the shallows, where it thumped down, still visible, raising a cloud of black silt. Taking the usual precautions for mooring in island waters, Pland had greased the anchor chain some hours before. The grease wouldn’t stop prill as they — should they have the inclination — could scale the wooden sides of the ship using the tips of their sharp legs like pitons, but it would deter frog and hammer whelks, and other of the more common annoyances. Anne lowered a ladder to Ambel while he hitched the boat to the side of the ship and secured his oars inside. As he climbed back aboard, Peck looked down at him disconsolately from the nest.

‘Still time to get a worm or two to tempt a sail. Fresh meat’s always best,’ said Ambel, nodding towards stony beaches and the island with its narrow crown of blue-green dingle.

‘I ain’t goin’,’ said Peck.

‘You stay and trull for boxies, Peck,’ Ambel replied cheerfully.

‘I don’t wanna stay,’ said Peck.

‘You could hook us some sea-cane and a few gourds as well. We’ve a barrel or two to spare, and some bags of dried salt-yeast,’ said Ambel, ignoring this.

Peck snorted and returned his gaze to the island. After a moment, he turned away, stepped out of the nest and scrambled down the mast to the deck, from where he again returned his attention to the island. Ambel watched him for a moment, then shrugged and walked over to the wall of the forecabin, from where he unhooked his blunderbuss. He also shouldered a case containing powder and shot. He turned to Anne and Boris, who had just come down from the cabin-deck.

‘You two fetch your stuff and get down to the boat,’ he said — then, turning to Sild and Gollow, ‘You two as well.’ To Pland he said, ‘Keep an eye on things here,’ flicking his eyes in the direction of Peck. Pland nodded, and Ambel ducked into his cabin. Once inside, he closed the door and laid his blunderbuss and bag on the table. After a pause, he went over to his sea-chest and took out the Skinner’s box. He opened it and looked at the head inside. Insane black eyes glared back at him from the grotesque object. Ears that looked like spined fins wiggled. There seemed a lot more of them than there had been before. Ambel looked closer and noted lumps growing down the side of the long-snouted end of the thing. They were similar in shape to the lumps from which its tusks sprouted. Ambel stared at it some more, then abruptly came to a decision.

‘It’s sprine for you,’ he said to the head.

The head rose up on its bottom jaw and tried to shake itself free of the box. Ambel slammed shut the lid and locked it. The head was still banging about inside its box as he closed it in his sea-chest. He took up his ‘buss and his bag and quickly left his cabin.

With a fear gnawing his gut, Peck watched them rowing ashore. Horrible things happened to you if you went ashore. Memory was a feeling. He could feel a long bony finger under his skin, working round between dermis and muscle, tugging and ripping. Why can’t a Hooper faint? he wondered. Why did the pain have to last for so long? Somewhere deep inside himself Peck knew he was being foolish. The Skinner was finished. Ambel kept the head in a box and the Skinner could no longer do what it had been named for.

The boat grounded on the beach of the cove and the five of them hopped out, secured it, then made their way into the dingle. Rhinoworms would be in the deeper water surrounding the island elsewhere, so they would have to make their way round there, and out of the shallow cove.

Peck looked at Pland, who was standing at the bows with two juniors. The three of them had dropped lines over the side and were milling for boxies. Nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. But then the whispering started again: a kind of hungry pleading.

‘Wants some buggering sea-cane does he?’ Peck said loudly.

Pland glanced at him. ‘Get it from the stern. I don’t want you stirring it too much here.’

Peck nodded, then moved to one of the rail lockers, where he pulled out a coil of rope and a grappling hook. He walked then to one side of the stern end of the ship, hurled the grappling hook out, and began hauling away. Soon the hook snagged one of the sea-cane plants, and he pulled carefully until it slid up to lodge in the tangle at the plant’s head, then he increased the pressure. With a puff of black silt the plant came up out of the sea bottom. He drew it in to the edge of the ship then hauled it up hand-over-hand as far as the rail. With it draped half over the rail, he grasped the stalk, which was as thick as a man’s leg, pulled out his panga, and with one blow cut off the hand-like root and anchor stone to which it was clinging. Root and stone splashed back into the sea, while the rest of the plant flopped on to the deck, its gourds thudding down like severed heads, scattering small leeches, trumpet shells, and coin-sized prill across the planks. Peck then spent a happy five minutes stamping on the prill and leeches, and dropping trumpet shells into a cast-iron bait box. During that time he forgot the whispering, but when he had finished it returned stronger than ever.

Come…

With a sweat breaking out, Peck clung to the rail — then he swore and headed for the rear hold. Down below decks, he muttered to himself and crashed barrels about with more vigour than was entirely necessary. Two barrels he hoisted out on to the deck before climbing out of the hold and rolling them over towards the sea-cane. After opening the barrels, he stamped on the few leeches he had missed, then began plucking gourds and tossing them into the first barrel.

Need…

‘Shaddup! Buggering shaddup!’

The stalk of the sea-cane Peck sliced up with single panga blows so each fragrant section fell into the second barrel. The ribbed red-and-green skin of the cane stalk was only a thin sheath covering a gooey yellow honeycomb that smelt strongly of aniseed. Peck scooped up the tangled top and tossed it back over the side, before quickly snatching up the grappling hook and casting it out into the water again. It’s a coward, he thought, as he yanked in another cane. It’s only this bad when the Captain ain’t aboard. But today the whispering was particularly strong. He’d never known it as persistent as this before. But this time he would resist. It was only when he had dealt with the second sea-cane, which had nicely filled both barrels, that he remembered that Ambel kept the salt-yeast in his cabin. Then the whisper became even more intense, even more eager. With elaborate care, Peck returned the rope and grappling hook to the locker before clinging tight to the rail again. He clung there for as long as he could, but a horrible fascination eventually turned him round to stare towards the Captain’s cabin. After a moment he walked to the door and — out of Pland’s view — he ducked inside.

The pain. The pain had been transcendent. It had taken Peck somewhere he had never before been. There had been a terrible understanding in it, too. It had been given to him so he might understand, yet he had failed. Peck stood over the sea-chest with his sweat dripping on to the ornately carved wood. Here, concealed in this box, was something that all Hoopers — with their ambivalent relationship with pain — could not but fear and worship at the same time.

I mustn’t…

It was so hungry, and if he fed it, the whispering would stop. Peck abruptly turned from the cabin and ran out on to the deck. For a moment he stood there gasping, hoping it would just cease. That subtle voice suggested untold pleasure and pain so intermingled they were indistinguishable. He had to silence it, so if food would do the trick, then food it must be. He reached into the barrel where they kept the sail’s feed and pulled out the last, rather putrid rhinoworm steak. He headed back into the Captain’s cabin and opened the chest.

It was there in the box; moving about in the box. Peck studied the secured lock and felt a strange relief.

I tried…

Then the lock clicked.

Oh bugger.

Gliding on thermals rising from banks of sun-heated coral, Windcheater observed the motorized dinghy as it hurtled for the shore, the wake of a chasing rhino-worm close behind it. Steam and explosions of water blew from around that wake as the figure crouched in the back of the dinghy tried to hit the pursuing worm with a high-intensity laser. Windcheater recognized this because only recently he had been scanning, with wonder and no little dismay, a weapon-dealer’s site.

‘They’re bounty hunters. Batian killers. I already know about them,’ said the Warden, as the sail tried to describe what he was seeing — he hadn’t yet quite mastered transferring images across from his visual cortex.

Windcheater banked, riding out of the thermal and away from the island. Hadn’t there been something about Batians on that weapons site? The sail resisted the impulse to go back to the place as he had more than enough to chew on concerning humankind. As he flew on, he auged through to any easily accessible information about his own kind, and was surprised to find how much and how little was known.

Polity experts knew that sails fed from the surface of the sea, taking rhinoworms, glisters, prill from the back of leeches — and sometimes leeches themselves. The speculation that they took to the ships for an easier food supply and a less hazardous existence was, of course, entirely wrong. Strange how the humans tried to classify the behaviour of any other species as relating only to ‘animal’ traits. Windcheater was completely certain that he and his kin had taken to the ships out of curiosity. It was much more difficult working as a ship sail for just a few steaks than snatching a whole worm from the sea and devouring it on the wing. Silly, arrogant humans.

The information section concerning sail mating was of huge interest to Windcheater. He had known for a long time that humans were divided into two sexes, and how all that operated — he had often been aboard a ship during one of the frequent Hooper meets, though why it was necessary to consume prodigious quantities of sea-cane rum and boiled hammer whelks before the sexual act, he had never been able to fathom. What he had not been aware of was that his own kind had four sexes. Anyway, during the mating season, he had never really had much chance to think about the mechanisms that drove him to such exhausting madness. Three males required to fertilize one female egg, and that egg then encysted and stuck, in its cocoon, on the side of the Big Flint. Hence, what a human far in the past had described as ‘that rock-top orgy’.

Windcheater flew on, heading for the horizon of Spatterjay, and all the new horizons he was now discovering. He was but a speck by the time the Batians beached their dinghy in a spray of sand and opened fire en masse on the rhinoworm that reared out of the sea behind them.

The worm dropped, flaming, back into the sea, writhed there for a moment as if still intent on coming on to the beach after them, and then grew still. Shib let out a shuddering breath, then quickly wiped at the sweat that was stinging his eyes.

‘Great idea using an inflatable dinghy to get out here. Real classic, that one,’ he snarled.

‘Shut up, Shib,’ said Svan, as she watched the leeches surfacing to take apart the laser-cooked rhinoworm. ‘You know what would happen if we used AG here. The Warden would be up our asses with a thermite grenade about two seconds later.’

‘Yeah, but—’

Svan made a chopping motion with her hand. ‘Enough. You either handle it or you don’t.’

Shib shut up. He knew Svan wasn’t suggesting he could pay back the deposit and go home. Employment contracts with first-rankers like her either ended with a large payout or in a rather terminal manner. He nodded when she gestured towards the boat, then slung his carbine from his shoulder and headed over to the vessel. Upon reaching it, he immediately clicked on the little rotary pump. Joining him, Dime hauled out their packs and tossed them on to the pebbled beach. Shib detached and collapsed the telescopic outboard, and then he and Dime stood back as the dinghy quickly collapsed and shrivelled. The rolled-up dinghy was no wider than a man’s wrist, and with its motor locked beside it, formed a pack that could be tucked under an arm. Dime carried this to the head of the beach and slid it under a spread of sheetlike leaves growing there. Soon all four of them had loaded up their packs and were heading along the beach.

‘Why here?’ Tors asked after a moment.

‘A location easy to find — and our client has business here,’ Svan replied.

Half listening to the conversation, Shib kept his eyes on the dingle. A hideous bird-thing observed him from the branches of a tree with a hugely globular trunk. He had thought the creature dead and decaying until it had moved to follow their progress with its glistening eye-pits. He suppressed his immediate inclination to burn it from its branch. No doubt Svan would take that as one push too many.

‘Do you have any further information on this client?’ Tors asked.

‘Same one as has had the bounty up on Sable Keech for the last three centuries. No way of tracing the transaction without collecting, and no one has managed that yet.’

‘I don’t get how he’s lasted so long,’ said Dime, with an apologetic glance to Shib.

‘Organization, speed, luck and, thus far, seven centuries of experience. Anyway, Keech doesn’t often put himself in a position where he can be hit. Normally he operates on Polity worlds well within AI surveillance, and spends most of his time searching through Polity databases. Not easy to get him there. When he does come somewhere like this, he’s normally well covered. It’s surprising that he’s here alone. Maybe he’s getting careless,’ said Svan.

‘Or maybe he’s just had enough,’ said Tors.

Svan shrugged and gestured to a path cutting into the dingle opposite a jetty. ‘This looks like it,’ she said.

As they turned into the path, Shib could feel the hairs prickling on the back of his neck. He had been in some hostile places before, some where he’d had to go suited and armoured, and some where nothing less than a fully motorized exoskeleton would do, but here he felt things were wrong right from the start. This was a casually brutal place. In the Hooper town, he’d caught the tail-end of some sort of fight, and even he had been surprised at how easily Hoopers bore hideous injury. Then there had been the rush to head for where Keech had headed, then of course Nolan… He peered round at the surrounding dingle and gripped his carbine tighter. From the dingle floor, spined frog-things regarded him with glinting blue eyes, and the foliage above bore oozing fruit of a long and slimy variety. Was there anywhere here where you could let your guard down?

‘This is the place. We secure it and wait for her here,’ Svan said.

‘Her?’ asked Shib, nicking his gaze forward. Ahead of them a tower sprouted from the ground, and around it the churned earth was clear of vegetation, as if the tower itself had sucked all goodness from it. Shib wondered where the resident ogre was.

Svan did not elaborate. Instead she turned to them.

‘Dime, take out the autogun, and any dishes on the roof. Tors, I want you to blow the door. You cover him, Shib, and hit any autos around the door.’

‘How many people here?’ Shib asked.

‘Just one old woman. We’re to hold her and wait. Our client should be along soon. Right, we go now.’

Dime dropped a targeting visor down over his eyes, raised his carbine, and fired four short pulses in rapid succession. As he fired, Shib and Tors ran for the door. On the roof of Olian Tay’s residence, the satellite dishes on the pylon flared and sagged. The autogun, which had swung their way at the last moment, disappeared with a flat crack and flare, out of which black fragments dropped to the denuded ground. Tors hit the door and slapped a small disk against the locking mechanism, while Shib covered him. They both swung themselves either side of the entrance as the small mine blew and sent the buckled door crashing inside the building. Then they were in.

Svan walked across the clearing, carefully scanning her surroundings. She watched as Dime ran around behind the structure, and she listened as sharp cracking sounds and low detonations issued from inside. The only noise she sensed came from Shib and Tors. This place was deserted. Either Olian Tay had struck lucky, or someone had warned her. As Svan entered the building, Dime moved in behind her. Tors stood in the central living room, doors broken open all around, while Shib was coming down a spiral staircase to one side. She glanced at them and they both shook their heads.

Svan peered up at the ceiling. ‘House computer, where is Olian Tay?’

‘Olian Tay, Olian Tay, is over the hills and far away!’ The voice was that of a woman, and Svan had no doubt to whom it belonged. She made a sharp hand signal to Dime, who quickly pulled an instrument from his belt and held it up.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Tay. ‘You want me to tell you that just so’s you can deliver the flowers my lover has sent.’

‘You could say that, but don’t you really want to know why we are here?’

‘That’s the way, keep me talking so’s your friend can trace a signal. Not too bright that, considering you destroyed the radio dish.’

‘You’re somewhere close, then,’ said Svan, making another sharp gesture. Shib and Tors made to duck out of the room and search, but Tay’s next reply stopped them in their tracks.

‘Wrong, this signal is coming through a landline to a pylon on the east of the island. Right now I’m sitting in the Mackay lounge on Coram. Oh, by the way, there’s enough explosives underneath my house to launch you four out this way as well, so I suggest you listen very carefully to me.’

‘I’m listening,’ said Svan.

‘Now, I know that somehow you’ve traced our mutual friend, Monitor Keech. He is not here anymore. The last I heard he was heading off to find some Old Captain to chat to. What I am most interested in is how you managed to trace him here.’

Svan gave the other three a warning look. ‘If I tell you that you’ll let us walk out of here?’

‘I will allow that,’ said Tay. ‘Now perhaps you can explain yourself?’

Leaning her elbows on the rim of the granite outcrop, Tay stared down at her tower. She then studied the screen of her transponder and smiled at the way the mercenaries were frantically gesturing to each other.

Their leader spoke up then. ‘We followed Keech with a purpose-built tracer that picks up on emissions from certain old designs of cybermotors,’ the Batian woman said, holding up some sort of device she had pulled from her belt. Tay peered at her screen. The explanation seemed plausible but she didn’t believe it for a moment.

‘I don’t believe that for a moment,’ she said, enjoying herself immensely. Only a small seed of doubt marred her enjoyment: if they hadn’t traced Keech by the method they claimed, how had they traced him? As she turned from the granite, with the transponder held up before her face, it occurred to her that maybe they were not here searching for Keech at all. No matter. She walked over to her AGC and climbed into it. When these mercenaries finally went away, as their kind always did, she would return to her home. She dumped the transponder on the seat beside her and reached for the control column.

‘Why, Olian,’ said the woman who climbed into the AGC beside her, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. They came here to meet me, and I came here to meet you.’

Tay did not recognize the face that smiled at her, but the gas-system pulse-gun pointed at her face had her fullest attention.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she asked.

‘Can’t you guess?’ the woman asked and, so saying, picked up Tay’s transponder and spoke into it.

‘Svan, this is your client here. I have Olian Tay and will be with you shortly. I must congratulate you on performing precisely as I expected.’

She clicked the transponder off, tossed it out of the AGC, and then looked at Tay expectantly. Before reaching out to take hold of the column Tay wiped sweat from under her chin and swallowed dryly. Batian mercenaries… now there were many people prepared to hire these mercenaries, hence the entire culture of one continent, on an Out-Polity planet, revolving around that frowned-upon profession, but factor in the recent presence of Sable Keech here on Spatterjay, and Tay’s own interests… Tay did not like where her thoughts were leading her. There had always been something odd about one particular story concerning the demise of one of the Eight.

‘What do you want?’ she asked.

The woman gave a deprecatory smile and waved the gun at her. Tay could not keep her eyes off the wide silvered snout of the weapon. She knew that, even at its lowest setting, it could probably take her face off.

‘Oh, Olian, we can chat about all this back in your wonderful tower. Then you can show me your wonderful museum. I’ve read quite a bit about it, and have always wanted to see it.’

Tay engaged the old grav motor and lifted the AGC into the air. She considered making a grab for the stranger’s gun, as up here might be her only chance. Perhaps this woman did not realize how long Tay had been a Hooper, and just how strong she was.

‘You know, Olian, you wouldn’t know how old this body is, just by looking at it, and how long it has been Hooper,’ said the woman.

Tay said nothing for a moment. This body. Not my body, not me. That one phrase was all the confirmation Tay needed. She felt suddenly very small and vulnerable, even though her captor seemed smaller and more fragile than she. She knew now who this person was, and that there wouldn’t be a lot she could do if she did get hold of the weapon. The woman sitting next to her could break her like a ship Captain could.

‘You’re Rebecca Frisk,’ she said.

‘Of course I am,’ said the woman.

As she brought the AGC in to land on the roof of her tower, Tay became absolutely certain that she would die if she was not very careful. And even then…

‘Out,’ said Frisk, once the grav motor wound down.

Tay climbed out of the AGC, calculating all the way how she might survive this. That Frisk had come to see her out of curiosity, she had no doubt; that she left death and destruction behind her wherever she went was a matter of historical fact.

‘What do you want here?’ she asked, as Frisk followed her to the stairwell.

‘I want to see your museum,’ said Frisk.