The Skinner

9

‘Something coming,’ said Ron, his eye to his telescope.

Janer looked out over the sea but for a moment could see nothing. He then discerned a distant dot coming towards them and growing larger. He unhooked his intensifier and quickly focused on the object.

‘I’ll be damned,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked Erlin.

‘He’s got an AG scooter,’ Janer replied. ‘Must have been all those investments he made before he shuffled off. Compound interest.’

Erlin laughed, and Janer chalked up a mental point as he hooked the intensifier back on his belt. It was good to know that he could touch her in some way.

The scooter came to a halt above the ship, and hovered there for a long while. Before anyone could wonder if it was just going to stay up there, it descended and came in to land on the clearest part of the deck.

Janer gagged when he drew close to it. The crusted stinking thing sitting on the saddle was Keech all right, but a Keech somewhat changed since the last time Janer had seen him.

‘Too late, I think,’ he said.

Erlin approached the reif with her diagnosticer. She pressed it against his arm and the thick scab there cracked and oozed red plasma. She stared at the reading on the diagnosticer, then abruptly took a step back. Keech’s head turned towards her, shell-like crust breaking away from his neck to reveal wet and bloody muscle underneath.

‘You’re alive,’ was all Erlin could manage.

Keech just looked at her with his single, weeping blue eye.

With the rest of the crew, Janer just stared. It was Ron who suddenly moved into action. ‘All right lads, get him below. Gently, mind,’ he said.

‘I ain’t touching that,’ said Goss.

Ron looked at her and raised an eyebrow — and Goss was the first one to reach for the reif. As they lifted Keech off his scooter, stinking crusts fell away from him to expose flayed muscle. Something bulked in the front of his overall, and Janer had a horrible feeling that organs were floating about free in there. He was so involved with what was happening that he didn’t notice the hornet had returned to his shoulder until Keech was taken below decks.

‘He brought a package for us,’ said the mind, ‘It is in the luggage compartment of the scooter. Get it now.’

‘You don’t order me any more,’ said Janer out loud, and Ron glanced round at him. Janer pointed at the hornet and Ron nodded, before following the others below decks.

‘Please,’ said the mind.

‘OK.’

Janer went over to the scooter and looked in the back. He instantly knew which package it was. He lifted it out and inspected it.

‘Put it somewhere safe… please.’

Janer headed for the hatch to his cabin. ‘What is it?’ he asked.

‘Do you need to ask that?’

‘No, I guess not,’ said Janer, since he had received deliveries like this before.

He took the package below, walking past the crammed cabin, where Keech was stretched out on a table. Reaching his own cabin, he was about to place the box under his bunk when the mind stopped him.

‘Wait one moment,’ it said, as if something had only just occurred to it. In Janer’s experience things never ‘only just occurred’ to a Hive mind. He waited anyway.

The hornet launched itself from his shoulder and landed on the box. It crawled round to the middle plane of its hexagonal front. Immediately a hexagonal hole opened and the hornet crawled inside.

‘You may put it somewhere safe now,’ said the mind. Janer crammed the box under his bunk, and went to see what was happening with Keech. As he arrived, Erlin was clearing the cabin.

‘Everyone out. Out, now,’ she said.

The disgruntled crew shuffled away. The medical technology of off-worlders always intrigued Hoopers simply because of its utter irrelevance to them. Their attitude was something like the attitude of a hospital consultant to the trappings of shamanism. This was yet another strange Hooper reversal.

‘You can stay,’ said Erlin, and it took Janer a moment to realize that she meant him. He walked into the cabin, past Ron as the Captain went out. He stared down at the thing that was Keech.

‘What can I do?’ he asked.

Erlin pointed at the autodoc. ‘That’s an idiot savant quite capable of dealing with injuries to a normal human. Right now Keech is making the transition from corpse to living man with the aid of a nano-changer. He’s also infected with the Spatterjay virus, which is digesting dead tissue, just as it does in a living creature. The problem is that it started on Keech when he was all dead tissue. We’ve also got a few hundred cybernetic devices to deal with.’

Keech made a clicking gurgling sound.

‘He keeps trying to speak,’ said Erlin. She seemed at a loss.

Janer did not know what to say. If she could not handle this, then there was no way he could. He looked at Keech and felt pity. The only option, it seemed to him, would be to load him back on his scooter and head full-tilt for the Dome. He’d probably be dead by then, but even so… Janer focused his attention on Keech’s aug. There was an interface plug on it.

‘Back in a moment,’ said Janer, and ran from the cabin. In the crew cabin he searched his backpack until he had hold of what he wanted, and rushed back. He brandished the small screen and optic cable, then walked over to Keech.

‘This should work,’ he said. ‘It has a voice synthesizer.’

‘It does work,’ said Keech, the instant Janer plugged him into the personal computer. ‘Erlin, do not concern yourself with the cybernetics. I will take them offline the moment they interfere with physical function.’

Erlin came up and stood by Janer. She seemed calmer now, and the look she gave Janer made something flip over in his stomach.

‘Right,’ she said, ‘we’ve got a lot of work to do. We need to rig up some kind of tank. The nanites cannot function outside of a liquid medium, and that’s why they’re failing to build his outer tissues. The virus needs to be inhibited by Intertox. Keech, I take it you’re blocking the pain?’

‘I am.’

‘Right, we need to make a tank.’

Erlin looked at her box of tricks for a moment, then looked at Janer.

Janer said, ‘There’s a monofilament mainsail stored in the rear hold. Goss told me it was a gift from some out-worlder who wanted to establish a business here by displacing the living sails. Ron didn’t have the heart to warn the man that such replacement sail would require extra rigging as well as extra crewmen. They now apparently only use it to stretch around the hull after an attack by borers. I don’t know what borers are, but I can imagine the effect. I should be able to rig something in about an hour.’

‘Do it then,’ said Erlin.

Janer turned to go, running through his mind the stored materials he had seen for the repair of any damage to the ship. He needed to construct a frame strong enough to support the weight of a few hundred litres of water. Perhaps some sort of hammock arrangement? He did not need to worry about the strength of the monofilament fabric. He’d yet to see it ripped, and knew that little short of a hit from a pulse-gun could puncture it.

‘Janer,’ said Erlin.

Janer turned at the door.

‘I don’t know how to say this…’ she began.

‘Then don’t,’ said Janer, and went on his way.

The four mercenaries were definitely unhappy. It had soon become evident that Frisk had been watching for some time before their arrival, and had allowed them to act as a crude decoy.

‘The warning message — was that you?’ Tay asked.

Frisk continued to study the looming sculpture of the Skinner and replied contemplatively. ‘Oh no, that was the Warden. We monitored the signal and made sure there were no subminds in the area. Now, tell me, how did you ascertain the details for this?’

Tay stared at the sculpture and wondered just who Frisk was referring to when she had said ‘We’. She also frantically tried to think of some story to turn to her advantage — something to eke out the possibility of escape from this impossible situation. Then she remembered one aspect of the history of Frisk and Hoop: they had once been art thieves and both had an interest in paintings.

‘A crewman going off-planet presented me with his collection of paintings. I never believed they were accurate until I went out to the Skinner’s Island and saw the reality.’

‘Ah, you saw… the Skinner, in the flesh?’ said Frisk.

Tay looked at her.

‘Yes, I saw what Jay Hoop had become,’ she said.

Frisk smiled humourlessly and moved on into the museum. At each exhibit she stopped and stared for an uncomfortably long time. Occasionally she laughed, and occasionally she shook her head in annoyance. All of this performance was precisely that: a performance.

‘It is an impressive collection,’ she said finally, coming to stand before the model of herself as she had once been. ‘You’ve got so much of it right, but there are a few inaccuracies.’

‘Such as?’ Tay asked.

Frisk made an airy gesture with her hand. ‘Eon Talsca was the one who always carried an old projectile weapon. Duon used a fast-feed minigun or one of those bulky old pulse-guns. They often argued over the effectiveness of the weapons they used. I remember them having a competition to see who performed best with their particular choice of weapon. Duon won, of course. He killed fifteen of the twenty ECS monitors we let run loose — though they disputed after about the artistry of their weapons’ play. Eon brought down his five monitors with clean head shots.’

Tay reached down to her belt for the device clipped there. A hand closed on her wrist and she found herself staring at the flat snout of a small stun gun, belonging to the Batian she now knew to be called Svan. She knew this choice of weapon was meant for her, if she ran. Obviously Frisk wanted her alive — for a while.

‘It’s only a recorder. I was making sure it was running,’ Tay said.

Svan looked askance at Frisk.

Frisk nodded. ‘Let her record. She’s an historian to the end.’

It was then that Tay knew for sure that she wasn’t going to survive this unless she was sharp. Obviously Keech’s presence had brought Frisk to Spatterjay and curiosity had brought her to this particular location. Self-preservation, though, would not allow Frisk to leave behind any witnesses to the fact that she was still alive. As Tay watched Svan step back and lower the weapon, she wondered if these mercenaries realized that.

‘Well, he did get Jay right, but then I suppose his memories of the Skinner’s isle were more recent than those of the Talsca twins,’ she said.

Frisk stared at her with the confidence of someone utterly in control of a situation, waiting for her to explain. Tay was aware that the old pirate was expecting some sort of survival ploy. Instead Tay pretended ignorance, or indifference, as she made a circling motion with her hand to encompass all the exhibits.

‘The artist,’ she duly explained. ‘Every exhibit here is based on the sketches and paintings he made. Of course it could be my error giving Duon the projectile gun — the twins are very easy to confuse.’

‘Who is this artist?’ Frisk asked.

‘Name of Sprage, one of the Old Captains,’ Tay replied.

Frisk was thoughtful for a moment. ‘The name escapes me,’ she said, ‘though I would perhaps recognize the face.’

‘Not that memorable,’ said Tay. ‘His self-portrait won’t win any prizes.’

Frisk glanced around the museum. ‘Where are they?’ she asked.

‘What?’ asked Tay, her attention deliberately directed towards the mercenaries, as if searching for a way past them. If Frisk clicked to her ploy, that was it — all over.

‘Where are these paintings?’

Tay glanced at her as if surprised at her interest, then quickly cleared her face of expression. ‘I don’t have them. Sprage has them still,’ she said quickly.

Frisk smiled at such transparency, and Tay dared to hope.

‘Where do you keep them?’ Frisk then asked. ‘Don’t lie to me. You know your life might depend on it.’

Tay hesitated before saying, ‘I keep them in a vacuum safe. They were done on kelp paper, and some of them are very old. I didn’t want to risk putting them on display in here.’

‘You could have vacuum-sealed them in here,’ said Frisk.

‘Yes, but they’re also susceptible to light damage,’ said Tay — then, quickly changing the subject, ‘What… what else have I got wrong in here?’

Frisk was not to be distracted. ‘I want to see these paintings. Show them to me.’

Hooked, thought Tay, though she was uncomfortable with just how easy it had been. None of the Eight had been quite this stupid, and these Batian mercenaries certainly weren’t. Perhaps they were all simply confident that any ploy she tried would be ineffectual in the face of their combined abilities. Tay scanned about herself as if seeking, yet again, for some way out. Finally she stared directly at Frisk.

‘I’ll let you have them if you let me live,’ she said.

‘What makes you think I want to kill you?’ Frisk asked.

‘I know your history, remember?’

Frisk affected an expression of boredom.

‘Take me to these paintings now or I will have Svan here cut your fingers off one at a time until you do,’ she said.

Tay stared at the Batian who was tapping a small curved knife strapped to her side. Giving a sharp nod, the historian moved to the door. Two of the other Batians closed in on either side of her as she stepped out into emerald sunlight. Perhaps they thought she might try to run now. She did not, and instead stumbled on the bare soil, obviously demonstrating how fear was making her weak, then walked as slowly as she could — delaying the inevitable. The mercenary Svan shoved her in the back, and she stumbled again. As she righted herself and continued, she felt the skin on her back crawl. This was her only chance, and it had to be done just right. Soon they reached the ruined front door of her residence, and Frisk went in ahead, with one of the mercenaries following behind her. Svan shoved again, and Tay followed them. Soon they were all gathered in the main living room.

Frisk turned and regarded Tay. ‘Well?’ she said, utterly in control of the situation.

‘I need to address the house computer,’ said Tay in a hollow voice.

Frisk nodded to Svan, who stepped up beside Tay and pressed the snout of her stun gun against the back of the historian’s head.

Tay swallowed dryly before speaking. ‘House computer, open false wall.’

Immediately a wall that seemingly held two windows, began to slide sideways. The windows blinked out, at the last revealing themselves as screens. Behind was revealed an oval door completely free of any apparent locking mechanisms.

‘House computer,’ Tay began again, pausing when the stun gun was pressed harder against the back of her head.

Frisk nodded for her to continue.

‘House computer, cancel lock-down and open atmosphere safe,’ Tay finished.

There came a deep clonk, then, with a low clicking and a hiss, the oval door swung aside. As it opened it was revealed to be almost like a barrel bung, such was its thickness. Inside lay a polished spherical chamber. At the centre of this chamber rested two long coffin-like cases.

Tay very carefully gestured towards one of them. ‘There they are. We can take a look if you wish,’ she said.

Frisk was immediately suspicious. ‘You — Shib, isn’t it? Go in there and bring that case out,’ she said, pointing.

With his laser carbine held one-handed, its butt propped against his hip, Shib cautiously stepped inside the chamber. He squatted and pulled at a handle fixed to one end of the case, then glanced back questioningly.

‘It’s palm-locked to the floor,’ explained Tay.

To Svan, Frisk said, ‘Take her in there to unlock it, and then bring it out.’

Svan pressed the gun again into the back of Tay’s head and the historian advanced while Shib stepped out of the safe and moved to one side. Tay ducked slightly as she stepped over the safe’s threshold — then drove her elbow back as hard as she possibly could. The Batian woman grunted and stepped back a pace. Tay kicked out, catching Svan hard in the groin, and then turned and slammed her hand against the touch control beside the door. The door began to swing closed, but not fast enough. There was a flash and searing pain in her thigh — one of them had hit her with a laser. She staggered against the case and glanced back in time to see Svan raise her stun gun. Only half the blast hit her as the door relentlessly drew closed. As something like a hammer of light flung her to the back of the safe, Tay could hear Frisk screaming imprecations. The sound of the door locking down told her she knew she might live, then she lost consciousness.

Ambel boarded first, and leant over the side to catch the rope cast up to him. Hand over hand, he hauled up a huge cluster of hide sacks sodden with fresh purple blood. As these squelched on the deck, Anne followed him up. Pland looked askance at the bloody slashes in her clothing.

‘Fucking prill,’ she muttered.

The others soon following her had similar slashes on their clothing. Gollow and Sild wore the same somewhat bewildered expressions at they disappeared below to tend their wounds. Boris remained on deck, pressing his hand to a deep, seeping wound across his stomach. He was chewing one end of his moustache; a sure sign of irritation. Ambel, Pland now realized, had slashes in his clothing too. There was no blood of course, since Ambel healed too quickly to bleed. Erlin, that Earther woman Ambel had taken a shine to some years back, had even wondered if he contained any blood at all. Pland chuckled at the thought and went over to help them lower some of the bags of meat below decks, and then to fill the sail’s food barrel from the remainder. He glanced around for Peck, then spotted him at the stern rail, stooping over another barrel to empty a sack of salt-yeast into it, and yelled to him. Peck tied off the yeast sack, dropped it to the deck and wandered across. He began to silently assist Pland and the others, while Ambel single-handedly hauled the heavy rowing boat up the side of the ship and tied it in position.

‘Leave a few lumps out on deck, lads. We might get us a sail tonight, then we can go after that other big’un,’ said Ambel.

There were groans from all of the crew — except for Peck, who was strangely silent.

‘You all right there, Peck?’ asked Ambel.

‘Buggered well shoulda gone with you,’ grumbled Peck.

‘Next time,’ said Ambel, giving the crewman an estimating look. ‘How’d you manage with the sea-cane?’

‘Barrel of cane and one of gourds,’ said Peck grudgingly.

‘Good,’ said Ambel, reaching out to give him a slap on the shoulder. ‘We’ll have some mash to sell at the Baitman when we get back, and later I’ll have you boil us up a batch of resin. Now get ‘em sealed and down below.’

‘He been all right?’ Ambel asked Pland, as Peck went to do as bid.

‘Bit noisy,’ replied Pland. ‘Shouting and muttering — but that’s nothing new.’

‘Mmm,’ Ambel nodded.

In the night, the boom of wings woke Boris from the light snooze he was enjoying while on watch. He observed the long neck and crocodilian head of a sail questing about below the mast, gobbling up the rhinoworm steaks deposited there. He then observed the curious sight of the sail dropping a half-chewed steak and staring intently out to the sea.

‘Who’s that?’ growled the sail.

Following its gaze, Boris saw that the molly carp had surfaced a short distance away and was now returning the sail’s stare. The sail clamped its mouth shut with a snap, and remained utterly motionless. It was almost as if the two creatures were engaged in a staring competition. Boris shook his head, dismissing the scene, and rested his head back against the rail. On the following morning, spread across the spars with meat digesting in its transparent gut, the sail — one of the largest Boris had ever seen — was ready for work.

It watched with interest as one by one the crew roused and came out on to the deck.

Peck came first up from the crew quarters, to empty a bucket of slops over the side, watch the commotion this caused in the sea below, and then urinate after it.

‘Mornin’, Peck,’ said Boris.

Peck merely grunted at him before heading to the water barrel for a drink, then moving on to his tasks about the deck. By the time Anne, Pland and some of the juniors came out, Peck had a brazier set up and was blowing on the charcoal in it. Every so often, he would stop to cough, or wipe at his watery eyes and mumble imprecations. Anne stood staring at him for a moment, arms akimbo and with obvious annoyance in her expression. When he finally noticed her she glared, took up the slop bucket he had left on the deck, and retreated below.

‘What?’ Peck asked Pland.

‘If you don’t know by now, you never will,’ said the crewman, coming over with a small jug and a hide bag. Peck shrugged and continued at his blowing while Pland poured oil into a pan and set it on the brazier. When Peck was satisfied with the glowing charcoal, and rocking back on his heels, Pland dropped square slices of boxy meat into the pan. The sudden sizzling and waft of savoury smoke across the deck was Ambel’s signal to come out of his cabin.

‘Ah, boxy,’ he said, then with a glance at Pland, ‘We got any of that Dome bacon left?’

Pland nodded and wandered off to investigate. Ambel watched him go, reflecting how it was strange that the stuff was still called ‘bacon’, it never having been within a light-year of a pig, or any other animal for that matter. He turned his attention now to the sail, who was audibly sniffing at the smoke from the pan and looking dubious.

‘How are you called?’ Ambel asked it, as was proper courtesy.

The sail turned its head towards him, and Ambel took an involuntary step backwards when he realized just how big the creature was. It exposed its teeth in what might have been a grin.

‘Windcheater,’ it replied, and all the crew on deck stood still with their mouths open. They’d never before encountered a sail without the name ‘Windcatcher’. True, they’d heard rumour of a sail that had actually grasped how a name could be an individual thing, but like so many other Hoopers, had dismissed the rumour as nonsense.

‘Only kidding,’ said the sail. ‘It’s Windcatcher really.’

They closed their mouths and got on with their work, quickly trying to forget this upset to the natural order of things.

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, sail,’ said Ambel, giving the creature a look. He had already noticed the bean-shaped device attached to the side of its head, and he knew precisely what it was.

The sail snickered and shook its wings.

Windcheater surveyed the ship with intense interest and recalled when, long ago, he had been here last. The Earther human woman had been aboard then, and he remembered how he had tried to bite her when she sneaked up on him to remove a sample of his skin. Memory of that brought back to him the memory of what had happened afterwards. The Captain, with some crew and the woman, had gone ashore, and after traumatic events he had only learnt about later, returned aboard carrying a certain box that was still here now.

Windcheater could even hear the whispering. The man he once threw from the top of the Big Flint was here now… in part.

The sail tested the movement of the spars and found that they were well greased in their sockets, and that there was little scope for slack movement between the three masts. Pulling on the reefing cables, he released the fore and aft sails and checked the movement there. Again, everything seemed fine. He lowered his head so as to inform the Captain, then abruptly pulled away from the smell of charring meat. He had never quite understood this human preference for incinerating perfectly good fresh meat prior to consuming it. It was like so many other things the humans did that he could not quite get a handle on. As he watched them eating their food, he thought back again to a time long ago.

Windcatcher had been the cleverest of all the sails and the most curious about these strange creatures that had descended from the sky, but the autoguns and intruder defences they had installed around the island they occupied had been enough to deter the most inquisitive, and thus the situation had remained for a very long time. Then had come internal strife, after the arrival of more of the same creatures, and the defences were gone and these creatures, these humans, came out into the world. Windcatcher’s curiosity became almost a painful thing when these humans built movable shells out of peartrunk and yanwood timber in which to float about on the seas.

At first he had flown at a safe distance, but sometimes close — especially in the night — and listened to the sounds they made to each other. He’d realized from the start that these sounds were a language much like that of the sails, and had quickly memorized it all. Learning what the words actually meant had taken somewhat longer, nearly one human century, and even then it had been difficult to grasp that they only had so few words to describe the wind. And as for names…

When Windcatcher had seen a ship drifting in the sea, without its sail of normal fabric, he had quickly grasped the opportunity this presented. Settling on the spars of the ship, he had gazed down upon the bemused crew and told them, ‘I am wind catcher.’ And so it had all begun. The other sails had soon joined him in this diversion — it was substantially more interesting than sitting on a rock discussing the weather. They, like the then original Windcatcher, had not grasped the concept that individuals could possess individual names and by the time they did, the tradition of them being called ‘Windcatcher’ had been established. The first sail to break with this tradition had been the original Windcatcher himself, when he had changed his name to ‘Windcheater’. But then he had always been one to break new ground.

After reminiscing, he accessed, through his aug, a communication channel that had been opened in the night. The first communication then being, ‘You still into dodgy artefacts, sail?’

‘Are you still there?’ he asked over the ether, still finding it difficult to talk without actually opening his mouth.

‘I ain’t going nowhere until this fucking fish has a bowel movement,’ replied Sniper’s irritated voice.

‘Aren’t you controlling that crazy carp, then?’

‘Nah, I’m recharging in readiness for that bowel movement. Molly here’s just got a bit confused, and seems to want to hang around the ship. Understandable, as it’s a long way from home. Tell me, how much you say the Warden’s paying you for this?’

‘A thousand a day.’

‘Yeah, thought so. But what the hell is there to see on that ship?’

‘Nothing much. I was hungry and needed a rest so I thought I’d stop by. The way I see it, the longer I’m out here, the more money I’ll get. If the Warden tells me to move on, then I will. Don’t see the point in putting in too much effort,’ said Windcheater.

‘You like the idea of wages, don’t you?’ said Sniper. ‘It ever occur to you that a few steaks is pretty cheap payment for the work you do as a sail? Without you, they’d need a fabric mainsail, extra rigging and extra crew.’

Windcheater blinked and surveyed the Treader. Boris was at the helm, steering the ship, but the others were scattered about the deck at minor tasks. That had not really occurred to him. Yes, over the ages he had seen the design of the Hoopers’ ships changing and, until this moment, had only viewed those changes as ones intended to more easily accommodate his kind. It seemed almost a reversal now to realize that the benefits were really a bit one-sided. Through his aug, he accessed a text on Hooper ships and sailing practices.

‘The crew-members all take a percentage of the ship’s profits,’ he said.

‘A sail could demand that, too’ said Sniper. ‘But, he’d probably have to agree to stay with the ship for the entire duration of the voyage.’ Sniper then transmitted the address of a particular site, and Windcheater studied with interest the sample work contracts there displayed. He decided then that, when the Warden was done with him, things were going to change.

The wound on her hip was now hurting less than the after-effects of the stun blast. Parting the burnt fabric of her trousers she saw that already the hole had filled with pink scar tissue, which was slowly welling to the surface of the wound. The Batians and Frisk, in their overconfidence in their abilities, had forgotten that she too was a Hooper with quite a few years behind her. Had she been a normal human, her surprise blows would have had no effect on the one called Svan — Batians were tough. Anyway, she had survived. The distant sound of a couple of explosions had long since faded, as had the wail of her house computer when it was blown. No doubt they had tried to either cut or blast their way through this door, but once it had closed she knew she was safe. The amount of energy required to penetrate a metre of what had so far only ever been described simply as ‘Prador armour’ — the superconductive and highly impact-resistant exotic metal that had been one of the reasons that ancient war had dragged on for so long — would have been sure to draw the attention of the Warden, and Tay was certain Frisk was not prepared to risk that. She wondered just what Frisk had thought about her having such an incredibly impervious safe installed here, but then Frisk did not know how valuable was the item Tay kept here. The historian grasped the edge of one of the coffin-cases to haul herself to her feet, then pressed her palm to the lock in the case’s surface.

‘Open viewing panel,’ she instructed.

In the surface of the case a rectangular section faded from shiny chrome to transparency, revealing that the case indeed served a purpose similar to a coffin. There had been no paintings here.

‘Well, I did get all of your features right,’ said Tay, gazing down at David Grenant. She then, with a stab of her fingers, initiated a touch-console beside the window and began studying the readouts. The feeding system was still being utilized and Intertox levels were being maintained — like this he could last almost indefinitely. She touched in a sequence she had not used in a little while, then waited. After a minute, Grenant’s face twitched — then, he opened his eyes. For a second he appeared utterly confused, then he started to jerk and shake and whip his head from side to side. She’d previously noticed how it always took him a little while to remember precisely what his fate was. Now she stared at him calmly as his silent screams frosted the underside of the viewing window. Grenant’s entombment had been one of the more imaginatively horrifying of Francis Cojan’s punishments, and Tay saw no reason to change that: it was history after all. She then reversed the touch sequence and he slowed to immobility and finally closed his eyes.

Glancing across at the other, empty, coffin-case, she contemplated the fortuitous workings of fate. When, if her plan evolved over many years came to fruition and she got to open her museum on Earth, this one exhibit would be the making of her fortune. Perhaps an additional exhibit would ensure this success. She smiled to herself, then sniffed at the air. First she had to get out of here, before the air — no longer renewed by the house computer — turned bad.

Tay pushed herself upright and limped over to the control panel she had used to close the door. There she paused. She had no way of knowing what might lie on the other side of the door. Frisk could be waiting for her, even though a few hours had already passed. Tay hesitated, and in that moment the opening light on the panel flickered, and she listened to the clicking as the lock mechanism disengaged. No, surely she hadn’t touched it. Frisk! Tay turned and stared in horror at the door, as it swung open. She would not now be able to close it again until it had reached its fully open position.

Grenant! She limped over to his coffin-case and slapped her hand down on the palm lock.

‘Open!’

Black lines quartered the lid of the coffin-case and those quarters began slowly to spin aside. Inside the case, Grenant was fully dressed, his fingers clawed above his chest, where he had been scraping at the lid. At his hip was an empty holster. Damn! She’d forgotten that she’d previously moved his weapon to the model she had constructed of him in the museum, mainly to prevent him trying to draw it and use it on himself here — the little projectile weapon would not have been sufficient to drill a hole in his coffin. She hardly dared look up now as the door clunked into its fully open position.

‘I thought you were advised to get away from here,’ spoke an irritated voice.

Tay stared out into the ruin Frisk and her Batians had made of her home, then focused on the object visible in the doorway. Here hovered an iron-coloured cockle, half a metre across.

It opened its bivalve shells to expose glimmers of greenish light as it spoke again. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ it said. Then, ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘Who are you?’ Tay asked, slapping her hand on the coffin’s locking mechanism.

‘I’m SM Twelve, the one they usually send to clear up other people’s messes,’ it informed her. ‘Now, I can see there’s quite a mess here. Perhaps, through me, you’d like to tell the Warden all about it?’

‘Close,’ Tay instructed the coffin-case, then watched it do so before moving away. As she walked to the door of the safe, the drone retreated into the room beyond and hovered in midair. With a touch, Tay had the safe door closing behind her, and then she stood surveying the wreckage. It was vandalism, plain and simple, like someone had gone berserk with a gas-system pulse-gun. The furniture was burnt, even the floor, ceiling and walls were distinctively scored, cabinets smashed. Books, some burnt and some still burning, were strewn all about, and the computer console was a hollowed-by-fire ruin.

‘It seems they had some sort of grudge against you.’

The voice that now issued from the mollusc drone was no longer its own, Tay realized instantly, but that is what it wanted her to know. Picking her way through the debris, she moved to the entrance hall — the drone trailing along behind her.

‘A grudge?’ she asked.

‘The Batian mercenaries that came here — presumably in search of Sable Keech,’ replied the Warden.

‘Oh, I don’t think they had a grudge,’ Tay replied, stepping out into soft green light.

‘There does seem an excessive amount of damage here.’

‘Not done by them, I should think. It’s not part of their remit. That lot,’ Tay gestured over her shoulder with her thumb, ‘was probably done by their employer, once she realized she couldn’t get at me. She has a long history of throwing spectacular tantrums. And now, of course, she’s quite mad.’

There was a long silence from the drone as Tay headed for her museum. Shortly before she reached the structure, the drone hummed ahead of her and zipped inside. Following it in she was pleasantly surprised to see no damage here at all. The drone was now hovering above the head of the Skinner, and together they presented a sinister apparition.

Tay stared up at it. ‘No explosives? No booby-traps?’ she asked.

‘None,’ now replied the voice of SM12 again.

‘I thought not. Her arrogance and self-regard would not allow her to destroy this, though her love of inflicting pain and terror would have let her destroy me — though she would have labelled it an act of self-preservation.’

‘Who is this employer you refer to?’ asked the voice of the Warden, quickly returning.

‘You haven’t worked that out?’

‘I have some idea, but I would like to hear the answer from you.’

‘Rebecca Frisk,’ said Tay, swinging her gaze down to the model of that very person. ‘She must have cored herself and swapped into another human body. It must have taken some deep re-programming to have whoever she put into her own previous body play the part of Frisk herself, but then she would have had access to Prador thrall technology, and without any compunction or moral restraint. She would have dearly relished breaking another’s mind and turning it to her own ends.’

‘The woman we thought was Frisk, and who was mind-wiped on Earth, was innocent, then’ said the Warden.

Tay wondered if the Warden was deliberately appearing to be slow for her benefit. Perhaps AIs sometimes found it difficult to assess the intelligence of the human minds they were addressing.

‘Well, now you’ve stated the obvious, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing at present. I have no real jurisdiction here.’

Tay grimaced and turned to glare up at the drone. ‘Do me a favour. Your average Polity citizen might believe that crap, but I do not.’ The iron cockle tilted itself towards her and its shell opened slightly wider. It was an action that could only be interpreted as a grin. As it closed again the Warden’s voice became significantly abrupt.

‘SM Twelve,’ demanded the Warden, ‘analysis.’

Tay could only assume that the AI wanted her to hear this conversation. There was no other reason for it to remain audible, since Warden and drone could communicate many thousands of times faster than human speech — or even become one entity.

‘The debris I analysed was that of a post-armistice Prador in-system cargo hauler. She probably used a small tactical to blow it, then under cover of the explosion jettisoned herself in an escape pod,’ explained the SM.

‘Olian Tay, why do you think she is here?’ the Warden asked.

Tay took a moment to catch up. Perhaps she was a bit slow.

‘To get to Keech, is my first thought,’ she said. ‘Then, again, she might be here to find her husband, or simply on a whim. Someone like her is not easily predictable. Why do you think she’s here?’

‘I cannot really say. It is difficult to assess such an ancient personality. But I do know that someone wanted it to be known she is here. Before confirmation of her presence by you, I have observed agents of untraceable employ disseminating rumours and stories of her arrival here. Curious, don’t you think?’

‘Must be some enemy of hers, then,’ said Tay.

‘Maybe.’

‘What else? You know what the reaction here will be?’

‘Oh, I know, and I observe it now,’ said the Warden. ‘Already the Old Captains have called a Convocation — no doubt to make arrangements to hunt her down and throw her to a leech swarm.’

Tay turned and walked out of her museum, and men stood glaring up at her tower.

‘I suppose the bitch destroyed my AGC,’ she said.

‘Do not despair, Olian Tay. Sprage is coming here for you even now, knowing you would not want to miss out on this.’

‘You told him,’ said Tay. ‘How did you know about this… to come here, I mean?’

‘Your house computer called me just before it died. It also gave me the locking code to your safe. Be well, Olian Tay.’

Tay glanced round at the drone as it came level with her shoulder. ‘Wait, you didn’t say why you thought Frisk might be here,’ she said quickly.

Just then the SM jerked, shaking itself like a wet dog. ‘Well, there he was, gone,’ said SM12.

‘Did he answer my last question?’ Tay asked.

‘The boss don’t know why she’s here, but says it could be any of three clear reasons or combinations of them: to kill Keech, to find her husband, or to the here. He says the last is a certainty — through her choice or otherwise.’ And with that, the drone gave her its green-light grin again and shot up into the air.