The Skinner Read online

  ‘Get a cask up, lads,’ he yelled generally. ‘You know how thirsty Ron can be.’

  And general laughter greeted this comment, though it was subdued.

  The rowing boat approaching from the Ahab had six people in it. Ambel immediately discerned the large, bald-headed shape of Captain Ron at the tiller, and he guessed the two at the oars to be Forlam and Goss. The other three were dressed like off-worlders, and for a moment he didn’t recognize any of them.

  So he felt a momentary flush of pique when Boris recognized her first.

  ‘It’s Erlin!’ the crewman yelled from the nest.

  Ambel squinted his eyes at the Earther woman. The last time he had seen her, she’d told him he was dead inside, and she seriously doubted if he was human any more. He wondered what she wanted of him now. Was she starting to comprehend things beyond her own small compass? Was time now doing to her what it had done to him so long ago? Ambel doubted it. He shook his head and concentrated his attention on the other two off-worlders. The blond-haired man wore the utile clothing of a seasoned traveller, and he wore it with the casual air of one who had not just donned it. That one might be an interesting person to meet. The other man looked ill – or as if recovering from a long illness. He was bald and scrawny, though his bone structure was that of a heavy-worlder. He was wearing monofilament overalls – utile garb again, but the kind worn by Golem androids and the like: individuals that did not worry too much about either the temperature or their appearance. Was there something familiar about this man? Ambel felt the nag of memory and a surge of both apprehension and excitement. Perhaps he was from before? No, unlikely: there were few off-worlders of that age. Ambel tried to dismiss these thoughts, but he still felt a nagging doubt.

  The boat clunked against the side of the ship and greetings were shouted back and forth as a rope was thrown up for them to secure it, then a ladder lowered. Ron was first over the rail and Boris thrust a jug into his hand. Ron downed it in one and handed it back for a refill.

  ‘How are y’, Peck m’boy!’ he bellowed at Peck, after he had bellowed greetings at each other member of Ambel’s crew.

  Peck just stared at him, and Ron turned to Ambel.

  ‘Still a bit . . . y’know?’ he asked, making a wiggling motion with his hand.

  Ambel nodded.

  Erlin was next over the rail and, while each member of the crew greeted her, she kept her eyes fixed on Ambel. When he winked at her, a slow smile spread across her face. Goss immediately started to come on to Boris, and Boris suggested showing her around the ship. Anne stared speculatively at Forlam, then filled a jug and took it over to him.

  Ambel watched the blond man as he came over the rail assisting the bald one up behind him. The look blondy gave Erlin told Ambel all he wanted to know. He allowed himself a little smile, as it wasn’t important. He stepped forward to greet the two new off-worlders.

  ‘Welcome to the Treader,’ he said.

  With deep-blue eyes the bald man stared at Ambel, and an immediate shock of recognition ran between them.

  ‘This is Janer Cord Anders and this is Sable Keech,’ said Erlin, still smiling.

  Ambel had only time to raise one hand before the first energy pulse slammed into his stomach. The next burnt a hole in his chest and the next blew away part of his shoulder. Collapsing, he turned and ducked to protect his head. Another pulse hit him in the back and he lost it for a moment. As he came to, he groaned and rolled over, agony blurring his vision and sapping his strength.

  He looked up to see Keech glaring at him with flat hatred, while he tried to bring his weapon to bear again. Ron, Forlam, and Boris were all three having trouble restraining him, which was very surprising. His struggles against them lasted only so long as it took Ron to get a hand free to slap him on the side of the head. As Keech went down, Ambel tried to rise, but that was not a good idea. He felt the blood draining from his face and just had time to see Erlin crouching over him, peeling open a drug patch, before he lost consciousness for the second time.

  Keech regained consciousness to find himself roped in a chair, with his head throbbing and an ache in his torso that evidenced the fact that someone had put the boot in as he went down. He sat for a moment with his teeth firmly clenched against the vomit that threatened to rise into his mouth. As the nausea slowly started to recede, he tested the rope and found it strong enough to restrain his human muscles. Next, he found that direct brain-to-cybermotor link that had nearly killed him, and tried again. This time the ropes stretched and the chair creaked. But still he did not have the strength, augmented or otherwise, to free himself, so he scanned the cabin for some other means of escape.

  No knife was lying handy on the desk and there were no useful sharp edges anywhere else, as was to be expected in a ship’s cabin. There were cupboards that might contain something he could use, but what chance did he have, without being heard, of manoeuvring his chair to one of them and opening it? So he waited and, as he waited, he became aware of a sound . . . or something like a sound. The sea-chest by the wall drew his attention. Before he could wonder what it was about this chest that increasingly riveted his attention, the door slammed open and Ron stomped in.

  ‘Give me a reason why I shouldn’t let the boys chuck you to the leeches,’ growled the Captain.

  Keech tested his bonds again then let out a sigh. ‘My name is Sable Keech,’ he said.

  ‘I know that, but it don’t sound like reason enough for me.’

  The Captain was angry, and Keech knew what damage an angry Hooper of his age could do. He suspected that if he didn’t explain himself soon, he wouldn’t even reach the sea in one piece.

  ‘I first came here seven hundred years ago, with the ECS mission that released Hoop’s slaves. I was part of the attack force that raided Hoop’s stronghold – and I was the one who subverted the program running the slave collars Hoop was using.’

  In shock, Ron stared at Keech, then stepped back and sat down on the sea-chest. He shook his head, appearing confused for a moment, then realized where he was sitting and abruptly stood again.

  ‘Keech?’ he said. ‘I came here after the war, but I know about you.’

  ‘I’m the same Keech who killed Frane and Rimsc, and I can recognize one of the Eight no matter how scarred and changed they may be. Ambel – a ridiculous anagram. So you don’t recognize him, even though you were present when the ex-slaves threw him into the leech swarm,’ said Keech. He spoke with the calm of utter certainty.

  ‘Gosk Balem,’ whispered Ron.

  Keech awaited some explosive reaction, but there came none. Ron looked thoughtful for a moment, then he shuddered. He rubbed a hand down across his bare chest, where the leech scars were thickest.

  ‘Are you going to release me now and let me finish what I started?’ asked Keech.

  After a moment Ron said, ‘No.’

  Keech felt a momentary sick anger. Had he misjudged? Could it be that Ambel was not the one he thought him to be? Or was Ron not who he thought either? So many memories crowding in his mind – so many to sort, to know.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because he’s not Gosk Balem,’ said Ron.

  ‘What makes you so sure of that?’ Keech sneered.

  Ron advanced to stand over him, placed his hands on the arms of the chair.

  ‘It’s the sea, Sable Keech. It takes.’

  With that, he turned from Keech and left the cabin. Keech stared at the door for a moment then slowly began to work his arms and legs against the rope. Motor and muscle. He broke skin and ignored the pain. The chair began to creak. From the sea-chest there came sounds of movement – and that other sound, that whispering.

  Keech worked harder at loosening his bonds, a sudden ludicrous idea occurring to him as to what was inside that chest.

  12

  The third male glister – the last one of this particular family had he but known it – was feeding with the female upon a turbul the size of a rowing boat. It sensed that something w
as very wrong, just before a hawser of a tentacle wormed into view, coiled and crushed the female, then snatched her backwards, squealing, through the murk. This last remaining male fled as fast as his flat tail and paddle legs could propel him. Another tentacle whipped out and slapped his side, cracking his armour, but driving him beyond the predator’s reach. The monstrous whelk was unconcerned about this escape, as it crunched down the female glister, then turned its attention to the plenitude of turbul corpses and their concomitant crop of leeches and prill. Perhaps it should have been more concerned about the heirodont, irate at having been deprived of the giant whelk it had been pursuing, and now ascending through the waterfall of organic detritus in the hope that its source might quell the grumbling of its gargantuan stomach.

  With so many eyes keeping watch for it in so many places, the Warden did not feel any guilt in allowing its attention to stray beyond Spatterjay to observe such momentous events. In this particular observation it was not possible to easily maintain a direct link, so it created a submind ghost of itself that it sent hopping for lightyears: from runcible to runcible and onwards to AI ships and ship’s drones, until it reached its destination. Here, as just one of many thousands cramming together to view one scene, it watched through the eyes of a Golem – linked by virtual fingernails – while the essence of the ghost ran itself in the huge processing spaces of the thinly disguised AI battleships poised above the Prador world. It recorded the momentous events, the AI reactions and net-space discussions, and relayed them back to itself every few seconds – a veritable age in AI terms.

  A hundred Prador transports were parked along the edge of the flat, and salt dust glittered in the eddies of air disturbed by the cooling of their engine cowlings. Grand Prador adults, with their retinues, were gathered in protective groups on the cracked and pinkish hardpan: trusting each other less than they trusted the ECS monitors and the sector AI which, in the form of this Golem, had come to negotiate and hopefully agree terms.

  ‘There can be no meaningful dialogue between us while this continues,’ said the sector AI. ‘Would you ever consider trade with us if it was our habit to use Prador carapaces as receptacles in which to take our ablutions?’

  The concerted reply from the gathered Prador was both amused and angry. The Warden noted an open message sent by one of its fellow AIs to its homeworld, informing certain high-ranking humans to ‘lose the decorative bathroom suites’, and the brief discussion that followed would perhaps have shocked some humans who considered AIs to be without humour.

  They settled down, though, when the speaker standing out in front of the Prador addressed the sector AI. ‘Would you deprive us of our hands?’ asked the male human blank on their behalf.

  ‘You had hands before you encountered humankind,’ replied the Golem, ‘and your own cyber technologies could provide you with hands more efficient than those of human blanks. In truth it has become only a matter of status amongst you.’

  After a long pause came the concerted reply through their speaker. ‘We must discuss this.’

  Humans, Golem and AIs together watched while Prador shifted about like huge draughts on some unseen board. A couple of shimmering fields flickered into existence and there came the stuttering crackle of a single railgun. One Prador, surrounded by its children, and attended by more blanks than most of its contemporaries, hissed out a bubbling scream and crashed to the hardpan as its AG cut out. Control units on its outer carapace detonated, and that carapace deformed and cracked, flinging fine sprays of dark fluid across the salt.

  Railguns now opened up again, and blanks and second-children exploded into a mess of shell, flesh and numerous legs. By now the humans where hazed behind projected fields, and autoguns were spidering out of the heavy-lifter and up its sides to get an open field of fire on the assembled Prador. A single first-child ran gibbering towards these screens, until a missile hit it from behind and the explosion separated upper carapace from lower. Its lower half ran on for a little while longer, perhaps not yet realizing it was dead, then it keeled over like an unbalanced pedestal table. Before the human side could feel sufficiently threatened by this violence, the speaker blank held up a hand and spoke, his voice amplified all around.

  ‘The discussion is ended. We now feel we can negotiate,’ he said.

  Erlin kept Ambel unconscious while she worked on his wounds. She didn’t need to work to save his life, only to prevent the formation of ugly scar tissue, and to do this she had to cut again and again in a race with the rapid healing of his fibre-filled body. Had Keech managed a headshot, the Ambel she knew would have been dead and what remained of him would not have been human. Sprine would have then been administered, and the corpse buried at sea with all due ceremony. As it was, the Captain was bound to recover. Even with these wounds, Erlin reckoned on the healing process normally taking about a day and a night. But Ambel had obviously suffered other injuries recently, as his body weight was down and there was an excessive blue tinge to his skin. She allowed him to wake just after she finished repositioning the flesh of his shoulder and as the wound there closed like a startled mollusc.

  ‘Erlin . . . who is he?’ he asked.

  ‘Goes by the name of Sable Keech. He claims to be an ECS monitor over seven hundred years old. He was a reification until only a few days ago, so that might be true. The bastard. I saved his life and he goes and does this. His brain must still be rotten – probably thought you were Hoop or something.’ As she spoke, Erlin searched Ambel’s expression with a kind of desperation.

  ‘He isn’t Hoop,’ said Captain Ron behind her.

  Erlin turned to see the Captain and Forlam entering the room. Forlam held a length of black cord she recognized as something used in ship wedding ceremonies and divorces. Ron nodded and Forlam stepped up beside her. He reached down and tied one end of the cord around Ambel’s wrist.

  ‘What the hell!’ Erlin yelled.

  She moved to stop him tying the cord, but Ron caught hold of her shoulders and gently pulled her away. Ambel watched impassively as Forlam bound his wrists together. Erlin tried to understand what was going on. Surely they knew that nothing less than a steel hawser would hold Ambel. Forlam stepped back after he had tied the final knot.

  ‘By my right as member and captain,’ said Ron formally, ‘I call you before Convocation, Captain Ambel. I want your parole until the time of the Convocation. Do you give it?’

  ‘I do,’ said Ambel.

  Ron made a cutting motion with the edge of his hand. Ambel snapped the cords binding him. Ron turned back to the door, with Forlam following him.

  ‘Do you know, then, Ron?’ Ambel asked.

  ‘I know,’ said Ron, without turning.

  ‘I’m not him any more. It was five years, Ron.’

  Captain Ron turned and stared at him. Erlin thought she had never witnessed such an expression of horror on an Old Captain’s face. She thought there was little in the world that could produce such an effect on such a man.

  ‘You’ll tell it, then,’ said Ron.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘No, the monitor must hear it as well. He’s owed that.’

  Ron went on his way. Erlin noted that Forlam appeared as confused as she herself felt.

  The rope stretched just enough for Keech to slide his hand free, but it only slid because he had lubricated it with his blood. As he held it up before his face to inspect the damage he had done to himself, the sounds from the sea-chest became more audible. Keech then worked on the knots tying his other wrist to the chair. His lack of fingernails made the task a lot more difficult than it should have been. Small nubs of nails were already growing from the quick of his fingers, but they were of no use as yet. He also found that his skin was too soft. It was like a baby’s skin and – yet to thicken and acquire the calluses of age – it was easy to tear. He swore quietly as he persevered.

  Keech had almost worked his left hand free when he noticed how the noises from the sea-chest had ceased. With his skin crawling, he slowly
looked up and peered across the room. The lid of the chest was partly raised, and two evil black eyes were watching him. As the lid rose higher, Keech tried not to believe what he was seeing. His chest felt constricted and painful and that tightness was only relieved by a hiccuping hysterical giggle.

  The thing crawled out of the chest and landed with a heavy thump on the floor. It made a snorting sound, then rolled over on to the six spatulate limbs it had grown. Keech felt the urge to giggle again, but the giggle dried up in his throat when the thing rolled its lips back from jagged blades of teeth that it licked with an obscene black tongue.

  Then it hissed, and Keech started yelling.

  Frisk occupied her time by luring leeches to the side of the ship with lumps of the sail’s feed, then hitting them with her pulse-gun. When she eventually got bored with this game, she dropped a weighted line overboard and, after a number of tries in which she caught only boxies, she managed to hook a frog whelk from the seabottom. This she pulled up and swung on to the lower deck, to see how her pet mercenaries would react to it.

  Tors saw it first and laughed at it, as it tracked him with its stalked eyes. He pointed it out to Shib who laughed too, until it jumped the entire length of the deck to land next to him, then leapt again to take off a couple of his fingers. Shib yelled, swung his weapon to bear one-handed, and blew the whelk to pieces just as it jumped again. Later, as Shib stomped about the deck with a dressing on his hand, Frisk wondered how, some time soon, she might lure in a prill or two. That would make things more interesting.

  ‘We have something,’ said Svan, coming up the ladder.