The Skinner Read online

  Sprage folded the contract and dropped it into his top pocket. He nodded slowly. ‘You’re a wise sail.’

  Windcheater tilted his head for a moment and his eyes crossed. When they uncrossed, he said, ‘The Warden tells me that this trip is not yet over.’

  Sprage paused in his rising from his chair and stared at the sail questioningly.

  The sail went on, ‘Captain Ron has called the Convocation to the Skinner’s Island. The Skinner is out and it has been revealed that Captain Ambel is in fact Gosk Balem.’

  There came exclamations of surprise from the crew – but Tay was curious to note how Sprage displayed no surprise at all.

  ‘That old chestnut,’ he muttered.

  Disdaining assistance, Keech clambered aboard the Ahab and moved quickly to his hover scooter. One-armed, he began to loosen the ties holding it to the deck. His other arm, though cell-welded and now without gashes, was still bruised and painful. Ron, as soon as he was aboard, walked up to the sail. Behind him, Boris, Goss – and other crew who had not wanted to be part of the coming quest – climbed aboard.

  ‘There’s fresh meat over there on the Treader. Will you go over there for us?’

  ‘Might,’ said the sail.

  ‘How can I persuade you?’ asked Ron.

  ‘Boxy meat. I like boxy meat,’ said the sail.

  ‘Well, we can always get that,’ said Ron.

  The Captain had heard of the sail called Windcheater, but not how he behaved. Had he heard, he would have been unsurprised, Windcheater was unique, but not that unique. Ron turned from the sail as it furled itself and climbed to the top of the mast, and faced Roach, who had snuck up beside him.

  ‘What’s happenin’, Cap’n,’ said the little man.

  Ron gazed down at him, then at the juniors who gathered beyond him.

  ‘Ambel is Gosk Balem, and the Skinner’s out, and we’re going to the Skinner’s Island to kill it – and also have a Convocation to decide whether or not we throw Ambel into a fire.’

  Roach squinted at him. ‘No, but really, what’s happenin’?’

  Ron gestured to Goss and Boris. ‘They’ll tell you all you need to know. Now, can I trust you, Roach?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Roach, sticking his chest out.

  Ron eyed the little man dubiously before going on. ‘OK, I want you to stay here. As soon as another sail comes along, I want you to follow on as fast as you can. No stopping for meets, and no going after turbul. This is important,’ he emphasized.

  ‘Aye, Captain,’ said Roach trying, but not managing, to not look sneaky.

  Ron then turned to Boris. The crewman was sombre, and Goss, who walked at his side, looked annoyed.

  ‘You might think different when you hear what he’s got to say.’

  ‘No,’ said Boris. ‘Gosk Balem ran the furnace. My dad went to the furnace.’

  Ron nodded then stood, staring pensively out to sea, with his thumbs in his belt, as if unsure of what to say next. After a moment, he freed one thumb and pointed.

  ‘That,’ he said, ‘is one very persistent molly carp.’

  They all gazed out at the humped shape in the sea – between themselves and the nearest atoll.

  ‘It crossed with us earlier. Had a go at a leech we got. Helped us get the Captain back in when he fell in the sea,’ said Boris. ‘Probably head back to its island in the night – unless there’s good hunting here.’

  ‘Helped Ambel in?’ asked Ron.

  ‘Well, we think so,’ said Boris.

  Ron turned to Roach. ‘Keep an eye on it. You never know what one of them might do. I’ll be off.’ He turned and walked over to Keech.

  ‘Ready?’ he asked.

  Keech nodded and climbed on to his scooter, Ron climbing on behind him. Keech lifted the scooter from the deck and, one-handed, guided it out over the sea to the Treader, which was already turning into the wind.

  ‘You’ll hold to your promise?’ Ron asked as Keech slowed the scooter over Ambel’s ship.

  ‘I’ll not kill him yet,’ said Keech.

  ‘You may change your mind when you hear what he has to say,’ said Ron.

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Keech.

  With the wind blowing through her hair, Rebecca Frisk stared out over the waves, and smiled happily. Come the morning, she would have the pleasure of slowly cutting Sable Keech into pieces and feeding those pieces to the frog whelks. This pleasure would be somewhat marred by the fact that Keech had long been beyond pain – but there would always be others on hand to satisfy that need. She hoped Keech had a partner to whom he had some meaningful attachment. If not, then the crew of his ship would have to do. She smiled again as she contemplated what she might do. The disadvantage in torturing a Hooper was their high resistance to pain: it took huge injury to cause sufficient pain to elicit a scream or two from them, but the advantage was that Hoopers could survive huge injury. Burning was the best method of torture. Over a slow fire, a Hooper could last for days.

  Frisk started to mentally recount the many slow fires she and Jay had lit, but her pleasurable contemplation was interrupted.

  ‘All stop! All stop!’ Svan yelled from the front rail. ‘Hard to port!’ She shot past Frisk to Drum, whose hand was on the control lever, and tried to pull that lever over. With interest, Frisk studied Drum, as Svan tugged at the Captain’s hand. There was a sudden rending crash and the ship shuddered to a halt. Tors yelled as he flew over the front rail. Frisk and Svan fell and slid across the deck to the side as the ship tilted.

  Something huge thrashed in the sea in front of the ship. The vessel slewed sideways, and Frisk heard the sound of many hard, scuttling feet. Tors began to scream.

  ‘Too fucking fast!’ Svan yelled, then looked up as a number of hard disk-shaped creatures leapt up on to the rail, red dots of eyes skating round their rims.

  ‘Prill!’ Frisk shouted from where she lay. Then laughed, drew her pulse-gun, and began shooting down at them. Svan rose to a crouch and drew her own weapon. After their volley of fire cleared the rail, she leapt to the edge of the cabin’s desk and looked down to one side. Below her, oozing past the side of the ship, a great glistening body heaved, and over its surface swarmed eager prill. On that slick surface, a vaguely human shape thrashed and screamed as the prill tore it apart. One creature made a run that uncoiled intestine. Another three were fighting over an arm that swiftly detached.

  ‘Tors,’ Svan whispered, then began firing again, but within a moment she did not know where to aim as Tors came apart and the prill fed on pieces of him all over the back of the giant leech. The ship lurched again as the leech itself began ponderously to pull away.

  ‘We’re flooding!’ Shib yelled up from the lower deck.

  Svan, hearing the panic in his voice, knew he was losing control since that damned whelk creature had taken his fingers off. She went over to Frisk and dragged the woman to her feet. ‘We have to use the AG,’ she said.

  Frisk laughed in her face, and Svan slapped her. Abruptly Frisk became sober. She backhanded Svan across the chest so Svan crashed through the back rail to the lower deck. There she lay stunned. Augmentation? She wondered, as Shib got to her side and helped her sit up. She leant against him and struggled for breath.

  ‘We’re sinking,’ said Shib, sweating. He had his handgun drawn.

  ‘Get to the motor. Turn on the AG. We’ve no choice now,’ Svan gasped.

  Shib nodded and ran for the hatch.

  Svan tried to stand, but for a moment could not manage. Beside her hand, the deck suddenly burst into flaming splinters. She looked up at Frisk, standing in the gap of the broken rail and waited for the killing shot. It didn’t come. More prill swarmed up on to the deck and instead Frisk started shooting at them.

  ‘Fucking lunatic,’ muttered Svan, and dragged herself towards the hatch. Once she reached it, she fell through, catching a rung with her hand so she turned and came down on her feet on the tilted floor below.

  Shib was waiting for her. ‘Tors?�
�� he said.

  ‘Dead,’ she replied.

  He nodded and looked up towards where they could hear Frisk still blasting away at prill.

  ‘She’ll have to pay,’ he said. He held up his hand with its missing fingers. ‘And for this too.’

  ‘Later,’ said Svan. ‘Four thousand grams of Prador diamond-slate, remember? We complete the contract, collect our payment, then we burn her.’

  Shib nodded, but his attention was wandering.

  Svan peered down towards the bows of the ship, where water gushed in and timbers were groaning.

  ‘Let’s get that AG going,’ she said, and the two of them headed up the sloping deck to the motor. Once they reached it, Shib popped the casing, and Svan flipped down a control panel underneath. She hesitated over the controls.

  ‘There’s no other way,’ urged Shib.

  ‘Might bring the Warden down on us, and we don’t need that,’ replied Svan.

  ‘Better that than swimming in this sea,’ said Shib.

  Svan nodded and punched a control. The ship juddered, and spillover from the field made her face tingle. The motor now produced an AC hum and the creaking and groaning of the ship increased. Svan watched the fixings bolted into the keel of the ship. If those tore free, the motor would smash through the deck above, before it righted itself. But they wouldn’t tear free: she had done them herself. When the ship heaved again, she regained her balance before making further adjustments to the motor controls. The field tilted, and now the ship was coming level, pivoting at the point of those fixings, which loaded them even more. The gushing of water into the bows ceased for a moment, and then went into reverse. Svan made a final adjustment to the control panel, then closed the cowling over the motor. She stood up as the flooring finally levelled out.

  ‘I’ve set it to lift us clear by about a metre,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and look at the damage.’

  She pulled her weapon and walked to the bows, Shib following a pace behind her, and it irritated her that his breathing sounded heavy with fear. He’d never seemed xenophobic before. Yes, it paid to be cautious around the lethal fauna of this planet, yet the creatures here were nothing compared to an armed human – and he had dealt with plenty of them.

  Frisk reluctantly holstered her weapon when it seemed she had disposed of the last of the prill. The ship was level now and the water quite a way below the rail. She stared at it for a long while before she realized what had happened. She thought about why it had happened – thought about some of her decisions over the last few days. She cringed inwardly and pressed a hand to her throat.

  ‘What’s happening to me, Jay?’ she asked.

  But Jay wasn’t there to answer her, nor to back her up, and sometimes she just did not understand why this was so. They had been happy on that Prador world hadn’t they? Why had he felt it necessary to leave, in the end? Why had he been so angry with her? Yes, sometimes she had behaved a bit irrationally, and of course that was to be expected: you couldn’t live together for as long as they had without sometimes encountering something like that. It had been her idea that maybe their crimes could be forgiven and that they could return to Earth which had thrown him into his rage. In retrospect she realized that had been a silly idea, but his reaction had been excessive.

  She remembered him sneering at her. ‘Another excellent idea from your superior mind, dear. I would put that on a par with your one about opening a gallery on Circe. Do you think for one second that ECS has stopped searching for us? Do you think for one second we can breeze easily through the Polity avoiding both capture and getting mind-wiped?’

  ‘But Jay, darling—’

  ‘I used to enjoy your little whims and sudden enthusiasms. I think I ceased to enjoy them the moment you ceased to be you. Why did you do it? Why the hell did you do it?’

  ‘Jay, darling.’

  ‘Don’t touch me. You disgust me.’

  There was a taste like iron in her mouth that she tried fruitlessly to spit away. That she had no longer possessed the body he loved, she understood. But, in the end, it had been because she no longer had the same mind. She gave a dry laugh and squeezed tears from her eyes, but, deep inside she knew she was going insane. Because she’d lived too long in a body not her own, she’d seen and caused too much horror, she’d lived too long amongst aliens, and because – in the end – she’d lived too long.

  Janer stepped over the wreckage of the door and into the cabin. He reached down and righted the chair to which they had tied Keech, then carried it to the desk positioned below the brass-rimmed portal. He sat down and studied the two sealed flasks contained in a rack clamped to the edge of the desk. Each flask contained a number of red rhomboidal crystals resting under a clear fluid. He removed a bung from one of these and sniffed at the pungency released. It reminded him somewhat of old coffee, perhaps with a background of something putrefying.

  ‘Just one crystal?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the mind, and Janer wondered if he was imagining a touch of avidity in its voice.

  ‘I suppose that if I don’t get it for you, you’ll get hold of it some other way.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the mind.

  ‘I’m not going to do this,’ said Janer, reinserting the bung and tapping it home with his forefinger.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve worked out what you’re up to. “Get me a sample of that unusual substance in Ambel’s cabin.” Do you think I’m entirely stupid?’

  ‘I do not.’

  Janer sat back in his chair. ‘Why do you want to go this route?’ he asked.

  ‘Power,’ explained the mind. ‘It was tried before using curare. That failed, and the hornets in question were wiped out. The mind concerned still hasn’t regained its consciousness. But it is the way.’

  ‘The same could happen again,’ said Janer.

  ‘Not here,’ said the mind. ‘This is a primitive society. It will work.’

  ‘Well, not with my help,’ said Janer. He stood, pulled the small jewelled Hive link from his ear, and dropped it in his pocket. He gazed at the two flasks of fluid out of which pure sprine was crystallizing, shook his head, then left the cabin. Once outside, he climbed up to the cabin-deck – to go and listen to a story.

  ‘Captain Sprage,’ said Ambel looking round at Ron. Ron nodded from where he leant against the rail. Ambel turned to face the sea again. Gathered behind him, on the main deck, were Keech and Erlin, Forlam, Pland, Peck and Anne, and behind them, the rest of the crew. Even the sail had extended its neck so it could turn an ear to what Ambel said.

  ‘It was him named me Ambel, and I’ve always thought he knew.’

  ‘We should ask him.’

  ‘Yes, we should – now. I’ve always been afraid to before.’

  ‘Is there a point to this?’ asked Keech flatly. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Ambel since mounting the cabin-deck. His right hand rested on the butt of his pulse-gun. In his left hand he held three steel spheres.

  Ambel stared at him. ‘Gosk Balem was a slave, then he was slave master. He became like Hoop and his crew because that was the only way to survive here then. Slaves were regularly cored, and had their cored brains and spinal columns thrown into a furnace. It was just like Hoop to put Balem in charge of that furnace,’ he said.

  ‘You should know,’ said Keech, bitterly.

  ‘But I don’t,’ said Ambel.

  ‘Explain,’ said Keech.

  ‘You came here with the ECS force that freed those slaves that hadn’t already been cored. But you weren’t as prepared as you ought to have been, and Hoop and all his crew escaped. So Hoop, Frisk, Rimsc, the Talsca twins and Grenant escaped off-world. They left Gosk Balem behind to face the consequences of his actions. The surviving slaves hunted him for a hundred years, and he was finally caught out here, by Sprage and Francis Cojan, who later went on to form the Friends of Cojan, whom you yourself knew.’

  ‘I knew Cojan himself,’ said Keech. ‘He got hold of the Talsca twins and b
oiled them alive.’

  ‘I heard that,’ said Ron. ‘What happened to him, then?’

  Keech turned and stared at Ron.

  ‘Batian mercenaries got him with a thermite bomb,’ he said. ‘But only because he allowed it. He was tired of the running and tired of the killing. He told me this only days before his death, when he transferred all his funds to one of my accounts.’

  Ambel nodded then continued. ‘When Gosk Balem was caught, the first Convocation was called. All the slaves were by then captains of their own ships, and the population here was swelled by their children, and by off-worlders coming through the gate. The Convocation decided unanimously to carry out the ECS sentence of death on Balem. They didn’t have sprine then, and at Cojan’s instigation they decided against burning. They decided instead to throw him to the leeches that were swarming at the time. On the dawn of the following day, they took him to the rail of Sprage’s ship and threw him into the sea. He screamed for four hours before he went under. The Convocation was broken and the Captains went their separate ways, assuming Balem was dead.’

  ‘Evidently he wasn’t,’ said Erlin. Janer studied her, wondering what she now thought of her Captain.

  Without turning round Ambel said, ‘No, Erlin, he wasn’t. The durability of the older Hoopers was something not fully understood then. The leeches fed on Balem’s skin and outer flesh, whittling him down until he was a stripped fish. He was just like a turbul or a boxy – only a turbul or a boxy that can experience pain. Pain of that intensity drove him insane. I have no doubt he wanted to die, yet having the fibres in him, his body could not die. He fed, on boxies, turbul, whatever. He regrew flesh, nerves, skin – regrew them, and had them eaten off him again and again. This went on for five years. In that time he died in the only way he could die. His mind died.’

  Ambel gazed around at them with a haunted expression. ‘My first memory is of Captain Sprage standing over me and asking, “Jesus, is he alive?” I’d been harpooned and hauled out of the sea. I was almost skinless and had very little muscle. In places I was right down to the bone. I was told later that I then had a leech mouth rather than a tongue, and that I took a chunk out of Sprage’s forearm. They tied me to the mast and fed me mashed Rhinoworm steaks and Dome-grown corn. The leech mouth slowly turned back into a tongue. It took only ten minutes or so before my lungs readapted to taking oxygen out of the air rather than out of the sea, but it was a couple of days before I was able to scream again. I screamed for a while, but even that uses too much energy, and apparently I stopped after an hour or so. It was two weeks before I’d regrown all my skin and muscle. Sprage then asked who I was and I had no reply for him. I didn’t even have language – I had nothing. I was an infant who had to be taught not to shit on the deck. Sprage taught me how to speak, taught me how to read, how to learn. I was on his ship for twenty years before I got some intimation of who I might once have been.’