The Skinner Read online

  ‘You can buy the bite of a leech there for a few shillings. Cheap immortality you’d think, but a bit of a rip-off when all you have to do is walk into the dingle and stand under a peartrunk tree for a while.’ She glanced round at Keech. ‘I don’t suppose it would work for you though.’

  Keech clicked dryly for a moment before speaking. ‘That is debatable,’ he said.

  ‘Would you try it?’ asked Janer. He was giving the stall a strange look.

  ‘To become immortal I would first have to become alive,’ Keech replied.

  Janer glanced round at him again and wondered what he meant by that, but of course the reif’s face was unreadable. Erlin led them on.

  ‘That’s the place we want,’ she said, pointing at the plate-glass window of a shop set between a bar and a cooper’s establishment almost concealed behind the stacked barrels. Over the window of the middle shop was mounted a long barbed harpoon.

  ‘Big fish they’ve got round here,’ observed Janer.

  ‘You could say that,’ said Erlin, pausing at the shop entrance. As she pushed open the door, a dull bell clanked and two Hoopers inspecting something in a glass cabinet glanced up before turning back to each other and continuing their conversation.

  ‘You can pay in stages, Armel,’ said one. ‘I’ll trust y’ on a ship oath.’

  ‘I’ll think ’bout it,’ replied Armel, and with one last wistful glance at the case he hurried past the three newcomers and out of the shop. The shopkeeper rubbed his hands on his shirtfront before coming over to them. He grinned widely.

  ‘Polity?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Erlin cautiously, ‘but we’ve been here for some time.’

  The man’s grin lost some of its exuberance at this.

  ‘How can I help?’ he asked.

  Janer surveyed the wares in the shop. In the glass case was a neat selection of projectile guns the like of which he had only ever seen in museums. Around the walls were also sharp-edged weapons of every description. There was enough armament here to equip a small medieval army.

  ‘Stun guns and lasers,’ said Erlin.

  The shopkeeper’s grin widened again and he gestured to the back of the shop.

  ‘Are you sure we need this?’ asked Janer.

  ‘You saw that shell at the gate?’ Erlin asked him.

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘It was the shell of a frog whelk. One of those sees you, it’ll try to take a chunk out of you. It could take your hand off with one bite. Hoopers view them as amusing little pests. And there’s much worse.’

  From a locked cabinet the shopkeeper produced three hand weapons with belts and holsters.

  ‘Y’ can have lasers and stunners separate, but I got these,’ he said.

  Erlin picked up one of the weapons and inspected it dubiously. Keech stepped beside her and took up another weapon. He knocked back a slide control, opened the bottom of the handle and peered inside, then slammed it shut.

  ‘QC laser with slow burn, wide burst . . . the lot,’ he said. He glanced at Erlin. ‘These’ll do all you need.’

  ‘QC?’ Janer queried.

  ‘Quantum cascade; standard solid-state,’ Keech replied.

  ‘What about stun?’

  Keech tapped the stubby barrel set below – and off-centre of – the main mirrored barrel. ‘Ionic burst – good for up to about five metres,’ he said. ‘And,’ he studied the three weapons, ‘I will not be requiring one of these.’

  Erlin eyed him thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to the shopkeeper.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Two hundred shillings each.’

  Janer thought he must have got it wrong: surely he meant two thousand shillings?

  ‘You’re a robber and a thief,’ said Erlin. ‘I’ll give you two hundred for two of them.’

  ‘I’m a thief! I’m a thief! One seventy-five each, with the belts and holsters.’

  ‘Seventy-five each and I’ll tell no one how you robbed us.’

  ‘One hundred and fifty each, and for that I make no profit at all.’

  ‘One hundred, and may the Old Captains forgive you.’

  ‘I have a family! I have mouths to feed!’

  ‘One hundred.’

  The shopkeeper’s expression was one of outrage, but that expression swiftly disappeared when Erlin turned to leave. He caught hold of her arm and she turned back to him.

  ‘One hundred and twenty-five and you must tell no one how you have robbed me,’ he said.

  ‘Agreed,’ said Erlin with a smile.

  Janer opened his wallet, but before he could remove any money, Keech laid one bony hand over it. ‘You neglected to mention the required power cells. Does your price include them as well?’ he asked.

  ‘You are all thieves!’ shouted the shopkeeper.

  Keech stepped back and left the bargaining to Erlin.

  With the door to his cabin firmly closed, Ambel sat on his bed and stared over at his sea-chest, the bait meat held in his right hand like a bloody hankerchief. He tilted his head as if listening to something, then shook it in annoyance, before abruptly rising and stepping across his cabin to stand before the chest itself. With his free hand he opened the lid and took out an oblong box a metre long and a third of that wide and deep. This he placed on his table then took a key for the lock from his top pocket. After unlocking the box, he returned the key to his pocket, then stepped back a bit before flipping up the lid. The thing inside did not leap out, though there were signs of movement.

  It was blue and filled the box. It was a head. Once it had been a human head, but now it was so horribly enlarged, stretched out and distorted that it was difficult to recognize it as such. It was more like the head of some bastard offspring of a baboon and a warthog. Ambel stood and glowered at it as it shifted in its box, and one of its insane black eyes blinked open and returned his look. It was still alive, and he questioned the impulse that made him keep it so. That the historian, Olian Tay, had offered him a fortune for it, he now knew as incidental – he wasn’t keeping it for her. Perhaps he kept it out of sadism. No one could be more deserving of punishment than this . . . individual. Ambel dropped the piece of bait meat in the box and slammed the lid shut. Next time he looked, he knew the meat would be gone, as the Skinner retained a tenacity for life. After wiping his hand, Ambel locked the box then placed it back in his sea-chest before slamming and locking the lid of that. He left his cabin speedily, as one glad to be away from some unpleasant but necessary task. Peck was standing just outside, gazing at him strangely. He held the panga in his right hand and was spattered with purple blood and flecks of turbul meat. Even to Ambel he was a disquieting sight.

  ‘Turbul all chopped, Peck?’ Ambel asked.

  The crewman took a moment to reply. ‘How . . . is the bugger?’ he asked.

  ‘Alive,’ said Ambel. ‘Still alive.’

  Peck nodded slowly. ‘Can still hear ’im muttering,’ he said.

  ‘We’ll always hear that,’ said Ambel, reaching out and carefully slapping Peck on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get that turbul pickled and stowed, man.’

  As Ambel walked past Peck, the crewman stared at the door to the cabin with his face screwed up in an expression that might have been remembered pain or might have been longing.

  ‘How many barrels?’ Ambel asked Anne as she lowered a full net down to the hive of activity in the hold.

  ‘Twelve in all, with enough spare to do us for a week or so. Good run,’ she added.

  Ambel studied her face. The leech scars there had not detracted from her rugged attractiveness, and her long black hair showed not a speck of grey despite her many years. The virus affected different people in different ways. Some became wrinkled prunes with grizzled hair; some, like Anne, stayed at their peak; others lost all their hair and sometimes their teeth too. Ambel himself had been like Anne, long in the past. Over the numerous years since, he had, like many of the Old Captains, incrementally increased his muscular bulk. Now he had cro
pped white hair, a young-looking but wide face, and the overall appearance of someone who could snap deck timbers between his fingers – and it wasn’t a deceptive appearance.

  ‘We going after another run?’ Boris asked from below.

  ‘Nope, lad,’ said Ambel. ‘It’s a night moon and we’ve still got time to get to the sands. I don’t want all our barrels filled with turbul. It only pulls down a few skind and the market’ll be flooded.’ He looked up. ‘We go east,’ he spoke loudly so the sail could hear him.

  ‘Amberclams?’ asked Pland, picking bait meat from under his fingernails with a skinning knife.

  ‘Amberclams,’ Ambel confirmed.

  ‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘I thought you were thinking of a hunt.’

  Ambel grinned at him, then went below to help Boris and the juniors stow the barrels.

  The voice from his Hive link had a hint of buzzing behind it but Janer reckoned that was just showmanship. Hornets did not communicate by buzzing, and Hive minds certainly did not. He suspected that this ersatz buzzing was the mind’s idea of a joke.

  ‘I would like you to travel with this Erlin. I find her interesting,’ the mind told him.

  It wasn’t an instruction any more. The mind had ceased to issue instructions when his indenture had run out two decades back. The request, though, was backed by the promise of unlimited credit, travel and lack of boredom, and for Janer boredom could be a problem, as it was for so many Polity citizens now.

  ‘I thought you wanted me to stick with the reif,’ he whispered, conscious of the people all around him.

  ‘The reification, I suspect, will go with her. If he does not, he will find her again in the future. His story and hers connect.’

  ‘You haven’t told me his story yet.’

  ‘In good time, in good time. Let us watch this fight for the present.’

  The two Hoopers facing each other in the dirt ring had stripped naked and oiled themselves from head to foot. The crowd was baying for blood, yet there seemed an insincerity about their shouting.

  ‘You note that they strip off their clothing first,’ said the mind.

  ‘So?’ said Janer.

  ‘Their bodies repair themselves. Clothing has to be repaired.’

  Janer absorbed that and nodded to himself. A passing tout assumed the nod was for him and he turned to Janer.

  ‘Domby or Forlam? Shillings, yen, dollars – or skind if you have to. What bet?’

  The man was short and powerfully built. He seemed to have none of those distinctive Hooper leech marks visible on him. Janer recognized his accent as off-world.

  ‘What are the odds?’

  ‘Domby’s a three-fifty and Forlam a one-fifty, with an impressive list of recent wins. Thirteen to one on Domby for an E, and ten to one on Forlam for a pop. Either of them drops from a vaso, and you lose. The fight is two hours limited.’

  ‘I’ll put ten shillings on Domby for an E,’ said Janer.

  ‘Very good, sir.’ The tout looked worried as he wrote out a betting slip and accepted Janer’s ten-shilling note. Others in the crowd were eyeing Janer speculatively.

  ‘That was a high bet here,’ said the mind. ‘Your average Hooper would have to work half a year for such a sum.’

  ‘Really. If you know that much, perhaps you can tell me what Es, pops and vasos are,’ said Janer.

  ‘An E is an evisceration and a pop is a burst eye. A vaso is when one or both of the contestants collapse through loss of blood,’ the mind replied succinctly.

  ‘Oh, very nice. What are my chances of winning?’

  ‘You heard the odds.’

  Janer glowered at the two hornets in their case then returned his attention to the fight. Domby, whom Janer presumed to be the one showing the most leech scars, had stepped into the ring with a long curved dagger in each hand. Forlam then stepped in to face him. His weapons consisted of a stiletto and something that looked like an ice-axe. As soon as they were face to face, someone rang a dull-sounding bell. The volume of the shouting immediately increased as the opponents began to circle and feint. Domby was the first to get a hit. He opened Forlam’s arm through to the bone, and blood jetted for a moment before abruptly ceasing to flow. Forlam backed away then leapt forward to jam his stiletto in Domby’s stomach. In reply, Domby cut Forlam’s ear so it was hanging by a thread. Forlam managed a low blow that cut Domby’s scrotum in half. Five or six more blows followed before the two parted and circled again. Janer stood with his mouth open and a sick feeling in his gut as he watched Forlam shake his head in irritation and with his forearm press his ear back into place. When the Hooper moved his arm away, the ear remained in position again, if slightly askew. On the other side of this dusty arena, the crowd had parted round an off-worlder who was spewing vomit on to the dirt. Janer was a little harder than that. He’d seen some horrible things in his time, but this . . .

  Domby and Forlam went at each other again. There was blood all over the ground. Not huge amounts, as all their wounds bled for only a short time. Janer noticed that the wound on Forlam’s arm had nearly closed and that Domby’s scrotum was back together.

  ‘Illuminating, isn’t it,’ said a voice at his shoulder which he first took to be the mind’s until he turned to see Keech standing next to him. He was also glad to notice that those who had shown interest in him earlier when he had opened his wallet were now nowhere in evidence. The crowd had parted round Keech just as it had around the vomiter.

  ‘That’s one way of describing it,’ said Janer. ‘Erlin found her Captain yet?’

  ‘He’s not here, but she’s still trying to find out where he went,’ the reif said. He nodded towards the fight as another hideous wound was inflicted – and ignored. ‘It takes little imagination to visualize the damage these people could do off-world, had they the inclination,’ he said.

  ‘But they don’t,’ said Janer.

  ‘No, most of them don’t.’

  It took an hour for the fight to reach its climax. By that time, there were pools of blood everywhere in the dirt and Forlam was heading for a vaso. Janer did not see the move that ended the fight. Forlam had his back turned so Domby was hidden. The roar of the crowd alerted him before Forlam turned, dropping his weapons as he tried to prevent his intestines dropping out.

  ‘I think I’ve won some money,’ said Janer as the crowd began chanting ‘Full! Full!’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Janer asked.

  The Hive mind replied. ‘It means full evisceration, though I believe that to be a misnomer. According to the rules of this kind of match there only has to be one clear loop of intestine,’ it said.

  ‘What?’ said Janer, not quite taking in what he was being told.

  Domby continued after Forlam, and Janer soon found out precisely what the mind had meant. He came close to losing the beer and sandwiches he had consumed a couple of hours before. It wasn’t so much the sight as the smell that did it. When he finally felt sure he had his nausea under control, the crowd was heading off in pursuit of various touts, and Keech was watching him impassively.

  ‘You’d better hurry if you want to collect your winnings,’ the reif suggested.

  Janer nodded, looked around for the tout, whom he now saw surrounded by a small group of winners, and clutching his ticket he went over to collect. As he drew close, two ugly-looking Hoopers suddenly stepped in front of him. Both of them had knives like Domby’s.

  Janer halted, then stepped back. ‘OK. OK, I don’t mind,’ he said. A hundred and forty shillings was not worth the risk of suffering what had happened to Forlam. Nevertheless, the two thugs kept coming at him. For half a second Janer considered running, then he swung a fist at the nearer of the thugs. The man’s head turned with the force of the blow, but otherwise he seemed unaffected. He grinned at Janer as if to indicate that the blow had now freed him of any restraints.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Janer. This was going to get nasty. He stepped back slightly, spun on his heel and drove a thrust-kick straight i
nto the man’s stomach. He might as well have kicked a tree for all the effect it had. He backed off, trying not to put too much weight on a knee that was already beginning to ache. The thug was still grinning that same grin. Behind him, his companion just stood with his arms folded, and was smiling with nasty expectation.

  ‘Can’t we talk about this?’ Janer suggested.

  The thug slowly shook his head, and then abruptly moved in. Janer readied himself for the fight of his life. Suddenly there was a flash and a low thud. The leading thug staggered back and sat down. He peered with perplexity at the smoking hole in his stomach then glared past Janer. Janer glanced round as Keech stepped up beside him. He was holding in his skeletal hand a chromed gun similar in appearance to a Luger, only heavier, and with a longer barrel. He next shot the second thug, and put him on the ground too.

  ‘I’ll go for headshots if either of you tries to get up,’ warned the reif. The first thug, who had been considering just that, sat back down again.

  ‘Get your winnings,’ said Keech. ‘I hate people reneging on bets.’

  Janer stared at Keech, then at the weapon the reif held. This was why he had not required one of the QC lasers; what he held was a JMCC military-issue pulse-gun. Janer now cast his eye over the two thugs. One of them was poking a finger into the hole in his body, to see how deep it went. The reality of Spatter-jay was rapidly coming home to Janer. Perhaps it had not been such a good idea to put the weapon he had purchased earlier in his backpack.

  He took out his slip and advanced on the tout, who stared at him for a moment then began to reach into his jacket. A hand, deeply cicatrised with leech scars, reached down and caught the tout’s wrist.

  ‘Now now,’ said a pleasant voice.

  Janer gaped at the owner of that hand. This Hooper was big, shaven-headed, and blue with leech scars. He wore hide trousers and a thin shirt. Even his muscles had muscles. Janer wondered if he would even notice a punch delivered by an off-worlder. This one looked as if bullets would bounce off his skin and knives would bend and break on him. There was a boulderlike solidity about him, and a stolid assurance.