The Skinner Read online

  Encircling the island were ridges of reef shaped like the ripples from a stone cast into water. These reefs were navigable and it was possible to get to the island by ship, but few Hoopers bothered, or so Keech had been told. It was this piece of information that had resulted in, partially, his decision to bring his own transport here to Spatterjay. He came in over the reefs and circled the island. Eventually he saw a wooden jetty and beyond it a track cut into the dingle. From above, it was impossible to see where the track led, so he brought his scooter down on the stony beach between dingle and jetty. The track was too narrow for the scooter, so he dismounted and, with his carbine tucked under one arm and the three guard spheres following him, he walked into the tree shadows. Immediately, on either side of him, he could hear things moving in the foliage, and at one point caught sight of the glistening body of a leech the size of a man, heaving past. Nothing attacked him though and he wondered if he was being over-cautious.

  The track eventually led to a clearing. The earth here was completely bare of growth and Keech assumed it had been poisoned, so verdant was the surrounding dingle. At the centre of the clearing stood a short stone tower with satellite dishes mounted on a pylon on the roof. Also on the roof, he could see the edge of an AGC of a very old design. In the walls of the building were wide mirrored windows, and along one side was a conservatory with sun lamps mounted inside. The glare of the Earthlight seemed harsh and crystal in contrast to the natural greenish light of Spatterjay’s sun. To one side of this conservatory was a single steel door with an intercom set beside it. Keech headed across the poisoned ground to the door. Only out here in the open could he see the autogun on the roof tracking his progress. He ignored it.

  The intercom buzzed and clicked then a woman’s voice babbled, ‘What do you want? What do you want?’

  ‘Information,’ said Keech.

  ‘An important commodity, but all the same something that can be acquired in great quantities from AIs, libraries, and even, dare I mention them, books,’ replied the voice.

  ‘You are considered the greatest authority on the history of Spatterjay.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yesss and I know who you are, corpsey. Deactivate your balls and enter.’ This the woman followed with a giggle before going on in more sober tones, ‘My house won’t let you in still armed, so be sure you are not, Sable Keech.’

  Keech held up his hand, and through his aug transmitted an instruction. The guard spheres settled in his palm and he placed them on the ground. He put his other weapons down next to them and by the time he was standing again, the door was open. He entered a narrow hall and stood still while a scanning light traversed his body. There was a long pause, then the woman spoke again.

  ‘My house is a fucking moron!’ Another long pause. ‘You may enter now.’

  The scanning light flicked off and the door at the end of the hall opened. Keech walked through into a luxuriously furnished room that was walled with books. The woman sat at a desk against one wall with a computer screen switched on before her. She spun round on her chair and looked him up and down. He in turn inspected her.

  She appeared young, but then that could be a matter of choice. She had long black hair in a plait down her back. Her figure under her toga was lush and running to fat. Her skin had Hooper leech marks on it and revealed somewhat more of a blue tinge than he had so far seen. He guessed she had not been eating enough Dome-grown foods to prevent the mutation the Spatterjay virus could cause. ‘Going native’ was the Hoopers’ way of describing it, and they were most reticent about the result.

  ‘Why is your house a moron?’ Keech asked her.

  The woman stared at him in open confusion, then after a moment seemed to recover her senses. She shook her head and stared down at the floor of polished quartz.

  ‘It thinks all your metalwork is weaponry. Doesn’t realize it’s just to stop you falling apart.’

  She grinned at her little joke.

  ‘You’re Olian Tay,’ said Keech.

  ‘Yes I am!’ She leapt to her feet and suddenly had a manic look about her.

  Keech watched her silently for a moment, before speaking slowly, enunciating every word. ‘You need Dome-grown food. You are going native.’

  Tay held her arms out in front of herself and inspected them. ‘Pretty blue,’ she said.

  ‘Very pretty,’ said Keech, then, ‘I won’t take up too much of your time. I just need information.’

  Tay turned and dropped into her seat again. ‘It’s all here; the definitive history of Spatterjay.’ She waved her hand at the screen. ‘But you have to pay.’

  ‘I’m a wealthy man,’ said Keech. ‘I’ve had money invested for a very long time.’

  Tay shook her head. ‘Money money money.’

  She shook her head again then stared up into the corner of the ceiling.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Hungh?’

  ‘What do you want, I said?’

  Tay’s gaze suddenly fixed on him and her soberness returned. ‘You’re right. I need supplements.’

  She stood and quickly strode across the room to a cabinet. She opened it and took out a bottle, uncorked it and drank deeply. Draining it completely, she dropped it on the floor, and then, as if forgetting that she was not alone, she dropped on to a sofa, lay back, and closed her eyes. The thick smell of garlic permeated the air.

  Keech walked to her and stood over her. She opened her eyes and glared at him.

  ‘Go away,’ she said. ‘Come back in an hour.’

  ‘Will your house let me back in?’

  ‘It will. It knows what you are now.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘A cop who won’t even let death stop him from making that last arrest.’

  Keech nodded and gave an approximation of a smile. He turned away and headed for the exit, and before he reached it, Tay was already snoring. Taking up his weaponry outside the house, Keech checked off the time in his aug and decided to look around. His patience had been centuries long, and in some places was a matter of legend. Another hour or so would make little difference to his quest. Ten minutes brought him to Tay’s museum of grotesqueries.

  At first, Keech thought he was seeing some kind of storage tank half-swamped by dingle. The thing was cylindrical, about ten metres high and three times that in diameter. There were no openings visible to Keech in its dull blued-metal surface until he had walked almost past it. Then he saw an archway nearly concealed by plaits of brown vines which sprouted silvery-green leaves like hatchet blades. He checked the vines for any lurking leeches, turned on the auxiliary light on his laser carbine, and then ducked inside, the guard spheres following like mechanical blowflies. Inside he found he did not need the light on his carbine, as fluorescent light globes were activated by his presence. For a moment, though, he thought he might need the other functions of his carbine.

  It stood four metres tall and looked like a man who had been stretched on the rack for a hundred years. It was blue, monstrous, spidery and impossibly thin. Its hands were insectile and its head was a nightmare. This model – for model it was – seemed like something out of Hindu demonology. Keech advanced until he was standing right below it, and there gazed down at a brass plaque set in the floor. The plaque said simply ‘The Skinner’. Keech moved past this weird exhibit to examine the first of three rows of glass cases.

  ‘Full Thrall Unit’ read the first plaque, but did not well enough inform of this example of Tay’s obvious taste for the grotesque. Inside the case was a seated human skeleton with its skull bowed forwards. The top of the skull had been neatly cut away to show a metal cylinder that had been driven in through the back of the skull. From this cylinder, metal spines, like bracing struts, connected all around inside the skull, and from the end a glassy tube curved down into the spine. The second display showed one of these cylindrical units completely disconnected and mounted on a wooden pedestal. Further along was a bowed skeleton with a cylinder of grey metal clinging
to the back of the neck vertebrae with its jointed legs. The plaque here described this device as a ‘Spider Thrall Unit’. A touch-plate set into the plastiglass of the case turned the whole case into a holographic display. Keech recognized ancient scenes from the Prador war – of humans killing the mindless human ‘blanks’ that were the Prador’s slaves. He moved on to the next item, then the next. These were all familiar to him as he had been alive at the time of the war, and had been involved in police actions then. He had held a weapon like this one, he had tried to release people from slave collars like those, and he had witnessed people dying in precisely that way . . .

  The next case contained items that were more esoteric. ‘Ten-Week Viral Mutation’ was etched into the plaque before a skeleton of a human that had made it halfway to becoming the monster he had seen on entering this place. ‘Feeding Tongue’ was a pink tubular object suspended in a jar of clear fluid. There was no other explanation. What else there was in the case he never discovered, for then something in the third row of cases immediately caught his avid attention.

  ‘Jay Hoop’ nicknamed ‘Spatter’.

  The man was tall, handsome and saturnine, with black cropped hair and eyes that were almost black. He was posing in an ancient environment suit, holding a short flack rifle that rested on one shoulder. The details of the model were perfect, down to the small hook-shaped scar below his right eye and the semiprecious stones sewn below the neck-ring of the suit. Keech studied the model long and hard, then moved on to the next in the row of eight cases. He was on his third circuit of the cases when Tay’s irritated voice spoke from an intercom.

  ‘Did you come here for information or to gawp? I’d have thought you knew their faces well enough by now.’

  Keech nodded to himself then returned to exit the arch. As he ducked out, he was lost in thought until something thudded on his shoulder. The leech struck just as he slammed his hand on it and pulled it away. One of the guard spheres went through the leech in mid-air, cutting it in half and puffing out a spray of ichor. Stepping away from the arch, Keech triggered his carbine and with one flash turned the two writhing segments to smoking ash. After a moment, he reached up and touched his neck. His fingers came away wet with the balm that ran in his veins.

  EXTERNAL CUT – MINIMAL: SEALING, came the message from his aug through his visual cortex. Of course, he felt no pain, just an awareness of the damage done to him.

  The sand banks and packetworm corals receded into the distance, but still the ship seemed surrounded by islands. Seated on the stool he had brought out on to the main deck, with his blunderbuss primed and loaded on his lap, Ambel watched a humped mass of sargassum drift close past the Treader. On this tangle of rotting stalks and gourd-like bladders, swarmed creatures like huge circular lice, and the clicking movement of their hard sharp legs could be clearly heard across the water. It was for these that Ambel had loaded his ’buss. Nasty-tempered creatures were prill; Hoopers had been known to lose their lives to them, a rare event in itself. The crew stood in readiness also. Peck had his pump-action shotgun out of its wrapping of oily rags and Anne had her automatic. Pland had only a large hammer, and a cauldron lid he used as a shield. His rifle had exploded the last time they’d had to fight off a swarm of prill, blowing a lump out of his forearm. He had been very annoyed as he’d liked that rifle. Boris, of course, was at the helm, but ready to leap across to the deck cannon. And the juniors, those of the crew who had recently joined the Treader and had yet to become able to afford any armament that was more effective, waited with pangas and pearwood clubs. The sail had rolled itself up to the highest spar and was watching proceedings with great, if pensive, interest.

  As soon as the smell from the sargassum reached the crew, there was an immediate relaxing of the tension. The smell of rotting vegetation was strong, but not half so strong as the smell of putrefying flesh. The prill that had not already fed were in the process of devouring a large carcass lying tangled in the decaying weed. Ambel stood up to get a better look, and saw the body of a huge crustacean, something like a lobster, but with more fins and adaptations to oceangoing life. Its shell had the beautiful iridescence of mother-of-pearl.

  ‘Glister,’ said Peck, stating the obvious.

  ‘That shell’d fetch a skind or two,’ said Pland.

  ‘Nearly as much as a pearl,’ said Peck, giving Ambel a look.

  ‘You want to go get it?’ asked Anne.

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘All right lads, back to your stations,’ said Ambel. He looked at the sail. ‘You too.’ The sail unfurled its wings and grasped the spars. The light wind belled it and it turned the rig of the ship in consonance with Boris’s spinning of the helm, and the mast chains and cogs clunked below. Ambel went on, ‘Peck and Pland on the harpoons and ropes. You take the nest, Anne. ’Nother couple of hours and we’ll be out of this and heading for the feeding grounds, I reckon.’ Ambel carefully eased down the hammer on his ’buss and lowered its butt to the deck. The weapon, which weighed half as much as a man, probably had more firepower than Boris’s deck cannon. Anne moved to the sail’s head as it came down to the deck. She stepped on to it, grasping the creature’s neck in her right hand, and it lifted her towards the crow’s nest.

  ‘Feeding grounds, I’ll be buggered,’ said Boris, mimicking Peck’s tone to perfection. As she rose past him, Anne laughed then holstered her automatic.

  ‘Look at it this way,’ said Ambel, addressing them all after hearing the comment. ‘We get a good haul and we won’t have to go out during all the ice season. It’ll be sea-cane rum and Dome grub for a six-month.’

  ‘More like crawling ashore a stripped fish,’ muttered Peck.

  Ambel looked at him. ‘Skin feeling a bit loose is it, Peck?’ he asked.

  Peck swore at him, but the other senior crew laughed anew. Junior crew were puzzled by this exchange, so Ambel assumed they had yet to hear Peck’s story. He smiled to himself. It was always like this before a hunt. The lads would thank him afterwards. When had things ever gone wrong, he tried to ask himself without irony.

  The Treader continued on its course, its sail turning to catch the best of the wind and muttering about feeding times, and the yellow and brown islands of sargassum slowly sliding behind it.

  Skin feeling a bit loose, thought Peck, and the thought made him itch. He scratched himself whilst gazing back from the rail towards Ambel, as the Captain ducked into his cabin to put away his blunderbuss. He didn’t know, in fact none of them knew what it was like. He glanced at the fabric foresail and saw that it had snagged part of the way down its slide.

  ‘That needs sorting,’ he said to the junior who was helping him, and indicated the jammed sail. The woman nodded to him and headed for the mast, taking up a hammer from one of the tool lockers as she went. She quickly climbed the mast and hammered at the slide mechanism until the lower spar dropped into place, pulling the sail taut. Peck lowered his gaze to the cabin again and felt the overpowering need to reveal what had been hidden, something that the Skinner had been about to reveal to him.

  Come.

  He could feel the call in the marrow of his bones and in the heart of everything he was. What would it be like to be . . . like that? What secrets were hidden?

  ‘Those harpoons won’t sharpen ’emselves, Peck,’ said Pland, in the process of coiling up one of the harpoon lines as he strolled past. Peck glanced at his fellow crewman and wondered if he felt it too.

  ‘Pland, do you—’

  ‘Peck! Those harpoons won’t sharpen themselves!’ bellowed Ambel as he stepped out of the forecabin.

  Pland grinned at Peck and went to untangle another line. Peck squatted by the rail where the harpoons were racked.

  ‘Buggering leech hunt,’ he muttered to himself. The hold was nearly full of barrels of pickling turbul meat, and they had four full barrels of amberclams which would spoil if they weren’t back in port within the week. But Ambel always wanted that bit extra before the bergs started sliding down
from the north. Admittedly, they often did well, and because of this were often in the chair at the Baitman. Their ‘luck’ had even once enabled them to afford a laser, but with the rocky exchange rate of the skind, they had been unable to afford replacement power packs for it, so had swapped it for a deck cannon. Luck. Peck snorted – how many times had he seen Ambel do that pearl trick? Anne and Pland had only been with the Captain for the last thirty years, so they were not yet wise to his ways. Still grumbling, Peck reached into the pocket of his long coat and took out his sharpening stone. The harpoon blades weren’t that blunt, so there was no point unscrewing them to give them a proper going over. Peck ran the back of his hand along one razor edge until it bit in and there was a brief spurt of blood. Hardly need sharpening at all.

  Come . . .

  Tay was still lying on her couch when Keech walked in and stood before her. He glanced at one of the chairs opposite her but did not sit until she waved him to it with an irritated gesture.

  ‘They’re self-cleaning,’ she said.

  Keech blinked as his irrigator worked on his eye. It had been his experience that often people did not like a walking corpse sitting on their furniture.