The Skinner Read online

  ‘Information,’ she said. ‘I only trade in information.’ She closed her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know what I can give you,’ said Keech.

  ‘You know why I know your name,’ she muttered. ‘Give me something unrecorded. Give me something about the eight that I don’t know.’

  Keech was silent for a long while. Eventually he said, ‘Aphed Rimsc killed me and threw my body into the Klader sewers. It took a week for them to find me, and six months of court actions after that before they acted on my will and handed me over to the cult. Do you want to hear about that?’

  ‘Thoroughly documented. You’d signed up as a member of the cult of Anubis Arisen some years before. Limitations of mortality, I suspect. There was a legal suit brought to try and prevent your reification, but the cult backed you all the way. I also know that same suit was brought by Rimsc himself,’ said Tay. She had less of a blue tinge to her skin now.

  Keech went on, ‘Rimsc died when the seal on his spacesuit failed outside the Klader space habitat. His body wasn’t reclaimed because the resulting blowout flung him towards Klader. He burnt up in atmosphere before anyone could get to him.’ Tay opened her eyes and waited. Keech continued, ‘What is not known is why his suit seals failed. They failed because they were eaten away from the inside, just as he was eaten away inside the same spacesuit. Somebody put a pressure-activated vessel of diatomic acid in his oxygen supply. When his oxygen got below a certain level, the vessel opened and flooded his suit with acid vapour. It must have been a very unpleasant death, especially for a Hooper.’

  Tay sat up. ‘There were rumours about it, but nothing was confirmed. You’d been reified by then hadn’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Four days,’ said Keech.

  Tay smiled. ‘What do you want to know then?’ she asked.

  Keech moved over to one of the armchairs and sat. He steepled his bony fingers before his face and regarded Tay with his single blue eye, as his irrigator sprayed, moistening the eye. His face was immobile.

  ‘I know about Rimsc, Corbel Frane, the Talsca twins, Gosk Balem, and David Grenant. I don’t know what happened to Rebecca Frisk or to Hoop himself. For two hundred years I’ve been chasing rumours and myths. When they don’t come to nothing, they lead back here. Tell me what you know.’

  Tay looked up to the ceiling. ‘House computer, make a copy of the Rebecca Frisk file to crystal.’

  The computer on the desk beeped and a small crystal popped up out of the touch-console. Keech glanced across the room at it. His face twitched and his eye irrigator began working double time.

  ‘You know it was her and Hoop who started out together. From what I’ve been able to put together they started as art thieves on Earth. From such little acorns . . .’ explained Tay.

  Keech continued to stare at the crystal. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said.

  Tay said, ‘Frisk walked into the ECS building in Geneva on Earth and told them who she was. When this was confirmed she requested a mind wipe, which she was duly given. After that they gave her a basic overlay personality and she was sent back here. The Friends of Cojan snatched her halfway and fed her into a zinc smelter.’

  Keech sat back. ‘The Friends are still about? They helped me trace Rimsc.’

  ‘No, they are not still about. This was three hundred years ago. ECS kept a lid on it, but I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. You were an ECS monitor before you were killed. Surely you had contacts?’

  ‘I never bothered much about her. She was the least of them. What about Hoop?’

  ‘No . . . Now I want something more from you. Tell me about Corbel Frane.’

  ‘I found him on Viridian, in a castle he had occupied for five hundred years,’ said Keech. ‘He was a living legend there, and it was difficult for me to get to him. The first time I managed to get through his defences I cut him in half with an industrial shear. His staff sewed him back together again and he was walking within one solstan year. I didn’t make the same mistake again. I used Junger mercenaries to assault his castle and when he escaped, I pursued him to the summit of mount Ember. Even an old Hooper cannot survive immersion in magma.’

  Tay nodded. ‘I like that,’ she said. ‘You realize I’m recording this meeting.’

  ‘I didn’t think otherwise.’

  ‘It doesn’t bother you?’

  ‘There is no statute of limitations on the things they did, and I am still officially an Earth Central Security monitor. They were all under sentence of death, whether physical or mental. Now, what do you know about Hoop?’

  Tay abruptly stood and went to the wall cabinet. She removed another bottle of the substance she had drunk earlier. This time she filled a glass before returning to the sofa with it.

  ‘Holodrama and VR has them as lovable rogues and dashing pirates. Time will do that to even the most heinous of villains,’ said Tay as she collected her thoughts.

  ‘You’re telling me this? Hoop and his crew were murderers and thieves. They used this world as their base and the immortality the virus here conferred on them, enabled them to terrorize this whole sector for two centuries. They stole and they killed, and they sold humans to the Prador cored,’ said Keech. His words were flat, without inflexion.

  Tay looked at him carefully. ‘You were on the mission that came here at the end of the war, weren’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘I was. And the things we witnessed here have made me what I am. I will not rest until they are all dead. I will not stop.’

  ‘So there’s only Hoop for you to get. What happens when you do get him – when you’ve killed him?’

  Keech looked down at the lozenge of metal on its chain around his neck. ‘Option one is that I die completely,’ he said. ‘I am exploring other options.’

  ‘That is a changer nanofactory?’ said Tay, pointing at the lozenge.

  ‘It is. Tell me more about Hoop.’

  ‘The mission you were on drove Hoop and his crew from here and scattered them. With their wealth and the experience of a couple of centuries of life, they established themselves in niches across this sector. The Talsca twins and David Grenant were hunted down and killed by the Friends of Cojan. It’s believed they were lowered feet-first into boiling water.’ Tay stopped talking when she saw Keech nodding.

  ‘I can confirm part of that,’ Keech said. ‘I knew Francis Cojan quite well. He kept a holocording of the event that he showed me. But I only saw the Talsca twins on that recording. It took them a long time to die and they died hard.’

  ‘I see . . . Gosk Balem returned here and died in the sea. Hoopers who were the direct descendants of slaves the Eight kept here, or were original slaves themselves, threw him into a leech swarm in Nort sea. That one is well documented. Frane and Rimsc were the ones you tracked down. Frisk and Hoop fled from the sector and lived on a world in Prador space for fifty years. That comes from Frisk. She left him there and just went and handed herself over to ECS. Attack of conscience? There seems no other explanation.’

  ‘And Hoop? What about Hoop?’

  Tay looked at him very directly.

  ‘Hoop is here,’ she said.

  Keech said nothing. He moved not at all.

  Tay went on, ‘A hundred and sixty-three years ago a craft was detected by the Warden. It went into orbit and attempted a sea landing. It was a very old craft. Unfortunately the Segre atolls got in its way and it crashed. The wreckage was found to be that of the Prador landing craft Hoop favoured – the craft he called Bucephalus. There was blood in the craft and it was Hoop’s. There was no trace of Hoop himself.’

  ‘It is not certain that he is still here then,’ said Keech.

  ‘It is. No spacecraft have come to Spatterjay since. The only way out is through the runcible gate on Coram, and the Warden monitors that. Humans might forget criminal activity. AIs forget nothing.’

  ‘He could be dead, then?’

  ‘He might have been injured enough to bleed, which is unusual for an old Hooper, but he is the oldest Hoop
er in existence, perhaps a thousand years. What do you think?’

  ‘Rumours?’

  ‘I’ve heard a few. Some have it that he is operating as a ship captain. Others have it that he went native and became something . . . horrible. Have you heard the legend of the Skinner?’

  Keech gave a slow nod, remembering the thing in Tay’s museum.

  ‘The Skinner is a creature that lives on an island and traps any ship Hoopers who land. It seems the one goal in life of this creature is to strip Hoopers of their skins and leave them to suffer in agony for months. The story goes that a lone Captain and an off-worlder went to the island and beheaded the creature, and that this Captain is now said to carry the living head of the Skinner in a box on board his ship. This way the Skinner can never pull itself back together sufficiently to cause the pain it once did. Its living body alone would just be that of an animal. This all happened at the Segre Islands, which have for some time been known as the Skinner’s Islands.’

  ‘And this creature, this Skinner, is supposed to be Hoop?’

  ‘Supposedly. Your best course of action now would be to speak to some of the Old Captains. Tell them who you really are. They’ll respect that.’

  ‘Would a Captain Ron be one of the ones I should talk to?’

  ‘Oh yes, definitely.’

  ‘And a Captain Ambel?’

  ‘Yes, he and Captain Ron are two of the oldest.’

  ‘Original slaves?’

  ‘So it’s rumoured.’

  ‘Why aren’t there more of them?’

  ‘Many left Spatterjay. It’s an interesting world but it has its limitations for people entering the latter half of a thousand years of life. Many stayed and died. This world is dangerous even for Hoopers. Many more killed themselves. There’s a poison here manufactured from the digestive tract of some of the larger leeches. It neutralizes the virus, and acts on the Hooper body much like that favourite of yours: diatomic acid. A Hooper taking this stuff will come apart in a matter of minutes – spectacularly.’

  Keech stood and gazed towards the door. Then he stared at the data crystal Tay had made him.

  ‘If you’ll permit me,’ he said, ‘I’d like to run some searches through your databanks.’

  Tay smiled almost hungrily and gestured to her console. ‘Stay as long as you like. I’m sure there is much more detail you can fill me in on.’

  Keech watched her for a moment, then moved over to the console and sat down. He pressed the data crystal back into place then viewed what it contained on the screen.

  Tay stood and walked up to stand behind him. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘describe to me exactly how it was when Aphed Rimsc killed you.’

  The woman gazed out across the salt flats to where a plume of dust cut across a range of yellow sandstone buttes. Soon this plume opened into a line, abruptly terminating as the approaching transport turned to head in. Like most Prador methods of transportation, this vehicle, when revealed, bore a close resemblance to the passenger or passengers it carried. It was a ridged teardrop like a spidercrab’s carapace, with antennae and sensor arrays mounted to the fore and grab claws folded up as ribs underneath. Beyond this, though, the similarities ended. The transport was bright red and had weapon turrets bulging from the sides. The pictographs of the Prador language adorned every surface, and this vehicle could really move. Behind it the clouds of salt crystals rolled on and settled, and as the vehicle came past the demesne, a double sonic crash shook the crystal windows before the following cloud obscured the view.

  The woman turned from the window and for a moment inspected one of her collection of paintings. This particular canvas depicted a similar scene to the one she had just witnessed, and it had been painted by the previous resident of this house, being, as far as she knew, nearly a century and a half old. Next to this was a painting of a man and woman standing on a monolithic rock and staring out to sea, while things that might have been seagulls circled above them. She frowned at this picture before moving to the bar, pouring herself a drink, and then heading out on to the balcony. Here she watched the transport slow and turn. The taste of salt in the air was sharp on her tongue and she sipped her cool-ice to wash it away. Between two security posts the shimmer-shield flickered and went out, and the vehicle coasted in over the blue grass lawns and ornamental ponds. With the rumbling and decreasing whine of thruster motors, it settled by the ramp provided for Prador visitors. The woman went back inside to her comunit to see if there had been any communications yet.

  ‘Councillor Ebulan requesting audience,’ said the voice.

  The woman looked at the face of the human blank on the screen and recognized it as one she had herself provided. She couldn’t remember the female’s name, but then what did it matter what name you gave a human shell? To the Prador, a blank like this would just have the title ‘Speaker’, as so many did.

  ‘I’m always glad to see the councillor,’ she said. It would have been impolitic to refuse to receive him. Even with all her wealth, she was still regarded as a second-class citizen of the Prador Third Kingdom. She finished her drink and went into her bedroom. There she discarded her robe and moved to stand before the wall mirror. Still good, after all this time. She had made the right choice with this body. The subject had been a beautiful woman with just the right combination of athleticism and femininity. Before coring, she had apparently been the daughter of an ECS monitor known to that damned Keech. A surprising discovery had been her virginity. The woman smiled at the memory and went to her wardrobe to select appropriate garb.

  Three blanks walked up the ramp before the councillor drifted out. Ebulan was an old Prador and all his atrophied legs were gone. He was simply a carapace shaped like a flattened pear with a scalloped rim. Antennae clustered round his fore, and an arc of blood-red spider eyes arrayed the turret front of what might be called his head. Shell-welded to his underside were the four polished cylinders of his AG units. Underneath the slow grind of his mouthparts had been welded the hexagonal control boxes. The woman counted fifteen of them, which meant he controlled fifteen human blanks. In Prador terms this was a sign of prestige: Ebulan was wealthy enough to own fifteen cored humans and had the mental strength to run them all, through their thrall units, simultaneously.

  The central blank of the three – the speaker the woman had seen, now clearly identified by pictographs tattooed on her body – stepped ahead of the other two. The woman noted the armour on the other two, and the heavy hand weapons they carried. It wasn’t hard to work out what they were for. Prador adults were meticulous about their personal safety. Prador adolescents, who were slaves to their parents’ pheromones, and human blanks, had mostly fought the war.

  ‘Greetings,’ said Speaker.

  ‘And to you, Ebulan. It’s been a long time,’ said the woman.

  ‘What is time?’ Ebulan asked through the mindless speaker.

  The woman smiled and fingered the human-skin jacket she wore.

  ‘Obviously I am honoured by this visit, but I am also curious,’ she said.

  ‘A social visit,’ said Ebulan, ‘and a small return of favours.’

  ‘Then please, enter.’

  The woman turned and led the way up the ramp. The three blanks followed her. Then came Ebulan, and after him came three adolescent Prador. Two of these were a twentieth of Ebulan’s size and each walked on six long legs. Folded underneath each of them were four arms ending in their hugely complex manipulatory hands, and in front of them were their heavy crab claws. These sexless creatures were loyal to their masters only while they remained sexless. Most Prador now used humans rather than their own kin, who were unpredictable and could not be as loyal as something mindless and under direct control. All high-level Prador like Ebulan had guards of some kind, since Prador politics was never less than lethal. All of the cored humans here, but for the speaker, were heavily armed. The third Prador adolescent was much larger than the others, and his coloration was deep purple and yellow. The woman realized that this one w
as not much longer for adolescence but unlikely to attain adulthood. No doubt he was soon due to have his legs stripped and his shell broken, which was the destiny of most of his kind.

  Settled in the room of her demesne especially reserved for Prador visitors, the woman and Ebulan exchanged pleasantries for as long as it took Ebulan to have his blanks check out the whole area and position themselves. Once he was satisfied a rival had not predicted the visit, and no traps were laid, Ebulan settled down on his AG units.

  ‘Something has occurred,’ said Ebulan through the speaker.

  ‘Please tell me,’ said the woman.

  ‘The reification has returned, at last, to Spatterjay.’

  The woman sat very still as a thousand memories shrieked for attention. She felt a brief nausea as her central core went into nerve conflict with the body she had stolen.

  ‘Does this not interest you, Rebecca?’ asked the councillor.

  Rebecca Frisk turned and gazed out of the crystal windows towards the salt flats. Keech – always damned Keech. Even after sending her own body, fitted with the brain and spinal column that had been in this current body, to ECS, she could not be safe while he . . . existed.

  ‘He’s still alive,’ she stated.

  ‘I wonder who you mean,’ said Ebulan.

  Frisk glared at him. ‘I mean Keech.’

  ‘Problematical,’ said Ebulan. He shifted on his AG units as if uncomfortable.

  Frisk ignored that and stared out of the window again. ‘Eight contracts and a hundred subcontracts from them, and every one a failure. Two of them were taken up by Batian stone killers. That bastard almost found out about me when he smeared them,’ she said. She turned to Ebulan. ‘Does he know about Jay?’

  ‘This I was not able to determine.’

  ‘He will.’

  5

  Having the ability to taste one part in a million of fresh ichor in the water, also possessing the thickest armour and the most efficacious mouthparts of any of the marine predators there, glisters were rapacious predators and assiduous scavengers. The four – a female and fertilizing males one to three – descended from their slimy home underneath a clump of decaying sargassum, and with tails flicking and flat legs extended as stabilizers, homed in on the delicious taste of dead or dying whelks, and that slightly hormonal hint of turbul in a feeding frenzy – that time in which the big fish became rather careless. The ever-spreading cloud of broken shell, fragments of flesh and essential juices, had lured to its perimeter a shoal of boxies, which fed with frenetic determination and a careful eye on the surrounding depths. As the glisters closed, the boxies fled, but the great crustaceans weren’t interested in giving chase to them. Instead, they ground and chattered their mouthparts while contemplating the long meaty bodies of turbul rolling and feeding on whelks – still oblivious to their surroundings. Leeches now were also homing in to latch on to turbul for a moment, then ooze away with a bleeding prize, and even prill were descending from above like flying saucers with particularly vicious landing gear. And the glisters knew they would have to be quick, before their potential banquet became a dispersed cloud of floating canapés.