The Engineer Reconditioned (17 page)

"No," said Erlin, and quickly followed Ambel. By the time she caught him up she wondered if she had gone insane. The Skinner? The names on Spatterjay were usually quite apt, so what did the Skinner do?

"You should've gone back to the ship," said Ambel, then glanced over her shoulder. "You too." Erlin looked behind to see Boris approaching, his grin turned rictus on his face.

"Just couldn't miss the fun," he said.

They moved on into the dingle, pear-trunk trees ashiver, and suspicious looking vines draped in the branches of something like an inverted pine tree. In all direction the undergrowth tangled all into darkness, yet it was easy to follow the Skinner's path of crushed vegetation.

"Big one," said Boris, and they all crouched down at Ambel's signal and kept very quiet. A giant leech oozed past nearby, waving its wad-cutter at them for a moment.

"They normally don't bother," said Ambel. "But if they do you don't get it back. One got Pland a year or two back. Been a bit cranky ever since."

Erlin tried to make sense of that. Surely not? The leech's mouth had been half a metre across.

"Keep away from the pear-trunk trees," Ambel told her as they moved off again. Pear-trunk trees? She looked up into the branches and saw things hanging there, but they did not look like pears. Of course, the trunk. It was squat and pear-shaped. The bark was real strange though. She wondered about its structure ...

"I said keep away — "

The pear-trunk tree shivered and Erlin screamed.

"All right, I got it!" yelled Boris. He tugged on the leech attached to her back and she screamed some more. It took Ambel's help to pull the leech off. She lay face down in the mould sobbing. She could feel the hole in her back.

"Don't worry," said Ambel. "I got it." He beat the leech on the ground until it released the lump of flesh it had unscrewed. Erlin regarded him with tears streaming from her eyes. God it hurt. Until now the whole process had seemed so unreal.

"That won't work," she said as Ambel approached with part of her back between his forefinger and thumb.

" 'Course it will," he said.

He screwed it into her back and the pain immediately started to fade. Slowly she got to her feet and tried to reach around to the wound. There was blood, but she couldn't quite reach ...

"You're one of us now," said Boris.

Erlin stared at him. Of course, the leeches. It all made sense now. She had to get her blood under the nanoscope as soon as she could.

"Come on," said Ambel, shouldering his blunderbuss.

When they reached the putrephallus stand at the edge of the dingle, Erlin refused the mask Boris offered her until the smell hit her, then she snatched it from him and quickly placed it over her face. The weeds were green and, again, well named. There was an Earth fungus that looked similar, but that did not throb quite so disconcertingly.

"See the hill. He lives up there," said Ambel.

Boris eyed him suspiciously."You've been here before."

"Couple of times. Chopped him up last time and spread him all over the island. Reckon it took him a century or two to pull himself together."

"Someone tried burning once," said Boris. "Wouldn't burn." The conversation went completely over Erlin's head. Beyond the putrephallus the hill rose up into a gentle pimple in the centre of the island. Ambel unshouldered his buss and began walking up the slope, his head darting from side to side. Definitely bluer, thought Erlin. Then she looked upslope just as the nightmare loomed into view and came screaming and giggling down towards them, something flaccid, and which she had no wish to identify, held in its long fingers. It was like a man who had been put on a rack for a hundred years, every joint and muscle stretched out impossibly. It was huge blue and spidery and came capering down the hill as if to welcome them. Ambel's blunderbuss boomed and a great cloud of smoke wafted away. The Skinner went, "Oh!" and fell on its back.

"Quick!" shouted Ambel, drawing his knife. Boris did likewise and followed him. They reached the Skinner just as it sat upright, reached round behind itself, and threadled its long hand through the hole Ambel had made in its chest. Ambel and Boris skidded to a halt.

"Shit!"

"Bugger!"

Erlin ran past them and swiped with her laser scalpel. The Skinner's long head thudded on the ground and looked at her accusingly. She laughed a little crazily and proceeded to cut the rest of the monster into pieces.

"That's the ticket!" bellowed Ambel, and proceeded to pick up bits and hurl them in every direction. Boris joined him and soon the Skinner was scattered all over the hillside and in the jungle below, barring the head that Ambel held onto, and the flaccid thing it had been carrying. Erlin saw it direct for the first time and immediately threw up.

"Oh God! Peck!"

It was Peck, outwardly.

Ambel looked at Boris and nodded towards the skin. Boris picked it up and shook it, then turned it around and peered at the split from the circle cut around the anus to the one cut around the mouth.

"He's gonna be a bit cranky for a while," said Boris.

Ambel nodded in agreement. Erlin turned away. They had both gone mad, she had to get help for them. When she turned back they were walking back up the hill. She quickly followed. She had nothing left to throw up when she followed them into the basin in the top of the hill. She just retched a little. The rest of Peck was jammed between two rocks, writhing about and making horrible noises. Erlin followed them down and watched in horror as they dragged him down and dropped him on the ground. All his muscles she could see, all his veins. His lidless eye-balls glared up at the sky. She advanced with her laser switched on. It was the only merciful thing to do.

"No!" Ambel knocked the laser from her hand. "Don't you think he's got enough problems? Find his clothes."

Erlin dropped to her knees, not sure if she wanted to cry or laugh. No, this was not happening ... but it was. When she looked up, Ambel and Boris were putting Peck's skin back on him, tugging the wrinkles up his legs and pressing the air bubbles out ... and Peck was helping them. As she watched Peck climb unsteadily into the boat she said to Ambel, "What are you going to do with the head?"

Ambel held the Skinner's head up in one hand.

"I'll put it in a box, then he'll never be able to pull himself together properly." Erlin had lost all her doubt. Of course, why not? She wondered about the report she must make. A nice scientific dissertation about how the leech fibre kept everything alive so that the leeches would have more prey to feed on, that was fine, but what about the Skinner? How would she tell them what the fibre had turned Spatterjay Hoop into, and what happened to humans too-long deprived of the Earth proteins that kept the fibres in abeyance? No, she would move her research in another direction — something about the leech symbiosis with the pear-trunk trees. She was relieved, as they came to the ship, to see a couple of sails circling above it. Both Boris and Ambel were now a much darker shade of blue, and Ambel seemed to be getting taller. Her own blueness was hidden by the natural colour of her skin, though Ambel had told her she had a pretty blue-white circle in the middle of her back.
JABLE SHARKS

The ship: three masts stitched across the horizon, black against the lemon sky. The hull is a cliff of wood topped with rails supported by tallow urns. Carvings everywhere. Wood and bone knitted together, interlaced, cunningly crafted. Along its sides are longboats braced like a beetle's wing cases. It seems deformed — top heavy. In the rigging are five crew, two hanging idle and one in the crow's nest, the twins reefing a sail. Below the deck are five more: three sleeping, the Barrelman, and Cook. On the deck to make things even are five others, for the moment.

Bosun Hinks handlines for green mackerel and the Captain sits in drugged stupor. Hinks pays him no mind. It is a fear the Captain has never named that drives him to the smoke, but he is not as bad as some, better than most, and only gives orders when the sharks are in. The rest of the time Hinks has charge. From his handline he now glances to Cheyne and Pallister who are sharpening the great knives ready for the next jable run. These harpoons are made of manbone and laminated shark skin. One of them is tipped with rare hull-metal, but it is never used during a run, being too valuable to lose.

"Ketra! Ketra!"

Hinks ties his handline to the rail and stares to where Chaff lies with arm stumps leaking into his bedding and the smell of his dying sickening the air. Tiredly Hinks climbs to his feet and walks over to the dying man. Cheyne is quickly with him.

"Chaff ... Chaff, it's Hinks." He squats down beside the man and touches a palm to sweat-soaked hair.

"Chaff."

Behind him Cheyne pulls a long bronze-edged stiletto from his sash and waits.

"Chaff, speak to me, please."

"He would choose death."

It is Pallister who speaks, Second Knife now that Chaff is dying.

"I would choose death and I would expect my friends and shipmates to release me, even had I no tongue to ask it."

He looks with especial concern to Cheyne. Cheyne has no tongue.

"Ketra! Ketra!"

Hinks glances to the Captain. "The Captain says no knife until he asks for it. By the Book. By the book." All three of them regard the large black book resting next to the Captain's hooka. The book he always has with him but never seems to read. They are aware of its presence, its weight, that it is the source of the fear that drives the Captain to his choice of oblivion. They listen to the creak of his chair as he rocks slowly back and forth puffing the smoke into the air.

"He will not see now," says Pallister.

They observe the reddened eyes fixing on the horizon as the rocking of the chair gradually comes to counter that of the ship. The glow of the gauze-wrapped wad of dreamfish waxes and wanes like the beating of a sick heart. Hinks turns from the Captain to the two knifemen.

"He asked us then. You will back me on this."

Pallister nods and glances at Cheyne who nods also. Cheyne tests the point of his stiletto with a callused thumb. A bead of blood falls to the waxed deck. Above; stillness. The one in the crow's nest watches. The four who are closer pretend concerns elsewhere. It is a hot and sultry day with not a breath of wind. There is little need for them to be up, but there the air is fresher in the rigging and the responsibility is nil.

"I cannot order you, Cheyne."

Cheyne nods, then steps past to stoop down next to Chaff. Pallister and Hinks stand between him and the Captain. There is a crunch as of a vegetable being segmented. There is the spastic kicking of legs, then stillness. Chaff no longer suffers.

"Man born of Earth who strives upon this sea ... "

The prayers are sincere and the sermon long and boring for the crew. The Captain assuages the guilt he feels at missing Chaff's death by reading the man's last rights. What remains of Chaff has been stitched into an old sailcloth and weighted with lumps of salt. Hinks watches it slide into the sea, a small splash, nothing really. Below decks the Barrelman cuts ligaments and drops Chaff's bones into the maggot barrel. As is the way, his bones will be fashioned into a great knife along with the skin of the jable shark his other remains will summon. The shark is not long in coming.

"Fin. Fin. Fin."

Pallister thumps the haft of his great knife against the deck. The chant is taken up by the rest of the crew as a fin a yard high slices their slow wake and takes the cloth-wrapped bloody morsel before the salt can take it right down. It is bad luck, but they are used to that.

"Fin. Fin. Fin."

"Second Boat!" yells the Captain, and the windlasses are manned. With a clatter of bone ratchets the boat folds out level. The twins leap aboard to stow the coils of rope and floats. They are not allowed to touch Pallister's barbs for he believes it is bad luck for them to be handled by women. Cheyne is not so superstitious and hands his down. As the boat is loaded the Barrelman comes out on deck and the chant becomes quieter in deference to him. He has the black skin that marked him for his position from birth, for only by the hands of those born of the dark may the dead be handled before their last passage into it. His face and shaven skull are dyed white and his eyes are blue. All the crew fear and love him. Six crew board the longboat: the twins, Pallister and Cheyne, Hinks and the Captain. The Barrelman has charge of the ship, but then, he always has had charge.

"Lower away!"

The ratchets clatter again and the boat drops to the sea. As it hits the surface the fin turns and moves in. Who is hunting whom? Hinks wonders as four scapula oars dig into the water and shoot the boat forward.

"It comes!" The Captain clutches a wax-proofed copy of the book to his chest as he shouts. "First knife!" Cheyne stands with a great knife ready. Behind the blade he has mounted one of the detachable barbs from which a rope coils to a sea-cork float. The sunlight glints on the waves and the jable shark approaches in a tide of golden bands. They can all see its dead button eyes.

"Steady." The Captain is firm. Cheyne is firm. The shark's expression is all tooth-bone and flesh-ripping horror.

"Now!" The Captain, a second after Cheyne has made his cut.

The boat is rocked at the edge of a strike. The fin clips an oar as it is raised. The rope thrums as it goes out and the float hits the water with a dull flat smack. Cheyne stands with his knife emptied of its barb and the shark paints a red line from behind its right eye, a curving line, as it turns.

"Second knife!"

Pallister has his place and is ready. Soon two lines of blood flee the boat, turn, return, three lines then four, until at last the shark has had enough and tries to dive.

"Row, boys, row!"

They pursue the bobbing and jerking floats that reflect the shark's struggles. Down below; a cloud of blood at the nexus of four taut ropes. Then out of the cloud the toothed horror comes again, slowed and tangled. Cheyne's unbarbed cut is true and the great knife goes in behind the shark's head and severs its cartilaginous spine. The shark is held on the surface in the tangle of ropes and floats, and the blood spreads.