The Skinner (10 page)

‘Hey up! Look at this lad!’ shouted Ambel, hooking out a larger clam with the edge of his rake. It was almost twice the size of the ones Pland was collecting. Ambel dropped his rake
and grabbed the mollusc before it buried itself again. It fought him for a moment, then came up with a sucking hiss, waving its fringed foot in the air.

‘This is the one for me,’ Ambel said, stepping to the nearby pool to wash his trophy before holding it up for all to see. He drew his sheath knife and inserted the blade between its
shells, twisted, then hinged the clam wide open. Inside he revealed a pint of quivering translucent amber flesh.

‘Always best fresh, though I could do with some vinegar and pepper,’ he said.

A quick slice round with his knife and he tipped the whole lot into his mouth before discarding the empty shells. He chewed at it for a moment, with orange juice running down his chin, then
swallowed, pulled a face, and reached into his mouth with his fingers. He pulled something out, then swallowed the rest, before wiping his chin on his sleeve.

‘I’ll be buggered,’ he said.

Pland and Anne moved up to see what he had found. Peck tramped over as well, with the two juniors trailing behind him as Ambel held up a small silver sphere for their inspection.

‘Pearl in the first clam of the season. Our luck’s in, lads!’

Anne and Pland nodded in agreement. Peck gave first the pearl then Ambel a suspicious look before summoning to the two juniors and moving away again.

Ambel pocketed the pearl and stooped to take up his rake. ‘Come on, let’s get these sacks full. I got a feeling this’ll be our best voyage yet!’

‘Tis good luck,’ agreed Gollow.

Peck meanwhile grunted and muttered something foul. Ambel threw him a glance of annoyance before he got down to more raking. Peck had been sailing with him for a very long time, and knew him a
lot better than most of the crewmen.

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.