The Skinner (27 page)

The sail snickered and shook its wings.

Windcheater surveyed the ship with intense interest and recalled when, long ago, he had been here last. The Earther human woman had been aboard then, and he remembered how he
had tried to bite her when she sneaked up on him to remove a sample of his skin. Memory of that brought back to him the memory of what had happened afterwards. The Captain, with some crew and the
woman, had gone ashore, and after traumatic events he had only learnt about later, returned aboard carrying a certain box that was still here now.

Windcheater could even hear the whispering. The man he once threw from the top of the Big Flint was here now . . . in part.

The sail tested the movement of the spars and found that they were well greased in their sockets, and that there was little scope for slack movement between the three masts. Pulling on the
reefing cables, he released the fore and aft sails and checked the movement there. Again, everything seemed fine. He lowered his head so as to inform the Captain, then abruptly pulled away from the
smell of charring meat. He had never quite understood this human preference for incinerating perfectly good fresh meat prior to consuming it. It was like so many other things the humans did that he
could not quite get a handle on. As he watched them eating their food, he thought back again to a time long ago.

Windcatcher had been the cleverest of all the sails and the most curious about these strange creatures that had descended from the sky, but the autoguns and intruder defences they had installed
around the island they occupied had been enough to deter the most inquisitive, and thus the situation had remained for a very long time. Then had come internal strife, after the arrival of more of
the same creatures, and the defences were gone and these creatures, these humans, came out into the world. Windcatcher’s curiousity became almost a painful thing when these humans built
movable shells out of peartrunk and yanwood timber in which to float about on the seas.

At first he had flown at a safe distance, but sometimes close – especially in the night – and listened to the sounds they made to each other. He’d realized from the start that
these sounds were a language much like that of the sails, and had quickly memorized it all. Learning what the words actually meant had taken somewhat longer, nearly one human century, and even then
it had been difficult to grasp that they only had so few words to describe the wind. And as for names . . .

When Windcatcher had seen a ship drifting in the sea, without its sail of normal fabric, he had quickly grasped the opportunity this presented. Settling on the spars of the ship, he had gazed
down upon the bemused crew and told them, ‘I am wind catcher.’ And so it had all begun. The other sails had soon joined him in this diversion – it was substantially more
interesting than sitting on a rock discussing the weather. They, like the then original Windcatcher, had not grasped the concept that individuals could possess individual names and by the time they
did, the tradition of them being called ‘Windcatcher’ had been established. The first sail to break with this tradition had been the original Windcatcher himself, when he had changed
his name to ‘Windcheater’. But then he had always been one to break new ground.

After reminiscing, he accessed, through his aug, a communication channel that had been opened in the night. The first communication then being, ‘You still into dodgy artefacts,
sail?’

‘Are you still there?’ he asked over the ether, still finding it difficult to talk without actually opening his mouth.

‘I ain’t going nowhere until this fucking fish has a bowel movement,’ replied Sniper’s irritated voice.

‘Aren’t you controlling that crazy carp, then?’

‘Nah, I’m recharging in readiness for that bowel movement. Molly here’s just got a bit confused, and seems to want to hang around the ship. Understandable, as it’s a long
way from home. Tell me, how much you say the Warden’s paying you for this?’

‘A thousand a day.’

‘Yeah, thought so. But what the hell is there to see on that ship?’

‘Nothing much. I was hungry and needed a rest so I thought I’d stop by. The way I see it, the longer I’m out here, the more money I’ll get. If the Warden tells me to move
on, then I will. Don’t see the point in putting in too much effort,’ said Windcheater.

‘You like the idea of wages, don’t you?’ said Sniper. ‘It ever occur to you that a few steaks is pretty cheap payment for the work you do as a sail? Without you,
they’d need a fabric mainsail, extra rigging and extra crew.’

Windcheater blinked and surveyed the
Treader
. Boris was at the helm, steering the ship, but the others were scattered about the deck at minor tasks. That had not really occurred to him.
Yes, over the ages he had seen the design of the Hoopers’ ships changing and, until this moment, had only viewed those changes as ones intended to more easily accommodate his kind. It seemed
almost a reversal now to realize that the benefits were really a bit one-sided. Through his aug, he accessed a text on Hooper ships and sailing practices.

‘The crew-members all take a percentage of the ship’s profits,’ he said.

‘A sail could demand that, too’ said Sniper. ‘But, he’d probably have to agree to stay with the ship for the entire duration of the voyage.’ Sniper then transmitted
the address of a particular site, and Windcheater studied with interest the sample work contracts there displayed. He decided then that, when the Warden was done with him, things were going to
change.

The wound on her hip was now hurting less than the after-effects of the stun blast. Parting the burnt fabric of her trousers she saw that already the hole had filled with pink
scar tissue, which was slowly welling to the surface of the wound. The Batians and Frisk, in their overconfidence in their abilities, had forgotten that she too was a Hooper with quite a few years
behind her. Had she been a normal human, her surprise blows would have had no effect on the one called Svan – Batians were tough. Anyway, she had survived. The distant sound of a couple of
explosions had long since faded, as had the wail of her house computer when it was blown. No doubt they had tried to either cut or blast their way through this door, but once it had closed she knew
she was safe. The amount of energy required to penetrate a metre of what had so far only ever been described simply as ‘Prador armour’ – the superconductive and highly
impact-resistant exotic metal that had been one of the reasons that ancient war had dragged on for so long – would have been sure to draw the attention of the Warden, and Tay was certain
Frisk was not prepared to risk that. She wondered just what Frisk had thought about her having such an incredibly impervious safe installed here, but then Frisk did not know how valuable was the
item Tay kept here. The historian grasped the edge of one of the coffin-cases to haul herself to her feet, then pressed her palm to the lock in the case’s surface.

‘Open viewing panel,’ she instructed.

In the surface of the case a rectangular section faded from shiny chrome to transparency, revealing that the case indeed served a purpose similar to a coffin. There had been no paintings
here.

‘Well, I did get all of your features right,’ said Tay, gazing down at David Grenant. She then, with a stab of her fingers, initiated a touch-console beside the window and began
studying the readouts. The feeding system was still being utilized and Intertox levels were being maintained – like this he could last almost indefinitely. She touched in a sequence she had
not used in a little while, then waited. After a minute, Grenant’s face twitched – then, he opened his eyes. For a second he appeared utterly confused, then he started to jerk and shake
and whip his head from side to side. She’d previously noticed how it always took him a little while to remember precisely what his fate
was
. Now she stared at him calmly as his silent
screams frosted the underside of the viewing window. Grenant’s entombment had been one of the more imaginatively horrifying of Francis Cojan’s punishments, and Tay saw no reason to
change that: it was history after all. She then reversed the touch sequence and he slowed to immobility and finally closed his eyes.

Glancing across at the other, empty, coffin-case, she contemplated the fortuitous workings of fate. When, if her plan evolved over many years came to fruition and she got to open her museum on
Earth, this one exhibit would be the making of her fortune. Perhaps an additional exhibit would ensure this success. She smiled to herself, then sniffed at the air. First she had to get out of
here, before the air – no longer renewed by the house computer – turned bad.

Tay pushed herself upright and limped over to the control panel she had used to close the door. There she paused. She had no way of knowing what might lie on the other side of the door. Frisk
could be waiting for her, even though a few hours had already passed. Tay hesitated, and in that moment the opening light on the panel flickered, and she listened to the clicking as the lock
mechanism disengaged. No, surely she hadn’t touched it. Frisk! Tay turned and stared in horror at the door, as it swung open. She would not now be able to close it again until it had reached
its fully open position.

Grenant! She limped over to his coffin-case and slapped her hand down on the palm lock.

‘Open!’

Black lines quartered the lid of the coffin-case and those quarters began slowly to spin aside. Inside the case, Grenant was fully dressed, his fingers clawed above his chest, where he had been
scraping at the lid. At his hip was an empty holster. Damn! She’d forgotten that she’d previously moved his weapon to the model she had constructed of him in the museum, mainly to
prevent him trying to draw it and use it on himself here – the little projectile weapon would not have been sufficient to drill a hole in his coffin. She hardly dared look up now as the door
clunked into its fully open position.

‘I thought you were advised to get away from here,’ spoke an irritated voice.

Tay stared out into the ruin Frisk and her Batians had made of her home, then focused on the object visible in the doorway. Here hovered an iron-coloured cockle, half a metre across.

It opened its bivalve shells to expose glimmers of greenish light as it spoke again. ‘You’re lucky to be alive,’ it said. Then, ‘Who’s your friend?’

‘Who are
you
?’ Tay asked, slapping her hand on the coffin’s locking mechanism.

‘I’m SM Twelve, the one they usually send to clear up other people’s messes,’ it informed her. ‘Now, I can see there’s quite a mess here. Perhaps, through me,
you’d like to tell the Warden all about it?’

‘Close,’ Tay instructed the coffin-case, then watched it do so before moving away. As she walked to the door of the safe, the drone retreated into the room beyond and hovered in
midair. With a touch, Tay had the safe door closing behind her, and then she stood surveying the wreckage. It was vandalism, plain and simple, like someone had gone berserk with a gas-system
pulse-gun. The furniture was burnt, even the floor, ceiling and walls were distinctively scored, cabinets smashed. Books, some burnt and some still burning, were strewn all about, and the computer
console was a hollowed-by-fire ruin.

‘It seems they had some sort of grudge against you.’

The voice that now issued from the mollusc drone was no longer its own, Tay realized instantly, but that is what it wanted her to know. Picking her way through the debris, she moved to the
entrance hall – the drone trailing along behind her.

‘A grudge?’ she asked.

‘The Batian mercenaries that came here – presumably in search of Sable Keech,’ replied the Warden.

‘Oh, I don’t think they had a grudge,’ Tay replied, stepping out into soft green light.

‘There does seem an excessive amount of damage here.’

‘Not done by them, I should think. It’s not part of their remit. That lot,’ Tay gestured over her shoulder with her thumb, ‘was probably done by their employer, once she
realized she couldn’t get at me. She has a long history of throwing spectacular tantrums. And now, of course, she’s quite mad.’

There was a long silence from the drone as Tay headed for her museum. Shortly before she reached the structure, the drone hummed ahead of her and zipped inside. Following it in she was
pleasantly surprised to see no damage here at all. The drone was now hovering above the head of the Skinner, and together they presented a sinister apparition.

Tay stared up at it. ‘No explosives? No booby-traps?’ she asked.

‘None,’ now replied the voice of SM12 again.

‘I thought not. Her arrogance and self-regard would not allow her to destroy this, though her love of inflicting pain and terror would have let her destroy me – though she would have
labelled it an act of self-preservation.’

‘Who is this employer you refer to?’ asked the voice of the Warden, quickly returning.

‘You haven’t worked that out?’

‘I have some idea, but I would like to hear the answer from you.’

‘Rebecca Frisk,’ said Tay, swinging her gaze down to the model of that very person. ‘She must have cored herself and swapped into another human body. It must have taken some
deep re-programming to have whoever she put into her own previous body play the part of Frisk herself, but then she would have had access to Prador thrall technology, and without any compunction or
moral restraint. She would have dearly relished breaking another’s mind and turning it to her own ends.’

‘The woman we thought was Frisk, and who was mind-wiped on Earth, was innocent, then’ said the Warden.

Tay wondered if the Warden was deliberately appearing to be slow for her benefit. Perhaps AIs sometimes found it difficult to assess the intelligence of the human minds they were addressing.

‘Well, now you’ve stated the obvious, what are you going to do about it?’

‘Nothing at present. I have no real jurisdiction here.’

Tay grimaced and turned to glare up at the drone. ‘Do me a favour. Your average Polity citizen might believe that crap, but I do not.’ The iron cockle tilted itself towards her and
its shell opened slightly wider. It was an action that could only be interpreted as a grin. As it closed again the Warden’s voice became significantly abrupt.