The Skinner (36 page)

‘What’s happenin’, Cap’n,’ said the little man.

Ron gazed down at him, then at the juniors who gathered beyond him.

‘Ambel
is
Gosk Balem, and the Skinner’s out, and we’re going to the Skinner’s Island to kill it – and also have a Convocation to decide whether or not we
throw Ambel into a fire.’

Roach squinted at him. ‘No, but really, what’s happenin’?’

Ron gestured to Goss and Boris. ‘They’ll tell you all you need to know. Now, can I trust you, Roach?’

‘Of course,’ said Roach, sticking his chest out.

Ron eyed the little man dubiously before going on. ‘OK, I want you to stay here. As soon as another sail comes along, I want you to follow on as fast as you can. No stopping for meets, and
no going after turbul. This is important,’ he emphasized.

‘Aye, Captain,’ said Roach trying, but not managing, to not look sneaky.

Ron then turned to Boris. The crewman was sombre, and Goss, who walked at his side, looked annoyed.

‘You might think different when you hear what he’s got to say.’

‘No,’ said Boris. ‘Gosk Balem ran the furnace. My dad went to the furnace.’

Ron nodded then stood, staring pensively out to sea, with his thumbs in his belt, as if unsure of what to say next. After a moment, he freed one thumb and pointed.

‘That,’ he said, ‘is one very persistent molly carp.’

They all gazed out at the humped shape in the sea – between themselves and the nearest atoll.

‘It crossed with us earlier. Had a go at a leech we got. Helped us get the Captain back in when he fell in the sea,’ said Boris. ‘Probably head back to its island in the night
– unless there’s good hunting here.’

‘Helped Ambel in?’ asked Ron.

‘Well, we think so,’ said Boris.

Ron turned to Roach. ‘Keep an eye on it. You never know what one of them might do. I’ll be off.’ He turned and walked over to Keech.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

Keech nodded and climbed on to his scooter, Ron climbing on behind him. Keech lifted the scooter from the deck and, one-handed, guided it out over the sea to the
Treader
, which was
already turning into the wind.

‘You’ll hold to your promise?’ Ron asked as Keech slowed the scooter over Ambel’s ship.

‘I’ll not kill him yet,’ said Keech.

‘You
may
change your mind when you hear what he has to say,’ said Ron.

‘I doubt it,’ said Keech.

With the wind blowing through her hair, Rebecca Frisk stared out over the waves, and smiled happily. Come the morning, she would have the pleasure of slowly cutting Sable Keech
into pieces and feeding those pieces to the frog whelks. This pleasure would be somewhat marred by the fact that Keech had long been beyond pain – but there would always be others on hand to
satisfy that need. She hoped Keech had a partner to whom he had some meaningful attachment. If not, then the crew of his ship would have to do. She smiled again as she contemplated what she might
do. The disadvantage in torturing a Hooper was their high resistance to pain: it took huge injury to cause sufficient pain to elicit a scream or two from them, but the advantage was that Hoopers
could survive huge injury. Burning was the best method of torture. Over a slow fire, a Hooper could last for days.

Frisk started to mentally recount the many slow fires she and Jay had lit, but her pleasurable contemplation was interrupted.

‘All stop! All stop!’ Svan yelled from the front rail. ‘Hard to port!’ She shot past Frisk to Drum, whose hand was on the control lever, and tried to pull that lever
over. With interest, Frisk studied Drum, as Svan tugged at the Captain’s hand. There was a sudden rending crash and the ship shuddered to a halt. Tors yelled as he flew over the front rail.
Frisk and Svan fell and slid across the deck to the side as the ship tilted.

Something huge thrashed in the sea in front of the ship. The vessel slewed sideways, and Frisk heard the sound of many hard, scuttling feet. Tors began to scream.

‘Too fucking fast!’ Svan yelled, then looked up as a number of hard disk-shaped creatures leapt up on to the rail, red dots of eyes skating round their rims.

‘Prill!’ Frisk shouted from where she lay. Then laughed, drew her pulse-gun, and began shooting down at them. Svan rose to a crouch and drew her own weapon. After their volley of
fire cleared the rail, she leapt to the edge of the cabin’s desk and looked down to one side. Below her, oozing past the side of the ship, a great glistening body heaved, and over its surface
swarmed eager prill. On that slick surface, a vaguely human shape thrashed and screamed as the prill tore it apart. One creature made a run that uncoiled intestine. Another three were fighting over
an arm that swiftly detached.

‘Tors,’ Svan whispered, then began firing again, but within a moment she did not know where to aim as Tors came apart and the prill fed on pieces of him all over the back of the
giant leech. The ship lurched again as the leech itself began ponderously to pull away.

‘We’re flooding!’ Shib yelled up from the lower deck.

Svan, hearing the panic in his voice, knew he was losing control since that damned whelk creature had taken his fingers off. She went over to Frisk and dragged the woman to her feet. ‘We
have to use the AG,’ she said.

Frisk laughed in her face, and Svan slapped her. Abruptly Frisk became sober. She backhanded Svan across the chest so Svan crashed through the back rail to the lower deck. There she lay stunned.
Augmentation?
She wondered, as Shib got to her side and helped her sit up. She leant against him and struggled for breath.

‘We’re sinking,’ said Shib, sweating. He had his handgun drawn.

‘Get to the motor. Turn on the AG. We’ve no choice now,’ Svan gasped.

Shib nodded and ran for the hatch.

Svan tried to stand, but for a moment could not manage. Beside her hand, the deck suddenly burst into flaming splinters. She looked up at Frisk, standing in the gap of the broken rail and waited
for the killing shot. It didn’t come. More prill swarmed up on to the deck and instead Frisk started shooting at them.

‘Fucking lunatic,’ muttered Svan, and dragged herself towards the hatch. Once she reached it, she fell through, catching a rung with her hand so she turned and came down on her feet
on the tilted floor below.

Shib was waiting for her. ‘Tors?’ he said.

‘Dead,’ she replied.

He nodded and looked up towards where they could hear Frisk still blasting away at prill.

‘She’ll have to pay,’ he said. He held up his hand with its missing fingers. ‘And for this too.’

‘Later,’ said Svan. ‘Four thousand grams of Prador diamond-slate, remember? We complete the contract, collect our payment, then we burn her.’

Shib nodded, but his attention was wandering.

Svan peered down towards the bows of the ship, where water gushed in and timbers were groaning.

‘Let’s get that AG going,’ she said, and the two of them headed up the sloping deck to the motor. Once they reached it, Shib popped the casing, and Svan flipped down a control
panel underneath. She hesitated over the controls.

‘There’s no other way,’ urged Shib.

‘Might bring the Warden down on us, and we don’t need that,’ replied Svan.

‘Better that than swimming in this sea,’ said Shib.

Svan nodded and punched a control. The ship juddered, and spillover from the field made her face tingle. The motor now produced an AC hum and the creaking and groaning of the ship increased.
Svan watched the fixings bolted into the keel of the ship. If those tore free, the motor would smash through the deck above, before it righted itself. But they wouldn’t tear free: she had
done them herself. When the ship heaved again, she regained her balance before making further adjustments to the motor controls. The field tilted, and now the ship was coming level, pivoting at the
point of those fixings, which loaded them even more. The gushing of water into the bows ceased for a moment, and then went into reverse. Svan made a final adjustment to the control panel, then
closed the cowling over the motor. She stood up as the flooring finally levelled out.

‘I’ve set it to lift us clear by about a metre,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and look at the damage.’

She pulled her weapon and walked to the bows, Shib following a pace behind her, and it irritated her that his breathing sounded heavy with fear. He’d never seemed xenophobic before. Yes,
it paid to be cautious around the lethal fauna of this planet, yet the creatures here were nothing compared to an armed human – and he had dealt with plenty of
them
.

Frisk reluctantly holstered her weapon when it seemed she had disposed of the last of the prill. The ship was level now and the water quite a way below the rail. She stared at it for a long
while before she realized what had happened. She thought about why it had happened – thought about some of her decisions over the last few days. She cringed inwardly and pressed a hand to her
throat.

‘What’s happening to me, Jay?’ she asked.

But Jay wasn’t there to answer her, nor to back her up, and sometimes she just did not understand why this was so. They had been happy on that Prador world hadn’t they? Why had he
felt it necessary to leave, in the end? Why had he been so angry with her? Yes, sometimes she had behaved a bit irrationally, and of course that was to be expected: you couldn’t live together
for as long as they had without sometimes encountering something like that. It had been her idea that maybe their crimes could be forgiven and that they could return to Earth which had thrown him
into his rage. In retrospect she realized that had been a silly idea, but his reaction had been excessive.

She remembered him sneering at her. ‘
Another excellent idea from your superior mind, dear. I would put that on a par with your one about opening a gallery on Circe. Do you think for one
second that ECS has stopped searching for us? Do you think for one second we can breeze easily through the Polity avoiding both capture and getting mind-wiped?’

‘But Jay, darling—’

‘I used to enjoy your little whims and sudden enthusiasms. I think I ceased to enjoy them the moment you ceased to be you. Why did you do it? Why the hell did you do it?’

‘Jay, darling.’

‘Don’t touch me. You disgust me.
’

There was a taste like iron in her mouth that she tried fruitlessly to spit away. That she had no longer possessed the body he loved, she understood. But, in the end, it had been because she no
longer had the same mind. She gave a dry laugh and squeezed tears from her eyes, but, deep inside she knew she was going insane. Because she’d lived too long in a body not her own,
she’d seen and caused too much horror, she’d lived too long amongst aliens, and because – in the end – she’d lived too long.

Janer stepped over the wreckage of the door and into the cabin. He reached down and righted the chair to which they had tied Keech, then carried it to the desk positioned below
the brass-rimmed portal. He sat down and studied the two sealed flasks contained in a rack clamped to the edge of the desk. Each flask contained a number of red rhomboidal crystals resting under a
clear fluid. He removed a bung from one of these and sniffed at the pungency released. It reminded him somewhat of old coffee, perhaps with a background of something putrefying.

‘Just
one
crystal?’ he said.

‘
Yes
,’ said the mind, and Janer wondered if he was imagining a touch of avidity in its voice.

‘I suppose that if I don’t get it for you, you’ll get hold of it some other way.’

‘
Yes
,’ said the mind.

‘I’m not going to do this,’ said Janer, reinserting the bung and tapping it home with his forefinger.

‘
Why not?
’

‘Because I’ve worked out what you’re up to. “Get me a sample of that unusual substance in Ambel’s cabin.” Do you think I’m entirely stupid?’

‘
I do not.
’

Janer sat back in his chair. ‘Why do you want to go this route?’ he asked.

‘
Power
,’ explained the mind. ‘
It was tried before using curare. That failed, and the hornets in question were wiped out. The mind concerned still hasn’t
regained its consciousness. But it is the way.
’

‘The same could happen again,’ said Janer.

‘
Not here
,’ said the mind. ‘
This is a primitive society. It will work.
’

‘Well, not with my help,’ said Janer. He stood, pulled the small jewelled Hive link from his ear, and dropped it in his pocket. He gazed at the two flasks of fluid out of which pure
sprine was crystallizing, shook his head, then left the cabin. Once outside, he climbed up to the cabin-deck – to go and listen to a story.

‘Captain Sprage,’ said Ambel looking round at Ron. Ron nodded from where he leant against the rail. Ambel turned to face the sea again. Gathered behind him, on the
main deck, were Keech and Erlin, Forlam, Pland, Peck and Anne, and behind them, the rest of the crew. Even the sail had extended its neck so it could turn an ear to what Ambel said.

‘It was him named me Ambel, and I’ve always thought he knew.’

‘We should ask him.’

‘Yes, we should – now. I’ve always been afraid to before.’

‘Is there a point to this?’ asked Keech flatly. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Ambel since mounting the cabin-deck. His right hand rested on the butt of his pulse-gun. In his
left hand he held three steel spheres.

Ambel stared at him. ‘Gosk Balem was a slave, then he was slave master. He became like Hoop and his crew because that was the only way to survive here then. Slaves were regularly cored,
and had their cored brains and spinal columns thrown into a furnace. It was just like Hoop to put Balem in charge of that furnace,’ he said.

‘You should know,’ said Keech, bitterly.

‘But I don’t,’ said Ambel.

‘Explain,’ said Keech.

‘You came here with the ECS force that freed those slaves that hadn’t already been cored. But you weren’t as prepared as you ought to have been, and Hoop and all his crew
escaped. So Hoop, Frisk, Rimsc, the Talsca twins and Grenant escaped off-world. They left Gosk Balem behind to face the consequences of his actions. The surviving slaves hunted him for a hundred
years, and he was finally caught out here, by Sprage and Francis Cojan, who later went on to form the Friends of Cojan, whom you yourself knew.’