The Skinner (37 page)

‘I knew Cojan himself,’ said Keech. ‘He got hold of the Talsca twins and boiled them alive.’

‘I heard that,’ said Ron. ‘What happened to him, then?’

Keech turned and stared at Ron.

‘Batian mercenaries got him with a thermite bomb,’ he said. ‘But only because he allowed it. He was tired of the running and tired of the killing. He told me this only days
before his death, when he transferred all his funds to one of my accounts.’

Ambel nodded then continued. ‘When Gosk Balem was caught, the first Convocation was called. All the slaves were by then captains of their own ships, and the population here was swelled by
their children, and by off-worlders coming through the gate. The Convocation decided unanimously to carry out the ECS sentence of death on Balem. They didn’t have sprine then, and at
Cojan’s instigation they decided against burning. They decided instead to throw him to the leeches that were swarming at the time. On the dawn of the following day, they took him to the rail
of Sprage’s ship and threw him into the sea. He screamed for four hours before he went under. The Convocation was broken and the Captains went their separate ways, assuming Balem was
dead.’

‘Evidently he wasn’t,’ said Erlin. Janer studied her, wondering what she
now
thought of her Captain.

Without turning round Ambel said, ‘No, Erlin, he wasn’t. The durability of the older Hoopers was something not fully understood then. The leeches fed on Balem’s skin and outer
flesh, whittling him down until he was a stripped fish. He was just like a turbul or a boxy – only a turbul or a boxy that can experience pain. Pain of that intensity drove him insane. I have
no doubt he wanted to die, yet having the fibres in him, his body could not die. He fed, on boxies, turbul, whatever. He regrew flesh, nerves, skin – regrew them, and had them eaten off him
again and again. This went on for five years. In that time he died in the only way he could die. His mind died.’

Ambel gazed around at them with a haunted expression. ‘My first memory is of Captain Sprage standing over me and asking, “Jesus, is he alive?” I’d been harpooned and
hauled out of the sea. I was almost skinless and had very little muscle. In places I was right down to the bone. I was told later that I then had a leech mouth rather than a tongue, and that I took
a chunk out of Sprage’s forearm. They tied me to the mast and fed me mashed Rhinoworm steaks and Dome-grown corn. The leech mouth slowly turned back into a tongue. It took only ten minutes or
so before my lungs readapted to taking oxygen out of the air rather than out of the sea, but it was a couple of days before I was able to scream again. I screamed for a while, but even that uses
too much energy, and apparently I stopped after an hour or so. It was two weeks before I’d regrown all my skin and muscle. Sprage then asked who I was and I had no reply for him. I
didn’t even have language – I had nothing. I was an infant who had to be taught not to shit on the deck. Sprage taught me how to speak, taught me how to read, how to learn. I was on his
ship for twenty years before I got some intimation of who I might once have been.’

The only sound now was that of the waves slopping against the side of the ship. Peck, Anne and Pland could not look at their Captain; Forlam’s expression displayed a strange avidity; Ron
was without expression.

Keech turned to Erlin, who was looking slightly sick. ‘Is this possible?’ he asked.

Erlin nodded.

‘A Hooper of Ambel’s age can’t die unless most of his major organs are destroyed simultaneously. The leech mouth was the result of lack of Earth food. It’s due to the
Spatterjay virus. Not only does it infest the body, but also it reprograms the DNA of that body for optimum survival – and keeps on reprogramming. Adrift in the sea, with his muscles eaten
away, he needed
some
way of feeding. The virus grew him a leech mouth so he could attach to other animals that got close to him.’ Erlin shook her head and stared down at the deck.

‘What about his mind?’ asked Keech.

Erlin said, ‘His nerves would have been regrowing all the time. He would have been suffering varying degrees of agony all the time that was happening to him. It would work in much the same
way as the overload employed in a mind-wipe, though that’s done by shooting a full sensory overload down every nerve channel, and takes only about ten seconds.’

Keech studied Ambel. ‘Then you’re like the Talsca twins and Rimsc,’ he said, and pocketed the three spheres he had been holding.

Ambel returned his stare and waited.

Keech said, ‘The sentence pronounced upon you has been executed.’

‘Does this mean you won’t try to kill me?’ Ambel asked.

Keech stared at him expressionlessly. ‘Probably not.’ He turned and left the cabin-deck.

One after another, the blanks were now walking away from the gathered Prador towards the heavy-lifter. One of the Warden’s fellow AIs was ruminating over the huge
possibilities now, perhaps, opening for such corporations as Cybercorp, and wondering if this had been the sector AI’s purpose in coming to the Prador home world in the form of a Golem
– Cybercorp could certainly provide the Prador with more efficient hands than those of the human blanks, and perhaps commence trade in Golem and robot technologies. Another AI was observing
that trade in such technologies would give AI a foothold in the Prador Third Kingdom, so that it would not be long until it was absorbed into the Polity. The Warden of Spatterjay acknowledged all
this and shifted its attention away from the sector AI Golem and to the interior of the heavy-lifter.

The blanks’ control codes were being switched over to the control of subminds that had been briefly initiated by the sector AI, then dowloaded into the blanks’ thrall units, and
these minds were moving them into cold-storage lockers on the lifter. As each one went into storage, sampling drones the size of flies took snips from their skin, which were instantly taken for
analysis.

Joseph Best, ECS monitor, lost in action . . . Erickson Sewel, medical orderly on the obliterated Hounger Station, lost in action . . . Seben Daes, housewife, disappeared . . . and so the list
scrolled on and on, as DNA was matched to ancient records and those records then completed and closed down.

The Warden now pulled further back, to get an overview of yet more heavy-lifters landing and taking off on other Prador worlds, as the thousands of essentially dead were taken away for
respectful disposal: a transmigration of the undead – a ghoulish chapter that should have closed the Prador war, though that war had ended long ago, but did not.

The final closing words, the Warden knew, would be written on Spatterjay. And so it continued to watch and send information packages back there – to itself.

The adolescent Vrell mistook the grinding of Ebulan’s mandibles as an indication of hunger, and nearly lost a leg trying to feed the councillor a nicely decayed hock of
human meat. Sliding on his AG, Ebulan slammed Vrell up against the weed-pocked stone-effect wall.

‘An adult Prador initiates and manipulates. But what does an adult Prador
not
do?’ Ebulan asked.

‘An adult Prador does not physically intervene, Father,’ Vrell signed.

Ebulan again slammed the child against the wall, putting a crack in Vrell’s carapace as a reminder, then backed off to let the child escape. As the adolescent scuttled away, Ebulan
accessed Speaker’s thrall unit and looked through the blank human’s eyes. Prill everywhere, water rushing in through a hole in the hull, screams and shots: chaos. Stupid human.

It had all been so simple: send Frisk off in pursuit of Keech, let it be known there that she was on-planet and, using adulterated eonides, destabilize her nerve linkages with her host body so
that she operated below efficiency. He had predicted how she would quickly be captured and a Convocation called. In such circumstances all the Old Captains on-planet, as well as Keech and Frisk,
would be assembled in one place. And in that same place, he would have a Prador multipurpose motor with a totally improbable antimatter power supply – and that with a little tab of planar
explosive stuck to the side. Ebulan ground his mandibles again and quickly sent four of his more heavily armed blanks hurrying off to his shuttle.

Then he summoned Vrell again. The adolescent edged his way into the chamber and waited, shivering, for instructions.

‘Things have not entirely gone against us. We have enjoyed some of what the humans call “luck”. A Convocation has been called, so we must be sure that the motor gets to its
location.’

‘What about Frisk . . . Father?’ asked Vrell.

‘The motor is of main importance. Frisk we must retain in case this Convocation is broken off and we need some method to set up another.’

‘I understand, Father.’

‘You will go along with the four blanks to assure the fruition of my plan.’

Vrell suddenly stopped twitching and went very still.

Ebulan went on, ‘Take the ship to that Convocation. Go along with Frisk’s plans unless they begin to interfere with this purpose. As it is primary. I do not expect you to
return.’

‘I understand, Father.’

The chamber was a thirty-metre sphere of mirrored glass, with a floor of black glass. The runcible itself stood at the centre of this, mounted on a stepped pedestal. Its
apparent similarity to some kind of altar had long been the subject of holodrama and VR: gleaming ten-metre-long incurving bull’s horns jutted up from the pedestal, and between them shimmered
the cusp of a Skaidon warp: an interface with the supernal. When asked why this was so, most AIs gave equivocal replies. The Warden’s reply to this question was uncompromisingly direct.
‘What design do you expect, from someone who calls a tachyon “pea-green”?’ it always retorted.

Through the cusp now stepped four people. The Warden noted the presence of an ophid-adapted human, two women dressed in the utile garb of seasoned travellers, and a free Golem android. Tourists,
doubtless. No ECS monitors as yet, though it expected them at any time. It flashed its attention down to the planet’s surface and took in multiple views through its thousands of eyes
positioned there, noting nothing more untoward than a fight between a couple of Hoopers, then returned all its attention to the eye mounted on one of its satellites.

The AG reading was coming from a ship, and this was all it could ascertain through the thick cloud layers. It wasn’t a registered antigravity device, of this the Warden was certain, and it
wasn’t one of the many unregistered ones it already knew about. It took the AI less than a second to interpolate the likely source of the device. It opened its ‘anomalous’ file
and inspected more closely what it found there – focusing on the instant before the antimatter explosion. The Prador ship had passed through the cloud layer, and been effectively hidden by
the ionized gas it left behind it. It seemed entirely likely that the explosion had been a subterfuge covering more than just the jettisoning of an escape pod. Something more significant than
Frisk’s arrival here had occurred. As a precaution, the AI sent a coded underspace transmission of activation to a satellite on the other side of Spatterjay.

That satellite, a polished cylinder twenty metres long, jetted out two blades of fusion flame and began to change its orientation. Inside it, systems came alive, and ten matt-black objects began
to draw energy. The Warden now turned its attention elsewhere.

SM12 and SM13 exploded from the surface of the sea and shot into the air.

‘I don’t know who is aboard that sailing ship, but it seems unlikely that whatever is going on down there is unconnected to the arrival of that Prador vessel. You, Thirteen, have
chameleonware – though I don’t remember approving it. I want you to get on board and report everything you see. Twelve, I want you scanning the entire area for anomalous signals –
anything,’ the Warden ordered.

‘It might not be Frisk. If it is her, though, there’s no way she could have got that far merely in an escape pod used as a submersible,’ said Twelve.

‘I am aware of that,’ said the Warden. ‘If it is her, then it seems likely she has had more assistance than that of a handful of Batians. If it is not her, then you can return
to your search for her, or work from that point, should there be a connection. Twelve, I want you to confine your scans to very low power, as I do not want you detected. Thirteen, you will transmit
direct to me via underspace. For now we just watch and learn.’