The Skinner (17 page)

‘No! Protected! The Warden!’

Sniper knocked the missile out of the air with an EM pulse just as it left his mouth then, too late, tried to lift out of the creature’s path. He couldn’t even use his fusion booster
because this too might kill it. The great mouth gaped and slammed shut, and with a satisfied bubbling the molly carp sank.

SM13 flew in a tight ring then settled down so the sensors on its tail were in the water. Immediately the little drone picked up an ultrasound signal issuing from below.

‘Bollocks,’ Sniper was saying.

The morning shuttle was due in an hour, and Keech sat in the Baitman nursing his fourth mug of sea-cane rum, his hover trunk resting on the floor beside him. The other
customers in the bar had avoided him since his arrival four hours earlier – it seemed this place never closed – and the barman watched him warily from behind his chessboard. Keech
tasted each mouthful but otherwise the potent liquor had no effect on him. There were Golem androids that could enjoy the option of insobriety. He had no such option while he retained this body. He
often considered, as Janer had suggested, memplantation in an android chassis, and just as often he rejected the idea. When he had been reified on the home world of the cult of Anubis Arisen, he
had more seriously considered the option then. But being a walking corpse did have advantages, especially if there were people you wanted to fear you. He savoured that moment Corbel Frane had seen
him: the atavistic terror the old piratical Hooper had felt. That terror had been integral to Keech’s success then. Had he just been human or Golem, Frane would not have fled at that critical
moment, and would likely have torn Keech apart. As it was, Keech had chased Frane’s AGC out over above Mount Ember, then shot it down. Frane’s ending had been suitably apocalyptic.

Keech sipped alcohol through his glass straw and thought about Hoop. Even though the two days with Olian Tay had yielded him little more information of value than he had learnt in the first few
hours with her, he was still satisfied with the result there. After seven hundred years, an end was in sight. The villain would be brought to book, and Keech’s self-assumed mission would end.
What then? Keech contemplatively studied the lozenge that depended from a chain round his neck. Whole avenues opened up before him, which was more than most dead men could say. Almost, almost he
smiled, but there was not enough movement left in his face. Lost in his own thoughts it took him a moment to realize that an individual who had just entered the Baitman was peering at him
curiously.

The man was short and very stocky, but not in the least bit flabby. His appearance had much that was human in it, and much that was boulder. Like most ship Hoopers, he wore loose canvas trousers
and a loose plastilink shirt with a wide leather belt around it. Tucked in a loop in the belt, like a weapon ready to be drawn, was a large briar pipe. His face was wide and friendly and seemed
even wider because of the great bushy sideburns sticking out below the shiny bald pate of his head. One look at this man, and at the mottled bluishness of his skin, told Keech that one of the Old
Captains now stood before him.

‘Do I know you, boy?’ the man asked.

Keech felt a hint of amusement at being called boy. It was of course perfectly reasonable for this man to assume that anyone but another Old Captain was much younger than himself.

‘You may know me – or know of me. My name is Sable Keech and I’ve been dead for seven hundred years.’

As a line, it was certainly an attention grabber. But that was what he needed to hook the interest of such a man, and perhaps then be able to extract information. The Captain
was
hooked.
He looked to the barman, pointed at Keech’s table, then he sat down opposite the reif.

‘Sprage,’ he said, holding out his hand.

Keech watched the hand for a moment, hoping Sprage would realize what he was doing and quickly retract it. When the hand remained offered, he tilted his head to one side and reached out with his
own grey claw. Sprage seemed unconcerned as he grasped and shook it, then released it to lean back. He unhooked his pipe from his belt and pointed the stem at Keech.

‘Funny to see a reif after all this time,’ he said.

‘When did you last see one?’ Keech asked, curious despite his concerns.

‘Oh, way back,’ said Sprage, taking a pouch out of the top pocket of his shirt and beginning the seemingly intricate process of filling his pipe. ‘A programmed one got sent
here in search of his killer, before the Polity put a stop to that sort of thing.’

At least five centuries ago, Keech calculated.

Sprage went on, ‘But
you’re
not programmed like that. You full AI?’

At this point the barman approached the table and placed a bottle and a glass before Sprage.

‘Tab it,’ said Sprage when the man seemed inclined to linger.

‘Partial,’ said Keech, after the barman had moved away.

Sprage now had his pipe filled and he inserted the stem in his mouth. The antique lighter he produced took at least five tries to get going. ‘Bloody thing – nothing lasts
nowadays,’ he muttered, then gazing at Keech through a cloud of tobacco smoke, ‘What you doing here, then?’

‘Looking for a killer – though not mine,’ Keech replied.

‘Anyone I might know?’

‘Almost certainly. I’m looking for Jay Hoop, perhaps more commonly known round here now as the Skinner. I’ve been looking for him for a very long time. Any ideas?’

Sprage appeared decidedly discomfited by the question. He puffed hard on his pipe, setting up a glow in it that reflected out of his eyes. Keech wondered what caused such an effect, for normal
human eyes were not so reflective.

‘Got to be dead, ain’t he?’ said Sprage.

‘From what I can ascertain, killing him has not been an easy option, and has been something people have been reluctant to complete. You wouldn’t happen to have something relevant in
a box on your ship, would you?’ said Keech.

‘Not on . . .’ Sprage broke into a fit of coughing. ‘Er, not sure I’m with you there,’ he finished, when he could. Keech thought that someone of this age ought to
be better practised at subterfuge. Sprage poured himself a glass of sea-cane rum and sipped at it to still his ticklish throat.

‘Do you know who I am?’ Keech asked.

‘Seem to recollect a name like that,’ said the Captain. He bore a puzzled expression for a moment, then that swiftly cleared. He stared at Keech with widening eyes.

‘You . . .’ was all Keech heard of what the Captain said next.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 30% LOAD INCREASE.

The warning message fed in from his aug through his visual cortex and glowed across his left visual field; also, the vision in his right eye went blurry and sounds abruptly became distant and
fuzzy. Everything external suddenly became of secondary importance. He ran an immediate diagnostic from his aug and got conflicting reports from the probes sunk in his preserved flesh. Something
was wrong, seriously wrong. Vaguely he heard Sprage saying something with vehemence, and then saw him stand and leave.

Keech ignored this: if now he went into true death, none of it mattered.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 38% LOAD INCREASE
.

Keech reached over and flipped up the lid on his trunk. He removed the cleansing unit and, ignoring the curious stares of the Hoopers in the bar, he opened his overall and quickly plugged
himself in. Black balm flooded the extractor tube, and it was some minutes before sapphire balm returned up the other tube.

DROP PUMP PRESSURE 20%
, he instructed. Immediately another warning message came up.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: EXTREMITY PROBE B23 NIL BALM
.

Keech glanced at the cleanser and saw the row of hieroglyphs as a blurred red line. The cleanser was obviously struggling to do its job.

EXTREMITY PROBE B23: STRUCTURAL ANOMALY
.

What the hell?

EXTREMITY PROBE B23: STRUCTURAL BREAKDOWN
.

This was it; there had always been the chance that his body would start to break down; that the preservatives would cease to be as effective as they had been in the beginning. He had never
expected it to happen so fast though. He looked at the lights on the cleanser and saw there was no sign of green.

The next message displayed by his aug was one he had only seen twice before, and then only shortly after he had been reified.

INVASIVE ORGANIZM DETECTED
.

IDENTIFY
, he told the aug.

A sub-program immediately connected his aug to the local server and a search engine was loaded with genetic code segments. The answer came back very quickly, and flashed up in his visual
cortex.

SPATTERJAY VIRAL FORM A1
.

The leech that had fallen on him outside Tay’s damned museum – that was it, then. The Spatterjay virus was inside him and it was doing untold damage as it tried to assimilate a dead
man. He looked at the cleansing unit and saw that there were now two green lights lit up. If he could breathe, he would have breathed a sigh of relief, for now the unit was handling it. He sat back
as his vision started to clear and saw that everyone in the bar was staring at him. The barman appeared particularly annoyed, as he walked over to his table.

‘I don’t know what you said to him, but I’ve never seen him get that uptight,’ he accused.

It took a moment for Keech to realize the man was talking about Sprage. After a long clicking gulp he managed to get out a reply. ‘I just told him who I . . . was,’ he said.

‘I don’t care who y’are. The Captains run it here, so I’d prefer it if y’left.’ The barman glanced at the cleanser. ‘And I want you to leave
now
.’ A couple of Hoopers had stood and were walking up behind the barman. Keech knew he had no chance in such a situation. He stood, picked up the cleanser and, holding it close to
his chest, walked unsteadily from the Baitman. His trunk closed its own lid and followed faithfully behind.

Outside the Hooper bar the street seemed more crowded than when he had entered and Keech noticed a lot of Polity citizens were wandering about. A cata-dapt passed close by him and, with a loud
sniff, gave him a look of disgust before moving on. Exerting greater control over his joint motors he walked stiffly towards an aircab he saw parked at the end of the street. Another red light had
gone out on the cleanser by the time he had reached it. The Hooper inside nodded his head in recognition. He was the one who had ferried them out from the shuttle port.

‘Can’t take y’mate. Waiting for a fare,’ he said.

‘I’ll give you ten shillings to take me very slowly to the shuttle port,’ said Keech.

‘Well, why didn’t y’say? Get in!’

Keech nodded to his trunk. ‘If you could deal with that.’

The Hooper quickly got out of his cab and, using the toggle control on the trunk soon had it in the boot. It gave Keech some satisfaction to see the same catadapt running towards the cab as it
lifted and turned towards the shuttle port.

INSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: EXTREMITY PROBE B23 NOMINAL
.

Only two lights now remained red on the cleanser.

‘How slowly y’want me to go?’ asked the Hooper.

‘Give me twenty minutes. That should do it,’ Keech replied.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP AT 80%

He’d forgotten about that.

INCREASE PUMP PRESSURE TO NORMAL
.

Another light changed on the cleanser, but the last red one seemed determined to hold on. The twenty minutes he had asked for were needed in full: the Hooper had done at least five wide circuits
of the shuttle port before the light finally changed to green.

SYSTEM NOMINAL – DIAGNOSTIC ANALYSIS?

Keech considered that, but there seemed no point.

NO ANALYSIS
.

He detached the pipes from their sockets and fed them back into the cleanser. The lights clicked off shortly after, as he resealed his overall.

‘You can land now,’ he told the Hooper.

As the man nodded and brought the aircab down to one of the many jetties, Keech closed one grey hand around his lozenge pendant. What he had done was a temporary measure at best. Soon he would
have to make a decision he had been putting off for close on a hundred years. Three options remained to him: he could lose what remained of his organic brain – and body – and become
fully AI; he could die; or he could take one course open to him that still seemed incredible even after decades of contemplating it.

Keech paid the delighted Hooper and watched the aircab lift and accelerate away in the direction of the Hooper town, no doubt to try and pick up the stranded catadapt. He walked to the edge of
the shuttle-pad structure and gazed down the long slope of sea wall at the spindly autoguns as they patrolled above the water line. He observed a mollusc, with a nacreous blue spiral shell, heave
itself from the water and begin sliding up the wall. An autogun was poised over it before it got a metre from the water, and flickering red light between gun and mollusc was quickly identifiable as
lines of laser light amid the smoke jetting from the many holes punched through the creature’s shell.

INFORM: BALM PUMP LOAD BELOW 20%
, he instructed.

OUTSIDE PARAM FUNCTION: BALM PUMP 8% LOAD INCREASE
.

INFORM: BALM PUMP LOAD ABOVE 20% ONLY
.

The message faded and was replaced by a waiting light flickering off to one side.

INFORM: ALL EXTREMITY PROBES OUTSIDE NOMINAL
.

The list that appeared had to scroll from the bottom of the visual field in his left eye. It began at B1 and just kept going.

CANCEL
, he instructed.

Then he queried the server as to the location of the nearest pharmacy. In his visual field there now appeared a map giving both his present position and the location of a pharmacy only a few
hundred metres from where he stood. He looked round and identified a squat building raised above the edge of an empty landing pad. Through its long chainglass windows he saw endless displays of
goods, and considered how, on any world he visited, no opportunity for commerce was missed. With his trunk dogging his footsteps he headed over to the metal steps leading up to the building. Here
he tapped the ‘stay’ and ‘security’ button on his trunk and it dropped hard against the plascrete, with the locks clicking home in its lid. At the head of the steps, sliding
glass doors admitted him to a small automart in which aisles of goods tempted the eye. Walking to the first aisle he was immediately joined by an automated trolley. At the back of this trolley was
a screen and touch-console. On the console, he punched in the words ‘Intertox Inhibitors’.