The Skinner (38 page)

‘You got it, boss,’ said Twelve as the Warden withdrew.

‘Creep,’ muttered Thirteen as they sped on through the sky.

Prill had entered through the gaping hole in the ship’s bows. Bits of their bodies lay smoking round that hole, though some of them had made it further in before being
hit. A legless prill lay on a coiled pile of rope, its red eyes still shooting round and about its carapace. Svan thought how like an adult Prador it seemed, and equally vicious. She looked to
where Speaker sat against a bulkhead, a pulsed-energy weapon on her lap and a cord round her right upper arm, above where the limb had been cut away.

‘Need any help?’ asked Svan, forgetting herself. She glanced at Shib, who was staring at the legless prill with a horrified fascination.

‘It is unfortunate that this unit has lost its arm,’ said Speaker, and Svan stared back at her, reminded that this Speaker was not actually a human being; she was just a tool of the
Prador in its ship; its eyes and ears, and . . . hand. She shook her head in annoyance, then ignored the blank while she inspected the damage to the ship.

‘Do we have enough equipment to deal with this?’ she asked Shib, gesturing at the breached hull.

‘I’ll rig a couple of sheets – inside and out – and fill the gap between with crash foam. Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said, still staring at the prill.

‘There is a more immediate problem,’ said Speaker. Both the Batians turned and looked at her as she removed the cord and dropped it, then stood, holstering her weapon. She continued,
‘Rebecca Frisk has been going into deep nerve conflict with her body for some days now. She carries the drug to alleviate this problem, but since arriving here has not taken it with any
regularity. The nerve conflict is therefore causing in her a psychosis with schizophrenic episodes.’

‘Pan-fried AI,’ said Shib, turning from the prill. Svan was glad to see that he seemed to have himself under better control now.

‘What are we supposed to do?’ asked Svan.

‘She must start to take the drug regularly. If she does not she could become a further danger to this ship. Also, while she is acting like this, you will find it difficult to effect
repairs, and we do not want it running on AG for much longer.’

‘You go and tell her to take her damned drug,’ said Svan. ‘She just took a shot at me out there.’

‘It should be possible for you to bring her down with a high-energy stun setting,’ said Speaker.

‘Right,’ said Shib, rolling his eyes.

‘I repeat, if you do not do this, she will become a danger to herself as well as to others.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Svan, turning back to inspect the hole in the hull.

‘Also, if you do not do it,’ said Speaker, ‘you will have to find some alternative method of transport from this planet.’

The Batians stared at her.

‘What’s your interest, Prador?’ asked Svan. ‘Her I can understand. She wants Keech off her back. She wants him dead. What’s in it for you?’

‘Friendship,’ said Speaker.

‘Answer the question then I’ll do what you ask,’ said Svan with contempt.

‘You don’t believe I do this for friendship’s sake?’ asked the Prador through its Speaker.

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Very well – politics. Our Kingdom is slowly but certainly developing closer ties with the Polity. As these ties grow, I become ever more of an outcast in my own society because of
my connections with the trade in cored humans. I have come here to sever all such connections.’

‘But Frisk is one of those connections,’ said Svan.

‘I do have a certain affection for her,’ said Speaker.

‘Keech is also one,’ said Shib, ‘but surely you could have left him to her, to us.’

‘There are others too,’ said the distant Prador.

‘Who?’ asked Svan.

‘Anyone who was once a slave here when the coring operation was being run. They are still here, many of them. They are people like Drum: the Old Captains.’

‘All witnesses,’ said Svan, nodding in understanding. Shib eyed her questioningly. She explained, ‘It’s the nature of Prador politics. Since anything written or recorded
can be falsified, only the verbal statements of witnesses are given any credence in law. It basically works out that you can get away with anything so long as you leave no living witnesses to
it.’

‘In this you are correct,’ said Speaker.

‘Be difficult tracking them all down,’ said Shib.

‘For really important events, all the Old Captains come together in Convocation. The presence of Hoop’s mistress here would certainly bring about such a Convocation.’

‘Then what?’ said Shib.

‘They are very primitively armed here.’

‘Point taken,’ said Shib.

Svan pulled her stun gun from her belt and altered the setting. Shib watched her for a moment, then did the same with his own.

‘Let’s go put our leader to sleepy-byes then,’ she said.

Up on deck Frisk was still blasting away at this and that – and giggling at things only she could see.

‘I can’t even begin to imagine such suffering as he experienced,’ said Janer, watching the sun descend into dull sunset.

‘None of us can,’ replied Erlin. ‘It’s beyond even
his
understanding – which is why his mind died, why he became Ambel.’

‘I’m confused,’ said Janer.

‘That’s not surprising,’ said Erlin. ‘It’s a very long and involved story.’

‘No, not about that – just about a couple of other points,’ he said.

Erlin watched him and waited.

He continued: ‘I know Hoopers have a very high pain threshold, but obviously they
do
suffer pain.’ He nodded towards Forlam who stood at the stern, near Keech. ‘I saw
him get his guts pulled out in a contest, yet that was an arranged bout he got into willingly. Was it just for the money, or what?’

‘Some of them do have a strange relationship with pain,’ said Erlin. She seemed uncomfortable with the knowledge.

‘What kind of relationship?’

‘Some of the neural pathways get mixed up. Severe injury can cause it. They get hurt time and time again, then find themselves going on to put themselves in more danger. It’s
unconscious, mostly, though some of them begin to realize what they want.’

‘They
want
pain?’

‘It makes them feel alive.’

Janer shook his head and stared down at the sea.

‘Maybe that’s why they want to keep on pursuing that dreadful thing,’ he said.

‘Maybe, but it is something that has to be done. It must be killed.’

‘Why?’ asked Janer, surprised at her vehemence.

‘The head will go to where its body is, and its body is on the Skinner’s Island. They intend to go there and destroy the Skinner completely.’

‘This Skinner is Jay Hoop, then? You know I never believed that story until now.’ He paused for a moment. ‘And now it’s . . . heading for its own body—?’ He
allowed himself a weak grin at the unintended pun.

‘To rejoin it, yes. And that cannot be allowed to happen.’

Janer studied her for a long moment. He felt as if someone must have shoved him into one of the weirder type of VR scenarios. Every time he thought he had a handle on the situation, it just got
stranger.

‘What about this Convocation?’ he asked, trying instead for a discussion of the prosaic.

‘The Old Captains will meet and sit in judgement on Ambel. They might decide to throw him back into the sea – or into a fire. But they might decide he’s suffered
enough.’

Janer studied her again.

‘How do you feel about it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Erlin.

Janer nodded and toyed with the Hive link in his pocket. He did not know how he himself felt either. Ambel he considered a rival for Erlin’s affections but, like Ron, with his slow, huge
power and calm assurance, the Old Captain was difficult to dislike.

Frisk playfully burnt holes in the deck as Svan dived for cover. The shot Svan returned splayed mini-lightning along a rail but caused no damage. Her second shot hit Drum, and
the Captain coughed as if slapped across the chest, but he remained by the helm as steady as a monolith.

‘Come out, come out, wherever you are!’ shouted Frisk, and burnt a couple of holes through the captive sail. The sail’s wings hung flaccid, but its stapled neck quivered.

‘Frisk!’

Frisk turned just in time to see Shib straddling the port rail. The pulse hit her in the chest and knocked her backwards. She tried to raise her weapon, but a second and a third pulse struck
her. She staggered away while Shib made an adjustment on his weapon. Then the fourth pulse slammed her back against Drum, and blackness engulfed her.

‘Got her,’ yelled Shib, and went to stand over the woman. Svan came out of hiding and climbed on to the cabin-deck. She glared down at Frisk.

‘What setting?’ she asked.

‘Six,’ Shib replied. ‘Hooper.’

‘No sign of leech marks on her though,’ said Svan, ‘but maybe that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll have to remember that.’ They both turned as Speaker made her
way precariously up the ladder.

‘What now?’ Svan asked.

‘Repair the damage to this ship. Using AG will bring us unwanted attention. Then we wait for my shuttle,’ said Speaker.

‘One thing,’ said Svan as Speaker turned to go. ‘To bring about this Convocation, you spoke of the Captains needing to know that Frisk is here. Our pursuit of Keech brings you
no closer to that goal.’

‘The Captains do know that she is here, but even that is now unnecessary since a Convocation has been called at our next destination. It would seem Rebecca is not the only remaining member
of Hoop’s crew here, beside himself. Gosk Balem has been found, alive.’

‘Hoop is here as well?’ said Shib, but Speaker descended to the lower deck without replying, then quickly returned to the hold.

‘I’ll watch her,’ said Svan, nodding at the prostrate Frisk. ‘You go and get on with the repairs.’

Shib glanced down at his mutilated hand. After a moment, he stepped closer to Frisk and trod his heel down hard on her face. He was about to do so again when Svan pulled him back.

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ she said. ‘If she’s Hooper, she probably won’t even notice when she wakes. Now, as I said, the repairs?’

Shib stared at her hard.

‘She’ll pay,’ he snarled.

‘Repairs,’ Svan repeated, her voice flat.

Shib retained enough survival instinct to recognize her tone, and moved off to do as he was told. With her hand resting on the butt of her pulse-gun, Svan watched him go. Unnoticed by the both
of them, a seahorse the colour and texture of the sky, had drifted to the top of the main mast and settled there. It immediately changed appearance to the colour and texture of the mast, providing
it with a baroque and somewhat odd adornment. The sail opened one crusted eyelid to expose a dark red pupil, then quickly closed it. Drum’s glance flicked impassively to the top of the mast,
then down to his hands on the helm. With painful slowness, he lifted one finger from the wood, then returned it. At the back of his neck, a hole had appeared, exposing the dull metal of the spider
thrall.

With a fair wind in all her sails, the
Treader
moved out of the atolls and into Deep-sea. The sun set in a silent viridian explosion and thick clouds hauled a deeper
darkness up behind the ship. Keech shivered at the rail, testing the fingers of his injured arm. ‘Hurt?’ asked Forlam with undue interest.

Keech nodded, closing his hand into a fist. He wanted to be fully functional for what was yet to come. He hadn’t decided about Ambel yet – but if his eventual decision went against
that of this Convocation, he wanted to be ready and able to carry it through.

‘The Skinner gives pain,’ said Forlam.

‘You don’t say,’ replied Keech.

Forlam went on, ‘They say it caught Peck, stripped him completely of his skin and ran around waving it about like a set of overalls. Peck’s never been the same since.’

Keech didn’t suppose he would be. He also wondered about the reason for Forlam’s intense interest.

‘Why was it allowed to live for so long? Didn’t you all know about it?’ he asked.

Behind and to either side of the ship, the sea reflected a yellow glow as Peck and Pland moved about lighting lanterns. Keech glanced around the ship. Anne was standing by the mast, cutting up
rhinoworm meat for the sail. Janer and Erlin had gone below, and Keech wondered if they would be sharing a bunk this night. From the cabin-deck could be heard the low murmur of Ambel and Ron in
conversation. Ambel was at the helm: his huge bulky shape silhouetted against the sunset. When Ron moved up beside him there was little to distinguish between them.

‘Not everyone knew about it. Kept it to ’emselves’ said Forlam, as if bemoaning that the location of some treasure had been withheld from him.

‘Who did, then?’ asked Keech.

‘The Old Captains mostly.’

‘That still doesn’t tell me why it was allowed to live.’

‘I guess it don’t.’

‘Balem knew and he did nothing,’ said Keech, testing.

Forlam appeared distracted as he said, ‘Its final death – maybe a Convocation decision, not just Captain Ambel’s.’

Keech let that ride: there had been no Convocation decision to pursue and kill the Skinner
this time.

‘How many Captains?’ he asked.

‘Twenty-three at last count,’ Forlam quickly replied, lost now in some strange abstraction – his eyes wide on the dark.

‘And your Ambel is one of the most respected of them.’

‘Yes, he is that.’

Keech nodded and turned to head for his bunk. This man made him feel uncomfortable as there was something definitely not quite right about him – which was an interesting assessment from
someone who had only recently been a walking corpse. Also, Keech felt tired and even with all his doubts and wonderings, he was relishing the experience. Even unpleasant sensations were better than
having no sensation at all.

‘No action,’ the Warden decreed.

‘But they’ve put a thrall unit in him,’ argued the submind.

‘No action.’

‘But they’re criminals. She’s Rebecca Frisk. I
should
do something.’

‘No action.’