It had taken them a while to get here from the point where the shuttle had dropped them off. Fillpsps had drifted a few hundred slow metres before handing them on to another, slightly smaller Floater, and they had changed hands another six times by the time they had come to a stop against the dull-brown, warty hull of the biggest Floater they had seen.
Its size was the reason the Dirigible Macro-Fungus Gadaps had been chosen as a dwelling by Gorrif when he had arrived here a few hundred years ago – he was vague about time but then he seemed vague about many things; Skarbo had the impression that here was another creature who preferred his own company.
Gorrif had been hospitable despite that. Especially to himself.
The low table in front of them was loaded with little oval leaf-shaped plates that Gorrif said were made of shed fungus layers. They held snacks that Skarbo thought smelled like shed fungus layers.
He looked at them. ‘Are these all edible for me?’ He had played the phrase through in his mind a few times. It seemed blunt, but he had run out of any other way to put it.
‘Yes, I believe so.’ Gorrif waved the hand again. ‘If you have any doubt, please feel free to pass. I won’t be at all insulted.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’ Skarbo looked around for The Bird but it had wandered off, muttering darkly to itself, when they had first arrived, and he hadn’t seen it since. He added, ‘And I won’t be at all insulted if you feel free to enjoy yourself.’
‘Quite.’ Gorrif spoke through a mouthful. ‘And of course there’s plenty to drink. I’m on firmer ground there, to be honest.’ And, as if to contradict himself, he reached unsteadily for a flask, grasping it on the second attempt.
‘Yes. Well, thank you for your hospitality.’
Gorrif took a sip from the flask. ‘You’re welcome. I was most excited to have won, I’m sure you will appreciate.’
Skarbo blinked. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘Are you? Why?’
‘No – I don’t understand. What did you win?’
Gorrif put the flask down carefully. ‘Well, you, of course. The right to host you, at least. Didn’t you know about the lottery?’
Skarbo stared at him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was told that the Left Hand Stewardship had agreed to host us. That they had outbid the others.’
‘Ah. Apologies! That’s true, but it’s not the whole of it. They needed to get their costs back, obviously, so they ran an internal lottery and I won. We do tend to monetize everything here.’
He paused, and looked at Skarbo as if he was expecting something. Skarbo said nothing, and after a moment the man blew out his cheeks. ‘It was rather expensive.’
For a moment Skarbo couldn’t think of anything to say. Eventually he settled on, ‘I’m flattered.’
‘Oh, no. The honour is all mine!’ Suddenly Gorrif was on his feet. ‘I’ve looked you up, of course. Such a history! All those years of study – lifetimes! And the models, oh, the models. Is it true that they were all destroyed?’
‘Yes.’ Skarbo was about to say that there were more models on the Orbiter, but then stopped. He didn’t trust this creature.
‘How dreadful. But of course, there’s more to the story than that, isn’t there?’
‘What do you mean?’
The hand waved again. ‘Well, obviously there is. All those rumours can’t be wrong. Why do you think I spent all that money? Eh? Do have a drink.’
He shoved a flask forwards, but Skarbo waved it away. ‘What rumours?’
‘Oh, don’t dissemble. I’m sure you know better than anyone.’ Gorrif leaned closer and Skarbo caught the smell of many different substances on his breath. ‘The Spin, of course. You studied it for hundreds of years. Obviously you didn’t publish everything you discovered. Who would? I don’t blame you. You’d be a fool not to keep something in reserve.’
Skarbo resisted the urge to take a step back. ‘I’m a fool, then.’
‘I doubt it very much.’
They stared at each other for a moment. Then Gorrif looked down, his face collapsing from eager to sulky. ‘Well, if you won’t tell you won’t. Seems a shame. I daresay I’ll find out. Perhaps your bird will tell me.’
Skarbo shrugged. ‘I doubt it. And so you know, it’s not my bird. I’m definitely not responsible for it.’
‘Yes. I imagine that would be a burden … well, well. If you can’t eat and you won’t drink and you won’t talk about your lifetime obsession, at least let me show you something more about mine. Gadaps? We’d like to see out. Will you dilate, please.’
There was a tremor beneath Skarbo’s feet and the end wall of the Floater rippled and split, pulling apart along a vertical line until the room was completely open to the exterior.
The great dim shapes outside seemed closer, seen from here. And closer to each other, too, in a way that somehow made Skarbo feel tense. He walked towards the opening to get a better view. There was something …
Then he saw it. He turned to Gorrif. ‘Are they squaring up to each other?’
The little man smiled. ‘Well done. Your lifetime habit of observation serves you well.’
‘But they’re not going to fight?’
Gorrif spread his arms. ‘Why not? I’d hardly be much interested in them if all they did was to float around, would I now?’
Skarbo stared at the man for a moment. There was something new in the eyes, or perhaps it had always been there and he had just noticed it? Something cold and hungry … Then he looked out towards the shapes outside. Two of them were definitely drawing closer to each other. Without looking away from them he said, ‘Why do they fight?’
‘Ah. They don’t fight each other in the wild, of course. But this is a stressed environment. There isn’t enough room, you see? Normally, if a colony gets too dense in the middle, there’s space for groups to separate and drift off somewhere else. Not here.’
Skarbo looked sharply at him. ‘Are you saying you do this deliberately?’
‘It’s a consequence of the environment.’
‘But you determine the environment.’ Skarbo looked away. As a human, he would have felt sick. That had been engineered out – but he could remember it.
‘Yes, I suppose I do. And a bit of quiet bioengineering, if I must be honest. They have a natural defence mechanism – a layer immediately beneath the tegument is slightly corrosive. It makes them less likely to be eaten by things that move faster than they do, you see? But here, the effect is stronger. Much stronger, in fact. Strong enough to be used as an offensive mechanism. And the chemistry varies from one to another, so they aren’t evenly matched. You never know which will have the advantage, but it’s rather fun guessing. Watch.’
And Skarbo knew he was going to, and that made it worse. He tried to tell himself he was showing some kind of respect for them, but it lacked conviction.
The two Floaters were almost touching now. They were roughly spherical, rough-surfaced grey-brown masses that Skarbo guessed were about twenty metres across. Dozens of slender filaments radiated from each one to what Skarbo found himself thinking of as the watching Floaters – although whether they were really watching he didn’t know. He didn’t want to ask Gorrif.
Then the two touched.
There should have been a spark, thought Skarbo, or a gasp from a watching crowd. There wasn’t – just two bodies pressing slowly against each other so that they visibly flattened at the point of contact, pausing for a long moment, and just as slowly bouncing apart.
But not unchanged. Even from here Skarbo could see an ugly blistered patch on one of them. It seemed to be spreading.
‘Ah!’ Gorrif was by his side. ‘A good start, that. But just a start. Which one has your bet?’
‘Bet?’ Skarbo shook his head. ‘Absolutely not.’
‘A pity. It would have made things much more interesting. I was thinking of offering you the chance to win back your companion.’
The words sank in slowly. After a long moment Skarbo made himself turn to look at the man.
There was no doubt about it – the eyes were definitely cold. ‘What did you say?’
‘Your companion. The avian creature. Friend, possibly. I did speculate about lover, given how you bitched at each other.’
‘The Bird? What have you done to it?’
‘Oh, nothing yet. Merely detained it. It is rather tiresome, isn’t it? Honestly, I would understand if you decided not to win it back.’
Skarbo decided the man was serious. He wondered if he should ping the Orbiter; the beaconer was still itching faintly at his shell. He thought for a moment. He had no idea whether anyone here could do The Bird any serious harm. If he had to bet on anything it would be that the thing had allowed itself to be detained for its own reasons. He shrugged. ‘You will need to release it when we leave,’ he said, and turned away to watch the show outside.
But not so quickly that he missed the flash of disappointment that crossed the pudgy face. He smiled to himself, just a little.
The two Floaters had drifted apart and were now closing again. The injured one, if that was the right word, had managed to rotate a little so it was presenting undamaged skin. Skarbo wondered if that was it – the whole strategy? And how much skin could the thing lose before it did whatever they did? Died, he supposed.
But then he saw that the injured creature was gaining height – quickly, and the fine threads that joined it to the others were stretching and snapping so that it was trailing a gently waving clump of them like some sea creature.
‘Ah.’ Gorrif nodded. ‘A high-risk strategy. Now we’ll see.’
Skarbo couldn’t see what the creature had gained. ‘Won’t it die, now it’s disconnected itself?’
‘Possibly. Not certainly. Watch.’
The injured Floater was almost directly above the other. It had stopped rising, but the other had started to gain height, presumably in response. As it rose it brushed a tendril, very gently.
It stuck.
Skarbo ramped up his vision as far as he could, until he had a grainy view of a few square metres of tegument. It took him a moment to realize what had happened – the tendril hadn’t stuck. It had penetrated, and an ugly little raised crater was growing around it. As he watched the fibre began to thicken.
Then another touched, and another. Skarbo pulled back his focus until he had the two Floaters in his field of view, and already the view was very different.
The two were joined by a thickening bunch of the fibres that were pulling the skin of the lower Floater into an ugly peak. Then it tore, peeling away to reveal a dark pinkish-brown substrate that looked uncomfortably like exposed flesh.
The injured creature began to lose height. As it fell it pulled at the skin still attached to the bundle of fibres, and the tear grew, running around the body in a ragged fissure that started to drip clear liquid.
As Skarbo watched the thing seemed to shrink and shudder. He turned to Gorrif. ‘Do they feel pain?’
The man shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. Who cares?’
Skarbo looked at him for a moment. Then he said, ‘I’d like to leave now.’
‘Yes, I expect so.’
‘And?’
‘That can be discussed shortly. Besides, don’t you want to see the coup de grace?’
‘No.’
‘Feel free to look away.’
But Skarbo didn’t.
The falling Floater was still turning, hanging off a lengthening strip of its own skin, and the victor was still rising, keeping the tension on the bundle of threads that maintained its death-grip on the other. The watching – if they were watching – Floaters seemed to be drawing away a little. Skarbo wondered if they had lost interest, now the spectacle was almost over. Hating himself for doing it, he asked: ‘What happens to it now?’
‘Keep watching. Ah! There. See?’
And he had seen something, but he wasn’t sure what. Something had flicked across his field of view and stopped at the victim. He looked harder – there was another, and another, and now he could see.
He wished he hadn’t.
There were carrion-eaters in this place, then. They were little black flying creatures, too small for him to see clearly even with his vision ramped up to the threshold of pain; but he could guess. They were smacking into the peeled flesh and disappearing. Burrowing. He imagined sharp mouth parts …
Next to him, Gorrif was smiling. ‘You see? The thing is almost dead now, but nothing will be wasted. The Floater Mites will make sure of that. It will make the perfect host for their larvae. You should be proud.’
Skarbo turned to him slowly. ‘I?’
‘Well, yes. Of course! You and the Mites have some shared heritage, at least in spirit. Insects together!’ He looked sly. ‘Or do you propose to deny the choice you made, all those lives ago?’
Skarbo bore down on his anger. ‘I deny nothing. I am not the perpetrator of this. And, I repeat – I wish to leave.’
‘Ah, of course. As I said, that needs to be discussed.’
Skarbo shook his head. ‘I have nothing to discuss with you.’
‘Perhaps so, but I wasn’t referring to myself. There are other interested parties. I assume the little thing concealed under your carapace is a signalling device?’
The anger ebbed, to be replaced by something else. For the first time since Hemfrets had invited itself to his planet, Skarbo felt fear. He stopped the slow movement of his claw towards the device the Orbiter had given him. ‘Supposing it is?’
‘Would you gamble on your ancient friend being able to come to your aid unimpeded by some of those interested parties? Ah, but I forgot. You have already told me that you don’t gamble.’
Skarbo forced himself to speak calmly. ‘Are you going to allow us to leave?’
‘Us? Well done for remembering. No, I am not. With apologies, I have already received nine offers for you. Do you know what’s happening out there?’
Skarbo waited.
‘You’re in a war zone. I don’t know what’s going to happen to you after you’re sold, but I’m not going to stay here. I wouldn’t have done in any case. Have you any idea how bored one can become with Floaters? Stupid things. I’ve been ready to go for years. Any one of those offers would get me out and away, so I suppose you should be flattered by that. I will be accepting the highest – ah, now, as it happens. There. Done. And certainly it cannot be undone, in case you were thinking of asking. Your new owners have rather forthright business habits. Even my death would not be guaranteed to nullify the contract. And in case you’re thinking of appealing to the Left Hand Stewardship, don’t bother. They’d be breathing vacuum if they interfered.’
Suddenly Skarbo didn’t need to force himself to calmness. It was happening to him anyway, the only sane response to a situation so far out of his control as to be almost comical.
Almost.
His claw had completed its interrupted journey. He felt it close on the beaconer, felt the little device scratch its way out into the open. He held it up.
Gorrif laughed. ‘Gambling after all? A last desperate throw? Well done. I’m almost relieved. There must be a bit of human left in you after all.’
Skarbo shook his head. ‘You were right the first time. I don’t gamble. But I don’t think the Orbiter does either.’ And he squeezed the little thing gently.
There was a faint pop. Then the beaconer shook itself free from his claw and flicked away to hover in the air halfway between him and Gorrif.
They watched it for a moment. Gorrif laughed again. ‘Waiting for an answer, I expect,’ he said. ‘It will have to wait a long time. I told you, this is a war zone. Your mad old friend is probably a cloud of vapour by now.’
Skarbo said nothing.
Then the little speck began to move, swinging slightly from side to side and turning on its axis. It looked, thought Skarbo, as if it was searching for something.
The movement stopped.
Then it was gone.
A fraction of a second later the room exploded.
The blast threw Skarbo backwards towards the dilated opening. He landed on his side a couple of metres from the edge and desperately dug his claw into the floor. It yielded just enough to give some purchase and he managed to stop his slide.
The room was full of dust and swirling debris. His shell felt as if it had been squeezed in a vice, but by some miracle he had kept his remaining limbs.
He heard a cough, and looked up. Gorrif was lying near him, his confused face white with dust. A scarlet trickle from one ear contrasted starkly with the mask. He raised himself on an elbow. ‘What …’
‘I don’t think it waited for a reply,’ said Skarbo. He unhooked his claw from the floor and stood up, keeping the open claw pointing at Gorrif.
The man’s eyes were fastened on the claw. He licked his lips. ‘You’re still sold,’ he said. ‘There’s no point fighting.’
‘There’s no point me doing nothing.’ Skarbo took a step towards the man. ‘Maybe I have something in common with those mites after all.’
The eyes opened wide, and the man scrabbled backwards along the floor. ‘Now, wait …’ he said.
‘I’ve waited.’ Skarbo took another step towards him.
Then there was a furious screech and something burst into the room and hovered between them.
‘Haaaaa! Where is the fucker?’
It was The Bird. It, too, was covered with dust. Its eyes were wild and its feathers were sticking out as if frozen in mid-explosion. It gave a few harsh flaps while it stared at Skarbo as if checking him over. Then it nodded, wheeled round, pointed itself at the prone Gorrif and launched itself downwards like a missile, screaming hoarsely.
It landed on his face, claws first. Gorrif yelped and thrashed his arms at the thing but it clung on, claws raking, beak stabbing. Now and then it made a ‘ha’ noise.
Skarbo winced, and looked away until the howls and the wet noises had stopped.
After a while The Bird hopped round into his field of view. ‘Ah! Needed that. Now, think we’d better leave.’
Skarbo allowed himself to stare at it. From the shoulders back it was still white with dust, but everything in front of that was slick and red. He didn’t quite manage to quell a shudder.
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