The Skinner

by Neal Asher

  A hundred pairs of infernal eyes glinted at him in the darkness but, beyond this observation, the sails showed no immediate reaction to him. He studied them more closely. They were big; their bodies, with spined wings folded around and behind them, stood at well over two metres and probably massed the same as at least three humans, and their ribbed necks and long flat heads stretched another three metres above that. Below their bodies were splayed large six-fingered foot-talons with which they gripped the rock to hold them secured against the wind. Their necks swayed in that wind like stalks of grass, and the heads that topped them were vaguely crocodilian with perhaps just a hint of praying mantis. Keech supposed that these creatures had as much trouble as did he when they landed anywhere lower, hence their occupation of the top of this rock. Also it explained their arrangement with the ship Hoopers. He put them out of his mind and thought about what he must do next. He must get to talk to one of the old ship captains, and to do that he must either return to the Dome or seek one out here. Obviously these captains were reticent about their dealings with Hoop, or rather the creature he had become, else Tay would have known more, or at least been certain of her facts. He needed a friendly captain, then, and the nearest he had to that was Captain Ron – or perhaps, through Erlin when she found him, Captain Ambel. In his aug, Keech loaded four names into a standard search program and uploaded it to the local server. The immediate response was two unknowns for the Captains, and the two last-known locations of Janer and Erlin. He dumped this information, then reached out to his touch-console and put the satellite comlink online. The connection was suspiciously quick and confirmed for him who was curious about his activities.

  ‘How may I help you, Monitor Keech?’ asked the voice of Warden.

  Before Keech could reply, a shuffling movement amongst the sails distracted him. All the heads had turned inward to one of their number; one that appeared bigger than the rest. He kept half an eye on them as he replied to the AI.

  ‘I’m trying to get in contact with Erlin Tazer Three Indomial, who at present is out on one of the Hooper ships.’

  ‘Erlin Tazer Three Indomial does not carry a personal transponder at this time, and has not filed intended destinations with me,’ came the reply.

  ‘How about Janer Cord Anders. He is with her at the moment.’

  ‘Janer Cord Anders does not carry a personal transponder either, and likewise has not filed intended destinations with me.’

  Keech paused for a moment, realizing, by the characterless tone, that he was not in direct contact with the Warden itself, but that it obviously had one of its subminds monitoring his transmissions. He was not sure if this was any more reassuring.

  ‘Janer Cord Anders is indentured to a Hive mind. Would it be possible to get in contact with him through his Hive link?’ he asked.

  ‘Hive links are for privileged use only. I can put you in communication with the Hive concerned, but it is up to that entity how you might proceed from there.’

  ‘Please do so.’

  There was a pause and a strange buzzing issued from the com-link. During this pause, Keech observed the bigger sail leave the group and begin to waddle over to him. The observing heads of the others were swaying from it to him like spectators at a tennis match.

  ‘Yes,’ said an echoey buzzing voice from the link.

  ‘My name is Keech. I travelled with one Janer Cord Anders for a short time then recently lost contact with him. I’m trying to get in contact with him again. Can you tell me his present location?’

  ‘I could,’ said the Hive mind.

  Keech hesitated for a moment, trying to work out what to say next. The sail creature was only a few metres away from him. He drew his pulse-gun and rested it in his lap, as he had recently returned the guard spheres to their case for recharging.

  ‘What is his present location?’ he asked.

  ‘I want something in return,’ said the mind.

  ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘On the next shuttle from Coram a package will be arriving for Janer. I wish you to pick it up. When you have this package, I will give you his location at that time.’

  ‘What is in this package?’

  ‘This is none of your concern.’ The buzzing ceased and the link with mind clicked off.

  ‘You’re on our rock,’ said the sail, now looming over Keech.

  Keech just stared up at the creature. He’d heard a little about sails, but not that they were sentient. When he had been here before, there had been no ships and the sails had only ever been distant shapes in the sky. As this sail now glanced back to its fellows, he noticed that it had a silvery aug on the side of its head. He didn’t know quite what to make of that.

  ‘You’re on our rock,’ said the sail again, louder this time.

  ‘I take it you don’t want me here,’ said Keech.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the sail, nodding its head.

  ‘Then I’ll leave,’ said Keech.

  ‘Last human come here I chucked him over the side,’ said the sail.

  ‘A bit drastic, don’t you think?’

  ‘He thought so,’ said the sail. ‘Climbed back up and threw a rock at me.’

  More evidence of the indestructibility of Hoopers.

  ‘What happened then?’ asked Keech.

  ‘Threw him off again and he buggered off,’ said the sail, nodding its head. It squatted down with a slight sigh and tilted its head to one side. ‘You smell wrong,’ it said.

  ‘That’s because I’m dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ asked the sail, then, ‘But dead is . . . dead.’

  ‘I am a reification,’ said Keech.

  The sail tilted its head and its eyes crossed slightly. ‘Oh,’ it said, obviously having accessed its aug for information on the subject. A sudden thought occurred to Keech.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’

  ‘Dunno,’ replied the sail.

  ‘Did you know a human called Hoop?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said the sail. ‘He bounced.’

  Keech just stared at it, and seemingly having made its point it rose up again, turned, and waddled away from him. This sail then was at least seven hundred years old and could be ten or a thousand times that. Keech holstered his gun and engaged the scooter’s AG. Soon he was back in the air and heading for the Dome.

  Captain Drum was another big thickset man like Ron, though he had a full head of hair that he tied into a ponytail. He ebulliently welcomed them on board and told them to tuck into the food provided. Over a large brazier, Janer noted a large lobster-like sea creature strapped to a metal frame. It was moving as they roasted it, and making low gobbling sounds.

  ‘Not like a boxy,’ he said to Erlin.

  ‘Some creatures have evolved defences against the leeches. A leech cannot get through a glister’s shell. Glisters in fact feed on leeches,’ she replied.

  ‘Do they have the virus in them?’

  ‘No, they’ve evolved in such a way as to exclude it. I think it’s connected to the fact that the fibres normally only enter through wounds, and they don’t get wounded too often. Their shells are very thick, and anything that’s going to break through is going to kill the creature.’

  ‘Why didn’t they kill this one before cooking it?’ Janer asked. The sound the glister was making was beginning to make him feel a little ill. He accepted the mug proffered by one of Drum’s crewmen and took a gulp. His eyes didn’t water this time. He took another gulp.

  ‘Glisters have psycho-active chemicals in their mouths and brainpans. The only way to kill one, other than by roasting, is to smash its skull. Doing so releases these chemicals into its flesh. Hoopers only kill glisters that way when they really want a party,’ said Erlin.

  ‘I think I’ve lost my appetite,’ said Janer.

  ‘That’s not the worst of it,’ said Erlin, pointing.

  A cauldron had been set over a wide brazier filled with glowing charcoal. Fishy steam drifted from this receptacle,
and peering through that steam were many stalked eyes. Only on seeing those eyes and how they were vibrating did Janer become aware of the hammering sound.

  ‘What . . .’ he began.

  ‘Hammer whelks,’ said Erlin. ‘Not such good news to any other slow-moving mollusc. They’ve got a kick that can crack plascrete. It can also snap human bone easily enough, if you’re incautious around them. They have to use a cast-iron pot to cook them.’

  That was it then: the molluscs were trying to batter their way out of the cooking pot – if ‘batter’ was the best term to use. Janer took another gulp of his rum to quell the sudden queasiness he felt. Erlin moved away with a fixed smile.

  ‘You told me to warn you the next time,’ the Hive link reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, but this time I really need it,’ he replied.

  Walking past carrying a stack of platters, the crewman who had earlier handed him a drink, glanced at him questioningly.

  ‘Eh, what’s that?’

  ‘Private conversation,’ said Janer, tapping the box on his shoulder.

  The man grunted and moved on. Janer brought his attention back to the hammer whelks as the first set of stalked eyes drooped and sank out of sight. The hammering was getting louder now. He turned away, only to see crewmen swinging the glister’s frame from its brazier and knocking out the manacle pins. One of the men used a large pair of tongs to haul the creature from the metal and drop it on to the deck. It was Ron who stepped forward with a large mallet and large flat chisel.

  ‘I get first dibs on the tail-meat,’ said the big man.

  ‘All yours,’ said Drum.

  Janer ate some of the white fragrant flesh of the glister after Ron finally broke it open. When a crewman presented him with a plate piled with steaming purplish body of a whelk, he demurred. This fleshy thing had a large pink foot, ending in a lump of bone, and its flaccid eye-stalks hung over the side of the plate. Thereafter, Janer stuck to the cane rum and tried to avoid seeing the Hoopers gobbling down hammer whelks liberally sprinkled with spiced vinegar, and tossing the foot bones over the side. He was thankful when it was all over and time to return to Ron’s ship.

  ‘You all right?’ Erlin asked.

  ‘Fine,’ said Janer, getting unsteadily to his feet.

  She and Ron helped him to the rail then down the ladder to the rowing boat. Once he was in the boat he felt queasy again and leant over the edge in readiness to be sick. The lights from the braziers aboard the ship glinted on the oil-dark wavelets. Janer’s nausea subsided and he trailed his hand in the cool water. When he went to take his hand out, he found that it seemed to have stuck.

  ‘Janer!’ Erlin shouted.

  A glistening body half a metre long came up with his hand and he could feel something grinding through his tendons and bones. There was a horrible keening coming from somewhere and his hand hurt very badly. Ron had hold of him and suddenly he was in the bottom of the boat, the glistening thing writhing beside him. Ron’s boot came down on his wrist and Ron’s hands closed like vices on the leech. It came off stripping skin and Janer saw pink flesh and abraded bone before the blood welled up. I should faint now, he thought, but there was no relief until they got back to the ship and Erlin slapped a drug patch on his neck.

  ‘You know what this means?’ she asked as he went under.

  Janer didn’t know what she meant. All he knew was that the pain was going and that he felt kind of funny.

  A hornet came to his bedside as he slept and it watched him with its compound eyes.

  The ship was dark and it stank, and it was crawling with the teardrop lice that fed on the scraps Prador dropped when feeding. Her own cabin had extra lights, but these only made the lice hide in her bedding and amongst the few belongings she had brought with her, and still there was the smell and the pervading marine dampness. Knowing what to expect, Rebecca had dressed in a full-body environment suit and, on the few occasions that she slept, she slept with her helmet on. Shortly after the launch she had hunted down all the lice she could find and burnt them with a small QC laser, but soon they had returned and she became bored with the chore. Now she was just plain bored. Time to see Ebulan.

  The service corridors of the ship were wide enough for second-children and blanks to pass each other – though she noticed some of the blanks had healing wounds on their bodies where Ebulan’s children had passed too close and sliced them with the edge of a carapace or some other lethal piece of shell. When she came face to face with Vrell, a first-child and consequently a larger Prador, Frisk ducked into a wall recess while he passed. The adolescent turned slightly towards her as he clattered by, with some chunk of putrefying human meat held in one of his claws. She stepped out behind him and followed, as no doubt the meat was for Ebulan. Only Prador of his age and status got to sample such delicacies, as not many humans were still bred for meat, it now becoming passé. Adolescent Prador ate only the decayed flesh of the giant mudskippers that were farmed along the seashores of their home world.

  Soon Vrell came to one of the main corridors which were wide enough to allow Ebulan himself passage. A second-child saw Vrell coming and dodged to the wall, pulling itself down flat so the first-child would have to extend himself to cause any real damage. Vrell clouted the top of its shell in passing but, obviously on an errand for his father, did not linger to pull off a leg or two. It was this society – utterly stratified and utterly devoid of beneficence – that Frisk most admired about the Prador. The slightest sign of weakness was punished in the extreme. No member of the society deserved any more than it could take. And there was no right to life. She felt there was something clean and pure about it, and it was the antithesis of all those things she detested in the Polity.

  Vrell drew to a halt at a huge doorway that was a slanted oval in a weed-coated wall. The doors themselves were a form of case-hardened ceramal; unpolished and still retaining its rainbow bloom from the heat treatment. They cracked in an arc off-centre of the oval and slid, turning as they went, into recesses above and below. Beyond was a chamber lit with screens and control panels that in the Prador fashion had something of the appearance of luminous fungi, and perhaps of rock-clinging insects. On a gust of warm air, rolled out the smell of sea-life, decay, and the sickly musk that only issued from adults like Ebulan. Frisk quickly stepped through the doorway after Vrell, and moved to one side, further studying the chamber as she did so.

  Ebulan hovered before a collection of screens, on most of which scrolled Prador glyphs and computer code. A couple of screens showed scenes from the Third Kingdom, and were probably U-space transmissions from Ebulan’s agents there. The adult turned as Vrell crouched down to one side of him, holding up the piece of meat, which Frisk now identified as a human leg, then slid forwards, only to halt before presenting his mandibles.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  The voice came from Frisk’s right, where three human blanks were lined up in readiness to do Ebulan’s bidding. He had spoken through one of these. It did not matter which one.

  ‘I’m here because I need one of your blanks to assist me,’ said Frisk.

  Ebulan slid forwards and presented his mandibles to Vrell. The adolescent dropped the meat across them and scuttled back. It was well for adolescents to be cautious: adult Prador were not averse to, in fact very much enjoyed, eating their own young, as this was the way they thinned-out the weaklings. As Ebulan sliced the meat and chewed on it, Frisk noted a number of screens fading behind him. Was there something the Prador did not want her to see? She turned her attention to Vrell as the adolescent backed up to the side of the chamber, his carapace scraping along the wall.

  ‘One of my blanks?’ said the blank to her right.

  Frisk returned her attention to Ebulan. Bits of flesh were dropping to the irregular floor and lice were scuttling in to gobble them up. There were also lice clinging around his mouthparts.

  ‘I have my library console and crystals here with me and I need some help with some cataloguing,’ she said
.

  ‘Which of these units do you require?’ asked the blank.

  Frisk studied the four mindless humans and then walked over to a heavy-set male. She ran her hand down this one’s bare and heavily tattooed chest then into the front of the elasticated trunks he wore. The blank farther to the right had no need of trunks like these to prevent certain items flapping about, having been neutered some time in the past, probably because he was not good breeding stock. After a moment, she slid her hand out and nodded in satisfaction.

  ‘This one will do,’ she said.

  ‘He is fully functional,’ said Ebulan. ‘You may take him, but be sure he is returned to me fully functional.’

  ‘Come with me,’ said Frisk to the blank, and headed for the oval door. The blank followed her, doglike, as she went through. Ebulan watched her go then turned slightly towards Vrell and waited. The adolescent shifted nervously, picking his legs alternately from the floor before finding the nerve to speak.

  ‘Why does she require a blank for cataloguing?’ he asked in the humming Prador tongue.

  ‘She does not. She is bored and requires a male blank for the purposes of recreation,’ Ebulan replied.

  ‘Sexual recreation?’ Vrell asked hesitantly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you allow her such liberties?’

  ‘You would find, Vrell, should you attain adulthood, that one gains a certain affection for tools one has had for some time. Also, you would understand and sympathize with the needs for . . . recreation.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ said Vrell, understanding not at all.

  6

  At her instruction, the three male glisters dropped away from their mate and skulked around to the other side of the feeding turbul and, once they were in position, she slammed into the turbul shoal to drive it towards them. She need not have bothered – so far gone in gluttony were the turbul that they hardly noticed her. Seeing their mate grabbing at turbul and tearing off heads had the males hurtling into the mêlée as well – snapping also at prill and goring leeches as they came. Soon all four glisters were in amongst it: moving from turbul to turbul with ruthless efficiency. In no way could they eat all they killed, but their instinct was to kill as many as possible before feeding, for there would always be uninvited guests at the table. For their part, the turbul were still too intent on the taste of hammer whelk, not realizing that none remained, not seeing the sudden flurries of claw and snapping mandible, and their headless fellows now drifting by. The glisters themselves would have been fine, had not all this occurred on the edge of an oceanic trench.