The Skinner

by Neal Asher

  Sometimes Sniper wondered if allowing the Warden to subsume him might be the best and most sensible move he could make. Perhaps then he would become as machinelike in his attitude as he was in appearance. Was it right for a drone such as itself – one of the pinnacles of Polity AI technology – to get bored, grumpy, and sometimes downright ornery? Did SM13 ever feel that way? He flicked a palp eye round to observe the submind, but the flying brooch was as blank and unreadable as ever.

  ‘GCV 1236, for our delectation and richness of experience,’ said Thirteen.

  Sniper quickly checked all his outputs and found he was emitting a low-grade mumble from one of his memory interfaces. He quickly shut it off as they slowed to hover over an islet in the shape of a horseshoe. This particular landmass was old enough and had room enough to have acquired some vegetation. SM13 turned and focused its topaz eyes on him.

  ‘That’s better – not so noisy now,’ said the little drone.

  ‘How long have I been doing that?’ Sniper asked.

  ‘Ever since you flew out here. You know you could do with either a deep diagnostic or a memory upgrade. You’re so backed-up you’re spilling over.’

  ‘I like it that way,’ said Sniper. ‘So, what have we got here?’

  ‘Usual whelk survey, they’re the best environmental indicators, then we check out the molly carp here. They sit at the top of the food chain and pick up all the poisons. But first, we pay a little visit to my sea cave.’ With that, the little drone dropped out of the sky towards the island. Sniper immediately followed, his interest piqued.

  The seahorse drone decelerated over a grove of stunted peartrunks, then eased in through the sparse green-and-blue leaves and knots of black twigs. Sniper followed, pulling leeches off his metal skin with his precision claw and snipping them in half, not because they might do him any damage, but because on some level it irritated him that they confused him with something living. Once through the branches, Thirteen accelerated to an area where a ridge of old packet-worm coral was crumbling to white powder and glittering nacreous flakes. This mass of coral rested on a slab of basalt tilted up out of black dirt. Underneath this slab was a dark elongated hole. Thirteen turned at forty-five degrees to enter this place, its eyes igniting to light up the interior.

  Sniper found the hole less than accommodating and had to smash away lumps of coral with his heavy claw before he could follow the little drone through. Once through he too sent beams of light from the projectors on either side of his mouth. The two drones were now in a narrow cavern. At the back of this, a cube-shaped hollow had been cut into the rock, and in it rested three large hammer-whelk shells. Thirteen moved forward until it was hovering over one of these. Its ribbed tail uncoiled, split at the end, and gripped the rim of the shell.

  ‘I thought you were only intended for observation,’ said Sniper.

  ‘I am,’ said Thirteen.

  ‘How did you excavate that?’ Sniper asked, indicating the cavity with his heavy claw.

  ‘With a boosted geological laser and patience.’

  ‘And what about your tail? Last I recollect, the Warden didn’t allow you any manipulation of your environment . . . ever since those thrall units . . .’

  Thirteen gave an aerial shrug above the whelk shell.

  ‘If you have the funds, you can buy the alterations. No doubt that is something you’ve been telling Windcheater for some time,’ the little drone replied.

  ‘I have . . . but does the Warden know about your . . . alterations?’

  ‘No,’ said Thirteen, ‘nor does he know about these.’ With that, the submind tipped the whelk shell to reveal that it was full of amberclam pearls. Sniper shifted forward in the confined space and turned a palp eye to each of the shells in turn. The second shell was full of short rods of translucent pink stone Sniper recognized as fossilized glister. The third shell contained lumps of greenish rock. Only a laser chromatographic scan rendered the delightful news that this substance was pure green sapphire.

  ‘Quite a collection,’ said the war drone. ‘What do you intend to do with it?’

  ‘To buy my laser upgrade I had to stick a pearl to my tail with amberclam glue and transport it over four thousand kilometres. That took me the best part of a solstan year and I lost four pearls in the process. My tail alteration took five years, by the same methods.’

  Sniper gave his deadly grin and backed out of the cave. Dropping the whelk shell back into its place, Thirteen followed him out into the emerald day.

  ‘You still have your account at the Norvabank, then?’ Sniper asked.

  ‘I do, though there’s not much in it right now.’

  Thirteen rose up through the trees at high speed, in an explosion of foliage and leaves. Sniper followed, deliberately going through the thickest branch he could see, just for the hell of it, and smashing it to splinters. Once clear of the dingle the two drones flew out over the bay and settled towards its calm waters.

  ‘So what sort of percentages are we talking here?’ asked the war drone.

  ‘There’s a gem dealer who comes down from Coram to buy stock from various Hoopers. I got his eddress two years ago and have been waiting for the opportunity to get my finds to him. I can’t move this amount without risking being caught by the Warden, and if he catches me, it’ll be immediate subsumption and I’ll lose the lot. You’re a free drone. You’ve a better chance. It’s doubtful that it’s even illegal for you to trade in natural gems.’

  ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

  ‘Twenty per cent net of profit,’ said Thirteen.

  ‘Fifty per cent,’ said Sniper.

  ‘You’re a robber and a thief!’

  Sniper grinned his grin again as they skimmed close to the surface. He lowered his back legs in, and set a subprogram to counting the whelks in the area.

  ‘Seems to me you’re all out of options,’ said Sniper, at last enjoying himself immensely.

  ‘Watch yourself, Sniper!’ said Thirteen, turning in midair.

  ‘Are you threatening me?’ Sniper asked, turning also. The little drone must have gone mad. Only at the last moment did Sniper realize to what Thirteen had been referring. The creature looked like a monstrous carp swimming with its top half out of the water. Underneath the water, Sniper knew that this molly carp would have three rows of flat tentacles with which it gripped the bottom to drag itself along. The prow of its head now cut quickly and without deviation towards its target.

  Sniper loaded a missile.

  ‘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 succe
ss 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 wan
t 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.