The Voyage of the Sable Keech s-2

by Neal Asher

  Perpetually growing larger, old clams slowly migrate down into the deep ocean muds, where have been found specimens weighing many hundreds of tons. But for viral infection, the amberclam life-cycle would be brief, and confined to the sands washed from the worm casts of packetworms -

  Janer walked down the corridor to the communal washroom, glanced inside and saw it noticeably devoid of Hoopers or any sign that they had ever been there. He had been surprised, when first coming to Spatterjay, that such an apparently unwashed people smelt only of things they caught and handled, and remembered a conversation with Erlin on that subject:

  ‘You’d think they would stink,’ he said, pulling his own shirt out of his sticky armpits and wishing he himself could wash. But they were returning from the Skinner’s Island, fresh water supplies were limited, and even sea water clear of visible life could contain a plankton that started eating one’s skin.

  ‘That’s not through any conscious effort on their part,’ she informed him dryly.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, the Spatterjay virus immunizes them from the bacteria that cause body odour. It also kills many other parasites to which humans are prone, and even some bacteria normal humans need.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Intestinal flora. They may look like us, but how they function inside has changed a great deal,’ she explained.

  ‘But you’re a Hooper in that respect, and I’m on the way to becoming one.’

  ‘Mmm… quite.’ Erlin seemed annoyed by the observation. ‘Perhaps I’m just thinking more of the Old Captains.’ She peered back down the deck, towards where Ambel and Captain Ron were deep in conversation.

  She went on to tell him at length how Old Captains did not sweat, probably not containing sufficient moisture, how their kidneys shrank and their livers changed, how they digested food; and how, by the colour of their urine, they seemed to have over-indulged in beetroot. Now Janer was seeing signs of these changes in himself, but he still liked to wash. Habit probably.

  He showered, used the built-in hot air blast to dry himself, then donned clean clothes: tough monofabric combat trousers, a blue silk shirt, and boots from an envirosuit. His jacket was of vat-grown leather, with an inner layer of ceramal mesh and a temperature-controlled lining run from a power pack the size of a coin which in turn was kept recharged by a gridwork of solar cells across his upper back and shoulders. After putting this on he slid his gun into an inside pocket. He now felt ready, and was anxious for this strange voyage to begin.

  Janer stepped out to the sound of Hooper voices echoing down the corridor and numerous other sounds probably from the mechanisms of the ship itself. Turning to head for the nearest stair, which spiralled up around the lower internal section of Mizzenmast Two outside the forward bulkhead of the crew quarters, he passed the cabin door next to his own, then halted and backed up. There was a name carved into this other door too—one he had missed. He was just contemplating this when Aesop found him.

  ‘Bloc requires you ashore.’ The reif passed him a plasmel box. ‘Here.’

  ‘What does he want me for?’ Janer eyed the sidearm the reif wore.

  Aesop gestured to the box. Janer opened it and studied the contents: some bottles of the supplements Hoopers now often used to stave off the transformation the virus could cause, a hollow-core laser injector—the only kind that could penetrate Hooper skin—and cartridges of Intertox inhibitors to load into it. He looked at Aesop questioningly.

  ‘Come,’ said the reif, not elaborating.

  Aesop led him through the bulkhead to the stair he had been heading for anyway, then up and out of the stairwell below the mizzen, and onto the main deck. Janer looked around.

  Each one of the nine masts penetrated right down into the ship’s bilge, and each of them was wound around with a spiral stair, though these ended at the maintenance deck, three decks below. This particular mast stair lay between the rear two deckhouses: a large one positioned amidships and a smaller one stretching back from here. In the latter deckhouse he had earlier seen automated restaurants, bars and shops, and others that would eventually be run by many of the Hoopers now aboard. Only glimpsing into the midship deckhouse, he had seen rows of chainglass tanks, like aquaria, and racks of medical equipment. Apparently the first two tiers were totally taken up by these, the third tier containing more catering facilities.

  From the forward deckhouse jutted a raised bridge. The cabins and staterooms underneath were to be occupied by Bloc and his lieutenants, and also by Captain Ron and his command crew. Up in the bridge, behind enclosing chainglass, he could just see some people moving about, though from where he stood they must be about seven hundred metres away. He supposed Ron, Forlam and other Hoopers must be checking out their command, and trying out the controls, for he could hear movement from the laser turrets positioned on the hull below the rails. Positioning lasers there was only a sensible precaution. There were some nasty creatures here quite capable of scaling the side of a ship.

  Just ahead of him, by Mizzen One, extending up the side of it from the midship deckhouse, rose a crane, positioned over the movable section of main deck between that deckhouse and the stern one. Above him was a forest of rigging in which some Hoopers were either working or just climbing for the hell of it; reefed monofabric sails, control cables and electric winders to drive them; solar panels, mast-mounted consoles and the places ready to be occupied by the living sails.

  Aesop led him through a milling crowd of reifications, past Hoopers wandering around bemusedly, and groups of watchful Kladites. They traversed the wide area of deck beside the Tank Rooms, passed midchain anchor points, where Janer peered down the length of the three ceramal chains reaching down into the sea, and finally reached the embarkation stair. Two Kladites stood below, armed with laser carbines, watching out for hostile life forms, since already some frog whelks had tried to board the ship.

  Janer’s admiration for the Golem builders was tempered by the fact that they had neglected to put up some kind of fence along the jetty’s edges. Just then, shadows drew across him, and he glanced up to see two living sails gliding in to land up in the rigging. Then transferring his attention ashore, he saw, on the beach, Bloc, a group of his Kladites and Bones, all standing beside some large metallic object. Halfway down the ramp and he saw the metallic object move, and realized it was a sail holding something flat to the beach with one talon. That something was struggling, and after a moment he realized it was human; and that what he could see of its skin was very blue.

  Returning his attention to the one holding it, he said, ‘That is a very odd-looking sail.’

  ‘Golem,’ Aesop replied briefly.

  Janer noted that the reif’s head was moving back and forth, scanning the island as if worried about something there, though it was difficult to be sure, what with Aesop’s lack of expression and a distracting lump missing from his head.

  The beach consisted of polished quartz pebbles lying in drifts on pale grey sand, seeming like something tipped out of a giant lapidary drum. As he approached the group gathered around the Golem sail and its captive, Janer pulled out the hollow-laser injector and clicked a cartridge of Intertox into it. Obviously here was someone undergoing the viral transformation which, if left unchecked, might result in something nasty.

  ‘We have one more passenger,’ said Bloc, turning towards him. ‘One even more important than yourself.’

  Janer did not like this obsequious and oblique compliment. His distrust of Bloc was growing on every contact with him. Bloc walked beside him as he stepped over to the sail. The great Golem turned and fixed him in its emerald regard, then simply bowed its head to indicate its prize with its snout. The sail was holding a woman face down with some sort of handle jutting up from a harness she wore. From this Janer surmised the creature had been carrying her. She was struggling and grunting with effort to escape. Only when he stooped down to pull back her collar did recognition dawn. He set the dosage at its highest, and placed the injecto
r against her neck. It burned a pinhole deep into her flesh and squirted a stream of Intertox into her as she continued struggling. His mind running scenarios and discarding them one after another, Janer stood and turned to face Bloc. He knew Erlin would never have risked any journey so unprepared as to end up in this state. But would it be a good idea to voice his suspicions right now?

  ‘I’ll give her another shot in about an hour or so,’ he said, ‘but we need to get some supplements inside her.’

  ‘You can do that aboard the ship. We have restraints there for anyone undergoing cybermotor nerve conflict as they Arise.’ Bloc’s spectacle irrigator sprayed his eyes.

  ‘I see.’ Janer remembered how he and Erlin had ministered to Sable Keech when, as a reification, he had arrived stinking, half-decayed and half-alive on the deck of Ron’s sailing ship, the Ahab. Keech’s convulsions, shortly after he had returned to life, had been the result of cybermotor nerve conflict. It was because of this that Bloc wanted himself and Erlin along. This was the reason for all the chainglass tanks aboard. This was the entire purpose of the voyage. He was not here for a celebrity’s free ride; he was here to work. He wondered, judging by her condition, how willing a volunteer was Erlin.

  Bloc gestured in turn to a couple of Kladites. ‘You two take her to the ship.’ He turned back to the Golem sail. ‘Zephyr, release her now.’

  Not thinking this a good idea at all, Janer stepped back. The sail released the handle with which it had clamped Erlin to the ground, and shuffled out of the way. Erlin paused before heaving herself to her feet.

  ‘Jaannersss!’ she hissed, her leech tongue waving about obscenely. ‘Lovelllies!’ She launched towards him, her hands open in blue claws. The two Kladites tried to grab her, but she shrugged them off as if they were not there. Bones stepped forward aiming a flat-nosed weapon. Janer flinched at the first stun blast—and the one after it. Erlin dropped face down at his feet, sighing into unconsciousness.

  ‘It is well to remember Hooper strength,’ said Bloc, irrigators again working furiously.

  Damned right, thought Janer.

  * * * *

  Huff’s memory of the time prior to his receiving severe injuries aboard Captain Drum’s Cohorn was not so good. But the horrible occasion when he actually received those injuries he remembered in lurid detail. Admittedly, his memory would never have been so clear now without the assistance his Polity aug gave his fibre-locked brain, but certainly he would never have forgotten that time even without it. The memory of that mad woman Rebecca Frisk boiling his head with a laser still made his eye sockets ache sometimes, but going to see her confined in her tube at Olian’s was always a pleasant remedy. A taste forever on his tongue was of the two human blanks whose heads he had bitten off at the time he escaped and carried Captain Drum ashore to hunt that Prador adolescent. The memory of Shib, the Batian mercenary, stapling his neck to the mast elicited a psychosomatic choking. This last memory was why Huff, surprisingly, felt happy now. Via his aug, he had learnt of the recent events here on this island. And discovering that a number of Batian mercenaries had been torn to pieces was cheering news indeed.

  Growling contentedly to himself, Huff spread his wings and gripped the control spars with his spur claws. Being this way up felt very strange, but was not entirely unpleasant. He shifted his position and felt the assister motors cutting in to move the spars above and below him, and on foremasts behind and in front of him. Turning his head he checked the mast console and, onlining the program in his aug, understood it perfectly: these controls to adjust trim, reefing controls on a percentage scale so that he could put just as much sail to the wind as he wanted, cable motors he could set to change the angle of the other fabric sails in relation to himself—but all these controls within parameters set by Zephyr, who would occupy the middle one of the three mainmasts, controlling those ahead and behind him. Puff was towards the stern of the ship, controlling the two mizzen-masts and the jigger mast.

  However, still studying the console, Huff came across many terms unfamiliar to him. He knew about course, gallant and top sails, but only through his aug did he learn about skysails, moonrakers and staysails, and numerous terms for the different kinds of rigging. He realized that this job would not be quite so easy as he had supposed, and understood then something Windcheater had once told him: ‘Technology means you work harder with your brain than you did with your muscles, but the rewards can be greater.’

  Huff agreed with the first part, but wondered when the second part might materialize. However, his speculations were cut short when Zephyr arrived on the central mainmast, his voice issuing from Huff’s mast console.

  ‘Now, we begin to learn,’ said the Golem sail.

  * * * *

  The quarter deck was crowded with reifications gazing back towards the island as it retreated from view. Above them the hundreds of square metres of doubled staysails cut up into the sky like blades and, forward, more sailswere opening to the wind all the time, as if the ship were a closed flower brought out into the sunshine. Many other reifs, John Styx knew, were, out of long habit, shy of company and so would be watching through their cabin windows—those with hull-side cabins that is, which on the whole had been occupied by Bloc’s people. Others, he knew, had no interest at all in the voyage itself, and had immediately interred themselves in their quarters, shutting themselves down until it ended. It occurred to him that those on deck were evidently the ones still with some appreciation of life, even though they were dead. He surveyed the crowd, studied their varied dress, varied styles of reification, various visible death wounds. It did not matter to him how accustomed he was getting to the sight of dead people walking; this was still a macabre scene.

  ‘Aren’t we a grisly crew,’ said a female reif standing beside him. ‘And here comes our grisly leader.’

  Styx turned to her as she gestured with one tatty hand—flesh worn through to the bone and replaced at the fingertips with rubbery pads. He inspected his own wrinkled hand as if unsure of its provenance, then gazed at where she indicated. Instantly recognizable in his long black coat, Taylor Bloc was walking down beside the stern deckhouse towards them, Aesop and Bones trailing along behind him as usual, but now with four armed Kladites behind them. As soon as Bloc reached the edge of the crowd, some of its members approached him. Out of this group stepped one individual who by the look of him had died before attaining full growth. This dead youth, with stringy blond hair still clinging to his scalp, wore clothing Styx recognized as being the fashion of Klader a few hundred years in the past.

  ‘Bloc,’ began this reif, ‘we have some complaints.’

  At this the others began to speak up too: ‘… damned inner cabin…’ ’… expect a reduction for…’ ‘I don’t see why it’s necessary for…’ They all spoke in dead flat voices and kept on interrupting each other.

  The ringleader held up his hand until the others fell silent. ‘As you can hear, we are somewhat troubled by your treatment of us. We may be dead, but you should know this does not give you the right to steal from us, or treat us like your personal property.’

  ‘You’d think that death would be an adequate cure for whingeing, wouldn’t you?’ the female reif murmured to Styx.

  Styx tilted his head, and would have grinned if he could. ‘Perhaps it’s all those years of having no one to complain to, and all those years of independent existence.’ He pointed to the one who was now going into more detail about the complaints of those hovering behind him. ‘Who is that?’

  ‘Ellanc Strone—recently reformed Kladites are always the angriest. And who might you be?’

  Styx held out his hand. ‘John Styx.’

  After a hesitation she took his hand. ‘Santen Marcollian.’ She turned his hand in hers and inspected it. ‘You recent?’

  ‘Relatively.’ He approximated a shrug. ‘And I use reconstructive cosmetics.’

  She released his hand then stared at her own. ‘I considered that, but never saw the point. I’m a corpse, wh
y bother being a neat corpse?’

  Now the crowd around Bloc and his crew continued with their litany of complaints while Ellanc stood with his head bowed and his arms crossed. Had the reif possessed the facility for expression, Styx supposed he would be smiling now.

  ‘Enough!’ Bloc turned up his volume. He was now holding up his hands, which he continued doing until the bitching around him dropped to an acceptable level.

  ‘Cabins were allocated at random. If any of you wish to move, then I suggest you work out some arrangement with your fellows.’

  ‘Yeah, but I would have paid—’ began one of the complainers.

  ‘Please!’

  Bloc’s eye irrigators seemed to have some sort of fault, Styx surmised. His eyes surely did not need that much moisture.

  Bloc continued, ‘I have given you this opportunity of resurrection, and you complain?’ Despite the even tone issuing from his voice synthesizer, his incredulity was evident. ‘We are reifications—’

  ‘Well screw you and your platitudes,’ Ellanc interrupted. ‘We’re not Kladites following you on the promise of resurrection; we’re paying customers.’

  Someone else interjected, ‘He’s right. We paid good money and we’ve been conned and robbed ever since arriving here.’

  Another said, ‘Yeah—five hundred shillings for a replacement joint motor.’

  Yet another: ‘Last I heard, it’d be a short voyage from the Island of Chel.’

  And the whole furore started up again.

  ‘Some definite hits,’ said Santen, ‘and some rather unfair criticism.’

  ‘They need to be rather careful,’ said Styx. ‘They seem to be forgetting that they are no longer protected by Polity law.’

  ‘That could be a problem?’ she asked, looking at him.