The Skinner

by Neal Asher

  ‘Captain got its attention, then,’ said Boris.

  ‘I thought it was going to try for him,’ said Anne.

  ‘Nah,’ said Boris, eyeing the junior crew gathered round. ‘It knew it couldn’t get the Captain down in one gulp, and what’d happen to it if it tried. Molly carp are smart. Remember Captain Gurt’s carp? He fed it on leeches, and trained it to catch even bigger leeches for him.’

  ‘He made a lot of skind,’ agreed Pland.

  ‘Then there was Alber’s carp – used it to tow his ship around,’ Boris went on.

  Anne said, ‘Could be it just didn’t want to eat the Captain. That was only a lick on its head it got, no more than an itch.’

  ‘Remember what happened to Captain Gurt?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, they only found his leg, didn’t they?’ said Anne, then, ‘Why they called molly carp? I’ve always wondered.’

  Boris appeared thoughtful for a moment. ‘They look a bit like a fish from Earth called a carp. Then there was this Hooper who had a wife called Molly who kept on carping at him.’ Boris ignored Anne’s wince at this and soldiered on. ‘He went out one day and saw this big fat carp and thought it looked like his wife. And that’s how they got their name.’

  The junior crewmen attended Boris’s explanation with dubious expressions, before being shepherded back to their tasks by Pland, now the excitement was over. Anne leaned close to Boris and muttered, ‘You don’t really know, do you?’

  Boris scratched at his moustache. ‘Nah, haven’t a clue.’

  Peck chose that moment for another yell. ‘That’s it, y’bugger!’

  He was waving his fist, but it was still unclear at whom or what he was gesturing.

  ‘Never been the same since,’ said Boris, shaking his head.

  ‘Oh, he only goes a bit funny sometimes,’ said Anne. She pointed at the island to which Ambel was again towing them. ‘It’s islands – they remind him of the Skinner’s Island. He never feels safe near them.’

  ‘He knows he can’t be got again,’ said Boris, looking meaningfully towards the Captain’s cabin.

  ‘Not the point. It ain’t logical, but he’s convinced it’s going to happen again.’

  ‘Well it can’t,’ said Boris, looking towards Ambel as the Captain continued to tow the ship on in.

  In Ambel’s cabin the Skinner’s head lay still in its box; still and silent, and attentive.

  The remaining hornet had been gone for two days now, and the mind had not spoken to him much since his voicing of his concerns about Erlin. Quite dryly, it had asked him just what he found so unbelievable about her story and, when he had tried, it had pointed out all the clues that pointed to the ‘extremity’ Erlin had described. Since then Janer had been contemplative and had nothing to ask it. Since then the mind had very little to say to him either. It was almost as if an embarrassed silence had fallen between them. When it was broken, Janer jerked as if he had been slapped.

  ‘Now, there’s an interesting sight,’ said the mind.

  ‘Mind, where are your eyes now?’ Janer asked, confused as to why he should have been surprised at the voice. After a pause came a flat reply, without the usual complementary buzzing. He realized this was the reason he had jumped: the buzzing had always served to forewarn of a communication.

  ‘I’m on a rock in the sea. Sails live on it,’ the mind said.

  ‘Why are you there?’

  There was no reply for a long time and, standing at the rail, Janer started to fidget uncomfortably. He glanced up at Ron, who had a telescope to his eye, then at Erlin, whom the sail had lifted to the nest. Other members of the crew were slowly moving about their business on the deck: Roach, Forlam, a thickset blonde called Goss, who kept giving him the eye, and others he had no name for. Janer studied Goss speculatively. This journey was starting to get a little boring. Perhaps it was time to spice things up a little. Just then, the Hive mind came back to him, but this time the buzzing had returned.

  ‘Look to the north,’ it said.

  Janer did so, and observed a red glow sheeting up behind cloud, wavering like an aurora.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘An antimatter explosion. The Warden is most reticent about its source,’ said the mind.

  ‘Antimatter?’

  The mind was silent for a while before continuing.

  ‘I will be with you soon. Keech is coming. Tell Erlin to prepare her equipment.’

  ‘What do you mean, Keech?’ Janer looked in confusion from the light in the sky back to the activity on the deck.

  Others were gazing out at the redness and talking to each other in muted tones. But already the light was beginning to disperse, to fade. The buzzing that had accompanied the mind’s message faded also, and it gave no reply. Janer looked at Goss again, then he looked up at Erlin. He called to her.

  ‘What did it mean “Keech is coming”?’ Erlin asked him, once Janer had related the mind’s message.

  ‘I can only think he’s in trouble, if it means you’ll need your medical equipment,’ said Janer.

  ‘What the hell am I supposed to be able to do for him?’

  ‘He is a little past your services, I have to admit.’ Janer shrugged and grinned at her. ‘Perhaps we should prepare anyhow. The mind doesn’t normally get things wrong.’

  ‘OK. I suppose you’re right.’

  Erlin headed for the deck hatch and Janer watched her for a moment.

  ‘Let me help you. I’m a bit of a spare wheel here anyhow.’

  Erlin gestured for him to follow.

  Once below decks, Erlin pulled one of her cases from a storage locker, then put it on the floor and opened it. Janer looked at the mass of gleaming apparatus neatly packed inside. He recognized a nanoscope, portable autodoc, and one or two other items.

  Erlin pointed at the autodoc. ‘You know how to assemble that?’ she asked.

  Janer pulled the doc out of the case and proceeded to clip together the hooded cowling and the insectile surgical arms. Erlin allowed a little surprise to enter her expression, nodded an acknowledgement to him, then turned to something else. She took out a flat box with a gun-shaped object fixed in its upper surface. Janer immediately identified the ‘gun’ as a hand-diagnosticer, and the box it was plugged into as a portable drug-manufactory.

  ‘Oh hell,’ said Erlin. ‘I haven’t got a clue.’

  ‘Let’s just be as ready as we can,’ said Janer.

  They got ready.

  Windcheater flew in a world constructed of information. Eyes crossed and toes clenched he gazed with wonder on a virtual galaxy dwarfing the incontestably vast Human Polity. There was so much to know, so much to see – great minds moved past the sail like sun-bright leviathans, and the financial systems of worlds were complex hives he could lose himself in for centuries. It was wonderful: there was so much to do, so much to have. But Windcheater, with a self-discipline and intelligence beyond that of his brothers and sisters, gradually shut all that out and concentrated on the specific. He curled his lip and growled when he located the minuscule antiquities site based on Coram and surveyed the price list. Perhaps Sniper believed the sail would be too dazzled to pick up on things like that.

  ‘Windcheater.’

  The voice came from close by and Windcheater uncrossed his eyes and looked around. His fellow sails were all gathered at the other side of The Flint, watching him warily. It had not been one of those that had spoken.

  ‘Sail, I’m speaking to you through your aug. Do you understand me?’ asked the voice.

  ‘I hear you,’ said the sail. ‘But I don’t know who you are.’

  ‘Of course . . . you’ve never heard my voice. I am the Warden.’

  ‘Ah,’ Windcheater managed. He noticed then that his fellows were edging even further away from him and were observing him all the more warily. There was nothing he could do about that just now.

  ‘Well, what do you think of the human virtual world?’ the Warden resumed.

  ‘It is . . . useful,
’ replied the sail. ‘What do you want?’ it then asked, thinking it might be less disconcerting for his fellows if he quickly terminated this conversation. He did not want them thinking him any crazier than they did already.

  ‘Like yourself I want many things – and like yourself I understand that there is little to be had without paying a price,’ said the Warden.

  Windcheater showed his teeth and waited. The Warden continued.

  ‘I see that your business arrangements with Sniper have provided you with some income. I see no reason to prevent that arrangement continuing. It could easily be argued that any artefacts accessible to you are legitimately the property of your people . . .’

  ‘Our property?’ Windcheater asked.

  ‘You are, after all, the autochthons of this world,’ the Warden observed.

  ‘Does that mean we own it?’ the sail asked, a couple of strange ideas occurring to him all at once.

  ‘That is something we can discuss at a later time,’ said the Warden. ‘For now I just want to know if you would like to augment that minor income.’

  Windcheater considered the offer for all of a couple of seconds, quickly forgetting his concerns about how his fellow sails might view him. That ‘minor income’ was the only income he had, and there was so much to have.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ the sail said.

  ‘I need a pair of eyes, but a pair of eyes in a natural form of this world. Not so much undetectable as unnoticed.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You saw the light in the sky to the north?’

  Windcheater nodded, then realizing the Warden would have no way of seeing this, replied in the affirmative.

  The Warden continued, ‘I want you to go and take a look in that area and report to me anything unusual.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Just anything unusual.’

  Windcheater considered again: Why not? He could do with the extra credit.

  ‘How much?’ the sail asked.

  ‘One thousand shillings for each day.’

  By the time the Warden had reached the word ‘day’, Windcheater was already airborne. His fellows, after watching him depart, turned to each other in great puzzlement and there was much confused shrugging.

  As Ambel rested, the Treader drifted up behind and nudged the back of the rowing boat. As it did this, he dipped the oars and rowed again for a few minutes. Slowly the ship drifted into a sheltered cove whose visible bottom was smeared with leeches and pinioned by the stalks of sea-cane, which at the surface opened into tangles of reddish tendrils that were kept afloat by chequered gourd-like fruits. An islet, no bigger than the ship itself, slid past to the right of them, and from this the stalked eyes of frog whelks tracked their progress, their grey and yellow shells clattering together in their agitation. Boris turned the helm so that the ship drifted away from these, and Ambel allowed the rowing boat to come back against the side of the ship.

  ‘All right, Pland!’ he shouted.

  At the bows, Pland, Sild and Gollow heaved the anchor over the side and dropped it into the shallows, where it thumped down, still visible, raising a cloud of black silt. Taking the usual precautions for mooring in island waters, Pland had greased the anchor chain some hours before. The grease wouldn’t stop prill as they – should they have the inclination – could scale the wooden sides of the ship using the tips of their sharp legs like pitons, but it would deter frog and hammer whelks, and other of the more common annoyances. Anne lowered a ladder to Ambel while he hitched the boat to the side of the ship and secured his oars inside. As he climbed back aboard, Peck looked down at him disconsolately from the nest.

  ‘Still time to get a worm or two to tempt a sail. Fresh meat’s always best,’ said Ambel, nodding towards stony beaches and the island with its narrow crown of blue-green dingle.

  ‘I ain’t goin’,’ said Peck.

  ‘You stay and trull for boxies, Peck,’ Ambel replied cheerfully.

  ‘I don’t wanna stay,’ said Peck.

  ‘You could hook us some sea-cane and a few gourds as well. We’ve a barrel or two to spare, and some bags of dried salt-yeast,’ said Ambel, ignoring this.

  Peck snorted and returned his gaze to the island. After a moment, he turned away, stepped out of the nest and scrambled down the mast to the deck, from where he again returned his attention to the island. Ambel watched him for a moment, then shrugged and walked over to the wall of the forecabin, from where he unhooked his blunderbuss. He also shouldered a case containing powder and shot. He turned to Anne and Boris, who had just come down from the cabin-deck.

  ‘You two fetch your stuff and get down to the boat,’ he said – then, turning to Sild and Gollow, ‘You two as well.’ To Pland he said, ‘Keep an eye on things here,’ flicking his eyes in the direction of Peck. Pland nodded, and Ambel ducked into his cabin. Once inside, he closed the door and laid his blunderbuss and bag on the table. After a pause, he went over to his sea-chest and took out the Skinner’s box. He opened it and looked at the head inside. Insane black eyes glared back at him from the grotesque object. Ears that looked like spined fins wiggled. There seemed a lot more of them than there had been before. Ambel looked closer and noted lumps growing down the side of the long-snouted end of the thing. They were similar in shape to the lumps from which its tusks sprouted. Ambel stared at it some more, then abruptly came to a decision.

  ‘It’s sprine for you,’ he said to the head.

  The head rose up on its bottom jaw and tried to shake itself free of the box. Ambel slammed shut the lid and locked it. The head was still banging about inside its box as he closed it in his sea-chest. He took up his ’buss and his bag and quickly left his cabin.

  With a fear gnawing his gut, Peck watched them rowing ashore. Horrible things happened to you if you went ashore. Memory was a feeling. He could feel a long bony finger under his skin, working round between dermis and muscle, tugging and ripping. Why can’t a Hooper faint? he wondered. Why did the pain have to last for so long? Somewhere deep inside himself Peck knew he was being foolish. The Skinner was finished. Ambel kept the head in a box and the Skinner could no longer do what it had been named for.

  The boat grounded on the beach of the cove and the five of them hopped out, secured it, then made their way into the dingle. Rhinoworms would be in the deeper water surrounding the island elsewhere, so they would have to make their way round there, and out of the shallow cove.

  Peck looked at Pland, who was standing at the bows with two juniors. The three of them had dropped lines over the side and were trulling for boxies. Nothing to worry about. Everything was fine. But then the whispering started again: a kind of hungry pleading.

  ‘Wants some buggering sea-cane does he?’ Peck said loudly.

  Pland glanced at him. ‘Get it from the stern. I don’t want you stirring it too much here.’

  Peck nodded, then moved to one of the rail lockers, where he pulled out a coil of rope and a grappling hook. He walked then to one side of the stern end of the ship, hurled the grappling hook out, and began hauling away. Soon the hook snagged one of the sea-cane plants, and he pulled carefully until it slid up to lodge in the tangle at the plant’s head, then he increased the pressure. With a puff of black silt the plant came up out of the sea bottom. He drew it in to the edge of the ship then hauled it up hand-over-hand as far as the rail. With it draped half over the rail, he grasped the stalk, which was as thick as a man’s leg, pulled out his panga, and with one blow cut off the hand-like root and anchor stone to which it was clinging. Root and stone splashed back into the sea, while the rest of the plant flopped on to the deck, its gourds thudding down like severed heads, scattering small leeches, trumpet shells, and coin-sized prill across the planks. Peck then spent a happy five minutes stamping on the prill and leeches, and dropping trumpet shells into a cast-iron bait box. During that time he forgot the whispering, but when he had finished it returned stronger than ever.

  Come . . .

  With a sweat b
reaking out, Peck clung to the rail – then he swore and headed for the rear hold. Down below decks, he muttered to himself and crashed barrels about with more vigour than was entirely necessary. Two barrels he hoisted out on to the deck before climbing out of the hold and rolling them over towards the sea-cane. After opening the barrels, he stamped on the few leeches he had missed, then began plucking gourds and tossing them into the first barrel.

  Need . . .

  ‘Shaddup! Buggering shaddup!’

  The stalk of the sea-cane Peck sliced up with single panga blows so each fragrant section fell into the second barrel. The ribbed red-and-green skin of the cane stalk was only a thin sheath covering a gooey yellow honeycomb that smelt strongly of aniseed. Peck scooped up the tangled top and tossed it back over the side, before quickly snatching up the grappling hook and casting it out into the water again. It’s a coward, he thought, as he yanked in another cane. It’s only this loud when the Captain ain’t aboard. But today the whispering was particularly strong. He’d never known it as persistent as this before. But this time he would resist. It was only when he had dealt with the second sea-cane, which had nicely filled both barrels, that he remembered that Ambel kept the salt-yeast in his cabin. Then the whisper became even more intense, even more eager. With elaborate care, Peck returned the rope and grappling hook to the locker before clinging tight to the rail again. He clung there for as long as he could, but a horrible fascination eventually turned him round to stare towards the Captain’s cabin. After a moment he walked to the door and – out of Pland’s view – he ducked inside.

  The pain. The pain had been transcendent. It had taken Peck somewhere he had never before been. There had been a terrible understanding in it, too. It had been given to him so he might understand, yet he had failed. Peck stood over the sea-chest with his sweat dripping on to the ornately carved wood. Here, concealed in this box, was something that all Hoopers – with their ambivalent relationship with pain – could not but fear and worship at the same time.