The Skinner

by Neal Asher

  The only sound now was that of the waves slopping against the side of the ship. Peck, Anne and Pland could not look at their Captain; Forlam’s expression displayed a strange avidity; Ron was without expression.

  Keech turned to Erlin, who was looking slightly sick. ‘Is this possible?’ he asked.

  Erlin nodded.

  ‘A Hooper of Ambel’s age can’t die unless most of his major organs are destroyed simultaneously. The leech mouth was the result of lack of Earth food. It’s due to the Spatterjay virus. Not only does it infest the body, but also it reprograms the DNA of that body for optimum survival – and keeps on reprogramming. Adrift in the sea, with his muscles eaten away, he needed some way of feeding. The virus grew him a leech mouth so he could attach to other animals that got close to him.’ Erlin shook her head and stared down at the deck.

  ‘What about his mind?’ asked Keech.

  Erlin said, ‘His nerves would have been regrowing all the time. He would have been suffering varying degrees of agony all the time that was happening to him. It would work in much the same way as the overload employed in a mind-wipe, though that’s done by shooting a full sensory overload down every nerve channel, and takes only about ten seconds.’

  Keech studied Ambel. ‘Then you’re like the Talsca twins and Rimsc,’ he said, and pocketed the three spheres he had been holding.

  Ambel returned his stare and waited.

  Keech said, ‘The sentence pronounced upon you has been executed.’

  ‘Does this mean you won’t try to kill me?’ Ambel asked.

  Keech stared at him expressionlessly. ‘Probably not.’ He turned and left the cabin-deck.

  One after another, the blanks were now walking away from the gathered Prador towards the heavy-lifter. One of the Warden’s fellow AIs was ruminating over the huge possibilities now, perhaps, opening for such corporations as Cybercorp, and wondering if this had been the sector AI’s purpose in coming to the Prador home world in the form of a Golem – Cybercorp could certainly provide the Prador with more efficient hands than those of the human blanks, and perhaps commence trade in Golem and robot technologies. Another AI was observing that trade in such technologies would give AI a foothold in the Prador Third Kingdom, so that it would not be long until it was absorbed into the Polity. The Warden of Spatterjay acknowledged all this and shifted its attention away from the sector AI Golem and to the interior of the heavy-lifter.

  The blanks’ control codes were being switched over to the control of subminds that had been briefly initiated by the sector AI, then dowloaded into the blanks’ thrall units, and these minds were moving them into cold-storage lockers on the lifter. As each one went into storage, sampling drones the size of flies took snips from their skin, which were instantly taken for analysis.

  Joseph Best, ECS monitor, lost in action . . . Erickson Sewel, medical orderly on the obliterated Hounger Station, lost in action . . . Seben Daes, housewife, disappeared . . . and so the list scrolled on and on, as DNA was matched to ancient records and those records then completed and closed down.

  The Warden now pulled further back, to get an overview of yet more heavy-lifters landing and taking off on other Prador worlds, as the thousands of essentially dead were taken away for respectful disposal: a transmigration of the undead – a ghoulish chapter that should have closed the Prador war, though that war had ended long ago, but did not.

  The final closing words, the Warden knew, would be written on Spatterjay. And so it continued to watch and send information packages back there – to itself.

  13

  The surviving male glister, having come within a whisker of falling prey to one of the deep-sea denizens, instinctively headed for the shallows where such creatures never came, and where it might digest in peace the hundredweight of turbul flesh now cramming its gut. It was this last huge meal, putting excess pressure on the network of blood-vessels lacing the creature’s body, which forced one such vein up against a sharp fragment of its own damaged shell. This circumstance would not have proved so unfortunate had the creature stayed in the depths; but the drop in external pressure, as the glister rose to the surface, caused the vein to expand, sawing against the shell as it swam. The vein burst just as the creature reached the surface near a small isolated atoll. The injury, in itself, was a minor problem for the glister and would have healed in a few days, had not the leakage of blood left a trail for the molly carp resident close by. Feeling a surge in the water behind it, and tasting molly carp – a taste that elicited only terror in it – the glister accelerated away from the shallows towards open sea, though it was sluggish after its gorging. Swimming over a declivity into deeper water, the glister experienced something like relief, assuming that the carp pursuing it from the shallows would be unlikely to pursue it any further. But when it flipped its tail to dive, the tail remained rigid and its body moved up and down instead. Sculling in panic with its flat legs it found itself rising inexorably out of the sea. As the carp somersaulted it into the air, its last view in this world was of a large mouth gaping where it would rather have seen ocean.

  The adolescent Vrell mistook the grinding of Ebulan’s mandibles as an indication of hunger, and nearly lost a leg trying to feed the councillor a nicely decayed hock of human meat. Sliding on his AG, Ebulan slammed Vrell up against the weed-pocked stone-effect wall.

  ‘An adult Prador initiates and manipulates. But what does an adult Prador not do?’ Ebulan asked.

  ‘An adult Prador does not physically intervene, Father,’ Vrell signed.

  Ebulan again slammed the child against the wall, putting a crack in Vrell’s carapace as a reminder, then backed off to let the child escape. As the adolescent scuttled away, Ebulan accessed Speaker’s thrall unit and looked through the blank human’s eyes. Prill everywhere, water rushing in through a hole in the hull, screams and shots: chaos. Stupid human.

  It had all been so simple: send Frisk off in pursuit of Keech, let it be known there that she was on-planet and, using adulterated eonides, destabilize her nerve linkages with her host body so that she operated below efficiency. He had predicted how she would quickly be captured and a Convocation called. In such circumstances all the Old Captains on-planet, as well as Keech and Frisk, would be assembled in one place. And in that same place, he would have a Prador multipurpose motor with a totally improbable antimatter power supply – and that with a little tab of planar explosive stuck to the side. Ebulan ground his mandibles again and quickly sent four of his more heavily armed blanks hurrying off to his shuttle.

  Then he summoned Vrell again. The adolescent edged his way into the chamber and waited, shivering, for instructions.

  ‘Things have not entirely gone against us. We have enjoyed some of what the humans call “luck”. A Convocation has been called, so we must be sure that the motor gets to its location.’

  ‘What about Frisk . . . Father?’ asked Vrell.

  ‘The motor is of main importance. Frisk we must retain in case this Convocation is broken off and we need some method to set up another.’

  ‘I understand, Father.’

  ‘You will go along with the four blanks to assure the fruition of my plan.’

  Vrell suddenly stopped twitching and went very still.

  Ebulan went on, ‘Take the ship to that Convocation. Go along with Frisk’s plans unless they begin to interfere with this purpose. As it is primary. I do not expect you to return.’

  ‘I understand, Father.’

  The chamber was a thirty-metre sphere of mirrored glass, with a floor of black glass. The runcible itself stood at the centre of this, mounted on a stepped pedestal. Its apparent similarity to some kind of altar had long been the subject of holodrama and VR: gleaming ten-metre-long incurving bull’s horns jutted up from the pedestal, and between them shimmered the cusp of a Skaidon warp: an interface with the supernal. When asked why this was so, most AIs gave equivocal replies. The Warden’s reply to this question was uncompromisingly direct. ‘What design do you expec
t, from someone who calls a tachyon “pea-green”?’ it always retorted.

  Through the cusp now stepped four people. The Warden noted the presence of an ophid-adapted human, two women dressed in the utile garb of seasoned travellers, and a free Golem android. Tourists, doubtless. No ECS monitors as yet, though it expected them at any time. It flashed its attention down to the planet’s surface and took in multiple views through its thousands of eyes positioned there, noting nothing more untoward than a fight between a couple of Hoopers, then returned all its attention to the eye mounted on one of its satellites.

  The AG reading was coming from a ship, and this was all it could ascertain through the thick cloud layers. It wasn’t a registered antigravity device, of this the Warden was certain, and it wasn’t one of the many unregistered ones it already knew about. It took the AI less than a second to interpolate the likely source of the device. It opened its ‘anomalous’ file and inspected more closely what it found there – focusing on the instant before the antimatter explosion. The Prador ship had passed through the cloud layer, and been effectively hidden by the ionized gas it left behind it. It seemed entirely likely that the explosion had been a subterfuge covering more than just the jettisoning of an escape pod. Something more significant than Frisk’s arrival here had occurred. As a precaution, the AI sent a coded underspace transmission of activation to a satellite on the other side of Spatterjay.

  That satellite, a polished cylinder twenty metres long, jetted out two blades of fusion flame and began to change its orientation. Inside it, systems came alive, and ten matt-black objects began to draw energy. The Warden now turned its attention elsewhere.

  SM12 and SM13 exploded from the surface of the sea and shot into the air.

  ‘I don’t know who is aboard that sailing ship, but it seems unlikely that whatever is going on down there is unconnected to the arrival of that Prador vessel. You, Thirteen, have chameleonware – though I don’t remember approving it. I want you to get on board and report everything you see. Twelve, I want you scanning the entire area for anomalous signals – anything,’ the Warden ordered.

  ‘It might not be Frisk. If it is her, though, there’s no way she could have got that far merely in an escape pod used as a submersible,’ said Twelve.

  ‘I am aware of that,’ said the Warden. ‘If it is her, then it seems likely she has had more assistance than that of a handful of Batians. If it is not her, then you can return to your search for her, or work from that point, should there be a connection. Twelve, I want you to confine your scans to very low power, as I do not want you detected. Thirteen, you will transmit direct to me via underspace. For now we just watch and learn.’

  ‘You got it, boss,’ said Twelve as the Warden withdrew.

  ‘Creep,’ muttered Thirteen as they sped on through the sky.

  Prill had entered through the gaping hole in the ship’s bows. Bits of their bodies lay smoking round that hole, though some of them had made it further in before being hit. A legless prill lay on a coiled pile of rope, its red eyes still shooting round and about its carapace. Svan thought how like an adult Prador it seemed, and equally vicious. She looked to where Speaker sat against a bulkhead, a pulsed-energy weapon on her lap and a cord round her right upper arm, above where the limb had been cut away.

  ‘Need any help?’ asked Svan, forgetting herself. She glanced at Shib, who was staring at the legless prill with a horrified fascination.

  ‘It is unfortunate that this unit has lost its arm,’ said Speaker, and Svan stared back at her, reminded that this Speaker was not actually a human being; she was just a tool of the Prador in its ship; its eyes and ears, and . . . hand. She shook her head in annoyance, then ignored the blank while she inspected the damage to the ship.

  ‘Do we have enough equipment to deal with this?’ she asked Shib, gesturing at the breached hull.

  ‘I’ll rig a couple of sheets – inside and out – and fill the gap between with crash foam. Shouldn’t be a problem,’ he said, still staring at the prill.

  ‘There is a more immediate problem,’ said Speaker. Both the Batians turned and looked at her as she removed the cord and dropped it, then stood, holstering her weapon. She continued, ‘Rebecca Frisk has been going into deep nerve conflict with her body for some days now. She carries the drug to alleviate this problem, but since arriving here has not taken it with any regularity. The nerve conflict is therefore causing in her a psychosis with schizophrenic episodes.’

  ‘Pan-fried AI,’ said Shib, turning from the prill. Svan was glad to see that he seemed to have himself under better control now.

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’ asked Svan.

  ‘She must start to take the drug regularly. If she does not she could become a further danger to this ship. Also, while she is acting like this, you will find it difficult to effect repairs, and we do not want it running on AG for much longer.’

  ‘You go and tell her to take her damned drug,’ said Svan. ‘She just took a shot at me out there.’

  ‘It should be possible for you to bring her down with a high-energy stun setting,’ said Speaker.

  ‘Right,’ said Shib, rolling his eyes.

  ‘I repeat, if you do not do this, she will become a danger to herself as well as to others.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said Svan, turning back to inspect the hole in the hull.

  ‘Also, if you do not do it,’ said Speaker, ‘you will have to find some alternative method of transport from this planet.’

  The Batians stared at her.

  ‘What’s your interest, Prador?’ asked Svan. ‘Her I can understand. She wants Keech off her back. She wants him dead. What’s in it for you?’

  ‘Friendship,’ said Speaker.

  ‘Answer the question then I’ll do what you ask,’ said Svan with contempt.

  ‘You don’t believe I do this for friendship’s sake?’ asked the Prador through its Speaker.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Very well – politics. Our Kingdom is slowly but certainly developing closer ties with the Polity. As these ties grow, I become ever more of an outcast in my own society because of my connections with the trade in cored humans. I have come here to sever all such connections.’

  ‘But Frisk is one of those connections,’ said Svan.

  ‘I do have a certain affection for her,’ said Speaker.

  ‘Keech is also one,’ said Shib, ‘but surely you could have left him to her, to us.’

  ‘There are others too,’ said the distant Prador.

  ‘Who?’ asked Svan.

  ‘Anyone who was once a slave here when the coring operation was being run. They are still here, many of them. They are people like Drum: the Old Captains.’

  ‘All witnesses,’ said Svan, nodding in understanding. Shib eyed her questioningly. She explained, ‘It’s the nature of Prador politics. Since anything written or recorded can be falsified, only the verbal statements of witnesses are given any credence in law. It basically works out that you can get away with anything so long as you leave no living witnesses to it.’

  ‘In this you are correct,’ said Speaker.

  ‘Be difficult tracking them all down,’ said Shib.

  ‘For really important events, all the Old Captains come together in Convocation. The presence of Hoop’s mistress here would certainly bring about such a Convocation.’

  ‘Then what?’ said Shib.

  ‘They are very primitively armed here.’

  ‘Point taken,’ said Shib.

  Svan pulled her stun gun from her belt and altered the setting. Shib watched her for a moment, then did the same with his own.

  ‘Let’s go put our leader to sleepy-byes then,’ she said.

  Up on deck Frisk was still blasting away at this and that – and giggling at things only she could see.

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine such suffering as he experienced,’ said Janer, watching the sun descend into dull sunset.

  ‘None of us can,’ replied Erlin. �
��It’s beyond even his understanding – which is why his mind died, why he became Ambel.’

  ‘I’m confused,’ said Janer.

  ‘That’s not surprising,’ said Erlin. ‘It’s a very long and involved story.’

  ‘No, not about that – just about a couple of other points,’ he said.

  Erlin watched him and waited.

  He continued: ‘I know Hoopers have a very high pain threshold, but obviously they do suffer pain.’ He nodded towards Forlam who stood at the stern, near Keech. ‘I saw him get his guts pulled out in a contest, yet that was an arranged bout he got into willingly. Was it just for the money, or what?’

  ‘Some of them do have a strange relationship with pain,’ said Erlin. She seemed uncomfortable with the knowledge.

  ‘What kind of relationship?’

  ‘Some of the neural pathways get mixed up. Severe injury can cause it. They get hurt time and time again, then find themselves going on to put themselves in more danger. It’s unconscious, mostly, though some of them begin to realize what they want.’

  ‘They want pain?’

  ‘It makes them feel alive.’

  Janer shook his head and stared down at the sea.

  ‘Maybe that’s why they want to keep on pursuing that dreadful thing,’ he said.