Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“All clear,” he said.

Erlin closed her door, leant her back against it, then slid down until she was sitting on the floor. Culture shock? She would just have to get used to it. She bit down hard on a giggle. On the third day of sail Erlin finally got Ambel into her cabin for a blood sample, but, when she pushed the syringe into him she could get nothing into it, and after a moment it popped out of his arm. Thoroughly determined now, Erlin tried a chainglass scalpel on his skin with a pad held ready to soak some blood up. The scalpel went in all right, but when she pulled it out again the wound sealed instantly. She tried again with two scalpels, side by side, to hold the wound open between. The gap she opened abruptly filled with flesh and skinned over. When she removed the scalpels those wounds closed as quickly as the first.

“Doctor at the port tried once. Don’t reckon I got any blood any more.” Erlin thought about the fibrous structures she had seen down the nanoscope. Peck, who claimed to be a hundred and eighty years old, had the most in his blood she had ever seen. The rest of the crew she had taken samples from; Jane, Boris, Pland, and Mede, who were comparative infants at ages ranging from fifty to a hundred and ten, had proportionally less.

“How old are you, Ambel?”

“Oh, a bit.”

Ambel rolled down his shirt sleeve and looked shifty.

“Come on. This is really important.”

“Don’t rightly know. Been on the ships for a while.”

Erlin wasn’t having that. “You do know. Don’t fob me off!”

Ambel looked uncomfortable. “No one believes me,” he complained.

“I will.”

Ambel got up and headed for the door, as he opened it he mumbled, “Spatterjay Hoop was a crazy git.” He went out onto the deck.

Erlin sat down on the chair and shook her head. They were all crazy gits, and Ambel was no better. If he thought she was going to believe he knew Spatterjay Hoop, the man after whom this strange little world was named more than five centuries ago, then he was probably worse. Ridiculous idea. Wasn’t it?

“Sail’s awake! Sail’s awake!” bellowed Boris from his favourite vantage on the roof of the forecabin. The head was questing around the deck, its eyes blinking sleepily. As Erlin came out of her cabin to see what new madness might occur, the sail looked at her, yawned, then sneezed. Ambel ran for the hatch cover, opened it and jumped down inside, then climbed out with a worm steak on his shoulder. He held it out for the sail, which took it in its mouth, hesitated a moment, then spat it out on the deck.

“Wormy,” it said with disgust.

Ambel shrugged. The sail watched him for a moment then unwound itself from the mast, released its holds and undulated away through the air. The ship slowed as Erlin walked over to the steak and inspected it. A long thin worm poked its head out of the meat, grinned at her with a mouth full of small triangular teeth, then dived back in. Ambel picked the meat up and threw it over the side before Erlin could object. He eyed her carefully.

“I’ve had worms,” he said, then said to Boris, “see anything?” Boris pointed off to one side. “Island over there.”

“Better get some more meat,” said Ambel.

Erlin wondered how it was they ever got anywhere if this was the rate they always travelled. And was it her imagination, or were they all looking a lot more blue than they had before? She sat against a rail and watched as they unhooked the rowing boat and Ambel lowered it into the water. The island was a distant speck and she wondered about going with them this time. When Ambel rowed the boat out still attached to the ship with a thick hawser, she realised what he intended to do. She stared with her mouth falling open as he began to really dig in with the steel oars. Slowly he pulled the ship around and began towing god knows how many tons of timber and metal towards the island.

It took most of the day and the sun was going into fade-out by the time Boris dropped the anchor and peered with deep suspicion down the length of its chain. Ambel turned the rowing boat back to the ship and leaving it on the water he hauled himself up the hawser onto the deck.

“I want to come with you this time,” said Erlin.

Ambel shrugged. “Morning,” he said then turned and bellowed down the deck, “Pland, boxies here, get a line out.”

Pland, a squat little man who spent most of his time at the helm muttering to himself and chewing bits of purple seaweed that squeaked when he bit them, glared at Ambel then slouched off to one of the rail lockers. He removed a line coiled around a wooden frame. It had a weight at the end of it and two small side lines bearing hooks.

“What about bait?” he asked.

Ambel went below deck and came up with their last steak held away from his body on his knife.

“Aw, come on,” Pland wailed.

“Just do it,” said Ambel.

Erlin watched while Pland tapped at the steak until a worm poked its head out. He reached out to it and it quickly sank its teeth in his hand. Grimacing and swearing he drew his hand away, pulling the worm from the meat. Once it flopped free he pulled it from his hand, a small squirt of blood hitting the deck, then he impaled the worm on a hook. The worm squawked and writhed about, but Pland tied it in place with another piece of line. He did the same again for the other hook then dropped the line over the side. His hand had healed by the time Erlin approached him.

“Do you often get the bait like that?” she asked.

“Better than some ways. Least we ain’t the only meat on board.” Erlin was contemplating that when Pland stepped on a worm, which was trying to sneak away from the meat, and grinned with satisfaction. The worm writhed about and bit at his boot.

“You next you little bastard,” he said.

Erlin walked to her cabin, suddenly feeling the need to lie down for a little while. When she returned to the lamplit deck Pland had quite a catch. Boxies were another aptly named Spatterjay life form. They were simply cube-shaped fish with eyes on one face of the cube and a tail sticking out of the other. Pland had stacked a number of them next to him like building blocks. Ambel was standing behind him biting chunks out of one like an apple. As he ate it the boxy blinked at him mournfully. Between bites Ambel was giving Pland his considered advice.

“Gently now, don’t tug so hard or it’ll be off again.”

He did and it did. Pland swore as the line slid through his hands until he was unwinding it from the frame again. Erlin walked up and stood beside Ambel, trying not to meet the boxy eye to eye.

“Reckon he’s got a turble on,” said Ambel. He picked up a boxy and held it out to her. “Want one?” Erlin tried to refuse, but she was really hungry. She held her hand over its eyes and bit into it. It was like eating curried squid with pieces of banana in it. Rather palatable really, if only all those other boxies wouldn’t look at her so.

“Wouldn’t it be kinder to kill them first?” she asked.

He stared at her shocked. “Kill boxies?”

She noticed he had eaten his one down to its spine. All that remained was the tail at one end and a little face at the other. He tossed this back into the sea and she watched in amazement as it swam away. For a moment she thought she was going to vomit. When she did not, and in fact took another bite out of her boxy before she could think about it, she was almost startled. Is this what they called going native?

Come sunrise Erlin, Ambel, Peck and Boris were in the boat heading for the shore. Erlin had a pack of equipment and in her pocket a surgical laser the case of which she had managed to open, to remove its safety governor. It was completely illegal, but she felt a damned sight safer with a weapon that could cut through anything within two metres of her on this crazy world. Anyway, Polity law was supposed to apply here, but it seemed to go no further than the security fence around the gating facility. Hoopers seemed to find the ideas of law and justice nearly as amusing as politics. They just got on with things. She often wondered about Ambel. Was he the captain of the ship, or was he deferred to because he could settle an argument by ripping people’s arms out of their sockets?