Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“Second knife!”

Pallister has his place and is ready. Soon two lines of blood flee the boat, turn, return, three lines then four, until at last the shark has had enough and tries to dive.

“Row, boys, row!”

They pursue the bobbing and jerking floats that reflect the shark’s struggles. Down below; a cloud of blood at the nexus of four taut ropes. Then out of the cloud the toothed horror comes again, slowed and tangled. Cheyne’s unbarbed cut is true and the great knife goes in behind the shark’s head and severs its cartilaginous spine. The shark is held on the surface in the tangle of ropes and floats, and the blood spreads.

“Heave, boys, heave!”

The Captain holds the Book in his hand, the proper book, the ship’s book. One of the twins mutters something filthy about his continual use of ‘boys’. There was no proof to the rumour, though. By slow increments and ratcheting clicks they hoist the jable shark from the sea using the same windlasses used to lower the boat. The weight heels the ship over and bloody water rains down its side. No fins are in sight, but there is time yet. Hinks hauls with the crew. Two sharks snapping at a dead one on the side of a ship is enough to pull that ship over. He knows. He has seen. In the long boat Cheyne and Pallister keep ready to drive sharks away, but only adapted squid swarm around the ship. Even so, they will not be washing their bloody hands in the water as Chaff did.

The white water of an approaching fin is seen as they lower the corpse onto the deck and open the blood drains. Cheyne and Pallister soon attach lines to the boat and the new shark only manages to nudge it once before it is hauled up the side of the ship.

“Open her up, boys. Let the shark soul free.”

It is Cheyne’s honour under the sight of the Barrelman. He uses the hull metal great knife in one flamboyant slice. Steaming guts avalanche across the deck at the unzipping. The opening of the stomach at the last spills a hundred weight of turtle crabs, an almond-shaped shell the size of a barrel, the remains of Chaff and, what appears to be the corpse of a small boy until it convulses and spews salt water from its lungs.

“Shark soul,” hisses Pallister as the Captain hauls the boy to his feet. Hinks glares at the Knifeman, then turns to one of the twins as she speaks.

“Sea people?” she wonders.

Hinks stares at her. Is she Jan or Char? He has never known as they deliberately confuse. He turns back as the Captain pushes away damp fair hair to inspect the boy’s neck for gill slits.

“Not of the sea people,” he tells the crew. “Where are you from, boy? How is it you come live from the belly of this shark?”

The boy stares at him with blue and innocent eyes and Hinks does not like the expression that twists the Captain’s mouth.

“Deal with this shark. I shall question him in my cabin.”

He pulls the naked boy away and the twins nod an affirmative to each other.

“That is not a boy. That is the soul of this shark come to avenge. We must cast it back in the sea.”

“Pallister, why so sure of this?”

“Always ‘release the soul’ and we see nothing. This time, something. A reason for the words. We always throw the innards and their contents back though they could be used.”

“’Tis no soul of a shark.” They turn as the Barrelman comes upon the deck. “Yet it seems not likely it is a boy.”

“What should we do?”

“As the Captain instructs. As always: by the Book of the Sea.” With great knives and small knives they cut the shark. The innards go back into the sea after, with cursory ceremony, the remains of Chaff. The hull thumps with movement below the waves: squid and the butting of sharks. Barnacles never grow on the hull of a jable hunter, but weed often grows on the teeth left jammed into the wood.

They skin the shark and the Barrelman takes its skin to preserve and prepare for lamination — one of the many uses of a skin with a colour and a texture called jable. The salted meat they store in the barrels he marks, the fat is rendered for oil, and the cartilage stored in brine for later use in the manufacture of glue. When all is done, they wash the deck clean and replace the blood drains. All around the sea foams and great dark bodies surface and dive. All around, fins.

Night seems to drive the last of the sharks away or perhaps another jable hunter has cast a bucket of blood into the sea. Hinks knows there are those who prefer to hunt by the light of the moons, those who make it a mystic thing of ceremony and sacrifice, and toast each kill with shark’s blood drunk from whelk-shell cups. As he pulls in nacreous glitters of green mackerel and snaps their necks with his forefinger and thumb he wonders what questions the Captain might be asking now. It has been some time since he took the boy to his cabin. No matter, no concern. Hinks casts his line of lures back into the sea as the two yellow moons the twins have their names from break over the horizon like glaring eyes.

“He buggers an innocent while Pallister talks of shark souls, Cheyne sharpens all his knives, and you catch mackerel we don’t need.”

Hinks stares the pile of mackerel next to him then looks up at one of the twins. “Are you Jan?” She ignores the question. “In Piezel they would crush his testicles and throw him to the jable. We sit idle while he gratifies lust.”

“Many would, given opportunity.”

She steps more into the moonlight and stands with her hands on her hips. “I might give you opportunity, Hinks. It is for me to say yes or no and for you to accept or not. This boy has been given no such choices.”

Hinks reels his handline back onto its frame then climbs tiredly to his feet. It is his responsibility, just like with Chaff. They all know what the Captain is doing and they all know it is wrong, but only he can do anything, by the Book.

“Back me up then. Where is your sister?”

“She is testing the point of Cheyne’s most important knife.”

Hinks is surprised. In all the time the twins had been on board he had never known either of them to bed another member of the crew. The rumour was that they preferred their own sex, but then that was always the rumour when men’s egos are bruised.

“A strange night, and I wonder why you told me… Is she recruiting to your cause?”

“No and yes. She has been with Cheyne since the season began and he is in agreement about the Captain.”

“I heard nothing.”

“Cheyne does not gossip.”

Hinks shakes his head. Of course Cheyne does not gossip. Cheyne does not speak at all and has not spoken since the excision and cautery of the fungal infection in his mouth and throat. Through the double moon shadows they walk to the forward hatch and the single stair that goes down to the Captain’s cabin. As they slip below decks, Hinks shakes a biolight to luminescence and carries it before him. Soon they are before the door of shark skin stretched on its frame of manbone. They listen. Nothing. Hinks reaches to scratch on the door, but it opens, unlatched. They enter.

“It is murder. Murder has been done here.”

Hinks nods agreement, the rich smell of slaughter in his nostrils. What else could this be? The Captain lies sprawled across his bunk in a tangle of bloody sheets. Driven up through his groin and into his guts is a spike made of solid glass, like an icicle. But maybe this was not the first cause of his death, since neat as a cylinder his right eye-socket has been reamed out to the back of his skull. Hinks knows the horrible fear of the supernatural. They heard nothing, perhaps a shark soul was loose on this ship.

“Man overboard!”

The yell is from above and breaks into their nightmare reverie. Hinks gains some command over himself and pushes the unnamed twin back to the door. What now? Another murder, or a murderer seeking to escape? Past the twin he rushes up on deck. The Barrelman is there leaning over the rail and Pallister is beside him.