Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“Who is it?” Hinks asks.

“I do not know. I do not know.” The Barrelman’s voice is strange, as if surprised at itself.

“Pallister?”

“I don’t know, but he is done.” Pallister points to the floating body and to the fin slicing moonlit water just beyond it. Hinks watches the inevitable: the fin disappearing, the body snatched from below.

“Dead or unconscious when he went in, like as not,” says Pallister, then after glancing to the twin, “or she.”

“Get the crew on deck, all of them you can find, find that boy if you can, bring them all, bring them all here. Murder has been done. The Captain is dead in his cabin and who knows who the shark took.” It takes little time for them all to be roused and assembled as many of them were coming onto the deck as Hinks made his speech. He counts and he appraises. Cheyne and the other twin look flushed. Cook has certainly been sampling the sea apple wine again and the others seem no different from normal. All are here but the boy and the Captain. Hinks wants to be sure, though.

“I want the ship searched forward to aft, every unsealed barrel checked and every sail locker. Check the crow’s nest as well.” He turns to the Barrelman. “What say you, Barrelman?” The Barrelman shakes his head and goes below to his own kingdom. Cook follows him.

No boy is found, just as Hinks expected. He speaks with Pallister and Cheyne as allies always and knows a loneliness when he realises he cannot trust even them. In the end he must ask those questions.

“Pallister, did you throw the boy back into the sea?”

“As the Book is my witness, Hinks, I did not.”

Hinks inspects the rest of the crew who stand nervously around. Which one of them? Which of them committed murder? It could be any, even the twin who had him go to the Captain’s cabin might have come from there earlier.

“Somebody cast the boy into the sea, dead or alive, no difference. Somebody has murdered our Captain.”

“The boy,” says Pallister. “The shark soul. It killed him and returned to its element.”

“You talk like a Reader,” spat one of the twins.

Hinks stares at her. “Which one are you? Tell me now.”

“I am Jan.”

The rest of the crew study her carefully. So, Hinks decides, Jan is the one with her hair tied back and Char the one who was bedding Cheyne, this night, anyway.

“She may be right, Pallister. What matter? If what you say is true then there is no blame or guilt to attach anywhere and I will be glad. But I must be sure.”

“What are your thoughts?” asks Pallister.

“I think one of you killed the Captain, and the boy, in disgust,” he gazes at all the crew, “or fear,” he now looks particularly at Pallister. “And the boy was thrown into the sea to bring belief in your story.”

“It could have been you,” says Jan.

“Yes, but I know it was not,” says Hinks. “Now you and Pallister will come with me and we will once again view the body before it is passed on to the Barrelman. The rest of you prepare sail for the morning wind. We head directly for Piezel.”

“What weapon is this?” Pallister braces his foot against the Captain’s groin and tries to pull the spike from him. His hands slip along the glassy surface. “Too deeply imbedded, perhaps in his spine. It was put there with some force.” Hinks, suspicious of every action now, tries to remove the spike himself. He cannot.

“And what weapon caused this?” asks Jan, pointing at the neatly reamed hole in the Captain’s head. Hinks has no answer for her.

“Hinks.” Pallister has moved back by the door and is pointing at the floor. “This is not the work of a man.” Hinks looks down and sees a trail of slime leading to the door. He turns to the table beside the Captain’s bed and picks up the Book of the Sea. As he opens it to the first page there is a scream of horror, turned rapidly to one of agony.

Crew, and he lies in a pool of blood upon the deck. Hinks turns him over gently. Holes have been bored into his neck. Another scream from below just as four more of the crew come onto the deck, amongst them are Cheyne and Char. Cheyne snatches up the metalled great knife and stares at the hatch to the crew quarters.

“What is it? What is happening?”

“Something… Something killing them,” Char replies to her sister.

“What does it look like? Tell me, tell me now,” demands Hinks.

“It is a man sometimes, and it crawls. There is slime and a tube like a wood bore… I cannot…” Hinks curses and in the moonlight he opens the book. He searches down the first tissue-thin page and finds the sea-life section: Dangers of the Sea. There are more sharks than he realised, giant squid and flatworms capable of ingesting a man. It is there. He finds it only a few pages in under ‘Sea Fages and Related Mullusca’. There is a picture of the glass dart; a love dart used during mating. It is barbed hence the reason Pallister could not remove it. Another scream just as Hinks reads the section which tells him of the shell they found in the stomach of the shark. Just then the hatch crashes open and out come the Barrelman and two others. All now watch the hatch and wait for what might come next. Pallister has armed himself, and the remaining great knives are shared. Only Barrelman, Hinks, and Jan are without weapons.

“What is it Hinks? Tell us?” asks Pallister, terror barely suppressed in his voice.

“It is a Fage. A kind of mollusc. That was its shell we saw inside the shark,” Hinks tells them all, and some of the terror departs. It is named. It is in the Book. Hinks continues to read, moving his finger from word to word, some of them unfamiliar, metamorph and shifter, syphon and ovipositor. He begins to feel a greater dread. The boy… He turns the page and sees the picture of a man, and something next to it that is half a man.

“Dear God… ”

He looks up directly at the Barrelman standing behind the shoulder-to-shoulder crew. Out of the corner of his eye the Barrelman returns his regard, but does not turn his head. His head is deforming, pushing forward and taking on a goatish shape, lips peeling back from something that glistens. The Barrelman is not. It is the Fage.

“Look out!”

The man directly in front of the Fage turns, screams, falls to the deck with half of his face ripped away. His screams take on a liquid quality. Back into the glistening head part the glassy tube of the syphon retracts. All of its skin now glistens. Arms merge with sides, legs merge, now a standing slug shape it falls on Char, who is locked in place in her terror. It slides over her fast. There is a brief struggle. It leaves her slime coated and spurting blood from the hole bored through her ribs into her heart. There is a scream, fear, rage. A great knife pins the Fage, goes right in. The reaction is horrifyingly quick. A slime coated tentacle exudes then cracks like a whip. A man smashes through a rail and goes bonelessly over the side. The great knife falls out, leaving only a white mark on the grey skin. That cry again. It is Cheyne. He comes in with the steel great knife, ducks the tentacle then lops it off. He cuts again and the Fage falls in half. He cuts again and again in his rage. In moments the deck is spread with writhing pieces of slimy flesh no larger than a man’s head. Cheyne drops his great knife, kneels down by Char. He cries silence.

“Oh God… Is it dead at last? Is it dead? I would have preferred the soul of a shark. Yes… I would have preferred that.” Pallister is babbling. Hinks stands. He had not even time to get to his feet. That fast, it happened that fast. He looks at the remains of the crew. Jan, standing with her mouth open in shock, Pallister, babbling to himself now that no one else is listening, Cheyne, silent, three other crew, one on the deck with his face hanging off, but still alive, one squatting by the mast gazing about him in bewilderment, one mechanically stabbing pieces of the Fage with a great knife and flicking them over the side.