Neal Asher - The Skinner

He took out his slip and advanced on the tout, who stared at him for a moment then began to reach into his jacket. A hand, deeply cicatrised with leech scars, reached down and caught the tout’s wrist.

‘Now now,’ said a pleasant voice.

Janer gaped at the owner of that hand. This Hooper was big, shaven-headed, and blue with leech scars. He wore hide trousers and a thin shirt. Even his muscles had muscles. Janer wondered if he would even notice a punch delivered by an off-worlder. This one looked as if bullets would bounce off his skin and knives would bend and break on him. There was a boulderlike solidity about him, and a stolid assurance.

‘Captain Ron,’ said someone in the crowd, and there was almost reverence in the voice.

‘I think you should pay the man,’ said Captain Ron.

‘Yes, yes.’ The tout dropped his moneybag in his eagerness to get the money out. He stooped and quickly retrieved it before counting out notes and change with shaking hands. Janer accepted the money while keeping half an eye on the Captain, who was gazing with ponderous insouciance back at the ring.

‘You all right there, Forlam!’ the Captain suddenly bellowed.

A groan came from that direction.

‘Soon have you back together,’ said the Captain. He gazed round at the crowd. ‘Anyone found his fingers yet?’

‘Got ‘em, Captain,’ someone yelled.

‘Get ‘im back to the ship then and tell Roach to thread ‘im up.’

Janer just could not take in what he was hearing. He knew Hoopers were very hard to kill, but this was ridiculous. He glanced round to see Keech approaching, while the two Hoopers he had shot had moved off into the background. They seemed unperturbed by wounds that would have killed an off-worlder, but were now pensively watching Captain Ron. Janer guessed they were hoping the tout wouldn’t call for them. It did not require much imagination to guess what the result of such an encounter would be.

‘I’d like to buy you a drink,’ Janer said abruptly.

With a vague smile, Captain Ron turned back to him.

‘Now that could work out expensive,’ he said.

There was laughter from the other Hoopers.

‘Well, I’ve had a bit of luck today,’ said Janer.

‘All right,’ said the Captain. ‘I’ll see you in the Baitman.’ He cast a baleful look at the tout, then at his thugs, who ducked their heads and tried to appear unconcerned. ‘And he better get there safely,’ he said loudly. Then he sauntered off.

With Keech at his side, Janer surveyed the people around him. All he could find were friendly expressions. The two thugs had already gone. The tout was slinking away, as if hoping not to be noticed.

‘Obviously not someone to mess with,’ said Janer.

‘You remember what Erlin said?’ asked Keech.

‘Remind me.’

‘He, I would guess, is an Old Captain, and has authority by dint of the simple fact that he could tear your arms off.’

‘Yes, I remember now.’

The Baitman was a ship-Hoopers’ drinking den, and no other off-worlders were present when Janer and Keech entered. Looks of vague curiosity were flung in their direction, before conversations resumed. Keech and Janer walked up to the bar, behind which sat a Hooper who seemed only skin and bone, with white curly hair. He was bending over a board on which chess pieces and small model ships were positioned. That he seemed to concentrate even harder on the board when they entered was obvious to Janer. He rapped on the bar with his knuckles. The barman glanced up at them with an albino’s pink eyes.

‘This place is for ship Hoopers,’ he said, and returned his attention to the board.

Janer was at a loss for a moment, then he started to get angry. Before he could say anything, Keech spoke up.

‘Then we are in the right place to meet Captain Ron for a drink,’ said the reif.

The barman stood upright, and only then did Janer realize how tall he was.

‘Ron invited you?’ He was studying them carefully.

‘I invited him, and he suggested here,’ said Janer.

The barman’s gaze flicked from Janer’s face to the two hornets, in their box on his shoulder, then to the reif. He inspected Keech for a long while, with a puzzled expression, then clearly decided not to ask. He put two pewter mugs on the bar, uncorked a jug, and filled them both. Then, from a rack behind the bar, he took down a two-litre mug and filled it with the same liquid. The vessel had ‘Ron’s Mug’ engraved on it. Janer picked up the mug in front of him and took a gulp.

‘It is best to approach such things with caution,’ said Keech, removing a glass straw from his top pocket and stooping to take a careful sip of his own drink.

‘Ung,’ Janer managed.

‘Sea-cane rum,’ added Keech.

‘You can drink it?’ Janer said, once he had his breath back.

‘My stomach is atrophied but I have a filter system which can remove impurities from high-alcohol beverages. What is pumped round my veins is alcohol based,’ replied Keech.

‘Why do you always use a straw?’

Keech gestured towards his mouth. ‘My lips, though having enough elasticity to mimic speech, do not have enough to form a seal.’

‘You’d dribble,’ said Janer.

Keech gave a measured nod.

Janer went on, his curiosity piqued, ‘How do you speak, then?’

Keech tapped his half-helmet augmentation. ‘It’s generated from here. With what little movement my mouth does have, the illusion is completed,’ he said.

Janer nodded, then took another, more cautious sip of his drink. He noted how the barman had not made a move on his chessboard since the commencement of their conversation. Understandable, as this had to be a fascinating interchange.

‘What about taste?’

‘A saporphone imbedded in the roof of my mouth transmits taste information to the mimetic computer in my aug and to what remains of my organic brain.’

‘But you can’t get drunk?’ said Janer.

‘No, I cannot, but I don’t feel that to be a disadvantage. In most situations I find it advisable to keep a clear head.’

Keech imparted this information with clinical detachment. Janer studied the reif as he thought carefully about his explanation. Keech was partially alive, since he had some functioning organic brain. The part that was not functioning was made up for by a recording of his previous living mind being run as a program in his augmentation. Thus it came down to the fact that Keech was a corpse made motile mainly by AI-directed cyber systems.

‘Why don’t you implant in a Golem chassis?’ Janer asked.

‘This is my body,’ said Keech, as if that was answer enough, and returned his attention to his drink. As Janer watched him, the Hive mind took the opportunity to interject. ‘The cult of Anubis Arisen believes physical life to be sacrosanct and that the life of the body is the only life. Perhaps Keech believes that too, though I doubt it.’

Janer did not get a chance to ask the mind to explain that comment, as Captain Ron just then crashed into the Baitman like some stray piece of earth-moving equipment.

‘Good sail to you!’ said the Captain, stomping up to the bar and taking up his mug to drain it in one. He slammed the mug down on the bar so hard the timbers leapt. The barman waited for dust to settle before refilling the mug. As it was being refilled, Janer noted that it had a bloom on its metal surface identical to that left on ceramal after it has been case hardened. Obviously simple pewter would not prove suitably durable.

‘That hits the spot,’ said the Captain.

Janer looked on in awe, wondering about the durability of this man’s intestine, before carefully taking another sip from his own mug.