Neal Asher - The Skinner

‘Many would find it and wish they hadn’t,’ said Erlin. Just then, the hornet droned back from across the room and Erlin could not help but notice how the other passengers flinched away from it, then tried to appear as if they had not. There was much nervous laughter in its wake. As it settled again on the man’s shoulder he merely glanced at it, then reached into the top pocket of his shirt and removed a small vial. From this he tipped a puddle of syrup on to the tabletop. The insect launched from his shoulder to the table, where it landed with a noticeable rattle, then it walked stiff-legged to the puddle to sip. Erlin saw that the creature’s thorax was painted with luminous intricate lines, as of a circuit diagram. They must mean something to someone — but not necessarily anyone human. On the table also lay a shoulder carry-case for hornets. Inside the case was another hornet, still as if sealed in clear liquid plastic.

After a brief silence the man said, ‘There’s a place, you know, where people live in the bodies of giant snails which float in the sky suspended from gas-filled shells.’

Erlin absorbed the comment with almost a feeling of delight. At the sound of the next clicking gulp, she turned back to the reification.

The reif said, ‘On Tornos Nine, people live under the sea in giant mechanical lobsters. It’s all for tourism, really. Every lobster contains its own hotel and restaurant. There are few private lobsters.’

The man laughed. Erlin switched her gaze between the two of them. She wondered if the reif would have smiled, if he could. She replied, ‘On the ships here you have to wait for your mainsail to fly to you and take the mainmast. Through the mechanisms of the ship, it controls the fore and aft sails, and all you have to do is feed it. Every sail has the same name.’

The reif finally lifted the gaze of his one watery eye from its study of her scar.

‘What name is that?’ he asked

‘Windcatcher.’

‘You have been here before,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.

‘You know that.’

‘So have I, a very long time ago.’

With a deprecatory grin the man said, ‘I’ve never been here before.’ He held out his hand. ‘Janer.’

Erlin clasped the hand he offered.

‘Erlin,’ she said.

Janer nodded and smiled, and only reluctantly released her hand.

‘You’ll have to excuse me for a moment. I just want to see this.’

He stood and moved over to the slanting window, to watch as the shuttle finally came in to land. Erlin turned expectantly to die reif.

There was no clicking gulp this time before he spoke. ‘Keech,’ he said, and did not offer his hand, which, considering his condition, Erlin felt was only polite.

The hornet watched and listened.

‘Land is at a premium here,’ said Erlin as the three of them later walked down the shuttle ramp to a curved walkway running parallel to a parking area around the edge of the landing pad. She felt buoyant now, though that was probably due to the higher oxygen content in the air and the lower gravity she had felt immediately on stepping from the shuttle’s grav-plates. She scanned these distantly familiar surroundings. The sea made a continual sucking hiss underneath the huge floating structure upon which the gun-metal wing of the shuttle had settled, and the air was thick with the smells of cooling metal, decaying seaweed, and of virulent aquatic life.

‘Just islands and atolls, no continents, and no island bigger than, say, the Galapagos islands on Earth,’ said Janer.

‘Yes,’ said Erlin, ‘and there are other similarities too, though you’ll find the wildlife here somewhat… wilder.’

‘Wilder?’ Janer echoed.

Erlin grimaced. ‘Well, it’s not so bad on the islands,’ she admitted.

‘But bad in the sea?’

‘Look at it this way: most Hoopers are sailors, but few of them can swim.’

‘Right,’ said Janer.

Rank upon rank of aircabs were parked here along the edge. Beyond them, the sea was heaving but not breaking, and underneath that surface Erlin knew the water would be writhing with leeches, hammer whelks and rurbul, glisters and prill. And all of them would be hungry. She gazed up at the misty green sky and wondered at her foolishness in returning here, then she followed her two companions off the ramps, her obedient hover luggage trailing along behind.

Keech was intent on getting to the first cab before all the other passengers swarmed off the shuttle. When there came a hissing crack, followed by a stuttering as of an air compressor starting, Erlin noted how the reif snapped his head round and moved his hand to one of the many pockets of his overalls, and how Janer dropped into a semi-crouch. She studied them for a moment longer as they warily surveyed their surroundings, then they slowly relaxed.

‘Over here,’ she said, and led them to the rail along the seaward side of the parking area. Below this rail, the foamed-plascrete edge of the floating structure sloped steeply down into the sea. Erlin pointed to an object like a metre-long chrome mosquito that was walking along the plascrete, just above the waterline. She then pointed to a disturbance out in the water. Pieces of shell and gobbets of flesh were being pulled at and rabidly denuded by dark, unclearly seen, anguine shapes in the water.

‘Autogun,’ explained Keech. ‘What did it hit?’

‘Well, out there, probably a prill or a glister. Most of the large lethal molluscs here are not swimmers,’ Erlin replied.

‘Charming,’ said Janer.

Keech stared for an interminable moment, but offered no further comment. Instead he turned and continued on towards the nearest aircab.

The vehicle was an old Skyrover Macrojet with a ridiculous and unnecessary airfoil attached, and its pilot was all Hooper in attitude and appearance.

‘The three of yah?’ he asked. He remained inside his cab as he cleaned his fingernails with a long narrow knife that Erlin recognized as a skinning knife, and she tried not to inspect too closely the memories that evoked.

The Hooper’s skin was pale, and the circular scars on his arms and down the sides of his face were only just visible. She supposed that, like all Hoopers on the Polity base, he was on one of the Intertox family of drugs to keep the fibres of the Spatterjay virus in abeyance. Usually it was the bite of a leech that caused infection but, even though the virus could not survive for a long time outside of a body, no one was taking any chances. Polity scientists felt that, despite the so-far-discovered huge benefits of the virus, it might still be some kind of Trojan. Erlin herself had not been infected by the bite on her forearm. Like many other viruses, the Spatterjay virus could be transmitted by bodily fluids, and she knew precisely when she had contracted it.

‘All three,’ replied Keech to the Hooper.

The Hooper looked askance at him, then stabbed the knife into the dash of his vehicle. After a moment he transferred his attention to Janer, then to the hornets in the transparent box on Janer’s shoulder.

‘Can they get out?’ he asked.

‘Only if they want to,’ said Janer.

‘Look like nasty buggers.’

Erlin bit down on a burst of laughter. That from a Hooper on a world where just about every creature was a nasty bugger out for its plug of flesh.

‘I assure you they are harmless unless forced to defend themselves,’ said Janer.

The Hooper studied the hornets more closely. ‘They got brains then?’

How’s he going to explain the hive mind? Erlin wondered.

‘They are the eyes of the hive,’ said Janer.

‘Oh, them… hornets, ain’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘OK, stick y’ luggage in the back and climb in. Y’want the Dome?’