Neal Asher: The Skinner

With a cycling down drone of thrusters, the Hooper landed his aircab on a neatly mown lawn, near the edge of the arcology, and the three disembarked.

‘How much?’ Erlin asked, leaning into the open window.

The Hooper paused for a moment as he calculated how much he might get away with asking for. Erlin groped in the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a wad of New Carth shillings. The two notes she proffered he quickly took and, obviously pleased, he got out of his cab to unload their luggage. Janer appeared bemused and Keech, of course, had no expression at all. Erlin understood that the both of them hadn’t realized they might need hard currency. She felt they had a lot to learn about this place, and was about to comment on this when Janer beat her to it.

‘Perhaps we need a little guidance here,’ he said, glancing at the reif. Keech showed no reaction to this either. Erlin was quick to reply; she had nothing to lose by being helpful.

‘I have to do what I have to do here, but you’re more than welcome to accompany me until you find your feet,’ she said, turning to study them. Keech gave a brief nod in reply and Janer grinned at her. Feeling slightly uncomfortable, she turned away from that grin.

‘You know that Polity law does not apply outside the main dome,’ she said.

‘It should do,’ said Keech.

‘Sometimes,’ added Janer.

Erlin continued, ‘Try defining assault or murder to a Hooper. They just laugh at all our rules. The way it works here is that the older a Hooper is, the more authority he has. This by dint of the fact that he knows so much more than you and that if you disagree with him he could probably tear your arms off. Ambel, the man I’ve come here to find, is old. I once saw him tow a deepsea-fishing ship with just a rowing boat. His boat was specially strengthened, and the oars made of ceramal composite.’

‘How old is he?’ asked Keech.

‘Seven centuries, minimum. He said he came here just after the war, but I wonder about that. Some of the early Hoopers are reticent about their pasts, and the viral fibres were very advanced in him.’

‘Yeah,’ said Janer, grinning. ‘I’ve heard plenty of stories like that.’

Not looking at him, Erlin went on, ‘His skin is mottled with leech scars overlaid one on the other. He’s so packed with fibre it’s impossible to take blood samples from him. I frankly doubt he even has any blood inside him. If ever he’s wounded, the wounds close just like that.’ She held up her hand and snapped it shut into a fist.

‘You believe him?’ asked Janer.

‘At first I didn’t, but I was with him for a number of years and I eventually ceased to doubt.’

‘Perhaps… Hoop is still alive?’ said Keech.

Erlin thought about the head kept in a box on the Treader and refrained from comment.

‘That’s it then,’ said the Hooper, standing next to their pile of luggage.

‘Thank you,’ said Erlin. She clicked her fingers and her hover trunk separated itself out from the pile of luggage and moved obediently to her side. It had surprised her that Janer used merely a backpack, but now she realized he must be a seasoned traveller and so only carried a few essentials. Keech, however, could not possibly have carried his trunk very far, it being the size of a sea-chest.

‘Luck,’ said the Hooper, climbing back into his cab.

‘Wait.’ Erlin turned back to him and he paused at the door. ‘Do you know where I can find Ambel?’

‘On the Treader.’

‘Where is the Treader?’

The Hooper shrugged. ‘Nort Sea and the Skinner’s Islands. Sou’ at the atolls. East in the Sargassum or West over the Blue Wells. Buggered if I know.’

It was not the answer Erlin would have liked but it was the kind she expected of a Hooper.

‘Thanks for you help,’ she said dryly.

‘This Ambel,’ said Janer as the cab rose into the air above them and tilted towards the hole in the Dome, ‘something more than clinical interest?’

‘You could say that,’ said Erlin. ‘We go this way now.’

She led them down paved walkways from the lawns, through neatly laid-out rose gardens, towards the looming metallic wall of the arcology. Daffodils bloomed in bunches, neatly circumnavigated by robot mowers that munched their way across the grass like iron beetles. Some of these flowers were old-Earth yellow, but the rest were blue and violet. Ahead, wide arcades and boulevards cut into the wall of the arcology, and here there were more gardens and lawns, from which sprang coconut and fishtail palms, fuchsia bushes and the occasional pineapple plant — this diversity of life, as Erlin well knew, genetically adapted to survive the odd conditions inside the Dome.

‘I thought you said land was at a premium here,’ said Janer, scanning about himself.

‘It is,’ Erlin replied. ‘All of this,’ she gestured ahead of them, ‘is sitting on ten metres of foamed plascrete, which in turn is sitting on a thousand metres of sea-water.’

‘Ah,’ said Janer then, ‘busy little raft they have here.’

Amongst these gardens strolled all manner of people: seasoned travellers who lived only to use the runcibles and briefly see new worlds; altered humans — catadapts and ophids and the like; and Hoopers nervous in these garden surroundings, with the rolling gait of those more used to having a deck under their feet.

Erlin said, ‘A lot of the people who come to see this world get no farther than this. Many come here not realizing that Polity law doesn’t extend outside the Dome itself. They come here for the immortality you mentioned, and discover that they feel very mortal once they step out into the Hooper’s world.’

‘You did,’ Keech reminded her.

‘I like new worlds, new experiences. You gain nothing without risking something.’

‘Trite,’ said Keech. ‘There should always be law.’

Erlin glanced at him as they moved into one of the boulevards, and then she gestured to a pyramidal metrotel entrance situated near the end of it.

‘I’m staying here for tonight. Unless you have other plans, I suggest you stay here as well. Tomorrow, if you like, we can get equipped. It would be a good idea if you both bought some hard currency, as you won’t get far here without it.’

‘Which is preferred?’ asked Keech.

‘New Carth shillings or New yen. Don’t bother with the Spatterjay skind — the exchange rate for it goes up every day.’

‘How quaint,’ said Janer.

Once they had entered the pyramidal metrotel Janer insisted on paying for all their rooms, by smart card at the automated check-in desk. Erlin reached down to her hover trunk and, into its miniconsole, punched one of the room codes the screen showed them — slaving the trunk to the hotel AI. For a moment she watched while it trundled off, then she checked her watch.

‘Down here at about nine, then, solstan?’ she suggested.

‘Definitely,’ replied Janer, and Keech gave his characteristic sharp nod.

Without further pause, Erlin headed for the room the hotel AI had allocated her.

‘Don’t forget that currency,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder. As she entered a lift, she wondered what had possessed her to take up with these two. Loneliness, maybe? When she reached the entrance to her room, her trunk was there ahead of her. She followed it in through the door, then slumped on to the large bed provided. Tucking her hands behind her head, she stared at the ceiling and said, ‘AI, I’d like some information about reifications’.

‘Can you be more specific than that?’ the hotel AI asked her.

‘Well… didn’t the practice originate from some sort of religious sect?’

‘It originated from the Cult of Anubis Arisen. It was their conjecture that souls do not exist, and that there is nothing more sacred than the body. They hung on to life for as long as they possibly could then, when they died, had themselves preserved and kept moving by use of the cyber technology of the time.’