2

Frog Whelk: this whelk’s cartoonish appearance belies its voracity. Its shell is much like that of a Terran whelk, and it has a single powerful foot that can launch it long distances when on land (there is nowhere on Spatterjay safe from these creatures). But seeing a flock of these creatures with their stalked eyes extended can be an amusing sight. The complex grinding and slicing mouth which it can extrude from underneath is not so amusing however. The adult whelks are large and dangerous, but are not often seen, as they inhabit the deep ocean trenches. After mating, the female lays a cluster of eggs which float slowly to the surface to hatch. The young whelks, no larger than the tip of a finger, which survive to reach an island’s shallows herd together for protection from larger predators, but they also hunt in packs. As they grow, they begin moving out of the shallows and down to the trenches. Very few survive the journey there through the awaiting pods of glisters and packs of hammer whelks, fewer still survive the attentions of their much larger kin: Whelkus titanicus -

Sprout and two others leapt ashore to wrap kelp-fibre ropes around gleaming bubble-metal bollards. Anne and Boris shortly joined them, hauling on the ropes to bring the Treader up against the jetty, while the three youngsters—not yet as strong as the two older crew and incapable of such a feat—took up the slack and finally tied off the ropes. Grumbling to himself, Peck lowered the gangplank, then stood staring suspiciously inshore. Peck had a bit of a thing about islands, but then some particularly horrible things had happened to him on one particular island. Carrying a box hung by a strap from his shoulder, Ambel slapped Peck on the shoulder and stepped past him.

‘Come on, Peck. The only skinners here are fish skinners,’ he said.

Ambel then turned to peer up at Galegrabber, who was waiting expectantly. He reached into his pocket and took out a roll of notes, unfolded a couple and eyed the picture of a sail’s head on them, before holding them up. Galegrabber reached down a spider claw, delicately took the notes then secreted them somewhere about its person.

‘That completes this contract,’ said Ambel. ‘But we’ll be sailing again,’ Ambel gazed towards the lemon-yellow sun nestling in jade clouds on the horizon, ‘in the morning, so if you want to take on some more work . . .’ The Captain shrugged.

The sail swung its head round to stare out to sea, where rhinoworms were exuberantly hunting whelks and leeches amid the remaining reefs. ‘I’ll grab a bite and get back to you.’

The creature now released its spiderclaw holds in the spars, drew in its veined translucent wings and, like a giant spider tangled in sheets of pink cloth, hauled itself to the masthead. There, with a dull thumping, it spread its wings again and launched into the sky. Ambel turned to the gangplank and stepped down.

Ten years ago, Olian Tay had lived alone on this island in her tower, adding to her black museum and researching the past crimes of the Eight—Jay Hoop and his pirate crew who, based here on Spatterjay, had terrorized this sector of space for nearly two centuries, before moving on to kidnapping and coring humans to sell to the Prador during that long-ago war. Some years ago she had expected to make a small fortune on Earth by displaying two items that had come into her possession, but before she could commit herself to the journey, things changed very rapidly on Spatterjay.

The increasing influx of Polity citizens in search of novel immortality brought with it a flood of wealth. Windcheater, the brightest of the living sails, had risen to power because he was both politically adept and financially acute. He knew the old currency of Spatterjay, based only on equivalency, needed to be replaced with currency based on something of genuine value to the larger human population. Gems there were aplenty, but to Hoopers, who until recent years despised personal decoration, they were worth only as much as they could be sold for to a Polity citizen. Polity citizens, moreover, being able to obtain manufactured diamonds, rubies, emeralds and many others, were only interested in rarities: unique gems like some types of fossilized wood or opalized skulls, of which the supply was limited. Windcheater toyed briefly with basing a currency on artefacts remaining from the time of the Eight but, again, not enough of them were available. Then he had his brilliant idea.

The immortal and practically indestructible Hoopers valued one thing above anything else, something they rarely used yet always coveted: the poison sprine and the quick (though messy) death it could impart. Windcheater based his new currency on sprine. The fifty New Skind banknote thus promised to pay the bearer one death measure of sprine. But where to keep the gathered sprine safe from nefarious Hoopers, and from those that might want to control Hoopers? Olian Tay made her fortune because she was the only individual on the planet with a secure vault, around which she established Olian’s: the first planetary bank of Spatterjay.

Strolling along the walkway leading from the jetties into the island, Ambel gazed ahead at cleared dingle and the new structures built there and being built. Olian’s tower stood at the centre of this, but now a long low building led to it. Anyone coming to the bank must now enter through her museum and get to know something of Spatterjay’s past.

‘I’ll bugger off now,’ said Peck. ‘Any chance I can have mine now?’

Ambel nodded, took out his cash roll and counted out Peck’s wages. ‘Any of the rest of you?’ Sild and Sprout took their payments, as did other crew members; only Anne and Boris stayed with Ambel to enter the museum. Over his shoulder Ambel told those departing, ‘First thing in the morning. No excuses.’

The life-size and lifelike statue just inside the door was the reason Peck did not enjoy this place. The Skinner loomed four metres tall over the entryway: his skin was blue, he was famine thin and possessed spidery grasping hands. His head was monstrous: hoglike and bony under taut-stretched parchment skin. The Skinner, which had lived up to its name in Peck’s case. Ambel moved on, viewing display cases containing skeletons with spider thralls attached at the backs of their necks, or with skulls open to show deeper thralls installed after coring to replace the human brain removed. Other skeletons were weirdly distorted, showing the initial stages of viral mutation which if it had been allowed to go on long enough would have resulted in the statue by the door. There were slave collars, weapons, mounds of personal belongings—all that remained of the millions of humans who had been processed here nearly a millennium ago. He came eventually to single cases containing models of the infamous Eight: the Talsca twins, Jay Hoop as he had looked before his transformation into the Skinner . . . and Ambel himself when he had been Balem Gosk, before the Old Captains threw him into the sea to lose most of his body and, throughout an eternity of agony, his mind as well. Two models only were missing from the set.

Chainglass pillars on either side of the bank’s entrance contained Rebecca Frisk and David Grenant, but these were the real thing: unable to die because of their tough Hooper bodies, unable to live because of their imprisonment and lack of nutrition and oxygen. Olian, on special occasions, fed them small supplies of both so that they could then hammer at the impenetrable walls of their containers and mouth screams through the preserving fluid in which they floated.

In the bank foyer, Olian Tay sat behind her desk working a console and screen. Two large Hoopers and two large skinless Golem stood to either side of her. The Hoopers eyed Ambel warily, knowing that if he caused any problems the four of them might not be enough to restrain him. Ambel studied the Golem, which stood there like silver skeletons. They were products of Polity technology: androids manufactured by Cybercorp, and here deliberately lacking their syntheflesh coverings so as to appear more threatening. He was not going to be a problem, though. With Boris and Anne standing at each shoulder, he took the seat opposite Olian and placed his box on the table.

‘Captain Ambel,’ began Olian, ‘always a pleasure. How is the lovely Erlin, and how is your crew?’ Before he could answer she went on. ‘And how is Crewman Peck?’ She repeatedly offered Peck a job in her museum as a guide and as an exhibit himself, he being the last victim to be skinned by the monstrosity back in the museum. Peck said the very idea gave him the willies, so it was not just the statue by the entryway keeping him away from here.

‘Peck is . . . Peck, and all the rest are fine,’ Ambel replied, opening his box.

Inside, two chainglass bottles nestled in kelp cotton. They contained rhombic ruby crystals. Ambel handled the bottles with care as he took them out and placed them on the table. Olian slid on a pair of surgical gloves, then a mask and goggles, before pulling over a set of scales. Though a Polity citizen, she had long been infected with the same virus as all Hoopers. Ambel leant back as she tipped crystals into the scales and weighed them.

‘I make that about four hundred and seventy-three grams. The Spatterjay measure is three hundred and twelve thanons, fifteen sear and twenty itch. Do you agree?’

Ambel nodded—he had weighed the stuff himself about five times.

‘A profitable trip. Anyone get hurt?’

‘Not by the leeches.’ Ambel gestured with a thumb over his shoulder. ‘Boris managed to cut off Crewman Sallow’s hand, but luckily it fell inside the giant leech we were cutting open, and we were able to retrieve it. Sallow’s as good as new now.’

‘So that’s three thousand one hundred and twenty New Skind, fifteen shligs and twenty pennies.’ Olian nodded to one of the Golem, who departed. She sat back. ‘Our rate is five per cent, as always, but you can keep the money here on account at three per cent interest, or we have some other interesting deals.’

Ambel started to fidget and scan around the room.

Olian continued, ‘You can buy share options in Artefact Trade Inc., or Island Jewels have an interesting . . .’

Ambel completely lost interest and the rest of her speech became just a background mutter to him. Once the Golem brought his money, Ambel thanked Olian and made his escape. What need did he have of accounts and investments? He would buy supplies, buy new rope and wood for repairs, maybe some Polity toys. But very soon he would be back out on the open ocean, where the Skind in your pocket meant less than the wind in your hair.

* * * *

Below a low bloom of pastel green cloud spreading across the emerald sky, Windcheater the sail drifted on thermals high above the ferry. This was the only powered vessel he allowed on the seas of Spatterjay. He had lifted the design of the boat via his aug from historical records maintained in cyberspace—liking it because it ran counter to all the Polity’s present discrete technologies. It was in fact a Mississippi riverboat, though driven by a fusion-powered electric motor with a guaranteed lifespan of two hundred years. Windcheater liked to choose the technologies employed here, preferring his world not to be absorbed into the homogeneous Polity.

Gazing down he noticed that some rhinoworms were following the ferry, no doubt snapping up other creatures the big water wheels stunned in their leviathan progress. He watched as one of his own kind in turn snapped up a rhinoworm and flew off with the creature writhing in its jaws. He focused on the decks, but the people there were unclear, so he routed visual reception through his aug and in it magnified and cleaned up the image. The individual standing in the bows, clad in a long black coat, had to be the reification. Windcheater growled. No doubt Taylor Bloc had come to complain about interference in his plans. The sail now lifted his head and peered towards the ferry’s destination.

The Big Flint—a giant column of flint rearing a kilometre out of the sea—was wreathed in scaffolding which supported platforms, stairways, the oblate forms of easy-to-manufacture habitats, and communication arrays keeping the inhabitants here in contact with the Polity’s AI networks. Hoopers and some Polity citizens occupied those habitats, but his own kind kept to the platforms and the flat top of the Flint. Windcheater had briefly tried out enclosed residences for himself and his kind, but the resultant claustrophobia for flying creatures accustomed to living in the open had been difficult to overcome. At some point he intended to obtain Polity shimmer-shields because, that phobia aside, he had never enjoyed some of the weather the planet threw at the Big Flint.

‘I take it the Gurnard has arrived?’ he queried through his aug.

‘It’s in orbit, and Taylor Bloc’s cargo is being shuttled down to Mortuary Island,’ Sniper, the de facto Warden, instantly replied.

Windcheater banked, feeling the warm air rushing over his wing surfaces, found a thermal to take him higher.

‘What about the reifications?’

‘I’ve put out a call to those in the Dome. They’ll be shuttled to the island. I’ll also lay on a special shuttle for those yet to tranship, to take them direct. It’s about damned time. I’m getting an average of one complaint every few minutes and the air is none too sweet up here.’

Windcheater growled agreement. He understood reifications trying to ascertain why the nanochanger technology that could resurrect them had only worked on Spatterjay. But their deification of Sable Keech into the ‘Arisen One’, and their aim to journey to the Little Flint, where he had first employed his changer, and there attempt their own resurrection, stank of religion. Keech himself, before returning to the Polity and his beloved profession of hunting down criminals, had warned Windcheater not to let something like that get established here, as excising such was as difficult as getting rid of a bait-worm infestation. However, reifications were very often wealthy, by dint of having been around for a long time, and though Windcheater, Boss of Spatterjay, did not want them on his world, he did rather like their money.

‘By the way,’ Sniper added, ‘are you also aware that a large number of those reifs are not dead at all.’

‘You’re talking about the Batian mercenaries?’

‘Ah, so you are aware.’

‘Security for Lineworld Development’s investment in Bloc’s enterprise, and probably what Lineworld will use to steal that enterprise from him. I don’t know if Bloc is aware of them, nor do I care.’

‘Might get nasty,’ said Sniper with relish. ‘Many of the reifications are Kladites—Bloc’s little army.’

‘It might.’ Windcheater gave an aerial shrug—that wasn’t his problem.

* * * *

Sniper did not want to be Warden, but such was his age and the sheer bulk of his experience, it had been unavoidable. Having sacrificed his old drone body to knock a Prador spaceship out of the sky before its owner used the vessel’s weapons to fry a Convocation of Old Captains, he had uploaded to the other Warden’s crystal and displaced that entity into storage. To relinquish control back to the original Warden required his being loaded to some other form of storage, and Sniper had thought about that long and hard. Over the last ten years, various drone bodies had been offered to him by the sector AI, all of which were better than his original in all but one respect: their armour and weapons. The sector AI had obviously wanted a less troublesome Sniper: a nicely castrated facsimile easier to control. But Sniper was a war drone, first, foremost and always.

Obtaining the body he wanted took years, and used up a substantial portion of his personal fortune. His search for a manufacturer capable of building to his specifications was blocked by the sector AI at every turn. Then, when he did find a manufacturer, on the fringe of the Polity, he discovered that the drone body he sought came under Polity weapons proscription, and so could not be transported by runcible or by any Polity vessel. But there were many free traders working those fringes, and he used one of them instead. And now, at last, his new body was here.

‘Looks like you’ll soon have your job back,’ the war drone informed the entity crammed to one side of the space he occupied.

The original Warden muttered something foul. Its language had been deteriorating lately, probably because of its close proximity to Sniper. The war drone grinned inwardly, then directly picked up the feed from cameras aimed at the spaceport on Coram, the moon of Spatterjay. His view was distant; the port itself did not really come under Polity jurisdiction and so no permanent cameras were established there. He magnified the image and tracked back and forth across the crowded population of mostly privately owned ships. These were of every imaginable design: utile ovoids, sharkish vessels, multispherical—up to decasphere ships—a replica of an ancient passenger aeroplane, deltawings, and even a replica of Nelson’s Victory. The grabship from the Gurnard rested amid these like some blunt tail-less scorpion skulking from the light, though what it now held in its claws gleamed. Impatient with this view, Sniper sent out one of his drones.

‘Two, go take a look at my delivery for me, will you?’

The drone, a little cranky ever since occupying an enforcer shell on the planet below during the same battle in which Sniper had brought down the Prador ship, now resided in a body the shape of an iron turbot a metre long. It had been sloping about the concourse waiting for Sniper’s attention to roam elsewhere so it could go off and moonlight in one of the bars as a vending tray.

‘Sure thing, Warden,’ it said without much enthusiasm.

Tracking it with pinhead cameras in the concourse, Sniper watched it shoot out through a shimmer-shield port in the glass roof, briefly ignite a small fusion drive it should not have possessed, then coast over to the spaceport. He then lightly touched its mind and peered out through its eyes. Dropping down through the diamond fibre rigging of the Victory, it then grav-planed a few metres above the plascrete towards the grabship. Now Sniper could see the ship had released its gleaming cargo, and that a big man in a big spacesuit was driving a handler dray towards the precious load.

‘Is that you, Ron?’ Sniper sent, after probing for the suit’s com frequency.

‘It certainly is, Warden,’ replied the Old Captain.

‘I hadn’t expected to see you back here so soon.’

‘Nowhere is there anything like the sea-cane rum of home.’

Through the eyes of the turbot drone, Sniper watched while Captain Ron brought the dray in close, picked up the framework containing the shining nautiloid drone shell, then took it towards the cargo sheds on one side of the moon base. Seeing where the man was heading, Sniper suddenly realized how he himself could speed things up considerably.

‘Ron, don’t take the shell to the cargo sheds. There’s a clear area over to the left of the base, as you face it. The drone just above you will lead you there.’

Captain Ron looked up, nodded, then drove the handler after the drone as it turned and slowly led the way to the area Sniper indicated. While this was happening, Sniper began scanning through the systems he controlled. Yes, if he wished, he could transmit himself directly into the drone shell with it located anywhere up to a hundred thousand kilometres away, but there were losses that last time, when he had transmitted himself up here to the Warden—about two per cent he estimated. Bringing the shell in via the cargo sheds would take time, as there was a lot of stuff going through there. But he did not need to do either.

As many Polity citizens had discovered ten years ago, when the Prador ship had revealed itself and begun its attack, this base was surrounded by powerful armament. The particular weapon that interested Sniper was a projector for electronic warfare, but not just the kind that knocked out systems with an EM pulse. This projector also transmitted kill programs, viruses and worms, and all the destructive cornucopia that had been evolving from the beginning of the information age. He tracked the system, shutting off all the alarms and disconnecting it from the rest of the weapons that could rise out of the ground in a concerted response to a threat, then he activated it.

‘Well bugger me,’ said Ron.

Ahead of the Captain, precisely in the centre of the level area, the ground erupted and out of it rose a column topped by the blockish structure of an emitter array, enclosed in armour. It rose twenty metres into vacuum, then the end split and opened like a tulip bud, to reveal the array itself. Sniper began drawing in his awareness from the numerous systems he controlled. He shut down the runcible, but it would not be off for long—only two people would find themselves stepping out on the wrong world, and only a further two would have their journey away from here delayed. The bandwidth, to the electronic warfare weapon, was necessarily wide; wide enough to take semi-sentient killer programs, and wide enough for Sniper. He probed ahead first to check the receptivity of the drone shell, and the shell then activated dormant power sources.

‘It might be an idea for you to just drop the shell there and move back, Ron.’

‘Yeah, it might at that.’

Sniper noticed how the Captain was peering at the signs of movement from the nautiloid’s silver tentacles, and the occasional glimmer of lights from optic ports in the head. The man lowered it in its framework, released it, then put his handler dray hard in reverse.

Sniper was now ready, but one thing remained for him to do. He quickly found a link that he, out of a sense of propriety, did not often use. Suddenly he was gazing out across blue sea to an island where self-inflating habitats had been landed, and where robots had built jetties and other structures. The eyes from which he gazed he knew were turquoise, and set in the head of a floating iron seahorse.

‘How goes it, Thirteen?’

‘Fair,’ replied this one of the old Warden’s subminds, SM13.

‘Perhaps you’ll soon think things better than fair. I’ve just transferred funds to pay off the last of your indenture. You are now a free drone.’

‘Um,’ said the SM, ‘I really wanted to do that myself.’

‘Ah, but the old Warden will shortly be back in control, and he might be a bit tetchy. Best it be done now.’

‘I see . . .Your shell arrived?’

‘Certainly did,’ Sniper replied, then cut the connection.

Nothing else remained now. It had been an interesting ten years acting as Spatterjay’s Warden: watching Windcheater’s rise to power and the changes the sail Boss wrought on the surface. But time and again he had wanted actually to be there, and been hard pressed not to take over some of the various drones scattered about the planet. Now he could get back into the game.

‘It’s all yours, Warden,’ he said, and began transmitting all that he was down the optic and S-con linkages to the transmitters on the weapon. He grew less, felt displacement and the division of self. As he went he could feel the Warden coming out of storage and unfolding itself to reoccupy abandoned spaces.

Hiatus.

Sniper expanded within the drone shell, checking out the systems at his disposal as he shrugged himself into his new body. He began running diagnostics, started the fusion reactor which until then had been in stasis. He opened crystalline orange eyes, probed his surroundings with radar, a laser-bounce spectrometer, many other instruments. Ultrasound, infrasound and sonar would have to wait for a more suitable environment. He extruded his two long spatulate tentacles and ran them through the stony dust before him, then reached back and tore away protective wrapping and the encaging framework. Engaging gravmotors, he shrugged away the last of his packaging.

‘A very fine swan,’ he stated, then turned on his fusion engines and hurtled up over the moon base and round the moon itself. He checked his weapons carousel, selected a low-yield missile, targeted a boulder on the moon’s surface and spat down the black cylinder. The rock blew apart in a candent explosion, hurling pieces of itself out into space. Sniper selected in turn a laser, particle beam, then an APW, and converted each fragment in turn to vapour.

‘Now we’re cooking!’

The blue and gold orb of Spatterjay rose above the rocky horizon. He adjusted his course towards it, and accelerated.

* * * *

Coming out on deck with Bones trailing behind him, Aesop eyed the long pink serpents thrashing in the sea, often lifting their rhinoceros heads out of the waves with mouths crammed full of squirming leeches. He then turned his attention to the beach, and saw that what he had at first taken to be flocks of gulls were in fact clusters of off-white spiral shells. Frog whelks. It seemed such an innocuous name for creatures that would happily chew down to the bone anyone who set foot on the beach. Thankfully an enclosed walkway led across that shore from the jetty the ferry was now coming alongside.

Aesop walked along the deck to where Taylor Bloc stood watching—bare of mask and hood.

‘What do you think the response will be?’ Aesop asked.

Bloc paused before replying, probably wondering if he was prepared to permit such familiarity from one of his slaves, then said, ‘Whatever it may be, we will still get established on this world and the ship will be built.’

And how so very much did Taylor Bloc want that ship built. It had taken some time in the early years for Aesop to figure the reif out, simply because there was little facial expression to read. But now he was certain of what drove Bloc. Few sentient reifs had any belief in the tenets of the Cult of Anubis Arisen, as most of them became too old and experienced to be taken in by it all, yet many of them remained the way they were out of long habit. Bloc did believe in resurrection through the flesh, but his real aim in bringing reified people here was for one purpose only—adulation—though as a corollary he had become a leader of what some described as ‘the militant dead’. Bloc also became very annoyed whenever he was thwarted, which was happening right now. Certainly the relocation was a result of machinations by Lineworld Developments, for the more cash it was necessary for the company to inject, the greater would be their percentage of the eventual take, and cash injection beyond a certain level meant they could also take control of the entire project.

‘Of course, relocating the enterprise away from what passes as civilization here, though initially costly, does provide other advantages,’ Bloc added.

Aesop knew what that meant. ‘But to both sides,’ he suggested.

‘I have one advantage of which Lineworld Developments could not conceive.’

Aesop made no reply to that. Despite all his years of experience Bloc had still yet to learn that you could not coerce people into adulation, that it was not something you gained through intimidation and murder. Aesop knew that, for he had made a profession of such.

Crewmen, big heavy individuals with skin distinctively leech-scarred and bluish, threw ropes to others of similar stripe down on the jetty. Aesop watched with interest as the second group began hauling on the ropes. He had heard about this sort of thing but thought the stories exaggerated. However, as the ferry moved sideways up against the pearwood platform, he had to make some rapid reassessments. Perhaps Bloc’s hiring of so many Hooper crewmen had not been such a good idea.

As the three of them disembarked, Aesop noted that other ferry passengers were keeping their distance. Bloc was beginning to reek, but no doubt wanted to get this meeting out of the way before he again used his cleansing unit. Or perhaps he was just getting careless. Aesop had noticed Bloc behaving rather oddly lately—perhaps it was the pressure. As he stepped onto the jetty, he turned and saw one of the Hoopers kick something squealing into the water. The woman grinned at him.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘We only get one or two up on the jetty.’

Aesop made no response but to follow Bloc on into the enclosed walkway. There he saw numerous stalked eyes, sticking up from the gathering of shells on the beach, turning to track the progress of the passengers. He controlled himself when a couple of those shells launched into the air and crashed against the mesh before falling back down onto the beach again. A screech from a man nearby told him that others had not been quite so prepared for this.

‘Have either of you had any odd messages from your internal diagnostics yet?’ Bloc asked.

‘I’ve yet to be bitten by a leech,’ Aesop replied.

Bones made no sound—his reply by other means.

‘Viral infection can be caused by other media,’ Bloc stated.

That required no response, so Aesop gave none.

It was the general opinion of those who had investigated the matter that Keech’s success with the nanofactory changer had been due in part to his being infected by the Spatterjay virus. There were other elements totake into account though, like him being shot, his use of Intertox inhibitors, and the delay before he got himself into a jury-rigged tank containing sterilized seawater. It was all very risky, and not something Aesop would have countenanced had he the choice. He kept himself well dosed with inhibitors to prevent viral infection, and just hoped. Too little was known about the damned virus. Bloc probably looked forward to his first ‘outside parameter function’ message from his internal hardware, which would tell him he was infected.

They mounted an enclosed stairway spiralling up the side of the Flint and began to climb. Other passengers were soon wheezing after only a few nights. Aesop, Bones and Bloc, clumping along behind the main crowd, did not wheeze, of course, did not breathe at all.

At the first platform, most of the ferry passengers left the stairwell to enter some kind of market. Aesop gazed out at the various stalls, many of them stacked with souvenirs: reproduction thrall units, slave collars, figurines of the Eight, variously sized models of the Skinner and other examples of the planet’s weird life forms, whelk shells, heirodont mandibles or their bones made into Hooper scrimshaw. Other stalls carried the usual cheaply produced items found in markets all across the Polity: ceramal cutlery, chainglass knives that would keep their edge for decades, image intensifiers, enviro boots and suits, augs . . . The list just went on and on. A couple of stalls carried terrariums and aquariums, and those who spent their money there would afterwards require medical attention. Here, in this market, you could buy everything from scratch-resistant sunglasses to the leech bite that would impart immortality, even if that could be obtained for nothing anywhere else on Spatterjay. Those tourists who bought it here showed their timidity or stupidity.

By the time they had passed another two platforms, the three were alone on the stair leading up. Eventually they stepped out on the top of the Big Flint where Aesop studied his surroundings. Ten years ago Keech stood up here, but things had certainly changed since then.

Some sails were huddled in a mass: large pinkish baggy bodies, long necks hooking above them, terminating in crocodilian heads. Other sails were scattered separately about on the top of the Flint or out on the bubble-metal platform ringing it. Some operated cowled machines Aesop could not identify, until stepping close to one with its weather shield open to find the sail working, with its big spider hands, a touch console and screen inside. Satellite dishes were positioned further out on the platform; cables snaked across the stone. None of the sails paid the three much attention.

‘We are here to see Windcheater,’ Bloc announced.

Abruptly a number of heads swung towards them. Then the crowd of sails parted and a larger, more aggressive-looking creature mooched over towards them. This was definitely Windcheater—Aesop recognized him from the files he had been instructed to study.

‘Yes,’ said the sail.

‘You’re Windcheater?’

The sail did not reply.

‘Are you Windcheater?’ Bloc tried again.

‘Evidently.’

Bloc said, ‘You’ve relocated us. We had an agreement.’

‘Yes.’

‘This is unacceptable. You can’t go back on your word.’

The sail arched its neck to bring its head down level with Bloc. ‘You paid me so you could come here and build a ship to sail your pilgrims to the Little Flint. The plans you submitted were for you to launch it from the Chel Island, but I did not agree to them. I don’t want you people that close to me. Now bugger off.’ The sail began to turn away.

‘What about the sails for our ship?’ Bloc quickly asked. ‘You agreed to that. It’s part of your law that no ship can sail without at least one of your kind aboard.’

‘You’ll get your sails,’ Windcheater told him.

‘There’s an economic reason for you moving us, isn’t there?’ Bloc suggested.

Aesop was impressed: Taylor Bloc was not normally so restrained.

Showing more interest than heretofore, the sail swung back. ‘For example?’

‘Because no more are being produced, there’s only a limited number of reifications who can come here for either a cure or their physical destruction by the virus, so eventually pilgrimages by those you find distasteful will dwindle. So afterwards you’ll get yourself a piece of civilization established on another island.’

‘Smart dead man,’ said the sail.

Aesop felt like laughing, but had lost that ability long ago. Nothing about the additional costs and a probable takeover by Lineworld. Windcheater had clearly been paid to relocate them. However, Bloc was only going through the motions. He had obviously decided on his course now.

* * * *

The sail Huff had been informed by humans, AIs and Windcheater that he remembered his name because he was brighter than the average sail, for a certain horrible reason. When the Batian mercenary Shib had stapled Huff’s neck to the mast of Captain Drum’s ship, the Ahab, and when Jay Hoop’s lunatic wife Rebecca Frisk had subsequently cooked Huff’s skull with a laser, his brain had then regrown without the usual hard wiring. Puff, it was supposed, remembered her name for similar reasons, telling Huff she only vaguely recollected the heirodont that had clamped its jaws on her skull when she had peered over the edge of the Little Flint to see about snapping up one of the hammer whelks nestling down there. Huff speculated that a similar happenstance had resulted in Windcheater’s enhanced intelligence, perhaps when the planet had been ruled by the Eight, who had taken as much pleasure in hunting indigenes as those humans who escaped from the coring facility. Windcheater was not telling. However, no such drastic damage had resulted in the cerebral rewiring of the third sail, nor was likely to. Huff now eyed their companion.

Zephyr was as big as Windcheater, and no heirodont’s jaws carried the muscle to crush his ceramal skull, and no one would be stapling him to a mast. His tough carbon polymer skin was the hue of blued steel. His teeth were chainglass and his bones were composite-reinforced bubble-metal. In his chest he carried two state-of-the-art fusion reactors, which drove his carbon-fibre muscles and powered his crystal brain and formidable sense array. His eyes were gleaming emeralds. Zephyr had very little to fear, being a Golem sail.

Huff and Puff’s partnership had lasted for ten years, from when they discovered much in common with each other and little with their fellows. Zephyr, when he arrived here less than a year ago, had been much less coherent than he was now. Windcheater had treated him with suspicion; the response of other sails had been confusion. Huff and Puff, however, adopted him as an outcast like themselves. They showed him their world, talked and flew with him. In a short time they became fascinated by the Golem sail’s strange combination of hard-headed wisdom and not quite sane pronouncements on life and death. They argued and flew, learnt, and thus became even more distant from their fellows. When he volunteered the three of them for a task other sails wanted no part of, he became the leader and they the followers.

‘I think I see it now,’ said Huff.

‘You do,’ Zephyr replied. ‘And now we need to go faster.’ The Golem sail accelerated.

Huff and Puff looked at each other questioningly, then grabbed air to catch up with their companion.

‘What’s the hurry?’ Puff complained. ‘The money’s the same either way and there’s no way they’ll be sailing without us.’

Zephyr glanced aside. ‘I will see the soulless sail.’

‘And . . . ?’ said Huff.

Zephyr’s voice changed to more normal tones, as if the Golem sail now assumed a prosaic guise. ‘Beyond the reason that will soon become evident to you, we have reason to get this part over with as quickly as possible.’ Zephyr held up the harness he clasped in one claw. ‘We might not be within the Polity, but this Warden will take a dim view of what we’re about if he catches us. From what I’ve been told he doesn’t put much credence in the rules and regulations supposedly governing his status.’

‘What might he do?’ Puff asked.

Huff had a damned good idea; he had been in the middle of the events that resulted in the new Warden. He still remembered the taste of the human heads he had bitten off just before the Ahab sank and the device inside it detonated. And later he had been high in the sky watching when the war drone Sniper, who was now the Warden, had come down like a hammer on that Prador ship.

‘It is this way,’ said Zephyr. ‘The new Warden would try not to endanger any innocent Polity citizen, but it might be possible to identify us by a chemical analysis of the ash floating on the sea. I do not choose Death. I refuse it.’

‘But you are a Polity citizen,’ Huff pointed out.

Zephyr exposed his chainglass teeth so they glinted in the sunset light. ‘But not innocent; and that I’m not an ignorant native makes me doubly culpable.’

‘No forgiveness then,’ asked Puff.

‘Outmoded concept of human law. We are all responsible for our actions.’ Zephyr pointed ahead with one long metallic talon. ‘Do you see now?’

Huff and Puff peered ahead.

‘Oh, one of them,’ said Huff.