6

Land Leech: from a large encystment clinging to the bottom of a clump of sargassum, protected in sprine-laden jelly poisonous to predators, leeches hatch out as globular diatoms with extended plug-cutting mouths already working. They drift in the sea, feeding and growing—forming the largest proportion of what is referred to as Spatterjay’s ‘vicious plankton’. However, they do not have it all their own way, being fed upon by anything large enough to eat them and small enough to gain any benefit from the meal—including their own kind. When they reach the size of a pea, they become somnolent, and it is at this stage the predation upon them is at its greatest. It is estimated that less than one in a million are finally washed ashore. Exposed to higher oxygen levels on the beach, they use stored fat to transform into fingerling leeches, and crawl inland to find a peartrunk tree in which to roost. A symbiotic relationship exists here. When heirodonts strip tree bark from it, the tree shakes, dropping leeches on the grazer to drive it away. But that relationship is simple compared to the relationship between leeches and the Spatterjay virus.

In prey infected by leech bite, the virus imparts resistance to damage and disease, and huge powers of regeneration. However, the regenerative process uses both the leech genome and fragments of other animal genomes which the virus has acquired over a billion years of evolution. Severely damaged animals can transform entirely into leeches — and other things.

The mechanism that finally drives leeches back into the ocean is dependent on land food resources and the island leech population. They can enter the sea at any size from that of a human arm up to something weighing many tons. Some never enter the sea, moving inland to deep dingle—becoming tougher-skinned, more tubular and of a reddish colour—where they feed upon larger varieties of land heirodont -

Captain Orbus was peeved that no one had been in a hurry to join his ship, that in fact three crewmen had abandoned it. Yes, his mate had been murdered and two of the crew executed for the crime, but new recruits would not be in any danger, and anyway Hoopers should not be so choosy or so cowardly. He guessed that what put them off was the atmosphere of despondency and bitterness aboard the Vignette, a mood that had better soon disperse or he would want to know the reason why. Even the sail, which had joined them with no knowledge of the events back on Chel, was beginning to get uneasy. Good thing sails now worked under contract. Without that piece of paper, this one would have abandoned them long before.

As he reclined in his chair on the Captain’s bridge, enjoying the hot morning sun and gazing out across pale green ocean, Orbus knew this was not going to be a particularly enjoyable journey, nor a profitable one. He discounted at once any thoughts of going after sprine. Being short-handed would push such a dangerous venture over the edge into lethality. Orbus did not mind losing the odd man when he had them to spare, but now he did not. It seemed his only option was to do a bit of turbul fishing, if the opportunity arose, on the way to find the particular variety of sargassum that had been the downfall of his mate. Collecting squeaky weed would be the only way to turn a profit, again. And perhaps this time he would not have to push his crew so hard. He would take it easy on them. There would be no keel-hauling on this journey, no thrashings . . . Yes, he would take it easy. He eyed the desultory way his crew now went about their tasks. At least, no punishments unless they were called for. He heaved himself out of his chair and stood.

‘Lannias, have you greased the ratchets?’ he demanded loudly.

‘Yes, Cap’n.’

‘Drooble, isn’t it time you stowed those ropes?’

‘Yeah, probably,’ Drooble replied, leering up at Orbus.

‘Do you want to be the first strapped up against the mast, Drooble?’ Orbus asked.

Still leering up at him, Drooble licked his lips. Abruptly Orbus felt a sudden disquiet. The other Old Captains, though agreeing there could be only one punishment for murder by sprine, had been scathing of his abilities. What was it Captain Drum had said?

‘Your crew can leave you at any time, Orbus, and being the bastard you are, do you ever wonder why any of them stay?’

‘I am a strict man and Hoopers need the discipline,’ Orbus had protested.

‘More like,’ Drum opined, ‘they like the discipline.’

Orbus was aware that in the eyes of the other Captains he was too strict and too ready with the punishments, and his crew too ready to receive them.

‘Get on with you,’ he said to Drooble, and turned away.

It was then that the sail’s head snapped up to peer at something casting a shadow on the deck. Orbus looked up into sun-reflected glare. For a moment the experience was religious—he felt on the brink of some revelation—then a voice said, ‘Okay, Captain, I’ve distance scanned you, but our quarry might be using chameleonware. I’d like to search your ship.’

Orbus blinked, and his vision finally resolved the huge gleaming nautiloid drone descending beside the Vignette. There were other shapes higher up he could not discern, and to the right of the big drone was a small iron-coloured one bearing the shape of a scallop, and another fashioned like some mythical fish swimming through the air, its large scales glinting metallic green.

‘The Polity has no jurisdiction here,’ said Orbus, still angry because of his previous feelings. ‘Any of you try to enter my ship and you will know the cost. Now bugger off!’

Orbus had not seen this particular drone before, but the others of the Warden’s drones, he recollected, usually went away if you shouted at them loudly enough. They were all frightened of stepping outside of the complicated charter laid down for them by Earth Central, and they all tried to keep out of trouble that could result in them being subsumed back into the Warden. There had apparently been some changes a number of years back, but Orbus had not been interested enough to find out what they were.

‘Are you threatening me?’ asked the big drone.

The fish drone piped up, ‘Bad move, Captain.’

The scallop added, ‘A possibly injurious move.’

Orbus glanced aside and saw that all the remaining twelve members of his crew were out on deck. It seemed it was now a matter of keeping face. He reached over by his chair and picked up the weapon propped there. It had cost him a shipload of squeaky weed to buy this. He flicked a switch on the side of it and the gas-system pulse rifle whined up to charge. As an afterthought he then picked up the glittering coil of his flexal bullwhip. The big drone, he expected he could only drive away, but if he could get a coil of his whip around one of the little shits and pull it close, he knew, with his Old Captain strength, he would be able to tear it apart. He stood silently waiting. In a minute they would decide he was too much trouble and be on their way. And, after that happened, he would go down to the lower deck and wipe that smirk off Drooble’s face.

The big drone sighed theatrically. ‘You know, while I was the Warden I had access to all the files on the Old Captains and now carry copies of them inside myself. Yours makes interesting reading: a sadist in charge of a crew of masochists. Now my view has always been one of “Live and let live”,’ the big drone paused for a second after a snort issued from the scallop, and Orbus guessed at some quick unheard communication, ‘but what about those Hoopers who joined you out of foolishness or desperation? As far back as your file goes, you’ve had six murders and four suicides aboard your ship, and eight others missing without explanation.’ The drone shrugged in mid-air. ‘What do you say to that?’

‘I say bugger off,’ said Orbus. He flipped his whip out behind him and levelled his pulse rifle.

‘Oh sod this,’ said the drone.

Orbus fired. A gleaming tentacle slid out from the drone with deceptive speed. The shots from the rifle just puffed into nacreous clouds on the drone’s skin, as the tentacle wrapped around the Old Captain’s neck and hauled him into the air. Other tentacles sped in, and he felt his whip and rifle snatched from his grasp, then he was upside down, a tentacle around his ankles, being jerked through the air. Next thing he knew he was hanging upside down from a spar of the foremast. He peered up at his ankles and saw them bound to the pearwood with his own whip.

‘Search it,’ said the big drone.

The two other drones zipped down to the deck and hovered over the forward hatch. Drooble ran over to them, stared at them for a moment, then reached down to open it.

‘Leave that bloody hatch alone!’ Orbus bellowed.

Drooble leered, then dragged it open. The drones shot inside.

‘Let me down from here!’ Orbus yelled, not liking the way his crew were now grinning up at him. He hauled himself up and tried to undo the whip, but not only had it been knotted around his ankles, the flexal coils had been welded. He dropped back down, to look into the upside-down crocodilian face of the sail.

‘Dumb,’ it said. ‘Surprisingly dumb.’

Shortly the small drones came back out of the hatch.

‘Clean as clean can be,’ prattled the fish.

‘Not a Golem in sight,’ added the scallop.

And with a low roar all three of them ascended into the sky.

‘Get me down from here!’ Orbus yelled again.

‘Minute, Cap’n. I got that rope to stow,’ said Drooble.

‘I think I missed one of the ratchets,’ said Lannias.

Other crewmembers took their lead from those two, and set about their many assigned tasks. All ignored the Captain’s bellowing for the best part of the day. When they finally decided to cut him down, they cut through the spar—it was the only way—and Orbus fell headfirst to the deck. He was very angry when he finally managed to free his ankles. Most of them liked that. Others were terrified.

* * * *

There were traps upon traps layered into the programming, their parameters changing over seemingly random time periods. There were so many that Vrell wondered how his father had kept track of them all and not fallen foul of them himself. Like the blast doors Vrell had earlier opened, and jammed by fusing the motors that drove them. For them the input locking codes changed at periods ranging from a few minutes to entire days. But at least this control pit and its array of screens in Father’s sanctum continued operating once Vrell short-circuited the gene reader with a lump of gristle he’d found attached to a piece of his father’s carapace.

With increasing bewilderment Vrell worked his way through the programming systems of the ship. He was finding the traps and nullifying them, but knew that at this rate he would not clean the system until some years hence. It made his major ganglion ache and, as he worked, pressure grew inside him. Inevitably there came a dull crunch, and he turned his eye-palps, and what was now his head, to observe another crack in his carapace. Relief was immediate, and with it came sudden inspiration. Of course, there had to be a separate tracking and reformatting program. It was clearly not in the system itself, so Father must have accessed it through one of his control units—one that was still active. And it was even more obvious that his father used the same unit to access the whole system. How could Ebulan have done otherwise? He had no hands. It was so blatantly obvious, why had Vrell not seen this before?

Vrell spun round and clattered across the room picking up the hexagonal control units once welded to his father’s carapace. Using a remote reader, a second device that mated into the socket in the face of each unit, he tested each one in turn. The first three were dead—obviously linked to the thrall units rendered defunct by the destruction of the blanks they ran—but the fourth was still transmitting. The Prador took it over to Ebulan’s private storage area—now open—went inside, unplugged the reader, then plugged a cable from a diagnostic tester into the same socket. All the control unit required, apparently, was another nanofibre rooting module. He found one of these, removed the old module from the back of the unit, and plugged the new one into place. With another hand he picked up a multihead carapace drill, placed it against his underside and triggered it. A high whine and puff of powder resulted in a neat pepperpot of holes in his undercarapace. He brought the unit up to these and paused.

There was danger here from two sources: the rooting module carried the format for Prador physiology, and Vrell was not exactly a normal Prador any more; and there might be more traps. He thought the latter possibility remote. The traps were all outside this chamber, since Ebulan had not expected an enemy to get this close, which was why, in the end, he was now in pieces on the floor. Vrell pushed the control unit into place, felt the sudden heat as it shell-welded, took his hand away.

Nothing for a moment, then a nauseating sensation much like he had experienced when the leeches burrowed inside his carapace. Then slowly, inexorably, he saw with other eyes and reached out with invisible hands into the systems of the ship. Programming within the unit itself automatically corrected his course so he did not fall afoul of the traps, physical or otherwise. Slowly he began to encompass it all. He saw the blown reactors and burnt-out generators both through cameras and in the constant cycling of diagnostic programs. He knew that, with a great deal of work, some fusion reactors were salvageable. Weapons systems were no problem: most of them were functional though lacking in sufficient power or projectiles. He set a small autofactory to suck in sea water and electrolyse required chemicals. Metals in storage were also made available to the factory, and within an hour the first gleaming missiles were clicking into place in weapons carousels. He cleared other glitches, circumvented damage, brought online and gave autonomy to repair systems that Ebulan, in his paranoia, had controlled centrally. Eventually he reached a point where there was no more he could do through the ship’s computer systems. It was time for grunt work. Shaking himself, Vrell pulled out from that omniscient ship vision and gazed around. From a nearby rack he took out four control units, and four thrall units, together with the required equipment for their installation. Then he headed for the ship’s larder—more than one purpose in mind.

* * * *

Some of his Kladites had fetched an autohandler up from the construction site. Peering out of the window, Bloc watched it trundle on its treads up to the abandoned tail section of the hooder, open and swivel its pincer grabs to pick the thing up. The tail was still moving and, from what he knew of hooder biology, each of its segments could grow into a new creature. He had no wish for any more of the creatures in this vicinity so had ordered it taken away and burned outside the enclosure. Others meanwhile were collecting human remains in motorized barrows, and still another group was pulling one of the accommodation units upright with a winch. Bloc turned away from the window.

‘Who fired that antiphoton weapon?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea who fired that proton weapon,’ Shive replied pedantically. ‘But, then, what lunatic brought a hooder here and released it?’

Bloc studied him. Shive could stand upright, though a little unsteadily. Two of his five remaining comrades were not so lucky. Both were on AG stretchers, one with his leg terminating at the knee, and one with a chrome autodoc clinging to her side maintaining life in her badly shattered body until such time as she could receive better attention than would be provided here. It had not been difficult to disarm them in the aftermath of the attack. Eighty Kladites armed with laser carbines had been sufficient.

‘Why, you did, Shive,’ said Bloc.

The mercenary bared his teeth. He was not so impressive now without his armour or his guns.

‘You think anyone is going to believe that?’

Bones took a step towards the mercenary, but Bloc reined him back. There was no need for any violence now Bloc had won. He glanced to the Kladite guards standing around the walls of the storeroom. They were completely loyal.

‘The passengers will believe. Apparently Lineworld Developments had the creature shipped here in order to sufficiently damage this enterprise to push its start-up costs over a certain limit, whereupon they would be able to take full control. Just like when they relocated us. In fact, the relocation was the first part of the plan, and the hooder the next part. Everyone knows how Lineworld operates.’

‘Reifications were destroyed by that creature, but many more of my men died.’

‘Oh yes ... I didn’t say it was a very good plan.’

‘So what now?’ Shive asked.

‘When the shuttle comes to take away the construction crew, you and your comrades will be put on it. Surprisingly few reifs will be departing, despite what happened here. Fewer still when I have had a chance to speak to them. You will go back to your masters at Lineworld and tell them that they will not be taking over this enterprise after all. They will not be able to do anything about that, because by then the ship will be built.’

‘Do you think they’ll just accept that?’

‘What can they do? They can send more of your kind, but how will you take a ship at sea? Remember, AG transport is not allowed on this planet, nor are powered boats. And even if you should reach the ship, under sail, it will be well protected.’

‘We have been well trained in taking such objectives.’

‘But you will also tell your masters that I still consider our contract valid. Their initial investment will be repaid, and they will make a profit from the first voyage, and subsequent voyages. I think they’ll find that the cost of mounting an operation against me will far outweigh such profits, especially when you tell them that should any operation be mounted against me, their initial investment will end up at the bottom of the ocean.’

‘Bloc,’ Shive almost snarled, ‘I don’t care what Lineworld does. I’ll be back.’

That was enough indication to Bloc of how Shive’s masters would ultimately react: they were all about profit, not pride. He stared at the mercenary, his spectacle irrigator spraying a fine mist into his eye. Why should he tolerate such threats from a messenger? There were others here who could do the same job.

‘Bones,’ he said, and mentally let that individual off the leash.

Bones stooped, then came upright fast. Secondary orders brought the Kladite guards in, with weapons aimed. Shive grunted, staggered back, a small cylinder of wood protruding from his right eye. The Kladites now covered the other mercenaries; the stubby snouts of their laser carbines under chins, against heads. Bones leapt forward and brought their leader down and, sitting on his chest, grabbed the wooden handle, turned it with a wet crunching, then in a gush of blood pulled out the ten-centimetre ceramocarbide blade.

Bloc studied the other mercenaries. ‘You’ll deliver my message?’

After a pause one of them said, ‘We’ll deliver it.’

‘Then make yourselves comfortable—you’ll be here for some little while yet.’ Bloc headed for the door, Bones following him, wiping his knife on his sleeve before returning it to his boot sheath.

Outside, in bright sunshine, Bloc spotted Aesop walking towards him. He stopped and waited until Aesop was close, then asked, ‘Where were you?’

Aesop seemed reluctant to reply until Bloc accessed him through his thrall unit and applied pressure.

‘Outside the compound,’ Aesop explained.

‘And why were you out there?’

‘It seemed the safest place for me to be, considering I was soaked with that pheromone.’

‘Did I give you permission to go?’

‘No, you didn’t, nor did you deny it.’

Bloc stared at Aesop, moisture again filling his dead eyes from his spectacle irrigator. Aesop and Bones were becoming increasingly rebellious. Had that occurred only recently, Bloc would have put it down to the extra channel he had enabled through his control unit—meaning that his attention was more divided—but it had been going on for a long time now. Perhaps, though they could not physically reject their thrall units, as could Hooper humans, they were somehow mentally rejecting them? He must check their hardware and run some deep diagnostic tests on the software. He did not want to have to shut them down, as they had been such useful tools—comfortable as well-worn shoes.

‘Very well,’ said Bloc. ‘Our Batian friends are well guarded now, but I want you and Bones to find out who fired that APW.’ He gestured to Bones who stood right beside him, head tilted staring at something on the ground.

‘How many Batians did it kill?’ Aesop asked.

‘The weapon?’

‘No, the hooder.’

‘Twelve of them.’

‘Other casualties?’

Bloc closed the one eye he was still able to close and disconnected visual reception from the other. He then turned an inner eye to the control unit inside his skull, and to one of its three open channels. Aesop was resisting the order he had been given and pursuing a frankly irritating line of questioning. Bloc did not want to talk about the eight reification memcrystals now being packed into a box for shipment back to Klader, nor the reports he had heard of some scatterings of heavy, slightly distorted bones, which meant the creature had also killed Hoopers. He increased the signal strength from the unit down the channels connecting to both Aesop and Bones.

‘Obey my orders,’ he said tersely, and opened his one lidded eye.

Aesop nodded and turned, while Bones jerked his head up again and followed his partner. Closing his eye again, Bloc focused his attention through the unit on something else, something wild and red and dangerous. He tried to exert his will over that entity, tried to—

WARN: EXTREMITY PROBE LA76 REG. CELLULAR DAMAGE

What?

Bloc fully restored his own vision, and for a moment could not fathom what the message might mean. Was it another glitch? Some ghost signal coming back through the control unit?

LA 76?

Leg/ankle, he realized, and looked down.

The leech was not large: merely the size and shape of a cucumber. He realized now that this was what Bones had been staring at, probably even as it slithered across the ground towards Bloc’s ankle. He stepped on it with his other foot and pulled his ankle away from it. The creature stretched to almost twice its own length then snapped back to normal size, a lump of grey flesh disappearing into its pink tubular mouth. Bloc put his full weight on it and twisted his foot back and forth until it burst like a huge blackcurrant, then finally stepped away. He tried to remember when last he had updated his dose of Intertox. The new formula lasted longer in reification balms than the stuff Sable Keech had used, but it did need to be frequently renewed.

WARN: CELLULAR REPAIR REQ. SHUTTING BALM FLOW LA76

OUTPARAFUNCT: YABB@~*

MEMSPACE: 00048

Ignoring the corrupted messages, Bloc glanced down by his ankle and saw balm soaking into the dusty soil. He needed to seal that quickly, then he needed to make sure the fence was back up, and the compound scoured of native life forms. He hurried to his quarters. He also needed to update his Intertox dose. He was a long way from the Little Flint and the transformation that awaited him there. To be infected by the Spatterjay virus now could be catastrophic.

* * * *

Only two of the four human bodies were serviceable. The nervous systems of the others being so badly degraded by their transformation into the leech form, Vrell was unable to use them, so ate them instead. Now, with two extra control units bonded to his carapace, he constantly updated the programming of the remaining two so that they worked as an adjunct to his mind, two extra pairs of hands as was intended. Glimpsing them through ship’s eyes, he watched one of them clearing wreckage and feeding it into one of the multi-furnaces Vrell had earlier ignited, while the other welded cracked bulkheads. Of course, in their earlier state with only leech mouths growing between their shoulders where their heads should have been, they had been of little use. It was only when he connected two cameras into the thrall units of each to give them binocular vision that he managed to utilize them. Now they looked like humans with strange trunklike probosces and insectile eyes rearing up on stalks. Even so, they were not enough.

Vrell checked the reading on his mission timer. Much time had been counted away by the slowly changing glyphs. He had accomplished much, but there was still very much to do. He needed to work faster than this, else he would run out of food long before he was ready.

It had puzzled him why Ebulan, knowing the dangers, had used only a spider thrall on an Old Captain called Drum, rather than fully core the man. Now he knew. Full coring removed every last trace of the original inhabiting intelligence, but most importantly it removed that part of the intelligence best described as ‘know thyself’. To control fully cored humans, like the two below, required a great deal of practice, for the controlled body did not instinctively know simple things like the length of its arms, how far a single pace would take it, or how tightly to grip an object to hold it, and so on. They also did not sense or react to pain. Consequently it had taken Vrell a long time to learn how to control these two, and still they were clumsy and constantly damaging themselves.

Once again fully connected into the ship’s system, Vrell searched for other tools to employ. He found a few small quadruped robots, whose purpose was to act as landward spies, and used them to clean up loose contaminants where a ceramic pile had fragmented. There were few other machines in the ship like them, and Vrell cursed the paranoia that had for so long prevented Prador using AI and other self-governing machines. Then, remembering his entry into the ship, he turned his attention to the drone cache and found there one of his kin.

‘We will kill the old drone,’ came the comment from the flash-frozen and stored brain of a Prador adolescent—still cycling some previous instruction from Ebulan.

Vrell studied diagnostic returns and peered through sonar cameras in the cache. Ebulan had used the brain as a backup recorder for the mobile war drones, so new drones would benefit from the experiences of their predecessors. The brain was stored behind the armoured bulkhead and had been disconnected from its group, probably so no signals could be traced back to the ship itself. Vrell felt his curiosity stirring: what was this old drone it wanted to kill? And, most importantly, what had obliterated the rest of the drones? Could it be the same thing that had brought down the ship itself?

Vrell tried to ascertain as much as possible from the ship’s memory, but there were gaping holes caused by feedback damage, and holes he himself had necessarily made to excise the alien programs remaining in the system from when the Warden had turned Ebulan’s own blanks against him. All he knew for certain was that, while Father had been distracted by this takeover, something had punched through the ship. He keyed into the control drone’s memory and found part of the puzzle. He observed how, one after another, Ebulan’s drones had been duped and destroyed by an ancient ECS war drone.

‘Father,’ said the drone mind.

Vrell ignored it. The adolescent brain presently had no way of knowing, being controlled now by the ship’s systems rather than Ebulan’s pheromones, that it was not the old Prador currently plumbing its memories. Vrell was still curious about what had hit this ship. His survival might depend on knowing that. There was a risk involved in what he decided to do next, but not too serious. Checking system memory, he knew that there were still some of Father’s secondary emitters out in the ocean, and many of them would have stored the last memory downloads from the remaining drones. He laboriously began to decode program traps so he could reinstate outside connections. When that was completed, some days later, the U-space links established in microseconds, and within further microseconds memory returned to the backup brain.

‘Not Father,’ said the adolescent, now knowing Ebulan was dead, before Vrell finished assessing those memories.

Vrell saw the last of the war drones, gutted by the ECS drone but still transmitting, taken high and brought down hard, along with that old ECS drone, to punch through Ebulan’s ship. The blow had been as simple and effective as that. In a way that was a relief, for Vrell had feared some powerful weapons strike from the Warden itself.

‘You are not Father,’ said the adolescent.

‘Obey me,’ said Vrell, reinforcing the order through the ship’s systems.

‘We will kill the old drone.’

As he isolated the brain from the secondary emitters, Vrell thought not. The other drones had not managed the task, and anyway the old drone had destroyed itself in that last attack. Thinking very clearly, Vrell realized what the problem had been: not the weaponry or armour but the minds behind them. That wily old ECS drone had been utterly out-gunned yet won every skirmish. Vrell himself could see how the Prador drones had been far too direct, and blind to the diversity of the ECS drone’s attacks. Knowing what he knew now, Vrell would have been more circumspect, and that was why he opened up a programming link, began to rearrange his sibling’s brain, and to map memories and thought structures across. When he had completed that task, he disconnected the adolescent brain from the ship and opened the bulkhead that protected it. Then he started pumps emptying the cache of sea water, before going in search of the tools he required.

* * * *

In a time unknown to him, ‘Vrell’ surfaced to awareness, clamped in the cache of his father’s ship. He did an almost instinctive systems check, and immediately discovered his non-standard alterations: extra grav-units, double the thickness of armour and double the power supply, additional Polity tech usually treated with contempt by the Prador, and even claws. He turned an eye-pit towards the other drone shell, and saw that it had been cannibalized to supply him with some of these additions, though the claws themselves were utterly new. He was much more powerful than any other drone ever launched from this ship, but this did nothing to stem the tide of bitter anger that filled him, knowing he was a copy of the original Vrell mapped into the mind of a flash-frozen sibling. And he was unable to disobey the real Vrell, who had long ago returned to Ebulan’s sanctum.

* * * *

In the gloom of the Treader’s hold, Ambel studied the ship’s manifest on his palm-screen. Then he eyed the crates of bottles filled with Intertox-laced fruit juice, the garlic bulbs and onions hanging in nets, the packs of desiccated proteins and vegetables, the salted pigs and various other items of dome-grown food. At a bit of a stretch there was enough here to keep himself and the crew from going native throughout the long journey he planned. Just one of those bottles of juice could keep the change at bay for the best part of a week. However, there was not enough food overall. He listened to the noise up on deck, which told him they were ready up there, then turned off the screen and headed for the ladder.

Climbing up onto the bridge of the Treader, Ambel turned and surveyed his crew. As instructed, all of them were now up on deck, some of them looking tired and irritable after being woken while off their shift. There were only four seniors: Peck, Anne, and now Sild on the deck below, and Boris at the helm beside Ambel. Of the junior crewmen there were eight, Sprout being the most senior. Fourteen mouths to feed, including the sail.

‘Listen up, lads,’ Ambel called, and, once he was sure he had their attention, continued. ‘You all saw the island and think you know what happened there. You don’t, and neither do I really. Erlin is still alive.’ He allowed them to mutter amongst themselves and toss dubious glances at each other. ‘I know this quite simply because she was spotted being carried away from the island by that big Golem sail, Zephyr, and his two companions.’

‘So she’s safe?’ said Anne delightedly.

Standing next to Ambel, Boris was rolling the end of his moustache between his fingertips, but even he could not remain dour at such news, and began smiling. Even Peck was showing his teeth, though whether or not he was grinning was debatable. Sild also looked happy. Other crew members, knowing Erlin less well and not having shared in this ship’s history, showed varying degrees of happiness or scepticism.

Ambel winced. ‘I’m not so sure about her being safe. The sail is heading due east, and the only habitation that way is what has recently been named Mortuary Island—where reifications are building a big ship called the Sable Keech.’

‘Why would she want to go there?’ asked Anne.

‘I’m not so sure she does want to go there,’ said Ambel, ‘as she would have communicated her intention, if not to me, then at least to the Warden. I’ve learnt that one Taylor Bloc, a reif, wants her there so she can do for him and his followers what she did for Sable Keech himself.’

‘The sails kidnapped her?’ said Boris.

At this one of the juniors spat, ‘Bloody sails.’

Ambel eyed the man, a one-fifty Hooper called Pillow—which was a comfortable name for a man who had taken to discomfort in a big way, by the look of his various body piercings. Ambel was about to utter some sort of reprimand when he saw Galegrabber’s head swing over the crowd, on the end of its long muscular neck, and dip down until it was breathing in Pillow’s ear.

‘You got a problem with sails, junior?’ hissed the sail.

Pillow nervously revolved his nose stud between forefinger and thumb. ‘Nooo, no problem.’

‘Good.’ Galegrabber rose up and turned back towards Ambel.

‘Now,’ said Ambel, ‘I could ask for help from the Warden, but I’ve always felt we should settle our own problems. I intend now to sail to this Mortuary Island and rescue Erlin.’

‘That’s a bloody long way,’ someone muttered incredulously.

Ambel went on relentlessly, ‘We’ll detour to the Sargassum first, picking up some turbul and amberclams on the way to supplement our supplies. I’m told there’s at least seven ships in that area, so any of you who don’t fancy the journey can hitch a ride from there.’

As the crew began to disperse, Galegrabber stretched his neck even further and brought his head level with Ambel on the bridge.

‘I got a contract,’ said the sail. ‘And this journey ain’t written down in it.’

Ambel reached into his pocket and pulled out a wooden box.

‘The aug you’re wearing,’ said the Old Captain, ‘it’s the basic cheap datalink kind. Bottom of the ladder really.’

‘So?’

Ambel opened the box and displayed the shiny new aug inside. ‘I thought about fitting this to myself, but never got round to it. It’s an Orion 3000, top of the range. From your present aug we can record across the alignment program for sail physiology, and then it’ll be ready to attach. What do you say?’

The sail licked its lips with its bifurcated tongue. ‘I’ll want that in writing.’

Ambel produced a new contract from his other pocket. ‘Just sign here.’

The sail took the paper from him in its soft lips and took it up to the top of the mast to study. By the time it finished and signed the new document—surprisingly remembering its new name—Ambel was down on the deck organizing some fishing gear, for a shoal of turbul had just been sighted.

* * * *

The Hoopers, to make their bunkhouse distinct and for their own comfort, constructed a veranda on which many of them would lounge during the day while they grumbled about the cost of living here. Janer felt they did not really have much to complain about: they were on a retainer until the Sable Keech launched, at which point they would go onto a full crewman’s wages. Anyway, as well as a veranda, they had also put together a couple of rafts to go fishing for boxies and turbul in the nearby shallows, so all they needed to buy from the various commercial concerns here was some Earth food, which was sensibly sold to them fairly cheaply. Forlam, showing uncharacteristic enterprise, had even brought along a still, and the distinctive smell around their bunkhouse came from the numerous buckets ranged outside, all full to the brim with fermenting seacane. Captain Ron thought Forlam a good lad.

‘He’s speaking again,’ Janer observed as he stepped out onto the veranda. He blinked in the bright light, rubbed his aching head—too much of Forlam’s rum last night.

‘Haranguing more like,’ rumbled Ron from where he sat in a chair tilted back against the wall. ‘It don’t seem to be working.’ He sipped from a beaker of coffee.

Bloc stood on a crate in the central clearing before a crowd of reifications. Picking up the gist of what he was saying, Janer realized the reif leader was telling them it was their duty to support him in defiance of Lineworld Developments’ attempted rip-off.

‘Maybe that’s because the intended target of that rip-off was Bloc himself,’ said Janer.

‘I dare say,’ Ron replied.

The hive mind then chipped in, ‘I have been checking: Bloc now fully controls this operation here, yet has maintained his contract with Lineworld. That means no reduction in ticket prices, accommodation costs or reification spares’

Janer relayed that to Ron. They had both heard plenty of grumbling, and knew that when the shuttle finally returned over two hundred of the reifications currently here would be leaving on it. But maybe that was not all down to economics. There was still the front end of a hooder out there somewhere.

‘How are you now?’ Janer asked Ron.

His injury hunger—that ravenous appetite Hoopers experienced after any physical damage as their bodies rebuilt themselves—had been immense, and had required the other Hoopers to chip in funds to buy sufficient dome-grown food.

‘Right as rain.’ Ron patted his shoulder.

Janer took hold of a chair and sat astride it. He watched Bloc, the crowd, the armed Kladites scattered all around the area.

‘Lineworld really screwed up, shipping that thing here,’ he said testingly.

Ron just grunted at that.

‘I note that no APW has turned up yet, and no one has admitted to owning one. We still don’t know who it was that cut the hooder in half.’

‘Not for lack of effort on Bloc’s part,’ Ron observed. ‘His lieutenants ain’t stopped turning this place over ever since.’

Janer nodded then emphatically wished he had not. He finally relented and took some pills from the top pocket of his shirt to swallow dry.

‘You should not have drunk so much last night. You are not here on holiday,’ the hive mind informed him primly.

Janer squinted down at his shoulder. ‘I’m not sure I give a damn.’

Muttered imprecations issued from the hivelink. Janer returned his attention to Captain Ron, who was gazing at him queryingly. ‘Hive minds are big on temperance, probably because they don’t like what happens to their hornets when they eat rotten fruit. You were saying .. .’

Ron shrugged and went on, ‘Curious how desperate Bloc is to find that weapon and its owner, considering they saved so many lives.’

‘They’re all a bit odd here,’ said Janer.

‘Yes.’ Ron nodded. ‘Not normal folk like us.’

A snort issued from the hivelink. Janer stood up and stepped down from the veranda, leaving Ron to nurse his coffee. Crossing the enclosure he eyed the damage the alien beast had wrought and noted that most of it had already been repaired. Most of the human remains had been collected, but it was still not uncommon to step on something nasty concealed in the dust.

‘They were burning the dead last night,’ he observed. The pyre had been built over the tail section of the hooder in an attempt to burn away some more of that as well. Hooder flesh did not combust very easily. ‘I wonder what they’ll do with the rest—the reifs are still extant, despite their bodies being ripped apart.’

‘Their memcrystals will be sent to Klader. Possibly the reifs now lacking bodies will be resurrected in Golem chassis or in cloned bodies, or destroyed, depending on the strength of their beliefs.’

‘Destroyed?’

‘Yes. Fanatical cultists believed the body was all, no matter how decayed it might be, and that without the body there can be no real return to life. Though the Cult itself is now defunct, many reifs still ascribe to its beliefs. Most here, incidentally, are Kladites.’

Janer grunted an acknowledgement then said, ‘I’m surprised.’

‘What, surprised at such primitive belief systems?’

‘No, that for three whole days you haven’t tried to persuade me to return to Chel. Or, rather, I’m not so much surprised as rather certain there’s something you aren’t telling me.’

‘Our agreement was for me to fund your journey here and to pay a bounty when you performed certain tasks. I have other contacts on Chel who will keep me apprised of anything I need to know. Meanwhile, I am curious about this . . . situation.’

Janer winced. There were no facial or verbal cues from a hive mind, but he knew it was lying. By now he had reached the edge of the compound, and saw that a female Kladite guard stood at the gate, which seemed to Janer rather redundant as over to her left a huge swathe of the fence was down.

‘Not advisable to go out there,’ said the woman.

Janer paused. He thought about arguing with her. But he was unarmed, being reluctant to carry around the weapon he had brought, and was now remembering how lethal Spatterjay life forms could be. And out there lurked something even worse than hippo-sized leeches, prill or the occasional adventurous whelk. He was not Captain Ron’s age, so the hooder could turn him into mush. He started to turn away, when a voice spoke from behind him.

‘I’ll keep him out of trouble.’

Janer turned around fully. It was the Golem, Isis Wade.

‘Why should you manage any better out there than he would?’ the guard asked.

‘Bloc seems to think the hooder is some distance away now, and I’m sure, like myself, Janer wants to see the ship.’ Wade shrugged. ‘Anyway, surely you are here to protect Bloc’s interests, not the likes of us from our own stupidity?’

‘Well, it’s your life.’

The dead woman opened the gate and the two of them strolled through.

‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Janer, once they were some distance away from her. ‘She doesn’t seem to know you’re Golem.’

‘Yes, it is,’ concurred Wade. ‘The Batians, if they had still been in charge here, would have found that out soon enough. Bloc’s Kladites, however, are not so well-equipped. Unfortunate that, isn’t it? It’s probably also why they cannot find that APW.’

Janer grimaced. ‘Can you keep me out of trouble?’

‘I could pick you up and run a lot faster with you than the hooder can move. Though I shouldn’t worry about that creature. It’ll be licking its wounds as far away from here as it can get.’

‘You know about hooders then?’

‘I’ve travelled some,’ said Wade.

Janer nodded, let the conversation die for a moment, expecting the hive mind to interject some comment. It remained ominously silent.

‘I never got to ask you,’ said Wade. He nodded at the transparent box affixed to Janer’s shoulder. ‘As I understand it you’re no longer indentured, and since certain events here a decade ago you haven’t carried a hive mind’s eyes. So why now?’

Janer did not question how Wade had obtained this information—anyone with access to the AI nets could know it. ‘Money,’ he explained smoothly. ‘After my indenture I continued working for this hive mind. As you say, after the events here, I broke the contract, but I’ve since renegotiated it.’

‘It was my understanding that you are now independently wealthy?’ said Wade.

‘You can never have too much,’ Janer replied. ‘The mind pays well for the small inconvenience of carrying round a pack of hornets in stasis and a couple of living ones on my shoulder, and all I have to do is be the tourist I’d pay to be anyway.’

Wade did not reply to that; instead he pointed ahead to where one of the reifs was trudging up the path towards them. ‘That’s Aesop—one of Taylor Bloc’s lieutenants.’

They both halted and stepped aside as Aesop walked past them. Janer only knew which reif this was because of the recognizable flak jacket he wore and because Wade had identified him. This was the first time the reif’s features had been visible. Aesop’s face was damaged—new damage—but that was nothing in comparison to his old and all too obvious death-wound. A segment of his skull between twelve and one o’clock was completely missing above his left eye. He acknowledged them not at all, as they moved on.

‘Do you know much about the history of reifs?’ Wade asked.

‘I learnt a fair bit from Keech. They were reanimated murder victims sent after their killers, mindless in the beginning, then becoming AI as the facility to memcord dead minds became available. The Cult came along after, its leaders twisting doctrine to fit the reality only when that reality suited them.’

‘Simplistic,’ said Wade.

Janer glanced at him. ‘I only recently learnt about how the Cult imploded, when reifs many centuries old could no longer espouse such simplistic beliefs. I know things are more complicated than that, but do I care enough to find out exactly how? Not really.’

A turning in the path revealed considerable industry below, around the huge, nearly completed ship. Janer now saw that what he had first taken to be the stripped trunks of dead trees in the dingle ahead were in fact nine masts rearing from the ship’s decks and its tiered deckhouses. Skeletal Golem glinted in the sunlight as they connected rigging, hauled up spars, cable motors, and the enormous rolls of monofabric sails that the living sails would control.

‘Impressive,’ he said.

‘It is,’ Wade agreed. ‘The designs for such vessels have been around since before we left Earth, and improved upon considerably over that time. But, with abundant energy and gravmotors, there’s never been the need to actually build one.’

‘Until now.’

‘Yes.’

They continued down to the deforested area, where Janer observed huge open crates from which equipment was being lugged across to the ship by treaded robotic handlers. This was the big stuff that needed to be placed inside the hull before the Golem bonded the last hull-planks into place. He paused to watch this work, letting Wade get ahead of him.

‘What do you think?’ he subvocalized.

No reply from the hive mind. Janer peered down at his shoulder box, then after a moment tapped it with his finger. One of the two hornets inside toppled over. Janer removed the box, pressed an indentation along the edge to flip up the lid. He prodded both hornets with his fingertip. They were both dead. He closed the box and transferred it to his pocket.

‘Your hornets dying should not disconnect the com-link,’ he said quietly. He reached up, pulled the hivelink from his earlobe, and dropped that into his pocket too. ‘I think I’m exactly where you want me to be, but it would seem you and I are not the only ones to know that.’

He walked on after Wade.

* * * *

On the planet Hive, the ancient hive mind sensed the probing presence of one of its brethren, but ignored it, aware that its own gradual fragmentation made it vulnerable to such inspection. The schisms inside it were becoming difficult to bridge or heal. It realized that this had happened to an earlier aspect of itself some time in a past immensely dim and distant. It had also happened to one of its ancient brethren a mere ten thousand years ago and—that event occurring during an ice age—all but one of the fragments of the mind concerned had died. The remaining fragment had then, over the intervening time, grown into the new mind—the youngest and most coherent of them all, and the most naive. The one now trying to make contact.

‘What are you doing?’ was the essence of the young mind’s question, though hive mind communication was not so easily amenable to human translation.

Ignoring it, the old mind considered its own future, or lack of one.

This was the way hive minds procreated: the networks of hives grew large and unwieldy, began to divide, as did the consciousness that spread across them, those portions of consciousness warring with each other as they sought self-definition, ego. In any other time the mind would have had to accept the death of self, but now it seemed the humans and their technologies offered alternatives. But were they real? Only just managing to still hold itself together, the mind could not decide.

‘You cut my link. (What are you doing?) Why did you cut my link? (What are you doing?) ’ The younger mind was growing more insistent; linking itself closer in through the gaps growing in the old mind.

‘Stop interfering. Go away.’

But the young mind kept asking questions—kept probing. The old mind tried to shut out the babble as it again returned to introspection.

If it loaded itself to crystal, memcorded itself, would it truly continue? Even humans, whose technology this was, were undecided. The reifications were a prime example of this indecision. They believed the body sacred, and that there could be no real life without it. They claimed their cult was not a religion, for they did not believe in souls or an afterlife, yet the foundation of their cult was just as irrational. The mind itself badly wanted to live, but was now truly divided over the issue: both accepting the inevitability of physical death and wanting to load to crystal, yet not accepting Death in any form. The latter attitude arose from the more physical aspect of it, and the most visceral and emotional. Reality did not impinge one wit. That part of the mind railed against Death, wanted to bring it down and sting it into oblivion. It viewed Death as some entity that needed to be fought, as a personification like the Grim Reaper which, if defeated, would remove any ending to life. That part was insane, but nevertheless its presence deadlocked the mind’s more logical side. Internalized, the dispute would not end, would only become the source of a greater splitting of the mind’s mentality.

‘I know you‘re going after sprine. You’ll get yourself killed, then the AIs will restrict us further.’

Despite its concerns for its own mortality, this evinced amusement in the old mind.

‘Naive,’ it told the other.

‘No, just not senile,’ the youngster spat back.

The old mind’s amusement grew.

‘Don’t do this. Recall your agent,’ the young mind begged.

The old mind groped for internal perception, located some information in partially dislocated memory, and showed reams of code to the younger mind.

‘What? What?’

‘Child, it is the genome of the Spatterjay leech.’

The young mind retreated in confusion: ‘(What are you doing?) (What are you doing?)’

Amusement faded as the old mind perceived how very little time it had left. Isolating its less sane aspects had accelerated the process of its internal division elsewhere. And loading itself to crystal in its present state would not halt that process, for it would merely then be mirrored in crystal. It needed instead the schematic for sanity that could only be created quickly enough in the faster outside world. The two recordings—one of this self and one of the isolated self—must clearly find that schematic soon. It was unfortunate that the less sane self, which had departed first, still believed it possible to kill Death, and had created the means . . .