11

Sea Leech: upon entering the ocean, the leech’s body-shape becomes leaflike to more suit it to the pelagic life. It grows huge on a diet of flesh taken from boxies, turbul, oceanic heirodonts—anything soft enough for it to bore into with its plug-extracting mouth. By the time a sea leech becomes whale-sized, such prey is too small to provide sufficient nutrient by plug feeding. However, it would be dangerous for the leech to take prey down whole as, with the incredible durability and voracity of all Spatterjay’s fauna, that prey would eat the leech from the inside. Hunger drives the next transformation. The leech grows a sprine-producing bile duct and feeds upon whole prey—poisoning them with sprine inside its intestines. Again genetically programmed to respond to their environment, they mate only when the surrounding population of their own kind drops below a certain level (this measured by the quantity of particular pheromones in the water). Leeches are hermaphrodite: they will close against another of their kind and exchange genetic material. After this the leech dies during the process of attaching its own body-segments to the bottom of masses of floating sargassum. The segments then collapse into hard encystments, and the cells inside them turn into eggs encased in sprine jelly. Each of these hatches a diatom, which then begins its long journey to shore to become a land leech —

In his stateroom. Bloc sat on the edge of his wide, soft and unneeded bed and stared at the polished, oak-panelled wall—an occupation that seemed more and more frequent to him lately. Internally, he gazed into the red tunnel comprising the third channel from his control unit. He felt that what he barely controlled there was his only option now. Ellanc Strone and those aligned with him had not needed to come on this voyage, but they had, and now their earlier complaining was turning into open defiance. Bloc realized that Strone understood Bloc’s position here; that he was isolated and could possibly be usurped. Could it be that the other reif was secretly working for Lineworld? No matter, Bloc must quickly assert full control aboard this ship, and remove all dangers to himself and this enterprise. As if to illustrate, the reason for this now appeared on his internal visual display:

OUTPARAFUNCT: B.P. LOAD INC. 15%

He had increased the amount of Intertox in his balm to a fifth, but still he was getting those warning messages. How long he could hold on before having to go into a tank he did not know, but it seemed unlikely he would reach the Little Flint before his transformation. He realized how he resented those reifs who would. He resented their knowingness, their lack of respect for him. He had done all this. This ship was his. And he refused to allow them to be so casual, dismissive and contemptuous in his presence. He stood up abruptly.

VIRAL INFECT

Again that message.

IDENTIFY he instructed almost automatically.

SPATTERJAY VIRAL FORM AI

He cleared that one, then another immediately appeared.

MEMSPACE: 00037

Annoyed, he quickly cleared that too, while considering all the potential dangers.

Strone and his followers numbered thirty-six—he had identified them all. Now, Bloc could simply order his Kladites to dispense with them, but that would not go down well with the other six hundred reifications aboard. Also the Hoopers, though primitive, were necessary at the moment and, despite the automation aboard the Sable Keech, it might be foolish to annoy them. The sails, even Zephyr, worked to their contracts for money and that was all. If they became a problem, though, this ship had the facility to sail on without them. It had the facility to keep going without any sails, either living or plain fabric. That left Janer Cord Anders and Erlin Taser Three Indomial, who he certainly wanted to keep on his side. So, no overt action on his part, but there was another way.

Bloc closed his eyes and turned his attention inward to the partitioned control unit he used to control Aesop and Bones. Those two channels were familiar and easy for him. The third channel was something else, however: a red tunnel of madness. He ignored it for the moment and turned his attention to his servants.

Bones he put on hold: utterly motionless in the corridor outside. Aesop he summoned inside. Bloc opened his eyes as the door opened and closed.

‘Summon Ellanc Strone and his friends to the stern meeting hall,’ he said.

‘You’ll not settle anything with them,’ said Aesop.

Bloc eyed him. ‘Did I ask your opinion?’

Aesop remained silent.

Bloc continued, ‘Seven o’clock this evening. When that is arranged, I’ll have another task for you, which you must complete before that meeting begins. I think you know what it is.’ He turned away, but Aesop was not leaving, so he turned back.

‘Leave now,’ said Bloc with finality, and pushed.

* * * *

As he stepped off the ladder Isis Wade paused to study his hands. The human form, he felt, was interesting: perpetually on the point of toppling from its mere two limbs but never doing so. The limitation of possessing only two legs, however, was more than made up for by the complicated dexterity of the hands. No doubt, had the body he occupied actually been human rather than a mechanical construct, he would be surprised by many of its other . . . functions. But he was Golem and, behind all this emulation of humanity, something utterly else. He turned from die ladder and scanned the bilge.

There was a great deal down here, most of it at Lineworld’s insistence, some at Bloc’s, and he suspected there was something else that nobody wanted here . . . perhaps. Making his way along walkways and through hidden corridors he approached the ship’s bows. Being Golem, his hearing was superb; he could hear the beating of a human heart, hear it stop.

Wade shook his head—another human gesture, as if the thoughts in a mind could be physically shaken free. It did not work, for the fact remained that he was allowing these distractions to divert him from his prime purpose here aboard this ship. But the human dramas were so much easier . . .

In the twisted conglomeration of rooms, corridors and walkways below the chain lockers, Wade began scanning about himself as he proceeded. Eventually, on a grated walkway affixed directly to the lower ribs of the hull, he found what he was searching for. He stooped and picked up a pair of bloody trousers, slashed to ribbons. He shook them, and caught something that fell out: a piece of bone. It was white, with bluish striations through it, and looked as if someone had roughed out its shape from the main bone with a small drill, then snapped it out. Wade nipped it aside then peered over the edge of the grating. After a moment he moved over to one side, clicked across the catches securing one section, then hinged it up. This gave him access to what had been deposited below the walkway. Down there were many more pieces of bone, fragments of cloth, strings of fibrous flesh, a skinning knife and a screwdriver. He picked up the knife and inspected the name etched into the blade: Sturmbul. Wade accessed the list of passengers and crew he had loaded, and after a moment nodded. Gazing into the darkness, towards the chain lockers, he carefully reached out to pull the section of grating down, stood back, and headed quietly in the other direction.

Halfway along the length of the hull, Wade came to his second objective down here. The enclosed section had one metal bulkhead door with a manual wheel and a code-input palm reader. He stared at the reader for a long moment, then took out the skinning knife and inserted its blade under the small keypad. One twist and this flipped away, exposing optical circuitry. He smiled—something else he had been practising—traced the circuitry with the knife point, then selected a plug-in chip, levered it out and pocketed it. He next moved over to the manual wheel, braced himself and began to put on pressure. After a moment something snapped inside the door and the wheel spun freely. As he pushed the door open, pieces of shattered locking mechanism clattered to the floor. Stepping inside, he stooped to pick them up and toss them out of sight, before closing the door behind him.

Wade first eyed the row of glass-fronted lockers containing breather gear and ceramal chainmesh diving suits, then turned his attention to the flattened-torpedo submersible. He approached the ladder, climbed up to the squat conning tower, where he opened the hatch and lowered himself inside. Then, dropping into the pilot’s seat, he studied a large screen and numerous controls. After a little while he went back outside and more closely inspected the craft’s hull. Very quickly he found the harpoon ports and slidable sections covering folded manipulators and chainglass vibroblades.

‘Naughty,’ he said, and shook his head.

Lineworld Developments had certainly been out to cash in wherever possible. Wade wondered what the Hoopers aboard would have thought about them using a submersible to harvest sea leech bile ducts. No matter, since this option was now closed to them. Nevertheless, here, should anyone require it, was a perfect way of obtaining the prized poison, sprine.

He again smiled to himself.

* * * *

As Aesop made his way down into the hull he felt his terror growing, but Bloc’s control of him was as rigid as a cage. Stepping off the ladder onto the maintenance deck, he observed a couple of Hoopers gazing through the protective cover over a ceramal powder forge, and wondered if the ship would soon be urgently in need of their skill if what was to happen inside it did not sink it. He knew that the hull was double-skinned, sandwiching a layer of crash foam, but would that be enough?

Eventually he made his way down into the bilge. Moving stealthily via stairs, platforms and hidden corridors, he came eventually to the area Bloc had designated: the room above the rudder hydraulics and motors where he had earlier lectured groups of the passengers. It was dark until he touched a pad beside the door, then star lights lit up all across a low ceiling, revealing the room space stretching hundreds of metres from port to starboard. Aesop had no idea what its intended purpose might be, but there were many places like this aboard. Perhaps it was for some celebration after they reached the Little Flint—though the bars and restaurants some way above him would be better for that. Aesop reached into his pocket and took out an aerosol can, and as if spraying invisible graffiti, began working his way around the wall.

‘Get a move on,’ Bloc instructed, and pushed.

Within twenty minutes Aesop was back at the door. Now, as he headed towards the ship’s bows, he began to spray also along the corridor wall. He resisted all the way, but to no avail—Bloc was not relaxing his control in the slightest. He wondered if Bloc would ever allow Aesop’s memcrystal to be recovered. Probably not, since Aesop’s mind contained far too much damning evidence. He wondered if being destroyed would feel anything like dying. At least there would be no pain this time, just physical destruction then . . . nothing. Up ahead somewhere: movement. The sound was like someone sorting through a huge wooden tool chest, though slightly more rhythmic than that. Suddenly there came a crash, and the sound was moving towards him.

‘I’ve done it now? he pleaded with Bloc.

There was no response from the reif. Through his enslaving link, Aesop could feel Bloc directly controlling Bones. Through Bones’s vision he glimpsed armed Kladites creeping along a corridor on one of the upper decks. The clear-up party, almost certainly. With Bloc’s attention elsewhere, Aesop could fight the control. This he did, trying to pull his finger away from the aerosol can’s spray button. With all his effort he broke through to Bloc, fed back, and managed to ease the pressure of the programmed order. His finger came off the button. But this was not enough to enable him to survive. He strained harder, trying to break the link, but it was like trying to cut through cable with a butter knife. Then suddenly he realized he was no longer walking—just standing in the corridor, straining forwards.

‘Please let me . . .’

He jerked his hand forward, releasing the can to send it bouncing down the corridor, just as a darkness slid, clattering, round a further corner. Aesop desperately wanted to run: he picked one foot up and tried to turn. He would have to fight for every step, yet knew he could not. There was a recess in the wall beside him—the moulding for a doorway that had never been cut through. He took one swinging, jerky step and fell into it. As he turned his head, something passed him thunderously. Aesop might well have sighed with relief, but considered it perhaps lucky he did not possess that ability, for it would have heard.

* * * *

Janer, sitting in the crew mess, eyed two Hoopers gobbling down pickled hammer whelks at a nearby table. The equipment checks in the Tank Rooms now finished, Janer felt the pressure had come off him, so it was time to turn his attention towards his primary purpose for being here.

The hive mind had paid him to hunt down the Golem agent of another hive mind, who was supposedly here after sprine. He was to ‘stop’ this Golem, though being armed by the mind with a perfect Golem assassination weapon made the method of prevention somewhat implicit. Janer had his reservations about this, but he was never one to turn down money, and the venture promised to be one that might keep his perennial boredom at bay. As he saw it, he would make a serious effort to stop this Golem without recourse to the weapon. Golem were not stupid after all. Upon his arrival here he had realized the hopelessness of the task. His joining Ron’s venture was a reaction to that, as had been his attempt to return the hive mind’s payment. The mind refused it, probably hoping to persuade him back to the task. But now his hivelink had shut down and the hornets were dead. This had happened while he was with Isis Wade, a rather inscrutable Golem, and Janer was convinced Wade was the one he had been sent here to find. But what now?

Janer stood up and took his empty dish into the galley to wash it. Now, he felt, it was time for him to start trolling for information. As far as he had been able to gather, Isis Wade’s job was to monitor and keep running some of the ship’s more high-tech systems—a make-work task at best. It seemed more likely that the Golem was ensconced in his cabin, so Janer headed there.

Wade’s cabin was in the forward section, along with the quarters of those employed to oversee the more technical systems of the ship. Finally reaching it, Janer undid his jacket, then knocked on the door.

‘Something on your mind?’

Janer froze, then slowly turned. Wade was standing directly behind him.

‘We need to talk.’

‘Is that so?’ Wade stepped past him, opened the door and ducked inside. Following him, Janer wondered where to start.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked.

Wade sat down on the bed while Janer closed the door and rested his back against it. Some species of almost painful amusement flitted across the Golem’s expression. But it was solely emulation—Janer felt he must never forget that.

‘I went to have another look at that submersible. It was most interesting.’

‘In what way?’

Wade shrugged. Damn, but it was good emulation. ‘It would seem Lineworld was prepared for every opportunity to make some profit, though of course it will now profit them nothing.’

Janer repressed his irritation. ‘Profit?’

Wade stared at him directly. ‘The submersible is especially equipped to catch leeches and remove from them their bile ducts. No doubt somewhere else on board this ship there are facilities for refining sprine.’

Janer felt himself tensing up. Was that it, then – had this hive-mind agent come here to take advantage of this opportunity? Certainly, obtaining sprine from Olian’s was out of the question, yet surely one of Wade’s capabilities could obtain that substance from any incoming ship—could have grabbed some before it ever reached Olian’s?

‘Is that why you are here, Wade?’ he asked.

‘Certainly not. I’m here to learn some things, and to apprise an individual of certain truths, and possibly—though I hope this will not be necessary—to prevent a cataclysm.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘I can, but I won’t,’ Wade replied.

‘All right then. Can you at least answer me this: are you the agent of an ancient hive mind?’

Wade abruptly stood up, and Janer slid his hand nearer to his concealed weapon. He didn’t much rate his chances against Wade in this situation—in any situation really. The Golem turned his back, opened a cupboard, and from it removed a long box. This he placed on the bed and flipped open. Janer eyed the weapon revealed, and felt his mouth go dry. Sable Keech had once carried something like this. It was an APW carbine. Fire burned inside its glass body.

‘It was you . . .You fired on that hooder?’

Wade waved a hand dismissively. ‘Yes, of course. But let’s keep to the subject of our discussion. In a sense, I am the agent you describe.’

Janer closed his hand on the butt of his own weapon, expecting the Golem to turn on him at any moment. But even as Janer quickly drew his gun, the Golem made no move.

‘What the hell is that weapon for?’ Janer asked.

‘I might well ask you the same.’ Wade indicated with a nod the gun now pointing at him.

‘Self-defence,’ said Janer.

‘Equally,’ said Wade, ‘I have not as yet told you what else I discovered down in the bilge.’

‘I’m listening.’

Wade told him.

* * * *

Ellanc Strone admiringly checked the working of the Batian weapon before placing it on his sleeping pallet next to a collection of grenades. Quite remiss of Bloc to have not collected all this. He turned and looked at himself in the mirror. Now it was time to move on. He had believed in the Cult for some years, but grown out of that, then come to hate it. He had in fact come to hate the whole idea of reification and would have gladly dispensed with the corpse he now saw before him. Only one thing stood in his way: money. Though the Polity did provide Golem, clones and sometimes the bodies of mind-wiped criminals for human beings recorded to crystal, the waiting list was fifty years long. To actually step over that list and buy a replacement cost a great deal and Ellanc’s funds did not stretch so far. His dislike of the Cult and its bastard offspring, also his need for money, were what had made him accept Lineworld’s initial offer to spy on Bloc. They were also the reason he had accepted the offer he recently received over secure com.

He would turn Bloc into a heap of scrap metal.

Ellanc donned his long coat, concealing the Batian weapon which hung from his belt underneath it. Quite probably he himself would be destroyed by the Kladites. However, Lineworld had made promises, guaranteed by independent arbiter, to load him to a Golem chassis, and pay him a disgustingly large quantity of money. Ellanc himself had made provision for one of his fellows to retrieve his memcrystal. Thereafter, Bloc’s people would be leaderless and easy prey for other Lineworld operatives, who were already on their way to Mortuary Island to await this ship’s return, and seize control of it before the next voyage.

It was 6.30 now, and time to get going. Ellanc stepped out of his cabin and strode along the deck that housed the reification’s staterooms, picking up his followers as he went. As Oranol joined him he said, ‘Remember, you do nothing. Don’t make any hostile moves—just ensure you get hold of my memcrystal.’

‘I understand,’ confirmed Oranol.

So he should—Ellanc would be paying him a lot of money for that understanding.

Twenty-five minutes later they reached the jigger stairwell and filed down to the meeting hall. They entered, looking around, but the hall was empty.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Oranol.

‘What’s to dislike?’ Ellanc asked. ‘Bloc is probably still trying to figure how he’s going to get out of this.’ Ellanc knew that Bloc was near bankrupt, and that definitely no further funds would be forthcoming from Lineworld.

‘Someone’s coming,’ said one of the reifs.

Ellanc listened—and heard a rumbling sound. Probably a troop of Kladites coming to back up some more of Bloc’s threats. Maybe some of those threats would even be carried out. Ellanc did not care really, just so long as Bloc came along with them. Precisely at the moment he turned, the door and half its surrounding woodwork exploded inward, and the hooder careened into the room like an out-of-control train.

The hard, segmented edge of the creature’s carapace cut across one reified woman like a saw, flinging her back with her clothing torn away and chest ripped open to expose shrivelled lungs. It slammed down on another reif, then instantly reared up again, tossing aside something ragged and spraying blue balm. Ellanc swung up his weapon, knowing it was useless. He fired continuously, explosions flashing along the creature’s surface, blowing small cavities and flinging off pieces of tough carapace. Another victim was smashed into the back wall, yet another cupped under the monster’s hood, while its new spiky tail lashed sideways and someone’s head bounced across the floor. It loomed up, with pieces of reification hardware and bones falling away from underneath its hood, whipped its head from side to side sending reifs sprawling in every direction.

Ellanc fired at it repeatedly, aiming for the same spot on the body segment just behind its head, trying to excavate his way in. Five reifs down in as many seconds, possibly more. This was worse than what he had witnessed back at the enclosure. The thing seemed maddened. He pulled a grenade and rolled it underneath the monster. It lifted slightly on the blast, a hole blown through the floor below it. Then it came down again and again, like a draughts player profiting by an opponent’s fatal error. One two three four: four others shredded to bones and tatters of milky flesh, torn clothing, spreading pools of balm.

‘Get out!’ Ellanc shouted needlessly. ‘All of you, get out while you can!’

Just seconds of distraction, and the tail, like a swinging steel girder, struck him in the chest and hammered him back against the wall. He glimpsed one of his fellows being smeared across the floor like a bug under a fingertip. Then darkness loomed over and above him as he struggled upright and brought his weapon again to bear. Perhaps striking it underneath the armoured hood would do it? Ellanc remembered seeing a Batian try the same, and fail, so instead he fired down at the floor by his feet as the hood slammed down on him. And had not the floor given way at that moment, the hooder would have collapsed him into a grotesque dwarf.

In a shower of burning wood Ellanc landed on the cowling of a big hydraulic motor. Fluid was squirting from a damaged ram, and the back end of the huge ship’s rudder was sliding towards him. On the other side of it, he glimpsed, in the tangle of pipes, rams and motors, a fire burning below the grenade hole, further over. He looked up and saw the vertical rows of burning red eyes, and glistening scalpel mandibles groping after him through the gap. But by the time he brought his weapon up, it had swept out of sight. He backed away from the rudder and sat down on a pipe. He gave a hacking sound, realized it was a laugh. For a dead man he had not felt so alive in a long time. Then, as doors behind him opened, he stood up and turned. Fire slammed into him, hurling him backwards. Hitting pipework, he tumbled to the floor. Error messages slid up into view, one after another. The smoke cleared enough for him to see Kladites standing beyond it.

‘A few others got away,’ announced one of them.

Another replied, ‘I don’t care—we get out of here now. You saw what it did to the others?’

Ellanc stared at the two of them. One turned and aimed his carbine at Ellanc’s upper torso, where his memcrystal and main control hardware was located.

‘No . ..’

Fire and smoke blasted up before his face, and Ellanc slid into blackness.

* * * *

Janer gazed down at the weapon he was holding. It seemed he would be getting just about all the excitement he could stand. As he holstered it, he noted that Wade had now tilted his head as if listening.

Emulation.

‘Do you hear it?’ Wade asked.

Janer listened intently. He could hear nothing but the usual sounds of the ship and the sea, but then he did not have a Golem’s hearing.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘A distinctive sound, something like a tank rolling across wooden boards, then a Batian weapon . . . and now laser carbines,’ Wade told him. ‘Down in the stern.’

In a fraction of a second, with a kind of snapping sound, Wade was on his feet, holding his carbine across his stomach. Could he have got me before I pulled the trigger? Janer wondered, and answered himself: Probably. He reached round and opened the door, stepped out into the corridor and turned to head for the nearest foremast stair. Reaching it, he made to go down towards the bilge.

Wade caught his shoulder. ‘Not that way. We’d have to go through most of the bilge itself to get there. We go along the main deck and down.’

They climbed the stair and stepped out onto the nighted deck. There Janer witnessed something that almost physically jerked him to a halt. He felt a further rush of adrenalin, immediately followed by confusion, asmemories surfaced in his mind’s sea. Before him, a few metres above the deck and regarding him with topaz eyes, hovered an iron-coloured seahorse drone. Thirteen—the Warden’s drone that had been present during those events on the Skinner’s Island ten years ago.

‘You’re armed. Good. We need people armed. Can’t find any of Bloc’s merry crew. I reckon they’re down there after it.’

It took Janer a moment to realize Captain Ron was speaking to him from a few paces beyond the drone, and that behind him stood a crowd of Hoopers and two reifications.

‘What?’ Janer asked stupidly.

Ron stepped forward, the drone shifting aside for him. ‘Thirteen here tells me that nasty bugger is aboard.’

Janer nodded. ‘Yes, I know.’ He gestured to his companion. ‘Wade just told me.’

Ron eyed the Golem. ‘How might you know that?’

Wade stepped forwards, pulled a knife out of his belt and handed it across to the Old Captain.

Peering over Ron’s shoulder, Forlam said, ‘Sturmbul. I wondered where he got to.’

Wade said, ‘What’s left of him is lying under a walkway down in the bilge. The hooder is down in the stern of this ship, and I heard weapons firing down there.’

‘Heard?’ Janer asked.

‘It has ceased,’ said Wade, glancing at him.

Ron peered at the APW that Wade held. ‘Mmm, well, best we go see what’s happened.’

Ron was armed with a heavy machete and a QC laser pistol. The others carried weapons which, in their variety, seemed to cover human history. They ranged from clubs and blades to muzzle-loaders, cartridge-fed weapons to various designs of pulse gun and laser. One of them even carried a machine gun. It was a pathetic collection of arms with which to go up against a hooder.

‘Have you been able to contact Bloc?’ Wade asked.

‘Can’t find the bugger,’ said Ron. ‘Didn’t try too hard.’

‘Maybe he’s down in the stern with his Kladites?’ Janer suggested.

Ron snorted. ‘Maybe leeches will fly. Best we get down there and lend a hand before anyone else gets ‘emselves killed.’

‘People die,’ said Wade, a strange expression on his face.

‘Not if I can help it,’ said Ron.

Wade looked up into the rigging, smiled, then said, ‘But surely you are risking your own life and the lives of others by becoming involved in this?’

Janer understood that the Golem was playing to an audience of one, for Zephyr’s hearing was just as good as Wade’s.

‘Nobody wants to die,’ growled Ron. ‘But life without risk ain’t living.’

‘Could it be,’ said Wade, ‘that life without the possibility of death is not life at all?’

Ron stared at him hard. ‘I don’t know what your agenda is, Golem, but we ain’t got time for it right now.’

Wade shrugged. ‘Well, we do have weapons . . .’

‘Come on!’ Ron turned and led the way back towards the stern.