Tay engaged the old grav motor and lifted the AGC into the air. She considered making a grab for the stranger’s gun, as up here might be her only chance. Perhaps this woman did not realize how long Tay had been a Hooper, and just how strong she was.
‘You know, Olian, you wouldn’t know how old this body is, just by looking at it, and how long it has been Hooper,’ said the woman.
Tay said nothing for a moment. This body. Not my body, not me. That one phrase was all the confirmation Tay needed. She felt suddenly very small and vulnerable, even though her captor seemed smaller and more fragile than she. She knew now who this person was, and that there wouldn’t be a lot she could do if she did get hold of the weapon. The woman sitting next to her could break her like a ship Captain could.
‘You’re Rebecca Frisk,’ she said.
‘Of course I am,’ said the woman.
As she brought the AGC in to land on the roof of her tower, Tay became absolutely certain that she would die if she was not very careful. And even then…
‘Out,’ said Frisk, once the grav motor wound down.
Tay climbed out of the AGC, calculating all the way how she might survive this. That Frisk had come to see her out of curiosity, she had no doubt; that she left death and destruction behind her wherever she went was a matter of historical fact.
‘What do you want here?’ she asked, as Frisk followed her to the stairwell.
‘I want to see your museum,’ said Frisk.
9
Prill and leeches had gathered in huge numbers, snapping up stray pieces of flesh while adding to the chaos by attacking each other — or the glisters, even though that gained them nought — and tearing the fragments into smaller fragments as they squabbled over them. Visibility in the water was now atrocious, what with all that activity disturbing the seabed and all the spurting spillage from tender organs. This detritus of broken bodies and stirred-up silt was also so thick in the water that little else could be tasted. And, what with the rattling and clattering of prill and the bubbling and hissing sussuration of leeches obliterating most other sounds, what happened next was predictably unfortunate.
‘Something coming,’ said Ron, his eye to his telescope.
Janer looked out over the sea but for a moment could see nothing. He then discerned a distant dot coming towards them and growing larger. He unhooked his intensifier and quickly focused on the object.
‘I’ll be damned,’ he said.
‘What?’ asked Erlin.
‘He’s got an AG scooter,’ Janer replied. ‘Must have been all those investments he made before he shuffled off. Compound interest.’
Erlin laughed, and Janer chalked up a mental point as he hooked the intensifier back on his belt. It was good to know that he could touch her in some way.
The scooter came to a halt above the ship, and hovered there for a long while. Before anyone could wonder if it was just going to stay up there, it descended and came in to land on the clearest part of the deck.
Janer gagged when he drew close to it. The crusted stinking thing sitting on the saddle was Keech all right, but a Keech somewhat changed since the last time Janer had seen him.
‘Too late, I think,’ he said.
Erlin approached the reif with her diagnosticer. She pressed it against his arm and the thick scab there cracked and oozed red plasma. She stared at the reading on the diagnosticer, then abruptly took a step back. Keech’s head turned towards her, shell-like crust breaking away from his neck to reveal wet and bloody muscle underneath.
‘You’re alive,’ was all Erlin could manage.
Keech just looked at her with his single, weeping blue eye.
With the rest of the crew, Janer just stared. It was Ron who suddenly moved into action. ‘All right lads, get him below. Gently, mind,’ he said.
‘I ain’t touching that,’ said Goss.
Ron looked at her and raised an eyebrow — and Goss was the first one to reach for the reif. As they lifted Keech off his scooter, stinking crusts fell away from him to expose flayed muscle. Something bulked in the front of his overall, and Janer had a horrible feeling that organs were floating about free in there. He was so involved with what was happening that he didn’t notice the hornet had returned to his shoulder until Keech was taken below decks.
‘He brought a package for us,’ said the mind, ‘It is in the luggage compartment of the scooter. Get it now.’
‘You don’t order me any more,’ said Janer out loud, and Ron glanced round at him. Janer pointed at the hornet and Ron nodded, before following the others below decks.
‘Please,’ said the mind.
‘OK.’
Janer went over to the scooter and looked in the back. He instantly knew which package it was. He lifted it out and inspected it.
‘Put it somewhere safe… please.’
Janer headed for the hatch to his cabin. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Do you need to ask that?’
‘No, I guess not,’ said Janer, since he had received deliveries like this before.
He took the package below, walking past the crammed cabin, where Keech was stretched out on a table. Reaching his own cabin, he was about to place the box under his bunk when the mind stopped him.
‘Wait one moment,’ it said, as if something had only just occurred to it. In Janer’s experience things never ‘only just occurred’ to a Hive mind. He waited anyway.
The hornet launched itself from his shoulder and landed on the box. It crawled round to the middle plane of its hexagonal front. Immediately a hexagonal hole opened and the hornet crawled inside.
‘You may put it somewhere safe now,’ said the mind. Janer crammed the box under his bunk, and went to see what was happening with Keech. As he arrived, Erlin was clearing the cabin.
‘Everyone out. Out, now,’ she said.
The disgruntled crew shuffled away. The medical technology of off-worlders always intrigued Hoopers simply because of its utter irrelevance to them. Their attitude was something like the attitude of a hospital consultant to the trappings of shamanism. This was yet another strange Hooper reversal.
‘You can stay,’ said Erlin, and it took Janer a moment to realize that she meant him. He walked into the cabin, past Ron as the Captain went out. He stared down at the thing that was Keech.
‘What can I do?’ he asked.
Erlin pointed at the autodoc. ‘That’s an idiot savant quite capable of dealing with injuries to a normal human. Right now Keech is making the transition from corpse to living man with the aid of a nano-changer. He’s also infected with the Spatterjay virus, which is digesting dead tissue, just as it does in a living creature. The problem is that it started on Keech when he was all dead tissue. We’ve also got a few hundred cybernetic devices to deal with.’
Keech made a clicking gurgling sound.
‘He keeps trying to speak,’ said Erlin. She seemed at a loss.
Janer did not know what to say. If she could not handle this, then there was no way he could. He looked at Keech and felt pity. The only option, it seemed to him, would be to load him back on his scooter and head full-tilt for the Dome. He’d probably be dead by then, but even so… Janer focused his attention on Keech’s aug. There was an interface plug on it.
‘Back in a moment,’ said Janer, and ran from the cabin. In the crew cabin he searched his backpack until he had hold of what he wanted, and rushed back. He brandished the small screen and optic cable, then walked over to Keech.