‘What?’ Peck asked Pland.
‘If you don’t know by now, you never will,’ said the crewman, coming over with a small jug and a hide bag. Peck shrugged and continued at his blowing while Pland poured oil into a pan and set it on the brazier. When Peck was satisfied with the glowing charcoal, and rocking back on his heels, Pland dropped square slices of boxy meat into the pan. The sudden sizzling and waft of savoury smoke across the deck was Ambel’s signal to come out of his cabin.
‘Ah, boxy,’ he said, then with a glance at Pland, ‘We got any of that Dome bacon left?’
Pland nodded and wandered off to investigate. Ambel watched him go, reflecting how it was strange that the stuff was still called ‘bacon’, it never having been within a light-year of a pig, or any other animal for that matter. He turned his attention now to the sail, who was audibly sniffing at the smoke from the pan and looking dubious.
‘How are you called?’ Ambel asked it, as was proper courtesy.
The sail turned its head towards him, and Ambel took an involuntary step backwards when he realized just how big the creature was. It exposed its teeth in what might have been a grin.
‘Windcheater,’ it replied, and all the crew on deck stood still with their mouths open. They’d never before encountered a sail without the name ‘Windcatcher’. True, they’d heard rumour of a sail that had actually grasped how a name could be an individual thing, but like so many other Hoopers, had dismissed the rumour as nonsense.
‘Only kidding,’ said the sail. ‘It’s Windcatcher really.’
They closed their mouths and got on with their work, quickly trying to forget this upset to the natural order of things.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, sail,’ said Ambel, giving the creature a look. He had already noticed the bean-shaped device attached to the side of its head, and he knew precisely what it was.
The sail snickered and shook its wings.
Windcheater surveyed the ship with intense interest and recalled when, long ago, he had been here last. The Earther human woman had been aboard then, and he remembered how he had tried to bite her when she sneaked up on him to remove a sample of his skin. Memory of that brought back to him the memory of what had happened afterwards. The Captain, with some crew and the woman, had gone ashore, and after traumatic events he had only learnt about later, returned aboard carrying a certain box that was still here now.
Windcheater could even hear the whispering. The man he once threw from the top of the Big Flint was here now… in part.
The sail tested the movement of the spars and found that they were well greased in their sockets, and that there was little scope for slack movement between the three masts. Pulling on the reefing cables, he released the fore and aft sails and checked the movement there. Again, everything seemed fine. He lowered his head so as to inform the Captain, then abruptly pulled away from the smell of charring meat. He had never quite understood this human preference for incinerating perfectly good fresh meat prior to consuming it. It was like so many other things the humans did that he could not quite get a handle on. As he watched them eating their food, he thought back again to a time long ago.
Windcatcher had been the cleverest of all the sails and the most curious about these strange creatures that had descended from the sky, but the autoguns and intruder defences they had installed around the island they occupied had been enough to deter the most inquisitive, and thus the situation had remained for a very long time. Then had come internal strife, after the arrival of more of the same creatures, and the defences were gone and these creatures, these humans, came out into the world. Windcatcher’s curiosity became almost a painful thing when these humans built movable shells out of peartrunk and yanwood timber in which to float about on the seas.
At first he had flown at a safe distance, but sometimes close — especially in the night — and listened to the sounds they made to each other. He’d realized from the start that these sounds were a language much like that of the sails, and had quickly memorized it all. Learning what the words actually meant had taken somewhat longer, nearly one human century, and even then it had been difficult to grasp that they only had so few words to describe the wind. And as for names…
When Windcatcher had seen a ship drifting in the sea, without its sail of normal fabric, he had quickly grasped the opportunity this presented. Settling on the spars of the ship, he had gazed down upon the bemused crew and told them, ‘I am wind catcher.’ And so it had all begun. The other sails had soon joined him in this diversion — it was substantially more interesting than sitting on a rock discussing the weather. They, like the then original Windcatcher, had not grasped the concept that individuals could possess individual names and by the time they did, the tradition of them being called ‘Windcatcher’ had been established. The first sail to break with this tradition had been the original Windcatcher himself, when he had changed his name to ‘Windcheater’. But then he had always been one to break new ground.
After reminiscing, he accessed, through his aug, a communication channel that had been opened in the night. The first communication then being, ‘You still into dodgy artefacts, sail?’
‘Are you still there?’ he asked over the ether, still finding it difficult to talk without actually opening his mouth.
‘I ain’t going nowhere until this fucking fish has a bowel movement,’ replied Sniper’s irritated voice.
‘Aren’t you controlling that crazy carp, then?’
‘Nah, I’m recharging in readiness for that bowel movement. Molly here’s just got a bit confused, and seems to want to hang around the ship. Understandable, as it’s a long way from home. Tell me, how much you say the Warden’s paying you for this?’
‘A thousand a day.’
‘Yeah, thought so. But what the hell is there to see on that ship?’
‘Nothing much. I was hungry and needed a rest so I thought I’d stop by. The way I see it, the longer I’m out here, the more money I’ll get. If the Warden tells me to move on, then I will. Don’t see the point in putting in too much effort,’ said Windcheater.
‘You like the idea of wages, don’t you?’ said Sniper. ‘It ever occur to you that a few steaks is pretty cheap payment for the work you do as a sail? Without you, they’d need a fabric mainsail, extra rigging and extra crew.’
Windcheater blinked and surveyed the Treader. Boris was at the helm, steering the ship, but the others were scattered about the deck at minor tasks. That had not really occurred to him. Yes, over the ages he had seen the design of the Hoopers’ ships changing and, until this moment, had only viewed those changes as ones intended to more easily accommodate his kind. It seemed almost a reversal now to realize that the benefits were really a bit one-sided. Through his aug, he accessed a text on Hooper ships and sailing practices.
‘The crew-members all take a percentage of the ship’s profits,’ he said.
‘A sail could demand that, too’ said Sniper. ‘But, he’d probably have to agree to stay with the ship for the entire duration of the voyage.’ Sniper then transmitted the address of a particular site, and Windcheater studied with interest the sample work contracts there displayed. He decided then that, when the Warden was done with him, things were going to change.
The wound on her hip was now hurting less than the after-effects of the stun blast. Parting the burnt fabric of her trousers she saw that already the hole had filled with pink scar tissue, which was slowly welling to the surface of the wound. The Batians and Frisk, in their overconfidence in their abilities, had forgotten that she too was a Hooper with quite a few years behind her. Had she been a normal human, her surprise blows would have had no effect on the one called Svan — Batians were tough. Anyway, she had survived. The distant sound of a couple of explosions had long since faded, as had the wail of her house computer when it was blown. No doubt they had tried to either cut or blast their way through this door, but once it had closed she knew she was safe. The amount of energy required to penetrate a metre of what had so far only ever been described simply as ‘Prador armour’ — the superconductive and highly impact-resistant exotic metal that had been one of the reasons that ancient war had dragged on for so long — would have been sure to draw the attention of the Warden, and Tay was certain Frisk was not prepared to risk that. She wondered just what Frisk had thought about her having such an incredibly impervious safe installed here, but then Frisk did not know how valuable was the item Tay kept here. The historian grasped the edge of one of the coffin-cases to haul herself to her feet, then pressed her palm to the lock in the case’s surface.