‘What’s happening to me, Jay?’ she asked.
But Jay wasn’t there to answer her, nor to back her up, and sometimes she just did not understand why this was so. They had been happy on that Prador world hadn’t they? Why had he felt it necessary to leave, in the end? Why had he been so angry with her? Yes, sometimes she had behaved a bit irrationally, and of course that was to be expected: you couldn’t live together for as long as they had without sometimes encountering something like that. It had been her idea that maybe their crimes could be forgiven and that they could return to Earth which had thrown him into his rage. In retrospect she realized that had been a silly idea, but his reaction had been excessive.
She remembered him sneering at her. ‘Another excellent idea from your superior mind, dear. I would put that on a par with your one about opening a gallery on Circe. Do you think for one second that ECS has stopped searching for us? Do you think for one second we can breeze easily through the Polity avoiding both capture and getting mind-wiped?’
‘But Jay, darling—’
‘I used to enjoy your little whims and sudden enthusiasms. I think I ceased to enjoy them the moment you ceased to be you. Why did you do it? Why the hell did you do it?’
‘Jay, darling.’
‘Don’t touch me. You disgust me.’
There was a taste like iron in her mouth that she tried fruitlessly to spit away. That she had no longer possessed the body he loved, she understood. But, in the end, it had been because she no longer had the same mind. She gave a dry laugh and squeezed tears from her eyes, but, deep inside she knew she was going insane. Because she’d lived too long in a body not her own, she’d seen and caused too much horror, she’d lived too long amongst aliens, and because — in the end — she’d lived too long.
Janer stepped over the wreckage of the door and into the cabin. He reached down and righted the chair to which they had tied Keech, then carried it to the desk positioned below the brass-rimmed portal. He sat down and studied the two sealed flasks contained in a rack clamped to the edge of the desk. Each flask contained a number of red rhomboidal crystals resting under a clear fluid. He removed a bung from one of these and sniffed at the pungency released. It reminded him somewhat of old coffee, perhaps with a background of something putrefying.
‘Just one crystal?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said the mind, and Janer wondered if he was imagining a touch of avidity in its voice.
‘I suppose that if I don’t get it for you, you’ll get hold of it some other way.’
‘Yes,’ said the mind.
‘I’m not going to do this,’ said Janer, reinserting the bung and tapping it home with his forefinger.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’ve worked out what you’re up to. “Get me a sample of that unusual substance in Ambel’s cabin.” Do you think I’m entirely stupid?’
‘I do not.’
Janer sat back in his chair. ‘Why do you want to go this route?’ he asked.
‘Power,’ explained the mind. ‘It was tried before using curare. That failed, and the hornets in question were wiped out. The mind concerned still hasn’t regained its consciousness. But it is the way.’
‘The same could happen again,’ said Janer.
‘Not here,’ said the mind. ‘This is a primitive society. It will work.’
‘Well, not with my help,’ said Janer. He stood, pulled the small jewelled Hive link from his ear, and dropped it in his pocket. He gazed at the two flasks of fluid out of which pure sprine was crystallizing, shook his head, then left the cabin. Once outside, he climbed up to the cabin-deck — to go and listen to a story.
‘Captain Sprage,’ said Ambel looking round at Ron. Ron nodded from where he leant against the rail. Ambel turned to face the sea again. Gathered behind him, on the main deck, were Keech and Erlin, Forlam, Pland, Peck and Anne, and behind them, the rest of the crew. Even the sail had extended its neck so it could turn an ear to what Ambel said.
‘It was him named me Ambel, and I’ve always thought he knew.’
‘We should ask him.’
‘Yes, we should — now. I’ve always been afraid to before.’
‘Is there a point to this?’ asked Keech flatly. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Ambel since mounting the cabin-deck. His right hand rested on the butt of his pulse-gun. In his left hand he held three steel spheres.
Ambel stared at him. ‘Gosk Balem was a slave, then he was slave master. He became like Hoop and his crew because that was the only way to survive here then. Slaves were regularly cored, and had their cored brains and spinal columns thrown into a furnace. It was just like Hoop to put Balem in charge of that furnace,’ he said.
‘You should know,’ said Keech, bitterly.
‘But I don’t,’ said Ambel.
‘Explain,’ said Keech.
‘You came here with the ECS force that freed those slaves that hadn’t already been cored. But you weren’t as prepared as you ought to have been, and Hoop and all his crew escaped. So Hoop, Frisk, Rimsc, the Talsca twins and Grenant escaped off-world. They left Gosk Balem behind to face the consequences of his actions. The surviving slaves hunted him for a hundred years, and he was finally caught out here, by Sprage and Francis Cojan, who later went on to form the Friends of Cojan, whom you yourself knew.’
‘I knew Cojan himself,’ said Keech. ‘He got hold of the Talsca twins and boiled them alive.’
‘I heard that,’ said Ron. ‘What happened to him, then?’
Keech turned and stared at Ron.
‘Batian mercenaries got him with a thermite bomb,’ he said. ‘But only because he allowed it. He was tired of the running and tired of the killing. He told me this only days before his death, when he transferred all his funds to one of my accounts.’
Ambel nodded then continued. ‘When Gosk Balem was caught, the first Convocation was called. All the slaves were by then captains of their own ships, and the population here was swelled by their children, and by off-worlders coming through the gate. The Convocation decided unanimously to carry out the ECS sentence of death on Balem. They didn’t have sprine then, and at Cojan’s instigation they decided against burning. They decided instead to throw him to the leeches that were swarming at the time. On the dawn of the following day, they took him to the rail of Sprage’s ship and threw him into the sea. He screamed for four hours before he went under. The Convocation was broken and the Captains went their separate ways, assuming Balem was dead.’
‘Evidently he wasn’t,’ said Erlin. Janer studied her, wondering what she now thought of her Captain.
Without turning round Ambel said, ‘No, Erlin, he wasn’t. The durability of the older Hoopers was something not fully understood then. The leeches fed on Balem’s skin and outer flesh, whittling him down until he was a stripped fish. He was just like a turbul or a boxy — only a turbul or a boxy that can experience pain. Pain of that intensity drove him insane. I have no doubt he wanted to die, yet having the fibres in him, his body could not die. He fed, on boxies, turbul, whatever. He regrew flesh, nerves, skin — regrew them, and had them eaten off him again and again. This went on for five years. In that time he died in the only way he could die. His mind died.’
Ambel gazed around at them with a haunted expression. ‘My first memory is of Captain Sprage standing over me and asking, “Jesus, is he alive?” I’d been harpooned and hauled out of the sea. I was almost skinless and had very little muscle. In places I was right down to the bone. I was told later that I then had a leech mouth rather than a tongue, and that I took a chunk out of Sprage’s forearm. They tied me to the mast and fed me mashed Rhinoworm steaks and Dome-grown corn. The leech mouth slowly turned back into a tongue. It took only ten minutes or so before my lungs readapted to taking oxygen out of the air rather than out of the sea, but it was a couple of days before I was able to scream again. I screamed for a while, but even that uses too much energy, and apparently I stopped after an hour or so. It was two weeks before I’d regrown all my skin and muscle. Sprage then asked who I was and I had no reply for him. I didn’t even have language — I had nothing. I was an infant who had to be taught not to shit on the deck. Sprage taught me how to speak, taught me how to read, how to learn. I was on his ship for twenty years before I got some intimation of who I might once have been.’