‘You saw that shell at the gate?’ Erlin asked him.
‘Yes…’
‘It was the shell of a frog whelk. One of those sees you, it’ll try to take a chunk out of you. It could take your hand off with one bite. Hoopers view them as amusing little pests. And there’s much worse.’
From a locked cabinet the shopkeeper produced three hand weapons with belts and holsters.
‘Y’ can have lasers and stunners separate, but I got these,’ he said.
Erlin picked up one of the weapons and inspected it dubiously. Keech stepped beside her and took up another weapon. He knocked back a slide control, opened the bottom of the handle and peered inside, then slammed it shut.
‘QC laser with slow burn, wide burst… the lot,’ he said. He glanced at Erlin. ‘These’ll do all you need.’
‘QC?’ Janer queried.
‘Quantum cascade; standard solid-state,’ Keech replied.
‘What about stun?’
Keech tapped the stubby barrel set below — and off-centre of — the main mirrored barrel. ‘Ionic burst — good for up to about five metres,’ he said. ‘And,’ he studied the three weapons, ‘J will not be requiring one of these.’
Erlin eyed him thoughtfully for a moment before turning back to the shopkeeper.
‘How much?’
‘Two hundred shillings each.’
Janer thought he must have got it wrong: surely he meant two thousand shillings?
‘You’re a robber and a thief,’ said Erlin. ‘I’ll give you two hundred for two of them.’
‘I’m a thief! I’m a thief! One seventy-five each, with the belts and holsters.’
‘Seventy-five each and I’ll tell no one how you robbed us.’
‘One hundred and fifty each, and for that I make no profit at all.’
‘One hundred, and may the Old Captains forgive you.’
‘I have a family! I have mouths to feed!’
‘One hundred.’
The shopkeeper’s expression was one of outrage, but that expression swiftly disappeared when Erlin turned to leave. He caught hold of her arm and she turned back to him.
‘One hundred and twenty-five and you must tell no one how you have robbed me,’ he said.
‘Agreed,’ said Erlin with a smile.
Janer opened his wallet, but before he could remove any money, Keech laid one bony hand over it. ‘You neglected to mention the required power cells. Does your price include them as well?’ he asked.
‘You are all thieves!’ shouted the shopkeeper.
Keech stepped back and left the bargaining to Erlin.
With the door to his cabin firmly closed, Ambel sat on his bed and stared over at his sea-chest, the bait meat held in his right hand like a bloody hankerchief. He tilted his head as if listening to something, then shook it in annoyance, before abruptly rising and stepping across his cabin to stand before the chest itself. With his free hand he opened the lid and took out an oblong box a metre long and a third of that wide and deep. This he placed on his table then took a key for the lock from his top pocket. After unlocking the box, he returned the key to his pocket, then stepped back a bit before flipping up the lid. The thing inside did not leap out, though there were signs of movement.
It was blue and filled the box. It was a head. Once it had been a human head, but now it was so horribly enlarged, stretched out and distorted that it was difficult to recognize it as such. It was more like the head of some bastard offspring of a baboon and a warthog. Ambel stood and glowered at it as it shifted in its box, and one of its insane black eyes blinked open and returned his look. It was still alive, and he questioned the impulse that made him keep it so. That the historian, Olian Tay, had offered him a fortune for it, he now knew as incidental — he wasn’t keeping it for her. Perhaps he kept it out of sadism. No one could be more deserving of punishment than this… individual. Ambel dropped the piece of bait meat in the box and slammed the lid shut. Next time he looked, he knew the meat would be gone, as the Skinner retained a tenacity for life. After wiping his hand, Ambel locked the box then placed it back in his sea-chest before slamming and locking the lid of that. He left his cabin speedily, as one glad to be away from some unpleasant but necessary task. Peck was standing just outside, gazing at him strangely. He held the panga in his right hand and was spattered with purple blood and flecks of turbul meat. Even to Ambel he was a disquieting sight.
‘Turbul all chopped, Peck?’ Ambel asked.
The crewman took a moment to reply. ‘How… is the bugger?’ he asked.
‘Alive,’ said Ambel. ‘Still alive.’
Peck nodded slowly. ‘Can still hear ‘im muttering,’ he said.
‘We’ll always hear that,’ said Ambel, reaching out and carefully slapping Peck on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get that turbul pickled and stowed, man.’
As Ambel walked past Peck, the crewman stared at the door to the cabin with his face screwed up in an expression that might have been remembered pain or might have been longing.
‘How many barrels?’ Ambel asked Anne as she lowered a full net down to the hive of activity in the hold.
‘Twelve in all, with enough spare to do us for a week or so. Good run,’ she added.
Ambel studied her face. The leech scars there had not detracted from her rugged attractiveness, and her long black hair showed not a speck of grey despite her many years. The virus affected different people in different ways. Some became wrinkled prunes with grizzled hair; some, like Anne, stayed at their peak; others lost all their hair and sometimes their teeth too. Ambel himself had been like Anne, long in the past. Over the numerous years since, he had, like many of the Old Captains, incrementally increased his muscular bulk. Now he had cropped white hair, a young-looking but wide face, and the overall appearance of someone who could snap deck timbers between his fingers — and it wasn’t a deceptive appearance.
‘We going after another run?’ Boris asked from below.
‘Nope, lad,’ said Ambel. ‘It’s a night moon and we’ve still got time to get to the sands. I don’t want all our barrels filled with turbul. It only pulls down a few skind and the market’ll be flooded.’ He looked up. ‘We go east,’ he spoke loudly so the sail could hear him.
‘Amberclams?’ asked Pland, picking bait meat from under his fingernails with a skinning knife.
‘Amberclams,’ Ambel confirmed.
‘That’s a relief,’ he said. ‘I thought you were thinking of a hunt.’
Ambel grinned at him, then went below to help Boris and the juniors stow the barrels.
The voice from his Hive link had a hint of buzzing behind it but Janer reckoned that was just showmanship. Hornets did not communicate by buzzing, and Hive minds certainly did not. He suspected that this ersatz buzzing was the mind’s idea of a joke.
‘I would like you to travel with this Erlin. I find her interesting,’ the mind told him.
It wasn’t an instruction any more. The mind had ceased to issue instructions when his indenture had run out two decades back. The request, though, was backed by the promise of unlimited credit, travel and lack of boredom, and for Janer boredom could be a problem, as it was for so many Polity citizens now.
‘I thought you wanted me to stick with the reif,’ he whispered, conscious of the people all around him.
‘The reification, I suspect, will go with her. If he does not, he will find her again in the future. His story and hers connect.’
‘You haven’t told me his story yet.’
‘In good time, in good time. Let us watch this fight for the present.’
The two Hoopers facing each other in the dirt ring had stripped naked and oiled themselves from head to foot. The crowd was baying for blood, yet there seemed an insincerity about their shouting.