‘World domination? Humans go home?’
‘No, Windcheater wants humans and everyone in here. He wants the Polity in. He wants the Hive minds in. He would like the Prador here, if he could get them. He has augmented his innate intelligence and is absorbing knowledge at an astonishing rate. I well understand this, as he has been starved of these things for many thousands of years.’
‘Thousands?’
‘A tentative estimate. The sails themselves don’t really know. They don’t die very often.’
‘One moment,’ said Janer. He turned to Boris, ‘What happened to that adolescent Prador?’
‘Still looking for it. Reckon it went into the sea,’ Boris replied, and was again shushed from behind. Janer noted that Ambel had not quite reached the end of his story, so returned to his conversation with the mind.
‘Still no answers to the question, why does he particularly want your nests on his rock?’ Janer probed.
‘Windcheater wants us all here because, the more Polity entities there are here, the more opportunities there’ll be for him and his kind. Specifically, I think he wants us on his rock so he can charge rent.’
‘And what form would the rent take?’ asked Janer.
‘Quite simply money — with which he can buy augmentations for all of his kind. AI linkups, high-tech tooling … all the trappings of technology. As Windcheater so appositely put it to me, “Spend a thousand years sitting on a rock having conversations that consist mainly of comments on how windy it is, and you’ll have a true appreciation of library computers, walls and solar heating. “ I somehow suspect that in the near future Hoopers will have to learn to handle fabric sails and rigging themselves on their ships.’
‘Forgetting that, are you prepared to pay the rent? You could just as easily establish a nest here.’
‘The rock has its attractions. For one it is not easily accessible to Hoopers.’
‘You consider them a danger?’
‘I cannot say. How will they react when they discover that creatures with stings that inject sprine are about to colonize here?’
‘I guess it’d be worth your while to take a few precautions,’ agreed Janer.
Ambel had just finished his story, and now the Captains were asking him questions. What did he remember? Did he now consider himself free of guilt? Did he think there should be a statute of limitations on multiple murder? Would he be prepared to undergo an AI-directed mind probe? Ambel seemed to give the right answers to all these questions, then at the last, a question was flung at Captain Sprage.
‘Why did you insist he is the same Gosk Balem we flung in the sea?’ asked Captain Ron.
Sprage stood up and drew deeply on his pipe. The tobacco’s glow was reflected in his eyes so they glimmered like embers.
‘He’s the man. Memories are gone but the framework is still there. He has the morals, the understanding and the empathy that were Gosk Balem’s. Put in the same position as he was put a thousand years ago, and likely he would do exactly the same things again,’ said Sprage.
‘You’re saying he’d still throw Hoopers in the furnace?’ a Captain asked, eyeing Sprage doubtfully.
‘He threw just the brains and spinal columns of Hoopers into the furnace. The rest of the bodies were sold to the Prador, like empty cups to be filled with metal and Prador thoughts.’
‘Very poetic, Sprage. We all know about coring,’ growled someone in the darkness.
Sprage went on, ‘Gosk Balem was an ECS soldier who was captured by Hoop and his crew. They brought him here to be cored like the rest of their captives, but as he was ECS, and so obviously horrified by what they were doing here, Hoop decided to keep him alive in order to extend his suffering. They forced a slave collar on him, then put him to work at the furnace, burning the physical remains of coring. He had no idea then that those remains were still living and, even had he known, would he have chosen not to burn them? Would any of you?’
Silence met this question, so Sprage continued: ‘The Hoopers that were cored were too recently infected with the virus to have survived long in that ganglionic form. Those that weren’t eaten by leeches would have died or slowly transformed into leeches themselves. He never burned anything that still had a chance at life. He worked for Hoop because he made the choice of survival.’
‘Yeah,’ said Boris. ‘But he didn’t have the slave collar on all the time.’
‘Survival again,’ said Sprage. ‘Hoop removed his collar so as to further extend his torment. He could try to flee into the wilds, but it was unlikely he would have succeeded. Hoop really wanted him to try. Instead, he stayed and he continued feeding remains into the furnaces. And do you know why? Because while he was there, he might find the chance to act against Hoop.’
‘How do you know all this, Sprage?’ asked Ron.
Sprage took a short penknife from his pocket and scraped round in the bowl of his pipe. After knocking out the pipe’s dottle on the palm of his hand, he immediately began to refill it.
‘I know because I saw him doing something then that I only came to understand a few years after we caught him and threw him in the sea. The furnaces were powered by an old fusion reactor Hoop had removed from one of his landing craft. I still had my collar on then, while the virus established itself in me. I was three weeks, a month perhaps, from being cored. It was at that time I saw him carry a piece of reactor shielding and drop it in the moat.’
Abruptly Keech was on his feet, having been squatting by the flames. ‘He what?’ said the monitor.
‘The war was ending and the Prador retreating,’ said Sprage, ignoring Keech. ‘There’d been little chance of rescue during the war, but as it ended there was hope.’ He turned to address Keech. ‘You came here then. It was you who broke the program controlling the slave collars, and helped free those who remained. But how did you know where to come?’
Keech stared at Ambel, who was looking increasingly puzzled.
‘We knew from which part of the sector the coring trade was operating, but we didn’t know which sun or which planet. We swept that area searching for some kind of trace, some sign of spacecraft, orbital stations, field tech — we used all available methods to pick on high-tech usage.’
‘What finally brought you here, then?’ asked Sprage.
‘The distinctive signal from a fusion reactor. Normally you will never pick up on it, but this reactor was completely unshielded,’ said Keech.
‘Bugger,’ said Boris, still sitting beside Janer. He was not alone in his exclamation. There was a sudden surge of talk, till Sprage held up his hands.
‘I called him Ambel when I found him. I’d recognized him right away. I didn’t throw him back and I didn’t tell anyone because they might have voted to throw him back. I let him find his own life, and always hoped no one would ever know. He’s Gosk Balem all right. He’s the one who, over a period of years, stripped the inner casing from the fusion reactor so it would act as a beacon for ECS. He’s the reason every one of us old slaves is still alive. We shouldn’t have thrown him to the leeches in the first place. We had too much hate back then and we did wrong. Let’s not compound that error now.’
With a click, Sprage placed his pipe back in his mouth and then relit it. A roar of talk erupted again, while Keech walked up to Ambel and stood before him. A silence descended and the Hoopers watched. They knew how for centuries this monitor had hunted down and killed off members of Hoop’s former crew.
Keech held out his hand to Ambel, and Ambel solemnly shook it. Boris stood and walked over to his Captain. Other members of Ambel’s crew then emerged out of the darkness. Then Old Captains, and other crews. Hoopers were shaking Ambel’s hand, pounding him on his back. They were shaking each other’s hands and pounding each other’s backs.