Keech was silent for a long while. Eventually he said, ‘Aphed Rimsc killed me and threw my body into the Klader sewers. It took a week for them to find me, and six months of court actions after that before they acted on my will and handed me over to the cult. Do you want to hear about that?’
‘Thoroughly documented. You’d signed up as a member of the cult of Anubis Arisen some years before. Limitations of mortality, I suspect. There was a legal suit brought to try and prevent your reification, but the cult backed you all the way. I also know that same suit was brought by Rimsc himself,’ said Tay. She had less of a blue tinge to her skin now.
Keech went on, ‘Rimsc died when the seal on his spacesuit failed outside the Klader space habitat. His body wasn’t reclaimed because the resulting blowout flung him towards Klader. He burnt up in atmosphere before anyone could get to him.’ Tay opened her eyes and waited. Keech continued, ‘What is not known is why his suit seals failed. They failed because they were eaten away from the inside, just as he was eaten away inside the same spacesuit. Somebody put a pressure-activated vessel of diatomic acid in his oxygen supply. When his oxygen got below a certain level, the vessel opened and flooded his suit with acid vapour. It must have been a very unpleasant death, especially for a Hooper.’
Tay sat up. ‘There were rumours about it, but nothing was confirmed. You’d been reified by then hadn’t you?’ she said.
‘Four days,’ said Keech.
Tay smiled. ‘What do you want to know then?’ she asked.
Keech moved over to one of the armchairs and sat. He steepled his bony fingers before his face and regarded Tay with his single blue eye, as his irrigator sprayed, moistening the eye. His face was immobile.
‘I know about Rimsc, Corbel Frane, the Talsca twins, Gosk Balem, and David Grenant. I don’t know what happened to Rebecca Frisk or to Hoop himself. For two hundred years I’ve been chasing rumours and myths. When they don’t come to nothing, they lead back here. Tell me what you know.’
Tay looked up to the ceiling. ‘House computer, make a copy of the Rebecca Frisk file to crystal.’
The computer on the desk beeped and a small crystal popped up out of the touch-console. Keech glanced across the room at it. His face twitched and his eye irrigator began working double time.
‘You know it was her and Hoop who started out together. From what I’ve been able to put together they started as art thieves on Earth. From such little acorns…’ explained Tay.
Keech continued to stare at the crystal. ‘Tell me about it,’ he said.
Tay said, ‘Frisk walked into the ECS building in Geneva on Earth and told them who she was. When this was confirmed she requested a mind wipe, which she was duly given. After that they gave her a basic overlay personality and she was sent back here. The Friends of Cojan snatched her halfway and fed her into a zinc smelter.’
Keech sat back. ‘The Friends are still about? They helped me trace Rimsc.’
‘No, they are not still about. This was three hundred years ago. ECS kept a lid on it, but I’m surprised you didn’t know about it. You were an ECS monitor before you were killed. Surely you had contacts?’
‘I never bothered much about her. She was the least of them. What about Hoop?’
‘No… Now I want something more from you. Tell me about Corbel Frane.’
‘I found him on Viridian, in a castle he had occupied for five hundred years,’ said Keech. ‘He was a living legend there, and it was difficult for me to get to him. The first time I managed to get through his defences I cut him in half with an industrial shear. His staff sewed him back together again and he was walking within one solstan year. I didn’t make the same mistake again. I used junger mercenaries to assault his castle and when he escaped, I pursued him to the summit of mount Ember. Even an old Hooper cannot survive immersion in magma.’
Tay nodded. ‘I like that,’ she said. ‘You realize I’m recording this meeting.’
‘I didn’t think otherwise.’
‘It doesn’t bother you?’
‘There is no statute of limitations on the things they did, and I am still officially an Earth Central Security monitor. They were all under sentence of death, whether physical or mental. Now, what do you know about Hoop?’
Tay abruptly stood and went to the wall cabinet. She removed another bottle of the substance she had drunk earlier. This time she filled a glass before returning to the sofa with it.
‘Holodrama and VR has them as lovable rogues and dashing pirates. Time will do that to even the most heinous of villains,’ said Tay as she collected her thoughts.
‘You’re telling me this? Hoop and his crew were murderers and thieves. They used this world as their base and the immortality the virus here conferred on them, enabled them to terrorize this whole sector for two centuries. They stole and they killed, and they sold humans to the Prador cored,’ said Keech. His words were flat, without inflexion.
Tay looked at him carefully. ‘You were on the mission that came here at the end of the war, weren’t you?’ she asked.
‘I was. And the things we witnessed here have made me what I am. I will not rest until they are all dead. I will not stop.’
‘So there’s only Hoop for you to get. What happens when you do get him — when you’ve killed him?’
Keech looked down at the lozenge of metal on its chain around his neck. ‘Option one is that I die completely,’ he said. ‘I am exploring other options.’
‘That is a changer nanofactory?’ said Tay, pointing at the lozenge.
‘It is. Tell me more about Hoop.’
‘The mission you were on drove Hoop and his crew from here and scattered them. With their wealth and the experience of a couple of centuries of life, they established themselves in niches across this sector. The Talsca twins and David Grenant were hunted down and killed by the Friends of Cojan. It’s believed they were lowered feet-first into boiling water.’ Tay stopped talking when she saw Keech nodding.
‘I can confirm part of that,’ Keech said. ‘I knew Francis Cojan quite well. He kept a holocording of the event that he showed me. But I only saw the Talsca twins on that recording. It took them a long time to die and they died hard.’
‘I see… Gosk Balem returned here and died in the sea. Hoopers who were the direct descendants of slaves the Eight kept here, or were original slaves themselves, threw him into a leech swarm in Nort sea. That one is well documented. Frane and Rimsc were the ones you tracked down. Frisk and Hoop fled from the sector and lived on a world in Prador space for fifty years. That comes from Frisk. She left him there and just went and handed herself over to ECS. Attack of conscience? There seems no other explanation.’
‘And Hoop? What about Hoop?’
Tay looked at him very directly.
‘Hoop is here,’ she said.
Keech said nothing. He moved not at all.
Tay went on, ‘A hundred and sixty-three years ago a craft was detected by the Warden. It went into orbit and attempted a sea landing. It was a very old craft. Unfortunately the Segre atolls got in its way and it crashed. The wreckage was found to be that of the Prador landing craft Hoop favoured — the craft he called Bucephalus. There was blood in the craft and it was Hoop’s. There was no trace of Hoop himself.’
‘It is not certain that he is still here then,’ said Keech.
‘It is. No spacecraft have come to Spatterjay since. The only way out is through the runcible gate on Coram, and the Warden monitors that. Humans might forget criminal activity. AIs forget nothing.’
‘He could be dead, then?’
‘He might have been injured enough to bleed, which is unusual for an old Hooper, but he is the oldest Hooper in existence, perhaps a thousand years. What do you think?’
‘Rumours?’
‘I’ve heard a few. Some have it that he is operating as a ship captain. Others have it that he went native and became something… horrible. Have you heard the legend of the Skinner?’