Keech stopped where he was, and thought for a moment. One eye. He reached up and pressed his fingers into the cartouche on his aug unit. With a sucking click it came away and rested warm and heavy in his hand. Doubled images slowly pulled together as his new eye focused. Erlin had repositioned the connections while he had been in the tank — as it seemed the nanites had been intent on growing him another eye, whether there were connections into what remained of his optic nerve or not. Vision was now painful. Taste, sound, the texture of the rail on his hands: it was a beautiful pain called life. And now he had it, Keech wanted to keep it.
‘How are you… feeling?’
Keech glanced round at Janer, who was standing just behind him.
‘Alive,’ said Keech.
‘A novel experience,’ said Janer.
Keech turned to Erlin as she came up on to the deck. ‘Thank you,’ he said.
Erlin smiled, glanced at Janer, and abruptly appeared uncomfortable. She turned back to Keech. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘This is the most involved I’ve been in anything for decades. I…’ she paused, and again glanced at Janer, ‘I enjoyed it.’
Keech nodded and gazed down at the sea. These two were like teenagers who had discovered sex for the first time — or was that just his perspective? Was this how the Old Captains felt? Did most people seem naive and silly to them? He studied his pink hands, then his body with the monofilament overall clinging to it. He felt a vague twinge of embarrassment when thoughts of sex and the feel of the material against his skin conspired to give him an erection. He stayed where he was by the rail.
‘What’s that?’ he asked after a moment, and pointed to a humped shape in the sea.
Erlin stepped up beside him and peered at where he was pointing. ‘It’s either a transitional leech that tried to take a large prill, or Hoopers have been hunting here,’ she said.
Keech waited for an explanation.
To try and cover her earlier embarrassment, Erlin took on a didactic tone. ‘Small leeches feed by taking a plug of flesh from their prey, and whatever fluids they can suck out.’
Keech noted Janer rubbing the distinctive scar on his hand.
‘As a leech gets bigger it takes to the sea after bigger prey, also because the water there can support its larger body. In time, it begins to outgrow its prey, so it makes the transition from plug feeder to a feeder upon whole animals. The problem with eating animals whole here is that they tend not to die very quickly, so can cause a great deal of damage to a predator’s insides. Therefore big leeches produce a poison in their bile which can kill virus and prey at once.’
Before Erlin could continue, Keech said, ‘And a transitional leech is one that isn’t yet producing the poison, but still needs to feed on whole prey.’ He nodded at the leech floating past. ‘Hence, that could be one that has fed on something that tore its way out of it again.’
‘Exactly,’ said Erlin, studying him carefully.
‘Why do Hoopers hunt leeches?’ he asked.
‘Sprine,’ said Janer.
‘That’s the poison,’ said Erlin. She said no more, and gestured Janer to silence when he seemed about to explain.
‘Difficult to obtain, also rare, and it kills Hoopers,’ said Keech. He turned away. ‘No wonder they hunt these leeches. They’d probably do much more just to get hold of it.’
‘Why are you here, Keech?’ Erlin asked, suddenly.
Keech considered lying to her for only a moment. ‘I’m here to find and kill Jay Hoop,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because he is a criminal. Because I must. Because it was… is my job.’
Erlin stared at the back of his head. She thought about where they were going, then about Ambel and about what he kept in his cabin. She’d hated that low morbid whispering. It was part of what had driven her away.
‘In a day or so we may well reach the ship that has… Hoop aboard,’ she said.
Suddenly Keech was facing her again, one hand gripping her collar, his other hand rigid for a killing strike. He had moved fast, faster than she could move. Alive, Keech must have been a very dangerous man. And now… he was alive again.
‘Explain,’ he said.
‘What remains of Hoop is kept on that ship,’ said Erlin.
Keech released her and suddenly stepped back. He seemed confused, and his hands were shaking. Spittle ran from the corner of his mouth.
‘No… I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that story.’ He shook his head once, shook it again. Abruptly his body began to spasm, and he fell over on the deck like a falling door. His aug unit bounced on the deck beside him, and a green light on its surface turned red as the reattachment delay finally ran out and it began to power down.
‘Quickly! Get him below!’ Erlin yelled.
‘What is it?’ Janer asked as he helped her carry the spasming man below.
‘His organic brain’s taken over control of his cyber implants and now his muscles are fighting them. We’ll have to restrain him till he gets control.’
‘What about his aug?’ Janer asked.
Erlin shook her head. ‘Wouldn’t work. He’d end up fighting it like he is his implants.’
Janer gazed down at the convulsing face. But for the metal interfaces inset in Keech’s cheekbone and above his eye, he looked utterly human and vulnerable. Janer wanted him to live, not to suffer — found that he cared for the man.
‘Well that’s a first,’ said his Hive link.
When Janer angrily questioned it, it retreated to its distant buzzing, and he wondered just how much it was picking up from him through their link.
Darkness and pain, and the smell of the sea and of things decaying. He fought the harness and, though stronger than most men, he was weakened by his wounds and could only flex ceramal that in other circumstances he could have broken like chalk. The blanks dragging him back were as iron as he had been, and his struggles were all but ignored. He was just a difficult parcel that they dragged to the table and threw down upon it. Then began the bubbling speech of the Prador and, in flickering nightmarish luminescence, a huge first-child entered and poised itself over him, its mandibles flicking as if it might like to taste this particular morsel. A claw closed on the harness, gouging into his back as it lifted and suspended him.
‘Why? Why did you kill my crew?’ Drum asked.
The Prador’s translator box groaned and crackled as it replied. ‘Kill your crew… I did not kill your crew,’ it stated.
‘Why—?’ he began, but before he could question further it threw him face-down, looming over him. Something clicked and detached from the harness, and now he was able to move his head. He turned to see the underside of the creature’s body: the ridged carapace and swiftly moving manipulatory arms. In one of those hands he saw something like a grey metal spider, wriggling its legs as the first-child brought it down behind Drum. He started to bellow as small legs like pitons burrowed into the back of his neck. Then his whole body went entirely slack, but not, unfortunately, without feeling. The cutting sensation continued, and the pain rolled out in waves which soon grew dull and distant. Blackness welled up inside him and took him away: stood him aside from the world.
Then, in time, he came back.
Drum would have normally looked around, but no longer had that choice. He continued to steer his ship and check the compass, but these actions were not at his own instigation. Hunger and thirst were constant, but he could do nothing to slake them. He could feel the horrible ache of healing injuries, and he could see, and he could taste the salt in the air, but beyond sensing the world around him he could not influence it. Straining to look round where he was not directed to look availed him nothing more than a little hope: for there was still something physical to strain against — and something at the back of his neck repositioned itself each time he tried.