* * * *
Ambel grinned to himself as Jane dragged Peck below decks and the rest of the group broke up in disappointment. He carved himself a slice of rhinoworm and chewed on it contemplatively. They really did need a sail. He did not like to hang around the islands for too long as he was well aware that the Skinner was still active. One day he intended to come here alone and catch the mad bastard. One day. He turned as Erlin came out on deck and stood next to him gazing with distaste at the worm steak.
“Want a bit?” he asked her. Her food ran out a couple of days ago and he knew she must be hungry.
“I wouldn’t mind if it was cooked,” she said.
He shook his head. “Destroys the flavour.”
“No, the stuff tastes awful—what it destroys is all the nutritional value for humans.” Ambel nodded and carved another slice. He held it out to her, blue blood dripping down his fingers. “Go on, it’ll do you good.”
Erlin took the slice and nibbled a bit off the edge. A sudden look of astonishment transformed her features. She ate the whole slice.
“It tastes good,” she said. “When I first had some it tasted like copper and curry powder.”
He carved her another slice, and as he did this she studied his hugely broad back. His bluish skin was mottled, looked almost patterned. It was only then that she realised the effect was caused by leech scars layered upon each other in their thousands.
“Did you fall in the sea or something?” she asked.
“Once or twice,” he said, turning and handing her some more meat.
“You have a lot of leech scars. I didn’t realise it until just now. You’re covered with them. Could I have a blood sample from you?”
“Sometime,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
She was about to say more when there was a shout from the cabin roof.
“Sail! Sail coming in!”
Erlin peered up at the sky. She had heard about this but never seen it. When the hover car had dropped her at the ship it had been as it was now: bare masted and moored by this island.
The sail undulated in on the east wind; a great veined sheet turning the flesh-filtered light underneath it a strange orangey pink. It caught hold of the top of the mainmast with one long bony hand, swung around and replaced that grip with a coil of its tail before moving that hand along with many others down onto the spars. Its lizard head on a long whiplike neck came questing down to the deck. Ambel pulled the worm steak off its spike and walked up to the creature’s head. The sail licked its lips with a dark-blue forked tongue and eyed the steak hungrily.
“How are you called?” asked Ambel, as was only proper.
“I am Windcatcher,” replied the sail, as replied all sails, never having mastered the idea that names could be an individual thing. Ambel gave it the steak, which it chomped down hungrily. Erlin watched the lumps of meat travelling up its translucent neck to where its stomach could be seen bubbling between the first two spars. When it had finished the meat it yawned loudly, shrugged the vast sheet of its body, then wrapped its neck around the mast and closed its eyes.
“Amazing,” said Erlin, but by that time Ambel had moved away and was giving orders. Erlin walked up to the triangular head resting on the deck and wondered if she might be able to get a sample without waking it. She stepped a little closer and removed a hand microtome from her overall pocket. The sail opened one demonic red eye and looked at her.
“Bugger off,” it said, then closed its eye.
* * * *
The anchor socketed with a crash, and crewman Boris ran yelling down the deck, swiping at a frog-whelk that had come up clinging to the chain, leapt onboard, and bitten a lump out of his calf before running away making a sound suspiciously like a titter. Boris cornered it by the forecabin and threatened it with a hammer. The whelk considered its options, looking from side to side with its stalked eyes, then spat out its prize before sidling towards the rail. Boris snatched his missing part and shoved it back into place before limping back to his station. Erlin looked on with her mouth hanging open, then quickly ducked into her cabin when she saw the whelk eyeing her estimatingly from the rail. There was a thump against her door just as she got it closed. Outside she heard yelling and cursing, then a squeal of surprise and a wet crunch. When she edged her cabin door open she saw Ambel toss something over the side then reach down and scrape something off his boot with his knife. He grinned at her.
“All clear,” he said.
Erlin closed her door, leant her back against it, then slid down until she was sitting on the floor. Culture shock? She would just have to get used to it. She bit down hard on a giggle.
* * * *
On the third day of sail Erlin finally got Ambel into her cabin for a blood sample, but, when she pushed the syringe into him she could get nothing into it, and after a moment it popped out of his arm. Thoroughly determined now, Erlin tried a chainglass scalpel on his skin with a pad held ready to soak some blood up. The scalpel went in all right, but when she pulled it out again the wound sealed instantly. She tried again with two scalpels, side by side, to hold the wound open between. The gap she opened abruptly filled with flesh and skinned over. When she removed the scalpels those wounds closed as quickly as the first.
“Doctor at the port tried once. Don’t reckon I got any blood any more.”
Erlin thought about the fibrous structures she had seen down the nanoscope. Peck, who claimed to be a hundred and eighty years old, had the most in his blood she had ever seen. The rest of the crew she had taken samples from; Jane, Boris, Pland, and Mede, who were comparative infants at ages ranging from fifty to a hundred and ten, had proportionally less.
“How old are you, Ambel?”
“Oh, a bit.”
Ambel rolled down his shirt sleeve and looked shifty.
“Come on. This is really important.”
“Don’t rightly know. Been on the ships for a while.”
Erlin wasn’t having that. “You do know. Don’t fob me off!”
Ambel looked uncomfortable. “No one believes me,” he complained.
“I will.”
Ambel got up and headed for the door, as he opened it he mumbled, “Spatterjay Hoop was a crazy git.” He went out onto the deck.
Erlin sat down on the chair and shook her head. They were all crazy gits, and Ambel was no better. If he thought she was going to believe he knew Spatterjay Hoop, the man after whom this strange little world was named more than five centuries ago, then he was probably worse. Ridiculous idea. Wasn’t it?
* * * *
“Sail’s awake! Sail’s awake!” bellowed Boris from his favourite vantage on the roof of the forecabin. The head was questing around the deck, its eyes blinking sleepily. As Erlin came out of her cabin to see what new madness might occur, the sail looked at her, yawned, then sneezed. Ambel ran for the hatch cover, opened it and jumped down inside, then climbed out with a worm steak on his shoulder. He held it out for the sail, which took it in its mouth, hesitated a moment, then spat it out on the deck.
“Wormy,” it said with disgust.
Ambel shrugged. The sail watched him for a moment then unwound itself from the mast, released its holds and undulated away through the air. The ship slowed as Erlin walked over to the steak and inspected it. A long thin worm poked its head out of the meat, grinned at her with a mouth full of small triangular teeth, then dived back in. Ambel picked the meat up and threw it over the side before Erlin could object. He eyed her carefully.
“I’ve had worms,” he said, then said to Boris, “see anything?”
Boris pointed off to one side. “Island over there.”
“Better get some more meat,” said Ambel.
Erlin wondered how it was they ever got anywhere if this was the rate they always travelled. And was it her imagination, or were they all looking a lot more blue than they had before? She sat against a rail and watched as they unhooked the rowing boat and Ambel lowered it into the water. The island was a distant spec
k and she wondered about going with them this time. When Ambel rowed the boat out still attached to the ship with a thick hawser, she realised what he intended to do. She stared with her mouth falling open as he began to really dig in with the steel oars. Slowly he pulled the ship around and began towing god knows how many tons of timber and metal towards the island.
* * * *
It took most of the day, and the sun was going into fade-out by the time Boris dropped the anchor and peered with deep suspicion down the length of its chain. Ambel turned the rowing boat back to the ship and leaving it on the water he hauled himself up the hawser onto the deck.
“I want to come with you this time,” said Erlin.
Ambel shrugged. “Morning,” he said then turned and bellowed down the deck, “Pland, boxies here, get a line out.”
Pland, a squat little man who spent most of his time at the helm muttering to himself and chewing bits of purple seaweed that squeaked when he bit them, glared at Ambel then slouched off to one of the rail lockers. He removed a line coiled around a wooden frame. It had a weight at the end of it and two small side lines bearing hooks.
“What about bait?” he asked.
Ambel went below deck and came up with their last steak held away from his body on his knife.
“Aw, come on,” Pland wailed.
“Just do it,” said Ambel.
Erlin watched while Pland tapped at the steak until a worm poked its head out. He reached out to it and it quickly sank its teeth in his hand. Grimacing and swearing he drew his hand away, pulling the worm from the meat. Once it flopped free he pulled it from his hand, a small squirt of blood hitting the deck, then he impaled the worm on a hook. The worm squawked and writhed about, but Pland tied it in place with another piece of line. He did the same again for the other hook then dropped the line over the side. His hand had healed by the time Erlin approached him.
“Do you often get the bait like that?” she asked.
“Better than some ways. Least we ain’t the only meat on board.”
Erlin was contemplating that when Pland stepped on a worm, which was trying to sneak away from the meat, and grinned with satisfaction. The worm writhed about and bit at his boot.
“You next, you little bastard,” he said.
Erlin walked to her cabin, suddenly feeling the need to lie down for a little while. When she returned to the lamplit deck Pland had quite a catch. Boxies were another aptly named Spatterjay life form. They were simply cube-shaped fish with eyes on one face of the cube and a tail sticking out of the other. Pland had stacked a number of them next to him like building blocks. Ambel was standing behind him biting chunks out of one like an apple. As he ate it the boxy blinked at him mournfully. Between bites Ambel was giving Pland his considered advice.
“Gently now, don’t tug so hard or it’ll be off again.”
He did and it did. Pland swore as the line slid through his hands until he was unwinding it from the frame again. Erlin walked up and stood beside Ambel, trying not to meet the boxy eye to eye.
“Reckon he’s got a turble on,” said Ambel. He picked up a boxy and held it out to her. “Want one?” Erlin tried to refuse, but she was really hungry. She held her hand over its eyes and bit into it. It was like eating curried squid with pieces of banana in it. Rather palatable really, if only all those other boxies wouldn’t look at her so.
“Wouldn’t it be kinder to kill them first?” she asked.
He stared at her shocked. “Kill boxies?”
She noticed he had eaten his one down to its spine. All that remained was the tail at one end and a little face at the other. He tossed this back into the sea and she watched in amazement as it swam away. For a moment she thought she was going to vomit. When she did not, and in fact took another bite out of her boxy before she could think about it, she was almost startled. Is this what they called going native?
* * * *
Come sunrise Erlin, Ambel, Peck and Boris were in the boat heading for the shore. Erlin had a pack of equipment and in her pocket a surgical laser the case of which she had managed to open, to remove its safety governor. It was completely illegal, but she felt a damned sight safer with a weapon that could cut through anything within two metres of her on this crazy world. Anyway, Polity law was supposed to apply here, but it seemed to go no further than the security fence around the gating facility. Hoopers seemed to find the ideas of law and justice nearly as amusing as politics. They just got on with things. She often wondered about Ambel. Was he the captain of the ship, or was he deferred to because he could settle an argument by ripping people’s arms out of their sockets?
Ambel rowed the boat into the green sand beach, then with two more strokes of the oars brought it up onto the sand. He did it effortlessly, as if it made no difference to him what substance was supporting the boat. They climbed out and Ambel hoisted out his blunderbuss and rested it across his shoulder. There it was again. The thing probably weighed about a hundred kilograms. Ambel ambled up the beach.
“See if we can get another rhino worm. Boxies ain’t that filling, and we need the meat for a sail,” he said.
They walked along the green strand ignoring the rustlings and gruntings from the dingle. Erlin was jumpy. Every time anything moved in the tangled undergrowth she had the nib of her laser pointing in that direction. The life forms of Spatterjay seemed to have a propensity for taking chunks out of one, and she would not heal as quickly as crew. Abruptly they all drew to a halt around Ambel, who had stopped and was peering at something in the sand. Erlin took a look and wondered what the problem was. All that lay there was a piece of screening from an old re-entry vehicle. Ambel raised his gaze from the yellowing glassite and stared down to the shoreline. There was quite a distance between.
“Oh shit, I thought it was further west,” said Boris, with feeling.
“Are we…is this…you know?” said Peck.
“Yes,” said Ambel. “Back to the boat.”
At that moment the dingle parted and an arm came out. It was six metres long, thin, and seemed as hard as bone. The long long hand stretched two metres from wrist to fingertip. It was a blue that was almost black. It plucked Peck from the sand and pulled him into the dingle. Erlin stared at what was on the other end of the arm and wasn’t sure she believed what she was seeing. Peck was shrieking as loud as he could. The noise he was making was joined by a loud maniacal laughing and giggling as the dingle closed, then both sounds receded.
“Damn and buggeration!” said Ambel.
Erlin thought that an understatement.
“Back to the boat now, yes?” said Boris eagerly.
“You go,” said Ambel. “Take the Earther back with you.” With that Ambel entered the dingle.
“What was that?”
Boris forced a grin. “Oh, the Skinner. Let’s go now shall we?”
“No,” said Erlin, and quickly followed Ambel. By the time she caught him up she wondered if she had gone insane. The Skinner? The names on Spatterjay were usually quite apt, so what did the Skinner do?
“You should’ve gone back to the ship,” said Ambel, then glanced over her shoulder. “You too.”
Erlin looked behind to see Boris approaching, his grin turned rictus on his face.
“Just couldn’t miss the fun,” he said.
They moved on into the dingle, pear-trunk trees ashiver, and suspicious looking vines draped in the branches of something like an inverted pine tree. In all direction the undergrowth tangled all into darkness, yet it was easy to follow the Skinner’s path of crushed vegetation.
“Big one,” said Boris, and they all crouched down at Ambel’s signal and kept very quiet. A giant leech oozed past nearby, waving its wad-cutter at them for a moment.
“They normally don’t bother,” said Ambel. “But if they do you don’t get it back. One got Pland a year or two back. Been a bit cranky ever since.”
Erlin tried to make sense of that. Surely not? The leech’s mouth had been half a metre across.
/> “Keep away from the pear-trunk trees,” Ambel told her as they moved off again.
Pear-trunk trees? She looked up into the branches and saw things hanging there, but they did not look like pears. Of course, the trunk. It was squat and pear-shaped. The bark was real strange though. She wondered about its structure…
“I said keep away—”
The pear-trunk tree shivered, and Erlin screamed.
“All right, I got it!” yelled Boris. He tugged on the leech attached to her back and she screamed some more. It took Ambel’s help to pull the leech off. She lay face down in the mould sobbing. She could feel the hole in her back.
“Don’t worry,” said Ambel. “I got it.” He beat the leech on the ground until it released the lump of flesh it had unscrewed. Erlin regarded him with tears streaming from her eyes. God it hurt. Until now the whole process had seemed so unreal.
“That won’t work,” she said as Ambel approached with part of her back between his forefinger and thumb.
“’Course it will,” he said.
He screwed it into her back and the pain immediately started to fade. Slowly she got to her feet and tried to reach around to the wound. There was blood, but she couldn’t quite reach…
“You’re one of us now,” said Boris.
Erlin stared at him. Of course, the leeches. It all made sense now. She had to get her blood under the nanoscope as soon as she could.
“Come on,” said Ambel, shouldering his blunderbuss.
When they reached the putrephallus stand at the edge of the dingle, Erlin refused the mask Boris offered her until the smell hit her, then she snatched it from him and quickly placed it over her face. The weeds were green and, again, well named. There was an Earth fungus that looked similar, but that did not throb quite so disconcertingly.
“See the hill. He lives up there,” said Ambel.
Boris eyed him suspiciously. “You’ve been here before.”