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?’

Keech gave a slow nod, remembering the thing in Tay’s museum.

‘The Skinner is a creature that lives on an island and traps any ship Hoopers who land. It seems the one goal in life of this creature is to strip Hoopers of their skins and leave them to suffer in agony for months. The story goes that a lone Captain and an off-worlder went to the island and beheaded the creature, and that this Captain is now said to carry the living head of the Skinner in a box on board his ship. This way the Skinner can never pull itself back together sufficiently to cause the pain it once did. Its living body alone would just be that of an animal. This all happened at the Segre Islands, which have for some time been known as the Skinner’s Islands.’

‘And this creature, this Skinner, is supposed to be Hoop?’

‘Supposedly. Your best course of action now would be to speak to some of the Old Captains. Tell them who you really are. They’ll respect that.’

‘Would a Captain Ron be one of the ones I should talk to?’

‘Oh yes, definitely.’

‘And a Captain Ambel?’

‘Yes, he and Captain Ron are two of the oldest.’

‘Original slaves?’

‘So it’s rumoured.’

‘Why aren’t there more of them?’

‘Many left Spatterjay. It’s an interesting world but it has its limitations for people entering the latter half of a thousand years of life. Many stayed and died. This world is dangerous even for Hoopers. Many more killed themselves. There’s a poison here manufactured from the digestive tract of some of the larger leeches. It neutralizes the virus, and acts on the Hooper body much like that favourite of yours: diatomic acid. A Hooper taking this stuff will come apart in a matter of minutes — spectacularly.’

Keech stood and gazed towards the door. Then he stared at the data crystal Tay had made him.

‘If you’ll permit me,’ he said, ‘I’d like to run some searches through your databanks.’