‘No blood in him,’ said Janer, ‘just fibres.’

‘Yes, I couldn’t even get a sample by opening his arm with a scalpel. Anyway, on we travelled with a sail hanging on the mast and frog whelks leaping on board, trying to take a chunk out of me, and even though I was truly beginning to understand it all, I didn’t realize what extremes it could all go to.’ She looked at Janer again. ‘Have you heard of the Skinner?’

‘Skinner’s Islands is what I heard. I assumed it was the name of whoever discovered them,’ he said.

‘No. It’s the name of the occupant and his occupation.’

Janer waited for her to continue, and after a long pause she did.

‘We lost the sail again because the stored meat had worms in it. Even they were extreme, and I had to hide in my cabin until they were all removed from the ship. Ambel towed the Treader to a nearby island and he, Peck and Anne went ashore again after meat — rhinoworms mostly live in coastal shallows. Anne and Ambel came back to the ship without Peck, and started to collect harpoons and other weapons… You know, even then most of the crew had a much bluer coloration because they hadn’t eaten Earth food for a while. I should have taken that as a clue.’

‘Keeps the virus in abeyance,’ said Janer.

‘Oh yes,’ said Erlin. ‘But what happens to a human who doesn’t get to eat Earth food at all? You know, ever since ECS drove Hoop and his crew away, there has always been Earth food available here. Hoopers could only grow a few adapted varieties that Hoop himself established here, but they were still enough. If such food had not been available there would have been no humans here when the Polity returned.’

‘They die without it?’ Janer asked.

Erlin gave a humourless laugh and gazed out to where the sun was sinking into a mantel of grey clouds which almost had the appearance of floating mud flats.

‘It would be better if they did. They do not: they just cease to be human — we know this because Hoopers have been stranded and unable to obtain Dome-grown food… Peck, it seems, had been taken by one of these creatures that had once been human — a creature they called the Skinner, because of its unpleasant habits. I, of course, wanted to see it for myself, and demanded that I go ashore with them in their attempt to rescue Peck. I think what finally persuaded them was the surgical laser I carried. I’d managed to remove its safety limiters and then had an effective weapon.’

‘So… you went ashore.’

‘Yes, we went ashore and we saw this Skinner.’ Erlin stared down at the water and proceeded to give a clinical description of the beast. Janer might not have believed her, had he not seen some strange and frightening things in his time. When she had finished her description she paused for a while before going on with, ‘When it came at us it was waving something in its right hand. Ambel put a hole in it with his blunderbuss and Anne and Pland got it with harpoons. When I saw what the creature was holding I joined in the fight. I cut it with my laser, and I tell you that was no easy task — then I crawled away to spew up my guts. The other three used my laser to finish the job on the thing.’

‘What did it have in its hand?’ Janer asked, getting right to the point, even though he thought he might already know the answer.

‘It was Peck’s entire skin.’

‘Jesu! The poor bastard.’

Erlin gazed at him now with a slightly crazy look in her eyes. ‘Yes, he was. When you meet him you’ll have to ask him all about it,’ she said.

‘What,’ said Janer, ‘he survived?’

‘Oh yes. Ambel picked up his skin and we went to find him. When we found him, skinless, writhing in a bowl-shaped rock, I tried to put him out of his misery. Ambel knocked the laser out of my hand, then he, Anne, and Pland proceeded to dress Peck again in his own skin.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Am I? You know what sticks in my mind the most?’

‘What?’

‘How they punched holes through his skin to let the air bubbles escape… so they could squeeze the air out through the punctures. They carried him back to the boat and out to the ship, but he managed to climb on board himself. There, you see, the raw extremes… those are what I saw.’

Janer watched her as she stared into the descending night. Perhaps she was a bit deranged. He did not want to openly call her a liar.

Keech shook with fever. His nerves were regenerating very quickly and when he could stand the pain no longer, he shut down some of the connections to — and in — his organic brain. He did want life, but he wanted sanity too. Even so, with connections closed off, he felt like a diseased wreck. His entire body was delivering to him the message that he was full of infection and decay, and that he was falling apart. The physical evidence of this was how he had swollen, and the plasma leaking from his skin and a creamy fluid oozing from his nose. The cleansing unit was humming now as it worked hard following the nanofactory programme. A pool of volatile balm had puddled on the rock around his knees, having leaked from the holes lasered in his torso. These holes were now filled with nubs of veined, purplish flesh, and a messages light was clamouring for his attention. He decided to view the said messages and turned the system back on.

N-FACT MESSAGE: BALM DRAINED. WATER REQUIRED — 8 LITRES.

The nano-changer program was fully online. Keech got unsteadily to his feet, picked up the cleansing unit and walked down to the edge of the rock. He stared out across the slow dark roil of the sea and thought for a moment that something further was wrong with his vision, until he realized that night was descending. He looked down and saw below the water’s surface, whelks of one kind or another, clinging to the stone, their shells seemingly formed of coiled gold and veined jade. He drew his pulse-gun before kneeling and dropping the unit in the water. No reaction from the whelks. Perhaps they became somnolent in darkness — or perhaps they did not consider him edible.

Immediately the unit began taking in water. He could feel it suffusing his flesh and cooling him. Was his bone marrow producing red blood cells now? What would happen first? In seeming answer, his arms began to itch intolerably. As he scratched at them, grey skin began to slew away. His hope of seeing pink skin underneath was dashed when flesh as white as fish meat was revealed. He stopped scratching and inspected his fingernails. Two of them were bent right back. He shook his hand and they fell out, pus now leaking from the ends of his fingers.

N-FACT MESSAGE: DANGER — TANK AMNIOT UNSUITABLE. ELECTROLYTIC REQUIREMENTS…

Keech turned the message off. He wasn’t in a tank. The nearest electrolyte he could immerse himself in was this sea, and that seemed a suicidal idea. He’d just have to pray that Erlin could help him. When his irrigator automatically moistened his already wet living eye, he reached up and unplugged it. Some things seemed to be working, anyway. Once the unit stopped drawing in water, he stood, picked it up, and headed unsteadily for his scooter. The nanites could still work on his body while he was in the air, so there was no point in waiting here any longer. He mounted his scooter and dropped the unit between his thighs. From the comlink came that familiar strange buzzing the instant he turned it on.