‘Just one crystal?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said the mind, and Janer wondered if he was imagining a touch of avidity in its voice.

‘I suppose that if I don’t get it for you, you’ll get hold of it some other way.’

‘Yes,’ said the mind.

‘I’m not going to do this,’ said Janer, reinserting the bung and tapping it home with his forefinger.

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’ve worked out what you’re up to. “Get me a sample of that unusual substance in Ambel’s cabin.” Do you think I’m entirely stupid?’

‘I do not.’

Janer sat back in his chair. ‘Why do you want to go this route?’ he asked.

‘Power,’ explained the mind. ‘It was tried before using curare. That failed, and the hornets in question were wiped out. The mind concerned still hasn’t regained its consciousness. But it is the way.’

‘The same could happen again,’ said Janer.

‘Not here,’ said the mind. ‘This is a primitive society. It will work.’

‘Well, not with my help,’ said Janer. He stood, pulled the small jewelled Hive link from his ear, and dropped it in his pocket. He gazed at the two flasks of fluid out of which pure sprine was crystallizing, shook his head, then left the cabin. Once outside, he climbed up to the cabin-deck — to go and listen to a story.

‘Captain Sprage,’ said Ambel looking round at Ron. Ron nodded from where he leant against the rail. Ambel turned to face the sea again. Gathered behind him, on the main deck, were Keech and Erlin, Forlam, Pland, Peck and Anne, and behind them, the rest of the crew. Even the sail had extended its neck so it could turn an ear to what Ambel said.

‘It was him named me Ambel, and I’ve always thought he knew.’

‘We should ask him.’

‘Yes, we should — now. I’ve always been afraid to before.’

‘Is there a point to this?’ asked Keech flatly. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Ambel since mounting the cabin-deck. His right hand rested on the butt of his pulse-gun. In his left hand he held three steel spheres.

Ambel stared at him. ‘Gosk Balem was a slave, then he was slave master. He became like Hoop and his crew because that was the only way to survive here then. Slaves were regularly cored, and had their cored brains and spinal columns thrown into a furnace. It was just like Hoop to put Balem in charge of that furnace,’ he said.

‘You should know,’ said Keech, bitterly.

‘But I don’t,’ said Ambel.

‘Explain,’ said Keech.

‘You came here with the ECS force that freed those slaves that hadn’t already been cored. But you weren’t as prepared as you ought to have been, and Hoop and all his crew escaped. So Hoop, Frisk, Rimsc, the Talsca twins and Grenant escaped off-world. They left Gosk Balem behind to face the consequences of his actions. The surviving slaves hunted him for a hundred years, and he was finally caught out here, by Sprage and Francis Cojan, who later went on to form the Friends of Cojan, whom you yourself knew.’

‘I knew Cojan himself,’ said Keech. ‘He got hold of the Talsca twins and boiled them alive.’

‘I heard that,’ said Ron. ‘What happened to him, then?’

Keech turned and stared at Ron.

‘Batian mercenaries got him with a thermite bomb,’ he said. ‘But only because he allowed it. He was tired of the running and tired of the killing. He told me this only days before his death, when he transferred all his funds to one of my accounts.’

Ambel nodded then continued. ‘When Gosk Balem was caught, the first Convocation was called. All the slaves were by then captains of their own ships, and the population here was swelled by their children, and by off-worlders coming through the gate. The Convocation decided unanimously to carry out the ECS sentence of death on Balem. They didn’t have sprine then, and at Cojan’s instigation they decided against burning. They decided instead to throw him to the leeches that were swarming at the time. On the dawn of the following day, they took him to the rail of Sprage’s ship and threw him into the sea. He screamed for four hours before he went under. The Convocation was broken and the Captains went their separate ways, assuming Balem was dead.’

‘Evidently he wasn’t,’ said Erlin. Janer studied her, wondering what she now thought of her Captain.

Without turning round Ambel said, ‘No, Erlin, he wasn’t. The durability of the older Hoopers was something not fully understood then. The leeches fed on Balem’s skin and outer flesh, whittling him down until he was a stripped fish. He was just like a turbul or a boxy — only a turbul or a boxy that can experience pain. Pain of that intensity drove him insane. I have no doubt he wanted to die, yet having the fibres in him, his body could not die. He fed, on boxies, turbul, whatever. He regrew flesh, nerves, skin — regrew them, and had them eaten off him again and again. This went on for five years. In that time he died in the only way he could die. His mind died.’

Ambel gazed around at them with a haunted expression. ‘My first memory is of Captain Sprage standing over me and asking, “Jesus, is he alive?” I’d been harpooned and hauled out of the sea. I was almost skinless and had very little muscle. In places I was right down to the bone. I was told later that I then had a leech mouth rather than a tongue, and that I took a chunk out of Sprage’s forearm. They tied me to the mast and fed me mashed Rhinoworm steaks and Dome-grown corn. The leech mouth slowly turned back into a tongue. It took only ten minutes or so before my lungs readapted to taking oxygen out of the air rather than out of the sea, but it was a couple of days before I was able to scream again. I screamed for a while, but even that uses too much energy, and apparently I stopped after an hour or so. It was two weeks before I’d regrown all my skin and muscle. Sprage then asked who I was and I had no reply for him. I didn’t even have language — I had nothing. I was an infant who had to be taught not to shit on the deck. Sprage taught me how to speak, taught me how to read, how to learn. I was on his ship for twenty years before I got some intimation of who I might once have been.’

The only sound now was that of the waves slopping against the side of the ship. Peck, Anne and Pland could not look at their Captain; Forlam’s expression displayed a strange avidity; Ron was without expression.

Keech turned to Erlin, who was looking slightly sick. ‘Is this possible?’ he asked.

Erlin nodded.

‘A Hooper of Ambel’s age can’t die unless most of his major organs are destroyed simultaneously. The leech mouth was the result of lack of Earth food. It’s due to the Spatterjay virus. Not only does it infest the body, but also it reprograms the DNA of that body for optimum survival — and keeps on reprogramming. Adrift in the sea, with his muscles eaten away, he needed some way of feeding. The virus grew him a leech mouth so he could attach to other animals that got close to him.’ Erlin shook her head and stared down at the deck.

‘What about his mind?’ asked Keech.

Erlin said, ‘His nerves would have been regrowing all the time. He would have been suffering varying degrees of agony all the time that was happening to him. It would work in much the same way as the overload employed in a mind-wipe, though that’s done by shooting a full sensory overload down every nerve channel, and takes only about ten seconds.’

Keech studied Ambel. ‘Then you’re like the Talsca twins and Rimsc,’ he said, and pocketed the three spheres he had been holding.

Ambel returned his stare and waited.

Keech said, ‘The sentence pronounced upon you has been executed.’

‘Does this mean you won’t try to kill me?’ Ambel asked.

Keech stared at him expressionlessly. ‘Probably not.’ He turned and left the cabin-deck.

One after another, the blanks were now walking away from the gathered Prador towards the heavy-lifter. One of the Warden’s fellow AIs was ruminating over the huge possibilities now, perhaps, opening for such corporations as Cybercorp, and wondering if this had been the sector AI’s purpose in coming to the Prador home world in the form of a Golem — Cybercorp could certainly provide the Prador with more efficient hands than those of the human blanks, and perhaps commence trade in Golem and robot technologies. Another AI was observing that trade in such technologies would give AI a foothold in the Prador Third Kingdom, so that it would not be long until it was absorbed into the Polity. The Warden of Spatterjay acknowledged all this and shifted its attention away from the sector AI Golem and to the interior of the heavy-lifter.