‘You all right?’ Erlin asked.

‘Fine,’ said Janer, getting unsteadily to his feet.

She and Ron helped him to the rail then down the ladder to the rowing boat. Once he was in the boat he felt queasy again and leant over the edge in readiness to be sick. The lights from the braziers aboard the ship glinted on the oil-dark wavelets. Janer’s nausea subsided and he trailed his hand in the cool water. When he went to take his hand out, he found that it seemed to have stuck.

‘Janer!’ Erlin shouted.

A glistening body half a metre long came up with his hand and he could feel something grinding through his tendons and bones. There was a horrible keening coming from somewhere and his hand hurt very badly. Ron had hold of him and suddenly he was in the bottom of the boat, the glistening thing writhing beside him. Ron’s boot came down on his wrist and Ron’s hands closed like vices on the leech. It came off stripping skin and Janer saw pink flesh and abraded bone before the blood welled up. I should faint now, he thought, but there was no relief until they got back to the ship and Erlin slapped a drug patch on his neck.

‘You know what this means?’ she asked as he went under.

Janer didn’t know what she meant. All he knew was that the pain was going and that he felt kind of funny.

A hornet came to his bedside as he slept and it watched him with its compound eyes.

The ship was dark and it stank, and it was crawling with the teardrop lice that fed on the scraps Prador dropped when feeding. Her own cabin had extra lights, but these only made the lice hide in her bedding and amongst the few belongings she had brought with her, and still there was the smell and the pervading marine dampness. Knowing what to expect, Rebecca had dressed in a full-body environment suit and, on the few occasions that she slept, she slept with her helmet on. Shortly after the launch she had hunted down all the lice she could find and burnt them with a small QC laser, but soon they had returned and she became bored with the chore. Now she was just plain bored. Time to see Ebulan.

The service corridors of the ship were wide enough for second-children and blanks to pass each other — though she noticed some of the blanks had healing wounds on their bodies where Ebulan’s children had passed too close and sliced them with the edge of a carapace or some other lethal piece of shell. When she came face to face with Vrell, a first-child and consequently a larger Prador, Frisk ducked into a wall recess while he passed. The adolescent turned slightly towards her as he clattered by, with some chunk of putrefying human meat held in one of his claws. She stepped out behind him and followed, as no doubt the meat was for Ebulan. Only Prador of his age and status got to sample such delicacies, as not many humans were still bred for meat, it now becoming passé. Adolescent Prador ate only the decayed flesh of the giant mudskippers that were farmed along the seashores of their home world.

Soon Vrell came to one of the main corridors which were wide enough to allow Ebulan himself passage. A second-child saw Vrell coming and dodged to the wall, pulling itself down flat so the first-child would have to extend himself to cause any real damage. Vrell clouted the top of its shell in passing but, obviously on an errand for his father, did not linger to pull off a leg or two. It was this society — utterly stratified and utterly devoid of beneficence — that Frisk most admired about the Prador. The slightest sign of weakness was punished in the extreme. No member of the society deserved any more than it could take. And there was no right to life. She felt there was something clean and pure about it, and it was the antithesis of all those things she detested in the Polity.

Vrell drew to a halt at a huge doorway that was a slanted oval in a weed-coated wall. The doors themselves were a form of case-hardened ceramal; unpolished and still retaining its rainbow bloom from the heat treatment. They cracked in an arc off-centre of the oval and slid, turning as they went, into recesses above and below. Beyond was a chamber lit with screens and control panels that in the Prador fashion had something of the appearance of luminous fungi, and perhaps of rock-clinging insects. On a gust of warm air, rolled out the smell of sea-life, decay, and the sickly musk that only issued from adults like Ebulan. Frisk quickly stepped through the doorway after Vrell, and moved to one side, further studying the chamber as she did so.

Ebulan hovered before a collection of screens, on most of which scrolled Prador glyphs and computer code. A couple of screens showed scenes from the Third Kingdom, and were probably U-space transmissions from Ebulan’s agents there. The adult turned as Vrell crouched down to one side of him, holding up the piece of meat, which Frisk now identified as a human leg, then slid forwards, only to halt before presenting his mandibles.

‘Why are you here?’

The voice came from Frisk’s right, where three human blanks were lined up in readiness to do Ebulan’s bidding. He had spoken through one of these. It did not matter which one.

‘I’m here because I need one of your blanks to assist me,’ said Frisk.

Ebulan slid forwards and presented his mandibles to Vrell. The adolescent dropped the meat across them and scuttled back. It was well for adolescents to be cautious: adult Prador were not averse to, in fact very much enjoyed, eating their own young, as this was the way they thinned-out the weaklings. As Ebulan sliced the meat and chewed on it, Frisk noted a number of screens fading behind him. Was there something the Prador did not want her to see? She turned her attention to Vrell as the adolescent backed up to the side of the chamber, his carapace scraping along the wall.

‘One of my blanks?’ said the blank to her right.

Frisk returned her attention to Ebulan. Bits of flesh were dropping to the irregular floor and lice were scuttling in to gobble them up. There were also lice clinging around his mouthparts.

‘I have my library console and crystals here with me and I need some help with some cataloguing,’ she said.

‘Which of these units do you require?’ asked the blank.

Frisk studied the four mindless humans and then walked over to a heavy-set male. She ran her hand down this one’s bare and heavily tattooed chest then into the front of the elasticated trunks he wore. The blank farther to the right had no need of trunks like these to prevent certain items flapping about, having been neutered some time in the past, probably because he was not good breeding stock. After a moment, she slid her hand out and nodded in satisfaction.

‘This one will do,’ she said.

‘He is fully functional,’ said Ebulan. ‘You may take him, but be sure he is returned to me fully functional.’

‘Come with me,’ said Frisk to the blank, and headed for the oval door. The blank followed her, doglike, as she went through. Ebulan watched her go then turned slightly towards Vrell and waited. The adolescent shifted nervously, picking his legs alternately from the floor before finding the nerve to speak.

‘Why does she require a blank for cataloguing?’ he asked in the humming Prador tongue.

‘She does not. She is bored and requires a male blank for the purposes of recreation,’ Ebulan replied.

‘Sexual recreation?’ Vrell asked hesitantly.

‘Yes.’

‘Why do you allow her such liberties?’

‘You would find, Vrell, should you attain adulthood, that one gains a certain affection for tools one has had for some time. Also, you would understand and sympathize with the needs for… recreation.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Vrell, understanding not at all.