11
Sea Leech:
upon entering the ocean, the leech’s body-shape becomes leaflike to more suit it to the pelagic life. It grows huge on a diet of flesh taken from boxies, turbul, oceanic heirodonts—anything soft enough for it to bore into with its plug-extracting mouth. By the time a sea leech becomes whale-sized, such prey is too small to provide sufficient nutrient by plug feeding. However, it would be dangerous for the leech to take prey down whole as, with the incredible durability and voracity of all Spatterjay’s fauna, that prey would eat the leech from the inside. Hunger drives the next transformation. The leech grows a sprine-producing bile duct and feeds upon whole prey—poisoning them with sprine inside its intestines. Again genetically programmed to respond to their environment, they mate only when the surrounding population of their own kind drops below a certain level (this measured by the quantity of particular pheromones in the water). Leeches are hermaphrodite: they will close against another of their kind and exchange genetic material. After this the leech dies during the process of attaching its own body-segments to the bottom of masses of floating sargassum. The segments then collapse into hard encystments, and the cells inside them turn into eggs encased in sprine jelly. Each of these hatches a diatom, which then begins its long journey to shore to become a land leech —
In his stateroom. Bloc sat on the edge of his wide, soft and unneeded bed and stared at the polished, oak-panelled wall—an occupation that seemed more and more frequent to him lately. Internally, he gazed into the red tunnel comprising the third channel from his control unit. He felt that what he barely controlled there was his only option now. Ellanc Strone and those aligned with him had not needed to come on this voyage, but they had, and now their earlier complaining was turning into open defiance. Bloc realized that Strone understood Bloc’s position here; that he was isolated and could possibly be usurped. Could it be that the other reif was secretly working for Lineworld? No matter, Bloc must quickly assert full control aboard this ship, and remove all dangers to himself and this enterprise. As if to illustrate, the reason for this now appeared on his internal visual display:
OUTPARAFUNCT: B.P. LOAD INC. 15%
He had increased the amount of Intertox in his balm to a fifth, but still he was getting those warning messages. How long he could hold on before having to go into a tank he did not know, but it seemed unlikely he would reach the Little Flint before his transformation. He realized how he resented those reifs who would. He resented their knowingness, their lack of respect for him. He had done all this. This ship was his. And he refused to allow them to be so casual, dismissive and contemptuous in his presence. He stood up abruptly.
VIRAL INFECT
Again that message.
IDENTIFY he instructed almost automatically.
SPATTERJAY VIRAL FORM AI
He cleared that one, then another immediately appeared.
MEMSPACE: 00037
Annoyed, he quickly cleared that too, while considering all the potential dangers.
Strone and his followers numbered thirty-six—he had identified them all. Now, Bloc could simply order his Kladites to dispense with them, but that would not go down well with the other six hundred reifications aboard. Also the Hoopers, though primitive, were necessary at the moment and, despite the automation aboard the Sable Keech, it might be foolish to annoy them. The sails, even Zephyr, worked to their contracts for money and that was all. If they became a problem, though, this ship had the facility to sail on without them. It had the facility to keep going without any sails, either living or plain fabric. That left Janer Cord Anders and Erlin Taser Three Indomial, who he certainly wanted to keep on his side. So, no overt action on his part, but there was another way.
Bloc closed his eyes and turned his attention inward to the partitioned control unit he used to control Aesop and Bones. Those two channels were familiar and easy for him. The third channel was something else, however: a red tunnel of madness. He ignored it for the moment and turned his attention to his servants.
Bones he put on hold: utterly motionless in the corridor outside. Aesop he summoned inside. Bloc opened his eyes as the door opened and closed.
‘Summon Ellanc Strone and his friends to the stern meeting hall,’ he said.
‘You’ll not settle anything with them,’ said Aesop.
Bloc eyed him. ‘Did I ask your opinion?’
Aesop remained silent.
Bloc continued, ‘Seven o’clock this evening. When that is arranged, I’ll have another task for you, which you must complete before that meeting begins. I think you know what it is.’ He turned away, but Aesop was not leaving, so he turned back.
‘Leave now,’ said Bloc with finality, and pushed.
As he stepped off the ladder Isis Wade paused to study his hands. The human form, he felt, was interesting: perpetually on the point of toppling from its mere two limbs but never doing so. The limitation of possessing only two legs, however, was more than made up for by the complicated dexterity of the hands. No doubt, had the body he occupied actually been human rather than a mechanical construct, he would be surprised by many of its other… functions. But he was Golem and, behind all this emulation of humanity, something utterly else. He turned from die ladder and scanned the bilge.
There was a great deal down here, most of it at Lineworld’s insistence, some at Bloc’s, and he suspected there was something else that nobody wanted here… perhaps. Making his way along walkways and through hidden corridors he approached the ship’s bows. Being Golem, his hearing was superb; he could hear the beating of a human heart, hear it stop.
Wade shook his head—another human gesture, as if the thoughts in a mind could be physically shaken free. It did not work, for the fact remained that he was allowing these distractions to divert him from his prime purpose here aboard this ship. But the human dramas were so much easier…
In the twisted conglomeration of rooms, corridors and walkways below the chain lockers, Wade began scanning about himself as he proceeded. Eventually, on a grated walkway affixed directly to the lower ribs of the hull, he found what he was searching for. He stooped and picked up a pair of bloody trousers, slashed to ribbons. He shook them, and caught something that fell out: a piece of bone. It was white, with bluish striations through it, and looked as if someone had roughed out its shape from the main bone with a small drill, then snapped it out. Wade nipped it aside then peered over the edge of the grating. After a moment he moved over to one side, clicked across the catches securing one section, then hinged it up. This gave him access to what had been deposited below the walkway. Down there were many more pieces of bone, fragments of cloth, strings of fibrous flesh, a skinning knife and a screwdriver. He picked up the knife and inspected the name etched into the blade: Sturmbul. Wade accessed the list of passengers and crew he had loaded, and after a moment nodded. Gazing into the darkness, towards the chain lockers, he carefully reached out to pull the section of grating down, stood back, and headed quietly in the other direction.
Halfway along the length of the hull, Wade came to his second objective down here. The enclosed section had one metal bulkhead door with a manual wheel and a code-input palm reader. He stared at the reader for a long moment, then took out the skinning knife and inserted its blade under the small keypad. One twist and this flipped away, exposing optical circuitry. He smiled—something else he had been practising—traced the circuitry with the knife point, then selected a plug-in chip, levered it out and pocketed it. He next moved over to the manual wheel, braced himself and began to put on pressure. After a moment something snapped inside the door and the wheel spun freely. As he pushed the door open, pieces of shattered locking mechanism clattered to the floor. Stepping inside, he stooped to pick them up and toss them out of sight, before closing the door behind him.