Wade first eyed the row of glass-fronted lockers containing breather gear and ceramal chainmesh diving suits, then turned his attention to the flattened-torpedo submersible. He approached the ladder, climbed up to the squat conning tower, where he opened the hatch and lowered himself inside. Then, dropping into the pilot’s seat, he studied a large screen and numerous controls. After a little while he went back outside and more closely inspected the craft’s hull. Very quickly he found the harpoon ports and slidable sections covering folded manipulators and chainglass vibroblades.
‘Naughty,’ he said, and shook his head.
Lineworld Developments had certainly been out to cash in wherever possible. Wade wondered what the Hoopers aboard would have thought about them using a submersible to harvest sea leech bile ducts. No matter, since this option was now closed to them. Nevertheless, here, should anyone require it, was a perfect way of obtaining the prized poison, sprine.
He again smiled to himself.
As Aesop made his way down into the hull he felt his terror growing, but Bloc’s control of him was as rigid as a cage. Stepping off the ladder onto the maintenance deck, he observed a couple of Hoopers gazing through the protective cover over a ceramal powder forge, and wondered if the ship would soon be urgently in need of their skill if what was to happen inside it did not sink it. He knew that the hull was double-skinned, sandwiching a layer of crash foam, but would that be enough?
Eventually he made his way down into the bilge. Moving stealthily via stairs, platforms and hidden corridors, he came eventually to the area Bloc had designated: the room above the rudder hydraulics and motors where he had earlier lectured groups of the passengers. It was dark until he touched a pad beside the door, then star lights lit up all across a low ceiling, revealing the room space stretching hundreds of metres from port to starboard. Aesop had no idea what its intended purpose might be, but there were many places like this aboard. Perhaps it was for some celebration after they reached the Little Flint—though the bars and restaurants some way above him would be better for that. Aesop reached into his pocket and took out an aerosol can, and as if spraying invisible graffiti, began working his way around the wall.
‘Get a move on,’ Bloc instructed, and pushed.
Within twenty minutes Aesop was back at the door. Now, as he headed towards the ship’s bows, he began to spray also along the corridor wall. He resisted all the way, but to no avail—Bloc was not relaxing his control in the slightest. He wondered if Bloc would ever allow Aesop’s memcrystal to be recovered. Probably not, since Aesop’s mind contained far too much damning evidence. He wondered if being destroyed would feel anything like dying. At least there would be no pain this time, just physical destruction then… nothing. Up ahead somewhere: movement. The sound was like someone sorting through a huge wooden tool chest, though slightly more rhythmic than that. Suddenly there came a crash, and the sound was moving towards him.
‘I’ve done it now? he pleaded with Bloc.
There was no response from the reif. Through his enslaving link, Aesop could feel Bloc directly controlling Bones. Through Bones’s vision he glimpsed armed Kladites creeping along a corridor on one of the upper decks. The clear-up party, almost certainly. With Bloc’s attention elsewhere, Aesop could fight the control. This he did, trying to pull his finger away from the aerosol can’s spray button. With all his effort he broke through to Bloc, fed back, and managed to ease the pressure of the programmed order. His finger came off the button. But this was not enough to enable him to survive. He strained harder, trying to break the link, but it was like trying to cut through cable with a butter knife. Then suddenly he realized he was no longer walking—just standing in the corridor, straining forwards.
‘Please let me…’
He jerked his hand forward, releasing the can to send it bouncing down the corridor, just as a darkness slid, clattering, round a further corner. Aesop desperately wanted to run: he picked one foot up and tried to turn. He would have to fight for every step, yet knew he could not. There was a recess in the wall beside him—the moulding for a doorway that had never been cut through. He took one swinging, jerky step and fell into it. As he turned his head, something passed him thunderously. Aesop might well have sighed with relief, but considered it perhaps lucky he did not possess that ability, for it would have heard.
Janer, sitting in the crew mess, eyed two Hoopers gobbling down pickled hammer whelks at a nearby table. The equipment checks in the Tank Rooms now finished, Janer felt the pressure had come off him, so it was time to turn his attention towards his primary purpose for being here.
The hive mind had paid him to hunt down the Golem agent of another hive mind, who was supposedly here after sprine. He was to ‘stop’ this Golem, though being armed by the mind with a perfect Golem assassination weapon made the method of prevention somewhat implicit. Janer had his reservations about this, but he was never one to turn down money, and the venture promised to be one that might keep his perennial boredom at bay. As he saw it, he would make a serious effort to stop this Golem without recourse to the weapon. Golem were not stupid after all. Upon his arrival here he had realized the hopelessness of the task. His joining Ron’s venture was a reaction to that, as had been his attempt to return the hive mind’s payment. The mind refused it, probably hoping to persuade him back to the task. But now his hivelink had shut down and the hornets were dead. This had happened while he was with Isis Wade, a rather inscrutable Golem, and Janer was convinced Wade was the one he had been sent here to find. But what now?
Janer stood up and took his empty dish into the galley to wash it. Now, he felt, it was time for him to start trolling for information. As far as he had been able to gather, Isis Wade’s job was to monitor and keep running some of the ship’s more high-tech systems—a make-work task at best. It seemed more likely that the Golem was ensconced in his cabin, so Janer headed there.
Wade’s cabin was in the forward section, along with the quarters of those employed to oversee the more technical systems of the ship. Finally reaching it, Janer undid his jacket, then knocked on the door.
‘Something on your mind?’
Janer froze, then slowly turned. Wade was standing directly behind him.
‘We need to talk.’
‘Is that so?’ Wade stepped past him, opened the door and ducked inside. Following him, Janer wondered where to start.
‘Where have you been?’ he asked.
Wade sat down on the bed while Janer closed the door and rested his back against it. Some species of almost painful amusement flitted across the Golem’s expression. But it was solely emulation—Janer felt he must never forget that.
‘I went to have another look at that submersible. It was most interesting.’
‘In what way?’
Wade shrugged. Damn, but it was good emulation. ‘It would seem Lineworld was prepared for every opportunity to make some profit, though of course it will now profit them nothing.’
Janer repressed his irritation. ‘Profit?’
Wade stared at him directly. ‘The submersible is especially equipped to catch leeches and remove from them their bile ducts. No doubt somewhere else on board this ship there are facilities for refining sprine.’
Janer felt himself tensing up. Was that it, then — had this hive-mind agent come here to take advantage of this opportunity? Certainly, obtaining sprine from Olian’s was out of the question, yet surely one of Wade’s capabilities could obtain that substance from any incoming ship—could have grabbed some before it ever reached Olian’s?