Free The Skinner by Neal Asher

she explained.
    ‘Harvest?’ Janer asked, vaguely recalling a previous conversation.
    Erlin smiled, turned to say something to Ron, then made for the forecabin ladder, and climbed down to get nearer to Janer. She inspected him with amused sympathy then pointed towards the stern
of the ship.
    ‘Roach is hand-lining for boxies for our lunch. Come and see, and perhaps you’ll begin to understand.’
    Janer followed where she led, giving the sail’s head a wide berth as he went. He saw now that not only did the creature control the movement of the fore and aft masts by some hidden
linkage, but it also adjusted the fabric sails with cables gripped in some of its spider-claw hands. Janer swung his gaze along the full length of the ship, estimating it to be at least fifty
metres long, with a beam of fifteen metres. There weren’t many crew visible but, knowing nothing about sailing ships, he did not know how many might be required to navigate it, nor how many
were unnecessary because of this weirdest of rigs.
    Roach was a short raggety Hooper with a furtive look about him. He sat like a pile of dirty washing at the edge of the deck where there was no rail. He glanced up at Erlin and Janer, then hauled
in the line he had trailing over the side of the ship. It came up with a boxy on the end, which he removed from the hook and tossed into the wooden bucket at his side. Boxy was an apt name for this
fish, Janer thought. It had a purple and white cube-shaped body with eyes at the front and a tail sticking out the back.
    With a gesture at the boxies already caught, Erlin asked Roach, ‘You mind?’ Roach looked sneaky for a moment as if estimating what he could get for one of the fish. He then glanced
towards the Captain, thought for a moment, and made a noncommittal gesture. Erlin picked up one of the fish.
    To Janer she said, ‘Spatterjay life forms have evolved to survive being fed upon by the leeches – to have their flesh harvested by leeches.’ She dug her finger in behind the
boxy’s eyes, hooked and pulled. The eyes, at the wide point of a small triangular head, the spine and sack of internal organs, and the tail, pulled from the surrounding cube of flesh like a
cork coming out of a bottle.
    ‘Look,’ said Erlin, and threw the essential part of the boxy back into the sea. Janer watched it hit the surface of the water and lie there for a moment. He was just about to ask
what she meant when the boxy wriggled, then wriggled again, and shot away into the emerald depths. ‘They don’t die,’ she told him, and to his horror she took a bite out of the
cube of flesh she held. ‘Here, try some.’
    Janer took the still-warm lump of flesh and stared at it. He glanced down at Roach, who was watching him with a ratty smirk, then he took a small bite and, gritting his teeth against his
rebellious stomach, chewed and swallowed. The meat slid down and seemed to settle there with a sudden heat that dispelled his nausea. He was surprised at the effect and took another bite. After
swallowing this too, he tried to identify the taste.
    ‘Spicy . . . like curry . . . and bananas,’ he said.
    ‘It’s loaded with vitamins, proteins and sugars – and the virus of course, but don’t worry about that. The virus can’t survive human digestion, just as it
can’t survive long exposure to the air. Your usual methods of contracting it are either through a leech bite or by sexual transmission.’ Erlin seemed uncomfortable at mentioning the
latter method. ‘Are you on Intertox?’
    Janer shrugged. ‘I’ll take my chances,’ he said, then remembering part of a drunken conversation the night before he asked, ‘Tell me, with food like this so easily
available, why do they bring out here what they call “Dome-grown” food?’
    Erlin smiled at a memory of her own, and Janer felt almost jealous of it. She said, ‘Dome-grown foods are Earth foods and the varieties grown here contain many natural germicides –
toxins