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.