Involution Ocean

Chapter 13 A Conversation with a Young Nullaquan Sailor

The illness vanished almost immediately once we were out of Glimmer Bay. We did not go to Perseverance after all.

Three weeks into our fifth month at sea we discovered a pod of whales and slaughtered all day. I think we attracted upwards of two hundred sharks.

We butchered the whales more quickly than seemed hu­manly possible. Everyone was pressed into the effort. Even Desperandum wielded bis mighty axe with the rest. The crew wore cleats on their shoes when they attached the hoisting hooks; a single slip would have sent them into the rending jaws of the sharks, and not even Desperandum’s vindictive lance could have saved them in such an eventu­ality.

No matter how quickly we pulled our massive victims onto the deck, their bellies were still ripped to oozing tat­ters by the scavengers. Several of our men were grieviously bitten by pilot fish; one lost a finger. We hacked and butch­ered and hoisted all day, and the sulfurous fires of the try-pots wore kept burning far into the night, staining our white sails with a thin coat of soot At last the crew fell into their bunks like dead men.

Next morning Desperandum officially announced that the holds were full. The crew pulled off their masks for a brief moment to give a single cheer, then walked into the galley tent to settle down to a gala breakfast.

Despite the vastly increased workload that this day of celebration cost me, I was in a good mood. Dalusa, her scouting trips no longer necessary, worked hard at my side. After numerous false starts she was showing promise of be­coming a talented cook. Besides that, I had four flasks of quality syncophine hidden securely in the kitchen, surely all that I could possibly smuggle off planet.

Later that night the crew began to drink heavily. It seemed that only one of us was not swept away by the holiday mood: Captain Desperandum. The captain had been sulking in his cabin for the past few days, perhaps ill from his arm, which had still not healed. I got stumbling drunk, and Dalusa went to talk to the captain. She never drank alcohol, and the sight of drunkenness made her un­easy. She could not accustom herself to the altered behav­ior patterns.

As we sailed on toward the Highisle it became obvious that something was occupying the captain’s mind. Days passed, and the crew settled into a dumb torpor, whiling away the hours with scrimshaw. Not so Desperandum. He paced the triple deck restlessly, scanning the horizon. On one occasion he even climbed up to the crow’s nest, though the mainmast groaned alarmingly under his weight.

On the morning of the seventh day we spotted another whale. To the surprise of everyone, Desperandum ordered the crew to pursue it. They were happy to do so; everyone aboard was suffocating with boredom. Desperandum called me to his side.

“I knew we’d find one more,” he told me quietly. “I need this whale for science, Newhouse. For knowledge. For human dignity. I won’t be kept in ignorance, you see. I can’t allow it. I have to take this opportunity; I’ll stake everything on it. You’ll see, John.”

As we drew closer to the whale Desperandum took one of the harpooneer’s posts himself, although it was against all custom. “Steer as dose to the monster as you can, men!” he shouted at us from behind the gun. “It has to be done with one shot.”

Desperandum anointed his harpoon with his own blood and loaded the gun. The whale was unusually skittish; it sounded well before we were in range. Desperandum second-guessed it with uncanny accuracy, however, and it surfaced almost under our bow. The captain aimed deliber­ately and fired into a weak spot between two sections of armor. The whale gave a single blood-choked shriek and dented the Lunglance’s bow with its tail. Desperandum had fired with telling effect, and the crcature died in less than a minute.

Desperandum lumbered across the deck and shouted, “Now, menl Haul it on board before the sharks can bite through its hide! But use the slings, not hooks. I don’t want any more holes in the beast.”

I had been wondering about those slings. Using them was slow and clumsy. But strangely, the sharks, which ap­peared in under five minutes, seemed less than enthusiastic. A trio of them swam alongside the Lunglance, just out of reach of our whaling spades. They seemed to be watching and waiting.

Desperandum did not give them a second thought. As soon as the whale was on deck he pulled out the harpoon with his own hands and began to give orders._The harpoon stab was lengthened into a six-foot slash in the animal’s left side. The crew cut through the tough flesh and cartilage between two of the ribs and, under the captain’s directions, they began to hollow out the creature, throwing its intes­tines overboard to the suspiciously languid diaries.

Desperandum pitched into the work with the eagerness of a total fanatic. When he rolled up his sleeves I saw that the long festering slash on his arm was finally healing.

It was exhausting work, and it ate up the rest of the day. I brooded on it after the rest of the crew had gone to sleep. It was not only the operations on the whale that bothered me. Several times I had seen Desperandum step back from the work to converse with Murphig. Murphig could not reply, of course, wearing his dustmask, but he certainly seemed to listen attentively.

It preyed on my mind. I couldn’t sleep. I got up, dressed, put on my mask and crept quietly up the stairs for another look at the whale.

It was only a dim bulk in the starlight on the deck over our starboard hull. As I moved quietly between the sleep­ing tents I noticed the blurred glow of a lantern behind the monster’s flukes. I crept closer. Suddenly I heard some­thing metallic bounce on the deck and roll off over the railing into the sea. The sound came from the other side of the whale. Silently, I ran forward and flattened myself against the shadowy side of the monster. As I moved cau­tiously toward the source of the light, I heard something that startled me: the sound of a real human voice, undistorted by speakers.

“You’re going to give me some more of what was in that bottle.”

It was Murphig’s voice. I moved closer, crouching, till I could look over the flattened flukes of the dead dustwhale.

“I will not buy it,” Murphig said tightly, and sneezed. He pressed his dustmask against his face and took a deep breath. There would be a trace of dust between the mask and his face, but his hairy nose could probably handle that He had a harpoon in his other hand.

Calothrick’s peeling mask hid his face, but I could see his fear from his posture. He had backed away a little and had his opened hands slightly spread before him, palms downward.

“My addiction was your responsibility. I’m not the fool you think I am . . . off-worlder.” There was hatred in Murphig’s voice. He took another breath; distorted shad­ows touched his face from the lantern on the deck. “You’re as guilty as sin, you galactic.” A breath. “Oblivion will take you. I want you to think of that.” Breath. “We have achieved perfect stability. While you may live for hundreds of years you can’t maintain the same personality, sinful as it is. We both know that in a few years you will manage to kill yourself. You will be dust and less than dust. Even your culture will be rotten and forgotten. But we’ll be alive and unchanged. And stable. For millions of years. Until the very sun goes out. And even then our ship is waiting. Do you see that little star up there? The one that moves? It’s a small one. You probably never even noticed it. Oh, it’s an old ship. Not like the kind you galactics ride. But it’s still in orbit, waiting our call. Someday it will hold us again. And well still think the same things, and believe in the same God, and be the same people. And all of us will be remembered. Not like your people. And we’ll find another planet, maybe your planet, after you are all dead. My des­cendants will dance on your ashes, Calothrick. If you live long enough to get back to that planet. Which you won’t unless you give me more of that drug. That’s the Confeder­acy’s drug, isn’t it? You don’t have to say anything. I know it is. You alien parasite. Either you give it to me—" he shook his harpoon “—or it’s through the guts and over the side for the sharks. Everyone will think you fell over­board.”

’ The young Nullaquan sailor had grown hoarse over the last few sentences. The dust was affecting bis throat Sud­denly he began to cough rackingly and pressed his dust­mask to his face. He was still choking softly when Calo­thrick attacked him. The harpoon bounced off the whale and tumbled to the deck, and the mask flew from Murphig’s palsied hand to land somewhere behind him. As the two grappled and fell to the deck Calothrick struck Murphig once, twice in the side with what looked like the open edge of his hand. Murphig squirmed aside, though, and got one foot braced against Calothrick’s hip. He kicked out. Calo­thrick reeled back, hit the railing with the small of his back, overbalanced, and fell overboard without a word or even a muffled scream.

Immediately there came the sounds of sharks ripping him apart That shocked me. I hadn’t expected the sharks. They had expected Calothrick, though; and I knew the cold horror of their patience and their silent tryst with death.

Murphig was coughing his lungs out on the deck, on his hands and knees. He looked badly shaken. If he kept coughing he was going to wake the sailors. Then all hell would break loose; Murphig would probably confess every­thing.

I walked around the whale. Murphig didn’t notice me until I handed him his mask. He pulled it on immediately. No doubt he had a lot to say to me, but he couldn’t say it with his mask on. I indicated the kitchen hatch with one extended arm.

We walked to the kitchen hatch. Murphig walked halfbent, his arms wrapped around his sides. He seemed cold, or maybe he was stunned by the murder. We went down into the kitchen, Murphig first. I was carrying the lantern with the flame set low.

Murphig was still hugging his sides. I offered him the kitchen stool and he sat down, pulling off his mask With one hand. I sat on the counter top. Murphig’s eyes were glazed yellow with Flare withdrawal. I took off my mask, and set the lantern on the counter by my side.

Murphig looked up at me. There was silence for a few moments. “Let me have some of the black juice,” Murphig said.

“All right,” I said, getting up with deliberate wariness.

Murphig only shivered.

I uncapped one of the bottles and set it down within his reach. “I’ll get you an eyedropper,” I said. As I ducked under the counter to get it I beard him grab the bottle. When I came up he was wiping his mouth.

“Hey!” I said. “Be careful. That stuff is almost pure—it’s a lot more powerful than you realize.”

“Well, that’s good!” Murphig said loudly. “I need its power now.” His eyes gleamed in the lantern light and a deadly flush had come to his cheeks.

“Not so loud,” I said.

Murphig lowered his voice and began to speak very rap­idly. “When I was a little boy in Perseverance I used to look down at the ocean and wonder what was under it, and I would ask my father, and he would say, ‘Son, pray to Peace or Truth to allay the pain of your lack of under­standing,’ and I did, and it didn’t help. That was when I committed my first major sin. It was on Remembrance Day, almost ten years ago. I was at the memory banks learning the stories of some of the dead. One of the men I had to remember had vanished at sea. That made me cu­rious and I perverted the use of the memory banks. I looked through them for those who had vanished at sea. Not to remember their spirits, but just for me. And there were hundreds of them. Sinners mostly. Sinners like me– .”

“Oh?” I said. “Go on.”

“That was only the beginning,” Murphig said feverishly. “I studied history. I neglected the story of the True Faith for other things, the mysteries. Like the Sundog Year, and the douds of St Elmo’s Fire. There are dozens of things. The floating islands. The things that crawled up the cliffs during the Hungry Year. Then there was that thing that washed up in the Pentacle Islands, in the old days. They said it was an old dead anemone, all battered and thornless—but there were no stumps. Just four digits like fingers, huge things, and a thumb and a kind of boneless wrist. Fifty feet across. It was a hand, a giant hand” Murphig was breathing hard. He was still clutching his sides.

“I stopped praying. That was a sin, too, my despair. I thought no Fragment would listen to me or my impieties. I tried everything, too—I. even prayed to Growth, like the rebels did. That was my worst sin. I’llnever forget the shame. But that didn’t stop me. Instead I went to sea for myself. With an alien captain. I wanted to find out, you see? I would have been ashamed to go to sea with pious men.

Then there was the drug. For a while I thought some Fragment of God had sent me that keenness of mind. But instead it was you. You and your friend.”

“That’s true,” I said frankly. “It was a criminal act It seemed necessary at the time, though.”

“It was a sin. You should be punished.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “And no doubt you could cause me a great deal of pain and embarrassment by revealing my actions. However, you just killed a man, so now you’re equally vulnerable. That leaves us at a stalemate. I suggest we leave justice to the afterlife. You see how much simpler that is?”

“Your arrogance has made you deaf and bHnd,” Mur­phig said. “You don’t know what the captain is doing—if you could hear his insane plans you would know. I’ve sinned many times, but never like that. Never like he wants me to. I could never do what he asks—not against Them.

“We have a common enemy, us Nullaquans and Them. It’s you, you aliens. They need us to cover them up, to hide them from the prying eyes of men. And we need them, to get people like you, to stop you from changing us, so we can still keep faith with God. IVe ginned against stability, and so have you. But I admit it freely. I repent! Do you forgive me?”

I looked at him, feeling an odd stirring of sympathy. “You look terrible, Murphig. Don’t worry yourself—it’s destructive. Calothrick stumbled overboard, and there’s plenty of Flare for both of us. We should be allies; we have more things in common than our sins. Now we’d better get you to your bunk.”

Murphig had a coughing fit and there was a wetness to it that alarmed me. “Do you forgive me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Grant me grace! Do you forgive me?”

“You idiot!” I said. “Of course I forgive you.”

“Thank God. I feel so sick.” He swayed on his stool.

“Look out!” I said, and half caught him as he fell off.

I eased him to the floor. It looked like an overdose—his face had turned as gray as whalehide. He was breathing shallowly. As I checked his pulse I saw a spreading stain on his left side, where his hand had hidden it as he hugged himself. I opened his jacket and shirt, quickly, and I saw the worst . . . the nasty gleam of the broken-off edge of Calothrick’s jackknife, jagged and shiny in the blood.

I grabbed the aid of the blade with the plierslike grip­ping edge of a can opener and pulled it out of the wound. I put pressure on the wound with a folded potholder, and stopped the bleeding. I propped up his feet on the lower rung of the stool to help with the shock, and when he stopped breathing I gave him artificial respiration. But he died.

“This is the worst,” I told myself. “The absolute worst” I took a small shot of Flare to stop my hands from shaking. I spread my quilt over the body and sat down on the kitchen stool to thinlr my way out of the situation.

There was no help for it I was going to have to throw Murphig overboard. I couldnt hide him anywhere safely, and there was no sense in leaving him on board with the mark of murder on his side. It was far easier to dump him, so that he could join Calothrick as another mystery of the deep. The double disappearance was not a happy solution to my problem, but it was the safest and simplest.

Once I bad made up my mindl saw no point in stalling. I took the quilt off, making sure it hadn’t touched the small puddle of blood. Then I heaved the body over one shoulder and climbed ponderously up the stairs. I opened the hatch and looked out I saw nothing suspicious, so I reeled slowly toward the port rail. I was about to dump him when I thought that the splash might possibly be loud enough to attract attention. It wasn’t likely, but I lowered him quietly to the deck and got ready to slide him out head first under the railing.

I heard heavy footsteps. A lantern flared up by the cap­tain’s hatch. I froze, but it was too late; he had been watch­ing me.

“What have we here?” the captain said.