Petrogypsies (19 page)

Big Mac flung his harpoon. I drew back and was about to let fly, when Sprocket’s tongue slapped me lightly on the chest. The length of it wound around me, sliding up my body until it reached the harpoon and curled around it.

I got the idea. I let go of the harpoon and Sprocket whipped off into the darkness with it.

“Go get him, boy!” I shouted hoarsely. “Now you got something to do it with!”

It was downhill from there for the sea monster. Between us all, we’d messed it up good. Sprocket put the finishing touches to it.

He drilled it to death.

* * *

Shortly after the sea-monster-attack part of the day ended, we got back to the submarine adventure part again. We were still far from shore in the middle of a hurricane.

Sprocket blew the air out of his bladders and dove for the bottom. Doc found under his bed, miraculously unbroken, the bottle that we’d been passing around. The same bunch of us congregated again in Doc’s room and passed it around while Sprocket headed for bottom.

After a few sips, I started to relax. The hard part was behind, I figured. Then the sphincter in the ceiling blew loose.

I went from leaning comfortably against a wall to drowning in the darkness within two breaths. Doc and Razer gagged and choked somewhere nearby. The flood swirled me against the ladder, and I managed to grab one of the rungs as it went by. The ladder was directly underneath the high-pressure jet of water blasting in through the sphincter. For a second, it dwindled to a trickle, as Sprocket tried to tighten down again, then spurted out again to a three-inch-wide gout.

Sprocket had been weakened by the fight with the sea monster, and he couldn’t keep that sphincter ring muscle tightened down completely against the outside water pressure.

Without even thinking about it, I lunged up another couple of rungs and plunged my fist through the sphincter. I forced it through the ring muscle until I was up past my elbow. Sprocket’s muscle tightened down around my biceps. With something other than itself to clamp down on, the sphincter was strong enough to shut out the water.

I hung there while the room slowly drained. We later figured out Sprocket sucked it in through the tip of his tongue, then pumped it into a bladder through his internal valve system.

Within a couple of minutes, Doc found a five-inch bull plug in the iron room. After I pulled my arm loose, we forced it, rounded end first, against the incoming water until it fit snugly in place of my arm. The sphincter clenched around it just fine.

I sat down on Doc’s bed, trying to flex some life back into my paralyzed arm. Sprocket had clamped down on it pretty hard. We all watched the bull plug for signs of another leak.

“Might look through the iron room some more,” Doc suggested to Razer. “We better be ready if another one gives way.”

A couple did, mostly up front. Sprocket had gotten so wrenched around by the sea monster, not to mention the other fun during the past few hours, that some of those muscles must have got just plain exhausted. We plugged them off, and they held. But we stayed paranoid the next couple of hours.

* * *

I was dreaming of being dry when somebody said, “Henry Lee, wake up. Something’s wrong.”

I snapped to attention and rolled out of my bed before I was awake. The words whispered to me had ruined my sleep dozens of times before. They could mean anything from stuck pipe to a flaming, explosive blowout. I relaxed when I realized where I was and that the chief had been the one shaking my shoulder. “What’s the matter? Sprung another leak?”

“No. I think we’re on shore.”

We stepped out of my room into the corridor. It was littered with sleeping bodies. Beyond a certain point, we had all been forced to quit worrying and just catch up on our sleep.

“What makes you believe that?”

He led me to the front of the corridor, just behind Sprocket’s mouth.

“Listen,” he said. “What do you hear?”

I leaned forward and cocked an ear. “A high whistling sound. Real faint.”

“Right. Like the hurricane blowing. But if we were on the ocean floor, we wouldn’t hear that. And if we were floating, where we
could
hear it, Sprocket would be rolling in the chop. He’s steady as a rock.”

“You know, you may be right, chief.” I grinned and rubbed my hands together. “We made it! Goddam, we made it!”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s a problem. He won’t open up.”

“What do you mean?”

He pulled at the thick curtain of flesh that was the back of Sprocket’s mouth. “I mean this is clamped shut. He won’t let us out.”

I looked at him pityingly. “You mean he won’t let
you
out, Chief.”

He turned red. “Maybe that’s it.”

I rapped on the corridor wall to get Sprocket’s attention if he wasn’t already listening. “How about letting us out now, buddy?”

When I tried to pry the curtain open, Sprocket refused to relax it for me, either.

“Huh. Maybe he’s still protecting us from the hurricane. I imagine it’s pretty rough out there if we can hear it from here. Probably all kinds of debris flying through the air.” I raised my voice. “I just want to take a quick look, Sprocket. Won’t even step out of your mouth.” He still wouldn’t cooperate.

“What the hell,” I said to the chief. “Might as well take it easy till the hurricane blows over. I trust Sprocket to let us out when it’s safe, and not a minute sooner.”

“It’s hard to wait, after all we’ve been through.”

“How come you’re in such a big hurry to get out there, Chief? You got some music to face, you know.”

He shook his head. “Not if I can help it. That’s why I want to leave now.” I looked down when I felt the point of the knife in his hand press into my stomach.

“Aw, Chief.”

“I tucked it away when we were making harpoons, Henry Lee. Tell Sprocket to let me out.”

“Or you’ll cut me?”

“I don’t have any choice.”

“You never seem to have any choice but to hurt people, do you? When are you gonna learn? Every time you pull this crap, you just get in further over your head. Go ahead. Cut me. I ain’t cooperating any more.”

I held my breath while he nudged me with the point again. I guess I was still being a dumb ol’ country boy. I couldn’t make myself believe he’d actually stick it in me.

After a second he sighed and pulled the knife back. “I can’t do it.”

“Good. Now, let’s go back, and—”

“But I can slash my way out of Sprocket if I have to,” he interrupted. The edge of the knife moved to press against the curtain. “Tell him to open up or I swear I’ll make my own opening.”

“Chief, for the love of—”

He jabbed the knife into the curtain. Then again. Sprocket moaned. “Open the goddam curtain!” he screamed. He stabbed a third time.

The curtain relaxed and the chief pulled it open with his free hand. I watched Sprocket’s blood drip onto the hallway floor.

“You won’t get far, Chief. It’s all been a big waste. Everything you’ve done.” Behind us, half a dozen hands woke up and watched us. The chief ignored them.

“It wasn’t as easy as it should have been, that’s for sure.” He undid two of the buttons on his shirt. The leather bag containing the emeralds hung around his neck once more. “But a half a million dollars should make it worth the effort.”

He nudged me into Sprocket’s mouth. The curtain closed behind us. I started to make a move in the darkness, but the knife pressed deeper into my side.

“Open wide, Sprocket,” the chief said. He poked with the knife again. “Time for me to check out. Open up, Sprocket! Don’t make me use the knife again.” Sprocket’s mouth opened.

Sprocket stood right inside the seawall, not a hundred yards north of the Bali Room. I’d been right about the serious major hurricane weather. The wind screamed into Sprocket’s mouth, driving with it rain as cold and hard as frozen buckshot.

Suddenly my ears felt as if ice picks had stabbed into them. I yawned enormously and they popped. The chief did the same, keeping the knife firm against my side.

“You won’t get twenty feet in that,” I shouted to the chief.

“Not your problem, Henry Lee. So long.” He stepped off Sprocket’s lip and staggered as the full force of the wind hit him. It shoved him ten feet, then knocked him down.

Sprocket’s mouth snapped shut before I could see whether he made it back up.

I thought about trying to convince Sprocket to let me go after him. Then I thought about where the chief must have gotten the emeralds from, and forgot about everything else.

Doc was lying with his head in a pool of blood when I tore into his room. He was still alive, though.

* * *

The chief had bashed him pretty hard. We begged with Sprocket to let us get medical help. But he wouldn’t open up, even when we got abusive. He plain refused to let anybody out.

I’m ashamed of the memory, but I was thinking about poking the curtain with a knife a couple of times to change his mind, until Doc came to on his own.

He said we should wait. He didn’t know either why Sprocket was being such a pain in the rear about it, but we were all alive so far because of him. Best to trust him a while longer. We waited over nine hours. Doc seemed to have nothing worse than a terrible headache and a superficial gash. The first aid book listed all the symptoms of concussion and internal hemorrhaging, and he didn’t appear to be possessed of any of them.

When Sprocket’s mouth finally opened and I stepped out, the hurricane had moved on, and a crowd stood around Sprocket. Star and Sabrina and the other girls from Lady Jane’s crew were right at the front of the crowd.

Star tasted as good as I remembered.

* * *

We told the DPS troopers about the chief being on the loose, armed and dangerous. They identified him an hour later as the mystery patient in the intensive care unit at UTMB Hospital, just one floor below the ward Doc and a half-a-dozen other hands from Sprocket and the ship had been checked into for observation.

Star and me went down to see the chief. He’d been found unconscious in the street by a Texas Ranger who was on the lookout for looters. The hurricane had finished tearing up the island only thirty minutes after we came ashore.

The chief had made it almost two blocks before he dropped.

Me and Star held hands and looked at him through the thick glass window. They had him isolated in a huge pressurized vessel, with only one husky male nurse sitting beside his bed reading a book.

The intern standing beside us made a mark in the folder he held. “Interesting case,” He looked over at me. “Oh, not that unusual, clinically speaking. But the circumstances … are you friends of his?”

Star squeezed my hand.

“We know him,” I said.

The intern pushed his glasses up closer to his eyes and looked as knowledgeable as he could. “Lucky we got him into the re-compression chamber as quickly as we did.”

“Re-compression chamber?”

“You people were with him, weren’t you? I heard part of the story. About how your Driller walked ashore. Hasn’t anybody told you anything?”

“We been busy with another injured friend.”

“Is it true that your Driller decompressed you himself?”

I must have looked totally confused. He proceeded to explain about their theory of what had happened. The chief had a severe case of decompression sickness, otherwise known as the bends. When undersea divers go down past certain depths and stay too long, the gases in their bloodstreams are compressed and concentrated because of their increased partial pressures. When the divers surface, unless they do it in stages, the gases expand inside their bodies and cause the bends. Air embolisms in the wrong body organs can kill. The lengthy pauses on the way up give the body enough time to throw off the excess gas safely.

Sprocket had apparently been forced to increase the internal atmospheric pressure after the fight with the sea monster, in order to somewhat offset the water pressure trying to broach his hull. The chief forced his way out right after we got to shore and suffered a bad case of the bends. We stayed inside, trusting Sprocket, and he decompressed us safely.

The medic pushed his glasses up on his nose again and peered at me. “The amazing thing is that your Driller knew to do what he did. I’m told there were some sailors with you. Did they instruct him about the proper procedures and timing?”

I shrugged. “Nope. They just mostly slept through the whole thing. Sprocket just knows how to deal with pressure. Downhole or underwater, I guess it don’t make no difference to him.” I didn’t say it, but what I figured was that whoever had made his kind had thrown in some features we hadn’t known about before.

“Too bad your friend didn’t stay in with the rest of you. We don’t know yet how serious the spinal cord and brain damage will be, but it doesn’t look good for him right now.”

“It hasn’t looked good for him for some time now,” I said.

The chief began to convulse. He died a few hours later.

In-Between

I almost broke my face when I stuck my foot in the hole and tripped. Doc and Razer and Sabrina laughed at me while Star helped me get up. My fault. I knew better than to walk around the pasture without keeping an eye on the ground.

After a second, one of the culprits ambled up and demanded to be petted and stroke by us all. Munchkin had dominoed right in the middle of the hurricane. According to Star, her crew got nearly as tensed up as Sprocket’s crew was at the time. Must have been some hairy maternity adventures there.

She’d birthed four healthy Drillers, two males and two females. A big litter.

Her and Sprocket made a handsome pair, nuzzling together in the pasture, watching the kids frolic. They were all little whirlwinds, squealing with baby enthusiasm as they charged around the pasture. Each was about the size of a grizzly bear, but as friendly and cute as a collie pup.

Trouble is, they wasn’t housebroke yet. The whole pasture was a mine field of holes. They all drilled. Not to find oil yet, or even water, since they couldn’t get much depth. Just for the sheer pleasure of drilling.

One of them, who’d already acquired the name of Spivey, wandered over and cuddled up against Razer. Razer climbed on top of him and they wandered off. Sprocket’s eyelid opened lazily when I rubbed it. He hummed a greeting. “You gotta control those little monsters,” I said. “I damn near wrecked myself getting here. Have ’em do it over in one corner or something.”

Sprocket watched Spivey and Razer rolling around in the grass. His lips flapped derisively at me. He wasn’t gonna rein in his kids. Birds got to fly, Drillers got to drill. We both knew that.

Doc squatted and poured himself and Sabrina a couple of cups of coffee from the pot hanging over the fire. “Looks like Spivey and Razer might make a good team,” he said to Sabrina. “Razer’s gonna have to settle down a bit, but I believe he’s got the stuff in him to work out. I’m gonna miss him when he’s gone.”

Sabrina nodded. “Uh-huh.” She looked at me. “You figured out who your new
segundo
is gonna be, Doc?”

“Uh-huh. I figured I’d make the official announcement this evenin’.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What’s this about Razer goin’ somewhere?”

Doc took a sip and squinted up at me. “ Well, hell, Henry Lee. Somebody’s gotta head up the crew on Spivey when he gets his growth on him. Him and Razer get along fine.”

“But—”

“Oh, it’ll be a year or so before Spivey’s big enough. They’ll do the basic training for him and his sibs up at Aggie Station. While Sprocket’s drill-head regenerates, I figure we might as well go to school up there, too. They got a big music competition sponsored every year by the API that I want to put my latest piece in. Besides, everybody on the crew could use some more training. A couple’a semesters of cracking the books and Razer’ll have his Bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering. He’s been putting off finishing it for too long.”

“Razer? A college degree?” My mind boggled. I knew some gypsies went to Aggie Station for schooling on occasion, but nobody on Sprocket’s crew had talked much about it. It had sounded more like vocational education than anything else.

“In a year, Sprocket oughta be ready to get back to work,” he continued. “You should have enough schooling to handle your new job by then. With me and Sprocket keeping a close watch and polishing you up in the field, you’ll make a half-assed decent
segundo
.”

My mind re-boggled.

“Who, me?” I finally squeaked.

“It’s a ugly job, but somebody’s gotta do it.”

I leaned against Sprocket. A gentle hum from inside of him vibrated against my back.

But—but—what about the other hands? Almost everybody on the crew’s got seniority over me.”

Doc looked disgusted. “We don’t go by seniority, Son, just ability. I ain’t gonna sit here and slobber all over myself about how wonderful you are, but we figure we got the best man for the job. Ain’t nobody on the crew gonna be jealous or give you a hard time. Except when you earn it. Most of us halfways like you, boy.”

I was overwhelmed. “I’m overwhelmed,” I said.

“Don’t let it go to your head. Mostly, it’s a pain in the ass.”

I gulped. “I won’t never let Sprocket down, Doc.”

Sprocket chirped to his three kids that had quietly drifted into place behind us. Three blasts of drilling mud hit me in the rear end and knocked me on my face. I twisted around and grabbed ahold of one of the tongues before it could creep up my sleeve and fill my coveralls with mud. The kids continued to spew mud out, over all four of us and each other until we were completely covered.

We wrestled with the tongues and each other for a while, with it somehow working out that me and Star mostly rolled around together, and Doc and Sabrina mostly rolled around together, and the kids mostly sprayed us all impartially.

Doc finally sat up and wiped mud out of his eyes. “I guess that’s their subtle way of congratulatin’ you on your promotion.” He eyed Sprocket. “Their Daddy is already teaching ’em his bad habits.”

He pulled a broken conductor’s baton out of the pocket running the length of his leg. “The problem ain’t letting Sprocket down, Henry Lee.” He sighed. “The problem is puttin’ up with him.”