The Black Lung Captain (21 page)

'I'm so lonely, Uncle,' came her voice again. 'I'm so lonely and it'l never end.'

'You rot-hearted bastard!' Crake shrieked into the dark. 'I loved her!'

'It's so hard to think in here, Uncle. What did you do to me?'

Crake choked back a sob.

'You should've let me die,' she said.

'I loved you! I love you!' he protested.

'How could you?' came the whisper, from right by his ear. He swung around in alarm.

She was there, reaching towards him, sodden red, open wounds pulsing with blood. But the look in her eyes was pleading.

'How could you?'

He screamed, and the light from his lantern went out.

Hysterical, weeping breathlessly, he fumbled for his matches again, but in his haste to light them he dropped them on the floor. He went down on his knees, searching. At any moment he expected to feel the dreadful touch of the bloodied apparition. But then his fingers found the matchbox, and he managed to steady his trembling hands long enough to strike one. He touched the tiny flame to the wick of his lantern, and light returned to the freezing room.

There was no sign of Bess. But there, lying next to him like an accusation, was the letter knife.

He put the lantern on the floor. Sobs racked him, each one like a punch in the chest. He stayed on his knees. He wasn't sure he had the strength to stand any more.

'I thought I could control it,' he gasped between sobs. 'You weren't supposed to be there.'

'Sssh,' came the disembodied voice. 'You know what you have to do.'

'I couldn't let you die.'

'Sssh.'

His fingers closed around the hilt of the knife. A sense of peace filed him at its touch. Yes, it would be so simple, wouldn't it? An end to the constant, grinding agony of memory.

'You've suffered enough, Uncle. It's time to rest.'

Time to rest. He liked that. She'd given him her blessing, hadn't she? And he was so very tired.

He put the blade to his neck, angling it under the curve of his jaw. One swift cut in the right place, and he could sleep. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept wel.

'Now push!' hissed the voice from the darkness. 'Push! Push!'

He felt a trickle of blood running down his throat, and realised he'd already broken the skin. He was already that far along; why not go a little further?

He took a breath, steadied his hand for the final thrust.

'Goodbye, Uncle,' said the voice.

And Crake stopped. Goodbye, indeed. With that one quick cut, he'd be leaving her. He'd be at rest. But Bess wouldn't.

And who'd save her then?

He took the blade from his throat. It fel from his hands, ringing as it hit the stone floor.

Rest. Peace. He didn't deserve it.

He got to his feet. From the dark, there was only silence.

The daemon that made him stab his niece had left him alive for a reason. It wanted him to suffer for his arrogance in meddling with forces he didn't fuly understand. To spend day after day in torment. In trying to avoid his sentence, Crake had unwittingly made it worse. By refusing to let her die he'd condemned them both to an eternity of misery. He'd only served two years, but it had almost broken him.

Yet now there was a chance of release, he couldn't take it. Not while Bess was stil alive. Bess needed him, and she was his responsibility.

He'd spent three months as a drunken vagrant before he puled himself together and found the
Ketty Jay.
Life on board had brought a window of clarity, but once the whole Retribution Fals affair was done he'd begun sliding back again. Blocking out the pain instead of tackling it. He'd always
meant
to do something about Bess, but somehow it had never happened. He was too afraid of the possibility of failure. Too scared to leave the relative comfort of the crew to strike out on his own. He knew, one way or another, that this was a task for him alone, and that frightened him.

But now it came to it, now he had the chance to give up his burden of grief, he found that he couldn't. He'd never atone for what he'd done, but he couldn't turn his back on it either. So there was only one other option. He had to face up to it, and
fix
it.

The thought lit a flame in his breast. This was his burden and he'd bear it. Suicide was the coward's way out. And Grayther Crake was no coward.

'Look what you did to me, Uncle,' whispered the voice. Crake turned, and saw her. Lying there, just as he'd found her that day, with that same look of incomprehension and betrayal on her face. Blood-soaked, gasping, paralysed by shock.

The sight brought fresh tears to his eyes. His lip trembled and he teetered on the edge of hysteria again. But he heaved in a shuddering breath, and he made himself look.

'Yes,' he whispered. 'Yes, I did that.'

He walked over to her, picked her up, and held her against him. The sodden, slight, ragged weight of her. She squirmed in his arms, trying to push him off her, but he was too strong and wouldn't let her go. Warm blood slicked his neck and hands.

'Don't worry,' he murmured. 'Uncle Grayther wil make it better. I promise I'l make it better, somehow.'

She began to squeal and shriek, thrashing in his grip. She pummeled and scratched at him. But he held her tight, tears streaming down his face, as the bloody child fought against him. The pain meant nothing to him now. He could take everything and more, as long as he didn't stop holding her.

Her screams reached a deafening crescendo, and then the darkness erupted into chaos.

'Crake!'

It was Plome. The child in Crake's arms was gone. An unnatural wind was blasting through the sanctum, a hurricane, sending apparatus crashing past him in the dark. There was a terrible roaring, and the sound of something pounding against metal.

He snatched up his lantern before it could be blown away. On the floor was a sharp length of steel, tipped with blood. His blood. A moment after he saw it, it was caught by the wind, skidded along the floor and out of sight.

He looked for Plome, and saw him, on the other side of the room. He was struggling with his control panels, lit by the faint glow from the gauges. Desperately trying to keep up the perimeter defences.

'The chamber!' Plome yeled, pointing.

Crake staggered into the wind, towards the chamber. It was rocking against its struts, dented by the inhuman pummeling from the creature within. The door was stil firmly closed. The daemon belowed as Crake stumbled past the porthole, and he caught a glimpse of a thrashing muddle of eyes and teeth in the lanternlight.

Then he was at the control panel. Fumbling fingers found a lever. He threw it.

The daemon screeched as it was bombarded with agonising frequencies. Crake leaned against the lever, his eyes closed, wishing ever greater pain on the monster in the chamber. For what it had done to him. for what it had shown him, he wanted to tear it apart. If he leaned on this lever for long enough, it would be shredded to pieces, dashed by the flux.

He wanted that. He wanted it so badly. But he had a job to do. He had people relying on him. So he took hold of the lever, and he puled it back. The wind dropped, and there was silence. Several of the electric lights came back on, flickering and crackling uneasily.

Crake brushed sweat-damp hair back from his forehead, panting.

'Are you alright?' Plome asked, from where he knelt by his controls.

'I'm alive,' he said. 'You?'

'Yes, yes, quite unharmed,' he said, his voice wavering. He brandished the pistol he'd brought at Crake's request. 'No need to shoot you, then?' he joked weakly.

'I should think not,' said Crake. He threw the lever again, out of spite, and listened to the daemon shriek for a few more seconds before he turned it off. Then he walked round the echo chamber, and stood in front of the porthole, looking in.

'Now,' he said to the daemon. 'Let's begin again, shal we?'

Fifteen

Pinn, Lost In Thought — Jez Takes A Walk —

A Fortress — Frey Has A Plan

Artis Pinn lay on his bunk, fingers laced behind his head, and stared at the metal ceiling. It was possible to see shapes in the ancient grime, if you looked hard enough. But today he wasn't playing his usual game. Today, he was thinking.

The quarters he shared with Harkins were narrow, cluttered and dirty. He had the top bunk, due to Harkins' unfortunate tendency to spasm out of bed several times a night. A square vent high up on one wal let in cool air from outside, wafting away the stench of unwashed bedding. There was a smal storage cupboard crammed with their meagre possessions, but space for little else. The
Ketty Jay
wasn't built for luxury.

Pinn had lain there for hours now, trying to make sense of things. He didn't know what this empty, listless sensation was, but he didn't like it much. He didn't want to get up. Didn't want to sleep. Didn't want to do anything, actualy. The thought of flying his Skylance failed to excite him. Even the prospect of booze had lost its charm, and he'd often said that when that day came, he'd eat a bulet. But he didn't feel much like shooting himself, either.

Lisinda,
he thought.
My sweetheart is marrying another man.

Was it even possible? He wasn't sure. After al, she'd said she loved him. Hadn't that meant anything to her? It had certainly meant something to him. It had inspired him to be a hero. It made him want to be a better man. It even made him want to stop cheating on her, although the gap between the desire and the reality was vast indeed.

How could she do it?

A sudden thought struck him, that hadn't occurred until now, even after hours of contemplation. If she was marrying another man, that must mean she'd been fooling around with him for at least a couple of months. Maybe longer. A flood of rage swept through him, and he gritted his teeth. How he'd like to get his hands round that other bloke's throat! Messing with another man's woman! Didn't he know she was taken? She'd already made her choice. Hadn't she said she loved him?

But kiling her husband-to-be would surely make Lisinda a bit sad. He'd never do anything to make her cry, and yet honour demanded he stamp his rival's face into the ground. How to solve a problem like that? It was al very confusing. He wished he had half the Cap'n's brains. The Cap'n would have known what to do.

No matter how he turned it over in his head, he couldn't conceive how Lisinda would want to marry anyone else. It just wasn't possible. She must be an innocent victim in al this, somehow. Her heart had been swayed by some sleazy charmer from out of town. Women couldn't help themselves sometimes, that was just a fact. She couldn't be blamed. She was powerless to resist his influence.

Or maybe she was being forced into it. Yes, that was it! She'd said in her letter that she was very happy, but that clearly couldn't be true. Not when her heart was with her absent hero.

His blood boiled at the thought. His Lisinda, married off to some scheming aristocrat three times her age! The kind of man who coveted her beauty because he was too old to win her by fair means. He'd bought her like an ornament to wear on his arm, no doubt.

What if she'd been kidnapped? What if the letter was her coded cry for help? She must have known he'd never believe she would leave him. It was too ridiculous. Had her kidnapper alowed her to send this letter, thinking it innocent? Had she cleverly concealed a message within the message?

He puled the letter out from under his pilow and began franticaly scanning it, searching for codes or clues. Halfway through, he froze as another possibility occurred to him.

Could it be that this was al a plan by some love rival? Perhaps
they
had written the letter, hoping that Pinn would come racing home prematurely. Then Lisinda would see that he hadn't yet become the strong, honourable and, most importantly,
rich
man he'd promised he'd be. She'd turn away from him then, disappointed.

Right into the arms of another.

He studied the letter furiously, searching for signs of forgery. What did Lisinda's handwriting look like, anyway? She'd never written him a letter before. Neither of them were much for reading or writing. Eventualy he gave up. He'd never recognise a forgery if he didn't know the genuine article.

It al made his head hurt. What did the letter
mean
? And what was this strange, aching feeling in his guts, this heaviness in his limbs, this lack of appetite? He supposed that al this thinking was making him il.

He heard a noise by the door and stuffed the letter back under the pilow just as Harkins peeped in. He was carrying a large butterfly net. His eyes roamed the room nervously.

'Pinn. Er . . . you wouldn't happen to ... I mean, have you seen the cat?'

Harkins' eyes widened as he saw that the grile had been taken off the air vent and was lying on the floor. No matter how many times he fixed it back, Pinn always took it off again, complaining that it made the room stuffy. It also alowed Slag to creep into the room and suffocate Harkins, which was part of the fun.

'You took the grile off,' Harkins accused.

'Yeah,' said Pinn.

Harkin's lip quivered. A determined look crept into his gaze. Pinn could see him visibly plucking up his courage. Alsoul's bals, was the twitchy old freak actualy going to try to stand up to him?

'Now you listen!' Harkins said sternly. 'I've had enough of this! This is my room as much as yours, and I—'

'Piss off, Harkins, I'm thinking,' Pinn snapped.

Harkins flinched at the tone of his voice and scurried out. Pinn sighed, settled himself back on his bunk and stared at the ceiling again.

Lisinda. Sweetheart. What are you trying to say to me?

Jez clambered up the ladder to the upper gantry of the engine room, trying not to spil the mug of coffee in her hand. The engine assembly was quiet, but it stil radiated a faint warmth. A sleeping monster of pipes and black iron.

Silo had a panel off and was poking around with a screwdriver. She squatted down next to him and put the coffee by his side.