The Black Lung Captain (9 page)

Hodd looked bewildered. 'Ears?'

'The singing, Hodd. Wil you bloody can it? They can hear you five kloms away.'

'Ah!' said Hodd. 'Yes, I see. Quite right, Captain. Just trying to keep up morale.'

'And you're doing a fine job,' said Frey. 'Just do it quietly, eh?'

Hodd put a theatrical finger to his lips. Frey turned away, eyes roling skyward, and moved back down the line. Grist gave him a smoky grin around the butt of his cigar and Frey fel into step next to him.

'Bit of a character, ain't he?' Grist said.

'You know, the animals wil smel that cigar al over the mountain, too.'

'Risk I'm wiling to take, Frey. A life without cigars ain't one much worth livin', if you ask me.' He started to laugh but ended up in a coughing fit that had him bent double. When he was done, he stood up and wiped spittle from his beard. He regarded his cigar with a teary eye. 'Tobacco. She's a harsh mistress.'

'We've al got our vices,' said Frey.

'Aye? What's yours?'

'I've plenty. But I reckon Rake tops the list.'

'A card player, eh? My men are partial to a game, but me? I'm no gambler. Don't have the luck.'

'It's not luck.'

'Wel, whatever it is, I ain't got it.'

'Some days I don't, either,' Frey admitted.

'But you keep goin' back, don't you?' Grist laughed. 'The things a man does to make himself feel alive.'

Frey looked at the man next to him. He liked Grist. There was something solid and impressive about him, a grizzled heartiness in his manner. He had a way of including people that made them feel almost grateful for it. He reminded Frey of Malvery, except he apparently didn't spend his whole life arseholed on grog.

'I've been thinking about that lately,' he said. 'Don't you sometimes wish you didn't
need
to? Like, you felt alright
without
al the smoke and the booze and the cards and everything else? Seems like some people manage okay.'

Grist's brow furrowed. 'Men like you an' me, Frey, it don't do us no good to be thinkin' that way,' he said. 'We live for today. The past don't mean nothin', and the future ain't worth a damn. We could al be dead by sunrise.' His dark eyes found Frey's. 'Ain't that how it is?'

Frey stared at the ground. 'Yeah. That's how it is.'

'Anyway, what's wrong with a little fun? You want to live for ever or somethin'?'

'Actualy,' said Frey, 'I kinda do.'

Grist belowed with laughter, which set off another coughing fit. 'Me, too!' he wheezed, slapping his leg, coughing and laughing fit to burst. 'Me, too!'

The rain lessened slightly as night fel, but the clouds stayed in the sky, and there was no light from the moon. Under Hodd's direction, they pitched camp on a patch of high ground, and stretched a tarpaulin between several trees to act as a roof. Hodd arranged stones to make a raised platform and somehow managed to get a fire going on it.

Jez had to admit, the man knew his survival skils. And he stil appeared confident of the route. His manner and his history inspired mistrust, perhaps, but a man didn't spend a lifetime as an explorer without picking up a few things.

The rainforest came alive at night. The treetops were busy with shrieks and wails. Insects clattered and hummed al around them. Bats flitted through the air.

Repulsive things slunk and crept.

Jez was among the volunteers for first watch, but she intended to take second and third as wel. Her eyesight was better than anyone else's in the dark, and she had no need of rest. Usualy she took pains to disguise her condition from strangers. She went through the motions of eating and sleeping so as not to arouse suspicion. But, just this once, she'd plead insomnia. The afternoon and evening had passed without incident, but she didn't trust their luck to hold. She didn't want anything sneaking up on them tonight.

She stood with her back to the camp, her head bare to the elements, black hair plastered to her forehead. The hood of her coat was down, so as not to block her peripheral vision. Behind her, the men were cooking up the last of the soup. Some were huddled close to the fire. Others had already crawled into their sleeping bags, exhausted.

Standing there in the rain, she tried to bring on the trance. When she slipped into that strange state of hyper-awareness, she'd
feel
the forest instead of merely seeing it. She'd be able to sense the animals and identify' any threats. In the past, she'd even shared their thoughts. Once, during a gunfight, she'd read a man's mind, just before she shot him.

In the chaos of sounds from the forest, she fancied she could hear the cries of the Manes. But no trance came. She couldn't make it happen. They took her without rhyme or reason, and she didn't have the trick of controling them. Perhaps she never would.

She heard someone approaching from the direction of the fire. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Silo. Only his beak-like nose showed from the shadow of his hood. Without a word, he sat down on a rock next to Jez. He drew a shotgun from under his coat and stared out into the forest.

They watched the forest together in comfortable silence for a time.

Some of the crew found Silo awkward to be around, but Jez rather enjoyed his company. Everyone else talked a lot, usualy about nothing important. Silo talked hardly at al, but she had the impression that he made up the difference by thinking.

'There's rage in my family,' he said, out of nowhere. Jez didn't know what to say to that, so she didn't say anything.

'My papa had it,' he went on. 'And his brother. And their papa, and
my
brother. Al them dead now, but they had rage. It'd just come explodin' out o' them, and you better not be in their way when it did.'

Jez was mildly surprised that he'd volunteered the information. She didn't even know he had a brother. She'd been aboard the
Ketty Jay
more than a year, but she stil knew hardly anything about him. Neither did anyone else, as far as she was aware.

Silo propped his shotgun against a tree and began making a rol-up, hunching forward to shield it from the rain. Jez wondered if that was the end of the conversation, but then he spoke again.

'My brother, one time, he got the rage when we was al chained up in the pens. Broke his ankle against the manacles, tryin' to get at some feler. Weren't fit for work for a long while after, but he was a strong 'un, so they wanted to see if it'd heal.' He licked the paper and sealed the rol-up. 'Didn't. Bones knitted bad, gave him a limp, so they kiled him.'

There was a hiss of phosphorus as he struck a match, then the smel of acrid smoke.

'Papa died the same. Picked a fight with some feler, Murthian like him, while they was haulin' rubble in a quarry. Smashed his head in with a rock. Sammies took him away and he didn't never come back.'

Jez hadn't heard Silo talk at such length before. She was reluctant to speak in case she interrupted his flow, but she felt the moment demanded something.

'Sorry about that,' she said.

'Nothin' to be sorry about. There's what is, and what ain't.'

Jez wished she'd kept her mouth shut. For a while, there was only the sounds of the forest and the rain. Then:

'I got the rage, too.'

Really?
she thought.
You? I've never seen you anything but calm.
But she didn't say a word.

'Used to be proud of it,' he said. 'They was afraid of me when I was young. I'd take on kids twice my age and give 'em worse than I got. Every day, I was angry. Angry that they kept us in chains 'n' pens 'n' camps. Murthians ain't like the Daks. Five hundred years and they stil ain't tamed us.' He took a drag and blew it out. 'Lately, I got to thinkin' maybe that's the problem. We're so damn proud of defyin' the Sammies, they'l never let us out from them chains. Bit more smarts and a bit less angry, and they'd think we was tame. We'd be like the Daks, in their homes, runnin' their businesses, lookin' after their children.' A pause. 'That's when we'd kil 'em.'

Jez kept her eyes on the forest. She'd always felt a faint bond with the Murthian. Both of them, in their own way, were exiles from their own race. She'd always suspected he felt the same. He spoke to her most out of al the crew, though usualy about matters of engineering. Machinery was their common ground.

Now it occurred to her that Silo was reaching out to her. Offering something. Making a connection.

'There was a woman, once,' he said. 'We was both young, but old enough. I hadn't seen anythin' like her. Thought there weren't no finer thing in the world. And she thought likewise about me. That's what she said.' He shook his head, blew out a jet of smoke. 'Hard-headed woman. Loved her fierce but she drove me crazy.

We'd fight and make up, over and over. Harsh 'n' sweet, harsh 'n' sweet. She had a temper, too.'

Jez had a horrible feeling she knew where this was going.

'One time we both went too far. The rage got me. Only for a second, but that was plenty. Won't never forget the look on her face, her holdin' her cheek like that. Saw it in her eyes. I'd lost her, right then. Didn't matter how I begged nor pleaded, she wouldn't look at me again. Never.'

Why are you telling me this?

'Damn, I was sick with the rage after that. Like an animal. They had to chain me down for a week. But the madness passed, and when I was wel again, things was different. Every time I saw her after that, with some other man in the camp, I'd think:
That's what rage did for you.
And I swore I wouldn't never let it out again.'

'And did you?' Jez had to ask.

'Only one time,' he said. 'Years later. Day I escaped the factory where they had us makin' aircraft. He had a gun, I just had fists an' teeth. Don't remember much of what happened after, but I'm here and he ain't.' He flicked away his rol-up, and it was extinguished by the rain. 'Sane man wouldn't have charged him like that.

But I weren't sane, not then.'

He got to his feet. Standing, he towered over her.

'Point I'm makin' is, you ignore your bad side, it eat you up. Like my papa and my brother. You got to face it. You got to make it a part of you,
control
it.

Maybe one day it save your life, yuh?'

Jez looked at him, startled. How did he know? How did he have any idea of the struggle within her, the push and pul between human and Mane?

He answered her question before she could ask it. 'Think I don't see you walkin' off on your own, worryin', workin' things out? I see you. You the same as everyone else, Crake 'n' me 'n' al of us. Think you better off keepin' it al to yourself.' He turned to her, eyes dark in the shadow of his hood. 'You ain't.'

Jez met his gaze. Of al the people to tackle her about this, Silo was the most unlikely. Of course, the others knew she was different, but they avoided the issue on purpose out of respect for her secrets. She'd been grateful for their consideration, but it also left her entirely alone. It occurred to her that she was doing exactly the same thing to Crake. Of al the crew she was the only one who knew the grief he carried, yet they'd only ever spoken of it once.

Perhaps she
didn't
have to deal with this al alone. Perhaps Crake didn't, either.

'Thanks, Silo,' she said.

He puled back his hood and turned his face up to the rain. Water trickled over his shaven scalp. 'In Samaria I was a slave,' he said. 'In Vardia I'm the enemy.

This might be the first damn place I ever been where I'm just a man.'

He smiled. An actual smile. Jez almost fel over with the shock.

'Freedom makes a feler talkative, I reckon,' he said.

That was when the screams began.

Seven

A Commotion In The Camp — Crake Is Missing —

Frey Takes To The Trees — A Worrying Discovery

Frey dreamed of a meadow on a hil. He dreamed of a young woman with long blond hair and a smile of such innocent beauty that it melted him to see it.rey dreamed of a meadow on a hil. He dreamed of a young woman with long blond hair and a smile of such innocent beauty that it melted him to see it.

Trinica was her name. They were mad with the joy of first love, swept up in each other. He chased her through the tal grass, but she was always one step ahead of him, laughing. Finaly he caught her, and she turned in his arms, her nose an inch from his as she leaned forward to kiss him . . .

Then she was screaming. Her mouth stretched open, grotesquely wide, exposing rotted teeth. Her breath stank of decay. Her green eyes darkened to black.

Hair came away from her head in clumps, the dying locks slithering to the ground. He struggled franticaly to let go of her, but his upper arms were gripped by some invisible force. She shrieked in his face, features distorted with horror, her skin white, corpse-like. Frey shrieked with her.

He thrashed awake to the sound of screams, shouting, rain. His arms were trapped inside his sleeping bag. Trinica's howling stil echoed in his mind.

Rain hammered against the tarpaulin overhead. A fire flickered nearby, smoking up the air beneath their little shelter. Dark figures moved beyond it, barely visible in the downpour. Frey looked about, trying to reassemble his memories, and found himself in a lumpy, tangled landscape of empty sleeping bags. He'd gone to sleep as soon as he'd had his dinner, exhausted by the afternoon's trek.

What in damnation is going on?

'Over there!' someone cried. One of Grist's men.

'Over where?'

'That way!'

'I can't bloody see where you're pointing!'

'That
way!'

'Which way is
that
way, shit-wit?'

Frey scrambled out of his sleeping bag, puled on his boots and snatched up his revolver. Then he puled his cutlass from where he'd lain next to it in the night, and thrust it into his belt. It wasn't the smartest thing to sleep with a naked blade - he didn't want any accidents where bits of his insides ended up on the outside -

but he was paranoid about someone stealing it. That cutlass was his most precious possession after the
Ketty Jay.
a daemon-thraled weapon given to him by Crake as price for his passage. It made even an amateur swordsman into a champion. Which was good, since Frey was very, very amateur.