The Engineer Reconditioned (18 page)

"Heave, boys, heave!"

The Captain holds the Book in his hand, the proper book, the ship's book. One of the twins mutters something filthy about his continual use of 'boys'. There was no proof to the rumour, though. By slow increments and ratcheting clicks they hoist the jable shark from the sea using the same windlasses used to lower the boat. The weight heels the ship over and bloody water rains down its side. No fins are in sight, but there is time yet. Hinks hauls with the crew. Two sharks snapping at a dead one on the side of a ship is enough to pull that ship over. He knows. He has seen. In the long boat Cheyne and Pallister keep ready to drive sharks away, but only adapted squid swarm around the ship. Even so, they will not be washing their bloody hands in the water as Chaff did.

The white water of an approaching fin is seen as they lower the corpse onto the deck and open the blood drains. Cheyne and Pallister soon attach lines to the boat and the new shark only manages to nudge it once before it is hauled up the side of the ship.

"Open her up, boys. Let the shark soul free."

It is Cheyne's honour under the sight of the Barrelman. He uses the hull metal great knife in one flamboyant slice. Steaming guts avalanche across the deck at the unzipping. The opening of the stomach at the last spills a hundred weight of turtle crabs, an almond-shaped shell the size of a barrel, the remains of Chaff and, what appears to be the corpse of a small boy until it convulses and spews salt water from its lungs.

"Shark soul," hisses Pallister as the Captain hauls the boy to his feet. Hinks glares at the Knifeman, then turns to one of the twins as she speaks.

"Sea people?" she wonders.

Hinks stares at her. Is she Jan or Char? He has never known as they deliberately confuse. He turns back as the Captain pushes away damp fair hair to inspect the boy's neck for gill slits.

"Not of the sea people," he tells the crew. "Where are you from, boy? How is it you come live from the belly of this shark?"

The boy stares at him with blue and innocent eyes and Hinks does not like the expression that twists the Captain's mouth.

"Deal with this shark. I shall question him in my cabin."

He pulls the naked boy away and the twins nod an affirmative to each other.

"That is not a boy. That is the soul of this shark come to avenge. We must cast it back in the sea."

"Pallister, why so sure of this?"

"Always 'release the soul' and we see nothing. This time, something. A reason for the words. We always throw the innards and their contents back though they could be used."

" 'Tis no soul of a shark." They turn as the Barrelman comes upon the deck. "Yet it seems not likely it is a boy."

"What should we do?"

"As the Captain instructs. As always: by the Book of the Sea." With great knives and small knives they cut the shark. The innards go back into the sea after, with cursory ceremony, the remains of Chaff. The hull thumps with movement below the waves: squid and the butting of sharks. Barnacles never grow on the hull of a jable hunter, but weed often grows on the teeth left jammed into the wood.

They skin the shark and the Barrelman takes its skin to preserve and prepare for lamination — one of the many uses of a skin with a colour and a texture called jable. The salted meat they store in the barrels he marks, the fat is rendered for oil, and the cartilage stored in brine for later use in the manufacture of glue. When all is done, they wash the deck clean and replace the blood drains. All around the sea foams and great dark bodies surface and dive. All around, fins.

Night seems to drive the last of the sharks away or perhaps another jable hunter has cast a bucket of blood into the sea. Hinks knows there are those who prefer to hunt by the light of the moons, those who make it a mystic thing of ceremony and sacrifice, and toast each kill with shark's blood drunk from whelk-shell cups. As he pulls in nacreous glitters of green mackerel and snaps their necks with his forefinger and thumb he wonders what questions the Captain might be asking now. It has been some time since he took the boy to his cabin. No matter, no concern. Hinks casts his line of lures back into the sea as the two yellow moons the twins have their names from break over the horizon like glaring eyes.

"He buggers an innocent while Pallister talks of shark souls, Cheyne sharpens all his knives, and you catch mackerel we don't need."

Hinks stares the pile of mackerel next to him then looks up at one of the twins. "Are you Jan?" She ignores the question. "In Piezel they would crush his testicles and throw him to the jable. We sit idle while he gratifies lust."

"Many would, given opportunity."

She steps more into the moonlight and stands with her hands on her hips. "I might give you opportunity, Hinks. It is for me to say yes or no and for you to accept or not. This boy has been given no such choices."

Hinks reels his handline back onto its frame then climbs tiredly to his feet. It is his responsibility, just like with Chaff. They all know what the Captain is doing and they all know it is wrong, but only he can do anything, by the Book.

"Back me up then. Where is your sister?"

"She is testing the point of Cheyne's most important knife."

Hinks is surprised. In all the time the twins had been on board he had never known either of them to bed another member of the crew. The rumour was that they preferred their own sex, but then that was always the rumour when men's egos are bruised.

"A strange night, and I wonder why you told me ... Is she recruiting to your cause?"

"No and yes. She has been with Cheyne since the season began and he is in agreement about the Captain."

"I heard nothing."

"Cheyne does not gossip."

Hinks shakes his head. Of course Cheyne does not gossip. Cheyne does not speak at all and has not spoken since the excision and cautery of the fungal infection in his mouth and throat. Through the double moon shadows they walk to the forward hatch and the single stair that goes down to the Captain's cabin. As they slip below decks, Hinks shakes a biolight to luminescence and carries it before him. Soon they are before the door of shark skin stretched on its frame of manbone. They listen. Nothing. Hinks reaches to scratch on the door, but it opens, unlatched. They enter.

"It is murder. Murder has been done here."

Hinks nods agreement, the rich smell of slaughter in his nostrils. What else could this be? The Captain lies sprawled across his bunk in a tangle of bloody sheets. Driven up through his groin and into his guts is a spike made of solid glass, like an icicle. But maybe this was not the first cause of his death, since neat as a cylinder his right eye-socket has been reamed out to the back of his skull. Hinks knows the horrible fear of the supernatural. They heard nothing, perhaps a shark soul was loose on this ship.

"Man overboard!"

The yell is from above and breaks into their nightmare reverie. Hinks gains some command over himself and pushes the unnamed twin back to the door. What now? Another murder, or a murderer seeking to escape? Past the twin he rushes up on deck. The Barrelman is there leaning over the rail and Pallister is beside him.

"Who is it?" Hinks asks.

"I do not know. I do not know." The Barrelman's voice is strange, as if surprised at itself.

"Pallister?"

"I don't know, but he is done." Pallister points to the floating body and to the fin slicing moonlit water just beyond it. Hinks watches the inevitable: the fin disappearing, the body snatched from below.

"Dead or unconscious when he went in, like as not," says Pallister, then after glancing to the twin, "or she."

"Get the crew on deck, all of them you can find, find that boy if you can, bring them all, bring them all here. Murder has been done. The Captain is dead in his cabin and who knows who the shark took." It takes little time for them all to be roused and assembled as many of them were coming onto the deck as Hinks made his speech. He counts and he appraises. Cheyne and the other twin look flushed. Cook has certainly been sampling the sea apple wine again and the others seem no different from normal. All are here but the boy and the Captain. Hinks wants to be sure, though.

"I want the ship searched forward to aft, every unsealed barrel checked and every sail locker. Check the crow's nest as well." He turns to the Barrelman. "What say you, Barrelman?" The Barrelman shakes his head and goes below to his own kingdom. Cook follows him.

No boy is found, just as Hinks expected. He speaks with Pallister and Cheyne as allies always and knows a loneliness when he realises he cannot trust even them. In the end he must ask those questions.

"Pallister, did you throw the boy back into the sea?"

"As the Book is my witness, Hinks, I did not."

Hinks inspects the rest of the crew who stand nervously around. Which one of them? Which of them committed murder? It could be any, even the twin who had him go to the Captain's cabin might have come from there earlier.

"Somebody cast the boy into the sea, dead or alive, no difference. Somebody has murdered our Captain."

"The boy," says Pallister. "The shark soul. It killed him and returned to its element."

"You talk like a Reader," spat one of the twins.

Hinks stares at her. "Which one are you? Tell me now."

"I am Jan."

The rest of the crew study her carefully. So, Hinks decides, Jan is the one with her hair tied back and Char the one who was bedding Cheyne, this night, anyway.

"She may be right, Pallister. What matter? If what you say is true then there is no blame or guilt to attach anywhere and I will be glad. But I must be sure."

"What are your thoughts?" asks Pallister.

"I think one of you killed the Captain, and the boy, in disgust," he gazes at all the crew, "or fear," he now looks particularly at Pallister. "And the boy was thrown into the sea to bring belief in your story."

"It could have been you," says Jan.

"Yes, but I know it was not," says Hinks. "Now you and Pallister will come with me and we will once again view the body before it is passed on to the Barrelman. The rest of you prepare sail for the morning wind. We head directly for Piezel."

"What weapon is this?" Pallister braces his foot against the Captain's groin and tries to pull the spike from him. His hands slip along the glassy surface. "Too deeply imbedded, perhaps in his spine. It was put there with some force." Hinks, suspicious of every action now, tries to remove the spike himself. He cannot.

"And what weapon caused this?" asks Jan, pointing at the neatly reamed hole in the Captain's head. Hinks has no answer for her.

"Hinks." Pallister has moved back by the door and is pointing at the floor. "This is not the work of a man." Hinks looks down and sees a trail of slime leading to the door. He turns to the table beside the Captain's bed and picks up the Book of the Sea. As he opens it to the first page there is a scream of horror, turned rapidly to one of agony.

Crew, and he lies in a pool of blood upon the deck. Hinks turns him over gently. Holes have been bored into his neck. Another scream from below just as four more of the crew come onto the deck, amongst them are Cheyne and Char. Cheyne snatches up the metalled great knife and stares at the hatch to the crew quarters.

"What is it? What is happening?"

"Something ... Something killing them," Char replies to her sister.

"What does it look like? Tell me, tell me now," demands Hinks.

"It is a man sometimes, and it crawls. There is slime and a tube like a wood bore ... I cannot ... " Hinks curses and in the moonlight he opens the book. He searches down the first tissue-thin page and finds the sea-life section: Dangers of the Sea. There are more sharks than he realised, giant squid and flatworms capable of ingesting a man. It is there. He finds it only a few pages in under 'Sea Fages and Related Mullusca'. There is a picture of the glass dart; a love dart used during mating. It is barbed hence the reason Pallister could not remove it. Another scream just as Hinks reads the section which tells him of the shell they found in the stomach of the shark. Just then the hatch crashes open and out come the Barrelman and two others. All now watch the hatch and wait for what might come next. Pallister has armed himself, and the remaining great knives are shared. Only Barrelman, Hinks, and Jan are without weapons.

"What is it Hinks? Tell us?" asks Pallister, terror barely suppressed in his voice.

"It is a Fage. A kind of mollusc. That was its shell we saw inside the shark," Hinks tells them all, and some of the terror departs. It is named. It is in the Book. Hinks continues to read, moving his finger from word to word, some of them unfamiliar, metamorph and shifter, syphon and ovipositor. He begins to feel a greater dread. The boy ... He turns the page and sees the picture of a man, and something next to it that is half a man.

"Dear God ... "

He looks up directly at the Barrelman standing behind the shoulder-to-shoulder crew. Out of the corner of his eye the Barrelman returns his regard, but does not turn his head. His head is deforming, pushing forward and taking on a goatish shape, lips peeling back from something that glistens. The Barrelman is not. It is the Fage.

"Look out!"

The man directly in front of the Fage turns, screams, falls to the deck with half of his face ripped away. His screams take on a liquid quality. Back into the glistening head part the glassy tube of the syphon retracts. All of its skin now glistens. Arms merge with sides, legs merge, now a standing slug shape it falls on Char, who is locked in place in her terror. It slides over her fast. There is a brief struggle. It leaves her slime coated and spurting blood from the hole bored through her ribs into her heart. There is a scream, fear, rage. A great knife pins the Fage, goes right in. The reaction is horrifyingly quick. A slime coated tentacle exudes then cracks like a whip. A man smashes through a rail and goes bonelessly over the side. The great knife falls out, leaving only a white mark on the grey skin. That cry again. It is Cheyne. He comes in with the steel great knife, ducks the tentacle then lops it off. He cuts again and the Fage falls in half. He cuts again and again in his rage. In moments the deck is spread with writhing pieces of slimy flesh no larger than a man's head. Cheyne drops his great knife, kneels down by Char. He cries silence.