Arran found himself standing upon a mesh-constructed spiral stair, lit by §-glow and built round the inner circumference of what seemed, looking down, a bottomless circular well. Above his head, it appeared to soar without limit. Of a sudden, jets of scalding, chemical-saturated water sprang from the walls. All round him as they climbed, people began awakening, scrubbing, shouting and laughing at one another. Unacquainted with the conditions responsible, Arran wondered how they had come to look and smell so filthy. He later learned that this rude bath was a luxury occurring once every hundred watches.
He began to imitate their motions, if not their bawdy enthusiasm, rediscovering many bruises and other injuries. Much of what washed off him onto the treads was dried blood. The rest, the residue of countless indignities, scarcely bore thinking of. In too few moments, before he had finished, the water turned frigid, shut off, and drained into the glowing depths.
The stair—termed with astronautic correctness the "ladder," a nicet}^of which Arran was presently ignorant— brought them to another hatch which swung open before them. Dripping men and women filed out, every one, he observed, bearing long, thin, ragged scars across their backs, arms, and shoulders. Many limped as if from ill-healed injuries. More than a few were missing ears, toes, or fingers.
An interstellar vessel, Arran knew, having constructed models of such ships, consisted in the main of a hull, in this instance some thirty measures in diameter and half again that length, fashioned, to a greater or lesser degree, after the unprepossessing proportions of a peasant's water bucket, and containing within its volume space for crewbeings and cargo. This, the area corresponding to the surface of the water within the bucket, was the maindeck.
142 HENRY MARTYN
No clue was to be had whether it be day or night upon deck. This was the merest matter of convention aboard even the most luxurious of passenger vessels. Nothing but the continuous multicolored flickering, tending toward blues and greens, of the §-field illuminated the scene Arran saw before him as it performed the dual tasks of suspending the effects of inertia within the starship and keeping out the vacuum and cold of the surrounding Deep.
At the ladderwell exit, two fat women sat upon stools behind makeshift tables. In the uncertain light they appeared, if such were possible, even older than Old Henry. Arran remembered his friend and mentor with a heartsick pang. One woman fingered folds of rough greyish fabric piled upon her table. As Arran passed, some of this was thrown at him and struck him in the face.
"Look lively, lad! Fresh meat, eh?" In quick appraisal, the larger of the women eyed recent injuries which, in addition to his expression of confusion, made his status obvious. "Did a right thorough job, they did."
The women looked at one another, the big fat one frowning in what looked like anger, the small fat one shaking her head. The big one spoke again. "Looks like our old friend Jimbeau's style. Best get into them togs, *fore you tempt him further. Or any of our other lads."
Even had he been inclined, Arran was given no chance to reply. Pushed by the slow-moving queue, chilled and impatient to exchange their scarred and thin-ribbed nakedness for clothing, he stumbled into what proved a crude, ill-laundered coverall. Still damp and barefoot, he wiped his hand down the front of the garment, closing the seal—already it had begun to chafe his damaged flesh—and staggered forward to discover what would happen to him next.
A few shuffling paces, and Arran had arrived at the other table, upon which were stacked dozens of small, white foam-plastic boxes. An odd aroma, savory but revolting, arose as they were handed out by the second and smaller of the fat women, merciful in her silence, one box to a crewbeing. As he passed the table, Arran accepted the box offered to him. It was snatched by the man ahead of him, who added it to the one he had been given.
"Hey!" Arran reached for the box. The man, twice Arran's weight, struck him backhand across the mouth. He stumbled into a knot of crewbeings and almost fell. They shoved him back at the man, and, of a sudden, Arran recognized him. It was Paddy, one of the three who had assaulted him.
"Keep your whiny mouthings to yourself, chicken, or you'll get another!"
Shaking with fear and rage, Arran started forward, reaching for the box again. "Give me that, or I'll—"
"Silence upon queue!" Another voice joined the shouting, somehow to Arran dreadful and familiar. "Ye there, newboy! 'Nother breach, I'll have y'lashed t'hatch cover for yer first dozen!"
Arran turned. The man shouting at him wore a uniform, baggy pantaloons which might have been the bottom half of a coverall such as he himself had been issued, and a frayed, dirty, stiff-collared tunic. He carried a peculiar object in his hand, nothing more than a short section, forearm-length, of wire-reinforced kefflar cabelle, such as was used in heavy farming operations at the Holdings—another pang beset him—with big, tight knots worked into its end. Of a sudden, the boy understood the scarred flesh all about him.
Sufficient reason there was for him to recognize the voice. It belonged to the man his other tormentors had called "Stewie." Nevertheless, Arran pointed out the crewman who had deprived him of his food. "But he—"
The uniformed figure swung the cabelle's end, slapping its knots into a palm hardened by years of such demonstration. "Two chances for fresh meat, by Ceo's naddies, more'n most get. This ain't no lady's pleasure charter where figure-headin's worst y'can expect, outa sight from refined sensibilities!"
The man placed his accent upon the first, elongated syllable of "refined." As Arran was to learn, punishment was a constant topic of conversation aboard the vessel. He had already discovered, unable to avoid overhearing the bathing crew, that one of the mildest forms, sometimes reserved for officers, was "figureheading." The victim was tied to the sculptured mascot at the forward tip of the mast, where fluctuations in the §-field singed skin, hair, eyebrows, or—
providing opportunity for wagers—seared eyeballs to opacity with a rare flicker or devoured half an individual's face. For crewbeings, this was too gentle and private. Their punishments occurred in public, where they served as examples to others.
"Along now, faggot," he was commanded, "or 'tis dead meat ye'll be!"
Without a word, Arran turned and began moving once again. Ahead of him, Paddy swiveled, held one of the precious boxes out, and leered at him. "I'll give back half, chicken," the obscene whisper issued from one comer of his mouth, "'pon condition y'pay later, 'pon gundeck, after watch."
Still shambling along, Arran looked up at the man towering over him, and also spoke without moving his lips. "I will pay you back, right enough, with interest, in my own time. Keep looking over your shoulder. You are going to be the sorriest turd who ever lived."
The man raised a work-hardened hand, then hesitated, whether because of the boy's determined scowl or the ludi-crousness of his threat, Arran could not tell. The villain looked down at the undersized, beaten-up twelve-year-old, lowered his fist, and laughed. Something of a nervous edge spoiled the menace of it. He turned his back and moved along. Thus passed Arran's first and second conversations aboard the starship he had stowed away upon.
As he shuffled forward again, his thoughts, as they ever would in evil circumstances, buried his immediate fears of their own accord and focused upon practical points. Overhead, seen vaguely by the half-powered §-field, the ship's single mast stretched into apparent infinity. Here and there along its great length, a full klomme in extent, a blob of color presented itself.
In a sense, Arran was finding that his education as a sailor had begun before he set foot aboard this unhappy vessel, before tragedy had overtaken the life he had earlier known. What he had learned at the behest of Mistress Lia began to serve him as he struggled to survive. Arran knew something of ship-handling (like all boys he had thought to take it up, although never to begin in precisely this manner), enough to
realize what the faint glow of the deckmesh—and the fact the deck remained beneath his feet—implied.
In this, the thirty-first century (co
mmemorating what event not even scholars were certain), starvoyages were undertaken at velocities greater than that of light, through the application of §-physics, in essence a matter of employing the manifold and subtle aspects of ordinary matter and energy. As any object might, during a less-sophisticated era, have been rendered "weightless"—by removing it from gravitic influences or manipulating it properly within them—so, upon account of §-physics, an object might analogously be rendered inertialess by enveloping it within a §-field. Thus, no longer subject to what were termed "einsteinian effects," starsailing vessels traveling from system to system depended upon the tachyon winds, streams and currents of massless, faster-than-light particles which, like cosmic rays, were and are a feature of the natural fluxes present within the galaxy.
Therefore, Arran reasoned, although still orbiting the planet—his beautiful moonringed Skye, now doubly lost to him—and not yet under weigh, the ship had a sufficient number of tachyon-filled starsails set aloft to maintain a small but appreciable spiraling headway against a springline angled to the anchoring cabelle of the lubberlift from the upper hull, establishing the illusion (and, illusion or not, useful and welcome) of gravity underfoot.
All of this, however, and more that he knew in some lost comer of his mind, was only empty theorizing, of less practical significance than certain barbarous everyday facts. This being a first watch during planetfall, new and untried crewbeings were assumed to have made their way aboard in one manner or another. A third pause now was made before tasks were assigned the group of which Arran found himself a disoriented and reluctant part. Crewmen and women of the watch were ordered to face away from a back-slanting wall two measures and a half in height encircling the deck they stood upon, pierced by windows with drawn curtains and topped by a rail. Arran knew the upper area to be the quarterdeck, whence the starship was commanded. Beneath it lay officers' quarters and caliprettes for the bow chasers.
146 HENRYMARTYN
projectibles of lesser power than those upon the gundeck. All hands faced inward toward the mast, through the base of which they had arrived upon deck, round which, at two man-heights, hung a platform. At its rail stood a uniformed individual who held his hands behind his back examining with contempt the specimens of humanity before him. He was gigantic, broad as he was tall, and, except for his coloring and animation, might have passed for an Oplyte.
"I be Phoebus Krumm!" he announced in a voice which matched his stature and would have been audible above the planet's most violent thunderstorm. "First oflScer and navigator of the carrack Gyrfalcon. Ye'd best mark me well, for this be the onliest warning ye'U receive."
With this introduction, he hefted an object—ridiculous as it seemed, it appeared to the hungry Arran to be a loaf of bread burnt black upon one end; a basketful stood beside the man—and hurled it from the platform, across the deck where they were ranked, and over the railed wall surrounding it. As it crossed the starship's outer circumference, it exploded with a flash and crack like lightning. Not a crumb or wisp of smoke remained of it.
"It be lethal bodily to intersect the field margin." Another loaf was hurled with the same result. "Settle quarrels amongst yerselves any way ye like, so long as it don't interfere with ship's routine, but to strike an officer be death."
A long list followed of additional items—failure to obey an order, cowardice, stealing ship's property (as with fighting, no prohibition existed against stealing from another crewbeing) —most, it seemed, ending with the same phrase and the same impressive demonstration of what that meant aboard a starship. Arran had known starsailing to be hazardous; it now appeared the greatest hazard lay in the last three words of each rule being read.
At last, having emptied his basket. First Officer Krumm brushed his hands against one another. Arran's mouth had watered as he watched each loaf arc to spectacular destruction. He wondered what the exhibit was when the baker had not burnt several dozen loaves. His body sagged with disappointment at the waste and his stomach growled. The entertainment portion having come and gone, the
crewbeings queued up a final time to file before another table. Each was asked what name he—or she—went by, what his position was aboard the starship, and had he heard and understood the articles.
"Arran Islay,'* he answered sullenly as he reached the table, wasting no thought on evading commitment to the ship and a new life, however terrible; he was a stowaway, and far worse awaited him on Skye. For those who could barquode or make other symbols a ledger was provided. With second thoughts about identifying himself as a hunted criminal, he put down in ancient letter-writing the first name that came to him. No one could read it, anyway. His attention was fastened upon a thille recorder taking down his every gesture. In the event he should appeal some punishment of the officers, he would confront his own voice and likeness consenting to their authority. It was likelier, before it came to that, he would confront a cabelle's end.
"I've no position I know of—" Several bawdy suggestions from crewbeings crowding round him were ignored by Arran and the man behind the table. "—except, I guess, stowaway. Yes, I heard and understood the articles." He looked up. The man behind the table was Jimbeau.
He laughed. "Ye're signed up, chicken, move along!"
Without further ceremony, the watch was set to its tasks. Many of the men and women were sent up, riding Krumm's steam-powered platform the first half klomme into the mainyards, where they would continue aloft and forward on their own hands and feet. Not long afterward, a protracted, horrifying scream ciame from above. One soul returned, plummeting to silence upon the mesh, not a measure from the Skyan stowaway. Before he looked away and gulped back a sour taste, he had time to see injuries other than a crushed skull and broken neck. The man was a mass of fresh blood from waist to knees. In this manner Arran learned the fate of those manifesting fear of heights. Seized and taken up, as this one had been, they were forced to balance the whole watch, hands tied behind them, with the organ which made them male tethered to the yard. Did they lose their balance, this was the result.
For Arran's part, someone threw a clutch of dirty rags and brushes at him, pointed to a section of deckmesh, and gave
148 HENRYMARTYN
him to understand that the rags and brushes were to be rendered even dirtier. Through that long, painful watch, he labored at the most menial tasks imaginable, all with a light head and growling stomach. It was the first time in his life, even as a forest refugee, or afterward upon the greenway where he foraged for himself, that he had ever been hungry. This, in addition to the injuries and indignities previously inflicted upon him, made him slow to absorb what he must learn, awkward in its execution, and earned him many blows until, had he been keeping track, which he was not, he would have lost count of them. He drew small comfort from observing that he was not being singled out, that these attentions were lavished upon one and all, without discrimination.
According to the first ofl&cer's dissertation, sickness among crewbeings, while not a capital offense like so many other transgressions, was punishable as disobedience; hard work and sweat being considered sovereign remedies for every laborer's malady. Complaining of work could be—often was—rewarded by having a wrist bound to an ankle and being required to work anyway, even if it meant going aloft. Those suffering rupture or broken bones (both epidemic aboard starsailing vessels) were compelled to continue their labors. Did they collapse, a common form of resuscitation was "striping," the soles of the feet being lashed until they bled. Individuals thus treated were slower for a time, but thought upon their work and nothing else. Malingerers might be fined their ration of food and water, even if they happened to be dead.
In the beginning, no one save task-masters assigned to his instruction told him anything, not even what he must know to do his duty. In this, he soon found, all aboard had the advantage of him, for gossip had spread through the Gyrfalcon. None among his fellow sufferers had not endured similar ordeals, nor remained ignorant of what he had experienced in
his first hours aboard. Common affliction failed to render them more sympathetic to his plight. In fact, as he discovered, much the contrary was true. Men and women alike—save one—deemed it a precious opportunity, choosing moments when officers were not watching to taunt him by mock endearment, foremost among them
"newboy," which was plain enough, also "faggot" and "chicken," whatever they meant. He dare not bend over without bracing himself for a pinch or probing hand. Even the one—the boy was never certain who he was; he had appeared as no more than a looming shadow as Arran, who had learned better than to look up, devoted his attention to the deck—did not seem much help at first, for he only whispered enigmatically and moved'on.
"Did y'know, newboy, that the knee be the weakest part of the body?" Arran pondered this odd lecture in anatomy for hours, believing it applied to his own knees, bruised and bleeding from deckwork. None saw fit to inform him that, according to their view, it had been his free choice to sneak aboard. That he must pay (however ill-informed his choice, whatever consequence fell due, however dear the coin he paid in) seemed to one and all no less natural—perhaps more so—than breathing. Thus, in the first hours which determined his survival, before he could move again with relative ease (a condition he was encouraged to with many a kick and cuff—and worse—through that first endless watch), self-education was a matter of sink or swim, work or starve, and starve in all probability in any case. Foremost, he was expected to learn to perform at the bidding of another or to perish.
Coordinated Arm 01: Henry Martyn Page 16