Arran glanced back at Mr. Van Merrivine. The man gave him a speculative eye. "I can, upon the other hand, select the manner and condition of your training, Islay. And I believe I know what is in the best interest of the ship." Whistling
between his teeth, he summoned the boy who had brought Arran to the maindeck. "Pass word to Mr. Shwarts. I wish to speak with him before he takes trainees aloft. Tell him I have another for his practice squad."
Hardened as the ship's boy may have thought himself, he glanced at Arran, pity written in his eyes. He had seen crewbeings ordered aloft in a neutrino storm, when wild undulations along the mast and unpredictable vibrations in the yards threw them off into the §-field, and, in precaution, double the number were sent aloft to replace them. Once, as part of a handfiil being punished for an offense committed by one of its members (when blame could not be assigned— sometimes even when it could—such punishment was ordered to weaken mutual support among the crew), he had been required to report upon the maindeck every hour for forty watches.
The second officer seemed gratified when his victim grinned in agreement, for the man was deceived by what he took for naive enthusiasm. It had always been a mystery to him why an individual, pressed into this terrible vocation, would prefer the miserable and perilous estate of a humble crewbeing upon a starsailing vessel to an alternative which, however desperate and final, was, given the multitude of means at hand, easier and more comforting to contemplate. Perhaps a solution lay in the very peril which characterized life aboard a starship, for attrition among new crewbeings was enormous, leaving only those behind who loved life well enough to endure its agonies.
Arran may have been one such, although for him the greatest hardship he anticipated, aside from what had befallen him upon what he now knew as the liftdeck, was the utter impossibility of sleep. Not only had he other members of the crew to fear, he and others might be turned out at any time for drills or extra duty. Perhaps the boy labored beneath a burden of what he looked upon as unfinished business, to be honorably disposed of before he might, in decent conscience, consider easier, more comforting alternatives. In any event, ordered aloft despite muscles aching from the previous watch (as well as his fight with Paddy), he went to it with an outward exultation which might have surprised anyone interested
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enough to be aware of it. That his attitude actually owed its existence to the identity of one going aloft with him escaped Merrivine, despite the fact that he had sent Arran ( nor was Arran unaware of it) to die. Heading the practice squad was Gyrfalcon's third officer, Mr. Schwarts—better known as "Jimbeau."
For Arran it was a quick, easy climb up the ratlines, ladderlike contrivances anchored at their after ends to the maindeck. No crewbeing was ever sent far aloft the first time—the three great yards of the mizzentier were closest to the maindeck, not more than several dozen measures above it—intended, as the exercise was, to provide them with basic instruction in the working of the ship. Yet it was safer only in a relative sense. A fall from this height would kill with the same finality as any from the foretier, two thirds of a klomme higher.
High in the mizzentier, Arran and other neophytes were ordered to space themselves along the yards, each of three squads supervised by a seasoned hand. It was intended that they should practice furling and unfurling the starsails, and to this purpose some worn expanses had earlier been set upon this tier, great volumes of mesh sheerer and more flexible than that of which the hull was fashioned. In this they were assisted by the footcabelle, of several gleaming strands, not unlike that from which the lubberlift depended, running through stout eyes attached at intervals to the after surface of the mizzenyard, and upon which, as might be imagined from its name, they placed their feet as they hung their arms over the yard and shuffled crabwise along its intimidating length. Veteran crewbeings eschewed this artifice of amateurs, preferring to run barefoot along the smooth upper surface of the yard. With equal spirit, they scorned the ratlines and scaled instead the cabelles like vine-climbing arboreals in some storythille jungle of Arran's childhood fancy. The boy believed a long time would pass before he would count himself among their number voluntarily.
No sooner had this passed through Arran's mind when the third officer made it plain that "voluntarily" would never be a word in currency aboard any ship for which he was responsible. With a sadistic chuckle, he inspected the green
countenances of the dozen crewbeings allotted him for the drill. Strung along the mizzenyard, they clung with a loving dedication never demonstrated at their mothers* breasts. The cabelle danced beneath their unpracticed feet. None— including Arran, who, save Jimbeau, had taken the position closest to the mast (suiting the third officer's preference as much as his own)—was capable of contemplating anything except the blessed moment when they might be allowed to return to the comparative comfort and safety of the maindeck below.
"Here, timorous tartlets,'* he laughed, "is where we separates live ones from corpses-t'be!*' Swinging his right leg over the mizzenyard, Jimbeau let his left foot—bare as that of any crewbeing, long-toed, with spurred and hardened heels—slip from the cabelle. Holding the yard with his right arm, he leaned down, undid the shackle, attaching the inboard end of the cabelle to a tumbolt upon the mast and began jerking at it.
Arran was alert, fear forgotten in a wash of something hotter, cleaner than the terror which, seconds before, had dominated his being. Man and boy were blocked from sight of the others, not just by the uncontrolled flapping of the practice-sail, but by the crewbeings' fear, not a whit better controlled. Arran watched and listened, calculating. Jimbeau opened his mouth to speak, Arran could hear the preliminary catch of the third officer's indrawn breath. Before it could be completed, Arran jumped hard upon the cabelle, letting it take his weight, all but letting go of the mizzenyard.
The cabelle, no longer shackled, screamed outboard, taking Jimbeau with it. Its turnings whistling with friction, it ran through the eye between the two of them, dropping Arran his full height and whipping Jimbeau round, tearing his arm free of the yard. He hung for but a moment by the callused spur of his right heel. His own arms pained by past effort, straining with what was demanded of them now, Arran scurried up the cabelle, regaining purchase upon the yard. It was an instant which seemed to last forever: Jimbeau still held the free end of the cabelle in his right hand; his trembling left reached toward Arran; a pleading expression was upon his face.
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"Help me!" Another lifelong moment passed.
Arran whispered, "None of that, now, sweetie!" and let Jimbeau's whitened fingertips slip through the air a siemme from his own. Jimbeau's heel left the yard, his face yanked from Arran's view. Once his desperate appeal had escaped the doomed man's lips, he was silent. Accelerating as he fell—for some reason he continued holding the cabelle—his course deviated, becoming a steep curve as the cabelle, stopped at the bolt nearest Arran, shrieked as it reeled slack from the yard and altered his fall. Instead of plummeting to the deck, he swung toward the §-field. As he struck the limit of the cabelle's slack, the shackle was torn from his hand. He continued onward, outward, and—with a huge, dull poplsind a flash of light—the GyrfalcorCs third oflScer vanished, vaporized like one of Mr. Krumm's loaves.
Right, Jimbeau, Arran thought. Inside, he was empty, experiencing nothing he could have named save for the mildest sense of satisfaction. Here is where we separate the living from the corpses-to-be!
It was a philosopher of crime, renowned for intelligence guided by experience, who observed that killing is best accomplished spontaneously, when means and opportunity are present by fortuity. Never having heard this advice, Arran had nonetheless acted in a manner consonant with its sagacity.
And thus became a wolf among sheep.
Chapter XX: Krumm the Baker
This watch. First Officer Krumm had chosen a stout ring-bollard upon which to rest his enormous fundament.
He sat at the break of the c
ommanddeck, the annular structure built upon a level with the maindeck. Overhanging the circumference of the hull (providing a scenic gallery for the privileged as well as some protection for the boats) the commanddeck housed the captain, a few of his officers, and the more important passengers. Here, officers and passengers dined, in comparison to less-fortunate others, amidst formal splendor. The commanddeck lay below the quarterdeck, a railed area like the maindeck open to the stars, from which ship's operations were ordinarily supervised. Here, however, Krumm could gather about him all of the ship's boys— including the new one—for the day's lesson, and still keep an eye out.
"Now, bravos, mark me. Whatever its manifold other intricacies, interstellar navigation's the most meticulous of arts, requirin' detailed charts—" He thumbed over his shoulder, indicating the commanddeck behind him where the all-important documents, the captain's log, and instruments were kept. "—seasoned judgment, an' a knowledge of abstruse mathematics."
He was answered by a general groan of boyish distaste which a greater disciplinarian, and lesser teacher, might have punished them for. Krumm, with nothing academic in his background, harboring similar feelings upon the subject, let it pass. Properly motivated, young minds could master any subject, once they knew it stood between them and whatever it was they wanted.
"Travelers aboard a starsailin' ship—" He raised a hairy right arm to point forward, while pointing aft with his left. No blacksmith could boast muscles to match those of a man
who had spent his youth mixing and kneading bread-dough in hundred-kilo batches. "—are as unable t'see where they're goin', as where they've been."
One or two younger boys appeared puzzled. The new one just looked miserable, and with reason. Lacking a more useful aptitude, he had, the previous watch, been set to hunting clots of fangmold in the aftmost recess of the ladderwell. A carnivorous vegetable pest encountered early in humankind's exploration of the Deep, fangmold was so hardy and ferocious it had rendered even shipboard rats a relic of the past. It could be dealt with only by searching out individual clumps, pulping them before they scurried away with a cabelle's end wrapped in barbed steel wool, and soaking the remains with something noxious enough to destroy the spores, seeds, cuttings, and runners it was capable of reproducing itself from. Combating the stuff was a matter of endless losing warfare, yet it was essential, for the stuff ate anything. Without the effort expended, vain as it was, to expunge it, it would have draped the starship, mastfoot to figurehead, in loathsome, dangerous festoons. The new boy was bedraggled, his coverall shredded in a dozen places, countless smears of blood upon it and his skin. Fangmold did not bleed.
"Bear with me, lads." Krumm cleared his throat. "Even were they able, seein', in the end, proves t'be of less than no help, owin' to the laggard speed of light which lends a picture of a universe, for'ard an' aft, thousands of years outa date."
Spreading broad hands and raising his eyebrows, he looked among his students for sign of enlightenment. His explanation did not seem to have helped. Despite the simplicity of the concept, it was, at first—in particular by children of untutored farmers and planetbound fisherfolk—only grasped with difficulty. Converting his hand-spread gesture to a shrug, Krumm sighed. Taken in his youth by a raid upon his port-city home, he had killed fourteen slavers (or fifteen, the count varied in the telling) with a "peel," an outsized, razor-sharp oven spatula. Neither farmer nor fisher, at heart the mighty Krumm remained a peasant, nonetheless. He still baked, between drills, landfalls, and battles, assisted by his pair of stout, merry wives. Krumm was a patient man, with
all the time in the galaxy. Although they came to him by differing pathways, all the boys (save this latest with his snotty accent and murderous habits) were as humble in origin as himself. Allowance must be made (it did not occur to him that allowance had never been made for him) for none possessed the advantage of education. In Krumm's experience, vast and long, all would come right in the end.
"Be brave, lads, it gets worse. The degree of visual obsolescence varies with the distance. Also, some destinations an' departures are too small, dim, occluded by intervenin' gases, brighter stars or clusters, or far away t'be seen at all!" By their expressions, Krumm could tell this made more sense to the boys. They ceased their squirming and waited with what even resembled patience for him to get to something else they could understand. "Upon the face of the known Deep, an' along the more common routes 'twixt those long-settled an' more densely populated systems considered 'civilized'—"
"Beg pardon, Mr. Krumm," this from one of the older boys, less forward than he appeared, for it was not yet clear what the day's topic was to be. "Considered civilized by whom?"
"Why," Krumm answered, laughing, "by their inhabitants, naturally!" He had sympathy for the boy who had asked, both coming, as they did, from planets derided by Hanover as backwaters. "Where was I? Ah: upon more commonly traveled routes, currents of subatomic particles—tachyons benevolent, neutrinos malevolent, an' everything relevant between—and their fluctuations have long since been mapped by generations of careful (or lucky) explorers." Krumm leaned forward, elbows upon knees, whispering in a conspiratorial tone. "In the Deep as yet unknown, mappin' these anomolies constitutes the first an' most important task. The uncareful (or unlucky) wayfarer leaves nothin' behind as a guide to his successors."
This time, their reaction was a shudder. Each had heard tales from the older hands of starships disappearing. Arran, too, from Old Henry, dramathilles, and Mistress Lia's histories. They assumed new meaning, and new terror, when he could glance up as he chose and gaze out through the §-field
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—dangerous in itself, as he well knew, although designed as a protection against eternal night—into the uncaring, deadly face of the galactic Deep.
Mr. Krumm laughed. Arran had not been surprised to learn the Gyrfalcon 's second-in-command was a pastrier. He appreciated Krumm as a gigantic, good-natured, somewhat barbarous lout, this almost comical first officer whom all the crew called "The Baker." He was one whose laughter came easy and deep—Arran liked this about him—and the warmth and power of it was such as to dispel any terror ever a young boy lost sleep over. At present, although neither was aware of it, he constituted the only bright spot in the boy's life, all that preserved a remnant of his humanity. Arran's prospects for advancement may have brightened (had he cared), but, as his companions in suffering began to note, it was a special wrath which brought the misspent days of Paddy, and perhaps Gyrfalcon's third officer, to an end. Arran, they came to see, was by no means superhuman in his savagery. He, in turn, found that promotion did not relieve him of a necessity for conspicuous readiness to fight for food and a safe place to sleep.
lirumm laughed again. "Nothin' behind," he repeated, shuddering himself. "Upon happier occasions, involvin' sufficient care, aye, an' luck, vast fortunes, indeed, entire gavagin' empires, have come to owe their sovereignty, prosperity, their very existence t'this kind of esoterica. A greater treasure it is, though ye'U not believe me till you're frosty-templed like meself, than ever was hoarded by ceo or brigand!" He watched their eyes. Some lessons could never be taught, but only learned, oftentimes over and over, the hard way. To young minds, treasure was treasure. It would require years, and no small experience of life, before they came to believe him upon this point—the value of information—or even that he had been serious about it.
"Excuse me, sir," Arran, having to a degree recuperated from his labors, and emboldened by the boy who had spoken, indicated the view-distorting field which enwrapped their starship. "How is such information safely gathered?"
Narrowing his eyes, Krumm inspected the newcomer, wondering, as ever in such a circumstance, whether the question, undistracted as it seemed by the candy-word "treas-
ure," confirmed his judgment that granting this particular boy special attention might pay dividends.
"Sometimes, when a vessel's in the perilous process of feelin' her way through new territory upon her fi
gurative tippy-toes—" He made a spidery finger-gesture. All, save one, laughed at the funny little phrase coming out of this giant. Arran looked impatient, even a bit insulted. A warm feeling spread through Krumm; he was beginning to believe the boy might be something special after all, killer though he was. "Or more often," he continued, "in the known Deep, when she's been swept off her intended course in a storm—" He paused to chuckle, as if at a vivid memory. "Or when the man responsible for her management's a bad navigator— ahem! —a starsailin' ship might at intervals be brought below lightspeed for corrective sightin's."
This engendered an expression of curiosity upon the faces of more than one. Good lads, Krumm thought with satisfaction, or none would be here listening to him. He ought to know, who had handpicked them. Mustn't overlook a one. Young Islay might be a prize, but they were all good lads.
"You're way ahead of me. She'll heave-to, all save smallsails furled, field damped to a necessary minimum, inertia thereby increased to its normal, speed-inhibitin' quality. Her captain, if he's desperate, may even run out the lubberlift, the better to achieve maximum parallax for sightings, or to let the length of its cabelle taste the winds of the Deep."
The Gyrfalcon, like two-decked frigates and other vessels her size and larger, was too fragile to make planetfall, instead lowering passengers and cargo from synchronous orbit. As with other decks of specialized function, the liftdeck, in addition to housing beneath the mastfoot the lubberlift and kiloklommes of cabelle, held cargo and crew quarters. Krumm observed each of the boys imagining the loneliness of a starship brought to a complete halt in the heartless bosom of the Deep, without planet or even nearby sun in sight. How much worse might it be all alone—swinging at the end of a cabelle tens of thousands of klommes from the only source of warmth, light, and companionship—he was certain they dare not imagine.
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