168 HENRYMARTYN
"After our next port—*' he chuckled, "—when our esteemed second officer's finished his overhaul, p'rhaps we can persuade the captain t'run the lift out as exercise. In emergencies, this is needftil, as Mr. Islay has indirectly pointed out. Above lightspeed, outside the influence of the §-field, the universe appears t'those onboard t'shrink—aye, as you've already learned, philosophers an' superstitious starsailors will gleeftily agree it actually does—to a blindin' hot blue light infinitely far for'ard, an' a duller red one aft." He pointed aloft—forward. As each of the boys knew without following the line of his finger, it was as he described it. "All else is blackness—till one starship comes within §-field range of another."
A stir went through them as they sensed the exciting part arriving.
"The effects of fields intersectin' are detectable by instrument at over a hundred klommes, increasin'ly discernible from vivid color an' pattern changes as the range closes." None of the boys had found occasion to confirm this for himself, although they looked forward to it with greater enthusiasm than their officers. The Deep was, at the best of times, a savage place. The §-fields of passing vessels coalesced into a large all-encompassing envelope (as soap bubbles will) making it possible for attackers to board. It imposed asymmetric stresses upon both §-field and hull structure, in particular when the vessels were upon differing courses. Experienced starsailors felt the chance meeting of two ships, even of the same imperium-conglomerate, seldom brought good fortune. "An old deck hand'U claim—an' often demonstrate—that he can sense an approachin' vessel before the captain's instruments." No one disputed it for, despite the lying and bragging which took place onboard, each had begun to learn the amazing things some hands were capable of. "He'll offer estimable guesses as to her course, condition, class, an'—"
"Idlers below! Riggin' hands to the maindeck!" Whistles shrilled about them as change of watches commenced. The spell was broken, the day's lesson at an end. As they arose from where they sat at Krumm's feet, dispersing to various responsibilities, Krumm held one of them back. "Mr. Islay."
"Sir."
"I see a many a question still alurk behind those eyes."
"Sir?"
"Come along, then. We'll see if we can't answer 'em." Arran nodded as the first officer arose from his improvised seat with a mighty grunt, and followed the man's broad back, winding across the crew-crowded maindeck and its ordered clutter, to the man's quarters, opposite the captain's. Krumm grinned as he turned the knob and entered the cabin. "Afternoon, medears! How's the batch I started this momin' comin' along?" The aromas of fresh, yeasty dough, a hot and well-used oven, of a thousand seasonings and spices, some familiar, some exotic, rolled about Arran like a thick, hypnotizing fog as he passed through the door and closed it behind him. Krumm lowered his voice a trifle. "And by the by, I've brought a guest for tea!"
"How nice, Phoebus dear!" A familiar female voice was audible to Arran from somewhere in front of the giant. "Your dough seems perfectly normal to me. That yeast you brought up from that ringed planet will do nicely. Will you ask our guest—wherever he might be—whether he'd like to wash up?"
Arran stepped round the first officer. Smiling at him, Tula Krumm's eyes crinkled shut above her round, red cheeks. She was seated beside one of Krumm's ovens—Arran could count four in the room, all of different sizes—peering over the tops of wire-rimmed spectacles as her plump fingers performed some sort of cleverwork with thick, fuzzy thread and flexible needles. This was one of the women he had first seen handing out coveralls and food boxes. Traces of a glower had passed across Krumm's face as his wife spoke his given name. Arran surmised he was embarrassed by it, and that one in so lowly a position as himself would be ill-advised to repeat it in the hearing of the crew. Krumm bent to kiss his wife upon the cheek and went straight to a huge crock covered with a damp cloth. Lifting this aside, he peered into the container, sniffed its contents, nodded to himself, and covered it again.
"Ask him yourself. I'll tidy up a mite. Where's Tillie off to?"
Her ample form filling the door, Krumm's other wife entered from another room. "Here, husband. What's this you've dragged in off the deck?"
Greeting his second wife as he had greeted the first, Krumm grinned down at the boy. "It followed me home. Can I keep it?"
"I don't know, Phoebus," answered Tillie, "is it house-broken?" In her comer by the oven, Tula Krumm emitted a pleasant chuckle, lifted a thick strand of her cleverwork over another, and did something to it with a needle.
"A good question, Mathilde medear. One more I think we'll be findin' an answer to this afternoon." Both wives nodded. Tillie put water to boil for tea, Tula continued her work. Wondering what the man had meant, Arran washed his hands at the tap he was shown, sat where he was told in a handcarven chair, and stared at a platter of biscuits, cookies, tarts, and other sweets the like of which he had never seen, even at the Holdings.
The boy was aware he had not known what to expect concerning the first officer's private arrangements. For that matter, being invited to see firsthand had been the least of his expectations. Perhaps he had awaited variations upon the dismal, dangerous surroundings he himself occupied, earlier upon the gundeck and now, a level higher, upon the boatdeck where, since his promotion, he slept in a hammock used by two other boys during watches when he was busy elsewhere. Perhaps, knowing Knimm's avocation, he had expected everything to smell of rancid lard, covered under a dusting of stale flour. In any event, the bright, spotless home Knimm's wives made for him, with its gingerbread furniture, its sparkling, many-paned windows overlooking the maindeck, and its books—the Krumms had real books, like the one Old Henry had given him!—now seemed much to Arran like the storythille den of a family of giant, cheerful animals. At once he was upon his guard.
". . . perhaps," Krumm was saying, "after our young friend has delivered himself of the question or twenty I brought him to ask and have answered in private." Like an absurd insect buzzing from blossom to blossom, Krumm had been flitting about, if that was an appropriate word, inspecting first an oven, next a crock, checking bins and boxes, sniffing, tasting,
and adjusting. Now he stopped. Arran looked straight up into the giant's big face.
"Sir, I should like to know why you chose to make me a ship's boy."
Sounding like his shorter wife, Krumm chuckled. If his peasant accent seemed to fade a trifle, betraying a searching and powerful, if self-educated, intelligence, neither he nor the boy seemed to notice. "Learned that much, have you, that in some languages the word 'gift' means 'poison'? And always count your change? Loss of innocence: a pity I suppose it is, but the better part of growin' up. It's this simple, Arran Islay. I've watched you, as I watch everything and everybody aboard this carrack. It is my job. And, by default, the job is mine, as well—for the captain, as owner-in-command, has other matters to occupy his attention—of findin' her new officers." Krumm sat at the table, his chair groaning beneath his weight. "You meet certain standards, lad. My standards, which each of your new messmates likewise met. You're agile, quick-witted, a survivor—though ye'll hafta be leamin' a more versatile form of hand-t'hand. Never depend upon trickery which works the once, leaving the user helpless against an informed adversary."
Arran nodded, wishing to understand. Over what now seemed a lifetime, despite the improved circumstances in which he found himself, he had seen incredible brutality. He had witnessed theft and extortion as everyday fact among crewbeings less able than he, or for some reason less willing, to defend themselves. He had seen torture disguised as discipline. He had more than witnessed murder. Rape he knew upon an intimate basis. These were violent times, Lia had told him, life being held cheap even by those who lived it.
"Also, however well deserved their grim comeuppances, you've cost me a crewbeing who'll be missed, and an officer— don't deny it!—than whom I've had a number worse. I'm curious t'see if you can replace both."
Again Arran only nodded, his ruminatio
ns elsewhere than upon the man's words or perhaps extracting different meaning from them than intended. The rest of the visit was spent eating, and afterward exploring the facilities which had produced what they had eaten. With proprietary pride.
172 HENRY MARTYN
Knimm had shown off his ovens and explained the steps involved in baking. Despite circumstances calculated to produce self-consciousness, Arran had taken in everything. If not fascinated, his questions were at least intelligent.
Now, Krumm shook his shaggy head as he watched the thin, tense figure of the boy recede across the maindeck. He had been uncertain whether to tell him he met the standards mentioned earlier better than any he had seen during his long, colorful career. In the end, he had decided not to, for the present. The decision had been emotional. Decades aboard all types of starships, in every position—he, too, having begun as a virtual slave—had taught the man to trust his feelings, doubts in particular. Potential greatness loomed about this child, he thought, but something else, as well.
As an apparent result of the boy's example, several rapists —not men alone—had died or were so injured at the hands of their intended victims that rape was becoming a rarity aboard Gyrfalcon. Food-stealing—interfered with only when it threatened, through starvation, to deprive the starship of able crewbeings—had become a thing of the past.
In Krumm's experience, as a voyage progressed, and with each shower interval, the pressure seemed to drop. Intended for issue to all crewbeings, for purposes of washing and drinking, water was withheld and sold to them. Since they possessed little or no money, the accepted currency was sexual, pain endured for the enjoyment of sadists, or, most valuable of all, tales identifying individuals likely to resist authority. Now the body of the noncommissioned officer who sold the crewbeings' own water to them had been discovered, facedown in a shallow pan, drowned in no more than two siemmes, and the first officer was having difficulty keeping it quiet.
Sickness and injury, always a problem upon voyages, were falling off, efficiency increasing. More time for music and dancing upon the maindeck had been found. Without prompting from officers who never cared to exert themselves, while it was never altogether pleasant belowdecks, it was becoming cleaner. Crewbeings took more pride in personal appearance.
Arran might be more than just an officer, someday. He
might be a mighty captain Krumm himself would be proud to serve. Or he might fail, winding up a cruel negligent or a red-handed slaughterer like—the big man throttled the insubordinate thought. Time would tell, which was why Krumm had withheld something which belonged to the boy by rights, taken from him by force, and which, in truth, the big man had intended acknowledging—by regulation, it could not yet be returned—during this visit. He went to a bureau beneath one window and opened a drawer. He did not remove the chemenergic pistol lying there, nor touch it, but looked down at it for a long while, thinking.
For his own part, Arran was uncertain whether to feel relief. Krumm had accepted the killing of Paddy as motivated by cause and arrived at in justice. The kindly giant had even expressed a willingness to take the third olBficer's death upon much the same terms. But would he accept what had yet to be discovered with similar equanimity? In his first hour aboard Gyrfalcon, Arran had suffered the cruelty of three men, not the two whose executions Krumm had forgiven. Somehow, the resolution Arran had just the previous watch contrived seemed fitting. Since the second officer had been occupied inspecting every siemme of the liftcabelle, a painstaking task he would entrust to no one, this was the first watch Mr. Van Merrivine—"Stewie"—would be missed.
Pity, the way the man had struck his head, becoming entan^ed in a length of rejected cabelle. Too bad his screams were stifled by a clump of some squirming gray-green substance which had fallen into his open mouth, nostrils, and eyes. Arran only hoped that Stewie and the fangmold had enjoyed their last meal half as much as he had enjoyed serving it.
Chapter XXI: Flatsies and Rollerballers
As it is inclined to do whether one wills it or not, and for good or ill, time passed.
Another series of watches came and went, and another. Days, fleeing unmarked into the black depths of the changeless Deep, accumulated into weeks, likewise unmarked. These accumulated into months, and with each second he survived, Arran harbored fewer illusions, in particular about people.
Even a kindly sort like Krumm was too complacent—he did not appear intimidated even by the captain's authority— to attempt changing an unhappy vessel like Gyrfalcon. All things being compensated for in an uncaring universe, a disappointing awareness dawned upon the boy (where dawn is never seen) that Krumm made up for his kindness, wisdom, size, and greater strength by lacking, insofar as Arran could discern, any initiative or ambition beyond whatever had brought him to his present estate. The boy could imagine him asking himself what else he might aspire to, when already he possessed all he wished: his women, his commission, his ovens (an appreciative, albeit captive, market relied upon his bread and cakes and pies), and an audience for his tales. Arran believed Krumm rather fancied the life he led as half startrader, half explorer (and sometimes, Arran suspected, half brigand). The man even appeared grateful to those who had forced it upon him long ago.
While perhaps the first officer sympathized with Arran's plight, he, like all men, suffered limitations. He was far from omnipotent (Arran told himself in hope of avoiding final disillusionment) and could not be counted upon— would no be, perhaps—to do anything to ameliorate it. Krumm's plump, merry wives were even more sympathetic, and less
able than their husband to do more than give Arran an encouraging word and an occasional sweet. Upon his own, lacking other choices in the matter, Arran discovered himself growing strong upon the bitter nourishment of adversity, surviving by expedient of learning to become more brutal than anybody else aboard.
At no time since stowing away had he caught a glimpse of the captain. He had no way of knowing it was not uncommon. Aloof invisibility was practiced by captains self-perceptive enough to understand that they possessed none of the rare power of personality which commands a willing and unquestioning obedience. In its absence, they preferred to let lieutenants hand their edicts down, as if issued from some ineflfable but undeniable source.
From Krumm and the others, upon the other hand, Arran experienced guarded acceptance as one among crewbeings, self-initiated by his killing of Paddy and the suspicious circumstances (which deceived no one) of Jimbeau's death. In due course, Arran learned many useful skills from them. Unknown to the boy, the first officer suffered greater difficulty grappling with what had befallen Van Merrivine, whom he had regarded as fundamentally decent, and—more important—competent. His cruel fate discovered at last, nothing tangible had remained of "Stewie" save buttons from his uniform and a scattering of polished teeth. Being devoured alive by fangmold was an unusual, yet not unheard-of, manner of dying by accident aboard a starship. The first officer was never uncertain about the truth of the matter, but no way presented itself of proving that Van Merrivine's demise—in this respect the boy seemed to improve with practice—had been anything but the misadventure it resembled. Although he dispensed, in the captain's name, absolute authority aboard the carrack, and was not required to produce evidence in support of life-and-death decisions, Krumm was persuaded that, having consumed those who had ravaged him, the full, furious measure of Arran's vengeance had been exacted.
It had been their own blasted fault. Deep take their eyes and whatever else was left! While what they had done may have been customary for ten thousand years aboard ships and among sailors, it possessed nothing in common with
ordinary, healthy horn. In the first officer's lengthy and disheartening experience, rape, gang-rape in particular, never did. They were by no means man-lovers, those three. He ought to know who, long before taking to wives, had wenched with them in many a starport brothel. For that matter, Krumm's thoughts digressed, his two best, bravest topmen were man-lovers; a more decent, up
right, dedicated couple he never hoped to see. It had been a matter of power, nothing more. They had done it because they thought they could.
Well, they had been proven wrong. Arran's drive and intelligence were rare. Valuable. In absence of further action upon his own part, Knimm believed—which might, in actuality, make things worse—the boy represented no threat to Gyrfalcon or anyone aboard her. Thus, where a failing grade meant death or worse, without being aware of it, Arran was evaluated, his patent of scholarship extended, and soon began to command a modicum of respect from his tutors and coworkers.
Like each of the ship's boys, he was instructed in starship-handling, and to manage cargo and accounts, these constituting the essence of survival for the Gyrfalcon, the reason for her existence. A trifle too mundane to suit the average adventure-thirsty youth, they nonetheless interested Arran, justifying in this respect alone Krumm's growing partiality toward him. However the discipline which Arran came to love best (in this, Krumm forgave him, sharing the same preference), learned most about in consequence, and which, at this moment, occupied the better part of his mind, owing to a practice exercise he anticipated during the next watch, was weapons-operation.
The expression applied to the starship's kinergic projectibles, fifteen all told, and nothing else. Although an arsenal of small-arms was hoarded in the captain's quarters, none of the officers was about to encourage any pressed crewbeing to better himself in a facility with personal thrustibles until it was certain he would become one of their number.
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