Since first coming aboard the Gyrfalcon, Arran had dealt— in ways which would have astonished his family and teachers —only with her first, second, and third officers, Krumm, Van Merrivine, and Jimbeau. Neither he nor any other crewbeing he knew had even glimpsed whoever commanded the vessel. Thus, until now, they had been spared a singularly impressive spectacle, after its own manner more alien in character than any nonhuman aboard.
Master-murchan Ballygrant Bowmore, owner-in-command of the Gyrfalcon, had seen as much of the known galaxy as could be experienced firsthand in any one lifetime. Yet his travels, wide adventure, and even greater wealth, had not been without their price. One of the man's eyelids was stitched shut over an empty socket, whence a deep-furrowed scar curved along one dark cheek toward a pierced, ring-bearing ear. The wound must have been terrible, for it was not beyond the power of medicine to replace an eye, given sufficient resources.
The other ear was missing altogether. Given other of his features, this went almost unnoticed. His long gray hair hung in more than a dozen stiff braids, stopped at the ends with bands of polished metal. Each served as a setting for a row of colored stones which, even in this age of spreighformers, might be considered priceless for their brilliance and unpro-grammed rarity. They swung, amidst their glittering companions, about his scarred and swarthy face, from time to time alighting upon his shoulders like iridescent insects. His nose had been broken so many times and so thoroughly that it now spread twice as wide upon his cheeks—pocked with the
weather and disease of a hundred worlds—as it had in his youth. It, too, was pierced, through sidewall and septum, where a pair of baubles made it more grotesque. Beneath it, a moustache drooped from the comers of his full-fleshed, cruel mouth. Beneath his lower lip, a triangle of beardlet had been spared the raser.
Like Krumm, the captain wore a thrustible upon each arm, his being lighter of construction and more embellished. Their wristbands were jeweled bracelets, the hands beneath them much adorned with heavy rings. Unlike his near-naked first officer, he wore a billowing, shiny-surfaced blouse fastened with elaborate studs, ruffled at the throat as at the cuffs, the sleeves being rolled up to facilitate the use of thrustibles. His loose-fitting trousers ended at a pair of kneeboots, fashioned from the hide of some exotic animal. Over all, he had draped a deck-length, voluminous cloak of heavy texture, tailored with a hem and high collar of some long-haired, spotted fur.
"Get that trash cleared away!" Speaking to Krumm, he pointed a weapon-heavy hand at the ravaged bodies at the eighth and ninth projectibles. His voice was high, nasal, with a rasping edge that carried through the din. "I want replacement crews an' those machines returned to action in two minutes, or, by the last fifty ceos, I'll figurehead every officer 'pon the gundeck!"
Despite his outlandish appearance, Arran knew at once that this was not a man to laugh at. Bowmore was a man to fear.
Chapter XXIII: The Night-Black Deep
The youngest projecteur's helper was not the only individual considering desperate, unprecedented measures.
Beneath their feet and everywhere round them, crew-beings felt the fabric of the vessel shudder with another
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Jendyne volley. Upon the gundeck, the stench of burnt, sundered bodies was intolerable. Like his youngest projecteur's helper, his first ofl&cer, and everyone else aboard, Bowmore worried about his starship and the corsair pursuing her. That his worries differed in their particulars from those of the common crew was something he kept to himself, although he suspected Krumm was aware of his thoughts.
As Gyrfalcon's stem-chasers howled their futility below, the tips of Bowmore's ring-laden fingers strayed for an instant over an unusual weight and thickness concealed in the double hning of his cloak. It was not often, he thought, peering about through blood-tanged smoke, that a man carried all his hopes and fears in a single pocket. Violating every advertised convention—a cynical usage in currency upon the capital worlds these days—he had in recent weeks, and at considerable expense, become the holder of letters of marque from the Ceos of tx)th the Jendyne Empery-Cirot and the Monopolity of Hanover, granting him the privilege of despoiling vessels of that imperium-con^omerate over which, respectively, they did not rule.
A trickle of sweat ran down his neck into the elaborate collar of his blouse. Understandably, neither Ceo (nor, more to the point, certain among their deputies with whom he had done business) was informed in every detail of this double-ended arrangement. To his regret, he had not yet found time or opportunity to exercise the privilege. The Gyrfal-con was too frail a reed in which to go aplundering, and he had, to his annoyance, become diverted to serve the purpose of one who had discovered his secret and found means of exploiting it before a better ship and crewbeings could be acquired.
Above the racket of thrust and counterthrust, he could hear the burble of someone, likely one among the wounded, sobbing. It reflected his own mood. If he were captured and the documents discovered in his possession (having sacrificed so much to keep them, he could not, despite the dictates of prudence, bring himself to dispose of them), he would be punishable by each side as brigand and traitor. Unschooled as he may have been in any relevant precedent, he knew the character of both polities. Every diplomatic nicety would be
exercised in his behalf to assure that he received a measure of retribution from each and that his death would be the last, least, and, in the end (to him), most welcome item upon the bill of reckoning.
In desperation, he had come below, into the savage, cloying death-stink of the gundeck (as he had never before ventured to do) and commanded Krumm to gather all hands about him. He had chosen them, in part, because the main-deck crew and those aloft were needed to purchase the extra hour his plan required and must neither be distracted nor diminished in number. Yet it was the presence, and the presumed understanding, of the giant first officer which, in the end, had decided him upon this course. Purposing to preserve their lives, that of the carrack which bore them, and, of course, his own neck. Captain Bowmore announced something of a tactical innovation. Their contribution, he informed the gundeck crew, would be a volunteer to execute it.
"A volunteer, sir?" Bowmore bent to hear better and came close to being knocked over by a sudden leap of the vessel. The rhetorical question had been asked by the first officer, who reached out a hand to steady his superior.
"A bloody pigeon, he means!" Krumm scowled through the thickening gloom. Who had yelled that before the captain could reply? He could not find the culprit. Arran, nursing a tactical innovation of his own, drifted as far toward the officers as the bounds of his station would permit, the better to see and hear. He was far from alone in this. With the gundeck projectibles out of play, a circle was growing about Krumm and the captain. As a newly-fledged ship's boy, now a blooded projecteur's helper, it was unquestionable that he had, with the first officer's assistance, made of himself much more than the lowliest crewmember he had begun as. Still—
"A pigeon save a falcon?" Someone at the front was encouraged by the previous insubordination committed without punishment. Bowmore, however, raised an arm. A crack sounded as §-wavefront met undefended flesh. The speaker fell to the mesh. A long silence followed. Someone behind Arran nudged him in the ribs. "No pigeon, then. More likely a chick—"
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The voice broke oflf as its owner, too, slumped to the deck, alive (likely to his regret) and vomiting as he held both hands over his genitals. Arran rubbed the back of his fist and continued thinking. He had nothing to say about his own fate. Some among the crew (and elsewhere, in likely a majority of so-called sapient life) welcomed relief from responsibility for themselves or anything else. To a boy educated otherwise, it was the least tolerable feature of life aboard the Gyrfalcon. He discovered now, without surprise, that he was willing to do anything to alter his circumstances.
Among the crew about the smoky, stench-filled gundeck, undiscouraged by the lesson in deportment just given, consi
derable muttering arose over the captain's announcement, regarding—in short sentences and shorter words—the inad-visability of volunteering for anything. Possessing, as an oppressed class will, a nice judgment in such things, they deduced that the captain, in his hour of need, was (within Umits just established) obliged to tolerate it. Proving them correct, he spoke again, more for their benefit than that of the man he ostensibly addressed. "Aye, Mr. Krumm, a volunteer, an' a handsomely rewarded one." Bowmore turned, looking as many crewbeings in the eye as he could. "He will, if a pressed man, provided he succeeds in this here undertakin', find his liberty restored to him, along with a document, issued under my authority as reserve officer of the imperium-conglomerate, grantin' him perpetual immunity from future conscription."
"Until next time!" Pressing the limits, someone had shouted from across the gundeck. Krumm scowled in that direction as the captain plowed on, to all appearances unperturbed. "He may remain onboard as a free crewbeing, perhaps trainin' as an officer, or be delivered dirtside at our next destination."
Muttering about the pair continued unabated. "Prong everyftng as moves, swab everyfing as don't, an' nivver volunteer!"
Bowmore cleared his throat. "In either event, there'll be other rewards. Me personal profit from this voyage, 'pon the order of two hundred thousand clavises. A not inconsiderable sum, I'm sure you'll agree? Also—"
A delighted buzz replaced the muttering, rising so rapidly
it became difficult to think, let alone hear or be heard. "I still says nivver volunteer!"
"Pipe down, you barrel-scrapings!" The first officer, al-thou^ he most likely agreed with the advice, sounded furious. "By the Core, I'll stripe the next man as speaks without leave!" Silence fell like a weight. It was unusual for Krumm to threaten in so grim and serious a manner. When punishment was warranted, he struck without preliminaries. Now, he cleared his own throat. "You were sayin', sir?"
"Thank you, Mr. Krumm. I was about t'say, should our volunteer be male—female, for that matter; in the end what difference does it make?—and of appreciative inclination, I offer additional inducement, a rather old-fashioned one, the person of me beloved daughter." Reaching to his collar, Bowmore extracted from within the many overlapping frills a finely-wrought chain he wore about his neck, upon which depended a small, deep-graven, and bejeweled cylinder of less than a siemme's diameter and eight or nine siemmes' length. Turning the free end upward, he made manipulations with his fingers and an image sprang into the air above it, the miniature moving figure of a lovely girl. Arran stumbled forward.
It was an unpretentious remembrance. She stood upon a polished inlaid floor, a shaft of yellow sunlight falling upon her hair and shoulders from a pair of tall windows behind her. It was possible, he thought, that she had not known her image was being taken. In one small hand she held a fold of her voluminous velvet skirt. Her other—her eyes were half closed, lips half parted—made gentle motions to the beat of unheard music. A floor-to-ceiling mirror set between the windows conveyed another view of her as she turned, with an unhurried, flowing motion, upon her tiny feet, rising to her toes and down again, coming round at last to face the unseen eye before her image began fading, only to repeat itself
The device in the captain's hand, Arran realized, was a rare, expensive autothille, something he had heard of and never seen, a self-playing record requiring no reader to release stored information. The image dancing before his face gave him pause. At first glance he had believed it—although he did not know how it could be so—that of his tutor. The girl
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shared something of Mistress Lia*s coloring. Her hair, arranged after what he knew to be the current Hanoverian fashion, was the same brown-auburn. To the extent he could tell, from the minuscule full-length portrait, she was even freckled in a similar manner.
Upon closer examination, there were differences. She was younger, somewhat more delicate of face and form. Even this vignette conveyed a repose that touched the boy in places, buried within him, which, for the sake of survival, he had forgotten existed. A portion of his mind which, from habit longer than his servitude aboard the Gyrfalcon, stood apart, offering wry commentary, wondered how such a creature could be daughter to the vile Captain Bowmore. A portion of his heart which, despite everything, had never grown cynical, told him he had found the woman he might love for all his life. Something else, something he had seldom heard from before, stirred below his navel, sizzled through his blood, and gave his body an odd, strained feeling.
"Here, lad," grinned the captain, "keep it, if y'like." He removed the autothille and its chain from his own neck and placed it about Arran's.
"And what small task, sir .. ." It was one of the projecteurs who asked, a tall, clean, personable man with an educated accent, darthelm tucked beneath his arm. ". .. might a man perform to acquire all of this largesse?" "Ah," replied the captain, "Mister ..." "Sarles," Krumm supplied, "first projectible." "Mr. Sarles, the answer lies within yon chest." For the first time, Bowmore acknowledged the coffer he had caused two strong men to bring from his cabin. It sat upon the mesh, not quite producing a depression, its bearers standing guard beside it. Whatever tragedies and losses had befallen a child innocent and cheerful by inheritance, Arran's intellectual capacity was undiminished. Without being told, he knew what was inside the chest, for he had learned the lesson of the walther well and had been determined to apply it again if given a chance. Such a weapon as the captain now offered him, or anyone who volunteered, would be useless against a starship^s protective §-envelope. However, when the fields merged—if, say, the Gyrfalcon hove to, pretending to
surrender—such a device, releasing its fury inside the Jendyne's §-field would, at the least, kill every member of her crew and leave the vessel derelict. Never expecting half of what had been promised, and against the urging of comrades, Arran stepped forward.
The fact was that Bowmore*s tactic had, until this moment, depended more upon what he could induce a volunteer to do than feasibility. The master-murchan was delighted to discover this ship's boy (in increasing optimism, he failed to catch the lad's surname, but he seemed familiar) had conceived the all-important final details. He would, as Bowmore suggested, don one of the carrack's half-dozen worksuits, a seldom-employed alternative to boats which attended to repairs that could be carried out traversing the Deep. He had refused, in the beginning, to strap onto his arm a thrustible Krumm offered, insisting he was not familiar enough with its operation to make good use of it, nor, he avowed, justify the loss to its owner. Krumm pressed until the boy conceded that one or more among the members of the Jendyne's crew might be quick-witted enough to ruin the plan, or spoil his escape.
In any case, the boy would venture overboard in a manner contrived between him and the first officer and—this was the boy's part of the plan—drift at the end of a cabelle past the pursuing vessel. The captain's contribution was that half-legendary weapon of last resort which caused a §-field to shrink about a core of heavy metal, becoming a small (and in ship-to-ship combat, he hoped unexpected) atomic explosive. Gyrfalcon would be prepared to make her getaway, separating fields from the Jendyne before the explosion. The carrack's thrustibles would, if necessary, accomplish the rest of the bloody job. Afterward, the boy would be picked up by lubberlift.
An hour's preparation passed like seconds. Alone save for the metal-bound chest, set with excessive caution a measure away, Arran rode the mastlift, where he had first seen Krumm holding forth, aloft into the yardtiers. The worst (he recognized the thought as irrelevant if not irrational) was not knowing what to do with his hands. The ride into the foreyards was long enough; circumstances made it seem longer. For the endless while it lasted, he attempted, without
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success, to affect casual demeanor, leaning, despite its inconvenient height, against the encircling rail. His arms—folded across his chest, hanging with fingers interlaced before him, bracing him from either side with hands spread upon the
railtop—would not assume a natural position. He felt the autothille upon its chain where the suit pressed and wished he had kept it out to look at, or never accepted it to begin with. The awkward armor was filled with someone else's sweaty odor. Donning and adjusting it had offered something useful-appearing to do, but there were limits to how long that lasted. Now the lift carried him past each of the yards and stays, the curious eye of every topman inspecting him, wondering at his courage or his sanity. It was not a feeling he cared for.
He reached the limit of the lift's travel and must debark onto the yard. Little as he had enjoyed the ride, he looked forward to a climb aloft less, encumbered by a suit he was unaccustomed to, carrying the contents of the chest. Fortunately, owing to the plan he, Krumm, and Bowmore had devised, he did not have far to climb. The rest of his journey was not, as it might have been, horizontal, half a klomme outboard along the dorsal foreyard to stunsail booms extended in a desperate, futile attempt to provide Gyrfalcon with more legs than her pursuer. Swaying as they were in the currents of the Deep, swinging with her evasive maneuvers, jumping with each thrust, he would not have relished venturing onto them, despite what he was about to do instead.
He required use of bitts and cabelles at the inboard end of the foreyard, and leverage obtained from the distance between the point he now occupied and the outboard end of the dorsal mainyards far below. A staysail cabelle, stretching down and outward, was stripped of its expanse of sailmesh. The topmen who had helped him rig it and carry the chest this far retreated, possessing exaggerated notions of his weapon's deadliness at rest.
Arran unlatched four spring-loaded hasps—through his helmet he heard alarms ping at the intrusion—and opened the chest. A louder alarm within his helmet told him he was bathed in low-level radiation. Inside, as he had been told he would, he found, nested in rich quilting, another coffer.
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