The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack

by Nate Crowley

  And this was just the Rio Entrada, the entry-river, so named for the Gate cut into its banks by the ancient architects of the Lemniscatus. It was a tributary of the mighty Sinfondo, one of a thousand throats that fed into that continental intestine. Why those titans of parahistory had chosen to anchor the Gate here, nobody would ever know, but the stretch of river they now sailed—named the Waldemar Transfer after Wrack’s hero—remained largely unsettled. In all but the most crowded worlds, it was deemed unwise to build much within range of an active Gate.

  And so they had steamed up the river under the swollen sun for two days, passing the place where Waldemar’s searchlights had swept the bank for the ruins of Torsville, and retracing the course of the great explorer. Ahead lay the Sinfondo confluence where, Wrack seemed to recall overhearing, they had plans to dock and resupply at Wormtown, the name Lipos-Tholon colonists had given to the old city of Mwydyn-Dinas.

  After that it would be on to the Esqueleto, and then... well, Wrack didn’t really know. In theory, it depended on what Kaba could glean from the locals, and whatever he could work out from Waldemar’s book. In practice, however, he suspect things would get weirder. The truth was—and it sounded so ridiculous he could barely admit it to himself—he could feel where they needed to go. But he was resolved to pretending he was working from Waldemar’s clues until such a time as he had to admit quite how mad he seemed to have become.

  For now, he would let Mouana’s cabal argue it out among themselves. He wanted little to do with it, if it could be avoided. In truth, thought Wrack, as he piled the chunks of the dismantled loaf on the ship’s edge, he had not been paying a lot of attention to the talk on deck since the night with the triremes. After the bit he really didn’t like thinking about, there had been an awful lot of shouting of his name, and a lot of being carried around above the heads of an excitable crowd. But when the shouting had finished and the crew had busied themselves with dealing with the aftermath, he had felt very sick and very frightened. There had been chewed bodies everywhere, and a phantom taste of blood that still lingered.

  The river, with its sheer indifferent tonnage, had been a good place to come back to himself. For all Waldemar’s talk of richness and decay, of a world full of savage energy, it seemed extraordinarily calm. If he could forget for a moment that he was a crab, a murderer, a man twice-dead and fully mad, it was like a wonderful kind of holiday. Nobody he knew in Lipos-Tholos had ever gone on holiday, but he had read about the idea in books and had always loved the thought. Indeed, he remembered, in those long evenings in the library belfry, this was often the place he had dreamed of going.

  If anything, he was amazed how ordinary it felt. The Waldermar Transfer, though largely unsettled, was as tamed as any part of this overgrown world could be. The banks had been cleared for crops and left fallow in endless cycles, while the waters had been well-combed by the paddleboats of the wurmjägers.

  Even so, the mystery of the jungle was forever lurking on the horizon. On the first morning he had seen the huge green hands of a gobbler, stripping branches on the distant shore before pulling back into the canopy—it had been a reminder of how deep this world ran if you looked past its surface.

  With a satisfied flourish, Wrack swept his little pyramid of bread over the edge, and watched the pieces tumble towards the river below. The moment they hit the surface, the river boiled in rapture. Fish of three or four kinds, stripe-sided and sail-finned, rolled and dove in their frenzy. They flipped and thrashed in splashing arcs, and the milky shapes of predators rose to snap up the stragglers.

  The feeding was over in moments; as shed scales eddied away, an elongate carrion turtle rose to catch the last bodies in its craggy jaws, then sank away in a stream of bubbles. Wrack had never anything like it, even in pictures; by the time he had registered the serpentine articulation of its shell, it was gone back into the silt. Waldemar’s words came to mind, memorised almost by heart now, though he reached for the book out of a sense of comfort.

  As with all the supposed former gartenwelten, Grand Amazon has a dizzyingly broad array of fauna, beyond any hope of categorisation for generations to come. It seems each new day—each hour—brings some new form as yet undocumented; every third sample net opens up a new field of study. As well as home-kinds both adapted and artificed, the Sinfondo and its schwesterflüsse bear host to countless exotaxa—beyond the spheres of colonial influence established in the last connected era, whole transplanted biospheres are said to thrive in the distant basins. Their intermingling with the home stock and with each other have given rise to a fierce and beautiful competition; the resultant biotic schema seem at times more rich than anything naturally evolved. To witness a phosphorescent worm slinking beneath a field of Nymphaeaceaelilies, among catfish and tambaqui, is to see a whole new nature, and—

  An unnatural cough came from the deck, splitting into Wrack’s recital like a blunted axe. Fingal was there, leaning on a railing and looking awkward. Wrack snapped the book shut, and scuttled round awkwardly to face him.

  “Not going to beat me up for reading, then?”

  “I’m sorry for the way things were during the attack,” said Fingal, with the tone of a man for whom apology was a currency not to be devalued through overuse. Despite his resentment, Wrack had the distinct impression he had already been allowed his one chance to take the piss, and held his tongue before answering.

  “I know the violence is tough on you, mate. You always were a sensitive lad.”

  Wrack rankled at being called ‘mate,’ for a start. Yes, the violence was tough on him. But Wrack knew full well Fingal couldn’t know how that felt at all—the man was a thug. Violence to him was a job. He doubted Fingal had much respect for him either, but could certainly see why he’d lie about it. To the old rebel, he was still old Wrack’s weakling boy: needy and spineless, eager for praise.

  “I remember your pa always used to wait ’til you were well in bed by the time we’d talk about the messy stuff, even when you were well into your teens.”

  Fingal had always refused to talk until the little sap was out of the way, more like. Wrack remembered now: the long evenings of muttered fireside plotting, that would become heated when he had disappeared. He remembered overhearing snatches from the top of the stairs. Fingal asking his father when he was going to get ‘that boy’ involved in some proper work, get some calluses on his hands. No doubt Fingal still thought of him as an innocent. But then, he hadn’t been a fucking battleship for a week, had he?

  Wrack wanted to tell Fingal to shut up about his childhood, and ask what the hell he wanted, but to his disgust found himself playing to the man’s tune.

  “Thanks for understanding,” said Wrack, hating himself for wanting the knife-happy bastard’s approval.

  “I wish it could be the way it used to be,” sighed Fingal, “when we’d keep the real business of what we did away from you. But we’re in a whole new world now, mate. You’ve been as brave as any Piper in making it through this far, and you’ve just got to stick it out a bit more. That’s all I was trying to say the other night, and I’m sorry the tension of it all got to my words.”

  Wrack seethed inside, knowing exactly how much praise and gentleness he’d be getting if acquiring his trust wasn’t Fingal’s only way to control a terrifying weapon. But again, he simpered.

  “It’s good of you, Fingal. I’m sorry I’ve been such a flake so far.” This earned him a pat on the carapace.

  “You’ve been a hero, mate, and the whole crew thinks so too.”

  They thought of him as an extremely lethal mascot and little else, but Wrack now felt too embarrassed by the flattery to do anything but nod his way to whatever end Fingal had planned for the conversation.

  “And the most heroic thing you can do now is just hold back the fear, stay with us, and help us find that damned High Sarawak.”

  Well that’s bloody convenient, isn’t it, thought Wrack.

  “Whatever it takes,” said Wrack in entirely fraudu
lent earnesty.

  Fingal nodded.

  “Right then, that’s the spirit. Now, speaking of bodies...”

  Wrack became aware of the Bruiser looming a few feet away. His face was badly dented and his hands were bandaged messes, but he’d been patched up well since the fight. Kaba was there too, wearing her own gruesome attempt at a smile. Wrack could see another round of cajoling coming his way, and pre-empted it with a hint of annoyance in his mechanical voice.

  “This is about Mouana, isn’t it?” he said.

  “That it is,” admitted Fingal. “She’s nearly done being pared down and wired into the Ahab, but Pearl’s never worked with the new model and she’s having a tough time of it. We reckon she could use a friend around.”

  Wrack snorted at the word, but passed no further comment. He was quietly sceptical that Mouana would be remotely interested in his company if he wasn’t annihilating soldiers, but they clearly weren’t going to leave him in peace until he came with them to Gunakadeit. So he let Fingal continue.

  “I know she’s a hard case, Wrack, and she’s been rough on you this far. But she’s taken a hell of a pasting, and she needs to get back on her feet before we get to Wormtown. She’s not forgotten it was you saved her, you know, way back on that awful ship. And whether she knows it or not, you could probably do her a lot of good right now.”

  Wrack felt a flash of acid towards Fingal; despite knowing he was being manipulated, he found himself wanting to look after the distraught corpse he’d pulled away from the rain-slicked flensing yards of Tavuto. He imagined her in pain, and he wanted to go and make her feel better.

  “Can I at least take my book?” he asked, with an air of resignation that his tram-announcer’s voice didn’t carry.

  “Sure, why not—you can read to her!” said Fingal, and the Bruiser gave a chillingly muscular thumbs-up. Wrack sighed, and scuttled onto the deck. At least they didn’t want him to have a fight.

  “ONCE INTEGRATION OF spinal trunk three is complete, refer back to section nineteen for instructions on ulnar nerve calibration across dorsal conduits F through J.”

  “Done that already!” said Pearl, revving the drill behind Mouana’s back. The bench in front of her was littered with grey-smeared bone chips and the trimmed heads of nerve bundles, the exhausted debris of a body forced through two lives.

  “Well you bloody shouldn’t have done it already,” answered Wrack, pointing at the mess of charts taped to the cabin window and continuing from the manual again. “If the ulnar nerve has already been calibrated, please refer to appendix nine for instructions on resetting tolerances across the brachial plexus. In addition, you may need to reset flexor drivers for the digitorum and ulnaris nodes in accordance with the new calibration.”

  “No need,” said Pearl, the drill plunging into Mouana’s spine. “That stuff’s written for journeymen. I’ve done this before, it’s basic to any body hookup. Doesn’t matter what you’ve already done by the time you wire up the dorsal nodes, if you run a decent spine flush it’ll find its own tolerances. And anyway—”

  “Look, don’t ask me. I’m just a crab. Just a crab, telling you what’s written here in the manual.”

  Mouana snarled above the wet grinding of the drill. It had been better when he’d been reading out the jungle stuff. At least that had kept everyone else quiet. Now he’d gotten onto the manual for the Mark V, it had become a shared performance with Pearl. If she didn’t know better, she would have said they were flirting.

  “Just get the fucking arm switched on,” growled Mouana, then grunted as an electric tremor passed through her right shoulder. Much as she loathed the former Ministry necrotechnician, she was prepared to accept Pearl was the only person on board capable of giving her a new body. It didn’t mean she wanted to make a comedy of it.

  “She’s doing it,” protested Wrack. “Anyway, I thought you wanted me to read something else.”

  “I did, but I didn’t want a damned music hall show made of it. If she knows so well what she’s doing playing around with dead bodies, then let her get on with it.”

  “I will. But I swear she’s missed some stuff from section eight.”

  “Shut up, you!” cried Pearl in mock outrage. “What have I missed?”

  Wrack peered at the manual with a theatrical gesture.

  “First of all, ensure sterility at all times during the procedure,” he recited, before sweeping out a claw to encompass the cabin. The place was caked in filth; where it wasn’t black from the battle’s spilt blood, it was tacky with engine oil and craggy with rust. Flies eddied in droning clouds, and every surface around Mouana’s makeshift operating table was heaped with slippery bodymess.

  The Bruiser was first to crack, giving a wuffling laugh from the corner of the cabin where he lurked, sipping from a can of oil. Then he punched Eunice, who seemed to have become his drinking companion during her own lengthy bout of repairs, and she started laughing too, a horrible sound like a ruptured gas pipe.

  Mouana was about to cut them all down with a vile threat, but checked herself. This had to be better than the silent anxiety that had clamped over the convoy since it had made transfer. The jubilation of routing the irregulars had faded fast; once through the Gate and under an empty sky, they had realised just how far they had left to travel, and how scarce their resources were.

  She looked out of the cabin window, her head still the only thing that could move in the new body. There was the Asinine Bastard, limping slightly but intact for the most part, and Chekhov’s Gun, which had been holed in the battle, and was only still with them thanks to a towrope and constant bailing. On their own deck was the grounded Alaunt, but there was no way of getting it aloft in Grand Amazon’s shifted gravity, so it was only good for spare parts.

  They would need every scrap. Their ammunition stores had been rinsed in the fight, and the heat and the insects had ensured they were already well into their preservative store. Their human resources were drained too—they had maybe three hundred sailors left, a third of them living. After the trireme fight, some of the dying Pipers had elected to take Fingal’s route through death, and had taken miasma; the others had been dumped overboard in sacks.

  Of the dead that remained, most boasted a few bullet holes or a severed limb. Wounds had become a matter of cheerful competition between the sailors, and they had become creative—decorative, even—in patching each other up. One man as she watched was pacing the deck with an irregular’s shotgun in place of his lower leg, lashed in place with pink cable. But for all their bravado, if they got into another fight now, they would be lucky to escape.

  And there was no doubt: pursuit was coming. The thick gravity would keep triremes back as they were recalibrated, but Dust would find other ways to stay close behind them. They had to repair and resupply at Wormtown, as quickly as they could, and keep moving.

  Mouana’s attention was yanked back to the filthy cabin as Pearl cursed, and something gave way in her back. One of her bone-chisels—her persuaders, she called them—had gone clean through a rotten rib, slipped from her hand, and clattered down inside Mouana’s body.

  “Fucking amateur,” grumbled Mouana between her teeth, as Wrack made another one of his bloody quips from the manual, and everyone had another good laugh. She let them. It was odd to think about morale on a mission where almost everyone was dead, and certainly Mouana had little talent maintaining it among the living, but it had to be attempted.

  Besides, the whole point of getting Fingal to coax Wrack here was to humanise him a little, get him attached to the rest of the crew again. The next time they ran into trouble, the last thing she needed was him stuck in another bout of selfish catatonia. Of course, she wasn’t much more keen on having the arsehole in the room with her, guffawing about her reassembly, but it was for the best in the long run.

  “Remind me—how long do I have to suffer you reading to me?” she asked, trying to make it sound like a joke.

  “Until you’re in one piece and m
oving that body again,” said Wrack. Mouana flexed her hip and gave a stiff kick of her leg, and everyone laughed. There, she thought. I can do morale.

  IT WAS DUSK by the time Mouana was wired in; she dismissed Pearl just as the sun began its plunge past the far bank. There were still superficial touches to be finished, bolts to be tightened and actuators to be fine-tuned, but she could walk and—more importantly—fire her weapons. It took longer to get rid of Wrack, but a sighting of something big rolling in the channel past the bow soon had him out of the cabin. Now it was just her, the Bruiser and Eunice.

  They were almost at the confluence, and the Entrada had widened to the point where the channel’s banks were reduced to a green trace on the horizon. The sun’s light had dimmed to a ruddy wash, the water was a rippled red sheet, and even this far from the banks the insects teemed. Jittering clouds of midges and moths bounced on the cabin lights, while every so often the armoured smack of a fist-sized beetle made everyone jerk.

  Watching Wrack potter towards the prow, stopping to inspect a flying lizard that had perched on a rail, she wondered how wise it had been to bring him back across to her ship. Certainly he seemed more in tune with the crew now—the circle of sailors around him, sharing jokes and stories, attested to that.

  But the same sight made her feel strangely bitter; it was him the crew saw as the heart of the voyage, him that they warmed to, even though it was her who had brought them here, who had led a tooth-and-nail defence while he had cowered behind his bloody history book. But that would change, she thought, as the forest swallowed the sun and darkness swept across the river. Now it was time to show them what real leadership was, beyond cracking jokes.

  “Bring him up,” said Mouana to the Bruiser, as she tested the flex on her boulder of a fist. A minute later the dead man returned, dragging with him a wretched sight.