“Sounds like a mutiny,” I said.
“Stow that, Clemens,” Perkins said sharply.
I said, “My apologies, Captain.” It occurred to me then that I had made a poor job of keeping my mouth closed.
Merriwether ignored my outburst, and my apology, saying instead, “So how about it, boys, will you help us dig out the new shaft, or are you afraid of ghosts like the other men?”
“I have no problem with it,” Calvin said, “as I for one do not believe in ghosts. Except for the Holy Ghost, I suppose, but that’s a different matter.” I vowed to myself that one day I would get to the bottom of Calvin’s religion, but not that day.
“And how about you, Clemens?” said Merriwether. “Are you willing?”
“Honestly, sir, I’m more afraid of the explosives going off half-cocked than I am of meeting a ghost. Being exploded seems a much more likely calamity to me.”
“Does that mean you will do it then?”
“I suppose so. What will you be expecting us to do?”
“Tote your hod, mostly,” Perkins said.
“Well, I’m up to that. Mostly,” I said, waggling my celebrated limb.
“And help with the explosives some, if you’re game,” he added, daring me to stand my ground. “You’ll never make a prospector if you can’t handle explosives.”
“And that’s the truth,” said Merriwether.
Perkins’s harpoon had been well aimed, and it sunk into me tolerably deep. I either wanted to be a prospector and become rich on a diet of precious minerals and ice, or else I wanted to talk it to death and return home empty-handed, and one digit shy of a complete set.
I said, “Point made. Very well then. I am your huckleberry.”
“I will take that for a yes,” said the captain. “Be suited up and ready for vacuum at three bells. And don’t let Chalk pour a load of bilge into your ears in the meantime.”
We did as we were instructed, and I soon returned to the belowdecks with my pressure suit in tow. Since they had refused to work, all the former whalers were there, lounging in their hammocks, or else practicing the fantastic, heretical form of poker revealed to them through the necessity of playing with the Deirdre’s sole, venerable, and deeply perverted pack of cards. I would like to say that those men were not playing with a full deck, but as satisfying as it would be to say it, it would not be the truth, for, if anything, the pack in question was overcrowded, like a barroom on election day. True, its roster was missing a number of prominent personages, including, as I recall, both the king and queen of diamonds and the jack of spades, but it made up for its low stock in royals by carrying three jokers, a spare trey, half a dozen nines, and a truly astonishing number of aces, most of which had been dogeared for easy identification. There were so many of these in fact that the “baby ticket,” as the gamblers on the river sometimes called it, had to be played at a steep discount, and any hand that didn’t contain at least three of them was considered pretty much dead on arrival. This was how it seemed to me anyway, as a dilettante, but then it was often hard to tell which of the cards in play was which because of the palimpsest of surreptitious markings, grease smears, and tobacco stains they had accumulated over the centuries. And what’s more, with the help of the feeble light in the belowdecks, a man sequestering a well-masticated plug of tobacco in his cheek and a spot of larceny in his heart could use a strategically placed thumbprint permeated with dark juices to instantly convert a four into a five, a six into a seven, or, if he dared to use both thumbs at once, make a nearly useless ace into a valuable trey.
I played only occasionally at the poker coaxed from this singular deck, largely because its recondite and highly changeable rules were beyond me, and because I had nothing to wager except my pressure suit, which was more valuable to me than a sackful of gold. For the record, Bemis was a purist in these matters and would not touch the game.
He and I set about filling our air cylinders from the several hoses running up from Mister Lovelace’s machines, and revitalizing our batteries with electrical energy from the same source. As we prepared for the vacuum, a few of the men stopped trying to modify the number of pips on their cards long enough to try to dissuade us from our mission.
“That’s a bad spur, boys,” said Watkins, whom I had credited with more sense. “Won’t find anything but trouble in there.”
“Yessir. Mighty unlucky,” agreed Winters, a former whaler.
Bemis, filling an air cylinder, scoffed, “How can a hole in the ground be unlucky?”
“Cuz it’s got the ghost of a jonah in it, ain’t it?” said Chalk. He threw down his handful of dilapidated pasteboards and rose from the deck in order to enlighten us further. “If there’s anything more unlucky th’n that then I’d like ta know about it.”
Calvin was not in the market and let Chalk know it. “Come now, Chalk. What is it exactly that a ghost can do to you, rattle his chains and make you piss down the leg of your suit? That’s already standard procedure, as far as I can tell.” A few of the men laughed at this. All the haggises I’d ever worn offered a receptacle for liquid waste, but it was up to the wearer to hit the bullseye.
Chalk said, “I’m only lookin’ out fer ya, ya unnerstands. I become kinda attached ta you two since Samuel had his mishap.” He paused to launch a bolus of tobacco at the communal spittoon and, hitting the mark, continued. “Yer jonah, ya see, ‘s oft times as heinous a creature deceased as when he was alive, as his malval’nt—his evil spirit is set loose to do supernatural forms a mischief that weren’t available ta him whilst still in the flesh. Why, there were a jonah in the old Hermione outta Gloucester, as I recall. She lost a brace a harpoons and a string a barrels on a spermaceti and nothin’ to show for it, all on account a the jonah, ya see, an’ the men was feelin’ right perturbed, then one day he—the jonah that is—fell outta the mizzentop durin’ a blow. I ain’t sayin’ he was he’ped to it, ya unnerstand, ‘cept like I says some a the men was perturbed. Anyhow, he hit the quarterdeck hatch cover with a awful noise an’ went straight on through all the way ta the bilge, or nearly so.” Chalk shook his head. “Took three days ta die, he did, an’ a moanin’ somethin’ horrible the whole time, but there weren’t nothin’ for it, as we di’n’t have no proper surgeon aboard, only a loblolly boy, an’—he’s dead now so’s I don’t mean no disrespect—he weren’t quite right in the head, from the laudanum, I ‘spect. But the jonah—I believe his name was Dutourd and so he were a frog a course, an’ I leaves ta you what ta make a that.”
I checked the gauge in front of me. I had filled an entire air cylinder and Chalk had barely finished killing off his jonah.
“Now I ain’t sayin’ all yer jonahs is of French extraction, mind you, fer the Devil don’t make things that simple, do he? So—”
Bemis, now stripped to his under-drawers, said, “Is there an end to this tale?”
“So, as I was about ta tell ya,” Chalk continued, “he dies—Dutourd that is, not the loblolly boy—an’ once he’s passed an’ his remains gone over the side, well, shipmates, after that there weren’t a moment’s peace in the barky. Sure’s yer born, not a dog watch’d go by where ya couldn’t hear his incorporeal body hit the deck. Made a horrible noise, it did, again an’ again, right about two bells, which was when he’d finally passed, ya see. It were a trial then, sleepin’ through a night watch in the Hermione.”
“It’d make for a better tale if it happened when he fell, rather than when he died,” I said.
Chalk looked at me, albeit with pity more than scorn, and said, “Which he fell outta the mizzen top in the noon watch, di’n’t he, an’ no shade, not even the shade of a jonah, is about ta haunt a ship in the daylight. Even a lubber like yerself should know that much.”
“I was only trying to help,” I said, sliding my wounded leg carefully into the lower portion of my suit.
“You make fun all ya like, Samuel Clemens, but you’ll be singin’ a darker tune when the ghost a ol’ Jonesy come outta that hole i
n D2.”
Well now, I thought, this was some hard information for a change. “What hole is that?”
“Ah, there’s a crack in the tunnel floor about a dozen feet to leeward—”
“Shipmate,” I said, “I happen to know what leeward means, and it has no place in the Moon.”
“The hole’s there nonetheless,” Chalk insisted. “An’ when ol’ Jonesy’s shade comes breachin’ up outta that hole like a spermaceti with a harpoon up its arse then you’ll know better, won’t ya now? An’ that’s a fact.”
“And what will it do then?” Calvin said as he helped me get into the rest of my suit.
Chalk shook his head. “I know ya means well, Calvin Bemis, but yer a speakin’ outta ign’rance, an’ that’s all I c’n say. I jus’ pray that ign’rance don’t git you an’ Samuel, or all a us, dead. Why, ya could fall straight down that hole, couldn’t ya, or did ya not think a that?” I expected I could fall into a hole on my own, without the help of a jonah, ghost or not.
“The hole the ghost comes out of?” Bemis said. “Sounds a bit crowded in there.”
“You scoff all ya want, but I tell ya the man were a jonah, sure’s yer born.”
Perkins came into the belowdecks then and heard the fateful word.
”Shade or no, he’ll always—”
“Stow it, ya silly booger,” Perkins barked, and after a moment the old whaler returned, grumbling, to his hand of cards.
Seeing that Bemis and I were nearly ready for the vacuum, Perkins, who was already suited, plucked his helmet from the rack and led the way out of the belowdecks toward the airlock.
As we were leaving, Chalk mumbled, “An’ whilst yer down there, you’ll keep yer radios turned off, if ya knows what’s good fer ya.”
Chapter Seven
It was oddly satisfying to be back inside my dear haggis again, prowling through the cold pitch-black airless tunnels of the Deirdre mine. The sense of satisfaction was not particularly keen, and did not last much beyond the consumption of my first cylinder of air, but it confirmed for me that I was, for better or worse, a bonafide Moon rat.
As expected, Calvin and I were carrying a hod, and although we were heading down-tunnel into the D line, the hod was already full to the gunwales, in fact well above any real or imagined gunwales, with supplies and equipment to be employed in sinking the new shaft. And lying low amongst the innocent rope, shovels, spare batteries and air cylinders, our cargo included a cache of explosives. We had no concept of the volatility of these exceptional passengers—the box of brown cigar-like cylinders looked harmless enough—but we thought it best to assume that they were prepared to detonate themselves for as little as a stern glance or harsh word, and we handled the hod accordingly. This was not the case of course: it takes something more precise, such as a sudden burst of electricity, to set them off. We learned all about this soon enough, but not soon enough to keep us from carrying the hod like it was baby Jesus in the manger. Lang and Perkins led the way, and they got farther and farther ahead as we nursed our hod full of destruction into the depths of the Deirdre. I tried not to consider their increasing distance from us and our cargo as evidence of the likelihood of our imminent demise, but the farther ahead they got, the harder it was to maintain my complacence.
Eventually Mister Lang put an end to my uneasiness, or a reasonable portion of it, by backtracking far enough for his radio to be heard, and saying, “Clemens, is your leg troubling you?”
I thought this mighty solicitous, especially for a man with a reputation as something of a hard horse, and felt satisfied all over again. However, the leg was holding up quite well, the only sign of its ordeal being a tingling in the missing toe that was almost comforting by then, like a cryptic but reassuring message from a close relative now beyond this world.
I said, “No, thank you, Mister Lang. The leg is doing well.”
“Then what the devil’s keeping you men?” he said. “You get much farther behind and we’ll lose you. Or are you satisfied that you can find your way to D2 by yourselves?”
This was indeed possible—but then so is a virgin birth, according to widely held opinion—it was just exceedingly unlikely.
“You’d best not count on that,” I said. “We were only trying to—to be cautious.”
Perkins, coming up behind Lang, could be heard over the radio snorting with derision. “They think the dynamite’s gonna explode if they drop the hod, the boogers.” That was not in fact the case. We, or at least I, strongly suspected that the cargo would explode if we disparaged its mother. We knew for a fact that it would explode if we dropped the hod.
“Move it along then,“ Lang said. “There’s only so much air in the cylinders.” So we did as he asked and picked up the pace, but still could not resist babying the hod over the rough patches.
Eventually we arrived at D2, which I had not visited before, or if I had I did not recognize any of its features—but then, despite the spur’s elaborate reputation, there was little of note to see. I shone the beam of my headlamp around looking for a sign, such as Dante found at the gates of Hell perhaps, but there was only D2 scratched into the rock, so all hope was not abandoned, as yet. We carried the hod around and over a steep dogleg in the tunnel, and then came to a place where the passage was loaded with debris, presumably tailings that had yet to be hauled out to the surface. I presumed this, I should say. Calvin had another notion.
“Is this where the tunnel fell in?” he said, and added, “Where the man was killed?”
“That’s right,” said Lang peremptorily. “So mind your step.”
Not far beyond this came another dogleg. These arbitrary twists and turns were ubiquitous in the Deirdre, and I had no idea why this should be. I assumed they were the result of a lack of skill or care during the excavation process, or simple cussedness and a desire to make life interesting for the men toting hod. I am always pleased to offer an opinion, and especially so on matters about which I am ignorant, since the field of play is so much broader that way. So in that spirit, or else simply to complain, I said, “Why, there’s not a straight passageway in this entire enterprise, is there?”
“Not a one,” said Perkins. He did not elaborate.
“Is there method to it then?” I wondered aloud. “I seem to recall something about a straight line being the shortest distance between two points, but perhaps that proposition is only valid on Earth.” I thought this provocative enough to knock loose a response, if not an actual explanation, but once again I was wrong. It took Bemis to explain.
“The sharp turns serve to protect the miners from the blasts,” he said. “Flying debris can’t turn corners.” So I was enlightened just in time to see the practice in action.
“This’ll do,” said Lang. “You men can drop the hod here.”
We did not drop the hod, any more than we would have pitched the baby Jesus to the ground, but it arrived there eventually.
“Watch where you step,” Perkins said. “There’s a hole hereabouts big enough to fall into.”
I swept my headlamp’s beam around the floor of the tunnel and thought I saw what might have been a small crevasse, leading down and away from the tunnel itself. Lang and Perkins led us past this hazard and into a particularly narrow passage a few yards beyond. There they stopped. It was either that or turn back, because this was a dead end.
The two men then began a close inspection of the walls and floor of this small space. They poked and prodded at various concavities and protrusions of what looked to me very much like rock, then used a small pick to break off interesting pieces of it and held them in the glare of their headlamps.
“Here’ll do,” said Lang at last, pointing at an undistinguished patch of rock with the five sausages of his gloved right hand.
Perkins said, ”Takes us mighty near the line, digging on that side.”
“Captain says we’re to proceed regardless,” Lang replied. “Impossible to know for certain how far west we’ve dug.” I had no idea what they
were talking about, and I was not even sure the word west held any meaning in the Moon.
Lang then returned to the hod, presumably to decant the baby Jesus and his accoutrements for business, but Perkins remained behind and then beckoned to us, saying, “Look here, men.” We looked, eager to see something engaging, such as a great bolus of water ice ripe for the picking. “You see there, those particles of white?”
“That’s ice,” claimed Bemis, who was always an optimist.
“Yes,” Perkins affirmed.
“It’s not much, is it?” I added. As I said, Calvin is the optimist.
“No, it ain’t,” Perkins agreed, perhaps a bit peevishly. “It’s what’s behind it, or below it, that we’re after. If it’s there.” He used one of the sausages attached to his hand to prod the filaments of ice. “Not the strongest lead I’ve seen, not by a long shot, but you do what you can with what you have.”
“Will we be blasting then?” I said, not sure if I wanted to witness the spectacle or not.
“That’s how she’s done, Clemens. About time you—”
“One of you men come lend me a hand,” Lang said suddenly. Although one could often hear breathing and other sounds of human life through the radios, it was easy to forget that others could hear everything you said if they were close by.
Bemis went to help Mister Lang, and Perkins continued, “As I was saying, it’s about time you boys lost your virginity.” I chuckled, catching his meaning. “Your great digging leviathan notwithstanding, blasting and plenty of it is the way to mine the Moon.”
This does not apply to strip mining, as done by the likes of Lunar Consolidated Mines, but then they are not after ice, or even precious metals, although those do turn up now and then in small quantities. No, the pigs graze on rock and dust. This fodder is reduced to its constituent atoms through the efforts of large resonance engines catholic in their tastes, and the atoms thereby obtained must be useful, especially the aluminum and the oxygen I expect, otherwise all the expense and commotion, the pigs and pickers and all the rest, wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Ice however, and lumps of nickel and iron, and the marvelous carbonaceous chondrite, from which, I’m told, anything short of the Last Supper or good manners can be fashioned, rarely if ever lie on the surface where they can be consumed by a roving pig. For these valuable wonders, one must go deep, and for that, blasting into the planet’s bowels with dynamite is the thing, and pretty much the only thing, that will get you to it.
The Deirdre Page 8