We walked and climbed for several minutes, the ship being, as I have said, of surprising size. My ears strained for sounds that were not there. Missing was the rolling of the ship at sea, but also the wind of the ship of the air. Had I not known by the evidence of my own eyes that we were some thousands of feet in the air, I would have sworn that we were entombed.
When we reached a level with no ladder leading further upward, I surmised we were nearing our destination, and so it was with little surprise that I was pulled to a halt at a wooden double door at the end of the short corridor. It was, in fact, the only door on this level. Garm rapped on it respectfully. At an unheard signal, he opened it.
"I brought the chief rower, Cap'n, like you asked." He must have received some further signal, for he turned to me. "Come on in. The cap'n wants to talk to you."
Given Timash's description of the "iron hand" and the coincidence of this summoning with the disappearance of the Library, for a brief instant I entertained the thought of jumping Garm for his weapon and taking my chances. I felt my legs tense to leap when the overseer, perhaps clairvoyant from his years as a jailor, dropped one hand on the handle of his whip. I relaxed. My window of insanity had closed.
Once more I had come upon a critical turning point in my life, and passed it by all unknowing, but still alive. Ignoring the crawling feeling in the flesh between my shoulder blades, I strode with a confidence I did not feel past Garm and into the captain's cabin.
The captain whistled. "You're right, Garm. He's a big one. And handsome, too."
Captain "Iron Hand" was Marella.
Garm wedged past me and muttered something in Marella's ear.
"Already?" she murmured, then held out a hand. "You owe me." Grumbling, he removed something from his sash and gave it to her. She placed it in a pocket of her own outfit and smiled.
Their by-play allowed me a few precious seconds in which to assimilate my surroundings, all of which passed in a dizzy blur —a spacious cabin, sparsely furnished with heavy chairs, a bed, and a desk Timash could sleep on; in place of art, tapestries and fabrics hung and thrown in an apparently random pattern—none of which remained upon my mind for more than an instant as my eyes were irresistibly drawn back to the most arresting object in the room: Marella.
The romantic interludes in my life have not been many; Casanova wooed more women in a week than I did in a year. But for all that, when I did fall my tastes and my affections were constant, and nothing in what my eyes beheld touched that place in my heart where only my lost Hana dwelled…but with God as my witness I had never imagined that the grease-streaked technician we rescued from an underground battlefield could metamorphose herself like this.
I stared, I admit it. In all likelihood I stared with my mouth open like a farm boy at a coronation. I could not help it.
Gone was the grease, the filth of the pit and the fatigue that had turned her skin papery and her eyes baggy. Now her black hair was washed through with strands of auburn that lit one by one as she swept her curls from her face. In dress, however, she had changed but little, favoring a deep red jumpsuit with a white stripe down the leg, rather than the fantastical motley that attired her crew. She tucked her suit legs inside of her thigh-high boots, rather than outside as was the style, a simple change which tightened and smoothed the fabric just enough to make her gender obvious to the most casual observer. Faint grease spots on her uniform marked long use, but I found them comforting, a reminder of the woman I had known and fought with days ago. Against her right hip lay the ever-present short staff, on her left perched a phase-pistol. I wondered—did that make her right- or left-handed?
"Garm," she said. "Wait outside."
While I stood, my mouth closed at last, she circled me like a shopper appraising a well-dressed model—or a shark her next meal. I felt a now-familiar tingle between my shoulder blades as she passed out of my sight. My questions scrambled all over each other trying to get out, but she had not yet given me a sign of her intentions.
When she strolled into my sight again, she sighed. "Sit down, Keryl. I know you're exhausted." I thanked her and did as she suggested. "I also know you've got a lot of questions," she blurted before I could ask, "but you have to wait. It'll be faster if I just tell you in my own way, and I don't want a lot of rumors starting. I have enough of that now."
My eye was caught by a pitcher on a side table, dewy with condensation. The mere sight made my mouth water. When Marella saw where I was looking, she flushed with embarrassment and poured me a glass of violet liquid without asking. I drained it. She smiled.
"That should take the edge off, in any case." Her hand began to make random circles on a tabouret next to her chair, and she watched in fascination.
"Perhaps you should try some, then."
She jerked her hand away. "I'm sorry. I'm just sitting here wondering how much I can afford to tell you. I mean—well, after what we've been through, I shouldn't have to ask, but I need to know if I can trust you."
I rolled this over in my mind. True enough that we had been comrades-in-arms, and she owed me her life more than once, but all that seemed to me to have been tossed by the wayside since we came to this ship, and I said so.
Suddenly she stood and stretched, her arms straight out to her sides. I had to look away quickly; it had been a long time since I had seen Hana, and Marella's posture made the fabric of her jumpsuit stretch exceedingly tightly. If she had ever done that in front of the crew, I doubt she would still be captain.
"All right," she said abruptly, as though physical activity had released her worries. As she spoke she paced the cabin. "First of all, my name isn't Marella. It's Maire, Maire Por Foret." She pronounced it "Marie." Another of the Library's deep-seeded lessons floated unbidden to the surface of my brain: "Por" was high-ranking Nuum nobility, roughly equivalent to a baroness. I blinked. What other surprises was this woman about to unveil? "This sky-barge, the Dark Lady, is mine. I own it, as well as being its captain.
"I know what you're thinking: Sky-barge, female captain, pleasure ship. Crewed by convicts, but its only real purpose is so that I can fly around Thora doing whatever I damn well please because I can't find a husband. And you know something?" She stopped in front of me. "You'd be absolutely right."
She resumed her story along with her pacing. "Except that it's not that I can't find a husband, I just don't want to. Why should I? I've got my ship, my crew, and a whole world that doesn't have to conform to the Nuum way of doing things." I blinked. "Don't be shocked. You know as well as I do that our hold on this planet is tenuous, at best. Just look at the Vulsteen."
"I would rather not, actually, if I had a choice."
She sniffed. "You and me both. But I didn't have a choice. That's what I'm getting to. I set down in that deserted city to do some hunting. We'd spotted the thunder lizards from the air, but I'm not into big game—I thought maybe I could bag a blood bat or a plains lion."
"Or a breen?"
Maire shot me a look of utter horror. "Are you crazy? Not if I was shooting from up here. Anyway, to get to the point, somebody stole my shuttle and left me there."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I was hunting alone—you know, big girl, big gun…big idiot—and somebody smacked me from behind. When I woke up my gun was gone. They left me my baton, for what it was worth. I was looking for shelter when the Vulsteen caught my trail, and that's when you found me."
"Someone was trying to kill you."
"Uh-huh. I've been questioning the crew. The word got around that I'd gone missing. They mounted search parties, but they couldn't look in the dark because of the animals. By the time they came back, the Vulsteen had caught up to us and we were underground. If they hadn't spotted you eventually, they probably would have given me up for dead and left."
"So that was why you kept looking at the sky."
"Uh-huh. Whoever dumped me had to make a really good-looking search before they gave me up—even then my father would have had heads flying�
��but I was hoping I could get some idea what was going on if I could see them before they saw me."
I reached for the pitcher again and poured another drink. "But we spoiled your plans. What was that all about, anyway? Do your men often swoop out of the sky and kidnap unsuspecting passersby?" She gave me a puzzled look, as if my question were entirely unexpected. I had blundered into some kind of faux pas, and I scrambled to change the subject. "That reminds me," I resumed quickly. "What happened to Harros? I know he was shot, but when I woke up in the dungeon I thought he'd be around."
The puzzlement on her face immediately gave way to grave concern. She walked over to one of the tapestries, and where I had thought would be only a wall I saw a room-sized alcove containing a large bed. On it lay Harros.
He was unconscious, his breathing regular but shallow. As I grew nearer I could see a clear gelatinous substance clumped around his right temple, a plasm bandage. Technically alive, it formed over a wound, feeding on bacteria and impurities so that it cleansed at the same time as it closed cuts and supplied nutrients by being absorbed slowly into the body. Once the injury was healed, if the plasm had not been completely absorbed, it simply dried into a powder and fell away. A faint scar showed through the gel.
"One of the men had his phase pistol set on high, unlike Durrn—the man who shot you. I don't know if he was aiming for me and hit Harros by mistake, or if he tried to pull his shot… It only grazed him, but he almost died before we could get him back on board. With all those witnesses the killer couldn't do anything but go along and follow my orders. So I know some of the crew is still loyal; I just don't know which ones."
"Is he going to be all right?"
"In a few days." She nodded sadly. "I felt responsible, so I had him brought here. Now you know what I meant about rumors."
I knew what she meant, all right, but I suspected also what she was not saying. Impertinent as it seemed to me, Maire had our lives in her hands, and I needed to know what she intended to do about us—her concern so far being subsumed to all appearances by her own self-interest. So I choked back my manners and prepared to be rude.
"It's going to be rough on him when he has to give up that bed for the rowers' quarters," I said with simulated pity.
"There's plenty of time for that," she replied brusquely. She took hold of the tapestry, giving me a meaningful look. We left Harros to sleep.
"There's something I have to know about you," she said. Standing directly in front of me, in height she came almost to my nose. Her eyes were dark and direct, challenging. "Why are two Nuum and an ape prowling around deserted cities alone with no guns and no transport other than a crushed groundcar? Come to think of it, where did that ape come from?"
Given the variety of humanoid mammals I had seen back in Vardan, I was surprised by the latter question, but as I could not answer it in any case, I ignored it and concentrated on the former. Harros and I had spent much time in the groundcar working on our story while the empty miles drifted by.
"We were part of an infantry unit detailed to fight the natives at a research station in the jungle," I said. "We came from Vardan on an airship. Most of the post was wiped out by the natives, but Harros and I escaped."
Her eyes widened, to my great appreciation. "You were at the research station? The entire Thoran newsnet talked about nothing else for a week!" I started to speak but she turned her back on me, pacing. Abruptly she turned again. "Escaped, huh? So where'd you pick up the ape?"
Damn. She was not going to let it go. "He helped us get away. The natives had him caged up. We freed him and brought him along. He's useful, times being what they are."
If she disbelieved a fraction of what I was telling her, she was a great actress, because she didn't show it. She began pacing again, and stopped.
"Garm tells me you've already taken over the Hold." She waited for my reply, but since the answer was self-evident, I said nothing. After a moment she went on, conceding a point to me. "You have any idea what that means?"
"As far as I can tell, it means that the next man you kidnap is probably going to try to pound my head in my sleep, so I should sleep with one eye open and the other half-closed."
"Well, yes… but more than that it means that it's your job to keep that bunch of killers, thieves, and cradle-robbers in line—and keep them from killing each other. That's your job as far as the rest of the crew is concerned, anyway—but I also need you. I need you to keep your eyes and ears open, to try to find out who's with me and who's against me." Her voice softened and her eyes would have melted a Prussian regiment. "Will you help me, Keryl? You've already saved my life twice; you're getting pretty good at it."
"And what about us? We weren't sentenced here; when do we get to leave?"
"You have a choice, my friend. You can either stay with me, or I can set you down at the next military outpost."
37. Conspiracy
"I just can't figure her out." I had explained my conversation with Maire to Timash in low tones. I had to give him credit for keeping his surprise at her identity to himself.
My friend shook his head in sympathy. "Women. They never change."
I glanced at him to see if he realized just what he had said, and the blank look on his face was too comical to resist. I started laughing and I could not stop. It took only a moment for Timash to see why, and he laughed until he was bent over with tears running down his face. While it may have owed its origin more to hysterical fatigue than real humor, our emotional release was real.
Evidently laughter of any kind was not a common occurrence in the Hold. (I made a mental note to try to change the name of this place. It reminded me too much of the pit.) Those whose survival mechanism consisted of staying out of the way of their larger mates stole surreptitious looks of confusion our way, while their bolder comrades—in particular those who had formerly been allied with Skull—watched us with open disdain. One or two grinned wolfishly, perhaps believing that this existence had already worn away our sanity and openly awaiting their chance to regain the throne of the slaves.
Our mirth exhausted, we leaned against each other for a moment until we regained our breath. I took the opportunity to whisper into Timash's ear.
"I've got to get out of here and search the ship. You stay here and keep order. You think you can handle it?"
Very softly, he cracked his knuckles.
No one challenged me when I left, not that I had expected anyone to do so, but it still felt akin to sneaking into the dons' kitchen for a midnight snack. Trying to adopt a purposeful attitude, I straightened my aching back but avoided making eye contact with any crewmen. It seemed to work: perhaps they simply assumed I had been summoned to the captain again—or perhaps word of what had befallen Skull had traveled above-decks: Even among the Nuum, I was a formidable physical specimen.
I say this not in vanity, but simply as truth: As I had noticed soon after my arrival, the men of this age, whether through lack of physical labor, deliberate malnutrition, or simply evolution, were physically smaller than we of the 20th century. Even the Nuum, an alternate offshoot given generations of offworld development and access to better food and medicines, were smaller than I on the average. Harros was really the only Nuum I had known who rivaled my size, and I believe that I yet surpassed him in strength, although it had never come to a test.
All this time I had been wandering the corridors at random while attempting to look as though I had a definite goal. That could not last forever. For one thing, I had my work shift soon, and I doubted my status as the captain's pet rower would protect me from Garm if I missed my assignment. For another thing, someone was eventually going to ask me a question I could not answer, or find me in a restricted area, which would see me hauled back before Garm, if they didn't simply toss me over the side.
Garm had explained to us the first day, in his "orientation speech," that a force field rose up from the hull on either side of the ship to a point about ten feet above the gunwale. Its purpose was to keep anyo
ne from falling out accidentally (he made it very clear that "anyone" was defined as the captain and crew), should the airship encounter unexpectedly rough weather. He had further intimated that it would not prevent the purposeful exit of a man from the ship, provided he were "assisted" by Garm. Then he snapped his whip and screamed "Row!"
Naturally I had carefully memorized each bend in every corridor and the placement of all the cross-passages I traversed, and so I set about to return to the Hold in complete confidence. Within five minutes I was totally lost; with the exception of the captain's quarters and where I really needed to be, I had no idea where I found myself. A vision of Garm treating me to a panoramic view of the earth from five thousand feet in the sky was beating down the doors of my mind.
Ahead of me stood one of the Dark Lady's few obvious modern features, a lift for transporting heavy cargo and machinery from the deck to the holds, and vice versa. If I could reach the deck, I could find my way back to my berth—or just stay there, as my shift would doubtless begin soon. As long as I stayed out of Garm's way he probably would not deign to notice me.
Once more my confidence soared. Every elevator I had ever seen on Thora operated the same way—I was as good as home. I stepped on, pressed the button to go up—and felt my stomach rise to my throat as I was dropped further into the bowels of the great airship.
There was no telling what was at the bottom of the shaft, but I needed no genius to know that rowers were not expected to be found there. My breath came shallowly as I waited for the car to halt; it was an express, and there were no controls for canceling its descent or stopping at another level. Finally it came to a gentle landing and the doors opened.
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