Geo walked down into the forecastle, still deserted except for Urson and
Snake. "Well?" asked Urson, sitting up on the edge of his berth. "What
did she tell you?"
"Why aren't you asleep?" Geo said heavily. He touched Snake on the
shoulder. "She wants to see you now."
Snake stood up, started for the door, but then turned around.
"What is it?" Geo asked.
Snake dug into his clout again and pulled out the thong with the jewel.
He walked over to Geo, hesitated, and then placed the thong around the
older boy's neck.
"You want me to keep it for you?" Geo asked.
But Snake turned around and was gone.
"I wonder what they do?" said Urson. "Or did you find out. Come on, Geo,
give up what she told you."
"Did Snake say anything to you while I was gone?"
"Not a peep," answered Urson. "I came no nearer sleep than I came to the
moon. Now come on, what's this about?"
Geo told him.
When he finished, Urson said, "You're crazy. Both you and her."
"I don't think so," Geo said. He concluded his story by recounting
Argo's demonstration of the jewel's power.
Urson fingered the stone on Geo's chest. "All that in this little thing?
Tell me, do you think you can figure out how it works?"
"I don't know if I want to," Geo said. "It doesn't sound right."
"You're damn straight it doesn't sound right," Urson reiterated. "What's
the point of sending us in there with no protection to do something that
would be crazy with a whole army. What's she got against us?"
"I don't think she has anything against us," Geo said. "Urson, what
stories do you know about Aptor? She said you might be able to tell me
something."
"I know that no one trades with it, everyone curses by it, and the rest
is a lot of rubbish not worth saying."
"What rubbish?"
"Believe me, it's just bilge water," insisted Urson. "Do you think you
could figure out that little stone there, if you had long enough, I
mean? She said that the priests five hundred years ago could, and she
seems to think you're as smart as some of them. I wouldn't doubt if you
could work it."
"You tell me some stories first," said Geo.
"Oh, they talk about cannibals, women who drink blood, things neither
man nor animal, and cities inhabited only by death. Sailors avoid it,
save to curse by."
"Do you know anything more than that?"
"There's nothing more to know," shrugged Urson.
"She said the stories you'd tell would not be one tenth of the truth."
"She must have meant that there wasn't even a tenth part of the truth in
them. And I'm sure she's right. You just misunderstood."
"No, I heard her correctly," Geo assured him.
"Then I just don't believe it. There are half a dozen things that don't
match up in all this. First, how that little four-armed fellow happened
to be at the pier after two months just when she was coming in. And to
have the jewel still, not have traded it, or sold it already...."
"Maybe," suggested Geo, "he read her mind too, when he first stole it,
the same way he read ours."
"And if he did, maybe he knows how to work the things. I say let's find
out when he comes back. And I wonder who cut his tongue out. Strange one
or not, that makes me sick," said the big man.
"About that," Geo started. "Don't you remember? He said you knew the man
it was."
"I know many men," said Urson, "but which one of the many I know is it?"
"You really don't know?" Geo asked, quietly.
"You say that in a strange way," Urson said, frowning.
"I'll say the same thing he said," went on Geo. "What man did you kill?"
Urson looked at his hands for a moment, stretched the fingers, turned
them over in his lap like meat he was examining. Then, without looking
up, he said, "It was a long time ago, friend, but the closeness of it
shivers in my eyes. I should have told you, yes. But it comes to me,
sometimes, not like a memory, but something I can feel, as hard as
metal, taste as sharp as salt, and the wind brings back my voice, his
words, so clearly that I shake like a mirror where the figure on the
inside pounds his fists on the fists of the man outside, each one trying
to break free.
"We were reefing sails in a flesh-blistering rain, when it began. His
name was Cat. The two of us were the two biggest men aboard, and that we
had been put on the reefing team together meant that this was an
important job and one to be done well and right. Water washed our eyes,
our hands slipped on wet ropes. It was no wonder my cloth suddenly flung
away from me in a gust, billowing down in the rain, flapping against
half a dozen ropes and breaking two small stays. 'You clumsy thing'
bawled the mate from the deck. 'What sort of fish-fingered sailor, are
you?'
"And through the rain I heard Cat laugh from his own spar. 'That's the
way luck goes,' he cried, catching at his own cloth that threatened to
pull loose. I pulled mine in and bound her tight. The competition that
goes rightly between two fine sailors drove a seed of fury into my flesh
that should have bloomed as a curse or a returned jibe, but the rain
rained too hard, and the wind was too strong; so I bound my sail with
silence.
"I was last down, of course, and with only a few lads below on deck,
when I saw why my sail had come loose. A worn mast ring had broken,
caused a main rope to fly and my canvas to come tumbling. But the ring
also had held the nearly broken aft mast together, and in the wind, a
split twice the length of my arm pulled open and snapped to again and
again like a child's noise clapper. There was a rope near, and inch
thick line coiled on a spike. Holding myself to a rat line by not much
more than my toes, I secured the rope and bound the base of the broken
pole. Each time it snapped to, I looped it once around and pulled the
wet line tight. They call this whipping a mast, and I whipped it till
the collar of rope was three feet long to the top of the cleft and she
couldn't snap any more. Then I hung the broken ring on a peg near by so
I could point it out to the ship's smith and get him to replace the rope
with a metal band.
"That evening at mess, with the day's incidents out of my mind and hot
soup in my mouth, I was laughing over some sailor's tale about another
sailor and another sailor's woman, when the mate strode into the hall.
'Hey, you sea scoundrels,' he bellowed. There was silence. 'Which of you
bound up that broken mast aft?'
"I was about to call out, 'Aye, it was me,' when another man beat me by
bawling, 'It was the Big Sailor, sir!' That was a name both Cat and I
were often hailed by.
"'Well,' snarled the mate, 'the captain says that such good thinking in
times so hard as these should be rewarded. He's seen the job and
approved.' He took a gold coin from his pocket and tossed it on the
table in front of Cat. 'There you go, Big Sailor. But I think it's as
much as any man should do.' And then he turned and clomped from the mess
hall. A cheer went up for Cat as he pocketed the coin; I couldn't see
his face.
"The anger in me started now, but without direction. Should it go to the
sailor who'd called out the name of the hero? Naw, for he had been down
on deck, and through rain and darkness probably he could not have told
me from my rival anyway at that distance. At Cat? But he was already
getting up to leave the table. And the first mate, the same first mate
of this ship here, friend, that we're on now, he was out stomping
somewhere on deck.
"Perhaps it was this that caused my anger to break out the next morning
when we were in calmer weather. A careless salt jarred me in a passage
way, and suddenly I was all fists and fire. We scuffled, we banged, we
cursed, we rolled. In fact, we rolled right under the feet of the mate
who was coming down the steps at the time. He sent a boot into us and
eight different curses, and when he recognized me, he sneered, 'Oh, the
clumsy one.'
"Now I'd had a fiery record before. Fights on ship are a breach few
captains will allow. This was my third, and one too many. And the mate,
prompted by his own opinion of me, got the captain to order me flogged.
"So, like a carcass to be sliced and bid on, I was lead out before the
assembled sailors at the next sunrise and bound to the main mast. I
thought my wrath went all toward the first mate now. But black turned
white in my head, into something that I could bite into, when he flung
the whip to Cat and cried, 'Here, Big Sailor, you've done your ship one
good turn. Now rub sleep off your face and do it another. I want ten
stripes on that one's back deep enough to count easily with a finger
dipped in salt.'
"They fell, and I didn't breathe the whole time. Ten lashes is a
whipping a man can recover from in a week. Most go down to their knees
with the first one, if their rope is slack enough. I didn't fall until
they finally cut the ropes from my wrists. Nor was it till I heard a
second gold coin rattle down on the deck from the first mate's hand and
the words to the crew, 'See how a good sailor gets rich,' that I made a
sound. And it was lost in the cheer which sprung from the other men.
"Cat and one other lugged me to the brig. As I fell forward, hands
scudding into straw, I heard Cat's voice come, 'Well, brother, that's
the way the luck goes.'
"Then the pain made me faint.
"A day later, when I could pull myself up to the window and look out on
the back of the ship, we caught the worst storm I'd ever seen, and the
slices in my back made it no easier on me. Pegs threatened to pull from
their holes, boards to part themselves; one wave washed four men
overboard; and while others ran to save them, another came and swept off
six more. It had come so suddenly that not a sail had been raised, and
now the remaining men were swarming to the ratlines.
"From my place at the brig's window I saw it start to go and I howled
like an animal, tried to pull the bars away. But legs passed my window
running, and none stopped. I screamed at them, and I screamed again. The
ship's smith had not yet gotten to fix my makeshift repair on the aft
mast with another metal band. Nor, with my anger, had I yet even pointed
it out to him as I had intended. It didn't hold a quarter of an hour.
When it gave there was a snap like thunder. Under the tugging of half
furled sails, ropes popped like threads. Men were whipped off like drops
of water shaken from a wet hand. The mast raked across the sky above me
like a claw, and then fell against the high mizzen, snapping more ropes
and scraping men from their perches as you'd scrape ants from a tree.
"The crew's number was halved, and when somehow we crawled from under
the sheets of rain, one mast fallen and one more ruined, the broken
bodies with still some life numbered eleven. A ship's infirmary holds
ten, and the overflow goes to the brig. The choice of who became my mate
was between the man most likely to live, figuring that he could take the
harder situation more easily than the others, and the man most likely to
die, figuring that it would probably make no difference to some one that
far gone. The choice was made, the latter choice, and the next morning
they carried Cat in and laid him beside me on the straw while I slept.
His spine had been crushed at the pelvis and a spar had pierced his side
with a hole big enough to put your hand into.
"When he came to, all he did was cry--not with the agonized howls I had
given the day before when I watched the mast topple, but with a little
sound that escaped from clenched teeth, like a child who doesn't want to
show the pain. It didn't stop for hours, and such a soft sound, it
burned into my gut and my tongue deeper than any animal wailing would.
"The next dawn stretched copper foil across the window and reddish light
fell on the straw, the board floor, and the filthy, crumpled blanket
they had laid him in. The crying had stopped and was replaced now by a
gasped breath, sharp every few seconds, irregular, loud. I thought he
must be unconscious, but when I kneeled to look, his eyes were opened
and he stared straight into my face. 'You ...' he said to me with the
next gasp. 'It hurts ... You ...'
"'Be still,' I said. 'Here, be still.'
"The next word I thought I heard was water, but there wasn't any in the
cell. I should have realized that the ship's supplies had probably gone
for the most part overboard. But by now, hungry and thirsty myself, I
could see it as nothing less than a stupendous joke when one slice of
bread and a single tin cup of water were finally brought and
embarrassedly and silently handed in to us about seven that morning.
"Nevertheless, I opened his mouth and tried to pour some of it down his
throat. They say a man's mouth and tongue turn black from fever and
thirst after a while. It's not true. The color is the deep purple of
rotten, shriveled meat. And every taste bud on the dead flesh was tipped
with that white stuff that gets in your mouth when your bowels are
upset. He couldn't swallow the water. It just dribbled over the side of
his mouth that was scabbed with purple crust.
"He blinked his eyes and once more got out, 'You ... you please ...' and
then he began to cry again.
"'What is it?' I asked.
"Suddenly he began to struggle and got his hand into the breast of his
torn tunic and pulled out a fist. He held it out toward me and said,
'Please ... please ...'
"The fingers opened and I saw three gold coins, two of whose histories
suddenly leapt into my mind like stories of living men.
"I moved back as if burned; then I leaned forward again. 'What do you
want?' I asked.
"'Please ...' he said, moving his hand toward me. 'Kill ... kill ...'
and then he was crying once more. 'It hurts so bad ...'
"I got up. I walked across to the other side of the cell. I came back.
Then I broke his neck with my knee and my two hands.
"I took my pay up. Later I ate the bread and drank the rest of the
water. Then I went to sleep. They took him away without question. And
two days later, when the next food came, I realized, sort of absently,
that without all of that first bread and water I would have starved to
death. They finally let me out because they needed the muscle, what was
left of it. And the only thing I sometimes think about, the only thing I
let myself think about, is whether or not I earned my pay. I guess two
of them were mine anyway. But sometimes I take them out and look at
them, and wonder where he got the third one from."
Urson put his hand in his tunic and brought out three gold coins. "Never
been able to spend them, though," he said. He tossed the little pile
into the air, and then whipped them back into his fist again, and
laughed. "Never was able to spend them on anything."
"I'm sorry," Geo said after a moment.
Urson looked up. "Why? I guess these are my jewels, huh? Maybe everyone
has theirs some place. You think it was old Cat, maybe, sometimes when I
was in the brig, perhaps, earning that third coin, slicing out that
little four-armed monster's tongue? Somehow I doubt it."
"Look, I said I was sorry, Urson."
"I know," Urson said. "I know. I guess I've met a hell full of people in
my short, wet life, and it could be any one of them." He sighed. "Though
I wish I knew which. But I don't think that's the answer." He lifted his
hand to his mouth now and gnawed at his thumb nail. "I hope that kid
doesn't get as nervous as I do," he laughed. "He'll have such a hell of
a lot of nails to bite."
Then their skulls nearly split apart.
"Hey," said Geo, "that's Snake."
"And he's in trouble too," said Urson. He leaped onto the floor and
started up the passageway. Geo came after him.
"Let me go first," Geo said, "I know where he is."
They reached the deck, raced along the side of the cabins, until they
reached the door.
"Move," ordered Urson. Then he rammed against the door and it flew open.
Inside, behind her desk, Argo whirled, her hand on her jewel. "What is
the ..."
But the moment her concentration turned, Snake, who had been immobile
against the opposite wall, suddenly vaulted across the table toward Geo.
Geo grabbed the boy to steady him, and immediately one of Snake's hands
was at Geo's chest where the jewel hung.
"You fools!" hissed Argo. "Don't you understand? He's a spy for Aptor."
There was a sudden silence.
Then Argo said, "Close the door."
Urson closed it. Snake still held Geo and the jewel.
"Well," she said. "It is too late now."
"What do you mean?" asked Geo.
"That had you not come blundering in, one more of Aptor's spies would
have yielded up his secrets and then been reduced to ashes." She
breathed deeply. "But he has his jewel now, and I have mine. Well,
little thief, there's a stalemate. The forces are balanced now." She
looked at Geo. "How do you think he came so easily by the jewel? How do
you think he knew when I would be at the shore? Oh, he's a clever one,
with all the intelligence of Aptor working behind him. He probably even
had you planted without your knowing it to interrupt us at just that
time."
"No, he ..." began Urson.
"We were walking by your door," Geo interrupted, "when we heard a noise
and thought there might be trouble."
"Your concern may have cost us all our lives."
"If he's a spy, I gather that means he knows how this thing works," said
Geo. "Let Urson and I take him ..."
"Take him anywhere you wish!" hissed Argo. "Get out!"
Just then the door opened. "I heard a sound, Priestess Argo, and I
thought you might be in danger." It was the first mate.
The Goddess Incarnate breathed deeply. "I am in no danger," she said
evenly. "Will you please leave me alone, all of you."
"What's the Snake doing here?" Jordde suddenly asked, seeing Geo still
holding the boy.
"I said, leave me!"
Geo turned, away from Jordde, and stepped past him onto the deck, and
Urson followed him. Ten steps farther on, he glanced back, and seeing
that Jordde had emerged from the cabin and was walking in the other
direction, he set Snake down on his feet. "All right, Little One.
March!"
In the passage to the forecastle, Urson asked, "Hey, what's going on?"
"Well, for one thing, our little friend here is no spy," said Geo.
"How do you know?" asked Urson.
"Because she doesn't know he can read minds."
"How do you mean?" Urson asked.
"First of all, I was beginning to think something was wrong when I came
back from talking to the priestess. You were too, and it lay in the same
vein you were talking about. Why would our task be completely useless
unless we accomplished all parts of her mission? Wouldn't there be some
value in just returning her sister, the rightful head of Leptar, to her
former position? And I'm sure her sister may well have collected some
useful information that could be used against Aptor, so that would be
some value even if we didn't find the jewel. It doesn't sound too
sisterly a thing to me to forsake the young priestess if there is no
jewel in it for her. And her tone, the way she refers to the jewel as
_hers_. There's an old saying, from before the Great Fire even: Power
corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I think she has
not a little of the un-goddess-like desire for power first, peace
afterwards."
"But that doesn't mean this one isn't an Aptor spy," said Urson.
"Wait a minute. I'm getting there. At first I thought he was too. The
idea occurred to me first when I was talking to the priestess and she
first mentioned that there were spies from Aptor. The coincidence of his
appearance, that he had even managed to steal the jewel in the first
place, that he would present it to her the way he did; all this hinted
something so strange, that spy was the first thing I thought of, and I'm
sure it was the first thing she thought as well. And she especially
would think this if she did not know that Snake could read minds and
broadcast mentally, because ignorance of his telepathy removes the one
other possible explanation of the coincidences. But, Urson, why did he
leave the jewel with us before he went to see her?"
"Because he thought she was going to try and take it away from him."
"Exactly. When she told me to send him up to her, I was fairly sure that
was the main reason she wanted him. But if he was a spy, and knew how to
work the jewel, then why not take it with him, present himself to Argo
with the jewel, showing himself as an equal force, and then come calmly
back, leaving her in silence and us still on his side, especially since
he would be revealing to her something of which she was nine-tenths
aware of already, and would watch him no more carefully than she would
were it not confirmed."
"All right," said Urson, "why not?"
"Because he was not a spy, and didn't know how to work the jewel. Yes,
he had felt its power once. Perhaps he was going to pretend he had it
hidden on his person. But he did not want her to get her hands on it for
reasons that were strong, but not selfish.
"Here, Snake," said Geo. "You know how to work the jewel now, don't you;
but you learned from Argo just now."
The boy nodded.
"Here, then, why don't you take it?" Geo lifted the jewel from his neck
and held it out to him.
Snake drew back and shook his head violently.
Urson looked puzzled.
"Snake has seen into human minds, Urson. He's seen things directly which
the rest of us only learn from a sort of second hand observation. He
knows that the power of this little bead is more dangerous to the mind
of the person who wields it than it is to the cities it may destroy."
"Well," said Urson, "as long as she thinks he's a spy, at least we'll
have one of them little beads and someone who knows how to use it. I
mean if we have to."
"I don't think she thinks he's a spy any more, Urson."
"Huh?"
"I give her credit for being able to reason at least as well as I can.
Once she found out he had no jewel on him, she knew that he was as
innocent as you and I are. But her only thought was to get it in any way
she could. When we came in, just when she was going to put Snake under
the jewel's control, guilt made her leap backwards to her first and
seemingly logical accusation for our benefit. Evil likes to cloak itself
as good."
They stepped down into the forecastle. By now a handful of sailors had
come into the room, mostly drunk and snoring on berths around the walls.
One had wrapped himself completely up in a blanket in the middle berth
of the tier that Urson had chosen for the three. "Well," said Urson to
Snake, "it looks like you'll have to move."
Snake scrambled to the top bunk.
"Now look, that one was mine."
Snake motioned him up.
"Huh? Two of us in one of those?" demanded Urson. "Look, if you want
someone to keep warm against, go down and sleep with Geo there. It's
more room and you won't get squashed against the wall. I'm a thrasher
when I sleep."
Snake didn't move.
"Maybe you better do what he says," Geo said. "I have an idea that ..."
"You've got another idea now?" asked Urson, "Oh, damn, I'm too tired to
argue." He vaulted up to the top bunk. "Now move over and be very
small." He stretched out, and Snake's slight body was completely hidden.
"Hey, get your elbows out of there," Geo heard Urson mutter before there
was only a gentle thundering of his snore.
* * * * *
_Silver mist suffused the deck of the ship and wet lines glowed a
phosphorescent silver; the sky was pale as ice; pricks of stars dotted
over the whole bowl. The sea, once green, seemed bleached to blowing
clouds of white powder. The door of a cabin opened and white veils flung
forward from the form of Argo who emerged like silver from the
bone-colored door. The whole movement of the scene made it look like a
picture imagination fastens in the slow ripplings of gauze under breeze.
One dark spot was at her throat, pulsing darkly, like a heart, like a
black flame. She walked to the railing, peered over. In the white
washing a skeletal hand appeared. It raised on a beckoning arm, then
fell forward in the water. Another arm raised now, a few feet away,
beckoning, gesturing. Then three at once; then two more._
_A voice as pale as the vision spoke "I am coming. We sail in a hour.
The mate has been ordered to put the ship out before dawn. You must tell
me now, creatures of the water."_
_Two glowing arms raised up, and then an almost featureless face. Chest
high in the water, it listed backwards and sank again._
_"Are you of Aptor or Leptar?" spoke the apparitional figure of Argo
again in the thinned voice. "Are your allegiances to Argo or Hama? I
have followed thus far. You must tell me before I follow farther."_
_There was a whirling of sound which seemed to be the wind attempting to
say, "The sea ... the sea ... the sea ..."_
_But Argo did not hear, for she turned away and walked from the rail,
back to her cabin._
_Now the scene moved, turned toward the door of the forecastle. It
opened, moved through the hall, the walls, more like polished steel than
weathered wood, and went on. In the forecastle, the yellow oil lamp
seemed a white flaring of magnesium._
_The movement stopped in front of a tier of three berths; on the bottom
one lay a young man with a starved, pallid face. His mop of hair was
bleached white. On his chest was a pulsing darkness, a black flame, a
dark heart, shimmering with the indistinctness of absolute shadow. On
the top bunk a great form like a bloated corpse lay. One huge arm hung
over the bunk, flabbed, puffy, without muscle._
_In the center berth was an anonymous bundle of blankets completely
covering the figure inside. On this the scene fixed, drew closer ... and
the paleness suddenly faded before darkness, into shadow, into nothing._
* * * * *
Geo sat up and knuckled his eyes.
The dark forecastle was relieved by the yellow glow of the lamp. The
gaunt mate stood across the room. "Hey, you," he was saying to a man in
one of the bunks, "up and out. We're sailing."
The figure roused itself from the tangle of bedding.
The mate moved to another. "Up, you dog face. Up, you fish fodder. We're
sailing." Turning around, he saw Geo watching him. "And what's wrong
with you?" he demanded. "We're sailing, didn't you hear? Naw, you go
back to sleep. Your turn will come, but we need experienced ones now."
He grinned briefly, and then went on to one more. "Eh, you stink like an
old wine cask. Raise yourself out of your fumes. We're sailing!"