had sounded almost — but not quite — human.
“Did ye lose something, Mr. Tohm?” a voice asked from behind.
VI
He looked over his shoulder, his heart having slipped up next to his molars.
“Ye lose something?” Jake asked.
“Uh… yeah, a pearl fell from my cape clasp.”
“I'll help.”
“No, no. That's okay. Imitation anyway.”
“I come back just to say that I'd like her to have blue eyes, Mr. Tohm.”
“Who?”
“The Amazon. Yer father's Amazon.”
He stood and brushed his leotards off. “Blue eyes it is.”
“Gee thanks, Mr. Tohm. I gotta go. See ye later.”
“Ya, Jake. Later.”
The giant thudded away again.
He closed the door before going back to listen for the noise. But there was nothing. He went back to his bunk after a few minutes and stretched out. And now a new question: what was in the cargo compartment? His cabin was right next to it. He was certain that spices, no matter how delicate, did not moan. Why had Hazabob lied to him? What was really in there?
His eyes were growing heavy, and it took him a few minutes to figure out what the trouble was. Sleep. He had been without sleep since being placed into the Jumbo, and he had nearly forgotten about it. Pulling the tattered blanket up around his waist, he surrendered himself to the blackness, for he had pleasant memories of it.
When he woke, there was a fuzz in his mouth like a live thing trying to crawl down his throat and into his stomach. He wrinkled his face, wiped the matting from around his eyes, and blinked at the wall clock. An hour until supper. He had slept right through the heat of the day, and the rolling of the ship told him he had slept right through the launch and several hours of travel too. Pushing up, he gazed about the gloominess, yawned, and stood. He cast a last glance at the wall between himself and the cargo hold, then left the room.
Whiffing the salty air as if it were a medicine, gagging on the slight sulfurous odor, he strolled along the deck, past the cargo compartment. There was a large, burglar-proof padlock on the door. Casually, he turned and walked away, exploring the ship at random until the gong sounded and everyone began moving below decks for supper.
The mess chamber was the only lively room he had seen on the vessel — if painted-over mediocrity could be considered lively. There were no trimmings. The steel beams were hanging around naked, the pipes of the sewage system filling the corners and gurgling now and then as various toilets were flushed and sinks drained. Still, everything was clean and bright — light peach in color. But not only the colors of the walls and ceiling were lively, for the crew seemed jovial too. Tohm had noticed an air of melancholia, gloom, ugliness about the ship. Here, in the mess, it didn't prevail.
The table was very long and broad, constructed of an odd wood he had never seen before, one that shone like polished stone, black and glossy. It was medieval in design, supported by crude, massive blocks of wood instead of regular legs. The chairs were a hodge-podge of styles and materials. Tohm had been given a seat near the head of the table to the left of Hazabob. “We believe in eating well,” the captain said, chuckling.
As the cooks brought in the trays, Tohm could see what Hazabob meant. The white-smocked men, gruff and burly as the crewmen themselves, flashed about, moving like lightning bolts, depositing the trays, returning with more, setting things down, busy as all Hell. When they left, there were platters of unknown meat chops, two dozen servings on each platter. There were large bowls of peas and pea-like yellow vegetables steaming heartily, forming ghosts above the heads of the thirty sailors sitting the length of the table. Huge baskets of rolls and chips of butter were everywhere along the ebony surface so that no one had to ask for the bread to be passed. Two different varieties of beans were offered to Tohm. He took both, and both were delicious. He had been accustomed to a simple spread in his village, a few courses, always the same. The great variety nearly overwhelmed him. The wine glass was never empty; one of the cooks saw to that. And the wine was best of all. It was black, absolutely Stygian, and bittersweet like no fruit he had ever tasted.
While they were consuming the gobs of cream and cake that was dessert, Hazabob leaned over and tapped his arm. “Ye won't be forgetting to tell yer father about the way we fed ye?”
“I won't be forgetting a bit,” Tohm answered, his mouth stuffed.
“Good,” Hazabob said, spooning cream into his mouth. “I like ye, boy.”
There was no orderly dismissal after supper. The men began to leave in ragtag order, staggering away with bloated bellies to go to sleep and prepare for the next day, dreaming about what the cooks would whip up for that supper.
“I believe I'll turn in,” Tohm said to Hazabob.
“Oh?”
“Food makes me sleepy.”
“Ya,” the captain said, starting on his second dish of cake. “Ya, ye was probably used to those prissy dinners with little sanditches and cookies.”
“And caca tea,” Tohm added, smiling. He had read about that in the floating library.
“Yeah.” Hazabob laughed, slapping the table with the palm of his hand. “Yeah, and caca tea!”
Caca tea was an aphrodisiac of the wealthy.
“Excuse me,” Tohm said, standing.
“Umm,” Hazabob replied, his face buried in dessert.
He left, climbing the companionway to the desk. The moons were out, two silver featureless faces on the blackness of the sky. The water slopped against the ship, and that was the only sound. Tohm walked casually to his cabin, closed the door behind. He would have locked it, but they had not seen fit to supply him with any such safeguard. He turned to the wall and looked it over. He just might be able to get through.
Standing in one corner, he sighted along the stubby barrel of the gas pistol. He didn't want to penetrate the wall and blow up something on the other side; he wanted to blast open the wall. That meant an angled shot. The gas pistol was a marvelous little weapon. It was good for a hundred or so shots before a refill was needed, and it was not bulky. A minute pellet of compressed gas left the barrel. When it sunk into the object fired at, resistance caused heat and expanded the pellet. The “explosion” caused thereby could down any man or beast. Or, he hoped, a metal wall. He wanted to strike the wall so that the pellet would have to travel through it at an angle, thus giving it time to expand before it crashed through into the storeroom. He depressed the stud.
Almost immediately, the wall ruptured, split back. From the same position, he fired again. Again. When he put down the pistol, the rent was large enough to squeeze through. He squeezed.
The place was dark. Very. There was a musty odor, part of it the dankness of any closed place, part of it food scraps, organic wastes. He stumbled about, looking for a light switch, found a palmer next to what seemed to be the outline of the door, and flooded the place with light. The door would be watertight, and certainly, no cracks should be there to emit light onto the deck.
Blinking his eyes, he surveyed the room. There were a number of crates, unmarked, stacked about, lashed to the walls in columns and to rings set in the floor. There were walkways between the cargo boxes, but he could see nothing that might have moaned.
There was a rustle.
He looked to the floor for rats.
“Well,” a voice croaked. It was like dragging a rake across tarpaper. “Well, what do you want?”
The renting wall had made only a soft screeching sound, so the person was unaware that he hadn't come in through the door. But what person? He didn't see anyone. It began asking him again, and it proved a good beacon to home on. He followed it among the crates and came finally to a cage. He jumped back. There was a face looking out of the cage at him. A face and nothing more. The thing was a head with a lump of ugly gray tissue beneath its
