them Brit, Imperial, Company-whatever-frigates suddenly shows up on the horizon? The Skipper’ll be deciding what to do based on his certain knowledge he’s got three boilers! Don’t ever just jump up and crack this deep into something without telling me first! Is that understood?”
Tears welled in Tabby’s large amber eyes.
Spanky was stunned. “Goddamn!” he managed. “Are you fixin’ to cry ?” His voice was incredulous. His own eyes went wide when Tabby’s tears gushed out and coursed down her furry cheeks.
“I… I so sorry!” Tabby practically moaned. As usual when she was upset or excited, she lost her careful drawl. “You got so much.. . so much other stuff; I just want to not bother you with more! I sorry, Spaanky! Please no be maad! I never, ever do nothing you no tell me! I wear shirt all the time! Just please no be maad at me!”
For a moment Spanky and Bashear were both speechless. Tabby sniffled loudly a few more times, then tried to collect herself. She began wiping the tears on her clean shirt, smudging it with wet soot and firebrick dust.
“I’ll swan,” Bashear said softly.
“Shut up, you!” Spanky growled. He turned back to Tabby. “Ah, lookie here,” he said clumsily. “No sweat. Just don’t do it anymore, see? ” Tabby nodded almost spastically. “All right, then.” He looked around, staring at anything but her for a few moments. If the work detail had heard or even paused in their labor, he couldn’t tell. They were still drawing the broken firebricks and passing them along to others, who dropped them into sacks. Finally Spanky looked back at Tabby. He was glad she’d apparently composed herself. He hadn’t come here to jump all over her; he actually had something else on his mind. Still, what he’d said was true and needed saying. Especially now.
“Look, Tabby, just get the job done, now you’ve started it. I’ll report the boiler’s down to the Skipper.” He gestured at the detail. “Things look well enough in hand.” He paused. “You’re doing a good job here in the firerooms. Those squirrelly Mice taught you all right, God knows how. I expect you know the old gal’s boilers as well as they do by now.” He paused again and took a breath. “Here’s the deal. I made Aubrey chief down here because he was a torpedoman. He knew turbines and steam plants, but he never was really all that good with the big stuff. Never should’ve used him like that. Should’ve left him working with Bernie Sandison back in Baalkpan.” He shook his head. “Well, Aubrey’s dead, and I’m going to split Engineering back into two divisions: steam plant and propulsion. Every fireman on this tub is a ’Cat now, and it would be stupid to take some guy off something else and put him in charge in here when you’d know more than he would, so as of right now, you’re chief of the boiler division, got that?”
Tabby’s surprised eyes began to fill again.
“But only if you don’t start cryin’ over it, for God’s sake!” Spanky added hastily. “There will be no cryin’ in the firerooms, clear? Not ever!”
Instead of answering, Tabby lunged forward and touched him on the cheek with her muzzle, tongue slightly extended. Spanky knew the gesture was a Lemurian version of a modest, chaste kiss. Passionate kissing involved much more licking. Even so, he was thunderstruck and didn’t have a chance to say anything before Tabby bolted back to the detail she was overseeing.
Bashear, uncertain how Spanky would respond, guided him back toward the air lock and they cycled through. “C’mon,” he said. “I still need you to look at that winch.”
“What the hell was that all about?” Spanky asked quietly, still torn between shock, fury, and… God knew what. “What the hell’s got into her? I had to chew her out about letting me know, but I figgered she’d make some crack and get back to work! Then she starts bawling! And that… whatever she did to me… Do you think she’s crackin’ up?”
“You really want to know what I think?” Bashear asked as they went through the forward air lock and headed for the companionway.
“Well… sure.”
“I think she’s sweet on you,” Bashear said seriously.
“Horsefeathers!”
“Sweeter than honey on a comb. I wonder how many engineers ever had sweethearts in the fireroom? Not many, I hope.”
Spanky turned on him. “Shut the hell up, you goddamn perverted, filthy-minded ape!” he said hotly.
“There!” Bashear said. “Now that’s more like it. Thought I’d never get a rise out of you!” His voice became serious. “She is sweet on you though, and it shows. A lot. What’re you gonna do? Turn Silva?” That was the increasingly accepted term for men suspected of having “taken up” with a Lemurian gal.
“She ain’t ‘sweet’ on me,” Spanky protested. “Sometimes she’s downright insubordinate!”
Bashear nodded sagely. “That’s always the first sign. ’Cats ain’t really all that different from us, you know. Once you get past the fur and ears-and, well, the tail.” They’d reached the weather deck and were passing under the amidships gun platform that served as a roof for the galley. Chief Gunner’s Mate Paul Stites was supervising a maintenance detail on the number three, four-inch-fifty. They were installing new oily leather bushings in the recoil cylinder. Below, Earl Lanier, the bloated cook, had left a heap of sandwiches on the stainless steel counter. Bashear snatched one. “Wimmen is all the same,” he continued. “Even ’Cat wimmen, I bet. They take to thinkin’ you belong to ’em and they start treatin’ you like dirt. Take advantage. I been married twice, so trust me, I know.” He looked at Spanky. “You want my advice?”
“No.”
“You can’t just ignore it,” Bashear advised anyway. “You treat her like a dog, pretend she ain’t there, it’ll just get worse. I don’t know what it is about ’em, but every time I try to get rid of a dame, they just try harder. You can’t chase ’em off.”
“Well… supposin’ you’re right-which you ain’t-how would you make Tabby get over her fit?”
“Easy,” Bashear said around a mouthful of sandwich. “Be nice to her. I never could keep a dame I really wanted. Nobody can. It’s the rules.”
CHAPTER 2
East Africa
“ General of the Sea” Hisashi Kurokawa strode slowly beside the immense, deep basin, lightly slapping his left boot at every step with a short, tightly woven whip. A wisp of dust drifted away from his striped pants leg with each strike. The handle of the whip was garishly ornate and the gruesome golden sculpture capping it appealed to his sense of mockery. It looked strikingly like a flattened Grik face. Beyond the basin, a hot wind blew swirling dust devils amid a sea of Uul workers swarming over the flat, denuded landscape that bordered the wide river, and the hazy orange sun blazed fiercely down from above. The wind reeked of rot, feces, and an untold number of partially cannibalized, festering corpses. Those scents were renewed each day as the defecating, dying thousands toiled, and the stench was almost unbearable. Yet bear it he did. To show weakness of any sort under the circumstances was tantamount to suicide in the great game he played.
Skeletal frameworks arose amid this teeming mass, erected by muscle power alone. Once again Kurokawa marveled at the discipline that could accomplish so much with such apparently mindless labor. Groups of Grik Uul performed many of the same functions as various machines in a factory. Some shaped massive timbers with a tool resembling an elongated adze-and that was all they did, while other groups were dedicated solely to moving the timbers to areas where still others set them in place. A little farther along, other “teams” did the same thing with an only subtly different timber. It was the most wondrous example of nonmechanized mass production he’d ever seen, and the scope and specialization of the endeavor surely put the construction of the Great Pyramids to shame.
There were overseers, to be sure, that served much the same purpose here as sergeants and officers might in battle. They orchestrated the timing and direction of every task. Some led bearers to the next mighty “skeleton” where their particular timber was required. Others lashed a continuous stream of bearers, burdened with massive tree trunks felled in the ever more distant forest, toward the timber shapers’ tools. Uul dropped from illness or exhaustion everywhere he looked, only to be trampled to death by those behind them. Some took quick, passing gobbets of flesh from the often still-moving dead.
Kurokawa was sickened, but enthralled. Such discipline! Such symmetry! Such simple, mechanical grace! Grik industry was driven by a living Grik machine. When a part broke down or wore out, it quickly and automatically
