surgeon who doesn’t operate, Malvery! You’re dead weight!’
Malvery’s face twisted in anger. He lunged across the table to grab him, but Crake was too fast, and pulled himself out of the way.
‘Then prove me wrong!’ he cried. ‘Cut him open! Stop the bleeding and save his life!’
Malvery’s huge fists bunched and unbunched. His face was red with rage. For a moment, Crake though he really would attack; but then he turned away, and stamped over to the wooden cabinet that was fixed to the wall. He pulled it open and drew out a scalpel. The surgical instruments were the only clean things in the grimy room. Malvery came back to the table and stared at Crake.
‘I’ll cut him, damn it,’ he snarled. ‘And you’re staying to help.’
Crake rolled up his sleeves. ‘Tell me what to do.’
Frey sat in the pilot’s seat, staring out at the fog. His air filter still hung round his neck, though more than an hour had passed since they crossed the lava river and its noxious fumes. Jez read out directions and co-ordinates from the navigator’s station behind him, and he followed them automatically. Once in a while she consulted the compass and warned of some distant mine that the Navy minesweepers had failed to catch, but it was always too far away to be a threat.
Frey barely paid attention to the job at hand. This was the fourth time he’d flown along this route, and it had lost its fear for him now. He trusted Jez. Harkins and Pinn were following his lights through the murk. As for the Navy, they could find their own way out.
He was thinking of Silo. The black spectre of loss hovered over him. It wasn’t only the thought that Silo himself might die - Frey had already been surprised by the depth of feeling he had for the taciturn foreigner - but the idea that one of his crew would be lost. With each new peril they survived, he’d thought of them more and more as one indivisible whole. Whereas he’d often dreamed in the past of ditching his crew and flying off alone, now he couldn’t stand the thought of it. They’d become a miniature society, the denizens of the Ketty Jay, and they needed one another to survive. Somehow they’d achieved a balance that satisfied them all, and when they were in balance they’d been able to achieve extraordinary things. Frey feared losing any of them now, in case that balance would be upset. He feared a return to the way things were.
All this time he’d armoured himself against loss by refusing to care for anyone. Now, somehow, he’d been blindsided. He tried to be angry for allowing himself to become so vulnerable, but he couldn’t muster the feeling. It had all been part of a greater change, one that had seen him gain a level of self-respect he’d never had before the destruction of the Ace of Skulls. He wouldn’t trade the days between that moment and this. Not for anything.
But now Silo lay on the edge of death, left in the hands of an alcoholic doctor and an untrained assistant. Silo, who had taken a bullet so Frey wouldn’t have to. Frey didn’t want to live with that responsibility.
What’s taking them so long? Aren’t they done yet?
As if in response, he heard the infirmary door slide open. He hunched his shoulders as if expecting a blow. Footsteps came up the passageway, boots rapping on metal. They were too light to be Malvery, so it had to be Crake. Frey turned in his seat to be sure, and saw the daemonist arrive in the doorway. His hands were gloved with blood, and he was still wearing his filter mask. He pointed to it and said something quizzical which nobody understood.
‘You can take it off now,’ Jez said, guessing his meaning.
Crake pulled off the mask and took a few deep breaths. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Those things are so stuffy.’
‘Mmm,’ said Jez in mild agreement.
‘Everything alright?’ Crake enquired.
‘Will
