The Black Lung Captain

Six

Crake pulled the collar of his coat up and hunched his shoulders against the cold. It always seemed to be cold nowadays. On the Ketty Jay or off it, there was a chill in his core that never quite went away.

The clouds were iron-grey overhead, and an arctic breeze came from the north, pushing through the rainforest. The Ketty Jay sat in a bald, rocky clearing, with tree-covered mountains on either side. Crake stood under her tail, the cargo ramp lying open behind him. In the distance, a waterfall plunged hundreds of feet from a ridge of cliffs. When the wind was right, Crake could hear its dull, sullen roar.

Nearby, the Storm Dog was easing itself down. The air was sharp with the smell of aerium gas as it vented its tanks.

The Storm Dog was craggy and rectangular, like a beam of black, petrified timber. Its prow was blunt and its hull pocked and uneven, stained with cloud-rime and iceburn. It sank on to its landing struts with an artless crunch and settled in the clearing. The air shimmered and rippled as it wheezed out the last of its aerium in an invisible cloud, then its engines shut off.

For a moment, there was quiet. An awesome, massive silence. Only the stir of the wind sounded over the endless industry of the waterfall. Crake tipped back his head, closed his eyes, and basked in the nothingness.

'Hey, Crake!' Pinn yelled from the cargo hold. 'Give us a hand here! Half of this is your stuff!'

Crake's eyes fluttered open. The birds and insects of the rainforest, which had been silenced by the disturbance, began to pick up their songs again. Hydraulics whirred as the Storm Dog opened its cargo ramp. The moment had passed.

Too brief. All too brief.

The others were coming down the Ketty Jay's ramp, carrying packs and equipment. Tents, weapons, food, and Crake's daemonist equipment, which they'd need when they reached their destination. Bess came clumping down with an armful of gear and laid it down among the other packs with a child's exaggerated care. Then she scampered over to Crake - as much as a half-ton armoured suit could scamper -and settled on her haunches in front of him.

'Well done,' he said, patting her flank. 'What a helpful girl you are.'

Bess leaned in, pushing her face-grille closer. Points of light twinkled in the darkness behind. Eyes like stars. She gave a quizzical coo: an ethereal, other-worldly sound.

'I'm alright, Bess. Don't you worry,' said Crake, forcing a smile.

Bess wasn't fooled. She reached out one gloved hand and stroked Crake's arm clumsily. Metal, chain mail and leather dragged down his coat, almost tearing his sleeve off. Crake felt sudden tears threatening, and swallowed. He gave the golem an awkward hug. She was too big to get his arms around.

'Don't you worry,' he said again.

'Will you stop flirting with your girlfriend and carry something?' Pinn yelled from the cargo ramp, as he went back in for another pack.

They assembled in a spot between the aircraft: six from the Ketty Jay, six from the Storm Dog, including Hodd. Frey wanted Silo to come, and Harkins had volunteered with great enthusiasm to stay with Bess on the Ketty Jay. Bess was the Ketty Jay's watchdog, ensuring that nobody but the crew came aboard with all their limbs still attached. But the Cap'n needed somebody human to keep an eye on things while they were away, and he was happy to leave Harkins behind. The pilot was a liability in a firefight and he had a jumpy trigger finger at the best of times. In the rainforest, he'd be a disaster. More likely to shoot himself in the foot than kill one of the enemy.

Along with Hodd and Captain Grist came the Storm Dog's emaciated, bug-eyed bosun, Edwidge Crattle, and three crewmen called Gimble, Tarworth and Ucke. They were a seedy-looking trio, but then Crake had hardly expected anything else.

Gimble was a thin, scowling fellow who said little. Tarworth was short, baby-faced and eager. Ucke had a more eccentric appearance.

He was bulky, with hair sticking out everywhere, and he had offensively bad teeth in all shapes, sizes and angles. When Pinn rudely commented on them, Ucke informed the group that they were actually a false set. Dentures. He'd made them himself from teeth he'd collected from a multitude of bar brawls.

Once the introductions were done, they shouldered their packs, checked their guns and made ready to set off.

'Now I don't want none of you believin' all that talk you might have heard about Kurg,' Grist told them. 'There'll be beasts, for sure, but probably not half as horrible as the tales tell.' He slapped Hodd on the shoulder. 'This man's been in there and come out without a scratch. If he can do it, then us rum sons of bitches ought to be able to. What's in there should be afraid of us, not the other way about!'

Yes, he came out without a scratch, thought Crake. It was the rest of his expedition that died.

Crake loathed Hodd on sight. Frey had told him about his first meeting with the explorer, which was enough to convince Crake that they were dealing with a shiftless rich boy who'd spent his life living on Daddy's money, utterly detached from the realities of the world. Crake had grown up amongst the aristocracy, and he was never afraid to apply stereotypes. In his experience, they turned out to be true more often than not.

Besides, Hodd reminded Crake of himself, and Crake hated that.

Crake had been that way, once. A life of privilege, sheltered from trouble by his father's money. Mixing only with his own kind. He treated lowlier folk with politeness because that was what people with good breeding did, but they weren't the same as him. He couldn't have said why, and he'd never have admitted it aloud, but they just weren't.

It had been the discovery of daemonism at university which had prompted his awakening. Before long, he'd grown bored with the vacant twitterings of the social classes. While they were talking about mergers and marriages, inheritances and infidelities, he'd been communicating with entities from another dimension. In the face of that, their preoccupations seemed rather juvenile.

But he'd still possessed the arrogance of the aristocracy. The knowledge that no matter what he did, he'd never not be rich. Whatever trouble he got into, someone would look after him.

Maybe that was why he did what he did. He'd not known what sorrow or torment or hardship meant until then. But he learned those lessons well in the time that followed.

'Right,' said Hodd, clapping his hands. 'Are we all ready?'

Belts were tightened, coats buttoned, bootlaces tied and retied. Pinn took a few test steps to check the weight of his pack.

'Off we go, then!' Hodd cried.

'Where are we headed?' Jez asked.

That stumped Hodd for a moment. 'Er ... to the crashed Azryx aircra—'

'No, I mean . . . Don't you have a map? Directions?' Jez asked. 'You said it would be over a day's walk. I just wondered how you were intending to find it again.' She looked around the group and shrugged. 'Sorry. Navigator. I just want to know.'

Hodd smiled broadly and tapped his head. 'It's all in here, Miss.'

'You remember the way,' Jez said, doubtfully. She eyed the forested flanks of the mountains that surrounded them. 'Are you sure? Once we're in there, we'll get pretty badly lost if you're wrong.'

'Be assured, I never forget a route,' he said. 'I've possessed a rather remarkable talent for pathfinding ever since I was a child. It was what inspired me to be an explorer, actually.'

'And what did Daddy think about that?' Crake asked, and immediately regretted it. He didn't want to have a conversation with this buffoon, but he'd been unable to resist a bitter jibe. It had just come out.

Hodd missed Crake's tone and the implied insult entirely. 'He was rather disappointed, actually,' he said, looking downcast. 'My father sits in the House of Chancellors for the Duchy of Rabban, and my six brothers all work in the field of law. But I had a different calling.'

'An explorer,' said Crake. 'So I see. Ever found anything?' Frey gave him a look, but he ignored it.

'Well, not anything that you'd see on the front page of the broadsheets, but I have led many expeditions to far-flung places, and contributed valuable knowledge in the fields of—'

'And how many people have you lost on your expeditions? Aside from your entire team the last time you were here?'

Hodd looked wounded, unable to understand the source of this sudden hostility. 'Sir, I don't know what I might have done to offend you, but—'

'Do you even know? Crake asked. The fury exploded from nowhere. Suddenly he was red-faced and shouting. 'Do you even know how many porters and pilots and natives died while you were playing explorer with your daddy's money? How many people?'

The group stared at Crake, shocked. Hodd had gone pale. He looked to Grist, as if the burly captain might defend him.

'Crake,' murmured Jez. 'Leave it alone.'

'People like him!' Crake snorted. 'Other people die for their dreams of glory. It won't be him that gets killed in there.'

'Now, now,' said Grist, raising his hands. 'Let's all play nice, hmm? We all trust Mr Hodd when he says he's goin' to lead us to great treasure.' He put his arm round Hodd and gave him a menacing squeeze. "Cause he knows what'll happen if he don't.'

The explorer grinned nervously. 'It's that way,' he said, pointing. With a few odd looks at Crake, they began to shuffle off towards the forest. Jez gave him a sympathetic glance and then turned away. Crake shouldered his pack and followed her.

I wonder if I'll make it back alive, Crake thought.

He honestly couldn't bring himself to care.

The rain began in the afternoon. It came with considerable force.

Frey had been rained on before, but this was up there with the best of them. Leaves and branches bowed and rocked under the onslaught. A wet mist gathered in the air until it was hard to see anything more than a half-dozen metres away. The forest filled with the hiss of falling water and the hoots and screeches of excited animals in the treetops.

What little good cheer had attended their departure rapidly disappeared. They trudged along in single file, wishing they were anywhere but here. Pinn, walking ahead of Frey, kept up a constant stream of grumbling. The ground had turned to a quagmire, and was attempting to suck their boots off their feet with every step. Their coats had soaked through. Previously warm underlayers were now damp and freezing. Frey could only hope that Crake's equipment was wrapped up better than they were.

The only person who seemed to be having a good time was Hodd.

'Spit and blood, I've missed this place!' he cried, then laughed and shook his fist towards the leafy heavens. 'Cruel nature, do your worst!'

Frey saw Pinn's hand twitch towards his pistol, and grabbed his wrist before he could do anything rash.

'Can't I kill him just a little bit?' Pinn whined.

'He's the only one who knows the way back, Pinn. We need him to get us out of here when we're done.'

Pinn thought about that for a moment. 'Alright, Cap'n.' He poked one stubby finger at Frey. 'But I'm doing this for you, okay?'

'Appreciate it,' said Frey. Up ahead, Hodd began to sing a marching tune, loud and off-key. Pinn gritted his teeth.

'I can't take much more, Cap'n,' he said.

Frey sighed, then pushed his way up the line to Hodd.

Hodd was punching the air lustily. ' Oh, brave and strident sol-diers, whose cou-rage none can— Oh! Hello, Captain Frey.'

Frey nodded in greeting, and leaned close as they walked. 'You've heard of the monsters that are rumoured to infest this island, Hodd?'

'Oh, yes!' said Hodd. 'I've seen several, in fact. One of them damn near had me for breakfast.'

'You've seen several,' Frey repeated. 'That's good. Did you see if they had ears?'

Hodd looked bewildered. 'Ears?'

'The singing, Hodd. Will you bloody can it? They can hear you five kloms away.'

'Ah!' said Hodd. 'Yes, I see. Quite right, Captain. Just trying to keep up morale.'

'And you're doing a fine job,' said Frey. 'Just do it quietly, eh?'

Hodd put a theatrical finger to his lips. Frey turned away, eyes rolling skyward, and moved back down the line. Grist gave him a smoky grin around the butt of his cigar and Frey fell into step next to him.

'Bit of a character, ain't he?' Grist said.

'You know, the animals will smell that cigar all over the mountain, too.'

'Risk I'm willing to take, Frey. A life without cigars ain't one much worth livin', if you ask me.' He started to laugh but ended up in a coughing fit that had him bent double. When he was done, he stood up and wiped spittle from his beard. He regarded his cigar with a teary eye. 'Tobacco. She's a harsh mistress.'

'We've all got our vices,' said Frey.

'Aye? What's yours?'

'I've plenty. But I reckon Rake tops the list.'

'A card player, eh? My men are partial to a game, but me? I'm no gambler. Don't have the luck.'

'It's not luck.'

'Well, whatever it is, I ain't got it.'

'Some days I don't, either,' Frey admitted.

'But you keep goin' back, don't you?' Grist laughed. 'The things a man does to make himself feel alive.'

Frey looked at the man next to him. He liked Grist. There was something solid and impressive about him, a grizzled heartiness in his manner. He had a way of including people that made them feel almost grateful for it. He reminded Frey of Malvery, except he apparently didn't spend his whole life arseholed on grog.

'I've been thinking about that lately,' he said. 'Don't you sometimes wish you didn't need to? Like, you felt alright without all the smoke and the booze and the cards and everything else? Seems like some people manage okay.'

Grist's brow furrowed. 'Men like you an' me, Frey, it don't do us no good to be thinkin' that way,' he said. 'We live for today. The past don't mean nothin', and the future ain't worth a damn. We could all be dead by sunrise.' His dark eyes found Frey's. 'Ain't that how it is?'

Frey stared at the ground. 'Yeah. That's how it is.'

'Anyway, what's wrong with a little fun? You want to live for ever or somethin'?'

'Actually,' said Frey, 'I kinda do.'

Grist bellowed with laughter, which set off another coughing fit. 'Me, too!' he wheezed, slapping his leg, coughing and laughing fit to burst. 'Me, too!'

The rain lessened slightly as night fell, but the clouds stayed in the sky, and there was no light from the moon. Under Hodd's direction, they pitched camp on a patch of high ground, and stretched a tarpaulin between several trees to act as a roof. Hodd arranged stones to make a raised platform and somehow managed to get a fire going on it.

Jez had to admit, the man knew his survival skills. And he still appeared confident of the route. His manner and his history inspired mistrust, perhaps, but a man didn't spend a lifetime as an explorer without picking up a few things.

The rainforest came alive at night. The treetops were busy with shrieks and wails. Insects clattered and hummed all around them. Bats flitted through the air. Repulsive things slunk and crept.

Jez was among the volunteers for first watch, but she intended to take second and third as well. Her eyesight was better than anyone else's in the dark, and she had no need of rest. Usually she took pains to disguise her condition from strangers. She went through the motions of eating and sleeping so as not to arouse suspicion. But, just this once, she'd plead insomnia. The afternoon and evening had passed without incident, but she didn't trust their luck to hold. She didn't want anything sneaking up on them tonight.

She stood with her back to the camp, her head bare to the elements, black hair plastered to her forehead. The hood of her coat was down, so as not to block her peripheral vision. Behind her, the men were cooking up the last of the soup. Some were huddled close to the fire. Others had already crawled into their sleeping bags, exhausted.

Standing there in the rain, she tried to bring on the trance. When she slipped into that strange state of hyper-awareness, she'd feel the forest instead of merely seeing it. She'd be able to sense the animals and identify' any threats. In the past, she'd even shared their thoughts. Once, during a gunfight, she'd read a man's mind, just before she shot him.

In the chaos of sounds from the forest, she fancied she could hear the cries of the Manes. But no trance came. She couldn't make it happen. They took her without rhyme or reason, and she didn't have the trick of controlling them. Perhaps she never would.

She heard someone approaching from the direction of the fire. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Silo. Only his beak-like nose showed from the shadow of his hood. Without a word, he sat down on a rock next to Jez. He drew a shotgun from under his coat and stared out into the forest.

They watched the forest together in comfortable silence for a time.

Some of the crew found Silo awkward to be around, but Jez rather enjoyed his company. Everyone else talked a lot, usually about nothing important. Silo talked hardly at all, but she had the impression that he made up the difference by thinking.

'There's rage in my family,' he said, out of nowhere. Jez didn't know what to say to that, so she didn't say anything.

'My papa had it,' he went on. 'And his brother. And their papa, and my brother. All them dead now, but they had rage. It'd just come explodin' out o' them, and you better not be in their way when it did.'

Jez was mildly surprised that he'd volunteered the information. She didn't even know he had a brother. She'd been aboard the Ketty Jay more than a year, but she still knew hardly anything about him. Neither did anyone else, as far as she was aware.

Silo propped his shotgun against a tree and began making a roll-up, hunching forward to shield it from the rain. Jez wondered if that was the end of the conversation, but then he spoke again.

'My brother, one time, he got the rage when we was all chained up in the pens. Broke his ankle against the manacles, tryin' to get at some feller. Weren't fit for work for a long while after, but he was a strong 'un, so they wanted to see if it'd heal.' He licked the paper and sealed the roll-up. 'Didn't. Bones knitted bad, gave him a limp, so they killed him.'

There was a hiss of phosphorus as he struck a match, then the smell of acrid smoke.

'Papa died the same. Picked a fight with some feller, Murthian like him, while they was haulin' rubble in a quarry. Smashed his head in with a rock. Sammies took him away and he didn't never come back.'

Jez hadn't heard Silo talk at such length before. She was reluctant to speak in case she interrupted his flow, but she felt the moment demanded something.

'Sorry about that,' she said.

'Nothin' to be sorry about. There's what is, and what ain't.'

Jez wished she'd kept her mouth shut. For a while, there was only the sounds of the forest and the rain. Then:

'I got the rage, too.'

Really? she thought. You? I've never seen you anything but calm. But she didn't say a word.

'Used to be proud of it,' he said. 'They was afraid of me when I was young. I'd take on kids twice my age and give 'em worse than I got. Every day, I was angry. Angry that they kept us in chains 'n' pens 'n' camps. Murthians ain't like the Daks. Five hundred years and they still ain't tamed us.' He took a drag and blew it out. 'Lately, I got to thinkin' maybe that's the problem. We're so damn proud of defyin' the Sammies, they'll never let us out from them chains. Bit more smarts and a bit less angry, and they'd think we was tame. We'd be like the Daks, in their homes, runnin' their businesses, lookin' after their children.' A pause. 'That's when we'd kill 'em.'

Jez kept her eyes on the forest. She'd always felt a faint bond with the Murthian. Both of them, in their own way, were exiles from their own race. She'd always suspected he felt the same. He spoke to her most out of all the crew, though usually about matters of engineering. Machinery was their common ground.

Now it occurred to her that Silo was reaching out to her. Offering something. Making a connection.

'There was a woman, once,' he said. 'We was both young, but old enough. I hadn't seen anythin' like her. Thought there weren't no finer thing in the world. And she thought likewise about me. That's what she said.' He shook his head, blew out a jet of smoke. 'Hard-headed woman. Loved her fierce but she drove me crazy. We'd fight and make up, over and over. Harsh 'n' sweet, harsh 'n' sweet. She had a temper, too.'

Jez had a horrible feeling she knew where this was going.

'One time we both went too far. The rage got me. Only for a second, but that was plenty. Won't never forget the look on her face, her holdin' her cheek like that. Saw it in her eyes. I'd lost her, right then. Didn't matter how I begged nor pleaded, she wouldn't look at me again. Never.'

Why are you telling me this?

'Damn, I was sick with the rage after that. Like an animal. They had to chain me down for a week. But the madness passed, and when I was well again, things was different. Every time I saw her after that, with some other man in the camp, I'd think: That's what rage did for you. And I swore I wouldn't never let it out again.'

'And did you?' Jez had to ask.

'Only one time,' he said. 'Years later. Day I escaped the factory where they had us makin' aircraft. He had a gun, I just had fists an' teeth. Don't remember much of what happened after, but I'm here and he ain't.' He flicked away his roll-up, and it was extinguished by the rain. 'Sane man wouldn't have charged him like that. But I weren't sane, not then.'

He got to his feet. Standing, he towered over her.

'Point I'm makin' is, you ignore your bad side, it eat you up. Like my papa and my brother. You got to face it. You got to make it a part of you, control it. Maybe one day it save your life, yuh?'

Jez looked at him, startled. How did he know? How did he have any idea of the struggle within her, the push and pull between human and Mane?

He answered her question before she could ask it. 'Think I don't see you walkin' off on your own, worryin', workin' things out? I see you. You the same as everyone else, Crake 'n' me 'n' all of us. Think you better off keepin' it all to yourself.' He turned to her, eyes dark in the shadow of his hood. 'You ain't.'

Jez met his gaze. Of all the people to tackle her about this, Silo was the most unlikely. Of course, the others knew she was different, but they avoided the issue on purpose out of respect for her secrets. She'd been grateful for their consideration, but it also left her entirely alone. It occurred to her that she was doing exactly the same thing to Crake. Of all the crew she was the only one who knew the grief he carried, yet they'd only ever spoken of it once.

Perhaps she didn't have to deal with this all alone. Perhaps Crake didn't, either.

'Thanks, Silo,' she said.

He pulled back his hood and turned his face up to the rain. Water trickled over his shaven scalp. 'In Samaria I was a slave,' he said. 'In Vardia I'm the enemy. This might be the first damn place I ever been where I'm just a man.'

He smiled. An actual smile. Jez almost fell over with the shock.

'Freedom makes a feller talkative, I reckon,' he said.

That was when the screams began.