The few remaining fish were fluttering upward now, gaining height and moving out of the captain’s reach. There was no point in attacking him. It would have taken hundreds of such shallow wounds to drain the gallons of blood in Desperandum’s massive frame.
The entire flock was gone. I opened the pillbox door and glanced quickly at the receding horde. The last few fish were struggling to regain their positions in the flock.
Bleeding, Desperandum watched them recede into the distance. Then he threw his bloodied spade aside with a clatter and walked to the pillbox.
“We have a few specimens now,” he said. “It’s too bad, but I think their heads were all crushed. That would be where they kept their radar equipment. What a shame.”
He walked inside the pillbox and disconnected a few of the wires from the tally box.
I pulled my mask off and closed my eyes. “One of the fish flew in here, Captain. I managed to trap it,” I said all in a breath. I pulled my mask back on and inhaled. Dust stung my nose. I sneezed and nearly burst my eardrums.
Desperandum shut the door with a loud clang and turned on the air filters. “Really? Where?”
I waited for the air to clear, then pulled off my mask and said, “I think it’s still alive. Right under that notebook.”
“Notebook? Where?” Desperandum looked at the counter. He took a step back and—squish—his large flat foot landed squarely on the book. I winced.
“Well. What a misfortune,” Desperandum said in a tone of deep regret. He picked up the notebook and gazed critically at the stickily adhering remnants of fish. “Completely ruined. What bad luck. By the way, Newhouse, I’m sorry I snapped at you a few minutes ago. I was overwrought.”
“I understand, sir. I had it coming, anyway.”
“No, no, I appreciate frankness. And, as you said, I don’t think the crew would appreciate a detour like that. There aren’t many whales there; they would see it as a waste of time. We don’t want the men getting restless.”
“Just as you say, sir.”
“You’re dismissed. Give the men the all clear when you go back to the kitchen. And have our medical officer report to my cabin.”
“Yes, sir.” I left.
And that was the last of the incident. But, later I found Dalusa staring raptly at the dried patches of Desperandum’s blood on the deck. I scrubbed it clean with sand that night when no one was looking.
Chapter 11
The Cliffs
Desperandum healed fast, except for his arm. He painted the slash with iodine but refused to cover the ugly black webwork of stitches put in by our first mate.
We continued to sail northwards and soon passed the halfway mark of our voyage, the Brokenfoot Islands. The settlements here had the best hydroponics labs on Nalluqua. They grow 90 percent of Nullaqua’s tobacco and over half the grain used in brewing beer. We did not land but exchanged greetings with several merchant vessels and a shrimp boat. I bought a new jackknife from an old man in a trading skiff.
I had lost my first knife to the glue in the false compartment of the Lunglance. I had often thought of confronting Desperandum directly with my knowledge of those hidden stores. It might even be possible that he did not know about the engine, the propeller, and the tanks of oxygen. But I decided against it.
We killed four more whales and laboriously butchered them. There were sharks here, too. They were a different subspecies from the sharks at the Seagull Peninsula, but they had the same vicious teeth, the same flying pilot fish, and the same disquieting hints of intelligence. Ignoring his wounds, Desperandum attacked the creatures with the rest of the crew, wielding a long whaling spade with extreme viciousness and every ounce of his incredible strength. The sharks attempted to give Desperandum a wide berth, and once a flying fish escaped Dalusa’s nets and bit a small piece out of Desperandum’s right ear, leaving it scalloped.
Desperandum snatched the fish from midair and stamped it to juice under his boot. After that he went after the eyes of the sharks. Blinded, they responded with suicidal ferocity, ramming the Lunglance’s sides with their snouts and leaping out of the dust to chew blindly on the railing. When the railing was down they chewed on whatever they could reach.
So far it had not been crewmen. Seeing the captain’s excessive joy in slaughter, the crew grew nimble with apprehension. And the blinded sharks did not have long to strike. It never took Desperandum more than two seconds to spear his shark-slimed spade into the vital organs.
By now we were approaching another Landmark.
There had always been cliffs on the horizon, rugged battlements whose roseate clifflight shed a crescent lunar glow at twilight. But now we were approaching the steepest edge of the Nullaqua Crater, that fifty-mile-long geological phenomenon known simply as the Cliffs.
The Cliffs are seventy miles high. They beggar description. I believe I could write for hours without conveying the actual visceral impact of seeing something that is seventy miles high. But I’ll try.
How quickly can a man climb? Two miles a day, perhaps? Two miles, then. Reader, you would be two miles above sea level before you were even over the boulders that have piled at the foot of the Cliffs. After two days of climbing you would find it impossible to breathe. Putting on an oxygen mask you could possibly climb another mile. Then you would have to switch to a spacesuit. The sky would turn black before you were halfway up the Cliffs. After a month you would be climbing rock not disturbed in four billion years. Up there it is’ old, it is cold, it is dead. There is no wind up there to disturb the slow eons of dust. There are no rivers to carve the rocks, no water to freeze and split open cracks, no bushes or lichen to seek out flaws in the cliffside with clever fingers and patient tenacity. Perhaps, once a decade, a soundless trickle of dust cascades down the ancient rock to the dessicated sea below.
Eventually, sometime, you would reach the lip of the cliff. You would stand in an airless badlands of tortured, buckled rock, that is the silent, day-long victim of dreadful heat and deadly cold.
Turn and look behind you, reader. Can you see the crater now? It is wide, round, magnificent; within it shimmers a sea of air above a sea of dust. Almost a million human beings live within this titanic hole, this incredible crater, this single staring eye in the face of an empty planet.
“In less than two months we ought to be docking safe and sound in the Highisle,” I told Dalusa, hugging her through the blanket. She gave a little moan of appreciation, and I grinned in the dimness.
“You said you wanted to leave Nullaqua,” I said.
“Yes.”
“So do I. And I’ll be coming into a sizable amount of money soon after we dock.” In about four months, I calculated roughly. Long enough to inform the Flare dealers on Reverie of the tight conditions and my last big haul. A few samples of my brain-kicking brew and they would move heaven and earth to get me back. All hope was not lost. I knew chemists on Reverie. Perhaps they could synthesize Flare. Maybe even improve it.
“Plenty of money. Enough to pay our way off planet, both of us.”
There was no reply.
“I know the situation looks hopeless for us,” I said, emphasizing the looks. “But nothing’s impossible with money. You can have your whole body chemistry altered; or, if that’s too difficult, I’ll alter mine. We can live together for years, maybe centuries. Even have children, if you want them.”