’ The young Nullaquan sailor had grown hoarse over the last few sentences. The dust was affecting bis throat Suddenly he began to cough rackingly and pressed his dustmask to his face. He was still choking softly when Calothrick attacked him. The harpoon bounced off the whale and tumbled to the deck, and the mask flew from Murphig’s palsied hand to land somewhere behind him. As the two grappled and fell to the deck Calothrick struck Murphig once, twice in the side with what looked like the open edge of his hand. Murphig squirmed aside, though, and got one foot braced against Calothrick’s hip. He kicked out. Calothrick reeled back, hit the railing with the small of his back, overbalanced, and fell overboard without a word or even a muffled scream.
Immediately there came the sounds of sharks ripping him apart That shocked me. I hadn’t expected the sharks. They had expected Calothrick, though; and I knew the cold horror of their patience and their silent tryst with death.
Murphig was coughing his lungs out on the deck, on his hands and knees. He looked badly shaken. If he kept coughing he was going to wake the sailors. Then all hell would break loose; Murphig would probably confess everything.
I walked around the whale. Murphig didn’t notice me until I handed him his mask. He pulled it on immediately. No doubt he had a lot to say to me, but he couldn’t say it with his mask on. I indicated the kitchen hatch with one extended arm.
We walked to the kitchen hatch. Murphig walked halfbent, his arms wrapped around his sides. He seemed cold, or maybe he was stunned by the murder. We went down into the kitchen, Murphig first. I was carrying the lantern with the flame set low.
Murphig was still hugging his sides. I offered him the kitchen stool and he sat down, pulling off his mask With one hand. I sat on the counter top. Murphig’s eyes were glazed yellow with Flare withdrawal. I took off my mask, and set the lantern on the counter by my side.
Murphig looked up at me. There was silence for a few moments. “Let me have some of the black juice,” Murphig said.
“All right,” I said, getting up with deliberate wariness.
Murphig only shivered.
I uncapped one of the bottles and set it down within his reach. “I’ll get you an eyedropper,” I said. As I ducked under the counter to get it I beard him grab the bottle. When I came up he was wiping his mouth.
“Hey!” I said. “Be careful. That stuff is almost pure—it’s a lot more powerful than you realize.”
“Well, that’s good!” Murphig said loudly. “I need its power now.” His eyes gleamed in the lantern light and a deadly flush had come to his cheeks.
“Not so loud,” I said.
Murphig lowered his voice and began to speak very rapidly. “When I was a little boy in Perseverance I used to look down at the ocean and wonder what was under it, and I would ask my father, and he would say, ‘Son, pray to Peace or Truth to allay the pain of your lack of understanding,’ and I did, and it didn’t help. That was when I committed my first major sin. It was on Remembrance Day, almost ten years ago. I was at the memory banks learning the stories of some of the dead. One of the men I had to remember had vanished at sea. That made me curious and I perverted the use of the memory banks. I looked through them for those who had vanished at sea. Not to remember their spirits, but just for me. And there were hundreds of them. Sinners mostly. Sinners like me– .”
“Oh?” I said. “Go on.”
“That was only the beginning,” Murphig said feverishly. “I studied history. I neglected the story of the True Faith for other things, the mysteries. Like the Sundog Year, and the douds of St Elmo’s Fire. There are dozens of things. The floating islands. The things that crawled up the cliffs during the Hungry Year. Then there was that thing that washed up in the Pentacle Islands, in the old days. They said it was an old dead anemone, all battered and thornless—but there were no stumps. Just four digits like fingers, huge things, and a thumb and a kind of boneless wrist. Fifty feet across. It was a hand, a giant hand” Murphig was breathing hard. He was still clutching his sides.
“I stopped praying. That was a sin, too, my despair. I thought no Fragment would listen to me or my impieties. I tried everything, too—I. even prayed to Growth, like the rebels did. That was my worst sin. I’llnever forget the shame. But that didn’t stop me. Instead I went to sea for myself. With an alien captain. I wanted to find out, you see? I would have been ashamed to go to sea with pious men.
Then there was the drug. For a while I thought some Fragment of God had sent me that keenness of mind. But instead it was you. You and your friend.”
“That’s true,” I said frankly. “It was a criminal act It seemed necessary at the time, though.”
“It was a sin. You should be punished.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “And no doubt you could cause me a great deal of pain and embarrassment by revealing my actions. However, you just killed a man, so now you’re equally vulnerable. That leaves us at a stalemate. I suggest we leave justice to the afterlife. You see how much simpler that is?”
“Your arrogance has made you deaf and bHnd,” Murphig said. “You don’t know what the captain is doing—if you could hear his insane plans you would know. I’ve sinned many times, but never like that. Never like he wants me to. I could never do what he asks—not against Them.
“We have a common enemy, us Nullaquans and Them. It’s you, you aliens. They need us to cover them up, to hide them from the prying eyes of men. And we need them, to get people like you, to stop you from changing us, so we can still keep faith with God. IVe ginned against stability, and so have you. But I admit it freely. I repent! Do you forgive me?”
I looked at him, feeling an odd stirring of sympathy. “You look terrible, Murphig. Don’t worry yourself—it’s destructive. Calothrick stumbled overboard, and there’s plenty of Flare for both of us. We should be allies; we have more things in common than our sins. Now we’d better get you to your bunk.”
Murphig had a coughing fit and there was a wetness to it that alarmed me. “Do you forgive me?” he demanded hoarsely. “Grant me grace! Do you forgive me?”
“You idiot!” I said. “Of course I forgive you.”
“Thank God. I feel so sick.” He swayed on his stool.
“Look out!” I said, and half caught him as he fell off.
I eased him to the floor. It looked like an overdose—his face had turned as gray as whalehide. He was breathing shallowly. As I checked his pulse I saw a spreading stain on his left side, where his hand had hidden it as he hugged himself. I opened his jacket and shirt, quickly, and I saw the worst . . . the nasty gleam of the broken-off edge of Calothrick’s jackknife, jagged and shiny in the blood.
I grabbed the aid of the blade with the plierslike gripping edge of a can opener and pulled it out of the wound. I put pressure on the wound with a folded potholder, and stopped the bleeding. I propped up his feet on the lower rung of the stool to help with the shock, and when he stopped breathing I gave him artificial respiration. But he died.
“This is the worst,” I told myself. “The absolute worst” I took a small shot of Flare to stop my hands from shaking. I spread my quilt over the body and sat down on the kitchen stool to thinlr my way out of the situation.