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 replaced itself with another! He felt himself on the very cusp of some profound revelation concerning the most fundamental nature of things. He was a naval officer but also an engineer, and the complexity of machinery had fascinated him even as a child. Here, however, was a machine that appealed to him in an almost spiritual way, not because it was complex but because of its almost perfect simplicity. He still considered himself piously devoted to his emperor and had utter faith in Hirohito’s divinity, but he felt close to some sort of personal… reformation.
He paused a moment, peering into the immense basin. The labor underway down there was of another sort entirely, utilizing completely different materials and techniques. It was also, of necessity, using a lot of his own men. They were the overseers in this case, each with a team of translators and runners, but as miserable as the working conditions were on the expanding plain above, it was pure hell down in “the Hole.” Some of his precious men had actually died just from the heat! He didn’t consider them “precious” for their own sakes. As far as he was concerned, most were traitors. If that were not the case, he would still have the mighty battle cruiser Amagi at his disposal. They had failed in their duty to him and the emperor by allowing her destruction at the pathetic hands of-
He forcibly calmed himself, taking deep, flared-nostril breaths. He’d begun to realize that his tantrums accomplished little. They terrified and intimidated his men but had no effect on the Grik. Besides, he always felt drained after they ultimately ran their course. Better to hold the hatred in, let it help fuel him. In any event, what made the treachery of those who died of something as ridiculous as heat even more egregious was that Amagi ’s survivors were “precious” only as an irreplaceable resource. Their value was reckoned in respect to what they knew, by what they could do for him to elevate his prestige and secure his position. There were too few of them left as it was, and after the last “culling” following their defeat at Baalkpan, he had fewer than four hundred. He needed to use them sparingly, but he did need some for this… and other ambitious programs. He grimaced and resumed his leg-slapping stroll.