Daenek assumed that the mertzer with the faded gold trim on his jacket and stiff cap was the captain. The man gazed moodily through the central window at the landscape, taking occasional sips from a cup filled with a dark, steaming liquid. How much has he changed, wondered Daenek, since the day he kicked Stepke off his caravan?
The translator led Daenek towards the captain, whose small, hard eyes glared at them from over the rim of his cup. He growled something in the mertzer language. The translator looked abashed and replied in a hurried murmur.
The captain’s eyes moved across Daenek’s face, then back to the land beyond the windows. “Lost in a storm,” he muttered disgustedly in English. “Well, find the fool a place to sleep until we reach the next village. We’ll let him off there.” He turned away slightly, as if the matter were of no interest.
“Excuse me, sir,” broke in Daenek. He saw one of the other mertzers leave the control panel and walk towards them. “I was wondering—if I couldn’t be of use to you. That is, uh, that it might be worth letting me sign on with you.”
The captain turned his head and looked at him coldly. “Why should it be?”
“Well, you see, I’ve got a kind of talent—for languages.”
Daenek had worried whether telling this might expose his real identity, but the possible benefits of staying aboard the caravan had finally outweighed his fears. “I can learn any language there is in a day.”
“So?” The eyes stayed hard.
Daenek was taken aback for a second. “Well, I could be a translator. For your negotiations in the different villages.”
“We’ve got a translator.” The captain pointed with his cup. “Standing right next to you.”
“But he’s getting old.” Daenek glanced at the old man beside him, then quickly away. “And he’s not as good at it as I am. Or would be, if you give me a chance.”
The captain grunted. “Who cares? Damn villagers take what we give ’em. And if they don’t like the prices, I don’t listen anyway. What good’s a translator? I need some strong backs around here, not useless talents.” He turned away, bending his head back to drain the last from his cup.
Looking nonplussed, the old translator tugged at Daenek’s sleeve and stepped towards the door being held open for them.
With an exhalation of bitter disappointment, Daenek was about to follow him out when the fourth mertzer, who had watched the scene from the bridge’s far end, stepped forward and spoke to the captain in a low voice. The captain listened and fingered his chin. Daenek pulled away from the translator.
The mertzer in the leather jacket and cloth cap stopped speaking, and the captain nodded. He looked over at Daenek.
“The chief mechanic here,” he spoke gruffly, “says he’s short-manned. Do you mind getting grease rubbed into your skin?”
Daenek looked at the expressionless face beneath the cloth cap, then back to the captain. “No,” he said.
“Get him signed on,” said the captain to the translator.
Dangling his empty cup from his hand, he walked over to one of the windows and stared out.
The translator grabbed Daenek’s arm and pulled him towards the door. The chief mechanic nodded silently at Daenek but before he could say anything they were out of the bridge and the door closed in front of his face.
“The head mech seems to be good luck for you,” said the translator as he led Daenek back down the stairs. “He led the party that was searching for the tread plate and found you instead. And short his crew is, too, since a drive cylinder exploded a week ago and killed two men. They just signed on another new man yesterday. Which serves to prove that some men’s misfortunes are blessings for others. You’ve got a place on board, if not—” He cast a sharp glance over his shoulder at Daenek. “—the one you were shooting for.”
“I’m sorry about what I said.” Daenek felt his face start to burn.
The old man snorted. “If I’d known you wanted to be a translator, I’d have warned you of your chances. Once, when I was younger, there were a dozen of us. But time’s slid past us. When I’m gone, that’ll be the last of talking to the villagers at all—someday you’ll just grunt at each other like animals.” His voice darkened with loathing.
They reached the bottom of the tower and stepped out onto the sunswept deck. “Well, come on then, lad,” said the translator, brightening. “If you’re going to be a mertzer, you’d best learn to speak like one first. A language in a day, eh?”
Chapter IX
It soon became obvious that there were no special procedures for the beginning of mertzerhood—that one such as Daenek becoming a mertzer was so rare and isolated an event as to need no special rituals surrounding it. The faces on board the caravan seemed to form around a waiting suspicion, as if saying beneath the flesh Can you ever be one of us? Can you?
Just wait, thought Daenek. He grinned at his image in the mirror hanging on the wall of the translator’s compact room.
Pulling the cloth cap closer to his eyes, he rocked back on his heels and admired the effect. There was a small chit of paper in his pocket that told how much would be taken from his first month’s wages for the cap, the leather jacket slung over the end of the translator’s bed, and the miscellaneous clothing and items stowed in a heavy canvas bag. The supplies clerk, deep in one of the farthest recesses of the caravan, had shuffled from cabinet to cabinet amassing the stuff, then handed the pile over his counter to Daenek with a bored expression on his face.
Just give me a chance, he said to the image in the mirror.
The words formed in his head in the mertzer tongue. Daenek felt a little gravel-eyed from lack of sleep, but pleased and satisfied to have spent all night up with the old translator, roaming ceaselessly through the corridors and chambers of the caravan, greedily soaking up the names of things, and how these men spoke of them and each other. The members of the night crews were greeted at their stations, the men’s faces green-lit by the dials of engine and guidance controls. Through the walls of the sleeping quarters he had been able to hear the rasp and snort of the universal sleepers’ language.
The mertzer language was like English (or at least to Daenek it seemed similar) but with rhythms and cadences like that of the great engines pulsing in the caravan’s center. The whole language, complex but of one piece, lay in Daenek’s mind now.
The door opened behind him and the old translator stuck his head into the room. “The captain wants to see you on the bridge. Right now.”
Daenek turned away from the mirror and grabbed the leather jacket from the bed. Great, he thought with satisfaction. He had somehow felt sure that there would be some kind of ritual, however slight, to mark this transition into a new life—a rebirth, actually. “I can find my way,” he told the old man. “You go ahead and get some sleep.”
As he emerged onto the caravan’s deck, the morning sun broke over a distant range of hills. The cranes and hoists, towering even when folded in upon themselves, were bathed in red light. Daenek savored the cold air as he headed along the walkway towards the control tower. His lungs tingled pleasantly as he entered the tower and mounted the stairs.
A surly “Come in” answered his knock upon the bridge’s door.
Daenek pushed it open before him. The glass-walled room was filled with the morning’s light, but here it seemed grey and numbing. He looked around and saw the captain and the head mechanic looking at him. Then his heart froze for a beat as he turned and saw to one side the militia captain and two of the subthane’s men.