“You know,” said Daenek slowly, “I wouldn’t necessarily have told anyone about you.”
She smiled, a ferocious grin. “Real buskers make sure of things like that. We learn to cover ourselves first, and then talk.”
Silence. Daenek shrugged and gestured with one hand. “It looks like we’re going to be sharing this room, then.”
“Looks like it.” She watched as Daenek packed his jacket and the bag of clothing into one of the footlockers.
He closed the lid and looked up into her hard-eyed, penetrating gaze. “If you’re right,” he said, “if I’m not what they think I am, I’m not going to tell you.”
“You won’t have to.” Her voice had a trace of amusement in it. “Believe me.”
Daenek stood up. He was starting to feel angry. “We’d better get on down to the engine room. They’re probably waiting for us.”
“Yeah?” The girl laid down on the other bed and yawned extravagantly. “I didn’t sign on this thing so I could play nursemaid to some machine.”
“You haven’t stopped being a busker, have you?”
She turned her head and looked at him without smiling.
“Don’t say busker like you’d say crook. It’s a life like anybody else’s.”
Without replying, he crossed to the door. He halted as he stepped out into the corridor. Over his shoulder he said: “By the way, my name’s Daenek.”
“Rennie,” said the girl, her eyes closed. “Greetings.”
He closed the door and strode towards the stairway, a bitter fury building up around his heart. There was more thinking to be done—a great deal more. He was sure of that.
Chapter X
The engine room was a pulsing universe of noise and black grease that coated every surface. The grinding roar of the engines could be felt like a pressure on the skin. Ducking his head beneath clusters of pipes and wires, Daenek finally located the mechanics. In a little open space surrounded by clattering machinery, the head mechanic was checking a bank of gauges—the glass covering the dials was nearly opaque with the dust and grease—and making notes on a clipboard. A few meters away several other mechanics crouched around an overturned box, engaged in a slow card game. None of them looked up as Daenek squeezed between a pair of enormous, rust-caked cylinders and into the open space. The whole area was lit by a dull yellow glow that filtered down from somewhere far above, murky with dust and shadows.
The chief mechanic finished whatever he was doing with the clipboard, turned away from the gauges and noticed Daenek. He nodded and motioned Daenek to come closer. “My name’s Benter,” he said, shaking Daenek’s hand in large, calloused fist.
He pointed to the cardplayers, none of whom seemed to notice as he rattled off their names. His hand swung around the space in a sweeping gesture. “As you can see,” he said, “there’s not much to do around here when everything is running right. When they first built these things, they built ’em to pretty much look after themselves. It’s only when some part breaks down that we have to get to work.”
Daenek looked around himself. The floor of the engine room was discolored and splotched with drying spills, and what looked like scraps of food growing furry with mould. He found it hard to believe that there was nothing to do but play cards in the middle of all the disorder. A tiny whisp of steam leaked into the air from a sagging pipe.
“Well,” said Daenek, “what’s my job then?” His skin was beginning to feel itchy from the dirt and constant mechanical vibration in the air.
Benter paged through several sheets on his clipboard, each bordered with dark thumbprints. “We’re putting you and the other new guy on the night watch.” He pencilled a mark on one of the papers. “We cut back on the power loads at night, so there’s less that can go wrong. All you have to do is watch these gauges and get hold of me if anything goes wrong. Sound OK?”
Daenek nodded.
“Then if we have to work on something during the day,” he continued, “you can help out. That’s about the only way you’ll learn how things go together down here.”
For the next several minutes the head mechanic scribbled down the proper gauge readings on the back on one of the clipboard’s bottom sheets. He tore off the paper and handed it to Daenek. “There’s the ’phone,” he said, pointing to a barely discernible lump on one wall. “Just pick it up, if anything happens on your shift—it’s direct into my sleeping quarters. Get you and your buddy down here about nine o’clock, OK?”
Folding the paper and slipping it into his pocket, Daenek nodded and turned to leave. Something caught his eye—a flat rectangular object propping up one corner of some kind of metal tank. The cylinder had a gaping hole in one side, obviously beyond use. He stepped over to the corner where it had been placed out of the way, then knelt down and examined the object that was being used to hold it upright . . .
It was a book, caked with years’ accumulated grease and dirt.
Daenek lifted up the tank’s bottom edge and slid out the book from beneath it. The covers were warped into a concave shape from the constant weight of the tank. He twisted it in his hands, straightening it a little, and opened it. The book’s spine cracked and split apart. Something in the grease had seeped into the paper, staining it a dark brown. He could make out enough of the words to tell that it was in English. When he turned the stiff pages to the front of the book, he found the name STEPKE written there.
“What’s that?” Benter had come up beside him.
The memory of that other mertzer’s face faded, leaving nothing but the filth-encrusted book in Daenek’s hands.
“Something I found under here.”
Benter walked a few steps away, then returned with a scrap of metal that he pushed under the corner of the tank with his foot.
Daenek stood up, still holding the book.
“I remember the guy that belonged to.” Benter pointed his blunt, grease-darkened finger at the book. “He was landed off the caravan—oh, a long time ago. He used to read us stuff from some of the books he had. Poetry and stuff.” The edge of a smile. “Yeah, I remember that. But then—” A disturbed, suspicious expression crept over his features.
Daenek turned away from the mechanic, as if there were some secret in his own face that was about to be discovered by the other. “I’ll be back at nine for my shift,” he said without looking behind. Pressing the book to his chest, he squeezed his way through the maze of jumbled machinery, away from the space filled with dim yellow light.
Rennie wasn’t in the room when Daenek returned. He stretched himself out on his bed and examined the book. The title page was illegible. In fact, most of the book was unreadable due to the grease that had permeated it. Still, thought Daenek, maybe it’s a sign. From out of the depths and heart of this world so so foreign to me. A vision of Stepke slowly toiling through the sunlit fields up to the house in which he and his mother lived. The mertzer’s voice. I was a stranger there, too, reflected Daenek. Just as much as he was. Maybe that’s what finding the book means. He dropped the book beside the bed. A tiny switch on the wall behind his head turned off the room’s overhead light. He closed his eyes in the darkness. Sleep was welcome now that he had come to a decision about what had to be done.