Lawler teased the other one out, cut it in half and in halves again, yanked the last bit of it free. He waited for the one that had gone back in to make itself visible again. After a moment he caught a glimpse of it, bright and gleaming within Martello’s bloody midsection. But it wasn’t the only one. He could see the slender coils of others, now, busily wriggling about, having themselves a feast. How many more were in there? Two? Three? Thirty?
He looked up, grim-faced. Delagard stared back at him. There was a look of shock and dismay and sheer revulsion in Delagard’s eyes.
“Can you get them all out?”
“Not a chance. He’s full of them. They’re eating their way through him. I can cut and cut, and by the time I’ve found them all I’ll have cut him to pieces, and I still won’t have found them all, anyway.”
“Jesus,” Delagard murmured. “How long can he live this way?”
“Until one of them reaches his heart, I suppose. That won’t be long.”
“Can he feel anything, do you think?”
“I hope not,” Lawler said.
The agony went on another five minutes. Lawler had never realized that five minutes could last so long. From time to time Martello would jump and twitch as some major nerve was struck; once he seemed to be trying to rise from the deck. Then he uttered a little sighing sound and fell back, and the light went out of his eyes.
“All over,” Lawler announced. He felt numb, hollow, weary, beyond all grief, beyond all shock.
Probably, he thought, there had never been any chance to save Martello. At least a dozen of the eels must have entered him, very likely more, a horde of them gliding swiftly in through mouth or anus and burrowing diligently through flesh and muscle toward the centre of his abdomen. Lawler had extracted nine of the things; but others were still lurking in there, at work on Martello’s pancreas, his spleen, his liver, his kidneys. And when they were done with those, the delicacies, there was all the rest of him awaiting their little rasping red tongues. No surgery, no matter how speedily done or unerring, could have cleaned all of them out of him in time.
Neyana brought a blanket and they wrapped it about him. Kinverson gathered the body in his arms and moved toward the side with it.
“Wait,” Pilya said. “Put this with him.”
She held a sheaf of papers that she must have brought up from Martello’s cabin. The famous poem. She tucked the worn and folded pages of the manuscript into the blanket and pulled its ends tight around the body. Lawler thought for a moment of objecting, but he checked himself. Let it go. It belonged with him.
Quillan said, “Now we commend our dearly beloved Leo to the sea, in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost—”
The Holy Ghost again? Every time Lawler heard that odd phrase of Quillan’s he was startled by it. It was such a strange concept: try as he might, he couldn’t imagine what a holy ghost might be. He shook the thought away. He was too tired for such speculations now.
Kinverson carried the body to the rail and held it aloft. Then he gave it a little push and it went outward, downward, into the water.
Instantly creatures of some strange kind appeared as if by a conjuring spell from the depths, long slim finny swimmers covered in thick black silken fur. There were five of them, sinuous, gentle-eyed, with dark tapering snouts covered with twitching black bristles. Gently, tenderly, they surrounded Martello’s drifting body and buoyed it up and began to unwrap the blanket that covered it. Tenderly, gently, they pulled it free. And then—gently, tenderly—they clustered around his stiffening form and set about the task of consuming him.
It was quietly done, no slovenly gluttonous frenzy. It was horrifying and yet eerily beautiful. Their motions stirred the sea to extraordinary phosphorescence. Martello seemed to be absorbed by a shower of cool crimson flame. Slowly he exploded in light. They made an anatomy lesson of him, peeling back the skin with utmost fastidiousness to reveal tendons, ligaments, muscles, nerves. Then they went deeper. It was a profoundly disturbing thing to watch, even for Lawler, to whom the inner secrets of the human body were no secret at all; but nevertheless the work was carried out so cleanly, so unhurriedly, so reverently, that it was impossible not to watch, or to fail to see the beauty in what they were doing. Layer by layer they put Martello’s core on display, until at last only the white cage of bone remained. Then they looked up at the watchers at the rail as though for approval. There was the unmistakable glint of intelligence in their eyes. Lawler saw them nod in what could only have been a salute; and then they slipped out of sight as silently as they had come. Martello’s clean skeleton had already disappeared, on its way to some unknown depth where, no doubt, other organisms were waiting to put its calcium to good use. Of the vital young man who had been Leo Martello nothing was left now except some pages of manuscript drifting on the surface of the water. And after a little while not even those could be seen.
Later, alone in his cabin, Lawler studied what was left of his numbweed supply. About two days” worth, he figured. He poured half of it into a flask and drank it down.
What the hell, he thought.
He drank the other half too. What the hell.
6
The withdrawal symptoms began the morning after next, just before noon: the sweats, the shakes, the nausea. Lawler was ready for them, or thought he was. But they quickly grew more severe, far worse than he had expected, a test so tough he was unsure that he would pass it. The intensity of the pain, sweeping in on him in great billowing waves, frightened him. He imagined that he could feel his brain expanding, pressing against the walls of his skull.
Automatically he looked for his flask, but of course the flask was empty. He crouched on his bunk, shivering, feverish, miserable.
Sundira came to him in mid-afternoon.
“Is it what happened the other day?” she asked.
“Martello? No, that isn’t it.”
“Are you sick, then?”
He indicated the empty flask.
After a moment she understood. “Is there anything I can do, Val?”
“Hold me, that’s all.”
She cradled his head in her arms, against her breast. Lawler shook violently for a while. Then he grew calmer, though he still felt terrible.
“You seem better,” she said.
“A little. Don’t go away.”
“I’m still here. Do you want some water?”
“Yes. No. No, just stay where you are.” He nestled against her. He could feel the fever rising, falling, rising again, with sudden devastating velocity. The drug was more powerful than even he had suspected and his dependency evidently had been a very strong one. And yet—yet—the pain fluctuated; as the hours passed there were moments when he felt almost normal. That was odd. But it gave him hope. He didn’t mind fighting if he had to, but he wanted to win in the end.
Sundira stayed with him all through the afternoon. He slept, and when he woke she was still there. His tongue felt swollen. He was too weak to stand.
“Did you know it would be like this?” she asked.
“Yes. I suppose I did. Maybe not quite this bad.”
“How do you feel now?”
“It varies,” Lawler said.
He heard a voice outside the door. “How is he?” Delagard.