“Last thing Lamp ever licked was a spoon.”
“You weren’t there,” Howard told Fallon. “Lamp swabbed the deck with that guy.”
Fallon looked like he was trying to spell a tough word. “Maybe the kid. When Amon left, Lamp adopted the kid, sort of.” Fallon looked at the board, reached to make a minor adjustment on a valve. His arm was thick, tattooed with a clumsy, unsinuous picture of a woman. Beneath that tattoo was another, the traditional fouled anchor.
“He was taking care of the ship,” Howard said. “Guys were afraid.”
“Guys are afraid.”
“Lamp said something.” Howard explained. ”… Jensen… his crew, after all… wouldn’t do anything to hurt this crew.”
“Now there’s a relief,” McClean said. “That there is a bonified relief.”
“Tell the guys up forward,” said Fallon. “When you think like that, you can’t get scared.”
“Lamp says it’s a sign.”
“I never paid much attention to that cook. Y’know, that’s a pretty good cook.”
Howard climbed from the engine room, stood on the grates and looked down into the brilliantly lighted space. The whooshing updraft of hot air and the rumble of the engines blanked the wash of the sea. McClean and Fallon stood unmasked as themselves. There was no illusion, no suggestion of Jensen on those plates. One sign seemed clear. Jensen did not want Brace in the engine room. Jensen seemed to be a jealous lesser spirit in the land of a jealous god.
Forward and to port was the crew’s compartment. Howard slowly descended the ladder. A man sat against the lower step of the ladder. He appeared as a dark bulk beneath the red glow of dull nightlights. The ancient hull of Adrian creaked, rattled; the old steel still firm along the welds but growing infirm across featureless steel plates stretched between points of stress. Water that had been carried to the deck on boots lay in a thin, red sheen. The red lights toned the edges of shadow, and it intensified the darkness of shaded bunks and corners. The crew’s compartment was not musty, as it would have been if men were sleeping. The smell, if it was a smell, telegraphed anxiety, and a sense of pending combat.
The man who sat against the bottom step was hunched over, dark, stolid, and he did not turn as Howard descended the ladder. A few feet forward, and starboard in the compartment, the redhead Rodgers sat beneath a red light. He wedged between a bulkhead and a locker. Rodgers whistled thinly, and he seemed pleased with his innovation. He looked forward and to port, where midships in the compartment lay the dark form of Racca stretched on a bunk. Beside the bunk, and directly beneath a light, Masters stood like a Samaritan elf about to spread ointment or unction. Bosun striker Joyce, having preceded Howard, sat on a bottom bunk and watched the whistling Rodgers. Joyce’s wet mittens lay in two small piles beside him, dark and steaming as venial sins. Joyce held a swab in one hand, and he pushed it back and forth across the area of deck he could reach without standing. Adrian pitched, rose to a high swell.
Howard squeezed against a rail to pass the sitting man. It was Wysczknowski, and Wysczknowski looked at Howard, his tight-lipped Polack face a warning against abrupt movement.
“Is it about anything,” Wysczknowski said, “or are you another one asking for a rap in the chops?”
Elfin Masters looked up, saw Howard, reached to tap the woozy Racca on his foot. Racca, like a man rehearsed, moaned, gave a small yelp, a creak like worn steel plates. Racca’s uninjured arm flopped. His hand rose and groped in the space between two bunks. The hand floated pale and redly washed. Racca looked like he offered a blessing.
Howard took a chance. “Are you all nuts?” he said to Wysczknowski.
“Them two,” Wysczknowski said and pointed at Masters and Racca. “I ain’t sure about them others.”
“I keep trying to tell you something,” Joyce said. “You guys won’t listen.”
Rodgers whistled a slow march tune, learned, no doubt, at his high school graduation. He fumbled at his shirtfront, a man confusedly caught without a crucifix. Racca moaned, raised his uninjured arm. He pointed forward. His arm trembled, shook, pounded the air. It was galvanic, like Amon’s seizure.
Masters looked elfishly at Howard and Wysczknowski. In the red lights his twisted face was leering. He was a man showing off. He was showing what he could do.
“Lamp whipped him for being yellow,” Howard said. “He figures Lamp won’t do it if he’s crazy.”
“He’s crazy.” Wysczknowski sat unmoving, but prepared. “We got enough trouble. Levere has got enough trouble.”
Howard, who had not heard about the trapped Brace, listened while Wysczknowski explained.
“Dane is there.”
“And Snow. They say we’re going to Boston.”
Masters leered. He passed a hand in front of Racca’s face. He hissed.
“Brace,” Racca moaned. Then in clear and somber tones he pontificated. His voice sounded like he was a senator praising soybeans.
“Brace is off the ship,” Racca proclaimed. “Brace must stay off the ship.”
Masters raised his elfin face into the red light like a satanic worshipper engaged in foul prayer.
“Brace,” he hissed. “Jensen.”
Racca pointed.
“There they are,” said Racca, in the wise and pontifical tones. “Brace and Jensen have returned to the ship. Please do not hurt us, Brace. Please do not hurt us, Jensen.”
His pontifical tone faded, he whimpered, choked like a man dying. “Don’t touch me—oh there… there… there… they are!”
“There—there—there—they—are!” Masters twirled slowly in the red light, the light chasing after the crevices and lines of Masters’s face. He did an eternally slow pirouette. He stopped and faced forward.
“I don’t want to go with you,” he said. His voice rose in a low shriek. “Leading me, he’s leading me, he’s come for me….” Masters blubbered, wept, recoiled against Racca’s bunk. He held to the frame of the bunk. His body was pulled, snatched, pressed backward as if invisible hands were dragging him. His elf face seemed to pull upward into his forehead, the diamond-shaped chin was lost in shadow as he ducked his head. Slobber fell like a sprinkle of blood onto the red, wet deck. Then Masters dived to the deck as if he chased his own blood. He lay flat, and his eyes were wide and unseeing. His slightly bowed arms shook, began to knock toward each other, and he fell forward again and started to writhe and flop as if jolted with electricity. His hands clawed at the deck. Then his body was thrust sharply upward, sideways, flopped back. Masters looked like he was being kicked by invisible feet.
“They’ve come,” moaned Racca.
“Don’t—oh—don’t—don’t—hurt.” Masters’s body was thrown in the other direction. It was nearly impossible to believe that he was not being kicked.
“Is he puttin’ on?”
“I don’t know.” Howard’s voice was awed.
Masters scrabbled about the deck like a crab. Masters vomited bile. Masters’s corpselike eyes stared, stared.
Rodgers stood and went to sit in quick companionship beside Joyce. Joyce looked up, jumped, looked forward where the figure of a man slowly rolled out of a bunk. Howard followed Joyce’s frightened stare with a frightened stare of his own. He waited for the worst.
The figure was leaned over the bunk, feeling beneath the pad. Hands appeared and the hands were holding a pack of smokes. The figure lit a cigarette, then turned toward the light. Gunner Majors shook himself like a dog shaking down its fur.
“You punks won’t let a man sleep,” he mourned. “You just keep at it and keep at it. Don’t I have enough trouble with wet guns?” He dragged at the cigarette, stepped to the forward bulkhead for a CO2 extinguisher. Masters flopped and slathered and gurgled. He began to make crablike movements toward the ladder. Wysczknowski stood.