"I'll carry you on my back—piggy-back. We won't be quite as close as we were in the apartment, but it's my only chance." As she hesitated, Jack played what he hoped was his ace: "Either you come down with me or I go alone with no protection at all. I'm not waiting here for your brother."
Kolabati stepped forward. "You can't go down there alone."
Without another word, she kicked off her sandals, hiked up her sari, and sat on the floor. She swung her legs into the hole and began to lower herself through.
"Hey!"
"I'll go first. I'm the one with the necklace, remember?"
Jack watched in amazement as her head disappeared below the level of the floor. Was this the same woman who had screamed in abject terror a moment ago? Going first through that hole took a lot of courage—with or without a "magic" necklace. It didn't make sense.
Nothing seemed to make much sense anymore.
"All right," she said, popping her head back through. "It's clear."
He followed her into the darkness below. When he felt his feet touch the suspended walkway, he eased himself into a tense crouch.
They were at the top of a high, narrow, tenebrous corridor. Through the slats of the walkway Jack could see the floor a good twenty feet below. Abruptly, he realized where he was: This was the same corridor he had followed to the aft cargo hold last night.
Kolabati leaned toward him and whispered. Her breath tickled his ear.
"It's good you're wearing sneakers. We must be quiet. The necklace clouds their vision but does not block their hearing." She glanced around. "Which way do we go?"
Jack pointed to the ladder barely visible against the wall at the end of the walkway. Together they crawled toward it. Kolabati led the way down.
Halfway to the floor she paused and he stopped above her. Together they scanned the floor of the corridor for any shape, any shadow, any movement that might indicate the presence of a rakosh. All clear. He found scant relief in that. The rakoshi could not be far away.
As they descended the rest of the way, the rakoshi stench grew ever stronger. Jack felt his palms grow slick with sweat and begin to slip as they clung to the iron rungs of the ladder. He had come through this same corridor in a state of ignorance last night, blithely unaware of what waited in the cargo hold at its end. Now he knew, and with every step closer to the floor his heart increased its pounding rhythm.
Kolabati stepped off the ladder and waited for Jack. During his descent he had been orienting himself as to his position in the ship. He had determined that the ladder lay against the starboard wall of the corridor, which meant that the cargo hold and the rakoshi were forward to his left. As soon as his feet hit the floor he grabbed her arm and pulled her in the opposite direction. Safety lay toward the stern…
Yet a knot of despair began to coil in his chest as he neated the watertight hatch through which he had entered nad exited the corridor. He had secured that hatch behind him last night. He was sure of it. But perhaps Kusum had used it since. Perhaps he had left it unlocked. He ran the last dozen feet to the hatch and fairly leaped upon the handle.
It wouldn't budge. Locked!
Damn!
Jack wanted to shout, to pound his fists against the hatch. But that would be suicide. So he pressed his forehead against the cold, unyielding steel and began a slow mental count from one. By the time he reached six he had calmed himself. He turned to Kolabati and drew her head close to his.
"We've got to go the other way," he whispered.
Her eyes followed his pointing finger, then turned back to him. She nodded.
"The rakoshi are there," he said.
Again she nodded.
Kolabati was a pale blur beside him as Jack stood there in the dark and strained for another solution. He could not find one. A dim rectangle of light beckoned from the other end of the corridor where it opened into the main hold. They had to go through the hold. He was willing to try almost any other route but that one. But it was either back up the ladder to the dead end of the pilot's cabin or straight ahead.
He lifted Kolabati, cradling her in his arms, and began to carry her toward the hold, praying that whatever power her necklace had over the rakoshi would be conducted to him as well. Halfway down the corridor he realized that his hands were entirely useless this way. He put Kolabati back on her feet and took two of the Cricket lighters from his pockets, then motioned to her to hop on his back. She gave him a small, tight, grim smile and did as directed. With an arm hooked behind each of her knees, he carried her piggy-back style, leaving his hands free to clutch a Cricket in each. They seemed ridiculously inadequate, but he derived an odd sort of comfort from the feel of them in his palms.
He came to the end of the corridor and stopped. Ahead and to their right, the hold opened before them. It was brighter than the passageway behind, but not by much; darker than Jack remembered from last night. But Kusum had been on the elevator then with his two gas torches roaring full force.
There were other differences. Details were scarce and nebulous in the murky light, but Jack could see that the rakoshi were no longer clustered around the elevator. Instead, some forty or fifty of them were spread throughout the hold, some crouched in the deepest shadows, others slumped against the walls in somber poses, still others in constant motion, walking, turning, stalking. The air was hazed with humidity and with the stink of them. The glistening black walls rose and disappeared into the darkness above. The high wall lamps gave off meager, dreary light, such as a gibbous moon might provide on a foggy night. Movements were slow and languorous. It was like looking in on a huge, candlelit opium den in a forgotten corner of hell.
A rakosh began to walk toward where they stood at the mouth of the corridor. Though the temperature was much cooler down here than it had been up in the pilot's cabin, Jack felt his body break out from head to toe in a drenching sweat. Kolabati's arms tightened around his neck and her body tensed against his back. The rakosh looked directly at Jack but gave no sign that it saw him or Kolabati. It veered off aimlessly in another direction.
It worked! The necklace worked! The rakosh had looked right at them and hadn't seen either of them!
Directly across from them, in the forward port corner of the hold, Jack saw an opening identical to the one in which they stood. He assumed it led to the forward hold. A steady stream of rakoshi of varying sizes wandered in and out of the passage.
"There's something wrong with these rakoshi," Kolabati whispered over his shoulder and into his ear. "They're so lazy looking. So lethargic."
You should have seen them last night, Jack wanted to say, remembering how Kusum had whipped them into a frenzy.
"And they're smaller than they should be," she said. "Paler, too."
At seven feet tall and the color of night, the rakoshi were already bigger and darker than Jack wanted them.
An explosion of hissing, scuffling, and scraping drew their attention to the right. Two rakoshi circled each other, baring their fangs, raking the air with their talons. Others gathered around, joining in the hissing. It looked as if a fight had begun.
Suddenly one of Kolabati's arms tightened on his throat in a stranglehold as she pointed across the hold with the other.
"There," she whispered. "There's a true rakosh!"
Even though he knew he was invisible to the rakosh, Jack took an involuntary step backward. This one was huge, fully a foot taller and darker than the rest, moving with greater ease, greater determination.
"It's a female," Kolabati said. "That must be the one that hatched from our egg! The Mother rakosh! Control her and you control the nest!"
She seemed almost as awed and excited as she was terrified. Jack guessed it was part of her heritage. Hadn't she been raised to be what she called a "Keeper of the Rakoshi"?
Jack looked again at the Mother. He found it hard to call her a female—there was nothing feminine about her, not even breasts—which probably meant that rakoshi did not suckle their young. She looked like a huge body-builder whose arms, legs, and torso had been stretched to grotesque lengths. There was not an ounce of fat on her; each cord of her musculature could be seen rippling under her inky skin. Her face was the most alien, however, as if someone had taken a shark's head, shortened the snout, and moved the eyes slightly forward, leaving the fanged slash of a mouth almost unchanged. But the cold, remote gaze of the shark had been replaced by a soft pale glow of pure malevolence.