Shipbreaker

Klom's single-minded urgency seemed to evaporate. He faced Sorrel with a look that mixed contrition and confusion.

"Sorrel, I need your help. I died today."

This last sentence, delivered matter-of-factly yet with a detectable tremor, catalyzed Sorrel's reaction from anger to a curious concern.

"What are you talking about? You're standing there as healthy as a Redskull ox."

"No, you don't understand. Here's what happened—" Klom recounted losing his arm in the matter-modem. "The last thing I remember is calling out for Tugger." The beast looked up at the sound of his name, offering a lopsided, slavering grin. "Then I blacked out. Not much time seemed to pass. Or maybe a lot. Anyway, I woke up whole."

Leerily, Sorrel regarded Tugger. "You're saying this creature was somehow responsible for regenerating your arm?"

"No, not exactly. You see, there was no blood anywhere anymore. And my sledge was empty. I had filled it with tubes, but now it was empty. Then I looked at my reader, and it said the wrong time. I was in the past."

"That makes no sense at all."

Klom whirled savagely around and punched the wall of the lavatory, sending up a puff of mortar and pulverized soil. "I know, I know! But there's something else besides. Look at my skin!"

Sorrel examined Klom's outstretched hand, bloody-knuckled from impact with the wall. "Your cruft is gone!"

"All gone! That's right! But how?"

Sorrel shook her head in bewilderment. "I—I can't explain. Maybe Airey—"

"Airey! Of course! Let's go!"

Without waiting for her agreement, Klom hustled Sorrel away.

Tugger trotted blithely along behind them.

The fluids giving life to a typical starliner ranged from viscous hydrocarbon derivatives to thin plant-based extracts to exotically tinged protein-hormoneenzyme sera. These various liquids—some of which could be captured and sold, others of which went straight to crude disposal in the polluted swamps—invigorated a variety of mechanisms, all of which had to be drained before storage or disassembly. This task fell to the crews of the drainage pits.

Airey was right down in one of the pits, ankle deep in rainbow-sheened stenchy sludge. Unlike his downtime finery, his work uniform consisted of scarred boots and a patched brown coverall, its waterproofing peeling away in places. Employing a big spa

"Motherless shit! Is this my reward for daring to aspire to elegance? May all the ancestors of all the mechanics who ever worked on this abomination freeze in the lowest levels of the Dimmig hells! Die, you bastard screwcap, die!" Ranked at the edge of the pit, Airey's co-workers were enjoying his eloquent frustration. A Foraminifer was laughing so hard it kept dislocating its multiple jaws, resetting them each time with a grisly clacking of bone.

An instant cessation of the laughter caused Airey to crane his neck upward. Before he could react to the unexpected sight of Klom, he was lifted bodily from the pit.

"Come with me, Airey," Klom demanded. Airey caught Sorrel's eyes and read there the wisdom of complying. As the trio moved off for privacy, the drainman grabbed a rag to wipe his hands. Finished, he tucked it into a back pocket.

In the shadow of a belching, stinking cracking tower, Klom rehearsed his morning to Airey. Airey listened thoughtfully, his glance bouncing back and forth between Klom and Tugger. When Klom finished his account, Airey remained silent for half a minute before speaking.

"I see only one answer. Your pet can manipulate time in some fashion."

Klom's brow creased. "What? How could that be? I've never heard of such a thing being possible."

"Regardless of what we know, it's the only solution. Tugger responded to your distress by shuttling you back to the past. That explains your empty sledge and the timecheck on your reader."

"But how would that have fixed my arm? A dying time-traveler is still a dying man."

Airey stroked his negligible mustache. "This is true. The answer must be more complex then. I'll need to cogitate on this a while. But meanwhile, I think you should give Tugger anything he wants as a reward. Without him, apparently, you wouldn't be here right now. He's your guardian raksha."

"I'd gladly give him the finest meal or the thickest bed in the world. But all he seems to want is to be by my side!"

Airey hunkered down beside Tugger. He took the rag from his pocket and wiped away a line of saliva from Tugger's jowls. "There, there, good boy. What you want depends on what you are. And I guess we'll never know that. Unless—"

"Unless what?" asked Klom.

Airey straightened up, holding the rag bearing Tugger's drool before all their eyes as if it were a holy relic. "Let's send this sample to the laboratories at Radius Seven and get a genomic readout for Tugger. It will cost Klom a pretty paisa, but perhaps we'll learn more about our friend's constitution." Sorrel said, "What could a simple lab analysis reveal that Bright Tide Rising and his majestatics overlooked?"

"I suspect that Tugger deliberately concealed his true nature from the Raisin, so that he would not be separated from Klom. Can we put anything beyond a being who can do what Tugger appears to have done for Klom?"

All three friends studied the i

Klom said, "Please see to it, Airey. We need to know what Tugger is so we can make sure he gets the proper treatment for his kind."

"Consider it done! And now, although you are suspended till after the Festival, Klom, Sorrel and I need to get back to work. Which brings me round to asking you for a small favor—"

Disdaining the spa

Klom's crib was luxurious by bustee standards. Scabbed together out of rusty sheet metal, driftwood posts and rafters, broad swaths of cured hides from Asperna's reptilian partchrumpfs and the odd bits of scratched plastic and warped pressboard, the shack leaked only minimally during the monsoon season and retained the heat from a seacoal fire well during the mild winters. Its interior held a hammock layered with rags and a teetering set of shelves hosting Klom's few possessions, including a photo of an old woman standing in front of a hut on a lakeshore. (The unframed photo was surrounded by deva medals distributed by the marabouts during various holy days, as if it were a small shrine.) A gamecube with a fuzzed-out display and half its functions deleted by age rested on a wicker hassock. Sorrel often spent the night in Klom's crib, whether she and Klom had sex or not, preferring it to the crowded quarters she officially shared with a family of kitchen workers. The rancid oily smells her fellow tenants brought back in their clothing and hair from their shifts in the kitchen nauseated her.

This night, with Klom still unwontedly preoccupied by his earlier "death," Sorrel elected to keep company with her lover after her shift ended. Their supper, taken amidst the crowded refectory attached to Kitchen Number Twelve, had been a silent affair.

They lay quietly together now in the hammock. The Great Sun had gone down just an hour ago, and, even without any exertion, their naked bodies—one sleek and golden, one hairy and pale—were bedewed with sweat. Estuarial breezes feathered their skins.

Strung from the two biggest, most solidly anchored posts, the hammock and its ropes nonetheless creaked as Sorrel shifted her position to clamber atop Klom. She began to kiss and tease him. "Where's the nasty old cruft then, sweetling? Nothing to stop me from rubbing my boobs here now, is there?"