Страница 17 из 82
She glanced significantly toward Zak, and I whispered, “He’s one?”
“I think he must be. He found you and came and got me, so I thought it would be all right to leave you with him while I went for food. He can’t talk, but he hasn’t hurt you, has he?”
“No,” I told her. “He’s been fine. In ancient times, Gu
“Don’t say, ‘By this time,’” Gu
“Only if you will lie down too,” I said. “You are as tired as I, or more. You’ve been going around collecting food and medicine for me. Rest now, and tell me more about the jibers.” The truth was that I was sufficiently better to wish to put my arm about a woman and even to bury myself in a woman; and with many women, of whom, I think, Gu
She stretched herself beside me. “I’ve already told you about everything I know. Most are sailors gone bad. Some are their children, born on the ship and hidden till they’re old enough to fight. Then too, do you remember how we caught the apport?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Not all the apports are animals, though there’s a lot more of those than anything else. Sometimes they’re people, and sometimes they live long enough to get inside the ship where there’s air.” She paused, then giggled. “You know, the others on their home worlds must wonder where they went when they were apported. Especially when it’s somebody important.”
It seemed strange to hear so massive a woman giggle, and I who seldom smile, smiled myself.
“Some people say too that some jibers are taken on board with the cargo, that they’re criminals who want to get away from their home worlds and have stowed aboard that way. Or that they’re only animals on their worlds and have been shipped as live cargo, though they’re people like us. We’d only be animals on those worlds — that’s what I think.”
Her hair, near my face now, was piercingly fragrant; and it occurred to me that it could hardly be thus always, that she had perfumed herself for me before returning to our cra
“Some people call them muties because so many can’t talk. Maybe they have some language of their own; but they can’t talk to us, and if we catch one he has to talk by signs. But Sidero said one time that mutist means a rebel.”
I said, “Speaking of Sidero, was he around when Zak took you to the bottom of the airshaft?”
“No, there was nobody there but you.”
“Did you see my pistol, or the knife you gave me when we first met?”
“No, there wasn’t anything there. Did you have them on when you fell?”
“Sidero had them. I was hoping he’d been honest enough to return them, but at least he didn’t kill me.”
Gu
“I think he must have struck me while I was unconscious. I don’t think I could have hurt my mouth in the fall. I was inside him, did I tell you that?”
She drew away to stare at me. “Really? Can you do that?”
“Yes. He didn’t like it, but I think that something in the way he’s built kept him from trying to expel me as long as I was conscious. After we fell, he must have opened up and pulled me out with his good arm. I’m lucky he didn’t break both my legs. When he got me out, he must have struck me. I will kill him for that; when we meet again.”
“He’s only a machine,” Gu
“I’m surprised you know that,” I told her. “I would have thought you’d think him a person.”
“My father was a fisherman, so I grew up on boats. You give a boat a name and eyes, and a lot of times it acts like a person and even tells you things. But it isn’t a person, not really. Fishermen are fu
I asked, “Did your father approve of your signing on this ship?”
She said, “He drowned first. All fishermen drown. It killed my mother. I’ve got back to Urth pretty often, but it was never when they were alive.”
“Who was Autarch when you were a child, Gu
“I don’t know,” she said. “It wasn’t the kind of thing we cared about.”
She wept a little. I tried to comfort her, and from that we might have slipped very quickly and naturally into making love, but her burn covered most of her chest and abdomen, and though I fondled her, and she me, the memory of Valeria came between us as well.
At last she said, “That didn’t hurt you, did it?”
“No,” I told her. “I’m only sorry I hurt you as much as I did.”
“You didn’t. Not at all.”
“But I did, Gu
Her hand sought her dagger, but she had discarded it when she undressed. It lay beneath her other clothing and well out of her reach.
“Idas told me she’d hired a sailor to help her dispose of the corpse of my steward. She called that sailor ‘he,’ but she hesitated before she said the word. You were one of her workmates, and even though you didn’t know she was female, it would have been quite natural for her to seek the help of a woman, if she had no male lover”
“How long have you known?” Gu
“From the first, when you brought me that gruel. Because it had been exposed, my arm had been burned by the digestive juices of the flying creature; it was the only part of me that hadn’t been protected by Sidero’s metal hide, and of course I thought of that at once when I regained consciousness. You said you’d been seared by a flash of energy, but such things don’t discriminate. Your face and forearms, which had been exposed, were unburned. Your burns were in places that would surely have been protected by a shirt and trousers.”
I waited for her to speak, but she did not.
“In the dark, I called out for help, but no one answered. Then I fired my pistol with the beam set low, to give me light. I held it at eye level when I fired, but I couldn’t see the sights, and the beam was angled down a bit. It must have hit you at the waist. When I slept, you went looking for Idas, I suppose, so you could sell me to her for another chrisos. You didn’t find her, of course. She’s dead, and her body’s locked in my cabin.”
“I wanted to answer when you called,” Gu
I said, “However that may be, I want you to know that Idas had nine chrisos on her when I searched her body. I put them in the pocket of the sheath on that knife you found. Sidero has my knife and pistol; if you’ll return them to me, you may keep the gold and welcome.”