A, B, C: Three Short Novels Read online

  “The next dawn stretched copper foil across the window, and red light fell on the straw and the filthy blanket they had laid him in. The crying had been replaced now by gasps, sharp every few seconds, irregular, and…so loud. I thought he must be unconscious, but when I kneeled to look, his eyes were opened and he stared into my face. ‘You…’ he rasped at me. ‘It hurts….You…’

  “ ‘Be still,’ I said. ‘Here, be still!’

  “The next word I thought I heard was ‘water,’ but there wasn’t any in the cell. I should have realized that the ship’s supplies had probably gone for the most part overboard. But by now, hungry and thirsty myself, I could see it as nothing less than a stupendous joke when one slice of bread and a tin cup of water were finally brought and with embarrassed silence handed in to us that morning at sunrise.

  “Nevertheless, I opened his mouth and tried to pour some of it down his throat. They say a man’s lips and tongue turn black from fever and thirst after a while. It’s not true. The color is the deep purple of rotten meat. And every taste bud was tipped with that white stuff that gets in your mouth when your bowels stick for a couple of days. He couldn’t swallow the water. It just dribbled over the side of his mouth that was scabby with crust.

  “He blinked and once more got out, ‘You…you please…’ Then he began to cry again.

  “ ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  “Suddenly he began to struggle and got his hand into the breast of his torn shirt and pulled out a fist. He held it out toward me and said, ‘Please…please…’

  “The fingers opened and I saw three gold coins, two of whose histories suddenly returned to my mind like the stories of living men.

  “I moved back as if burned, then leaned forward again. ‘What do you want?’ I asked.

  “ ‘Please…’ he said, moving his hand toward me. ‘Kill…kill…me,’ and then he was crying once more. ‘It hurts so….’

  “I got up. I walked across to the other side of the cell. I came back. Then I broke his neck with my hands.

  “I took up my pay. Later I ate the bread and drank the rest of the water. Then I went to sleep. They took him away without question. And two days later when the next food came, I realized absently that without the bread and water I would have starved to death. They finally let me out because they needed my muscle, what was left of it. And the only thing I sometimes think about, the only thing I let myself think about, is whether or not I earned my pay. I guess two of them were mine anyway. But sometimes I take them out and look at them and wonder where he got the third one from.” Urson put his hand in his shirt and brought out three gold coins. “Never been able to spend them, though,” he said. He tossed the pile into the air and then whipped them from their arc into his fist again. He laughed. “Never been able to spend them on anything.”

  “I’m sorry,” Geo said after a moment.

  Urson looked up. “Why? I guess these are my jewels, yes? Maybe everyone has theirs someplace. You think it was old Cat, sometime when I was in the brig, perhaps, earning that third coin, slicing out that little four-armed bastard’s tongue? Somehow I doubt it.”

  “Look, I said I was sorry, Urson.”

  “I know,” Urson said. “I know. I guess I’ve met a hell full of people in my wet windy life, but it could be any one of them.” He sighed. “Though I wish I knew who. Still, I don’t think that’s the answer.” He lifted his hand to his mouth and gnawed at his little fingernail. “I hope that kid doesn’t get as nervous as I do.” He laughed. “He’ll have such a hell of a lot of nails to bite.”

  Then their skulls split.

  “Hey,” said Geo, “that’s Snake!”

  “And he’s in trouble too!” Urson leaped to the floor and started up the passageway. Geo came after him.

  “Let me go first!” Geo said, “I know where he is.”

  They reached the deck, raced beside the cabins.

  “Move,” ordered Urson. Then he heaved himself against the door: it flew open.

  Inside, behind her desk, Argo whirled, her hand on her jewel. “What is the—”

  But the moment her concentration turned, Snake, who had been immobile against the opposite wall, vaulted across the bench toward Geo. Geo grabbed the boy to steady him, and immediately one of Snake’s hands was at Geo’s chest, where the jewel hung.

  “You fools!” hissed Argo. “Don’t you understand? He’s a spy for Aptor!”

  There was silence.

  Argo said, “Close the door.”

  Urson closed it. Snake still held Geo and the jewel.

  “Well,” she said, “it is too late now.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Geo.

  “That had you not come blundering in, one more of Aptor’s spies would have yielded up his secrets and then been reduced to ashes.” She breathed deeply. “But he has his jewel now and I have mine. Well, little thief, here’s a stalemate. The forces are balanced now.” She looked at Geo. “How do you think he came so easily by the jewel? How do you think he knew when I would be at the shore? Oh, he’s clever indeed, with all the intelligence of Aptor working behind him. He probably even had you planted without your knowing it to interrupt us at just that time.”

  “No, he—” began Urson.

  “We were walking by your door,” Geo interrupted, “when we heard a noise and thought there might be trouble.”

  “Your concern may have cost us all our lives.”

  “If he’s a spy, I gather that means he knows how this thing works,” said Geo. “Let Urson and me take him.”

  “Take him anywhere you wish!” hissed Argo. “Get out!”

  Then the door opened. “I heard a sound, Priestess Argo, and I thought you might be in danger.” It was Jordde, the First Mate.

  The Goddess Incarnate breathed deeply. “I am in no danger,” she said evenly. “Will you please leave me alone, all of you?”

  “What’s the Snake doing here?” Jordde suddenly asked, seeing Geo and the boy.

  “I said, leave me!”

  Geo turned away from Jordde and stepped past him onto the deck, and Urson followed him. Ten steps farther on, he glanced back, and seeing that Jordde had emerged from the cabin and was walking in the other direction, he set Snake down on his feet. “All right, Little One. March!”

  —

  Once in the passage to the forecastle, Urson asked, “Hey, what’s going on?”

  “Well, for one thing, our little friend here is no spy.”

  “How do you know?” asked Urson.

  “Because she doesn’t know he can read minds.”

  “How do you mean?” Urson asked.

  “I was beginning to think something was wrong when I came back from talking to the Priestess. You were too, and it lay in the same vein you were talking about. Why would our task be completely useless unless we accomplished all parts of her mission? Wouldn’t there be some value in just returning her daughter, the rightful head of Leptar, to her former position? And I’m sure her daughter may well have collected some useful information that could be used against Aptor, so that would be some value even if we didn’t find the jewel. It doesn’t sound too maternal to me to forsake the young priestess if there’s no jewel in it for mother. And her tone, the way she refers to the jewel as hers. There’s an old saying, from before the Great Fire even: ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ And I think she has not a little of the un-goddess-like desire for power first, peace afterwards.”

  “But that doesn’t mean this one here isn’t a spy for Aptor,” said Urson.

  “Wait a minute. I’m getting there. You see, I thought he was too. The idea occurred to me first when I was talking to the Priestess and she mentioned that there were spies from Aptor. The coincidence of his appearance, that he had even managed to steal the jewel in the first place, that he would present it to her the way he did: all this hinted at something so strange that ‘spy’ was the first thing I thought of, and she thought so as well. But she did not know that
Snake could read minds and broadcast mentally. Don’t you see? Ignorance of his telepathy removes the one other possible explanation of the coincidence. Urson, why did he leave the jewel with us before he went to see her?”

  “Because he thought she was going to try and take it away from him.”

  “Exactly. When she told me to send him to her, I was sure that was the reason she wanted him. But if he was a spy and knew how to work the jewel, then why not take it with him, present himself to Argo with the jewel, showing himself as an equal force, and then come calmly back, leaving her in silence and us still on his side, especially since he would be revealing to her something of which she was nine tenths aware already, and she would watch him no less carefully than if it were unconfirmed.”

  “All right,” said Urson, “why not?”

  “Because he was not a spy and didn’t know how to work the jewel. Yes, he had felt its power once. Perhaps he was going to pretend he had it hidden on his person. But he did not want her to get her hands on it for reasons that were strong but not selfish. Here, Snake,” said Geo. “You now know how to work the jewel, don’t you? But you just learned how from Argo.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Here, then. Why don’t you take it?” Geo lifted the jewel from his neck and held it out to him.

  Snake drew back and shook his head violently.

  “As I thought.”

  Urson looked puzzled.

  “Snake has seen into human minds, Urson. He’s seen things directly that the rest of us learn only from a sort of secondhand observation. He knows that the power of this little bead is more dangerous to the mind of the person who wields it than it is to the cities it may destroy.”

  “Well,” said Urson, “as long as she thinks he’s a spy, at least we’ll have one of them little beads and someone who knows how to use it….I mean if we have to.”

  “I don’t think she thinks he’s a spy anymore, Urson.”

  “Huh?”

  “I give her credit for being able to reason at least as well as I can. Once she found out he had no jewel on him, she knew that he was as innocent as you and I. But her only thought was to get it any way she could. When we came in, just when she was going to put Snake under the jewel’s control, guilt made her leap backward to her first and seemingly logical accusation for our benefit. Evil likes to cloak itself as good.”

  They stepped down into the forecastle. By now a handful of sailors had come into the room. Most were drunk and snoring on berths around the walls. One had wrapped himself completely up in a blanket in the middle berth of the tier that Urson had chosen for Snake. “Well,” said Urson, “it looks like you’ll have to move.”

  Snake scrambled to the top bunk.

  “Now, look, that one was mine!”

  Snake motioned him up.

  “Huh? Two of us in one of those?” demanded Urson. “Look, if you want someone to keep warm against, go down and sleep with Geo there. It’s more room and you won’t get squashed against the wall. I’m a thrasher—and I snore.”

  Snake didn’t move.

  “Maybe you better do what he says,” Geo said. “I have an idea that—”

  “You’ve got another idea now?” asked Urson. “Damn it. I’m too tired to argue.” He stretched out, and Snake’s slight body was completely hidden. “Hey, get your elbows out of there,” Geo heard Urson mutter before there was only the gentle thundering of his breath….

  —

  —mist suffused the deck and wet lines glowed phosphorescent silver; the sky was pale as ice, yet pricks of stars still dotted the bowl. The sea, once green, had bleached to blowing white. The door of the windowless cabin opened and white veils flung forward from the form of Argo, who emerged like silver from the ash-colored door. The movement of the scene seemed to happen in the rippling of gauze under breeze. A dark spot, like a burn on a photograph negative, at her throat pulsed like a heart, like a black flame. She walked to the railing, peered over. In the white washing a skeletal hand appeared. It rose up on a beckoning arm and then fell forward in the water. Another arm rose now, a few feet away, beckoning, gesturing. Then three at once; then two more.

  A voice as pale as the vision spoke: I am coming. I am coming. We sail in an hour. The Mate has been ordered to put the ship out before dawn. You must tell me now, creatures of the water. You must tell me.

  Two glowing arms rose now, and then a blurred face. Chest high in the water, the figure listed backward and sank.

  Are you of Aptor or Leptar? demanded the apparitional figure of Argo again in the thinned voice. Are your allegiances to Argo or Hama? I have followed thus far. You must tell me before I follow further.

  There was a whirling of sound which seemed to be the wind attempting to say: The sea…the sea…the sea…

  But Argo did not hear, for she turned away and walked from the rail, back to her cabin.

  Now the scene moved, turned toward the door of the forecastle. It opened, moved through the hall, more like birch and sycamore bark than stained oak, and went on. In the forecastle, the oil lamp seemed rather a flaring of magnesium.

  The movement stopped in front of a tier of three berths. On the bottom one lay Geo! But Geo with a starved, pallid face. His mop of hair was bleached white. On his chest was a pulsing darkness, a flame, a heart shimmering with the indistinctness of absolute black. On the top bunk a great form like a bloated corpse lay. Urson! One huge arm hung over the bunk, flabbed, puffy, with no hint of strength.

  In the center berth was an anonymous bundle of blankets completely covering the figure inside. On this the scene fixed, drew closer; and the paleness suddenly faded into shadow, into nothing….

  —

  Geo sat up and knuckled his eyes.

  The dark was relieved by lamp glow. Looking from under the berth above, he saw the gaunt Mate standing across the room. “Hey, you,” Jordde was saying to a man in one of the other bunks, “up and out. We’re sailing.”

  The figure roused itself from the tangle of bedding.

  The Mate moved to another. “Up, you dogface! Up, you fish fodder! We’re sailing.” Turning around, he saw Geo watching him. “And what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “We’re sailing, didn’t you hear? Naw, you go back to sleep. Your turn will come, but we need experienced ones now.” He grinned briefly and then went to one more. “Eh, you stink like an old wine cask! Raise yourself out of your fumes! We’re sailing!”

  chapter four

  “That dream…” Geo said to Urson a moment after the Mate left.

  Urson looked down from his bunk.

  “You had it too?”

  Both turned to Snake. “I guess that was your doing, eh?” Urson said.

  Snake scrambled down from the upper berth.

  “Did you go wandering around the deck last night and do some spying?” Geo asked.

  By now most of the other sailors had risen, and one suddenly stepped between Urson and Geo. “ ’Scuse me, mate,” he said and shook the figure in the second berth. “Hey, Whitey, come on. You can’t be that soused from last night. Get up or you’ll miss the mess.” The young Negro sailor shook the figure again. “Hey, Whitey…” The figure in the blankets was unresponsive. The sailor gave him one more good shake, and as the figure rolled over, the blanket fell away from the blond head. The eyes were wide and dull; the mouth hung open. “Hey, Whitey!” the black sailor said again. Then slowly he stepped back.

  —

  Mist enveloped the ship three hours out from port. Urson was called for duty right after breakfast, but no one bothered either Snake or Geo that first morning. Snake slipped off somewhere and Geo was left to wander the ship alone. He was walking beneath the dories when the heavy slap of bare feet on the wet deck materialized into Urson.

  “Hey.” The giant grinned. “What are you doing under here?”

  “Nothing much,” Geo said.

  Urson was carrying a coil of rope about his shoulder. Now he slung it down into his hand, leaned against the support shaft
, and looked out into the fog. “It’s a bad beginning this trip has had. What few sailors I’ve talked to don’t like it at all.”

  “Urson,” asked Geo, “have you any ideas on what actually happened this morning?”

  “Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t,” Urson said. “What ones have you?”

  “Do you remember the dream?”

  Urson scrunched his shoulders as if suddenly cold. “I do.”

  “It was like we were seeing through somebody else’s eyes, almost.”

  “Our little four-armed friend sees things in a strange way, if that’s the case.”

  “Urson, that wasn’t Snake’s eyes we saw through. I asked him, just before he went off exploring the ship. It was somebody else. All he did was get the pictures and relay them into our minds. And what was the last thing you saw?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Urson said, turning, “I think he was looking at poor Whitey’s bunk.”

  “And who was supposed to be sleeping in poor Whitey’s bunk?”

  “Snake?”

  “Exactly. Do you think perhaps Whitey was killed instead of Snake?”

  “Could be, I guess. But how and why and who?”

  “Somebody who wanted Snake killed. Maybe the same person who cut his tongue out a year and a half ago.”

  “I thought we decided that we didn’t know who that was.”

  “A man you know, Urson,” Geo said. “What man on this ship have you sailed with before?”

  “Don’t you think I’ve been looking?” Urson asked. “There’s not a familiar face on deck, other than maybe one I’ve seen in a dockside bar, but never one whose name I’ve known.”

  “Think, Urson, who on this ship you’ve sailed with before,” Geo repeated, more intently.

  “Jordde!” Suddenly Urson turned. “You mean the Mate?”

  “That’s just who I mean,” said Geo.

  “And you think he tried to kill Snake? Why didn’t Snake tell us?”

  “Because he thought if we knew, we’d get in trouble with it. And he may be right.”