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MA'AI 43, 610 ROMANOVAN220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4LbqvYGZn2
KVINTAI 7, 2678 GENRICHIAN220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFSPPYmysWQ
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THERE WAS A LOFTY SHIP220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuqFeBMJ1Fj
AND SHE WANDERED WIDE AND FREE,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZP6m120oMs
'TIL SHE SAW THAT SHE WAS FOLLOWED BY THE DZENDAYN ENEMY220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuK4DiHP35R
AND SHE FEARED THE COURSE SHE SAILED UPON WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZrLQtcuJBa
AS SHE CAME BENEATH THE DZENDAYN,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlgi2uWrHDg
DZENDAYN,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFZUhyypNVW
DZENDAYN,220Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUMQ0eaRbOM
SHE CAME BENEATH THE DZENDAYN LEE.
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"On deck, you slutborn---and look alive!"
A savage kick to his already-battered ribs awakened Zakh from his stupor. Before he could go so much as groan or turn over, a slashing blow from a whip or light club cut across his naked back. By the time he had climbed to his feet, hand over hand up the cold, hard side of the massive caliprette, or projectible mounting, where he had the previous night collapsed, whoever had struck him thus, the same one yelling at him---in fact, at all of the grimy, sleep-stupid denizens of the gundeck---had moved on to his next victim.
Grumbling, staggering, and scratching, the gundeck crew---a sorry lot of both genders, all colors, sizes, and ages---hunched beneath the low ceiling. Zakh was lucky to be of so small a stature, else he would've struck his head upon it. As it was he might as well have taken such a blow, even with all that had happened to him of late, for he was stunned and revolted at the sight of many women---gentle creatures he'd been brought up to believe should be respected, sheltered, somehow set apart from the sordid, pragmatic, masculine world---who appeared as naked as himself, and every bit as dirty.
With the men, some hundred seventy-five or 80 altogether, the women filed without spirit towards a heavy-gasketed door set in an in-curved wall, pausing several at a time to further shock Zakh's preadolescent sensibilities by relieving themselves before the others, no different in their demeanor than their male counterparts, into a pair of steaming troughs upon either side of the hatch. The air was already thick with the odors of sleep, the crowding of too many unwashed bodies, and a hundred exotic vices. Individuals in this time and place inhaled the weedsmoke, chewed or brewed the leaves, seeds, roots, or stems of plantlike species from a million planets. Now the place began to take upon itself yet another stench, emanating from the troughs, before Zakh---gulping to control his stomach, retched dry the night before---had used one himself, whatever his reluctance, and passed in turn through the hatch which swung shut from the inside, closing with ear-bursting pressure.
Zakh found himself standing upon a mesh-constructed spiral stair, lit by purge-glow and built around the inner circumference of what seemed, looking down, a bottomless circular pit. Above his head, it seemed to soar with no limits. Of a sudden, jets of scalding, chemical-rich water sprang from the walls. All around him as they climbed, people began awakening, scrubbing, shouting and laughing at each other. Unacquainted with the conditions responsible, Zakh wondered how they had come to look and smell so filthy. He later learned that this rude bath was a luxury occurring once every hundred watches.
He began to imitate their motions, if not their bawdy enthusiasm, rediscovering many bruises and other injuries. Much of what washed off him onto the treads was dried blood. The rest, the residue of countless indignities, scarcely bore thinking of. In too few moments, before he had finished, the water turned frigid, shut off, and drained into the glowing depths.
The stair---termed with astronautic correctness the "ladder," a nicety of which Zakh had been previously ignorant---brought them to another hatch which swung open before them. Dripping men and women filed out, each one, he observed, bearing long, thin, ragged scars across their backs, arms, and shoulders. Many limped as if from ill-heated injuries. More than a few were missing ears, toes, or fingers.
An interstellar vessel, Zakh knew, having constructed models of such ships, consisted in the main of a hull, in this instance some 30 measures in diameter and half again that length, fashioned, to a greater or lesser degree, after the unprepossessing proportions of a peasant's water bucket, and containing within its volume space for crewbeings and cargo. This, the area corresponding to the surface of the water within the bucket, was the maindeck.
No clue was to be had whether it be day or night upon deck. This was the merest matter of convention aboard even the most luxurious of passenger vessels. Nothing but the continuous multicolored flickering, tending towards blues and greens, of the purge-field illuminated the scene Zakh saw before him as it performed the dual tasks of suspending the effects of inertia within the starship and keeping out the vacuum and cold of the surrounding Deep.
At the ladderwell exit, two fat women sat upon stools behind makeshift tables. In the unsure light they appeared, if such were possible, even older than Terrible Yvan. Zakh remembered his friend and mentor with a heartsick pang. One woman fingered folds of rough grayish fabric piled upon her table. As Zakh passed, some of this was tossed at him and struck him squarely in the face.
"Look alive, son! Fresh meat, eh?" In quick appraisal, the bigger of the women eyed recent injuries which, in addition to his expression of confusion, made his status obvious. "Did a right thorough job, they did."
The women looked at each other, the big fat one frowning in what looked like anger, the small fat one shaking her head. The big one spoke again. "Looks like our old friend Vanya's style. Best get them into togs, before you tempt him more. Or any of our other kids."
Even had he been inclined, Zakh was given no chance to reply. Pushed by the slow-moving queue, chilled and impatient to exchange their scarred and thin-ribbed nakedness for clothing, he stumbled into what proved a crude, ill-washed coverall. Still damp and barefoot, he wiped his hand down the front of the garment, closing the seal---already it'd begun to chafe his damaged flesh----and staggered forward to discover what would happen to him next.
A few shuffling paces, and Zakh had arrived at the other table, upon which were stacked dozens of small, white foam-plastic boxes. An odd aroma, savory but revolting, arose as they were handed out by the second and smaller of the fat women, merciful in her silence, one box per crewbeing. As he passed the table, Zakh accepted the box offered to him. It was snatched by the man ahead of him, who added it to the one he'd been given.
"Hey!" Zakh reached for the box. The man, twice Zakh's weight, struck him backhand across the mouth. He stumbled into a knot of crewbeings and almost fell. They shoved him back at the man, and, of a sudden, Zakh recognized him. It was Rodya, one of the three bastards who had assaulted him.
"Keep your whiny mouthings to yourself, chicken, or I'll do it again!"
Shaking with fear and rage, Zakh started forward, reaching for the box again. "Give me that, or I'll...."
"Silence in the line!" Another voice joined the shouting, somehow to Zakh dreadful and familiar. "You there, newboy! Another breach and I'll have you lashed to the hatch cover for your first twelve!"
Zakh turned. The man shouting at him wore a uniform, baggy pantaloons which might have been the bottom half of a coverall like he himself had been issued, and a frayed, dirty, stiff-collared tunic. He carried an odd object in his hand, nothing more than a short section, forearm-length, of wire-reinforced kevlar cable, such as was used in heavy farming operations at the Holdings---another pang beset him---with big, tight knots worked into its end. Of a sudden, the boy understood the scarred flesh all about him.
Sufficient reason there was for him to recognize the voice. It belonged to the man his other tormentors had called "Voya." Nevertheless, Zakh pointed out the crewman who had taken away his food. "But he..."
The uniformed figure swung the cable's end, slapping its knots into a palm hardened by years of such demonstration. "Two chances for fresh meat, by Premier's gonads. That's more than most get. This is not a lady's pleasure charter where figureheading's the worst you can expect, out of sight from refined sensitivities!"
The man placed his accent upon the first, elongated syllable of "refined." As Zakh was to learn, punishment was a constant topic of conversation aboard the vessel. He had already found out, unable to overhear the bathing crew, that one of the mildest forms, sometimes reserved for officers, was "figureheading." The victim was tied to the sculpted mascot at the forward tip of the mast, where fluctuations in the purge-field roasted skin, hair, eyebrows, or----providing betting opportunities---seared eyeballs to opacity with a rare flicker or devoured half an individual's face. For crewbeings, this was too gentle and private. Their punishments happened in public, where they served as examples to others.
"Move it, manlover," he was ordered, "or I'll make you dead meat!"
Without a word, Zakh turned and started moving once more. Ahead of him, Rodya swiveled, held one of the precious boxes out, and leered at him. "I'll give back half, chicken," the obscene whisper issued from one corner of his mouth, "on condition you pay me later, on the gundeck, after watch."
Still shambling along, Zakh looked up at the man towering over him, and also spoke without moving his lips. "I will pay you back, right enough, with interest, in my own time. Keep looking over your shoulder. You are going to be the sorriest shit who ever lived."
The man raised a work-toughened hand, then hesitated, whether because of the boy's determined scowl or the ludicrousness of his threat, Zakh could not tell. The villain looked down at the undersized, beaten-up twelve-year-old, lowered his fist, and laughed. Something of a nervous edge spoiled the menace of it. He turned his back and moved along. Thus passed Zakh's first and second conversations aboard the starship he'd stowed away on.
As he shuffled forward again, his thoughts, as they ever would in evil circumstances, buried his immediate fears of their own accord and focused upon practical points. Overhead, seen vaguely by the half-powered purge-field, the ship's single mast stretched into apparent infinity. Here and there along its great length, a full verst in extend, a blob of color presented itself.
In a sense, Zakh was finding that his education as a sailor had begun before he set foot aboard this unhappy vessel, before tragedy had overtaken the life he had earlier known. What he had learned at the behest of Mistress Maria began to serve him as he fought for his survival. Zakh knew something of ship-handling (like all boys he had thought to take it up, although never to begin in exactly this manner), enough to realize what the faint glow of the deckmesh---and the fact the deck remained beneath his feet---implied.
In this, the forty-second century (commemorating what event not even scholars were sure), starvoyages were undertaken at velocities greater than that of light, through the application of purge-physics, in essence a matter of employing the manifold and subtle aspects of ordinary matter and energy. As any object might, during a less-sophisticated era, have been rendered "weightless"---by removing it from gravitic influences or manipulating it properly within them---so, upon account of purge-physics, an object might analogously be rendered inertialess by enveloping it within a purge-field. Thus, no longer subject to what were termed "einsteinian effects," starsailing vessels traveling from system to system depended upon the tachyon winds, streams and currents of massless, faster-than-light particles which, like cosmic rays, were and are a feature of the natural fluxes present within the galaxy.
Therefore, Zakh reasoned, although still orbiting the planet---his beautiful moonringed Genrich, now doubly lost to him---and not yet under weigh, the ship had a sufficient number of tachyon-filled starsails set aloft to maintain a small but appreciable spiraling headway against a springline angled to the anchoring cable of the lubberlift from the upper hull, establishing the illusion (and, illusion or not, useful and welcome) of gravity underfoot.
All of this, however, and more that he knew in some lost corner of his mind, was only empty theorizing, of less practical significance than certain barbarous everyday facts. This being a first watch during planetfall, new and untried crewbeings were assumed to have made their way aboard in one manner or another. A 3rd pause now was made before tasks were assigned the group of which Zakh found himself a disoriented and reluctant part. Crewmen and women of the watch were ordered to face away from a back-slanting wall two measures and a half in height encircling the deck they stood upon, pierced by windows with drawn curtains and topped by a rail. Zakh knew the upper area to be the quarterdeck, whence the starship was commanded. Beneath it lay officers' quarters and caliprettes for the bow chasers, projectibles of lesser power than those upon the gundeck. All hands faced inward towards the mast, through the base of which they had arrived upon deck, round which, at two man-heights, hung a platform. At its rail stood a uniform individual who held his hands behind his back examining with contempt the specimens of humanity before him. He was gigantic, broad as he was tall, and, except for his coloring and animation, might have passed for a Cossack.
"I am Dracul Putin!" he announced in a voice which matched his stature and would have been audible above the planet's most violent thunderstorm. "First officer and navigator of the adventurer Zilvagabond'. Mark me well, you little bastard, for this is the only warning I will give you."
With this introduction, he hefted an object---ridiculous as it seemed, it seemed to the hungry Zakh to be a loaf of bread burned black upon one end; a basketful stood beside the man---and threw it over the platform, across the deck where they were ranked, and over the railed wall surrounding it. As it crossed the starship's outer circumference, it blew up with a flash and crack like lightning. Not a crumb or wisp of smoke remained of it.
"It is fatal to you to intersect the field margin." Another loaf was hurled with the small result. "Settle quarrels among yourselves in any way you want, as long as you do not interfere with ship's routine, but to strike an officer invites a death sentence."
A long list followed of additional items---failure to obey an order, cowardice, stealing ship's property (as with fighting, no prohibition existed against stealing from a fellow crewbeing)---most, it seemed, ending with the same phrase and the same impressive demonstration of what that meant aboard a starship. Zakh had known starsailing to be hazardous; it now appeared the greatest hazard lay in the last three words of each rule being read.
At last, having emptied his bask, First Officer Putin brushed his hands against each other. Zakh's mouth had watered as he watched each loaf arc to spectacular destruction. He wondered what the exhibit was when the baker had not burnt several dozen loaves. His body sagged with disappointment at the waste and his stomach roared. The entertainment portion having come and gone, the crewbeings lined up a final time to file before another table. Each was asked what name he---or she---went by, what his position was aboard the starship, and had he heard or understood the articles.
"Zakh Sorokin," he answered sullenly as he reached the table, wasting no thought on evading commitment to the ship and a new life, however horrible; he was a stowaway, and far worse awaited him on Genrich. For those who could barcode or make other symbols a ledger was provided. With second thoughts about identifying himself as a hunted criminal, he put down in ancient letter-writing the first name that came to him. No one could read it, anyway. His attention was fastened upon a file recorder taking down his every gesture. In the event he should appeal some punishment of the officers, he would confront his own voice and likeness consenting to their authority. It was likelier, before it came to that, he would confront a cable's end.
"I've no position I know of..." Several bawdy suggestions from crewbeings crowding round him were ignored by Zakh and the man behind the table. "---except, I guess, stowaway. Yes, I heard and understood the articles." He looked up. The man behind the table was Vanya.
He laughed. "You're signed up, chicken, move on!"
Without further ceremony, the watch was set to its tasks. Many of the men and women were sent up, riding Putin's steam-powered platform the first half verst into the mainyards, where they would continue aloft and forward on their own hands and feet. Not long afterward, a protracted, horrifying scream came from above. One soul returned, plummeting to silence upon the mesh, not a measure from the Genrichian stowaway. Before he looked away and gulped back a sour taste, he had time to see injuries other than a crushed skull and broken neck. The man was a mass of fresh blood from waist to knees. In this manner Zakh learned the fate of those manifesting fear of height. Seized and taken up, as this one had been, they were forced to balance the whole watch, hands tied behind them, with the organ which made them male tethered to the yard. If they lost their balance, this was the result.
For Zakh's part, someone threw a wad of dirty wags and brushes at him, pointed to a section of deckmesh, and gave him to understand that the rags and brushes were to be rendered even dirtier. Through that long, painful watch, he labored at the most menial tasks imaginable, all with a light head and growling stomach. It was the first time in his life, even as a forest refugee, or afterward upon the greenway where he foraged for himself, that he had ever been hungry. This, in addition to the injuries and indignities previously inflicted upon him, made him slow to absorb what he must learn, awkward in its execution, and earned him many blows until, if he'd been keeping track, which he was not, he would have lost count of them. He drew small comfort from observing that he was not being singled out, that these attentions were lavished upon one and all, without discrimination.
According to the first officer's dissertation, sickness among crewbeings, while not a capital offence like so many other transgressions, was punishable as disobedience; hard work and sweat being considered sovereign remedies for every laborer's malady. Complaining of work could be---often was---rewarded by having a wrist bound to an ankle and being required to work anyway, even if it meant going aloft. Those suffering rupture or broken bones (both epidemic aboard starsailing vessels) were compelled to continue their labors. Should they collapse, a common form of resuscitation was "striping," the soles of the feet being lashed until they bled. Individuals thus treated were slower for a time but thought of their work and nothing else. Malinlgerers might be fined their ration of food and water----even if they happened to be dead!
In the beginning, no one save taskmasters assigned to his instruction told him anything, not even what he must know to perform his duty. In this, he soon found, all aboard had the advantage of him, for gossip had spread through the Zilvagabond. None among his fellow suffers had not endured similar ordeals, nor stayed ignorant of what he had experienced in his first hours aboard. Common affliction failed to render them more sympathetic to his plight. In fact, as he discovered, much the contrary was true. Men and women alike---save one---deemed it a precious opportunity, choosing moments when officers were not watching to taunt him by mock endearment, foremost among them "newboy," which was plain enough also "manlover" and "chicken," whatever they meant. He dared not bend over without bracing himself for a pinch of probing hand. Even the one---the boy was never sure who he was; he had appeared as no more than a looming shadow as Zakh, who had learned better than to look up, devoted his attention to the deck---did not seem much help at first, for he only whispered enigmatically and moved on.
"Did you know, newboy, that the knee is the weakest part of the body?" Zakh pondered this odd lecture in anatomy for hours, thinking it applied to his own knees, bruised and bleeding from deckwork. None saw fit to inform him that, according to their view, it had been his free choice to sneak aboard. That he must pay (however ill-informed his choice, whatever consequence fell due, however dear the coin he paid in) seemed to one and all no less natural---maybe more so---than breathing. Thus, in the first hours which determined his survival, before he could move again with relative ease (a condition he was encouraged to with many a kick and cuff---and worse----through that first endless watch), self-education was a matter of sink or swim, work or starve, and starve in all likelihood whatever the case. Foremost, he was expected to learn to perform at the bidding of another or die.
Many vital data of this kind Zakh absorbed while scraping, brushing, scrubbing, and---enveloped, ill-protected though he was, in the noxious fumes of solvents---helping refinish the resin coating of the mesh of which every square line of the Zilvagabond had been fabricated. He was inspired, in aid of this pragmatic education, by the curses, threats, feet, fists, and knotted cables' ends of those put in charge of him. By the time the watch had ended, he had learned his lessons well, in particular the one about knees, which he had seen the sense of. Hands aloft were called down---"aft" was the word---and with those from the maindeck were formed into a line again, at the terminus of which a table had been piled high with white plastic boxes.
It was an offense to complain of the food, punishable in various manners from simple starvation to being forced, if it amused the officers, to eat the plastic packaging or waste from the troughs. The cruelest discipline is inconsistency. As Zakh had expected, Rodya soon materialized, this time behind him. As they shuffled along, the man leaned down and whispered, "You can't hold out forever, Chicken, not unless you want to starve."
Zakh ignored him until they reached the table, took the offered box and stepped forward. Collecting his own ration, Rodya also snatched the box from Zakh's hands. "See what I mean, chicken?"
Stepping back as if frightened, Zakh leaped, bringing both feet up to kick Rodya's left knee with all his might. The joint gave way with the sound of breaking celery. As the man slumped, Zakh steadied himself, twisted and smashed his elbow into the man's right eye. Rodya fell to the deck, his hands to his face, screaming. Blood streamed between his fingers. With the ball of his left foot, Zakh rolled the ruined knee experimentally. Rodya screamed louder and shifted his hands to his leg. Zakh lifted a foot and brought his heel down upon the man's throat with another sickening crunch. Rodya gurgled and stopped breathing.
Expecting all the while to be hit by a cable's end, lashed to the rigging and flogged to death, or picked up and hurled into the purge-field margin, Zakh forced himself to inhuman calmness, collected both boxes to the deck, and glared his defiance around. All eyes were fixed on him. Nobody spoke.
At the behest of an officer, hands bent to Rodya's body and dragged it away. Recalling the words, settle quarrels among yourselves in any way you want as long as it doesn't interfere with ship's routine, Zakh neither knew nor cared. The line shuffled onward. He went to find a safe place to eat against the broad base of the mast. No one ever touched him against his will again, save officers who struck one and all alike with rough egalitarianism, or called him "chicken."
He was learning.
