“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.”