"A chain-climber. I got a good mind to throw him to hell off back in the drink where he come from. He looks like some kind of cop to me."
"Do I get the job or not?" I said, looking at Carboni.
"I'm talking to you, mug," the long man said. "I ast you if you're a cop."
"Who runs this show?" I said, still watching Carboni. "You or this talking horse?" I jerked a thumb at the second man. He made an explosive noise, started up from the bench.
"Sit down, Pogey," Carboni snarled. The lanky man sank back, talking to himself.
"That's a pretty good swim out from shore," Carboni said. "You musta been in a pretty big hurry to leave town."
I didn't say anything.
"Cops after you?"
"Not that I know of."
"Not that he knows of, he says." Carboni grinned. He had even white teeth; they looked as though they had cost a lot of money.
"Any papers?"
I shook my head.
"No papers, he says."
"You want me I should pitch 'im over the side, Carboni?" the third man asked. He was a swarthy man with stubby arms and a crooked jaw, like a dwarfed giant.
"Cap'n wouldn't like that," Joel said. "Cap'n said we needed crew-"
"Up the Captain's," the horsey man said. "We don't need no-"
"Pogey." Carboni rolled the eye over to bear on him. "You talk too much. Shut up." He jolted his chair back, turned, lifted a phone off a wall bracket, thumbed a call button. The glass eye was rolled over my way now, as though watching for a false move.
"Skipper, I got a bird here says he's a seaman," Carboni said into the instrument. "Claims he lost his papers…" There was a pause. "Yeah," Carboni said. "Yeah…" He listened again, then hitched himself up in the chair, frowning. He glanced toward me.
"Yeah?" he said.
I let my gaze wander idly across the room, and switched my hearing into high gear. Background noises leaped into crackling presence; the hum of the phone was a sharp whine. I heard wood and metal creak, the thump of beating hearts, the glutinous wheeze of lungs expanding, the heavy grate of feet shifting on the floor-and faintly, an excited voice:
"… UN radio… a guy… bumped off somebody… Maybe a couple… try for a ship, they said. Cripes, looks like…"
Felix had said that with a little concentration, I could develop selectivity. I needed it now. I strained to filter the static, catch the words:
"… handle him?"
Carboni looked my way again. "Can a kid handle a lollipop?"
"Okay… look…" The voice was clearer now. "… lousy local cops… we turn this guy in… reward, peanuts… their problem. We need hands. Okay, we work this boy… get there… Stateside cops… a nice piece of change…"
"I see what you mean, Skipper," Carboni said. He had a corner of his mouth lifted to show me a smile that I might have found reassuring if I'd been a female crocodile.
"Get him down below… Anchors in in an hour and a half. Shake it up."
"Leave it to me, Skipper." Carboni hung up, swung around to give me the full-face smile. The bridgework wasn't too expensive after all-just old-style removable plates.
"Well, I decided to give you a chance, Jones," he croaked. "You're on. You'll sign papers in the morning."
"Hey, okay if he helps me out in the hot-room and stuff?" Joel asked. He sounded like a ten-year-old asking for a puppy.
Carboni thrust out his lips, nodded. "All right, Jones; for now, you help the dummy. Take the flop next to his."
"By the way, where's this tub headed?" I asked.
"Jacksonville. Why? You choosy or something?"
"If I was, would I be here?"
Carboni snorted. "Anchors in in an hour." He leveled the eye on Joel. "Get moving," he barked. "What do you think this is, a rest home for morons?"
"Come on." Joel tugged at my arm. I followed him out, along corridors to a door. He opened it, flipped on a light, showed me a room identical with his own except that it lacked the plaster saint and the hooked rug. He opened the locker, tossed sheets and a blanket on the bed. I pulled off my wet jacket. Joel puckered his mouth, looking at me.
"Hey, Jones, you better get Doc to fix them cuts you got."
I sat on the bunk. I felt weak suddenly, sucked as dry as a spider's dinner. There was a humming in the back of my head, and my face felt hot. I pulled the sodden, makeshift bandage from the arm the dog-thing had chewed. There were four deep gouges, half a dozen shallower ones-all inflamed, swelling. The arm was hot and painful.
"Can you get me some antiseptic and tape?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"Is there a first-aid kit around?"
Joel pondered, then went into the corridor, came back with a blue-painted metal box.
In it, I found a purple fluid that bubbled when I daubed my wounds. Joel watched, fascinated. At my request, he applied some to the cuts on my back, working with total concentration, his mouth hanging open. If he saw the glint of metal filaments in the torn skin, he made no comment.
I folded gauze; Joel helped me tape it in place. When we finished, he stood back, smiling. Then he frowned.
"Hey, Jones-how come you didn't get Doc to fix you up?"
"I'll be okay," I said.
Joel nodded, as though I had clarified a difficult point. He looked at me, frowning. He was thinking again.
"How come Carboni's scared of you?" he asked.
"He's not scared of me, Joel," I said. "He took a shine to me on sight."
Joel thought that one over. "Yeah," he said. "But look; we got stuff we got to do. We got to get a move on."
I stood up, acutely aware of fatigue, and wounds, and a sensation similar to a ticking bomb behind my eyes. Felix's posthypnotic anesthetic had been a big help while it lasted, but the withdrawal symptoms evened the score.
"I want to go up on deck a minute," I said. Joel blinked, followed me. I stepped out onto the deck, shivered in my wet clothes as the freshening wind hit me. There were no lights on the shore opposite; half a mile to the left, there was a faint gleam from the windows of the beach shacks. Farther along, the great arc of the dredged harbor was a line of jewels against the night.
I tensed the eye-squint muscles, saw the black water snap into gray, misty clarity. On its surface, nothing stirred. I attuned my hearing to pick up the softest of night sounds. There were the thousand pings and thumps from the ship, the creak of the anchor cables, and the crump! and hiss of the distant surf. If the demons were close, they were well hidden. For the moment, it seemed, I was safe.
Chapter Eight
For the first eight hours at my new job, while the ancient tanker plowed at fifty knots sixty-five feet beneath the surface of the Mediterranean, I labored with Joel at routine drudgery that could have been performed with greater efficiency and less cost by a medium-priced computer.
I spent a bad hour when we surfaced to pass through the Gibraltar locks; a boat came alongside and I heard the clank of feet on the deck above, caught scraps of voices asking questions, and the Captain blandly denying any knowledge of stowaways. I was waiting just inside the deckhouse door as he invited his official visitors to search the ship. They declined, with curses. I heard them reboard their launch; then the sound of its engines growled away across the water. I leaned against the wall, feeling hot and dizzy. My arm throbbed like a giant toothache.
Joel had been waiting with me. "Hey, Jones," he said. "How come we're hanging around here? You going out on deck?"
I let a long breath out; it was a bad habit I was forming-forgetting to breathe for minutes at a stretch. I straightened with an effort, feeling the deck move under me. "Sure," I said. "Let's go take a look at the Rock."
The cold predawn air cleared my head. I leaned on the rail beside Joel, watching the towering barrier walls slip down into the churning water as the lock filled; then the tanker edged ahead, the mighty gates slid in behind us, churning water aside, and met with a dull boom.