Mikhail nodded, then went below, closing the cabin door behind him.
Aphrodite continued westward, chasing the shrouded sun as it gradually dipped toward the horizon. It was beginning to slide into the ocean when Angelo called a stop for the night. There were no islands around, so he simply stopped the engines, allowing the boat to drift. With no nearby islands, there was little chance they’d attract the shrikes who haunted them. The captain left the nets in the locker, and since it was a mild evening, Mikhail suggested that they have dinner on the aft deck beneath the tarp.
Time to relax a bit. All the same, Ronson took the precaution of scanning the ocean with the binoculars. Aside from a distant logging ship, they’d seen no other boats since escaping the yaz camp. As he’d predicted, the croppers had apparently decided that pursuing the people who’d abducted their chief—their former chief—was more trouble than it was worth. And although he’d occasionally glimpsed Water Folk breaching the surface, they’d kept away from the boat. He couldn’t tell whether they were the same ones they’d met before, but he doubted it. Their task was done; no reason for them to have anything further to do with the humans.
He was wrong.
Darkness had fallen when a froghead rose to surface just behind Aphrodite’s stern. By then, the four men were seated in folding deck chairs beneath the awning. Ronson had removed the ropes around David’s ankles but left his wrists tied; he was eating canned stew from the paper plate Angelo had placed in his lap when Ronson happened to glance behind the boat and spotted a pair of eyes that reflected the light of the deck lamps like silver coins.
“Company,” he said.
Angelo turned around in his chair, followed his gaze. “Oh, hell,” he muttered, annoyed by the distraction. “What does it want?” He looked at Mikhail. “Give it a candy bar and tell it to go away. It’s putting me off my food.”
Mikhail had been quiet all afternoon, saying little to anyone. Now he put down his plate, pushed back his chair, and stood up. Instead of turning to the froghead—no, Ronson realized, there wasn’t just one pair of eyes, but two … and now three—he looked at David.
“You remember when we were at your camp and you were showing us how you got the Water Folk to bring you tree roots?” he asked. “You remember that one of them said something to you and your people?” David said nothing and Mikhail went on. “I know you did not understand what it was saying, but I did. It said that it did not want any more chocolate, and then it begged you to let it go.”
“Yeah, well …” The kid was watching the frogheads. They were coming closer to the boat. Ronson counted six pairs of eyes, and it seemed like more were coming. “That’s really tough, but I don’t think … I don’t think …”
“No. You don’t think, do you?” Mikhail stepped away from the circle of chairs, out from under the tarp. “And now you pay the price.”
A thump against the stern, then a froghead reached over the side. With surprising speed and agility, it pulled itself aboard. Its feet had barely touched the deck when another one followed it. And then a third.
“Hey, what’re you …?” Angelo was out of his chair, staring at the creatures. “Tell these goddamn things to get off my boat!”
“They will be gone soon.” Mikhail was calm, hands at his sides. “They will leave as soon as they have taken what they want from us.” A faint smile. “And no, it isn’t chocolate.”
“Mikhail, this has gone far enough.” Ronson stood up, felt for the Taser he’d clipped to his belt. His hand fell upon an empty holster. Sometime in the last half hour or so, it had disappeared. He remembered Mikhail’s bumping against him just before they sat down for dinner, and immediately knew what he’d done. “Mikhail …!”
Frogheads were climbing over the starboard and port gunnels. Ronson could hear more coming over the bow. Eight, ten, twelve? He had no idea how many. Now it wasn’t just their eyes that were reflecting the light, but also the teeth within their open mouths. Wet, sharp teeth …
“Get ’em away from me!” The plate fell from David Henry’s lap as he leaped to his feet. His eyes, when they swung toward Ronson, were wide and utterly terrified. “Get a gun or something and get ’em the fuck away from me!”
Ronson looked at Mikhail. Frogheads were standing on either side of the Russian now, advancing toward the other three men beneath the tarp. “Don’t do this. Mikhail, don’t let them do this …”
“Go below,” Mikhail replied. “You too, Captain. If you do not interfere, they will not …”
All at once, the Water Folk attacked.
Ronson saw little of what happened next. It was swift, it was violent, and by the time he and Angelo reached the cabin and threw themselves inside, it was over. Almost. The screams were still coming as the captain slammed the door shut and they put their weight against it.
The frogheads hadn’t come for them, though. They’d come for David Henry.
And for Mikhail, too.
Both men put up a fight, but it didn’t last but a few seconds. The boat rocked back and forth, and there were the sounds of a struggle from the other side of the door. A series of loud splashes. And then the night was quiet again.
Ronson waited a minute or so. Not just to make sure that the frogheads had left, but also to give his heart a chance to stop hammering against his chest. Then, with Angelo fearfully peering over his shoulder, he inched the door open and peered out.
Overturned chairs. A ripped tarp. Blood on the deck, already mixing with puddles of seawater. No bodies.
The two men stood on the aft deck, feeling the warm rain against their faces. In the far distance, lightning flashes briefly delineated the horizon, painting the clouds with shades of purple and silver, silver the color of the Water Folk’s eyes. A soft rumble of thunder. A storm was approaching.
“I really hate this fucking planet,” Angelo whispered.
“Yeah,” Ronson said. “Me too.”
LAVIE TIDHAR
Here’s a vivid pulp adventure of the old-fashioned kind, full of slam-bang action, that pits a hard-bitten spaceman against a vengeful god from a Lost Civilization in the depths of the steaming Venusian swamps …
Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel, has traveled widely in Africa and Asia, and has lived in London, the South Pacific island of Vanuatu, and Laos. He is the winner of the 2003 Clarke-Bradbury Prize (awarded by the European Space Agency), was the editor of Michael Marshall Smith: The Annotated Bibliography, and the anthologies A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults and The Apex Book of World SF. He is the author of the linked story collection HebrewPunk, the novella chapbooks An Occupation of Angels, Gorel and the Pot-Bellied God, Cloud Permutations, Jesus and the Eightfold Path, and, with Nir Yaniv, the novel The Tel Aviv Dossier. A prolific short-story writer, his stories have appeared in Interzone, Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, SCI FICTION, Strange Horizons, ChiZine, Postscripts, Fantasy Magazine, Nemonymous, Infinity Plus, Aeon, The Book of Dark Wisdom, Fortean Bureau, and elsewhere, and have been translated into seven languages. His latest novels include The Bookman and its sequel Camera Obscura, Osama: A Novel, and, most recently, The Great Game. Osama: A Novel won the World Fantasy Award as the year’s Best Novel in 2012. His most recent books are novels, Martian Sands and The Violent Century. After a spell in Tel Aviv, he’s currently living in England again.
The Drowned Celestial