It took weeks to reach Gehenna and toward the tail end of the trip they caught the last slap of a nor’easter that snapped the freaks like marbles across the floor of the hold all night long. Jeta became hysterical and Aziz was forced to backhand her with one of his enormous paws.
Landfall came just after dawn one morning. Captain Gunter dropped anchor and summoned Bruno to his quarters for a card game and a conference over a breakfast of hardtack and Becherovka.
“My debt,” the Captain said, “is paid.”
Bruno nodded, raised his glass to the man.
“You kept your word,” Bruno agreed.
Gunter smiled, pulled out a small canvas pouch filled with snuff, and offered the strongman a pinch. The Captain’s ego was larger than his legendary belly. An autodidact, he had a well-known passion for the Bible and the Bard, and Bruno hoped that he wouldn’t have to endure a reading from the Song of Solomon.
“And what now?” Gunter asked. “What will you do?”
Seboldt waved off the snuff and tried to shrug his muscle-bound shoulders.
“We’ll look for work,” he said. “People are the same all over. Everyone wants to see the freaks.”
“So you’re staying with them, then?” said Gunter, a man not normally given to surprise.
“For a time anyway,” Bruno said.
“I could take you back home,” the Captain said. “You got them out of harm’s way. Most men would say that was enough.”
“I can’t go home,” Bruno said. “Shoshone McGee had a lot of friends.”
At this, Gunter spit out the latest sip of his drink.
“The hell he did,” the Captain said. “I knew McGee. Even his parents hated that bastard. He was a boil on the ass every day of his life.”
“The ladies liked him enough,” Bruno said, getting up from the table and moving to look out the Captain’s porthole. The small room smelled of oil and sweat and the odor combined with the low ceiling to produce in the strongman a touch of claustrophobia.
Gunter refilled Seboldt’s glass and carried it to him.
“The ladies,” he said to Bruno’s back, “feared him and loathed him. He was a bully on his best day and a rapist when he drank. And he drank whenever he was awake.”
Bruno turned around but didn’t argue.
The Captain handed him his drink and moved back to the bottle.
“The fact is, Bruno,” he said, “no one would give a goddamn that you killed the knife thrower. You did a favor for all of Bohemia. And I think you know that.”
“Murder is still murder,” Bruno said, but it came out weak. “There will be a warrant out on me.”
“There won’t be a one,” Gunter said evenly. “Teddy Bluett will find a new bladesman and life will go on.”
“Tell it your way,” Bruno said, wishing they could move on to a new subject.
“It’s my ship,” the Captain said. “I’ll always tell it my way. But this time it’s also the truth.”
“There’s nothing for me back in Bohemia,” Bruno said.
“Maybe not,” Gunter said. “Probably not. But I think you’re off to Gehenna because you want to stay,” his voice suddenly rising here, “with those pathetic vermin in the hold.”
Bruno was caught off guard.
“You’re touched,” he said to the Captain, but there was no force behind the insult.
“Careful son,” Gunter said. “You’re strong as Krok’s mule, but this morning you’re in the Captain’s quarters.”
“What are you getting at?” Bruno asked.
“I think you’re hard for those filthy monsters down below.”
Bruno spoke slowly and deliberately.
“I hate those miserable abominations. As much as you. As much as McGee.”
Gunter nodded and smiled in response.
“Son,” he said, “you might be a murderer. But you’re still a pathetic liar. And I say you’re sweet on the freaks.”
Then there was a moment of possibility in which one or the other might have thrown a punch. But both were smart men with a wealth of experience in the area of dismal consequence.
“Why don’t you just bring us into the harbor,” Bruno said, “and we’ll be out of your hair?”
Captain Gunter stared at the strongman, expressionless, then he moved back to his mess table and sat down again. He lifted his glass of spirits, brought it to his lips, and said over the rim, “Who said anything about the harbor?”
As a boy, Bruno Seboldt had survived daylong strappings from his maniac father. As a teen, he had seen trench combat in the Budwein province. As a young man, he had lived through the cholera epidemic and the Krumloff Circus fire. To say that Bruno Seboldt was a man of courage and tenacity was a more than reasonable statement. But that morning, as he heard Captain Gunter deliver those six casual words, he shuddered and was overcome with the kind of doubt that can render a man impotent for the balance of his life. And though Bruno could not have known it, down in the hold, at that exact moment, the chicken boy was starting to sweat and ache.
“I don’t understand,” Bruno finally managed to say.
“You don’t?” said Gunter, enjoying the taunting.
“You have to put in,” said Bruno. “Your hold is full of cargo.”
“So it is,” said Gunter. “Fertilizer and abominations. The shit goes down to the Port of Chaldea. That’s still a good hundred kilometers away. But I’m afraid you and the monsters are getting off here.”
Bruno squinted at him and Gunter barked out a laugh.
“I liked you, Seboldt,” the Captain said. “Truly, I considered you a friend. You could hold your liquor like a Russian and you played a fine hand of cribbage. But you’re sweet on those freaks. I’ve seen it. Don’t try to deny it. You’ve turned. You’ve gone over. And I can’t help you. I’ve got a business to run and I’ve got a reputation. If even one of my importers knew I brought those deviants to Gehenna, he’d tear up my compact. And if they knew their goods had been bunking with freaks, they’d dump all that expensive dung in the deep.”
“What are you going to do?” Bruno asked.
“You sound like a eunuch already,” Gunter said. “Good Christ, it’s an awful thing.” He shook his head and motioned to the porthole.
“We’re less than a kilometer from shore. That’s Bezalel out there. A terrible city. A place without God. Makes Maisel look like Eden. But it’s a fine spot for freaks. And their handmaids.”
“Then bring us in and we’ll be gone,” Bruno said.
“I’ve no business in Bazalel,” Gunter said. “You want to go there? Then jump in the sea and swim.”
It took Bruno a second to realize that the Captain meant his last words literally.
“You know they can’t make it,” Bruno said.
Gunter smiled as if on an indulged child.
“You had the strongest back in Bohemia,” he said. “Put it to work.”
“There are eleven of them,” Bruno said.
“Is that all?” Gunter said. “It seemed like a multitude.”
Then he called for his first mate, who was waiting outside the Captain’s door. Landau entered already smiling, as if in on the joke for a year.
“Mr. Landau,” Gunter said, “escort Mr. Seboldt topside. And have the rats brought up from the hold.”
WHEN THE SWABBIES came for them, the freaks went passively. Getting the fat lady and the Siamese twins up the iron ladders to the top deck was no easy task. But everything progressed peacefully until curiosity overtook one of the sailors, who tried to cop a feel on Milena, the hermaphrodite.