"He sent Joab and more than a hundred men into the maze down there this morning. You hadn't heard?"
"No sir. I was working the Sagdet angle." Azel was disturbed. This was notgood. He did have to find out what it meant. Soon. But it looked like Cado wasgoing to keep him tied up all day. Damn!
He should not have come.
Aaron removed the last of the clamping straps that had held the parts of themast step motionless while the adhesive between joins and around the holdingpegs had set. He waved to the men working the hoist. They began lowering theharness that would lift the mast step so they could swing it over and drop itinto the ship's half-completed hull.
The new Herodian foreman, Cullo, who had not yet been on the job two weeks, came to inspect the finished product. "Perfect," he pronounced it. "I've neverseen more perfect joins, Aaron. They're cabinetry quality."
"That's the sort of work I was taught, sir. And what I'd be doing if I waswell off enough to do whatever I wanted."
"Forget that. Stay with us. In five years you'd be a master shipwright."
"Yes sir." The way the Herodians were stripping the little forest on the hillssouth of Qushmarrah there would be no timber left in five years. Under the oldregime every tree taken had had to be justified and every ounce of it put tosome use. If he could find no other reason to dislike Herodians, Aaron coulddislike them because they were locusts, stripping resources and wealthwherever their armies were successful. He suspected greed moved them more thandid religious fervor.
He helped secure the harness, then stepped back. There would be nothing to dotill the laborers had the mast step ready to drop into the hull. Cullo was onto someone else, so he went and found Billygoat where he was pounding andtamping caulking rope into laps of clinker planks with a wooden mallet andwedge. The old man was quick and deft. He was ten feet ahead of his assistant, who was sealing the laps with hot pitch.
"That stuff stinks," Aaron told the old man. "Pitch? You get used to it. Gets to smell damned good if you're out of work for a while. You dogging it?"
"Hoisting the step."
"Uhm."
"They decided what to name her yet?" Billygoat knew everything before the foremen did. There was a battle going on at the top over the name of the ship.
A struggle between zealots and practical merchants who knew she would beentering ports where the Herodian god would not find a warm welcome.
"Nope. Something on your mind, Aaron?"
"Yeah." He did not know how to broach it without sounding like an old woman, so he just had at it. "Remember when you told me about they found those lost kids out by Goat Creek?"
"Uhm." The older man's hands never stopped moving.
"You ever heard about them finding any other ones?"
"Worried again?"
"Some. Not for me this time. Friend of my wife had her little boy taken yesterday. An only child." "Uhm." Billygoat paused to look at him directly. "You got one hell of a big determination to let this business fuss you, don't you, Aaron?"
What could he say? He couldn't mention the dreams and the nightmare certainty that something would happen to Arif. After all your precautions? they would ask. You have to be crazy. Maybe he was.
"Now you bring it up, though, Aaron, yeah, it seems I do remember hearing about two, three other kids that turned up the same way. Good clothes, good health, short on memories of what happened to them while they was missing." Billygoat's hands were busy again.
"They knew their families?" "I never heard anything said otherwise."
Aaron sighed a sigh that started right down in the roots of his soul. There was something to hang on to and nurture. "Good, then," Billygoat said. "And what else do you have on your mind this morning, young man?" Part of Billygoat's charm was his assumption of the old man's role, though he was far from elderly. Aaron was startled. Was he that obvious when he was troubled?
"Yep. The old man's a mind reader. What the hell did you expect, Aaron, mopingaround here all morning? Nobody pays attention? Come on. Spit it out."
"It isn't that easy, Billygoat. It's one of those things where you've got tomake a choice, and even ignoring it is a choice, and no matter what you choosesomebody is going to get hurt. So what you have to do is pick who gets it."
"Yeah. Those kind are a blue-assed baboon bitch, ain't they? Homar, it's timeyou broke. You're getting tired and sloppy trying to keep up. I see a coupleplaces you're going to have to do over."
Aaron couldn't see anything wrong with Homar's work. Neither could Homar, hesuspected, but Billygoat's assistant cleaned his tools, put more charcoal on, broke up a couple of pitch billets and put them in to melt, then went away.
"So, Aaron. Let's talk about it."
"What do you know about the Living?"
Billygoat's eyes got wary. "As little as I can. Knowing too much could get youa chance to swim across the bay with a hundred pounds of rocks tied to yourtoes."
"Yeah." He hadn't thought of that angle. "What I meant was, are they somethingworthwhile, or are they just a bunch of diehards making it rougher for therest of us?"
Billygoat smiled. "You don't get me that easy, Aaron. It's in the eye of thebeholder. Why don't you lay out the problem and if I see something I'll say soand if I don't I'll forget you even asked."
Aaron thought about it a minute, but there was not much going on inside hishead. All he wanted to do was puke it up, get it out of his gut before itpoisoned him.
"Say there was a guy who betrayed Qushmarrah in a way that was just asimportant as what Fa'tad did, only hardly anybody noticed, and only one guyknew, and the traitor didn't know he knew, and one day years later suddenly itlooked like the traitor was now somebody real important in the Living. If heworked for the Herodians before ..."
"I see." Billygoat raised a hand for silence. He had stopped working. "Say nomore." He turned inward for several minutes. Then, "With the years interveningthere would have grown up knots of personal considerations and complications, not so? The fight for Qushmarrah is over and lost. The traitor probably has afamily now, all completely innocent, who would suffer terribly from anybelated justice. Yet if he were indeed high in the councils of the Living, andstill a tool of Herod, and the Living are a worthy group of men with a realchance of restoring Qushmarrah's independence and glory ... Yes sir, Aaron, truly a blue-assed bitch baboon of a problem."
Someone up top yelled at Aaron to come on. The men on the hoist were ready tolower the mast step.
"I'll think about this, Aaron. For every no-win situation I've ever seenthere's always been an extra way out if you could just back off and look atthe whole map from a skewed angle. Talk to me later. Get up there before they get pissed."
"Thanks, Billygoat." Aaron trotted to the nearest scaffolding, clambered up, crossed the ship on a work deck of loose planks, checked that everything hehad brought up earlier was still handy. His helpers were ready. "Lower away!"
The step assembly came down slowly. The men helping turned it, aligned it, guided it into place. Aaron beckoned the foreman. "It looks like a good fit.
But let's check the join points to make sure."
Ten minutes later he was puffed with pride. Only one place did he need toplane a bit offa beam end. Cullo told him, "You have to stay in this business, Aaron. We'd get the contracts filled in half the time."
Aaron shrugged, went to the side, had the men on the hoist lift the assembly afoot and a half. His helpers started brushing all the join points withadhesive. He let it set up a little, then had the assembly dropped into placeagain. His helpers started driving adhesive-soaked pegs immediately, four tothe join, of which there were twelve: four at deck level, two to the side; four halfway down a pair of the midships ribs, two to the side again; and fouron the keel itself.
"A successful experiment," the foreman told Aaron. "It's saved us a week overputting it together in place, piece by piece. I'm sure you'll get a fat bonus.