Maelstrom (33 page)

“He’ll sleep now,” Bradford assured the girl. “Mr. Miller will bind his wounds.”

“Uh . . . I don’t want to bug him,” Jamie almost sputtered. “Why don’t I wait until he
is
asleep?”

Bradford rolled his eyes. “He’s quite harmless.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” disputed Silva, then paused. After a moment he dropped his pistol in his holster and buttoned the flap. “But maybe he ain’t dangerous, if you know what I mean.” He looked at the girl again. “I’m sorry to you too. I never would’ve figgered it. You want somethin’ to eat?”

Becky started to flare at him again, but caught herself and just sat, looking disoriented.

“I . . . I suppose. Yes, thank you . . . Mr. Silva.”

Once summoned, Juan brought a tray of sandwiches and bowed. “It is a great pleasure,” he said, “to have a young lady as beautiful as you grace our poor, drab ship. It has been too long!” He looked her over. “I will see if I can find more suitable clothes to replace those rags.”

Becky paused before taking a bite of one of the steaming sandwiches. “Why . . . thank you. You are very kind.”

“De nada,”
Juan said, and departed.

“Was that Spanish?” the girl asked, shocked.

“Sorta,” answered Silva, surprised. If she was one of these “Others” Adar always spoke of, where’d she learn to recognize Spanish? he wondered. “He’s Filipino. You know who they are?” Becky didn’t answer, but dove into her sandwich. They munched companionably, seated around the unconscious lizard. Everyone was famished, and the stack of sandwiches soon disappeared.

“My dear—” began Adar.

“Young lady . . .” interrupted Bradford.

“Whoa!” said Silva. “Damn, fellas! She just ate. Give her a while.” He looked into her large, jade eyes. “You tired?”

“Not especially.” She saw the light dimming beyond the porthole. “I suppose I should be; this is the time of day we usually prepared our defenses for the night.”

“Mmm,” Silva replied. It must have been tough living on that island, fighting off nightly incursions by predators, both by land and from the trees. The shore party hadn’t encountered anything dangerous, but Flynn had described some particularly terrifying creatures that dropped on them at night from above. They’d quickly learned to keep to the clearings. “Don’t have to do that tonight, doll. Yer safe as can be! How about a evenin’ stroll? I’ll show you around the ship!” He caught Adar’s eye and winked.

“I really shouldn’t . . . Mr. O’Casey . . .”

“O’Casey’ll be busy talkin’ to the skipper till who knows when.”

The girl stood and, with a final glance at her sleeping friend, nodded. “Very well then, if it isn’t any trouble. I must admit to an intense curiosity about your ship.” She paused. “I must also admit I misjudged you, Mr. Silva. I still dislike you, but perhaps that may pass as well. I apologize for attacking you.”

“Good thing you did,” Dennis admitted, also looking at her friend. “I
would’ve
killed him if you hadn’t.”

“Just so. Very well, then, please do lead the way.”

They left the others behind, mouths agape like beached fish, and climbed the companionway to the open deck. Silva described the various features of the ship visible from where they stood: the back of the bridge, the funnels, the amidships deckhouse. He noticed she was particularly interested in the four-inch guns atop it on either side, fascinated by the rifling at their muzzles.

“What are those twisty grooves for? I’ve seen many cannons, but nothing like them.”

Silva blinked, hesitating, then laughed. “Why, they spin the bullets. Makes ’em fly straighter.”

“Oh.”

Her tone sounded like he’d satisfied a long-burning question. Surely she’d seen the gun on the sub? Maybe she’d never asked the pigboat pukes. O’Casey’d probably told her not to. Silva remembered Flynn telling them she never played with the other kids, and suddenly realized that despite O’Casey, she’d probably been very lonely indeed. They passed under the platform and walked by the galley, ignoring Lanier’s strident criticism of his assistants. Standing between the port and starboard torpedo mounts, the small girl got her first look at the passing sea.

“My goodness!” she declared. “This is a very fast ship! How fast can it go?”

“’Bout twice as fast as this, give or take.” He looked at her. “How old are you?”

Her eyes never left the surging wake. “I’ll soon be ten,” she answered absently.

“Lordy. You look six and act twenty!” His tone prevented her from taking offense. “You on that island a whole year with them submariners?”

“Indeed. They picked us up at sea after our ship was destroyed by a leviathan. It was terrifying.”

“If ‘levy-than’ means what I think it does, I know what you mean,” he agreed. “Them big boogers scare me to death!”

She glanced at him with a tentative, impish smile. “I cannot imagine you frightened.”

“Mmm. Well, I was. A little. Least I sunk one of the bastards!”

She giggled. It was such an unusual, forgotten sound it almost broke his heart.

“Did not! What a villainous liar you are! Besides, I asked you before to control your language.”

“Did too!” Dennis insisted, willing away the strange, fluttery sensation in his chest. “With the four mount! Shot him right in the mouth! Course, the depth charges might’ve helped, but that don’t matter.” He looked at her. “Besides, you called me a ‘bastard.’ I figgered I could say it.”

She giggled again, and held her hand over her mouth. “I
am
sorry. What would Master Kearley say?” Her expression grew sad. “Poor man. He knew he was doomed, but he saved my life, as did Mr. O’Casey.”

“Master Kearley?”

“My tutor. He . . . didn’t make it off the ship.”

“How long were you adrift?” Dennis asked gently.

“Something over four weeks. I’m not certain. We had plenty of provisions—just two of us in a boat meant for twenty. Still, it was terrifying. There are few silverfish in the deep waters to the east, but there are other things.” She shuddered.

Silva took a pouch from his pocket, loosened the string at the top, and removed a plug of yellow-brown leaves. He bit off a wad and worked it for a moment until it formed a bulge in his right cheek. Seeing her watching him, wide-eyed, he graciously offered the pouch. “Chew?” Revolted but intrigued, she shook her head. “Suit yerself,” he said, and pulling the string tight, he returned the pouch to his pocket. “Where’d you come up with Lawrence, anyway? Flynn said he was in your boat.”

“He was. We found him on an island we landed upon, searching for a place with food and water closer to . . . where our people might search for us. There wasn’t any, but he’d been there several days, a castaway as much as we. All he had was a dugout canoe, and no idea which direction to head! His species is not unknown to us, a few meetings on isolated islands southeast of my home somewhere. But I’d never seen one before!”

“Peaceful meetings?” he asked, apparently astonished.

“I believe so, yes.”

“I’ll swan. Where’s home?” Dennis ventured.

She started to answer, then caught herself. “Are you interrogating me?”

“Yep.”>

Hands on hips, she looked up at him. “How rude! A gentleman never pries into the affairs of a . . . a young lady!”

Silva shrugged, a twisted grin on his face. “I ain’t no gentleman, doll. ’Sides, whose rules are those?”

“Why . . . they’re society’s rules—the rules of civilization.”

“Land rules.”

“Not just ‘land’ rules!”

“There’s other rules, you know. Sea rules. When somebody rescues castaways, either adrift or ashore, he can ask ’em anything he wants.”

The girl became pensive. “Truly?”

“Yep.”>

“Must one always answer such questions?”

Silva laughed, a deep, booming laugh that drew the attention of those working nearby. “Not always, doll, but it’s sorta rude not to.”

“Do you have to answer my questions too?”

“No, but I will. I already have, some.”

She pointed at Chack, supervising a deck crew lashing covers over the fireroom skylights. Silva was expecting a blow, and it looked like the skipper was too. “What are those creatures?”

“’Cats. Cat-monkeys, monkey-cats—Bradford calls ’em ‘Lemurians,’ and I guess that’s stuck, but most fellas just call ’em ’Cats. They have another word for theirselves—can’t remember it—that means ‘People.’ They’re good folks, too: smart as a whip and twice as strong. Hell, Adar—that’s the fella in the wardroom—and Keje are prob’ly the smartest fellas I know. Them and the skipper.”

“Skipper?”

“Captain Reddy, to little girls.”

“He mentioned a battle, and several times people have acted afraid of poor Lawrence—and you shot him, of course! What is that about?” She seemed genuinely curious, so Silva told her. He wasn’t used to talking to kids, especially ones who acted so grown-up, so he didn’t pull any punches. When he was finished, she just stared at the wake. They’d moved to the rail while he spoke, and she was leaning on it now. “So you Americans are fighting for the freedom and safety of others, essentially. You yourselves could simply leave, if you wished.”

He spit a yellowish stream over the side, and she shuddered. “Well, sure. But where would we go?”

“You could . . .” She stopped herself again, and shook her head. “It makes no difference. You wouldn’t leave even if you could. You are engaged in a noble war, a holy war. A war against absolute evil.” In a small voice she added, “I think Father would approve . . . almost envy you that.” Her face was suddenly stricken. “Oh, Lawrence will be so upset to discover others of his kind behave so!”

“That’s okay. There’s others no more different from us than he is to Griks, helpin’ ’em. Buncha Japs, with a great big battle cruiser. Could eat us alive, like one o’ them ‘levy-than’ things.”

“Yet still you stay?”

Silva shrugged. “’Tween the Japs and Griks, I’ve lost ’most every friend I ever had. It may be a ‘noble holy war’ to some, but to me—and the Skipper too, I think—it’s plain ol’ simple revenge.” He was almost shocked out of his wits when he felt her warm, tiny hand crawl into his massive paw.

“You have a new friend now, Mr. Silva, even if you are a disgusting beast. I don’t dislike you anymore at all. I have another question, though.”

“Shoot,” he said, still rattled.

“Why do you call me ‘doll’?”

He was silent a moment, watching the lightning off the starboard quarter; then he sighed. “You don’t like ‘girlie’ or ‘child,’ and you don’t look like a ‘Becky’ to me. . . .” He shrugged. “You look like a doll. A fragile china doll. Dirty, shaggy haired, with raggy clothes, and you need a good washin’, but underneath, you’re a beautiful china doll.” He growled incoherently and shook his head. “Say, while yer all dirty, you wanna see the engines?”

Later, in the wardroom, Silva made his report. He stood as if he didn’t notice the deck heaving beneath his feet, and he probably didn’t. The ship was pounding through the rising swells of the Celebes Sea at twenty-two knots, and the storm that had stalked them for the last couple days in the east was chasing them now in earnest. It was a godsend, in a way; it kept the monstrous fish from basking in the surface sun, and the lashing sonar chased away those lurking in their path. Their speed outpaced any that rose behind them.

Every officer was present except Campeti, who had the watch. Flynn and his nominal superior, Ensign Laumer, sat beside the captain. Adar, Keje, Bradford, and Chack were also there, as were a couple of Chack’s senior Marines. Silva felt awkward being the center of attention in such a . . . respectable way . . . and also felt uneasy recounting his conversation with the girl, as if he were betraying her confidence. Still, despite the girl’s obvious attempts to conceal certain things, he’d gathered a lot of information the captain needed.

“We already knew their ship was wrecked by a mountain fish,” he began, “an’ they were the only survivors. Girl had a tutor named Curly er somethin’ who didn’t make it, so I figger she’s sorta ‘somebody.’ I thought that anyway ’cause of her name. She just don’t seem like a ‘Becky’ to me. That might be a nickname, er part of her real name, but I don’t think she’s used to goin’ by it.”

“I got that impression too,” Matt murmured thoughtfully. “Please continue.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway, she said they’d drifted on the current four or five weeks from the ‘deep water to the east’ and went ashore on an island close to their own shipping lanes. They had to leave ’cause there wasn’t no food er water, but that’s where they picked up their lizard. She’d never seen one, but knew about ’em. Said they came from islands to the southeast of her home, and there’d been contact with the critters before. She also didn’t seem to think it unusual for it to be friendly. Said her friend’d be upset how vicious ‘our’ Griks are.”

“Good God!” Bradford exclaimed. “If there was no food or water on the island, why was the creature there, and how did it survive?”

“‘Marooned’ too. Showed up on a dugout canoe.”

Adar and Keje exchanged significant glances, and Bradford sputtered: “By canoe on such a sea! But that certainly explains much. I’ve often wondered why the ‘aboriginal’ Grik seem so prolific from one land to another, when other creatures don’t. I’ve studied our sleeping guest, and though there’s no question he’s the same
species
as our enemy, he’s clearly an entirely different
race
—as different as Europeans from Polynesians! Perhaps his race evolved a different sociology—less violent! Oh, I can’t wait to speak to him!”

Silva shrugged. “Could be. Maybe we could raise a regiment: Comp’ny A, First Stripey Lizards!”

Matt scowled, looking at Adar’s disgusted blinking. “Mr. Silva . . .”

“Oh. Yes, sir. I picked up some technical things too. Granted, she’s only ten, but she was very int’rested in our guns and engines. Not shocked, she
knew
what they were, just amazed by what they could do.”

Matt nodded. “I got the same sense from O’Casey, though I admit you picked up more information than I did. How’d you do it?”

Dennis grinned. “She’s a kid, Skipper. So am I. Just a great big kid.”