The Beast of Cretacea (11 page)

Only Pip declines to come out. When Ishmael looks back toward the hatch, he’s gone.

The rain ends and the clouds start to break up, allowing the glitter of stars — actual stars!— to peek through. The hatch swings open again and a figure steps out, wearing a long black slicker. It takes Ishmael a second to recognize Starbuck without his dark glasses. The first mate’s forehead wrinkles with consternation when he sees the nippers and Charity in their drenched uniforms.

“Better make sure Stubb doesn’t catch you,” he jests. “He might dock you a day’s pay for the cost of drying your clothes.”

“Money, money, money!” Charity shouts as she dances and splashes in the puddles around the first mate. “That’s all you ever think about!”

Starbuck watches while she circles him. “What else is there?”

“There’s life! Rain! Color! Look!” She points through a break in the sky at a faint crescent of blue, yellow, orange, and red against the dark.

“What is it?” Billy asks.

“A rainbow,” Queequeg answers.

“Can’t be,” Starbuck says. “You need the sun. I’ve only seen them during the day.”

“I think it’s from that.” Queequeg points at an opening between the clouds where they catch a glimpse of a huge, pockmarked orb in the sky a thousand times larger than any star.

“I’m never going back!” Charity starts to dance again. She is in a strange and wild mood.

“Really?” Starbuck counters. “You don’t think you’ll get homesick?”

Charity stops. “Homesick? For that ruined piece of dirt?”

“It’s still your native planet.”

Charity bows her wet head; the spell has been broken. “Killjoy,” she grumbles, brushing past Starbuck and climbing back through the hatch.

The night sky continues to clear. Rainwater trickles from the crane towers and rails. As the clouds overhead thin, the great orb becomes more prominent, glowing full and bright. On the rain-slick deck, Starbuck nods at Billy and Queequeg. “You two go below. I want to talk to your friend.”

Billy and Queequeg shoot Ishmael uneasy glances but do as they’re told. Alone with Starbuck on the deck, Ishmael feels a chill caused only partly by his soaked uniform. Even though the first mate isn’t wearing his glasses, Ishmael can’t see his eyes in the dark.

Starbuck gazes out at the ocean, where a thick ribbon of rippling orblight tapers as it grows distant. The
Pequod
motors steadily through the night, still on the trail of the big hump Queequeg harpooned earlier in the day.

The first mate lowers his voice confidentially. “No matter what anyone says, that was a good stick today, boy. We get another dozen humps like that and the mood on this ship will be vastly improved.”

An orange-billed flyer swoops out of the dark and disappears again.

“I asked Perth, the ship’s engineer, to take a look at the stick boat’s RTG,” Starbuck continues. “If it didn’t take in too much salt water, it might not have to be rebuilt. Could save you some serious coin.”

Starbuck is full of surprises tonight. Ishmael thanks him and, looking at the star-stippled night sky, now almost clear of clouds, wonders if one of the stars up there supports the solar system where Archie’s been sent. Or maybe one is the star around which orbits that “ruined piece of dirt” where his foster parents are stranded, quietly hoping for a way off.

“One more thing,” Starbuck says. “From now on, you’re the skipper. Billy’ll train to be a lineman.”

“Does Billy know that, sir?”

“You’re the skipper now. You tell him.”

“That rain last night,” Ishmael says the following afternoon. “What makes it happen?”

“When sunlight heats the ocean, water evaporates into the air,” Queequeg explains. “That’s what clouds are. Then, when the atmospheric conditions are right, fresh, drinkable water pours freely out of the sky. It used to happen on Earth, too.”

Pip sniggers. “What a fertile imagination.”

“Shut up and let him talk,” Gwen snaps.

The big hump Queequeg harpooned has been hauled in. Down on the flensing deck, sailors cut the creature into pieces that will be reduced to micronutrients for cryogenic transport back to Earth. During a short break between lunch and dinner, the nippers have gathered on the main deck to relax and get some sun. Pip has joined them. Ishmael suspects that he’s lonely; while he spends most of his time in drone control, he never seems to hang out with the drone operators outside the control room.

Queequeg continues: “For millions of years there was rain on Earth, until pollutants from industry and transportation caused the Shroud.”

“Scientists debunked that theory centuries ago,” Pip states.

“Scientists whose r-research was p-paid for by the same industries that were being b-blamed for the Shroud,” Billy adds incisively.

“Balderdash,” Pip insists. “The Shroud is a natural astrophysical phenomenon. Maybe you’ve forgotten that the majority of planets in this galaxy are permanently covered by clouds. Even in Earth’s solar system, the only ones that aren’t are Mercury and Mars.”

The conversation goes no further. Ishmael glances at Gwen. “Some Z-packs came through last night.”

Gwen makes a face. Like Queequeg, she’s torn the sleeves off her uniform shirt, and in addition the legs off her slacks, turning them into shorts. Her skin has become tawny, and her tangled red hair has sun-bleached streaks of orange. “I heard. No one’s going to contact me.”

“Could you make out your message, Billy?” Ishmael asks.

“N-not very well. There wasn’t much. My p-parents are always busy.”

“Doing what?” asks Queequeg.

“They have a business.”

“Their
own
business?” Pip says, skeptically.

Except for a few shopkeepers around Black Range, whose shelves were empty most of the time, Ishmael has never known anyone who owned a business.

“What do they do?” Gwen asks.

Billy remains tight-lipped; apparently he’d rather not say. Last night, when Ishmael took him aside and told him what Starbuck had said about Ishmael becoming the skipper of their chase boat, Billy hadn’t seemed surprised, muttering that it would just be another disappointment for his father.

“If your parents are so busy, wouldn’t they want you around to help?” Queequeg wonders out loud.

Billy hangs his head. “N-not really. I-I’m only here because m-my father sent me. He th-thought it would be good for me.”

An awkward silence falls. Then Queequeg says, “How about you, Pip? Looked like you were in VR for a long time last night. What’s the word from home?”

Pip looks surprised; it’s obvious that he didn’t expect anyone to ask. “Uh, nothing.”

Gwen lifts her eyes upward in aggravation. While they’ve all grown used to his evasiveness, he rarely lies this clumsily. “How about for once you tell us the truth?”

Pip’s round face reddens.

“Don’t you think you should get back to drone control?” Ishmael cuts in. “They’re probably wondering where you are.”

Pip throws him a grateful look and heads off.

“Why didn’t you let him answer?” Gwen demands.

“He didn’t want to talk about it,” Ishmael replies. “We’re only going to alienate him if we keep pressing him for answers.”

“So?” Gwen says. “I don’t need him to be my friend. I’d just like to know why everyone lets him do whatever he wants.”

“Y-you really d-don’t know?” Billy asks.

The others gaze at him curiously.

“H-he’s . . . of the Gilded.”

Gwen makes a face. “The what?”

Before Billy can explain, he tenses, staring past the others with a look of alarm on his face. Bunta, the human block of concrete, is coming toward them, running his thumb along the blade of a long knife.

Jumping to their feet, Ishmael and Queequeg look for something to defend themselves with.

Bunta stops and snickers. “Not in broad daylight, pinkie.” With the tip of his knife, he points off the starboard side of the
Pequod.
In the distance a boat has appeared. It has two broad, winglike booms from which nets hang.

“That’s a pinkboat,” Bunta says. “Now you’ll see what you’re nicknamed for.”

Pinkboat?
The word jars Ishmael, even though he knows at this point it shouldn’t. Like the name of the
Pequod,
like the name of this planet, Old Ben knew.
But how?

“The boat’s not pink,” Billy says.

“Just wait,” says Bunta. “May not be much in the pot, but at least we’ll eat well tonight.”

The pinkboat — which is blue and white — has tied up alongside the
Pequod,
and the captain, a stocky woman with short gray hair, exchanges sarcastic greetings with Starbuck, who leans against the
Pequod
’s bulwark.

“I see you haven’t aged a bit,” the woman calls from the deck of the pinkboat, speaking around a stem with a small bowl at the end that’s clamped between her teeth.

“Jealous, sweetheart?” Starbuck yells back.

“You won’t catch me putting that poison in my eyes.”

“So what’ll it be today, my love?” Starbuck asks.

“Got sixty pounds of hump meat?”

“Yes, ma’am, nice and fresh. What else?”

“A gallon of marine grease, five pounds of red berry, a couple of quarts of alcohol. And you wouldn’t happen to have any VR appropriate for a twelve-year-old boy, would you?”

“I’m sure we can scare up something,” Starbuck replies. “Twelve’s about the average maturity of the men on this ship. So for all that, I’d assume we’re talking fifty pounds of pinkies?”

“Funny, sounds to me more like thirty,” replies the captain.

“Settle on forty?” Starbuck proposes.

“That’s a deal.”

The nippers watch sailors hoist up baskets of small translucent gray sea creatures with black eyes and long pink antennae. In return go the hump meat and other supplies. Finally, a sailor from the pinkboat climbs a rope ladder and boards the
Pequod,
then stands on the deck, looking around. He has a pack slung over his shoulder and looks to be about nineteen or twenty. “Say, mates, where’s yer stasis tech?”

“I’ll take you,” Ishmael volunteers. They start across the deck. “Been on that boat long?”

“Couple a weeks,” the sailor replies, in an accent Ishmael has never heard before. “Hopscotching me way to a tub with a workin’ stasis lab. After three years, this salty dog’s ready to git home and feel some dirt ’tween his toes.”

Ishmael leads him belowdecks. “Three years, huh? On what kind of ship?”

“Factory vessel,” the sailor answers. “Big old can of rust like this one. Called the
Town-Ho.
”

“Hunting humps and terrafins? Things like that?”

“Humps, for sure,” the sailor answers. “But terrafins? No way, mate. Ain’t worth the trouble.”

Ishmael makes a mental note of that. “Whereabouts did you sail?”

“Darned if I know. All open ocean to me. Seen land a few times, but we stayed clear. They say it’s dangerous.”

“Catch a lot of beasts?”

“You kidding? The ocean’s full of ’em, mate — though I probably don’t have to tell you that. The weight we put in, I got enough in the bank so’s I’ll never have to work another day in me life.”

Ishmael brings him to the stasis lab and knocks. Charity answers, looking distracted. “Help you?”

“Here to get transported, miss,” the sailor says, then adds with a leer, “but now that I seen you, I might decide to stick around.”

“And I might send you back to Earth missing a few parts,” Charity replies sharply.

The sailor goes pale. “Sorry, miss. Just been a while since I seen a pretty lady. Promise you’ll send me back whole and I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

Charity smiles. “That’s more like it.”

That night festive sailors gorge themselves on boiled pinkies, which are more delicious than anything Ishmael has yet eaten. The mess is jammed. There’s an entire table of mud-skinned belowdecks “bilge rats”— mechanics, nuclear techs, engineers — their dirty olive uniforms stained with grease and oil. At another table sit the drone operators, who are as dull-skinned as the bilge rats but whose uniforms are pressed and clean. They sit apart from everyone else and confer quietly while they eat. At other tables are the flensing crew, the deck hands, and “slimers,” who prepare the catch for cryogenation and transport back to Earth.

The nippers are on their feet nonstop and barely have time to feed themselves. There follows a long cleanup, and they’re exhausted by the time they drag themselves back to their quarters.

Ishmael climbs into his sleeper and closes the curtain. But sleep doesn’t come easily. Earlier that day, the sailor from the pinkboat reinforced something he’s been wondering about. Compared with humps and the other large sea creatures they’re supposed to be hunting, terrafins are smaller, more difficult to capture, and much more dangerous. According to the sailor, the ocean is full of beasts, and yet the
Pequod
’s caught only a few of them since the nippers came aboard. Why are they spending so much time and energy pursuing terrafins?