World of Water (16 page)

It was all bit scraggy and gimcrack, but then what could you expect from a small community perched on – to use Ty’s colourful phrase – a pimple on the butt-end of the galaxy?

The Moot wasn’t hard to locate. As Aletha had advised, Dev followed the sound of voices, a babble which echoed all the way up to the dome’s apex. It led him through the parkland to a plaza, where benches and tables were laid out in the open, encircled by a ring of lampposts. Drinks were being served at a roofed bar in the middle of the space. Dev counted perhaps twenty locals, variously sitting or standing, necking beer and liquor. He loitered just outside the plaza’s perimeter, in a clump of shrubbery beyond the reach of the lamplight, and observed surreptitiously for a while.

More people arrived in dribs and drabs. Not much debating was taking place as far as Dev could see, until, when the numbers swelled to about fifty, it seemed as though a quorum had been reached. Someone climbed onto a table and began complaining about an offence his neighbour had committed. Siphoned off fuel from his boat, was the gist of it.

The neighbour then got up and refuted the accusation. He was no thief, he said. The two of them had had a verbal agreement. If one happened to run short of fuel, he could borrow some off the other with having to ask permission.

The first speaker responded that he hadn’t thought the agreement still stood. They’d made it several months ago. Wasn’t there some sort of expiry date on these things?

The problem was thrashed out in public. Friends and acquaintances weighed in on either side. Eventually a solution was reached, by consensus. The fuel would have to be repaid in kind, and to avoid future misunderstandings the agreement was officially annulled. Both parties consented to the decision and sealed the deal with a handshake.

Dev watched a couple more interpersonal disputes get resolved in a similar manner. It was mob rule in action. Raucous, confrontational, ramshackle, but it seemed to work.

Then the conversation at the Moot turned to the bust-up with the Marines that afternoon at the food court. There were grumbles about the troops’ general rowdiness and misbehaviour, and it was proposed that a message be sent to Station Ares outlining what had happened and requesting disciplinary action.

The suggestion was shot down, however. Several of the townsfolk were strongly of the opinion that the incident should be left to lie. Raising a fuss would be counterproductive. The phrase ‘unwanted attention’ kept cropping up.

By that stage, Gaff Hook had come sidling into the Moot. His arm was in a sling, his bare elbow encased in a stabilising brace with a healing-pad inlay. He was far from the only townsperson present nursing an injury from the brawl, but he seemed to reckon he had come off worse than most, aside from his friend Dietrich.

“Poor bastard’s still in the infirmary,” he said. “Doc says he’ll be there for a week at least and not fit to get back to work for a month. That’s a month he and his crew aren’t fishing. A month with no money coming in for them and their families.”

Someone proposed a whip-round for Dietrich, who Dev had to assume was the gash-faced Gutting Knife. Someone else muttered darkly that Dietrich didn’t deserve charity for having potentially brought trouble to their door. The Marines, they said, hadn’t stopped by for any reason other than refuelling and some onshore R and R. Now, though, they may have cause to think something funny was up. They might have gone for reinforcements, and when next they came to Llyr, it mightn’t be a social call.

“What are you saying, Snodgrass?” demanded a powerfully built, grizzled man who had been the loudest and most frequent contributor to the debates and whose opinion everyone else seemed to defer to. If Llyr had been the kind of place to have an elected mayor, Dev reckoned this fellow would have fulfilled that role. He bore a kind of settled self-confidence and had the demagogue’s habit of emphasising a point by thumping something with his fist – a table, his own chest, the palm of his other hand.

“I’m just saying maybe now’s the time to cut our losses, McCabe. Forget that Dietrich ever brought anyone here. Make the whole thing go away.”

McCabe scowled, and Snodgrass bobbed his head, an unconscious gesture of submission.

“A thought, that’s all,” Snodgrass added hastily. “Just floating an idea.”

“Nothing is changing,” McCabe declared. “Nothing whatsoever. If you haven’t got the balls for this, Snodgrass, that’s your lookout. No one’s asking you to be involved. But you’ve no right to ruin other people’s fun. Clear?”

“Yes, McCabe.”

“Good. Glad we’ve got that straight. I’d hate to think you were poking your nose into other folk’s business. Anybody else take Snodgrass’s side? Anybody back him up?”

The Moot was, for once, quiet.

“Thought as much,” said a satisfied McCabe. “Those Marines screwed up, and they know it. Picking a fight like that... If they’ve any sense, they’ll sweep the whole thing under the carpet, act like it never happened. We don’t have anything to worry about from them, you mark my words.”

The meeting, and the drinking that went with it, continued for another hour, but nothing further was said about the Marines or about the subject which McCabe had clamped down on so firmly. In that respect, his word, it seemed, was final. No alternative viewpoints would be brooked.

Dev had a ringleader. McCabe was the man in charge of the captive Tritonian. McCabe, therefore, was the man he had to watch and follow.

Eventually, with several bottles of beer inside him, McCabe got up to leave the premises. A group of his cronies took their cue and went with him, among them Gaff Hook, whose name Dev had learned was Chlumsky. They ambled away from the Moot, and Dev, still fully hooded, followed after them at a distance.

24

H
E ALMOST LOST
them in the maze of bridges and lesser domes at Llyr’s fringes. He couldn’t tail them too closely since this area of town was more or less deserted and there was a risk he’d be spotted. He hung well back and used their voices and footfalls as guidance whenever he no longer had visual contact. McCabe and his cronies were, thankfully, in a rambunctious mood, and the noise they were making carried far, even above the constant lap of waves and the squeal of bridge hinges.

They ended up at a boatyard with a repair shop attached, a low utilitarian building advertising itself as McCabe’s Mechanics and Chandlery.

“Now I see why you’re such a big shot, Mr McCabe,” Dev muttered to himself. McCabe fixed boats. People had to be nice to him, otherwise that motor stayed bust or that hole didn’t get patched. No transportation, no livelihood.

McCabe and followers disappeared inside the repair shop.

There was a window near the main door, its panes encrusted with salt, cloudy but still just transparent enough to see through. Dev crept up to it, knelt and peered in.

In a room full of tools, workbenches and cutting and welding gear, McCabe approached what appeared to be a large box covered by a tarpaulin. He whipped the tarpaulin away to reveal a steel-framed, glass-sided tank which looked like something he himself had constructed specially. It held a few hundred cubic litres of water – filthy water, brackishly green, with assorted lumps of waste matter floating in it and gnawed fish bones littering the bottom.

Just visible inside the tank was a figure. A young male Tritonian lay slumped in one corner, shackled with chains.

As Dev looked on, McCabe hit a switch, and a hoist in the ceiling started turning with a mechanical whine, drawing a length of chain from the water and reeling the Tritonian out.

The indigene hung inert, insensible, as McCabe used the hoist to guide his dripping form clear of the tank and lower him until his toes just touched the floor. He stirred a little as he realised he was no longer immersed in his natural medium. His gills began to pulsate, working to breathe.

McCabe slapped his face, and the Tritonian’s eyes flew open.

“Wakey-wakey, sushi breath,” McCabe said, his words just audible to Dev. “We’re back. It’s time to party again.”

The Tritonian’s face rippled through shades of mauve and magenta, a weary plea for mercy.

One of McCabe’s cronies cupped an ear. “What’s that? Sorry, I can’t make out what you’re saying. No speakee sea monkey.”

There was guffawing and general amusement.

“He’s probably offering to give us all a blowjob if we’ll let him go,” someone commented.

“Eurgh! I wouldn’t even if he was female,” said someone else. “And have my dick all stinking of fish?”

“Doesn’t it anyway, after fucking your wife?” said another.

“You leave my missus out of it.”

“He certainly smells a bit like pussy,” said Gaff Hook, a.k.a. Chlumsky, leaning close to the Tritonian and sniffing.

“No, more like rotten eggs. Sewage.”

“That could just be because most of us have taken a dump in that tank.”

“They all smell bad, sea monkeys,” said McCabe. “Doesn’t bother ’em. Stench doesn’t travel underwater.”

Dev noticed that the Tritonian’s body was covered in cuts and contusions. His scales were dull, his skin sloughing away in places. Anyone could tell he was in pretty bad shape, barely this side of death.

Dev felt his temper rising, his fists clenching. McCabe and the others must have been systematically torturing the Tritonian ever since Dietrich brought him in. He was just a kid, and his only crime had been jumping aboard Dietrich’s boat with a spear in his hands, no doubt in a fit of youthful bravado. He was being made to pay for the sabotage and damage his race were inflicting, a scapegoat for the insurgency, a whipping boy these settlers could take their frustrations out on.

“Who in the name of fuck are you?”

Dev whirled round, to see three men had stolen up behind him.

“Never mind,” said the middle man.

Dev caught a glimpse of a short truncheon with a double-pronged tip.

Something crackled.

Pain coursed through his midriff. His legs, suddenly numb, gave way as though chopped by an axe. He crashed down, twitching helplessly, his body no longer under his control. Faintly he could smell burning flesh.
His
flesh.

Another crackle. Another paroxysm of agony.

Then nothingness.

25

A
SLAP TO
the cheek. Hard.

Dev awoke.

He was trussed up in chains, like the Tritonian. Fastened to a tubular steel chair. The hood had been pulled back, exposing his head.

Blearily he looked around. McCabe was bent over him, hand drawn back to deliver a second slap if required. The Tritonian was nearby, still suspended from the hoist and now in evident respiratory distress, his gills opening and closing frantically as they dried out. Slowly suffocating.

“Yeah, that’s him all right,” Dev heard Chlumsky say. “The guy who gave me and Dietrich so much grief. Near broke my fucking arm. Sneaky son of a bitch, he is. Doesn’t fight fair.”

“Two of you, armed, against one of me?” Dev croaked, dry-mouthed. “You have a strange definition of fighting fair.”

“But you know kung fu or something.”

“No, I don’t. I know dumb fu, the ancient art of dealing with morons.”

One of McCabe’s cronies sniggered.

Chlumsky bristled. “Who are you calling a moron?” he snarled.

“You, moron. Truth is, weapons or not, you and your friend Dietrich were hopeless. Easy meat. Pre-schoolers would have been more of a challenge.”

“Enough!” McCabe smacked Dev round the face again, open-handed but still with force. “You were outside eavesdropping on us. Spying. Lucky thing Kelso came by when he did with his fish stunner.”

“I brought it to use on
him
,” said Kelso, pointing the device at the Tritonian. “Saw you sneaking around and... Well, a couple of five-million-volt jolts later, here we are.”

“Yeah,” said Dev. “Thanks for that. All that electricity – I haven’t felt this lively in years.”

He didn’t feel good at all, truth be told. There was a sore patch on his belly, the skin singed where the fish stunner’s electrodes had been applied. The muscles in his abdomen and upper torso, meanwhile, ached from the fierce contractions they had undergone as the current surged through them.