Читать книгу The Ancient - Muriel Gray, Muriel Gray - Страница 10

The fantasies of most ancient cultures almost always included one of walking on water. From Christianity through Mayan domestic legend, even into modern obsessions with surface-bound sports, the defiant, burnished skin of the ocean presents a challenge to man that is considerably deeper than the mere domination of nature.

As the early morning sun gave the Pacific a pale cream solidity, Esther felt she could run straight off the deck and onto that glittering rugged surface without puncturing it. However, a dull but well-meaning officer on the journey down to Callao had regularly and unbidden furnished Esther with sea-going statistics, and the revelation that the sea along the coast of Peru concealed a trench that was over twenty thousand feet deep had induced in her an immediate vertigo as she thought of the blackness yawning beneath her feet. Gazing out now at the innocent shining surface, she felt that same mix of fear and thrill again at the ocean’s secret.

Maybe, she reasoned, that was why mankind always felt impelled to make instant contact with water the moment it was anywhere in his vicinity. The child on the beach who runs without fail to the sea, the adults who pull off their socks and shoes to paddle in the shallows, the fisherman who catches nothing but is satisfied with the contact of weighted line and water; all are reassuring themselves that what excites them about what they see, that beckoning seductive sheet of light, is as flimsy as net and as dangerous as fire.

If she could, Esther, too, would have made contact with a cool sea.

A swim after the punishing circuit she was pounding would have been delicious, but even if the boat were a pleasure yacht that drifted to let her bathe, she wouldn’t care to swim thinking of the sunless chasm that lay beneath her. A cramped, steamy shower would do and with only four more laps of the cargo deck to go, even that was pretty damned attractive.

She needed to get back in shape, and although the mountain treks had been hard, nothing in her field trip had left time for the kind of physical programme she liked to stick to back home. Fifty-one laps of the deck, twenty of them with a stitch ripping her side apart, only confirmed that she had serious work to do, and as she sprinted for the bow it was with a sinking heart that she realized she would have to stop and let the pain subside.

Her trainers squealed on the metal as she slowed down and jogged to the edge of the last hold, whose open hatch protruded about six or seven feet beyond the lip of its fixings. Esther put out a hand and leant heavily against the metal, her head bowed to her waist, sweat dripping onto the deck between her feet.

Less than a minute passed before her heart rate had slowed to near normal, and she straightened up rubbing at the side that was still tight and sore. Despite the eternal thrumming of the engine vibrating through her body that was so constant and rhythmic it ceased to exist for most sailors only hours into any new voyage, the serenity was exquisite. The breaking water around the hull swished erratically and the light wind that toyed in her hair was no more than a whisper.

She leaned back against the hatch and looked out over the sea. Although the route was hugging the west coast of Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, they were far too many miles from land to view it. The sun had an uncluttered stage upon which to rise and it was doing so with unparalleled magnificence.

This was a lucky time. Esther had always divided her days since childhood into lucky and unlucky times.

When things were bad, unlucky bad, she knew that by waiting, the lucky bits would present themselves, and however brief they might be, she had learned to grab them and hold them tight. She’d started it at the age of eight as she stood over her mother’s grave, Benny’s whisky breath filling her nostrils as he clung to her little shoulder as a means of steadying himself rather than of comforting her. Her grief had been too profound to articulate, but she had felt her father’s confused adult despair being transmitted to her through his curled fingers the way a plant carries chlorophyll, and as she had shaken free of his grasp she had looked around in desperation to see something beautiful, something distracting, something lucky.

A heavy-set woman in a pink organza hat was tending a grave beyond the untidy scrub in that cheap little Pennsylvanian graveyard, and as she bent a gust of wind blew it from her head and made her stumble after it in a way that was both grotesque and funny. Esther had looked around and noted that no one else had seen it but her. So that, she’d decided, had made it lucky. She could think of that instead of her Mom lying in the ground, and that would help get by the unlucky bit. It became habit, and here she was at the age of twenty-three still doing it in the most mundane of moments.

And yes, at this moment away from the decidedly ragged collection of shipmates, with the sun and the sea as her only companions, her passage home assured and her dissertation shaping up in her head with every mile, she had the right to feel lucky. Lucky, even though the trash in the hold was tainting the perfect scene a little now that she’d stopped, by randomly releasing its foul odour in small nauseating gusts.

Esther waved a hand over her face.

‘Shit.’

She turned and looked to the hatch as though a stern glance would halt its emissions, but since its metal surface was at least three or four feet above her head, the culprit – the mountain of waste – was impossible to see.

Esther inclined her head back out to sea, then looked slowly back again, curious. A sheen on the edge of the metal hatch had caught her eye, and she stepped back to examine it. There was a trail emanating from the lid of the hatch above her head, running over the edge and then continuing along the deck below, as though whatever had left it had dropped the seven or eight feet and continued its progress. She rubbed at it with a toe. It had been dried hard by the sun exactly like the trail of a slug, but with the marked difference of being at least three feet wide instead of the innocent half inch you would curse at in your glasshouse, and when her trainer made contact it broke off in wafer-thin flakes.

Esther bent and looked more closely at it. Under the hardened flakes of slime there were other things sticking to the deck, things that were still slightly moist, streaks of effluent maybe, a trace of oil or tar, but worst of all a brown-red smear that looked almost like blood. Still crouched, she followed the trail on the deck, her hand shading her eyes from the sun, until, squinting, she could just make it out disappearing over the edge of the deck about twenty feet short of the accommodation block.

Esther stood up and wiped her foot unconsciously on the edge of the metal hatch runner. She shook her head. The only explanation could be that someone had pulled an unpleasant portion of the trash from its pile, dragged it nearly seven holds further up the deck and then tipped it into the sea. She knew she shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but everything about this ship was making her long for the dull, reliable neat container ship she’d arrived on.

Most likely the trail was the residue of drunken behaviour, a bet, a forfeit or a prank, and the worst of it was that discipline was obviously so lax no one had bothered to come out and scrub away the evidence. This was a crew that needed its ass kicked.

The stitch healed, she bent forward and took two deep breaths, ready to finish the circuit. She straightened. For no reason other than that the unscrubbed trail of goo had irritated her, she had an overwhelming desire to peer into the hold to see exactly what they had been up to.

A quick glance up to the far-off windows of the bridge suggested that she was not about to be observed, and so with her hands on the guide rail of the hatch cover she hauled herself up to the edge of hold number two. There was a moment of feeling precarious, the action putting her higher than the ship’s taff rail, and she paused to steady herself. When she had adjusted to the height she walked carefully forward to the fifteen-foot slit between the open hatch doors and crouched down at the edge. The smell nearly knocked her backwards and she covered her nose and mouth with one hand, leaning heavily on the other.

Ten or twelve feet below her, the pile of irregular and unidentifiable waste was illuminated by a slim strip of daylight, while the rest of the load skulked in darkness beneath the ledges of drawn hatch covers. It was an ugly cargo, and looking down into it gave Esther the creeps. The sea breeze seemed chillier up here, and she hunched her shoulders against it as she scanned the top of the waste to try and understand what someone might have been pulling free from it.

From the dark starboard portion of the pile came a movement. Her eyes flicked to it immediately, her breath caught in readiness.

She focused hard on where she thought she saw the subtle peripheral shifting and waited for it to happen again.

Her leg was grabbed in a vice-like grip below the knee, and before she could cry out Esther was dragged backwards.

‘What the fuck do you think you’re at?’ It was a male voice.

Esther found herself on her back, her fists clenched ready to strike, blinking up at the figure silhouetted against the sky. Her panting breath slowed and she untensed her body enough to sit semi-erect and recognize the figure of Matthew Cotton.

‘My God. You near made me shit myself.’

‘Yeah?’ It was said with aggression, not apology.

He offered her a hand to get up. She ignored it and sat forward instead. Matthew pointed to the deck. ‘Get down. Right now.’

Esther looked at him sulkily and slowly stood, walked forward and lowered herself to the deck. Cotton dropped after her, dusting off his pants and never taking his eyes from her sullen face.

‘You any idea how stupid that was?’

‘Aw, come on.’

Matthew nodded vigorously as though she’d offered to start an alley fight. ‘Okay, smartass. Let’s just say we hit a swell there and you tipped in. You think you’d just land on it and step right out? Huh?’

Esther said nothing, but put her hands on her hips and stared out to sea.

But Matthew had no intention of stopping the lecture. ‘Year and a half back, an ABS who decided to take a jaywalk across an open hold full of grain while the hatches were still open in port, fell in. Okay? Crew thought he’d jumped ship, done a runner, when he didn’t show up for his watch. So they sailed, they thought, without him. Found his body at the bottom of the grain at the next port. Care to think about what drowning in raw, unhusked wheat must feel like? No? Well try thinking about how drowning in a big pile of shit might be for laughs, because believe me, honey, that’s what would have happened to you if you’d gone ass over tit.’

Esther looked at him. He was genuinely angry, breathing hard, his eyes lit with indignant fire. She held up restraining hands. ‘Yeah. Okay. Sorry.’

Matthew turned and looked out to sea himself now, as though trying to calm himself. ‘Man, you shouldn’t even be out here without a hard hat. It’s a bulk carrier, not the QE fuckin’ 2.’

Esther was getting annoyed. This, after all, was the drunk who could barely stand upright yesterday, and even though she was grateful he got her on board, he was hardly Captain Kirk.

‘Yeah, well it doesn’t look like “shipshape” means much out here anyhows.’

He snapped his glance back to her. ‘Meaning?’

She pointed down at the hardened slime trail beneath his feet. ‘I got curious as to what that was.’

Matthew looked down, and followed the trail with his eyes from hatch cover to ship’s rail.

She watched the slow wit of the perpetual drunk try to work it out and fail, and pity returned. ‘But I guess I was out of line. Sorry.’

Matthew was still staring at the trail. ‘Yeah.’ He said it absently, obviously still perplexed.

‘Can I finish my run?’

He turned back to her, his hand stroking the nape of his neck in thought. ‘Huh? Yeah. Go on. You heard me out.’

She held his gaze for a beat then turned and sprinted for the bow.

Matthew watched her absently for a second then turned and walked along the trail to where it left the deck and slipped beneath the rail. He leant over and stared down at the stained hull of the ship. There was nothing to see except the oily blue-black of an insanely deep ocean and the virgin white of its foam.

By the time Esther had come around again, he was gone, but the third and last circuit saw her nearly run into two cadets wandering on deck with buckets and mops.

Although she didn’t know why, Esther was pleased they were coming to clean it up. Very pleased.

The captain’s door was closed, which Renato knew signalled he was either in the shower or asleep. But it was already gone eight-thirty and neither possibility was very likely for a man of such regular and early rising habits as Lloyd Skinner. As he paused by the closed door and pondered what to do, he was joined by Pasqual the radio officer, clutching a piece of paper and yawning.

‘Taking a dump is he?’ said Pasqual in their native tongue, secure in the knowledge that even if the captain was on the other side of the door, the words would be meaningless. That, of course, was the great advantage of sailing with American top brass. At least usually it was. Although the captain had picked up a word or two of Filipino, enough to say please and thanks, the crew could largely talk amongst themselves in front of Skinner without the threat of being pulled up for verbal insubordination. Unless, of course, you were a rating and second officer Renato Lhoon heard you. Then you were in big trouble. Cotton however, required more caution. His Filipino was pretty strong for an American, as was his Spanish. But since Cotton was mostly drunk the crew could afford to relax when discussing him in his earshot. Anyway Cotton wasn’t here. They could say what they liked.

‘Yeah, well we all got to go sometime, Pasqual.’ Renato knocked lightly on the door.

‘Come.’

The captain’s voice revealed that he was indeed on the other side of the door, sounding, by Renato’s familiarity with the master’s quarters, as though he were merely seated at his couch and chart table.

The men entered, and Renato was rewarded by having his theory proved exactly right. The captain’s quarters consisted of an office that was joined by a closed door to his personal suite of rooms, no more than a larger version of the officers’ cabins with a slightly bigger shower room. In the office that the men entered, a large desk covered with papers was fronted by a seating arrangement of three cheap block-cushion sofas pushed together to make a C-shaped fortress of foam, surrounding a low table designed to be exactly the correct size to accommodate a standard navigational chart. Skinner was seated at the table, his hands cupping a knee, nothing on the table more sinister than a chart of the area they were currently sailing and a mug of coffee. He looked up at the men with the mild irritation of someone who has been disturbed.

‘Gentlemen?’ Skinner said shortly, as though they’d walked in on him naked.

The two men exchanged glances. ‘Eight thirty-four, captain.’

Skinner blinked at Lhoon, then looked down at his watch. ‘Ah. Right. Sit.’

The radio officer held out the paper. ‘Just delivering this, sir. Two messages from company for you, and one for purser.’

Skinner took the paper, and Renato sat down on the ungiving couch opposite his captain.

‘Thank you, Pasqual.’

Looking down at the paper without reading it, he spoke casually, absently avoiding eye contact with the man.

‘Eh, yes. Make a reply in a couple of hours. You can let me know when will be convenient for me to use the radio room alone. Confidential ship-to-shore.’ He scratched at his neck and added, ‘Nothing urgent.’

Pasqual nodded. ‘Sure. No problem.’

The radio officer left them, stifling a yawn again. He hadn’t slept well last night as a result of eight hours of fierce half-waking dreams and half-conscious anxieties, an unusual occurrence for him, and now it was taking its toll. No matter. After he’d got his morning watch out of the way, maybe he would slip back to the cabin and catch up. After all, the sea couldn’t be calmer and everything on board was normal to the point of tedium. He left the captain’s door open as he exited, the way shipboard etiquette said it should have been when he’d entered.

Renato coughed into a fist, then clasped his hands in front of him ready to deliver his routine daily report. ‘Quiet watch, captain. All’s well. Only action, First Officer Cotton opened hatch doors round eleven-thirty. Thinks there might be risk of methane. Weather looks like being okay to leave them for now.’

Skinner raised an eyebrow, then nodded. ‘Methane. Yes, well.’

‘Third officer on duty now, and he knows to keep an eye on weather fax to close them if it blows above force four.’

‘Good. Right.’

‘Anything for today, sir?’

Skinner looked casually at the radio officer’s communication again. ‘Eh. Maybe some routine inspection. Down in the engine rooms and in the cofferdams.’

‘I can organize that.’ Renato held out his hand for the paper.

Skinner looked up at him, and there was nothing absent or distracted about the piercing gaze he fixed on the man. It took his second officer by surprise.

‘That won’t be necessary, Renato. This is my duty.’

The man nodded, withdrew his hand self-consciously, then waited. The captain continued. ‘The bosun briefed for the day?’

‘Sure.’

Skinner held his eye, then said quietly and with great finality, ‘Thank you, Renato.’

Lhoon coughed again and stood up. ‘Thank you, captain.’

He left quietly, and before he had got even halfway to the lift, he heard the quiet but unmistakable metallic sound of Skinner’s door closing. Renato paused, thought, then dismissing the man’s eccentricities of the day, went about his business.

Esther was enjoying her breakfast. The eggs and bacon were good, the coffee hot, she felt revitalized after her shower, and unlike the awkwardness of last night, her dining companion this morning was a jolly and talkative chief engineer called Sohn. Through broken English and equally broken teeth he was telling her about his family which consisted entirely of women: six daughters and what sounded like a formidable wife, and how even the nightmare of an overheating engine room was a blessed escape from the heat of their nagging when he was ashore.

He was candid and funny, and even Matthew Cotton entering the mess room, bringing a nauseating faint stale whiff of alcohol with him as he sat and joined them, couldn’t dampen her high spirits.

Sohn nodded and grinned at Cotton as the lugubrious-looking first officer poured himself a coffee from the communal plastic flask on the table.

‘Feel good this morning, Mattu?’

‘Goddamn born again, Sohn,’ he replied without warmth and took a long swallow of coffee.

The engineer laughed and nodded again. ‘No one like night watch. Mattu get it every time. Ha ha.’

Esther smiled at the man’s jollity in the face of the second officer’s gloom. She crunched on some toast and smiled. ‘So you do eat then?’

Matthew looked at her. ‘The only damn thing Leonardo can cook.’

Given last night’s dinner Esther had to admit he had a point. Sohn pointed at Esther as though Matthew had never seen her before.

‘Esther army stoodent.’

‘Yeah?’

The engineer cheerfully ignored Cotton’s dismissive grunt and turned back to his considerably more charming companion.

‘You shoot guns and all?’

Esther looked down at her plate as though she were talking about something dirty. ‘Standard M16 A2. Nothing fancy. You get acquainted with your weapon at advance training camp.’

Sohn nodded enthusiastically, wanting more. Nothing came. Matthew sat back in his chair and looked at her.

‘Guess you got on well with Lloyd last night then, huh?’

Esther narrowed her eyes. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘He’s a Nam vet. Explosives. Used to defuse bombs, lay land mines.’

She was interested. ‘Yeah? It didn’t come up.’

Matthew drained his cup and poured another. ‘Doesn’t talk about it. You blame him?’

Esther shook her head at nothing in particular.

‘Shit, it’s crazy when you think about guys Lloyd’s age, walking about looking like they spent a lifetime doing nothing more than mow a lawn and polish their Lincoln Continental, yet they’ve seen stuff that you and I only have nightmares about.’

Sohn tried to keep up with what she was saying, watching her with rapt attention now she was talking at regular speed to a fellow English speaker, instead of the slow deliberate words she’d been enunciating for him in the last half hour. He caught the gist.

‘Yeah. He nearly go down on the Eurydice too. That really mess him about, I think.’

Sohn pointed to his head to illustrate where exactly he thought the captain had been messed about.

‘What was that?’ enquired Esther of Cotton, knowing that Sohn’s explanation would be tortuous.

The same waiter as the previous night brought a plate across to Matthew and set it down. Obviously Cotton was a creature of habit. He picked up a fork and shovelled some scrambled egg into his mouth.

‘Carrier Skinner sailed about five years ago. Got called ashore for some personal reason halfway through the voyage, and handed the command over to another captain at Lagos. Damn thing disappeared without trace a day later out of port. No survivors. No salvage.’

Esther was genuinely horrified. ‘Jesus. That must have been rough. He would have known all those guys well?’

‘Sailed with the same crew for nearly two-and-a-half years. Like family.’

‘Did they find out what happened?’

Matthew shook his head. ‘Lloyd had to give evidence at the enquiry. He’d kept his own log after they’d left Luanda and for some reason had taken his notes ashore when he left for Florida.

‘Apparently he thought there’d been an irregularity he couldn’t prove with cargo stowage by the African stevedores, and on account of everything he was able and obliged to check having been in order, they had forced him to sail.

‘But he hadn’t been happy, so guess that’s why he took his copy of the log. Company loved him for that. With no wreck to examine, Lloyd’s evidence was the only thing that counted. His log proved everything had been done just right by the captain and I guess by Sonstar too. Meant the insurance crooks had to pay up in full.’

Esther’s estimation of the captain had risen again. No wonder the guy was reticent and distracted. It sounded like he’d had more than his share of shit. Sohn was nodding enthusiastically at this story.

‘They make a lot of money when ship go down like that.’

Matthew looked sour. ‘Yeah. They sure as hell ain’t got the reputation for charity.’

Esther ate in silence, thinking of the horror of being sucked down on a ship this size into the blackness of that trench below them, and her food lost its taste.

Sohn pushed his chair back and bowed cheerfully to Esther. ‘You want I show you my engine room later?’

Esther beamed. ‘Aw, neat. I’d love that.’

‘I on watch for four hours now. Any time.’

He bowed again and left. Esther was once again stranded with company she could well do without, and she watched Matthew eating in silence, much of her cheerfulness having exited the room with Sohn. Now might be a good time to set things straight, so she took the chance.

‘Listen, I’m real sorry I made you mad on the cargo deck.’

Matthew shrugged as he ate, then mutely nodded his forgiveness.

She continued. ‘Find out what that stuff was?’

He shook his head and shrugged again, completely uninterested, his mouth overful with hot food. Esther could see a repeat of last night’s one-sided conversation looming, and she wiped the sides of her mouth in readiness to go. No one could say she hadn’t given it her best shot.

Matthew looked up at her and intuitively caught the body language that meant she was getting ready to leave and, to Esther’s surprise, did something to halt it. He waved a fork. ‘So tell me. Why’d you choose the military?’

She looked at him to see if there was bitterness or sarcasm behind the question, and when she saw none, she answered. ‘I wanted a degree. It was the only way I could afford one.’

Matthew looked genuinely interested. He swallowed what he’d been chewing and gesticulated at her again with his fork as though he needed it to talk. ‘Yeah? What kinda service you need to put in for that? Three, four years?’

‘Seven.’

Matthew raised both eyebrows. ‘No shit? Hell, you must want that degree real bad.’

It was Esther’s turn to shrug.

Matthew took another swig of coffee, watching her over the rim of the cup. ‘Or maybe I’m getting it wrong here. Maybe you wanted to join up anyhow. Seen those commercials myself, the guys rappelling in California and cross-country skiing and shit? Makes me almost want to do it too.’

She scratched her neck and gave a light laugh. ‘Well, since you ask, funny thing is, sure, I thought it was just a way to buy me some academic time. Stuff I thought my whole life I wanted to do. Kind of always dreamt that it was education could let me escape. Know what I mean? But when I went to advance training camp? You know, I found I had an aptitude for it I never knew I had. Surprised the living shit out of me.’

‘Aptitude for what?’

She picked up her coffee cup and looked him square in the eye. ‘Combat.’

Matthew looked at her, smiled weakly, then returned to his breakfast.

She knew he didn’t believe her. He knew nothing about her, but she could practically read his thoughts.

He’d picture some white-collar home, see her playing at being a soldier, getting off on the masculinity of holding and firing a semi-automatic weapon. How could he know she’d been shooting guns since she was nine? Dogging off school with Henry-Adam Shenker to go to the wasteland of scrub willow a mile away from the trailer park, and shoot at everything that moved and everything that couldn’t with his big brother’s hand gun. The same gun that eventually helped put him and his other two drug-dealing, store-robbing siblings behind bars. And how could he know she’d spent her teens fighting with her fists and her teeth, against almost every kid at school that called her trailer-trash, or asked after her daddy with those shit-eating smug grins?

All that until the autumn term when Mr Sanderson took over as her grade teacher and discovered, like some lion tamer with the magic chair of academia and genuine concern for her, there was a brain in there, under that wild animal that tore and kicked and bit anything that got in her way.

Matthew Cotton couldn’t know any of that, and frankly she didn’t care. She was civilized now, a tamed creature that read philosophy and studied culture, and that was all that mattered. She would give her best to the US army, and then see what life held at the other end. But that was enough. It was Matthew’s turn for spilling the beans, she decided.

‘What about you?’

He stabbed some bacon. ‘What about me?’

‘Well where you from?’

‘Nowhere special.’

Esther pursed her mouth. She was a private person by habit, and it annoyed her to have shared even a tiny part of her life with him when he was plainly so reticent to do the same.

‘Oh pardon me. Did I say I came from anywhere special? Texas sure ain’t frigging Arcadia.’

‘You sail, you live on ships. There’s nowhere else.’

‘So I guess you were born and raised on a bulk carrier? Cool.’

He looked up and the pain behind his eyes made her regret her tone. He wiped his mouth. ‘I was born and raised in New York. I lived for a time in Atlanta. Now I don’t live any damn place. Okay?’

Esther held his gaze, embarrassed, then nodded.

‘Sure.’

He got back to his meal.

Esther waited until a decent amount of time had passed to let the dust settle from his inexplicable ire, then pushed back her chair and stood. ‘If I run tomorrow, I guess I’ll wear the hard hat.’

Matthew nodded down into his eggs. ‘You do that.’

She nodded back to the top of his head, cleared her throat and left. As she walked back up the corridor to her cabin, Esther let out the breath she’d been holding in for nearly a minute. A peal of laughter burst from the crew’s mess hall, and she rubbed at her hair with an exasperated hand. Right now, Esther Mulholland wished she’d majored in languages. Namely, Filipino. Life ahead for the next five days would have promise to be a lot more entertaining if she had.

Fen had been keeping out of the bosun’s way all morning, when he finally caught up with him on the main deck, crouching in front the accommodation block, staring at the long perspective of holds in front of him.

‘What the hell are you up to?’

Fen looked up at Felix Chadin from the bucket of unused water he was squatting beside and blinked. ‘Deck,’ he said, standing and waving a hand weakly at the surface as if he had just named it. ‘I was scrubbing the deck.’

‘For the whole of your watch?’

‘Eh, no. I was helping cook move some crates.’

Chadin crossed his arms. He was in a bad mood. Sleep had evaded him last night and he was grouchy.

‘Well isn’t it convenient that I find you just as your watch is over, particularly when the derrick cables need checking?’

‘I can check them. I don’t mind.’

Chadin looked at the man. It was not the answer he expected from a rating he suspected of skiving. It threw him.

‘No. Go on.’ He dismissed Fen with an imperial wave that was peculiarly Filipino, used liberally by foremen, mothers-in-law and dictators alike in their homeland.

‘I want to know exactly where you are on the next watch though,’ he called after the hastily-retreating figure. Fen disappeared into the block’s door, and Chadin looked down at the bucket. It was clear that the man had not been scrubbing at all, yet the eagerness with which he’d offered to extend his watch was confusing. Chadin looked up along the open holds and squinted against the low sun, then went to find someone else he could make suffer for his poor night’s rest.

Fen entered the crew’s mess room, went to the coffee machine and punched in his command. The whining machine pissed a spiralling stream of brown liquid into a plastic cup that was too flimsy to prevent it burning any inexperienced hand that attempted to hold it. He waited until it had finished its business, grabbed the cup by its thick rim, and went to join the four men, three of whom sat smoking, one sulking, at the Formica-covered table nearest the serving hatch.

‘Ah, now then, the very man,’ exclaimed Parren the storekeeper, slapping the table top. He pointed at the surly sixteen-year-old cadet, Hal, and laughed. The other two men laughed in a snickering kind of way, childish, but entirely unkind.

‘This little shit-eater wants to know if his girlfriend’s being faithful.’

Fen looked from face to face, then sipped carefully at the nasty coffee. ‘So?’

‘So you’re the guy to tell him.’

Fen scowled. ‘Yeah, well not today. Okay?’

Hal emerged from his sulk. ‘Aw come on, Fen. I’ll pay you.’

‘No.’

The boy snorted and picked up his own white plastic cup. ‘Yeah, well it’s a load of bullshit that stuff anyway. It doesn’t tell you anything you don’t know.’

Fen’s face darkened and he lowered the cup. The three older men looked at each other with eyebrows raised gleefully in anticipation of an explosion.

‘You want to be careful, kid. Stupider people than you have fallen foul of Saanti. The dumber you are the harder it is to take the truth.’

The boy made a face, pretending he was scared, then laughed. Parren leant forward, trying to break the iron rod of gaze that Fen had fixed on the boy. ‘Do it for us then, Fen. Come on. I wouldn’t mind asking a couple of things.’

Fen looked round slowly at the storekeeper and frowned.

‘Yeah,’ added the steward who sat slouched to Parren’s right. ‘Why not?’

Why not, indeed. Fen knew why not. Because when he had scattered the Saanti bone-dice last night and laid out the alphabet cards, reading them for himself instead of for someone else for the first time in fifteen years, they had terrified him. He would never normally cast those dice for himself. It had been the dream that had made him do it. The dream that had made him doubt what was real and what was not when he awoke in a sweat. But he had done it, and as it was with those he read for, he took what the dice told him very seriously. The reading always required the card-caster to read out the message that was being spelled for his eyes only, and sometimes Fen found that his voice adopted the tone of the person who was communicating, whether they were alive or dead. It had been uncanny at first, and almost everyone he read for imagined at first that he was faking it. Until, that is, someone they loved, or had lost forever, spoke through Fen’s mouth. Then they believed. They had no choice.

But last night … Fen shivered at the memory. Someone – no that wasn’t quite right – some thing, had spoken to him, or rather made him speak, and done so in a voice and a language that was both unintelligible and indescribably horrible. He had broken off the reading even before it had completed its first communication, his mouth fouled by the noise that had come from it, and now he was afraid that if he read again, it would come back.

But that had been in the night. He had been too tormented by his dreams to sleep well, no doubt fuelled by the schoolboy superstitions of ridiculous peasant stevedores. Now it was day, and he was sitting in the brightly-lit mess room that was familiar as his own skin, the faces of his long-time shipmates looking at him expectantly, waiting for some fun. If ever there was a time to exorcise the demons of the night with a playful and harmless reading, telling these men of their loved ones at home, then perhaps it was now. Cowardice was not compatible with being a Saanti-master. Fen licked his lips and wiped the sides of his sweaty shirt with his palms.

‘What kind of things?’ he asked Parren.

The men smiled, sensing entertainment.

‘Well, for one, I want to know if my boy working in Dubai will marry a good girl and give me grandsons.’

The man at the end of the table laughed and blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘I can tell you that Parren. I have it on good authority he’s choking on Arab cock right now.’

Parren made a mock-threatening swipe with the back of his hand, but he was smiling. He looked back at Fen. ‘So?’

Fen toyed with his cup, his gaze fixed on the brown circle of liquid, then slowly put his hand in his trouser pocket and brought out the pack and dice. The four men shifted in their seats with delight and sat forward in anticipation.

Fen held the pack and looked from face to face, then slowly began to shuffle the cards. They watched closely as he laid out a semi-circle of ancient and bizarrely-marked cards, each with letters of the alphabet inscribed over a lurid illustration. The three bone dice had occult symbols burnt into them, two of them inlaid intricately around the symbols with tiny slivers of gold, one with silver.

Fen realized his hand was trembling. He stopped and took another swallow of coffee. This was ridiculous. All the more determined now to shake this night terror off, he sped up, concentrating hard as he laid and arranged the cards.

This task complete, he gathered two of the three dice together in his hand and looked up. ‘Who’s first?’

Parren wiped his mouth with a hand then looked to the cadet. ‘Well I suppose it’s Hal whose losing most sleep.’

‘Yeah. Or his girlfriend,’ sniggered the carpenter.

Fen looked to the boy. ‘You answer only when I ask you a question. You touch none of the cards, but only this die when I tell you to. Understand?’

The boy smiled and nodded, looking round for approval. All eyes were on Fen, and the serving hatch filled as the two assistant cooks leaned forward happily on their elbows, well used to the show that the rating could put on.

Fen placed the single die in the centre of the semi-circle then shook the other two in his palm and cast them. They clattered onto the table top, rolled and came to rest in front of Parren.

‘What’s your name?’

Fen was looking at the cards, not the boy, but Hal knew to answer when he was poked in the ribs by a sharp finger.

‘Hal Sanin.’

‘What’s your question?’

Hal licked his lips. It felt more tense now, less of a game. Fen’s face was stern with concentration.

‘Em, will my … no, sorry.’ He took a breath and composed himself. ‘Is my girlfriend, Phaara, being faithful to me?’

Fen looked at the two cast dice. ‘And who do you ask? The wind, the sun, the water or the fire?’

Hal looked to the other men and gave a worried shrug. Parren shrugged back cheerfully and mouthed silently the word ‘water,’ for no other reason than to keep things going.

‘Eh, water.’

Fen stretched forward and put his little finger on the die in the semicircle of cards. He breathed in hard, then waited. The men waited, Parren throwing Hal a fatherly wink. Slowly, Fen’s finger began to move the die across the table top.

It bobbed and hesitated in front of the cards, then moved on, stopping and starting randomly before setting off again. And then his finger speeded up, sliding faster and faster until it was darting across the table top like some impossibly fleet insect captured between the laid-out cards. Most of the men had seen this many times, but they were still impressed. Even if it wasn’t supernatural, just Fen doing some long-practised party trick, it was still damned dextrous. All the time, Fen’s eyes darted with the die, reading the letters as it spelled them out, interpreting what the illustrated cards denoted, and waiting for the voice he had asked to come through.

Fen stopped. His eyes were closed but his head came up sharply.

‘Hal?’

It was a woman’s voice. No question. The stewards at the hatch nudged each other in glee. This was good.

Hal gulped. He looked around for support, but all eyes were fixed on Fen’s face. ‘Yes?’ he replied weakly.

‘You son of a sow.’

Hal gaped at Fen. There was no question it was his girlfriend’s voice, and if he were honest, her language too.

‘What?’

‘You dare accuse me of infidelity, you bastard?’

The boy was silent, his mouth working without words.

‘I’ll tell you about infidelity. What about my cousin? Yeah? That bring back anything? Tasik and Carlo’s wedding in Manila?’

Hal gawped stupidly at the cards then back up at Fen. He looked as though he might be sick.

‘You tried to have her in my brother’s car, didn’t you? Go on deny it. Right there while the dancing was starting. Fumbling at her bra like a kid.’

‘Stop. Stop it.’ The boy was nearly crying.

‘And you’re asking if I’m being unfaithful? I bought that dress specially for you, not for the wedding. Blue, because I know you like blue. And what do you do? You take Deni out to my brother’s car the moment I …’

Fen stopped suddenly and opened his eyes. There was silence except for Hal’s sharp hard breathing as he wrestled to compose himself like the man he wanted to be. Wrestled, in fact, to stop himself weeping with fear and shame.

Every face watched Fen intently, but his eyes, though open, were cloudy and unfocused. Then, slowly, Fen’s mouth contorted, and from it came noises that chilled the blood of everyone present. Guttural, throaty noises that sounded almost like words …

‘Caaahrdreeed. Cahrdreeed montwaandet.’

On the table, Fen’s finger started to move. It started slowly, then as before gathered speed, until it was flying from card to card. Sweat had started to bead on his temple.

The men watching stayed perfectly still, hardly breathing as though stalked by some invisible predator.

Spit started to foam at the corner of Fen’s mouth, his eyes rolled in their sockets, and the finger on the die stopped abruptly. The next sounds from his mouth came from the same ugly contorted lips, but this time they were delivered in a low, almost inaudible whisper, as though something were experimenting with his tongue. The words started indistinctly, becoming more articulate, more formed, as the volume increased. It was as if someone were practising speaking in an unfamiliar language, growing bolder as they became more coherent.

‘Yes. Yes. Scum. Scum. Oh filthy scum of scum. Listen, scum. Sons of scum. Fathers of scum. Husbands of shit. Brothers of barren spunk. Listen … listen to me. To meeeee …’

Parren broke his own spell of paralysis. This was too much. ‘Fen. Fen stop it.’

Fen appeared completely unable to comply.

‘Dung that drops from the dead. I am whole. You scum. Listen … listen …’

The die beneath Fen’s finger started to tremble as though sitting on a vibrating surface, and it continued to do so, even when it shook loose from his grip. The men watched it with horror, then Parren leapt to his feet and slapped Fen hard across the face with a blow that knocked him back in his chair.

Fen let out a shriek, and raised his arms across his face, but not, thought Parren later, to protect himself from the blow. The die ceased its tremulous progress across the table top, once again becoming an innocent and inanimate object, and the men looked at Fen with horror.

The cadet and the steward had also leapt to their feet, and two of them grabbed Fen under the arms and brought him back upright.

‘Get some water,’ Parren barked to the two cooks standing dumb-struck in the hatch.

Water was fetched and duly administered, but even an hour later, the time when the men should have been laughing and reflecting on what must have been nothing more than a ugly prank, neither Fen nor his audience had recovered sufficiently to laugh at anything.