Free-Wrench, no. 1 (8 page)

“What
is
that?” Nita asked.

“That’s our ship’s inspector, Wink. The fug
folk require at least one of them to accompany every ship. They tap
along the planks looking for wood grubs, which we can pick up from
time to time when we make landfall. They’re also trained to
identify and mark planks that are succumbing to rot. Mack says this
ship would have fallen apart years ago without Wink here, so he
usually considers him a crewmember. Rather silly sentiment, if you
ask me, but captains all have their quirks.”

“But what manner of creature is it?”

“Some sort of jungle creature. They come from
an island on the far side of Rim. At least that’s where they
came
from. Now they mostly come from the fug, and who knows
how the fug folk get them. Enough of that, though. The captain’s
order is followed to the letter. I’ve got to rest up for my watch.
Get yourself sorted out. I suppose I’ll figure out what to do with
you in a few hours.”

Gunner ushered Nita out of the boiler room.
Wink lingered in the still-open door. She stared down at the
creature, and it stared right back. Its face had a stern, almost
distrustful look as it met her gaze. With a final jittery tap of
its thin fingers, it slunk into the shadows within and shut the
door. It was astounding how ominous such a small creature could
be.

Nita fidgeted uneasily in
her freshly installed hammock. Space was the most precious thing on
the ship, and as such there were few places where she might find a
corner to call her own. She’d settled on hanging her hammock in the
room they called the gig room, the room through which she’d entered
the ship. Despite the piled boxes of their less valuable
merchandise, it had the most free space. Within minutes of setting
down to rest she regretted her decision. Though the dinghy was
winched tightly to the bottom of the ship and the other hatch was
shut, they didn’t create an airtight seal. As such, she was treated
to the whistling of wind all night long. The constant motion of the
ship had a habit of swinging her hammock so violently that at times
she was worried she would fall out. They’d provided a blanket, and
a second one to roll up as a pillow, but for someone so used to
tropical climes it was still a bit chilly even in her heavy work
gear. By far the worst part of those first few hours of rest,
though, was the time it gave her to think.

There was no aspect of this journey that sat
well with her. It was uncomfortable, but that much she could stand.
The air had a strange smell to it, either from the fuel they burned
in the boiler, the gas they filled the envelope with, or the
particularly lax approach to hygiene shared by certain members of
the crew. Rather than the shower she’d unwittingly come to rely
upon to relieve the stresses of her day, the best this ship could
offer was a bucket of clean water, a cake of soap, and a sea
sponge, all tucked into a small room at the stern of the ship. The
added presence of a washboard suggested that the room doubled as
laundry facilities. In the opposite corner was the bathroom, or
“head” as they called it, though even that seemed to be too
extravagant a name for what turned out to be a bench mounted over a
hole in the bottom of the ship. Using it was an unpleasantly breezy
experience that made her feel sorry for any fishermen or sailors
who might be below. It also served to remind her of the one fact
she could never come to terms with; she was hundreds of feet in the
air in a none-too-sturdy vessel.

Such thoughts had been churning in her head
for three or four hours, making sleep all but impossible, when a
tapping sound drew her attention. In the doorway was Wink, or
rather
on
the doorway. He was crawling up with ease, tapping
with his middle finger and cupping his ears toward the sound. Nita
tried to put him out of her mind and get back to sleep, but
something seemed odd. The tapping had slowed and stopped. She
turned, but as soon as she moved, Wink started tapping again with
renewed vigor. Twice more she looked away and twice more the
tapping trailed off. She pulled the goggles from her bag, buffed
the lenses a bit, and pretended to drift to sleep once more. When
the tapping began to slow, she tipped them enough to see Wink in
the reflection. He was staring at her.

At that point, it became clear she would get
no more sleep today.

As it turned out, it was just as well. Not a
minute after her brain finally gave up on being rested, the flared
tube beside the door echoed with a bellow that she could just
barely hear through the walls as well. It was Butch, shouting in
whatever language she spoke. Though she couldn’t understand the
announcement, she assumed a trip to the galley was called for. She
dislodged herself from the hammock and stumbled her way to the
nearest ladder. At the top, she encountered Lil.

“There you are, Greenhorn. I was just coming
down to fetch you. Supper’s on the table. Or lunch. Or breakfast, I
reckon. Just depends how long you been awake. You sleep okay?”

“Terrible.”

“I did too, my first few days. Nowadays I
can’t hardly sleep without my hammock rocking in the breeze. Being
a greenhorn is rough. I guess that’s part of why most of you don’t
last more than a day.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?”

“What, a greenhorn? Because that’s what you
are! A newbie, a tenderfoot. Wet behind the ears and all that,” she
explained. “Better get used to being called that. Round here,
everybody’s
a greenhorn ’til the Cap’n decides otherwise.
Life on a ship ain’t all bad, though. Once you learn to look it in
the eye without feeding the ducks, the view’s a thing to see. Plus,
on this ship you get to eat what Butch makes, and that stuff’s fit
to make your tongue kick a hole through your teeth to get at the
spoon.”

Nita grinned. There was something disarmingly
charming about the way these people spoke. In Caldera, the desire
to create ran so deep that people of distinction spoke with an
almost literary formality. Thanks to the status of her parents, she
dealt with such people every day. The clumsy but colorful manner of
speech employed by people like Lil and Coop, whether purposefully
or not, had an undeniable life and poetry to it. To ears trained
from birth to seek out uniqueness and creativity in all of its
forms, it was a joy. It was like finding a whole new set of colors
to paint pictures with.

Lil led the way onto the galley, where all
but the captain were already present and seated. At one table
lounged Gunner. At another perched Coop. The third was empty.

“That there’s the captain’s table. You don’t
sit there unless you’re invited. Anywhere else is up for
grabs.”

“Where
is
the captain?”

“He’s getting the ship set to guide herself
for a while. Once he’s set a course, he can’t leave her for more
than a few minutes at a time before the wind sets us off in the
wrong direction again, but a good look at the wind gauge and some
careful figuring can usually get him time enough to come down and
have a meal. Of course, that’s assuming he hasn’t got that feeling
he gets when he decides he can’t leave the deck, which is as often
as not. He’s a mite skittish about not having at least a lookout up
there.”

“Me bein’ a mite skittish is what’s kept this
bucket in the sky instead of in the drink, let’s not forget. And
it’s hazy out there. Low clouds. Let’s make this quick so I can put
someone out there on lookout,” Captain Mack said, marching in
through the doorway.

Nita took a seat at Lil and Coop’s table. A
shallow notch cut into the table formed just the right size to fit
the bottom of a bowl, and another was sized for the bottom of a
mug. When the captain was seated, Butch emerged from the kitchen
with a pile of tin bowls, mugs, and spoons stacked precariously in
one arm. She fitted them into the table in front of each of the
crewmembers, never once so much as allowing the pile to teeter
despite the motion of the ship. She then fetched a heavy pot and
spooned out their dinner.

After Lil had bragged about it, Nita had to
admit she was curious and a little excited to see what sort of
exotic food these strange people ate, but what she got was a far
cry from the irresistible feast the younger Cooper had described.
It was a stew, or, at the very least, that was the closest word in
her culinary lexicon that might describe it. What poured out of
Butch’s ladle was a wet mound of ingredients that had been boiled
far beyond the point of recognition. The mixture probably included
some vegetables, and
possibly
some meat, but each had given
up and dissolved into a mush with the texture of mud and the color
of paper pulp.

“I’m sorry but, um… what do you call this
dish?”

“That’s a bowl,” Coop said.

“She means the food
in
the bowl,
dopey. That there’s slumgullion. Don’t let the looks fool you.
That’s about as close to heaven as your tongue is gonna get.”

Nita gave the bowl another doubtful look as
her mug was filled with what smelled like ale. Never one to appear
ungrateful, and with little recourse for anything better, she
dipped her spoon into the runny mush and gave it a taste.

“It’s… it’s actually quite good!”

“You’d best get some of that shock and wonder
out of your voice before Butch’s feelings get hurt,” Coop said.

“My apologies,” she said, bowing her head.
“It really is delicious.”

“Like I said, one of the good bits of working
on this here ship,” Lil said.

“Let’s just get down to business,” the
captain said. “As you all know, Ms. Graus here has a relative who
is in a bad way. Needs some medicine that Glinda says the fuggers
will have. She’s offering the biggest payment we’re ever likely to
see in exchange for getting her some, so we’re going to be spending
a few extra days in port at Keystone while we try to get some out
of those tightfisted beanpoles.”

“Suits me. I got a pretty lady back that way
who’s probably staying up nights waiting for me to spend more’n a
few hours in town.”

“Sure you do…” Lil jabbed.

“If we’re going to make it where we need to
go, we’re going to need to find a way for Ms. Graus here to pull
her weight. So…”

“Do we
really
need to go through this
again
?” Gunner snapped suddenly.

“Gunner…” the captain said sternly.

“Let’s just pitch her over the side now. The
longer we wait, the harder it will be to do it when the time
comes.”

“What?!” Nita cried, jumping to her feet.

“Settle down, Nita,” Lil said, putting a hand
on Nita’s arm.

“Settle
down
?! He just threatened to
throw me overboard!”

Her hand clamped down harder, and the other
revealed a cocked pistol. “Wasn’t a suggestion, Nita.”

Across the table, Coop pulled a pistol of his
own, as did the captain. Gunner unholstered two things which might
have been pistols as well, though they seemed to have more optics
and barrels than could ever reasonably be called for.

“Have a seat, Nita. I’ll explain what this is
about. Gunner, on deck for lookout, and we’ll discuss this little
outburst later.”

An angry sneer on his face, Gunner eased the
hammers down on his weapons and stalked out the door. Nita looked
to Lil and Coop. They still had their weapons steady, and most
worrisome of all, their faces remained as chipper and friendly as
ever. As there were few other options, she lowered herself to her
seat.

“Are you going to kill me?” Nita asked.

“Not necessarily,” Lil said. “All depends on
how good of a job you do.”

“Am I a prisoner?”

“Of course not. You’re a greenhorn,” Coop
said.

“Ms. Graus, what you need to understand is
this. You grew up in Caldera. I can’t speak for your upbringing,
save to say it had to be a darn sight better than ours. Things out
here… well, they’re rough. We run ourselves on a shoestring, and
not just because it’s all we can afford, because it’s all we can
get.
A bad bit of weather puts us more than a day behind,
and we start going hungry. A piece of equipment fails, and we can’t
be sure we’ll make it at all. What we have on board is enough fuel
and supplies to get five humans and Wink to the next port without
much room to wiggle. And what we have right now is one human too
many. I can get us through, all of us through, on what we’ve got,
but only just. And
only
if everything goes right that can go
right, and nothing at all goes wrong. That means if you show
yourself to be a liability in even the smallest way, you aren’t
just a nuisance, you’re a threat to our lives and our livelihoods.
I can’t allow that, not on my ship.”

“How many times have you taken someone on
board like this?”

“Oh, what is it now… seven? Including Nita
here?” Coop said.

“No, no. It’s nine, right? There was that
couple who wanted to go from Westrim to Circa, and we got blown off
course,” Lil said.

“Right, right. Nine then.”

“And how many have made it?”

“Well, there’s still just the five of us on
the crew,” Lil said. “Plus Wink. So it’s safe to say that none of
them turned out to be worth their salt as airmen.”

“But I think… well, I guess it was… nine take
away…” Coop struggled with the math for a moment. “Cap’n, help me
out here.”

“The last two people are the only ones we had
to take care of personally. One got himself killed, and the rest
got back to shore, at the very least. Gunner had to do the deed for
the ones that were more harm than good. He didn’t take it
well.”

“But you
did
kill two people.”

“We ain’t killed nobody. Them folks just
didn’t turn out to be handy enough to keep themselves alive,” Coop
said.

“You people are monsters!”