Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  And now, as he stared at the sharp eyes of this perfectly unblemished swank, he realized that he had missed a factor. He didn’t know anything about the girl. He knew about gold, though. Gold bought security, salvation from the ships and the breaking and light crew. Lucky Strike had gone down that road. Nailer would have been smarter to simply let Pima pigstick the girl and be done with it.

  But what if there were other roads? What if there was a reward for this rich girl? What if she could be useful in some other way?

  “You got crew who’ll come looking for you?” he asked.

  “Crew?”

  “Someone want you to come home?”

  Her eyes never left his. “Of course,” she said. “My father will be hunting for me.”

  “He rich?” Pima asked. “Swank like you?”

  Nailer shot her an annoyed glance. Amusement flickered across Lucky Girl’s face. “He’ll pay, if that’s what you’re asking.” She held up her fingers. “And he’ll pay you more than just my jewelry.” She pulled a ring off and tossed it to Pima. Pima caught it, surprised. “More than that. More than all the wealth I’ve got on my ship.” She looked at them seriously. “Alive, I’m more valuable than gold.”

  Nailer exchanged glances with Pima. This girl knew what they wanted, knew them inside and out. It was as if she were a beach witch, and could throw bones and see right into his soul, to all his hunger and greed. It pissed him off that he and Pima were so obvious. Made him feel like a little kid, stupid and obvious, the way the urchins looked when they were hanging out behind Chen’s grub shack, hoping he’d toss out bones for them to pick over. She just knew.

  “How do we know you’re not lying?” Pima asked. “Maybe you’ve got nothing else to give. Maybe you’re just talking.”

  The girl shrugged, unconcerned. She touched her remaining rings. “I have houses where fifty servants wait for me to ring a bell and bring me whatever I want. I have two clippers and a dirigible. My servants wear uniforms of silver and jade and I gift them with gold and diamonds. And you can have it, too… if you help me reach my father.”

  “Maybe,” Nailer said. “But maybe all you’ve got is some gold on your fingers and you’re better off dead.”

  The girl leaned forward, her face lit by the fire, her features suddenly cold. “If you hurt me, my father will come here and wipe you and yours off the face of the earth and feed your guts to dogs.” She sat back. “It’s your choice: Get rich helping me, or die poor.”

  “Screw it,” Pima said. “Let’s just drown her and be done.”

  A flash of uncertainty crossed the girl’s face, so quick Nailer might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching closely, but he caught the slight widening of her eyes.

  “You should watch yourself,” he said. “You’re alone. No one knows where you are or what happened to you. You could be drowned in the ocean for all anyone knows. Maybe you just disappear and the wind and waves don’t remember you even existed.” He grinned. “You’re a long way from your swank servants.”

  “No.” The girl drew her blankets around her like a cloak and looked out at the moonlit ocean and the far waves. “The GPS and distress systems in the ship will tell them where to look. It’s only a matter of time now.” She smiled. “My ‘crew’ will be coming very soon.”

  “But right now, you’ve only got me and Pima,” Nailer said. “And you definitely ain’t our crew.” He leaned forward. “Maybe your people really will hurt us bad—yank out our guts, cut off our fingers—but that doesn’t scare us, Lucky Girl.” He drew out the words of the nickname, mocking. He waved back toward the ship-breaking yards. “We die here every day. Die all the time. Maybe I’m dead tomorrow. Maybe I was dead two days ago.” He spat. “My life isn’t worth a copper yard.” He looked at her. “So the only way your life is worth more than that gold on your fingers is if it gets us out of this place. Otherwise, you’re just as good dead.”

  As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized it was true. He was in Hell. The ship-breaking yards were Hell. And wherever this girl came from, whatever she was, it had to be better than anything else he knew. Even Lucky Strike, who everyone thought lived like a king, was nothing in comparison to this spoiled sleek girl. Fifty people answering to her. Lucky Strike could muster Raymond and Blue Eyes and Sammy Hu, and that was enough for most of his leg-breaking jobs, but it was nothing outside. And even Lucky Strike smiled and scraped when the big bosses from Lawson & Carlson rolled in on their special train to inspect the breaking, before it rolled out again to wherever swanks lived. This girl was from a whole different planet.

  And she was going back to it.

  “If you want to stay alive,” he said, “you take us with you when you go.”

  She nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”

  “She’s lying,” Pima said. “Buying time, that’s all. She’s not our crew. As soon as her people show, she’s gone and we’re back in the yards.” She glanced back to where the invisible hulks of the wrecked ocean vessels lay along the beach. “If we’re lucky.”

  “That true?” Nailer studied the swank carefully, trying to divine if she was a liar. “You going to ditch us? Dump us back with the rest of the ship breakers while you go back to being swank?”

  “I don’t lie,” the girl said. She didn’t look away from his gaze. She held, hard as obsidian.

  Nailer took out his knife. “Let’s see, then.”

  He came around the fire to her. She flinched away, but he grabbed her by the wrist, and even though she struggled, he was stronger. He held the knife in front of her eyes. Pima grabbed her by the shoulders, steadying her.

  “Just a little blood, Lucky Girl. Just a little,” she said. “Just to make sure, right?” The girl didn’t stand a chance against Pima’s strength.

  Nailer dragged her hand toward him. She fought all the way, jerking and twisting, but it was nothing, and soon he had her hand outstretched before him. He pressed the blade to her palm and looked up at her, smiling. “You still swear now?” he asked, looking into her eyes. “We going with you when you go?”

  The girl was breathing fast, scared and panicky, her eyes going from the blade to him and back again. “I swear,” she whispered. “I swear.”

  Still, he studied her face, hunting for signs that she’d betray them, that she’d pull a Sloth and stab them in the back. He glanced at Pima. She nodded a go-ahead.

  “Guess she wants it.”

  “Guess so.”

  Nailer slashed her palm. Blood welled and the girl’s hand spasmed, fingers trembling at the gash. He was surprised she didn’t scream. Nailer slashed his own hand and made a fist with hers.

  “Crew up, Lucky Girl,” he said. “I got your back, you got mine.” He held her eyes with his own.

  Pima jostled the girl. “Say it.”

  Lucky Girl stuttered, but she said the words. “I got your back, you got mine.”

  Nailer nodded, satisfied. “Good.”

  He pried open her bleeding hand and drove his thumb into the slash of her open wound. She gasped at this new pain and then he pressed his thumb to her forehead. She flinched as he applied the bloody tattoo between her eyes, a third-eye mark of shared destiny. She trembled and closed her eyes as he marked her.

  “Now you mark him,” Pima said. “Blood with blood, Lucky Girl. That’s how we do it. Blood with blood.”

  Lucky Girl did as she was told, her face frozen as she drove her own thumb into his palm and marked him well.

  “Good.” Pima leaned close. “Now me.”

  When it was done, they went down to the black water and rinsed the blood from their hands before hiking back up into the vegetation. The sea was all around, leaving the three of them alone in the darkness as they slowly climbed up to their beacon fire. Nailer’s shoulder was tender and inflamed from all the activity and it made climbing difficult. Lucky Girl scrambled ahead of them, loud in the vegetation, unused to climbing, breathing heavily, her clothes torn. Nailer watched her slim legs and sm
ooth form under her skirt.

  Pima smacked him. “What? You think you’re getting with her after you stuck a knife in her hand?”

  He grinned and made a shrug of embarrassment. “She’s damn pretty.”

  “Probably cleans up nice,” Pima agreed; then she lowered her voice. “What do you think? Is she really crew?”

  Nailer paused in the climb, rotating his shoulder carefully, feeling the sear of his wound across his back. “Being crew wasn’t worth a scrap of rust with Sloth. Crew don’t mean anything except that we’re all sweating together on the same ship.” He shrugged and winced at the pain again. “Still, it’s worth a gamble, right?”

  “You serious about leaving here?”

  Nailer nodded. “Yeah. That’s the smart thing, right? The real smart thing. Nothing here for us. We need to get out, or we die here same as everyone else. Even Lucky Strike got trashed in the storm. Being light crew boss didn’t do Bapi any good at all. Just got him killed.”

  “Lucky Strike did a lot better than us.”

  “Sure.” Nailer spat. “That’s what the pig in the pen says when his brother gets knifed for dinner.” He shrugged. “You’re still in the pen. Still gonna die.”

  11

  NAILER WOKE TO SUN pouring over him, and the luxury of knowing that he still had another couple of hours before the tide would be far enough out for them to make their way back to shore. By this time on any regular day, he would have been on light crew, deep in a duct with LED glowpaint smeared on his forehead like a luck mark, sucking dust and mouse droppings and sweating in the darkness.

  The sun shone down through the rustling of ferns and stunted cypress of the island in dapples of light and shadow. Voices interrupted his thoughts.

  “No, don’t put all the damn wood on at once. Do it slow.”

  Pima’s voice. Lucky Girl said something in return that Nailer couldn’t make out but sounded like she wasn’t much interested in Pima telling her what to do.

  He sat up and gasped with pain. His whole shoulder was on fire, a brutal pain that dug deep and burned like acid. He’d worked it too much yesterday for sure. Too much effort hunting scavenge and getting Lucky Girl out, and now he’d screwed it up again. He moved his arm gingerly, trying to get it to loosen up. The pain was intense.

  “You awake?

  He looked up. Lucky Girl, peering through the ferns. In the daylight, she was still pretty. Her light brown skin was smooth and clean, freshly scrubbed. She’d pulled her long black hair back and tied it in a knot so that it was out of her way, showing the delicate structure of her face. She grinned at him. “Pima wants to know if you’re up.”

  “Yeah, I’m up.”

  “Get over your beauty sleep, Nailer,” Pima called. “It’s breakfast time.”

  “Yeah?” Nailer pushed himself upright and forced through the ferns to where the girls crouched around a newly built fire. Down on the water, the ship was still there, shifted by the tide, but so tangled in the rocks that it hadn’t fled down the coast. Luck was holding, he supposed, especially if they wanted Lucky Girl’s people to find her quickly.

  He looked around for whatever they were eating. He didn’t see anything prepared. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Whatever you make,” Pima said, and she and Lucky Girl laughed.

  “Ha ha.” Nailer made a face. “Seriously, what you got?”

  “Don’t look at me.” Pima leaned back on the sandy ground. “I made the fire.”

  Nailer gave her another dirty look. “We’re not on light crew here. You’re not the boss of me.”

  Pima laughed. “Guess you’re going to be damn hungry, then.”

  Nailer shook his head. He started rifling through the sacks of food they’d pulled off the ship the night before. “Don’t be surprised when you find snot in yours.”

  Pima sat up. “You spit in my food, I’ll spit in your mouth.”

  “Yeah?” Nailer turned around. “You wanna try?”

  Pima just laughed. “You know I’d kick your ass, Lucky Boy. Just make breakfast and be glad we let you sleep.”

  Lucky Girl interceded. “I’ll help.”

  Nailer shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Pima doesn’t cook because she’d screw it up. All muscle, no brains.” He started pulling fruit from a sack, digging through the rest of the food. “Check it out.” He pulled out a pound sack of grain.

  “What is it?” Pima sat up, interested.

  “Wheat berries.”

  “They good?”

  “Pretty good. They chew better than rice.” He paused, thoughtful. “You swanks have sugar?” he asked Lucky Girl.

  “Down on the ship,” she answered.

  “Really?” Nailer looked down to the water. He didn’t want to have to climb all the way down and come back up. “Can you get some sugar and some fresh water?”

  Lucky Girl nodded, surprisingly eager. “Sure.”

  Nailer kept rifling through the food as Lucky Girl disappeared down the hillside. “Man, I can’t believe how much food they have.”

  “Regular feast every day,” Pima said.

  “Remember that pigeon Moon Girl brought me for a luck gift?”

  “Good eating.”

  Nailer jerked his head toward Lucky Girl, scrambling into the ship. “Bet she wouldn’t think so.”

  “Is that why you want to leave with her?”

  Nailer shrugged. “Never really thought about it until last night…” He trailed off, trying to explain what was in his mind. “You saw her cabin, right? All the scavenge? It’s nothing to her. And look at all her rings. Take that diamond out of her nose and you or me, we’re rich. But she doesn’t even notice.”

  “Yeah, she’s rich all right. But she’s not crew. No matter what you say. And I don’t trust her. I asked her about her family, who they were…” Pima shook her head. “She ducked and dodged like Pearly when you ask him why he thinks he’s Krishna. She’s hiding stuff. Don’t be fooled just because she looks so sweet.”

  “Yeah. She’s smart.”

  “More than smart. Sly. You know all that gold on her fingers? Some of it’s missing today. Don’t know where she hid it, but it’s gone now. She’s saying all kinds of things about us being crew, but she’s running her own game, too.”

  “Like we aren’t?”

  “Don’t blow me off, Nailer. You know what I mean.”

  Nailer looked up at the tone in Pima’s voice. “I hear you, Boss Girl. We’ll watch her close. Now lemme cook.” He found a sack of some kind of small dried red fruits and tasted one. They were tart and sweet in a mix. Pretty damn good. He tossed one to Pima. “You know what this is?”

  She tasted. “Never had it.” She held out her hand. “Gimme some more.”

  He grinned. “No way. I’m using them. You’ll just have to wait.”

  He set the sack out beside the wheat berries and stared at all the food, so casually kept in the ship. “I never really thought about how bad it is here. Not until yesterday. Not until her.” He paused. “But you got to think, if she’s that rich, there’s other swanks out there. There’s money out there. And it ain’t here. Even Lucky Strike’s a joke, in comparison to what she’s got.”

  “So you think you can just go live with her or something? Happily ever after?”

  “Don’t make fun of me. Even the people on her crew are richer than Lucky Strike.”

  “If she’s telling the truth.”

  “You know she is. And you know if we stay here, we never get anything.”

  Pima hesitated. “You think we can take my mom?” she asked.

  “Is that what you’re worrying about?” Nailer smiled. “We saved the swank’s life. She owes us big-time blood debt. ’Course we can take her.”

  “What about Moon Girl? Pearly? Rest of light crew?”

  Nailer paused. “Lucky Strike didn’t share,” he pointed out finally. “He worked his own deal.”

  “Yeah…” Pima didn’t sound convinced, but her nex
t words were interrupted by Lucky Girl scrambling back up out of the greenery and vines.

  “Got it!” she panted, smiling.

  “Nice.” He grinned at Pima. “She’d be good on light crew when work starts up again, huh?”

  Pima didn’t smile. “She’d sell pretty good to the nailsheds, too.” She turned away.

  Lucky Girl frowned. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Nothing,” Nailer said. “She just gets moody when she’s hungry.”

  As he took the jar of water that Lucky Girl had carried up, he gasped. His shoulder was on fire. He almost dropped the water.

  Pima looked up. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “My back,” Nailer said through gritted teeth. “It hurts like a snake bite.”

  “That means it’s infected,” Pima said. She hurried over.

  “No.” He shook his head. “We cleaned it.”

  “Lemme see.” She pulled off the bandaging and sucked in her breath. Lucky Girl took one look and gasped.

  “What the hell did you do to yourself?”

  Nailer craned his neck around, but he couldn’t see. “How bad is it?”

  Lucky Girl said, “It’s really infected. There’s pus everywhere.” She came closer, businesslike. “Let me take a look. I’m trained in first aid. From my school.”

  “Swanky,” Nailer muttered, but Lucky Girl didn’t respond. Her fingers probed and pressed against the wound. He flinched at the searing fire.

  “You need antibiotics,” she said. “This smells awful.”

  Pima shook her head. “We don’t have those here.”

  “What do you do when you’re sick?”

  Nailer grinned weakly. “Let the Fates decide.”

  “You’re insane.” Lucky Girl stared at his wound again. “I should have something on the Wind Witch,” she said. “There’s a whole medical closet. There ought to be some kind of ’cillin.”

  Nailer shook her off. “Let’s eat first.”

  “Are you crazy?” Lucky Girl looked from him to Pima. “You don’t wait on something like this. You take care of it now.”