Ship Breaker

by Paolo Bacigalupi

“I’m telling the truth—” Nita started hotly.

  Sadna waved her to silence. “Really?” She looked at Nailer. “You’re sure she’s worth it?”

  “No one ever is,” Tool rumbled.

  “My father can pay,” Nita said. “He can reward—”

  “Shut up!” Pima said. She turned to Nailer. “Nailer decides. He’s the one to take you. He’s the one to take the risk.” She grabbed Nailer and pulled him aside. She lowered her voice. “You’re sure about this?” She glanced back at Nita. “The girl’s sly. Every time she tells us something, it turns out it’s only half true.”

  “I believe her.”

  “Don’t. Swanks don’t think like us. She’ll have an angle. You sure you’re watching yourself?”

  “There’s no risk. I’ve got nothing here. There’s no way I can keep clear of my dad if I stay.” Nailer shrugged, pulled away from Pima’s grip. “My dad will never forget this. No matter what anyone says, he’ll never forget.” He looked at Nita and spoke loudly to the group. “We’ll go. I’ll take her.”

  A flurry of activity down below startled them all. Pima scrambled up on a boulder, peering through the foliage. “Get up here, Lucky Girl,” she said.

  Nita climbed up beside Pima, and Nailer joined them. Out on the dark water, a pale ship was anchored, lights glowing like the day, bright LED spots sweeping the water, catching the shapes of boats rowing toward shore. Nita shook her head. “They’re coming for me.”

  “They’ll pay a reward, too,” Pima’s mother said to Nailer.

  “Mom.” Pima shook her head.

  “We’re crew,” Nailer said stubbornly. “I’m not selling her.”

  Pima’s mother studied Nailer. “You run and Richard Lopez will hunt you forever. You can never come back.” She looked down. “You can still make a peace. Broker a deal and sell the girl to those people down there, and Richard will forget. You don’t think so, but money will make him forget plenty. Moby and Blue Eyes and the rest are nothing in comparison to the amount of money we’re talking about.”

  Nita watched fearfully. If he sold her, they’d be rich, for certain. He could buy peace from his father.

  Lucky and smart. I need to be lucky and smart.

  The smart thing was to give Nita up, to buy the safety he couldn’t beg for. But just handing her over to her enemies made him feel nauseous. The smart thing was to turtle down and let the girl go and make a profit in the bargain. Her fight wasn’t his. He looked to Pima. She just shrugged.

  “I told you what I thought.”

  “Blood and rust,” he muttered. “We can’t just give her to them. It’d be like giving Pima to my dad.”

  “But a lot safer for you,” Tool suggested.

  Nailer shook his head stubbornly. “No. I’ll take her to the Orleans. I know how to hop the trains.”

  “This isn’t light crew and a short quota,” Tool said. “You won’t get second chances. You make a mistake now and you die.”

  “You ever jumped the train?” Sadna asked.

  “Reni told me how.”

  “Before he went under the wheels,” Sadna said.

  “We all die,” Tool rumbled. “It’s only choosing how.”

  “I’m going,” Nailer said. He looked at Nita. “We’re going.”

  Something in the way he said it got it through this time. No one tried to protest. They just accepted it and nodded, and suddenly Nailer felt as if he’d made the wrong decision. He realized that a part of him had wanted them to talk him out of it. To find a way to convince him not to run.

  “You’d best be going, then,” Tool rumbled. “Richard will be coming to sell the girl soon.”

  “Good luck,” Pima’s mother said. She dug into her pocket and offered Nailer a handful of bright linen Red Chinese cash. “Run hard. Don’t come back.”

  Nailer took the money, surprised at the amount, feeling suddenly alone. “Thanks.”

  Pima ran back to the camp, and returned with a small pack that had been Blue Eyes’s. She handed it to Nailer. “Your scavenge.”

  Nailer took the pack, feeling water sloshing in it. He looked at Nita. “Ready?”

  Nita nodded eagerly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah.” He pointed through the jungle. “The tracks are that way.”

  They started out of the clearing, but Tool called after them, “Wait.” Nailer and Nita turned back. Tool studied them with his yellow killer’s eyes. “I will go as well, I think.”

  Nailer felt a shiver of fear. “We’re fine,” he said at the same moment as Pima’s mother smiled brilliantly and said, “Thank you.”

  Tool smiled slightly at Nailer’s hesitation. “Don’t be so quick to turn down help, boy.”

  Nailer had a dozen retorts, but all of them were based in his distrust of the half-man’s motives. The creature frightened him. Even if Pima’s mother trusted him, Nailer didn’t. It worried him that someone so close to his father and Lucky Strike was going with them.

  “Why now?” Nita asked suspiciously. “What do you want?”

  Tool glanced at Sadna, then nodded toward the beach. “The patrons down on the ship have half-men of their own. They will have questions about my presence. It will not be a convenience for anyone.”

  “We can make it alone,” Nailer said.

  “I’m sure,” Tool answered. “But perhaps you will benefit from my wisdom.” His sharp teeth showed briefly.

  “Be glad he’s willing to help,” Sadna said. She turned to Tool and clasped his huge hand in both of hers. “I owe you now.”

  “It is nothing.” Tool smiled and his sharp teeth showed again. “Killing in one place or killing in another; it makes no difference.”

  15

  THE GROUND SHOOK as the train came up at them. They crouched in the ferns. The engine roared toward them and then flashed by. Nailer swallowed as machinery rushed past. Wind pummeled his face and tore at the leaves of the trees and ferns around him. The train seemed to suck him forward to where the huge wheels, each as high as his chest, blurred past. They beckoned him to throw himself under their passing weight, inviting him to be chopped into pieces and left bleeding as the train roared on. With rising fear, Nailer realized that it was one thing to speculate idly about jumping a train, another to watch freight cars hurtle past.

  It was enough to make him reconsider his options. To review the possibility of stealing a skiff, of sailing the coast instead, or of walking the jungle and swamp route… but they had no supplies to make that run. And if they went by water, the clipper ship out in the bay would pursue them with ease. There was no other option. They needed to run and they needed to run now.

  The train cars whipped past in a blur. From a distance, they seemed much slower. Now, close up, they were horribly fast. Was the train speeding up? When Reni had jumped the train, it had always seemed to be going slower, had seemed easier. Nailer knew that depending on how aggressive the engineer was, the train could go much faster than was actually jumpable. That was how Reni had finally gone under: misjudging the speed he could leap aboard. He’d also been drunk and stupid, but he’d been lulled by all his other successful jumps.

  Nailer and Nita and Tool all stepped out from the vines and clambered up the raised rail bed to the tracks. The wind buffeted them as the train roared past. The noise of rushing cars was as bad as a city killer storm. Nailer glanced back at his companions. Nita’s eyes were wide with fear. Tool watched impassively, perhaps even with contempt. This would be nothing to the half-man. Nailer found himself wishing that Tool were big enough to simply pick them up and carry them as he jumped aboard.

  Quit fooling yourself. Hurry up and jump.

  They were running out of time. The end of the train would be approaching. He needed to commit. It was like being in the oil room all over again, knowing that the only way to survive was to dive, and dive deep. But that time he’d known that there were no other choices. This time, he kept trying to find another way out. Go, he told himself. But his feet sta
yed rooted.

  Reni had jumped the trains all the time. Had boasted about it. As Nailer’s heart pounded in his chest, he tried to remember everything Reni had ever told him. He took Nita’s shoulder and shouted in her ear, “You run ahead of the car, let it catch up and then grab the ladder and don’t let go no matter what.” He pointed at the wheels. “If you fall, you go under, so never let go, no matter how much it hurts.” He said it again. “Don’t let go!” He paused. “And get your legs up in a hurry.”

  She nodded again. He took a deep breath, trying to get his bravery up.

  Suddenly Nita dashed ahead.

  Nailer stared, surprised, as she ran beside the train. She seemed pathetically small beside the rushing wheels and the ladders that ran up the sides. One ladder whipped past her. Another. She wasn’t even looking at the ladders of the train cars. She was just charging along beside the train, her black hair bouncing behind her in a ponytail.

  One ladder, two, three, went by. At the fourth, she leaped. Her hands caught the crossbars and she was jerked forward. Her legs flew into the air, torn out from under her. Her feet came down, then flew into the air again as she hit the ground. She was like a rag doll being dragged. She was going to be sucked under the wheels. Nailer waited, thinking he would see her torn apart, but then she curled her legs under her and she was suddenly aboard, clambering up the side of the train car. She hooked her arm in the ladder and looked back. Already she was becoming distant, carried away by the speed of the train.

  “The end of the train is coming,” Tool observed.

  Nailer nodded. Took another breath, and started running.

  Almost immediately, he understood why Nita hadn’t looked back. The ground was uneven beside the track, even though it looked smooth from a distance. The tracks where Reni had jumped the train had always been smoother than this. Nailer had to keep his eyes ahead if he wasn’t going to fall.

  Beside him, the speed and noise of the train were dizzying. Cars blurred past. He kept imagining himself tripping and falling under the wheels, torn apart by the train. He was running as fast as he could over the uneven ground, and still the ladders whipped past him.

  How the hell had she done it? How had she…? He glanced behind, wanting to be able to see the cars coming up. The movement and noise were dizzying. He stumbled and almost fell into the train’s rush. He caught himself and forced himself to look straight ahead. Picked up his pace. He counted time as ladders flicked past. One, two. And then a count of three for the center of a train car to pass, and then one, two again. He prayed to Pearly’s Ganesha and the Fates. One, two. Pause, one, two, three. One, two…

  The first ladder flashed past. Nailer grabbed for the second. It caught his hand and slammed him away, spinning him. His legs tangled. He fell, rolling over gravel and weeds and came to a stop. Train cars whipped past as he lay in the dirt, bruised and stunned. Blood ran from his scraped knees and numbed hands. His shoulder was a bright blossom of pain.

  Tool flashed by, hooked easily on a ladder. The half-man looked down at Nailer as he went past, yellow eyes watching, impassive to Nailer’s failure.

  Nailer scrambled to his feet. Nita was almost gone. He started running. The end of the train was coming up. His leg was bruised from the fall and he limped as he ran. His shoulder felt as if he’d torn it once again. Limping, he couldn’t get as much speed. Ladders blurred past. Again he timed them. He glanced back. The end of the train was here.

  Now or never.

  Nailer put on a burst of speed and leaped as a ladder swept past. Instead of grabbing for a rung, he grabbed the side of the ladder with both hands. His shoulders exploded with pain as his arms were yanked forward and he was dragged with the train. His feet bounced over rocks—bright pain blossoms—and then he pulled himself into a ball, dangling low off the ladder.

  The ground blurred beneath him. Wind ripped at his clothes, choked him with its heat and force. He scrabbled for a new handhold, found a rung, and pulled himself painfully away from the rush of rocks beneath. Another handhold, and then he was up and climbing with the wind tearing at him and the trees of the jungle blurring emerald as he shot past. His arms were shaking; his whole body tingled with adrenaline. His legs felt weak. But he climbed, clawing his way higher until he was at the top of the freight car and could see down the length of the train.

  His feet were scraped and battered, his knee was oozing blood, his hands were raw, but he was safe and he was alive. Far ahead, Nita and Tool were watching. Nita waved. He waved back tiredly, then hooked his arm in the ladder and let his body shake. Eventually he’d have to make his way down the length of train and rejoin them, but for now he just wanted to rest, to be grateful that for the first time in days, clinging to a speeding train, he felt absurdly safe. He looked back the way he had come. The twin rails of the train tracks were being swallowed by the dense jungle. Every minute on this train took him farther from his past.

  He had to smile. His whole body hurt, but he was alive and his father was in the distance and whatever lay ahead, it had to be better than what lay behind. For the first time in his life he was safe from his father.

  The thought of safety reminded him of Pima and her mother, still there, still facing more days on the crews, facing whatever retribution his father might think to devise. It worried him. In the heat of the escape, he hadn’t been able to concern himself with what the consequences might be for them; he had so desperately wanted to get away that he couldn’t think of anything else, but now, suddenly, the two of them were on his mind, like spirit demons, plucking at guilt.

  Looking back the way they’d come, he used his free hand and touched his forehead to the Fates and prayed they would be all right. That they would be able to hold Richard off, that he would believe the story that Tool had betrayed him for the sake of a reward, and that Pima’s mother and Pima hadn’t been the ones who had stolen a Lucky Strike from his hands. Nailer prayed for the people he had abandoned and then he turned his face forward again and let the wind rush past. He opened his mouth, gulping at the heat and speed and smells of the jungle.

  Through the trees, a flash of ocean showed, blue and bright. The train was slipping toward the shoreline. In the far distance, he caught sight of the moored clipper ship, its sails glinting in sunlight, a white gull resting on a mirror sea. He grinned at the sight, at the thought of all those swanks who would be scrambling now, trying to find them in the jungle, all of them never realizing they had been fooled and that their quarry had outwitted them.

  The view of the ship and ocean disappeared, hidden again by the emerald tangle of blurred trees and vines. Nailer turned and peered down the length of the train, looking ahead to where the towers of drowned Orleans would eventually rise.

  16

  THE PROBLEM WITH a clever escape was that it helped to have planned for it.

  In their rush to slip away, they’d left with few supplies, and riding in the gaps between train cars meant it was impossible to scavenge for food. Within hours, Nailer was starving. He thought longingly of the dinner he’d had the night before.

  He would have thought that by sitting still they would have hardly needed to eat. After all, it wasn’t like working light crew. But his body was already whittled by a lack of food from his time of fever and now his belly pressed against his backbone. There was nothing to do about the problem, so he gritted his teeth and felt his belly grind on emptiness and promised himself he would scavenge a feast when they arrived in the drowned city.

  The train, in addition to the access ladders to the roofs, had tiny service platforms between the cars, but these were hardly more than steel planks two feet wide, suitable for standing and working, but terrible for hours of riding. Early on, Tool made his way down the length of the train, hunting for open bays in the train cars, but he was unable to crack any of the sealed compartments and so they huddled in the train gaps with the ground blurring beneath them and the wind whipping all around. It was awful, and yet still better than the hot roofs of
the train with no protection at all from the blaze of the sun.

  Sleeping on the brink of the wheels was nearly impossible. They pinned themselves between the ladders, perched precariously above the blurred ground and slept in nodding shifts that broke off at abrupt moments when the train jerked forward or slammed to a slower speed. All of the train’s braking and acceleration came in jerks and shuddering decelerations that threatened to throw them off their perches. After Nailer and Nita were nearly thrown down into the train gap, they rode with their arms threaded through the ladders. Another time, as the train slammed itself to a slower speed, Tool almost crushed them, his whole bulk smashing them against metal and leaving Nailer’s head ringing.

  But all of those discomforts were nothing against their lack of water. The few bottles they carried in their pack were quickly drunk and by the second day all of them were parched and hollow in the heat and humidity. There was nothing to do but watch the landscape rush past and hope that the train would reach its destination soon. Sometimes huge lakes spooled past. They debated jumping from the speeding train into the cool inviting water, but Tool shook his head and said that they would never catch a train again at this speed, and unless they wanted to spend days walking, they must suffer instead.

  Nailer resented the idea, even though he didn’t want to ever try to jump a train again and knew that the huge creature was correct. So while they killed time and watched the landscape roll past, they talked.

  “Who are the people who are after you?” Nailer asked Nita. “Why are you so important?”

  “It’s Nathaniel Pyce. A business-marriage uncle.” She hesitated, then said, “He and his people want me for leverage.”

  Nailer frowned, confused. Nita saw his lack of comprehension. “My father learned about some of his dealings. Pyce was misusing the family’s corporate resources. Now Pyce wants to use me to keep my father from making trouble. I’m the best way to put pressure on him.”

  “Pressure?”