The Private Life of Elder Things

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  He shuddered. Mister American wasn’t the only survivor lost in the weeds. He knew that through bitter experience. Weeks lost with no hope did strange things to people’s minds. At least Mister American’s madness was benign. But the others … he remembered what had happened to the crew of the Boreas. He knew he was the only survivor.

  Charred, gnawed bones beside a suggestive pile of ash. He shivered.

  Titanic, now, that had possibilities. She didn’t carry enough boats – it would be difficult for any commercial liner; there wasn’t the deck space for all those rigid-hulled boats. Lots of clever men mulling over the problem, clever men like Professor Extraordinarus Paulinus Sigurdsun, or like he had been once, before the beard and the grey-streaks, the relentless sun, the burns, the black sails and weed, weed, everywhere weed, as far as the eye could see and further, beyond imagining, beyond redemption, lost forever, never get out…

  Cold water splashed in his face.

  “You do look, my son,” said Mister American, empty bucket in his hand, “in a moved sort, as if you were dismay’d; be cheerful, sir.”

  Sigurdsun lay still, blinking. “Thank you.”

  Vulcan. Vulcan, Roman god, Vulcan … vulcanised, that was it. Vulcanised rubber. There had been talk of making inflatable boats out of the stuff. Boats which would be more easily stored, and transported.

  “Which we could carry over the weed,” he said, as he pulled himself up to the railing. “See there, that smokestack? Perhaps a few hundred yards east of that point is the edge of the weed. All we need to do is keep that stack in view, all the time. Then we can find our way out of here. But we need one of those rubber boats first, and that means we need to forage. Take heart, Mister American! We’re almost home free!”

  *

  She was exactly what they were looking for. Large, some kind of warship, she had been in the weed for perhaps a little over a year, judging by wear and tear. Sigurdsun did not recognise her design, nor yet the ragged flag which still flew at her stern – but that meant little. So many strange things could be seen in dreams that he no longer puzzled over details.

  The problem was, she was large – mammoth, even – and that meant she’d be rich pickings. Anyone could see that, which meant she’d be a beacon for anyone who came near. And she was large enough that, if someone else found her first and was aboard her now, scavenging, Sigurdsun and Mister American wouldn’t have the slightest idea, perhaps not until it was much too late.

  The thing he’d taken from the smaller warship, still hanging from his belt, wouldn’t be much use in defence. It could only be used once, and then they’d be stuck. They hadn’t found anything more useful since then.

  Sigurdsun helped Mister American board her, then crept up himself.

  He decks canted at an angle, and though mould hadn’t eaten her yet, the metal was slick. They had to step cautiously. Mister American directed Sigurdsun’s attention to an open hatch. Sigurdsun nodded. He reached out and grabbed the hatch rim, more to stabilise himself than anything, and leaned in for a closer look. Enough light streamed in from outside to tell him that this was some kind of communicating corridor.

  On deck, there were peculiar seeming guns, all bloat and short barrel, off to his left, so he assumed that the corridor stretching away and turning left led to those weapons. That suggested that the stairs leading down, which he could just see from where he was, led to some kind of ammunition storage. So the corridor running further, back into the dark, presumably led somewhere more interesting.

  The weed wouldn’t burn, and he had no electric torch. All he had was paper, and some matches.

  It had taken so long to find his paper. Much of it he’d written on, made his mark; he couldn’t bear to burn it. He gazed longingly into the dark.

  Mister American scrambled past him, and before he could do more than shout in surprise, had vanished into the bowels of the ship.

  “Hoy!” He hastily rolled a spindle of paper, and prepared to light a match. “Wait!”

  Noises, and this time, he felt, not from Mister American. He crouched down, trying to stay out of sight.

  Three other survivors, one with an electric torch, were poking around. The light had come from the stairs Sigurdsun had seen, and then the first of them emerged. Sigurdsun watched closely.

  The man was rags from shoulder to waist. One arm was burdened with something heavy, a bag or sack. He had a rifle strapped at his shoulder and the torch was in his free hand. His breeches looked like military dress uniform, long gone to rot. The other two, a younger man and a woman, were dressed in baggy clothing Sigurdsun couldn’t identify. Their clothes shone oddly when the light hit. One held an axe, the other a pistol.

  It was their eyes and faces that made him stay hidden. He knew that near-permanent grimace, those staring, hopeless eyes. Stay too long in the weed and it caught at you, made your mind wander. Go too long without food, and you begin to think your neighbour’s haunches are just the thing. Gnawed bones were the only remnants this sort left behind.

  Mister American’s footfall had startled them, but they seemed not to know which direction he’d taken. The one with the rifle grunted, and pointed back into the dark. The younger man took his torch and he and the girl set out. The rifleman made towards the hatch, to light.

  Sigurdsun let go of the hatch and slid down the canting deck. His legs doubled under him when he hit the rail, tensing. It had been like this before. Throat dry, teeth rattling – would the other hear? – then, release.

  When the one with the rifle emerged from the hatch Sigurdsun pushed up at him, arms out, closing round his neck and mouth. The survivor was in better shape than he, stronger, but the rifle round his neck and sack in his arm kept him from bringing all those advantages to bear. Sigurdsun grabbed that rifle, pulled the strap close around the survivor’s neck. He pulled till his arms cracked, pulled till his hands went white, pulled till his muscles felt as if they’d split.

  He was still doing that when Mister American emerged from the hatch. He was in a tearing hurry and not looking where he was going, so he fell forward, and but for luck would have tumbled over the rail and down to the weed-strewn water below.

  Shaking hands pointed the rifle at the hatch just as the first of them, the younger man, emerged. The shot was an avalanche of sound, while the round spanged off the metal and went God alone knew where. The younger man screeched and fell back into the dark.

  After what felt like an eternity and probably lasted less than a minute, Sigurdsun began to breathe again. He checked the rifle: that had been the only round. The sack was full of supplies, what seemed to be desiccated food of some kind, wrapped up in shining paper, water, even a medical kit.

  The corpse stared up at him, empty eyes full of memories only Sigurdsun could see. Memories of mud and shell holes, terror-filled nights. Dreams he could only remember when he was dreaming, that splintered and vanished in daylight. Dreams of the moon, and what lived there, on its darkest side.

  The drops running down his cheeks, he was amazed to discover, were tears, not blood.

  *

  Mister American carried the raft. It was light enough for that. Sigurdsun carried the food.

  “Keep the stack on your right,” he told Mister American. “That way we won’t get lost.”

  He wondered how far they were from land. Surely it must be many miles away. They had paddles, and could probably put up some kind of sail. The stars were more familiar, now, after so many nights of study. The one which gleamed so bright was the Watchman, which warns men away from the now-accursed basalt city. The cluster near it was the Two Wanderers, marching across the sky arm-in-arm as winter follows summer. He remembered them now as he would old friends.

  “I used to return to the city each night,” he told Mister American, as they trudged across the weed. “I knew each street, each house. I was a fisherman, and happy, but I was only a boy; I couldn’t know what was coming. Politics were for my parents.

  “Then the Serbs betra
yed us, and we had to go to war. My whole class stood up and, with one voice, cheered our Kaiser. I was fourteen, and had to wait, but in my mind, I was already a soldier.

  “My dreams changed then. Danger was coming, and it would take the basalt city. The warnings began to pull at me, luring me away, telling me to flee. I didn’t understand what it meant, only that I had to go, and when my friends tried to dissuade me I slipped aboard a ship by night, and stowed away. I remember being found by the captain, being beaten, then put to work.

  “But the black sails…”

  Mister American had stopped moving but Sigurdsun had not noticed. Now Mister American was some distance behind. Sigurdsun looked back.

  “Why are you—”

  Mister American silenced him with an angry glare. He pointed.

  Far in the distance, but not so far that they were no danger, Sigurdsun could see the black sails.

  He crouched, shivering. There had been stories, awful tales. Never go aboard, he was told, never go near, never have dealings with the hunched men who spoke for the ones who crewed those ships. At night, when in port, strange ululations came from the black sail ships, deep in the hold. Not even the hunched men went below decks, he noticed. Not even at night. They slept on deck, under the stars, and when the time came they would up anchor and vanish into the night. It was said that they took slaves, but he had never seen them do it.

  Or, he realised, perhaps he’d never seen it then, but was seeing it now. For why else would the black sails come here, to the weed? True, they might be robbing the ships that found themselves caught here, but he thought not. There would be richer pickings further in, and so far at least he had not seen the black sails try to get any closer than the edges. But if they were fishing for survivors, then sticking to the edge of the weed was their best bet. All the survivors would want to make their way to the edge, to escape, just as he was doing now. Then they would be easy prey.

  It couldn’t be profitable for them, of course, but profit might not be their motive.

  For a moment he entertained mad fantasies of boarding the black sails, slitting throats, prancing about like a cut-rate and starving Fairbanks, sliding down the sail with one dagger in his hand, another in his teeth.

  Mister American wept.

  So caught in his own thoughts was he that Sigurdsun did not notice, and it was only when he made to move away, back from the edge, that he realised. Discomfited, he wondered what to say, and then how to say it. “How now, spirit,” he finally decided. “Wither wander you?”

  He remembered the actor more than the character, a fat man, all charm, the kind who would never lack for friends. It was the only line of the play he could recall.

  Mister American pointed at the black sails.

  “A treacherous army levied,” and his voice trembled. “One midnight fated to the purpose did Antonio open the gates of Milan, and, i’the dead of darkness, the ministers for the purpose…”

  Tears choked him.

  “You have been here before,” Sigurdsun said. “You have seen those sails before.”

  Mister American nodded.

  “They took something from you? Someone?”

  Sigurdsun wrapped an arm around Mister American’s shoulder, holding him close. It was incredible, he thought, how thin those shoulders were, how skin and bone he had become. It was time rushing past, famine standing on their shadows, and all around them, weed.

  “They cannot stay forever. They can’t afford to get too close either, or the black sails will be trapped here, same as everyone else. All we have to do is wait them out, you see? Wait until they go, and then we get out of here. We have food now, and shelter’s easily had. If we’re careful we can avoid them, and then, we’re free!”

  Mister American didn’t take cheer from this. He stared out across the Sargasso, at the black sails, while his tears dried on his face in salty trails.

  *

  For the first time in a very long while, Sigurdsun dreamed. Or perhaps, he rationalised later, he believed that he dreamed, for it all muddled in his mind after he woke, and he could remember very little. It was like drowning, and when he stirred, it was to gasp and drag air back into his lungs.

  Mister American had left.

  It wasn’t difficult to see where he had gone. The trail in the weed was plain, and led straight to the edge. Sigurdsun couldn’t see the black sails, but in his bones he knew they were still out there, somewhere. Mister American had sought them out.

  *

  Sigurdsun stared across the water. Actual, clear water, lapping gently at the weed, and just a few hundred yards distant, it lay.

  It was like a galley, with a lateen rig, but it had a longer hull, lay deeper in the water. It had oars for when the wind gave out, and it was using them now, as if its crew didn’t trust the capricious breezes. It had not been difficult to track. Even if he hadn’t seen the sail every so often, he would have followed the screams.

  Mister American had arrived there before him. He had no idea what happened next, but Mister American’s screams rang in his ears for a very long time. Perhaps the twisted men had caught him before he got close to their ship, perhaps he’d somehow crept aboard without being seen. It didn’t matter which it was. Plainly the crew had caught him.

  Sigurdsun wondered how long it would take him to reach land, if he launched his inflatable. Perhaps he never would. It was, at least, a chance.

  He stood up waving his arms, and shouted. There was no response from the black sails, not so much as movement on deck. Was there a crew, he wondered? Or were the hunched men temporary faces, go-betweens for whatever hid below decks, unseen?

  Launching the inflatable was easier than he had expected. He paddled over to the long hull. The sea lapped lazily, pulling him gently, as he stood, grabbed hold, and climbed aboard. The inflatable, without anything tying it to the black sail ship, drifted away.

  No movement on deck. Like many another cargo ship, there wasn’t room in the hold for all the cargo, so he had to pick his way past bales of trade goods. Several open, empty cages were also on deck. They reminded him of the crates the Boreas had kept chickens in, for fresh eggs, and later, when the hens stopped laying, fresh meat. But these were much larger, and by the stink had been occupied recently.

  Mister American was nowhere to be found.

  The shape of the ship seemed wrong, somehow. There were masts, rigging, a steering oar, and yet it felt as if what he saw, and what he felt, were two different things. His hands closed on objects that, though not visible to his eye, were plainly there. The steering oar did not feel right, at all, and he wondered if it made any difference to the ship’s heading. The black sails he saw above him, hanging in lazy lateen, were oddly static. He could feel a breeze, but despite it the sails remained still and he began to wonder what force, if any existed, would fill that strange canvas. To his fingers the sail canvas felt delicate, like silk, but who would make a sail out of such fragile material?

  He had explored the deck from stem to stern, and not only had he not found Mister American, he hadn’t encountered a single crewman, or even a single living thing. Even the derelicts in the weed sometimes had rats, but this ship was completely abandoned.

  The only place left to explore was below decks.

  Unlike a dhow, which it greatly resembled, there were no cabins of any kind. Just a hatch, slightly aft of the mainmast. It was partly opened, which surprised Sigurdsun; a well-run ship would have its hatches secured. Perhaps Mister American had gone below.

  He lifted the hatch, throwing daylight down into the ship’s depths. He saw movement, something large, perhaps more than one something. It did not like the light, whatever it was.

  There was no step or rope, so he hung from the hatch for a moment, feet dangling in the dark. Then he let go.

  They were all around him. He could sense that without seeing them, for they preferred the shadows, only their shifting bulk betraying them. He could not guess how many. There was fresh blood in the
air, and sweat, and something else, rank and tainted.

  “It is said,” he called out to the dark, “at the docks of Dylath-Leen, that the black galleys come from far distant lands, with goods to trade, fantastic rubies and other things, and that those who sail the black galleys will pay any price for slaves. I was there. I remember. Perhaps all dreamers who sail the sea remember Dylath-Leen, the great city, famed for its fleet, and its magnificent port, where all things are bought and sold. I have wandered down every track, each alley of that city. I knew the least shack in it, and the greatest houses. It was my city.

  “Then you took it from me. You took it from all of us, I suppose, those who dream of the sea, and who travel over it, who explore its depths. Dylath-Leen, the basalt city, Dylath-Leen the jewel, the delight. You came to us by night and you…

  “Is that why you spread your nets further? Why you planted this Sargasso? Or is it not your doing, just an unhappy accident, which you take advantage of?”

  The creatures did not speak. Their grey bulk seemed to quiver, or shift, in the darkness, so he could not know what they looked like. Each had a great, blunt muzzle, from which lighter-coloured tentacles or pseudopods quivered. It was like Scyphozoa, sea jellies, he reasoned; the nematocyst probably contained some nervous irritant, something it used to sedate or immobilise prey. Or it could be a sensory organ of some kind. It deserved further study, but that required time he did not have.

  “My friend would have had something to say by now, but I don’t have his talent. I don’t know where he is, but I can guess what happened to him.”

  They were all around him now. With no rope or ladder there was no way out of the hold.