2014 Campbellian Anthology

by Various

  So there I am at the bottom of the Breede River, caught up in a tangle with an old yellowwood and not long for the world, I reckon, and soon sure enough the water on the other side of my lips is looking sweeter and sweeter if only so that it’ll stop that damn fire in my lungs. That’s when I see it: to this day your Uncle Mika doesn’t believe me even though he’s seen the old lady himself, but I swear that I saw something dark moving through the water, and to be sure, it was exactly the same thing that your Uncle Mika had been afraid of—an old Zambezi bull shark, the grand dame of river sharks, I reckon, her body like a torpedo with a slit-open mouth across the front, head wavering back and forth as she slid oh so delicately through the waters.

  They say those sharks are killers, man-eaters, they call them, the slipway greys. Sure as Hell if I had thought drowning would be bad, it had nothing on being taken apart bit by bit by those teeth of hers.

  But this one, she just glided past me, a solemn thing, beautiful even though I can’t tell you how, until the darkness and the murk closed around her once more.

  Who can say if I really saw it? I certainly believed it. It was only a moment later that your Uncle Mika was in the water again, and he was hauling me out by the shoulder, by the hair, by any bit of me he could grab hold of. You see, he’d realized there was no blood, and if there had been a shark, there would’ve been blood. So after a minute up on the banks, gasping like a son of a bitch, he was in the water again and he was after me and I’m sure that I owe him my life for it.

  But that shark, that slipway grey… I swear to you, my bokkie, there was nothing more frightening in the world, not even the fear of drowning, than seeing that old thing gliding past. My father, he was a religious man and he spoke to us boys about angels and signs and such, and I swear to you, that day the Angel of Death wore a face and that face was the face of the slipway grey.

  I have told you all this for a reason, though, and that is to say that deep water has always had such an effect on me. It is enough to shiver my blood and tighten my balls, if you don’t mind me saying. I still cannot shake the feeling that deep water, it was not made for the likes of you and I. It was made for the angels and the demons of this world.

  So when Jurie set me to walking down those steps into the cold blackness of those waters, saying that word over and over again, a kind of creeping terror stole over me. All I could imagine was the feel of something against my legs as I crawled through darkness towards the three boxes he told me about, but I did as he told me, and I opened them one by one, and into them I placed the day’s lessons. When I woke, cold-soaked and sweating, there it was in my head, and to this day I still know the things I learned. I only have to travel in my mind to the boxes.

  As you know, Jurie and I became close friends, and I suspect I owe much of my career to him and his tricks. Indeed, it was the very next semester that I met your Ouma, God rest her soul, and if I thought the first woman had a kind of pull about her, well, there has never been another woman like your Ouma.

  The next part of the story happened some time later once Jurie and I had both taken jobs at the Selebi mine in Botswana. I know you have not been to the mines and so you do not know what it was like there. The job of an engineer is to make a place unfit for man livable, and that is what I did. I was the winding engineer, it was my job to inspect the shafts and make sure there were no obstructions for the man winder, that little elevator the workers used to ride, ninety, a hundred-fifty, up to three-hundred-sixty metres down to the bottom where they loaded the copper and tin into bins.

  On this particular day, Jurie and I were riding on the top of the cage of the man winder in order to perform an inspection upon its gears. This was the part that I disliked most about the job, that great fall into the black, just watching that cable unwind slowly as the winding engine driver lowered us down. Jurie, of course, was Jurie and it never bothered him in the slightest, he was the sort of man who could raise a smile on the Devil’s lips if he had to. In those days we could not get a radio signal in the mines so we used a system of bells to communicate with the surface: one chime to stop, two chimes to raise slowly, and three chimes to lower. So this time it was three chimes to lower, and down we went, one, two, just like that and the winding engine driver sent the cage a hundred meters, two hundred meters into darkness.

  It was at about the two hundred-fifty meter mark where Jurie was fooling around as he did sometimes, knowing that I was a nervous man about such things. Sometimes he would joke about the other men, and sometimes he would sing that old mining song. “Shosholoza,” he would sing, “shosholoza, you are running away on these mountains. Eh boss? Sing it with me.” And the sound would echo back up through the mines like Jurie was the tongue kicking around at the bottom of some enormous throat.

  Shosholoza, shosholoza, he was singing like a mad man, and me chiming three times for the winding engine driver to take us the rest of the way down.

  And Jurie’s just been singing along—“shosholoza, shosholoza,” he’s singing like a drunk, “go forward, go forward,” he’s singing—and suddenly he’s hollering up a storm. Underneath us the cage starts to shudder and shake—snick, snick, snick—making a noise. Oh, my bokkie, I don’t have to tell you that it is every mine worker’s nightmare. That sound. The feeling of the world shifting under your feet and a straight plunge into darkness waiting for you. It sends shivers through me even now, just remembering.

  But there it was, the man winder tilting sideways until there’s a shower of sparks as it scrapes along the side of the shaft, but not budging too much because now it’s jammed solid in the shaft. Then I can see something flashing like a snake in the bright cone of my mining light, something winding through the air, fast now, hooking back and forth. I’m looking around and then I see what it is, one of the stabilizing guy wires snapped free.

  It’s snapping mad like a hyena put off her dinner for too long, and Jurie’s still shrieking, and I can see he’s over by the cage’s metal guide, and now he’s waving his hand around and the air has gone heavy and sour with the smell of blood.

  You’ve seen Jurie smile that goose smile of his, yes, I know it, but you’ve never seen the way a man smiles, you’ve never seen the way a man’s lips might become something else, might change the very shape of his face when he’s staring at the stump of his thumb down there in the mine’s darkness, two hundred meters from a sunlight you don’t know you’ll ever see again.

  That snapped guy wire, you see, that wasn’t enough to drop us solid—thank God for that—but it was enough to jam us down there. Jurie with just that stub of his thumb bleeding out on the cage. Me with nothing but that bell to tell them what had happened. “Eh, boss,” says Jurie, and I don’t even know if he can tell what he’s saying, but he’s whispering, “go forward, go forward” still as if the song’s just kept running through his head, teeth flashing white and glowing in that thin beam of mining light.

  I chime the bell once, and the cage, it stops grinding away. At least it’s steady for a moment.

  I look at Jurie, and Jurie looks at me. He’s licking his lips now, I don’t know if he can feel the pain, but he’s licking his lips just like he’s going to settle down to a chicken dinner, like he’s so hungry and that scares me all the worse.

  “We’ll get you, Goose,” I say to him, “they’ll be coming down here for us, you know that.” I’m tearing off something of my shirt, and you can hear that noise, that long rip echoing back up the throat of the mine. Then I’m wrapping it around him, wrapping it around that hand, and I can feel the blood pooling sticky onto my hand, and I can hear him breathing heavy now in my ear. “Eh, boss,” he’s saying, as he holds his other hand over mine ’til I can feel them almost tacking together with the blood. “Eh, boss. You gotta climb, you gotta climb now.”

  I know he’s right. I know that bell isn’t enough, and if we wait, well, Jurie’s bones wouldn’t be the first to feed the darkness, his blood wouldn’t be the first dripping down into the great dark black
. But, dammit, if there isn’t a worse thing I can imagine at that moment than climbing. But there is need, and I know it, and I know that if I do not climb then Jurie will be dead.

  There are vertical ladders—five, six meters each—running up the side of the shaft, so before I think about it, before my brain slams on the brakes, there I am, twenty meters up, Jurie’s mine light winking away below me, him slumped over away from the broken guy wire. And then I was climbing. I was climbing and the shaft wall was wet with groundwater leakage, and it was running down the metalwork too, down those ladders I was clinging too. And my hands, my hands were wet with Jurie’s blood, but I pull myself up, I pull myself up until after a while I can hear Jurie singing, “go forward, go forward” in that crazy, pain-mad voice of his, or maybe I’m just dreaming it by then.

  Because it is just like being underwater. It is just like that, the darkness close around me, and my muscles burning, burning. But I know that if I slack for a moment now, then I will plummet all that way and the dark will take me too.

  So I start saying a word.

  I started saying that word that Jurie taught me years before, and with every hoist upward I am saying that word now, I am breathing that word out and I am breathing that word in again and I am getting higher and higher and higher away from the blood and the cage and the pool of light beneath me.

  And as I climb higher, it is like I am swimming up from deep water now, swimming from the ocean floor up and up and up to sunlight and the Sunday morning air.

  But I know I will not make it. I know my strength is failing me.

  I am a hundred meters up now. I am a hundred and twenty meter up. If I fall, I will die.

  And there is something in the darkness with me.

  Something in those dark waters of my mind, something that I sensed was always there with me, has always been with me since I was a child, since the day I was born. And she is sleek, gorgeous and deadly. This thing with me. This thing I know is my own death.

  The killer. The man-eater. The slipway grey.

  She is coming for me now, drifting along the currents, slick and terminal. Cold and quiet as the lights turning off one by one by one. Her mouth open and tasting. The wide, dark, liquid space of her eyes. The shadow of her, the shape of her. My death come for me at last.

  I said, my bokkie, that I have never told this to another person, and that is true. But it was real. It was real to me. I swear it you and I swore it to your Ouma and, for everything, I know she believed me.

  I could feel my hands going slack on the ladder. My back humping out into the open shaft of the mine.

  She was beautiful. I wanted her to come for me.

  But then. But then, my bokkie, there was something else. Three boxes. I could see them as well as I can see you here, all dressed up fine for Sunday church and maybe a bit impatient—no?—with your Oupa’s stories. Three boxes.

  So my hands are slipping and in my mind I am opening those three boxes. And do you know what I find? In the first is your Uncle Mika who had taken on the National Service for me. In the second is Jurie, lying in the darkness below me, singing that damn stupid song of his. And in the third is your Ouma who was everything to me. My piece of sunlight. My Sunday morning air. In those three boxes were all the things worth living for.

  So I set myself to climbing again and oh, even though it hurt, even though it hurt more than anything, it was still easier than dying. So up I am coming, and I can see that shape of darkness near me I could touch her. I can see those teeth of hers. But for the second time she passes me by. For the second time she lets me go, and up I came out of the mine. Up I came into the light, and there was the winding engine driver and all the others, waiting for me.

  They got Jurie out, not fast, of course, not fast enough to save his thumb but fast enough that even though he was pale and shaking he was still alive. Still singing that damn song of his. “Go forward, go forward,” he was singing, “you are running away on those mountains, the train from Zimbabwe.”

  Now, as I said to you, your Ouma and I, we could never much agree on what it all meant, what it was that I had seen there drifting in the darkness. But let me tell you this one thing, my bokkie, this one thing that I have not told another soul. At the end, after your Ouma and I had come to that decision together and I could see that the lights were going out, one by one, she drew me close to her. Her skin was as pale as old silk, and her touch was as light as a moth’s wing, but she pulled me close to her and she whispered into my ear, “I see it. Oh, love, I see it, and I am scared, and I see it, and she is come for me.”

  Now I know you do not want to listen longer to an old man’s ramblings, but as I said, this is a true story. Not a fable. Not a fancy. And I swear to you that it has not grown in the telling. But even now. Even now as I am drawing in breath through these raggle-taggled lungs of mine, these lungs that the doctors tell me will not last much longer, these lungs that feel as if they are breathing in water instead of Sunday air. Even now I know she is coming for me. The grand dame of the river. The slipway grey.

  There are three boxes.

  Jurie has gone into one, your Ouma has gone into another, and I fear, my bokkie, the last box is mine. But this is how it should be. A man should not live forever.

  Because that is what death is. That beast in the darkness where no beast should be. Death is the thing that hooks you and will not let you go. Death is the slow undoing of beautiful things. You should know this, my bokkie, while you are young. Your father will not teach you this.

  But here is another secret. The slipway grey has her own kind of beauty, and when you meet her you will know that. There is more to her than the teeth. This is how it is, my bokkie. I want you to know that. When she comes for me the third time, I shall be ready for her. I shall welcome her as an old friend. And when she comes to you, and pray God let that be many years from now, I know that you will do the same.

  Michael J. Martinez became eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer with the publication of The Daedalus Incident (2013), from Night Shade Books.

  Visit his website at michaeljmartinez.net.

  * * *

  Novel: The Daedalus Incident (excerpt) ••••

  THE DAEDALUS INCIDENT

  (excerpt)

  by Michael J. Martinez

  First published as The Daedalus Incident (2013), by Night Shade Books

  • • • •

  CHAPTER 20

  June 19, 1779

  Father, if you are to ultimately receive this journal, as I fervently hope, know that your son goes now to do his duty, both to England and to all people of the Known Worlds. I am shaken by today’s events, but terrified at the task that is now laid before us.

  Once again, I must muster my will and courage to put pen to paper, and I must ignore the bodily pain I endure to do so. Do not fear, Father, for there are those who have fared far worse than I, be they friend or foe. But I must once again order my thoughts and start anew. I have little time before I must lead our men into great peril.

  The sun-currents were with us as we departed the Rocky Main, and as Mars began to loom large over the horizon, we spotted our quarry and began to close….

  “IBELIEVE it’s her, sir,” Weatherby said, folding his glass. “Her lines match the ship we encountered on Callisto.”

  “And who else would come to Mars?” Plumb added, still looking through his own glass at their quarry. “There’s naught but ruin and sand down there. Most of the canals barely have enough water to keel upon.”

  Morrow and his lieutenants left the bow and strode across the main deck. “One never knows,” the captain said. “It seems the Royal Society or the Jovian Trading Company sends expeditions to Mars weekly in search of some damned thing or another. And the Spanish, of course, continue to seek out gold, for whatever good it does them. Still, I concur. Their course would have them coming from Jupiter, not Earth or Venus. Mr. Plumb, we shall beat to quarters, if you please. Mr. Weatherby, signa
l the Badger to prepare for battle.”

  Once more, the Daedalus erupted into a frenzy of activity, the men executing the plans drawn up in Morrow’s quarters over the long transit from Jupiter. The ship’s “alchemical society”—as Morrow had dubbed Finch, Franklin, St. Germain and Anne—had prepared extra stores of curatives and alchemical shot for the engagement. They also promised to unveil their new electrical working should a safe opportunity present itself, though Weatherby, upon hearing this, wondered exactly how “safe” would enter into the equation of the coming battle—or to the working, for that matter.

  At least the men were well drilled, Weatherby noted. If this was the moment, then they stood to make the most of it. Weatherby looked to starboard and saw Badger roughly a half-mile out, her guns at the ready as well.

  Weatherby returned to the quarterdeck a hairsbreadth ahead of Foster, both reporting their divisions ready for battle. The Count and Franklin had joined Morrow, despite the latter’s entreaty that they station themselves below decks to weather the coming engagement. Neither would have any of it, however.

  “Beyond the ship’s speed, I doubt Cagliostro has revealed much of his knowledge with these pirates,” St. Germain observed. “He was never of a mind to share freely of his work. And he likely believes he was successful in leaving us to take the blame for his crimes against the Xan.”

  “He very nearly was successful,” Franklin reminded him. “It was a canny ploy. But I agree. I doubt they shall have much besides speed to recommend them.”