Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “They say that you don’t know what you are doing. That we are chasing a bush tale. That we should head for Cowfoot Island and hide from the Azteca there.”

  John sighed. “I just have to hold it together for two more days. That’s all. Then we will see if Edward and the Loa were right about the Ma Wi Jung.”

  “We’re close, John, but we may not have that long.” Pepper moved over and sat on the bed next to John. Clumps of ice slid off his coat onto the bed.

  John looped his good arm around Pepper’s arm. He still didn’t understand what Pepper’s goals were, but for this shadowy moment, he felt an unspoken brotherhood with the man. “You shouldn’t be out. The crew will kill you if they realize you’ve escaped.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Steps toward the cabin door prompted Pepper to stand up. “I have to go, John.” He pulled his coat tight around him. “It’s hard to see you like this, man. You and me, we were just about the most dangerous things out there. Now here we are, messing around on this small little world, facing death. Unknown. Insignificant.” Pepper walked over to the rear porthole and opened it. A blast of cold air made John shiver. “Now we’re just alone.” Pepper slithered through the porthole, twisting and contorting to fit through a space that John didn’t think anyone could have fit through.

  “Where are you going?” John asked as Pepper dropped out of the porthole.

  Pepper’s hands grabbed the lip, and he looked into the cabin. “Out. Off this contraption. But I will be close by, John. Always close. If anything happens, strike out into the snow, quick. I’ll be there soon enough. Hear?”

  John nodded, and a hand knocked at the door. Pepper closed the porthole behind him and disappeared into the night.

  “Come in,” John said.

  Barclay strode in. “We got a problem.” His mouth etched out a grim line, his eyes narrowed. John didn’t know Barclay well, but he could see the anger in Barclay’s tense posture. “We missing food.”

  “Help me up,” John said. “How much are we missing?”

  “What we going do?”

  “How much are we missing?” John repeated.

  Barclay slammed the palm of his hand into the desk by the door. “Half.” He looked at John and nodded. “Enough to get back, seen? Someone plan this real careful.”

  John balanced on his good leg. “Call everyone topside, awake or asleep. We give orders. Half rations.”

  “They ain’t go like it. Not a bit.”

  “I know. But what’s the alternative? Our only hope is this damn machine everyone wants, you know that. Or do you think we have enough men in Capitol City to hold off the Azteca?”

  Barclay shook his head.

  “Do it,” John ordered. “Get someone to help me up the companionway.” Damn it, they were so close!

  Barclay walked off, shoulders slumped over. John hobbled over to the steps that led up into the dark, cold air. He could see stars just past the rails that led up.

  He shifted the crude crutch. Things were coming to a head, he realized. And a stubborn part in the back of his brain told him that there was no way he could back down. Some old part of him, long since forgotten, insisted that they find this machine. No matter what the cost. John’s breath steamed the air as he thought about how to get the sailors to find that same determination.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  So now what, John? he whispered to himself when Oaxyctl helped him out of the companionway and onto the deck. He wobbled for a second, the skin on his face crinkling as the cold wind brushed at him.

  Far in front of La Revanche great jagged edges of metal and ice grew out of the snows. They looked like shark fins. The landscape had changed from the natural to the unnatural. The graveyard of the old-fathers, John thought. Their ancient ships, their buildings, stuck in this snowy waste.

  La Revanche lurched to a stop, and John toppled forward. He braced against the fall with his arms, then struggled back to his knees. All twenty sailors stood on deck, and the mongoose-men lined the rails, shivering.

  “What the hell is going on?” John snapped.

  Barclay walked forward and John’s shoulders slumped. He could tell. Something in Barclay’s walk alone. He hadn’t kept control. “You?” John asked. “You’re turning the ship around, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry.” Barclay looked down at John. “I had tell you we only had half we supply. But I lie. I’d hope you would have turned back when I told you this. But instead, you want push on.”

  “So you think we chasing a fairy tale?”

  “We think we lucky if we make it back alive.”

  “Back where?” John yelled. “Capitol City? Or you go hide in the bush, on Cowfoot Island? Where?”

  The sailors muttered when they heard Cowfoot Island.

  “Already one of we lose they finger to the cold,” Barclay said. “This ain’t right. This weather, this place. We ain’t supposed to be here. If we leave now, we could hide on Cowfoot Island, build more boat, build some weapon. If we turn back now, we could fight.”

  “How long you think you can stay on Cowfoot Island?” John grunted and pulled himself up to stand on one leg. “Weeks? Months? Then the Azteca come and wipe you away when they realize people hiding there.”

  “Then we hide in the jungle,” someone yelled. “At least we live.”

  John walked forward. “This is foolishness.” He took another half step forward and Barclay pushed him. John flailed over backward and the side of his head hit a cleat. He bled onto the icy deck.

  Several mongoose-men stepped forward and the sailors produced spears and guns. An uneasy silence settled across the deck.

  “So what are you going to do with me?” John asked, looking straight at the forest of boots shuffling on the deck. Pepper had told him to go out onto the ice. But John didn’t have the strength to stand. The dizziness threatened to overwhelm him.

  “Lock you up, take you with us,” Barclay said.

  “Why don’t you leave me here.” John coughed and pulled his cheek off the cold deck. “Leave me here with food, water, let me try to find the machine myself.”

  Barclay shook his head.

  “He go die anyway,” someone shouted. “Toss him.”

  “No,” Barclay said. “If we amputate him leg now, rest him up, keep him warm, he go live.”

  “They don’t want that,” John said. “What do you do with me anyway? Maybe I’ll tell others about your treachery. Suppose I wander around, saying that you had a chance to save Capitol City, their brothers and cousins, from being sacrificed, or spending their lives as slaves?”

  Barclay looked around, judging the air for himself.

  “If you leave me,” John said, “you won’t have that on your conscience. You can still say you left me out here, and that if I didn’t find the machine, it was because it didn’t exist. Or it didn’t work.”

  “Okay.” Barclay swallowed. “You stay.” He looked around. “Get him supplies.”

  The sailors spread out.

  “Who will go with him?” Oaxyctl asked, still standing behind John. Barclay paused. “He can’t walk. And there are people on this ship who don’t want to turn around.”

  “Go with him, then, Azteca,” Barclay said. “Who else?”

  Avasa stepped forward. “I will go.” The long line of mongoose-men stirred, but he flicked his finger. He turned and pointed at two more mongoose-men. “As will they.”

  “You have twenty minutes,” Barclay said. “Then La Revanche steaming back to the ocean.”

  John dug the tip of his hook into the deck, splintering wood as he ground his teeth. He’d said he would get to the Ma Wi Jung and bring it back any way he could. Pepper had told him he was the code.

  He would get the Ma Wi Jung.

  “Oaxyctl,” he whispered. “There are maps in my cabin.”

  Barclay heard him and shook his head. “We need the maps to retrace the route, deBrun. You on you own.”

  John nodded. He had it memorized anyway. Instead he to
ld Oaxyctl where to find the device the Loa gave him in Capitol City. Just in case.

  Twenty minutes later Avasa and Oaxyctl helped him into the snow. The cold seeped through his clothes. Two sailors hopped down after them, silently agreeing to become part of the marooned group.

  La Revanche left the pack of seven a skiff and a pair of axes. Oaxyctl wasted no time in hacking the small boat apart to make a crude sled for John. Once done, the six men grabbed the ropes and pulled.

  On the sled, John and several bags of supplies moved forward toward the massive scythelike fins in the distance.

  “I hope,” Avasa said, “this thing we are searching for will be able to save us now, or we will die in the ice.”

  Oaxyctl, John noticed out of the corner of his eye, said nothing. He just looked back at the ship with dread in his eyes. It was as if he expected it to come bearing down on them at any moment.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Oaxyctl was convinced he would die in the cold. The bleak, colorless hills of snow stretched and stretched until they either hit small mountain peaks in the distance or disappeared into the gray haze that hung over the land. Each step into the deep snow, almost halfway up his thighs, seemed to bring more numbness. And the constant struggle through the powder exhausted him.

  Hopefully he could do what he was commanded before the god caught up to them.

  Sweat froze. First it trickled down his back and sides. Then it froze. Sometimes the beads of sweat would unfreeze again, and trickle farther down until his clothes caught it.

  On the pallet they pulled through the snow, John lay in a slight fever. At least that was small consolation. Oaxyctl had been told Barclay would try to jail John, so that Oaxyctl could torture him for the codes, but it had also been understood that Oaxyctl might have to leave the ship with John to get the codes.

  If he could return to La Revanche quickly enough with the codes, he should be safe. But even if he didn’t, Oaxyctl’s friends had told him that the god was out on the ice now, and it would catch up to them one way or another.

  If he got the codes first, then they could return to the ship, Oaxyctl imagined. He would have done his duty to the gods.

  Oaxyctl wasn’t sure what John dreamed or hallucinated now out in the cold, but he couldn’t imagine John would live long. And he needed the pass codes John had in him before John died.

  Where was the god? Oaxyctl wondered. Close?

  He wondered if he was supposed to kill John right after obtaining the codes, to seal them away for good. It seemed that the gods might want that, but Oaxyctl wasn’t sure he could do it. He’d spent too long in Nanagada and been through too much with John. He viewed John and his men as just that, men, like him. And they did not deserve slow deaths any more than Oaxyctl did.

  Coward, he told himself. That is all you are. At one time he would have been glad to offer himself up as a sacrifice to the gods.

  But now he no longer believed they were gods. Just that they were more powerful creatures than him.

  All these thoughts swirled around his mind as he trudged along the icy wastes. But the one image that sat foremost in his mind was that of the glistening, black cocoon ensconced inside La Revanche.

  Oaxyctl wondered what form the god would take to track them through the snow.

  The great fins towered a few hundred feet overhead, blocking out the strong winds that seemed to whip the cold right through them. Avasa agreed that they should rest in the shelter of one, away from the ten-foot-long icicles that had developed on the ledges overhead.

  Oaxyctl sat close to the fire and listened to the snapping sound of ice. Avasa huddled close to him.

  Times like this seemed surreal. They were so far removed from the things they considered normal that they began to lose themselves.

  “Do you miss your wife?” Avasa asked.

  Oaxyctl looked at the man. They both had dark skin, brown compared to the darker skin of the average Nanagadan. In the cold it seemed to turn gray. Avasa’s mustache drooped tiny icicles that moved as he spoke.

  “I barely remember her,” Oaxyctl said. “Does that sound bad?” Over to his left John stirred, wrapped in blankets, only his eyes visible. “I’m so far out from anything I consider normal, I don’t even understand things. I just keep going.”

  Avasa nodded. “I’ll miss seeing my wife again.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Kali’s infinite eyes stare back at me in this desolate shitland,” Avasa said. “I know I’m going to die of the cold here. Look.” He pulled at his gloves, tugged at them, until the stiff piece of clothing pulled off. The edges of his fingers were black. “I can’t feel them.” Avasa’s voice broke. “The cold is eating me away at the edges.”

  He solemnly held the damaged hand close to the fire.

  Oaxyctl looked down at his boots. He’d stopped feeling the stinging snow around his toes at midday. He wondered what his feet looked like.

  “So why do it?” Oaxyctl asked. “You could have stayed on the ship.”

  Avasa looked at him. “I’ve seen the plans to keep back the Azteca. We stand no chance. This long shot John chases, that Haidan came up with, it’s the only hope I have of saving my family, my children. One must do whatever they can, even it means one’s life, understand?”

  Oaxyctl squinted at the dancing fire. Thinking of John’s struggle, he said, “Yes, I understand.” He huddled into his clothes as best he could. The wind whistled nearby, broken by the great slab of metal at their backs. He’d been right. Capitol City could not stand. There was no place that he could hide from the gods.

  Their will demanded to be obeyed. He had no choice.

  The other men glanced at each other, grim, quiet, mostly trying to catch sleep. Oaxyclt nodded at the two sailors who’d volunteered to come.

  One was the man who had led him deep into La Revanche’s bilge to meet the god. The man nodded back.

  Oaxyctl stamped out the fire. He looked at the last embers wistfully, recalling the warmth and already missing it. The fierce, constant wind kicked up snow, making it hard to hear anything.

  “My name Lionel.” Oaxyctl turned around toward the accomplice who was yelling at him over the wind, the sailor by his side. “I never introduce myself before.” Lionel nodded over at the other sailor. “He name Vincent. He with us.”

  “Okay.” Oaxyctl pulled Lionel close and whispered, “Your task is the two mongoose-men. Get them out of sight, kill them.”

  “Yeah.”

  They crunched over the ice away from each other, breath puffing out in front of their faces.

  John’s fever had let up again, Oaxyctl noticed. John craned his head back and looked up at the great fins of metal around them all. “Oaxyctl, are those letters?”

  Oaxyctl looked up the sides of a large fin across from the party.

  “Yes.” Faint shadows of symbols could barely be discemed.

  “Read them to me.”

  Oaxyctl squinted, but couldn’t read the faded shapes. “I can’t.”

  “Damn.” John struggled around a bit, then stopped. “I don’t know where my spyglass is.”

  “We left it on the ship.”

  “Oh.”

  Oaxyctl walked out toward the end of the rope, taking his place next to Avasa and Lionel. The two mongoose-men walked out in front, scouting the way. They’d found the ice to be treacherous, filled with crevasses. They walked with splintered lengths of plank to stick into the snow every other step to search for lethal gaps.

  “Oaxyctl,” John called out. “I think we lost my leg.”

  Oaxyctl said back over his shoulder, “I know.” He picked up the rope, then he and Avasa began to pull. They weren’t as fast as the ship. And La Revanche didn’t fall into crevasses as they might.

  Three, or four, more days of this hell.

  It didn’t help Oaxyctl’s nerves that at any moment he knew something horrible could burst out from the gloom. The god was out there, tracking them by now.

  He
felt it.

  Lionel’s attack came three hours later. The mongoose-men and the two sailors left to explore up ahead. They were out of the great forest of fins into gentle hills of snow.

  Oaxyctl heard a scream, and then another.

  Lionel returned alone, fifteen minutes later. He looked shaken, a good actor. “A big crevasse,” he panted. He shook his head. Looked at Avasa with a tired expression. “My man Vincent dead. And you two mongoose-men.”

  Avasa dropped the rope, calm. “My two best men?”

  Lionel nodded. “We go need avoid that area.”

  Avasa walked over to him. “Those men never made mistakes like that. Not ones you would have been able to walk from.”

  “What you saying?” Lionel asked.

  “We keep going. Straight. I want to see what happened for myself.”

  Lionel hesitated, but Oaxyctl took up the rope. “Let’s keep going.”

  Avasa circled the scuffed marks in the snow and squatted. Oaxyctl stood next to him. The crevasse, he thought, was a few feet away. If he just shoved and kicked Avasa in, he could be done.

  But he could see a wariness in Avasa’s posture that told him otherwise.

  And even if he didn’t see it, he wasn’t sure he could do it.

  Coward, he berated himself again.

  “They fought,” Avasa said. “I don’t know about that man Lionel. He is lying. He killed my men.”

  “Maybe the other man, Vincent, did something,” Oaxyctl said.

  Avasa shook his head. He pulled a gun out and trudged over to Lionel.

  Oaxyctl pulled the ax out of his belt and followed. “Listen, there is no need for any of this!” He tried to get closer to Avasa.

  Lionel stood up and pulled a long knife out from his boots. He and Avasa circled each other. The sound of a shotgun being cocked stopped them all.

  John sat upright, shivering in his blankets. “No one kills anyone. You all stay right in front of me. You all put your weapons on the sled, slowly. Then we continue on.”