“They?” Daenek shook his head, trying to clear away the fog of lapsed memory. “Who’s they?”
“A bunch of our mechanics.” The translator rubbed his speckled chin. “When the caravans had halted to wait for the storm to pass that night, the mechanics found that one of the tread plates had come off several kilometers back. About a dozen of them went hiking after it in the rain, to fetch it before it got rusted. Lucky for you that they stumbled across you as well. Seemed just about gone when they flopped you into the infirmary here.”
Daenek hesitated, cautiously weighing his next question.
“Were there,” he spoke quietly, “any—others around?”
The translator smiled, his expression becoming conspiratorial. “Oh, a few. Some local subthane’s strongarmers, all befuddled with booze and confusion. The mechs had no trouble losing them.”
Daenek tensed. How much do they know? And if they do know I’m the thane’s son . . . what then? “Did you find out, um, why they were looking for me?”
“Faugh,” snorted the translator. “Ask a hard one. Skinny, odd-looking kid like you—gashed up like that, and why else would they be in such a storm mucking about to find you? You’re some busker that tricked a few coins out of some subthane’s pocket, and got caught at it. The fact that you know more than one language only cinches it.” The old man nodded sagely.
With a small sigh, Daenek relaxed and leaned back against the wall. “Well,” he said, smiling. “I guess you’ve found me out.”
The translator stood up. He spoke to the first mertzer, who turned and hurried down the aisle. “We’ll see if we can’t come up with some food,” said the old man over his shoulder as he followed after the other figure.
Safe, thought Daenek. The door shut and he was alone again in the room, except for the yellow disc of sunlight, now oval-shaped upon the blanket. But for how long?
Daenek swabbed the last trace of gravy from the plate, then swallowed the piece of bread in two bites. He still felt hungry, even though the food had seemed to expand inside him like a slow, comfortable explosion. He knew he probably would have eaten himself sick if he had been given more.
He laid the metal plate beside himself on the bed. With his thumb he rubbed out a spot on the rough-textured pants the old translator had brought him. Daenek’s own had been too badly shredded to save, but his shirt was on his back, carefully washed and mended by someone aboard the caravan. And his boots, scraped clean of mud, had been returned as well.
His hands flew suddenly to his throat as he re-mebered the fine-linked chain and the little square of white metal. Until now he hadn’t noticed that it was missing. A momentary surge of despair welled up inside but he quickly pushed down the feeling.
It had only been a key after all, he told himself—what did it matter if it was buried in the mud on some irretrievable hillside?
When I come to that door, he thought, I’ll find a way in. No matter what.
The door at the far end of the room opened and the translator came in again. Daenek watched the bent-shouldered figure passing between the rows of beds towards him. His mind was intent, furiously plotting out what to say and do next. Even if they kick me off, he thought, I’m still better off than I was—as long as they don’t know who I really am. But if I could get on here, stay on board for a while—
“Ready to see the captain?” said the translator.
Daenek nodded and stood up. He brushed some crumbs from his shirt, then followed the translator out of the infirmary.
Several flights of metal steps that rang under Daenek’s boots, and they emerged through a hatchway onto the caravan’s wide, level deck. Daenek blinked, looking about in the dazzling sunlight. Beyond the guardrail a dozen meters away the landscape of hills slowly crawled past. Behind the caravan, its sister machines followed, a convoy receding into the distance as they breasted the land.
The deep bass vibration of the caravan’s engines was stronger out in the open. It pulsed through Daenek’s body like a new heart. A shrill sound from above, and he looked up to see great-winged birds outlined against the sky as they glided past the struts of the towering cranes and hoists.
A group of mertzers, lounging idly around the gaping mouth of an open cargo hold, looked with mild curiosity at them.
Daenek hurried to catch up with the translator on the narrow walkway. Ahead he saw the looming mass of the caravan’s control tower, surmounted by the wide sweep of glass that was the bridge.
Daenek followed the translator into the base of the tower and up the flights of stairs leading to the bridge. He noted that here the lights and ventilation worked, in contrast to the dim, musty-smelling infirmary and other sections through which they had passed.
At the top of the stairs the translator motioned for Daenek to wait, then rapped on the rivetted metal of the door before them.
“Captain Sather was born in the Capitol and speaks the tongue, too,” whispered the old man. “So watch what you say.” The door swung open and he led Daenek into the bridge.
Through the bank of windows Daenek could see the land before the caravan, the wide stretch of brown dirt that was the roadway flowing under the prow. There were four mertzers already in the glass-walled room, three of them wearing dark blue coats and stiff caps. The fourth, a compact but solidly muscled figure standing with folded arms at the far end of the bridge, wore the usual leather jacket and battered cloth cap.
The blue-coated mertzer who had opened the door closed it behind them and then joined his companion in front of the gauges and controls that extended nearly the width of the room.
Daenek assumed that the mertzer with the faded gold trim on his jacket and stiff cap was the captain. The man gazed moodily through the central window at the landscape, taking occasional sips from a cup filled with a dark, steaming liquid. How much has he changed, wondered Daenek, since the day he kicked Stepke off his caravan?
The translator led Daenek towards the captain, whose small, hard eyes glared at them from over the rim of his cup. He growled something in the mertzer language. The translator looked abashed and replied in a hurried murmur.
The captain’s eyes moved across Daenek’s face, then back to the land beyond the windows. “Lost in a storm,” he muttered disgustedly in English. “Well, find the fool a place to sleep until we reach the next village. We’ll let him off there.” He turned away slightly, as if the matter were of no interest.
“Excuse me, sir,” broke in Daenek. He saw one of the other mertzers leave the control panel and walk towards them. “I was wondering—if I couldn’t be of use to you. That is, uh, that it might be worth letting me sign on with you.”
The captain turned his head and looked at him coldly. “Why should it be?”
“Well, you see, I’ve got a kind of talent—for languages.”
Daenek had worried whether telling this might expose his real identity, but the possible benefits of staying aboard the caravan had finally outweighed his fears. “I can learn any language there is in a day.”
“So?” The eyes stayed hard.
Daenek was taken aback for a second. “Well, I could be a translator. For your negotiations in the different villages.”
“We’ve got a translator.” The captain pointed with his cup. “Standing right next to you.”
“But he’s getting old.” Daenek glanced at the old man beside him, then quickly away. “And he’s not as good at it as I am. Or would be, if you give me a chance.”
The captain grunted. “Who cares? Damn villagers take what we give ’em. And if they don’t like the prices, I don’t listen anyway. What good’s a translator? I need some strong backs around here, not useless talents.” He turned away, bending his head back to drain the last from his cup.
Looking nonplussed, the old translator tugged at Daenek’s sleeve and stepped towards the door being held open for them.
With an exhalation of bitter disappointment, Daenek was about to follow him out when the fourth mertzer, who had watc
hed the scene from the bridge’s far end, stepped forward and spoke to the captain in a low voice. The captain listened and fingered his chin. Daenek pulled away from the translator.
The mertzer in the leather jacket and cloth cap stopped speaking, and the captain nodded. He looked over at Daenek.
“The chief mechanic here,” he spoke gruffly, “says he’s short-manned. Do you mind getting grease rubbed into your skin?”
Daenek looked at the expressionless face beneath the cloth cap, then back to the captain. “No,” he said.
“Get him signed on,” said the captain to the translator.
Dangling his empty cup from his hand, he walked over to one of the windows and stared out.
The translator grabbed Daenek’s arm and pulled him towards the door. The chief mechanic nodded silently at Daenek but before he could say anything they were out of the bridge and the door closed in front of his face.
“The head mech seems to be good luck for you,” said the translator as he led Daenek back down the stairs. “He led the party that was searching for the tread plate and found you instead. And short his crew is, too, since a drive cylinder exploded a week ago and killed two men. They just signed on another new man yesterday. Which serves to prove that some men’s misfortunes are blessings for others. You’ve got a place on board, if not—” He cast a sharp glance over his shoulder at Daenek. “—the one you were shooting for.”
“I’m sorry about what I said.” Daenek felt his face start to burn.
The old man snorted. “If I’d known you wanted to be a translator, I’d have warned you of your chances. Once, when I was younger, there were a dozen of us. But time’s slid past us. When I’m gone, that’ll be the last of talking to the villagers at all—someday you’ll just grunt at each other like animals.” His voice darkened with loathing.
They reached the bottom of the tower and stepped out onto the sunswept deck. “Well, come on then, lad,” said the translator, brightening. “If you’re going to be a mertzer, you’d best learn to speak like one first. A language in a day, eh?”
Chapter IX
It soon became obvious that there were no special procedures for the beginning of mertzerhood—that one such as Daenek becoming a mertzer was so rare and isolated an event as to need no special rituals surrounding it. The faces on board the caravan seemed to form around a waiting suspicion, as if saying beneath the flesh Can you ever be one of us? Can you?
Just wait, thought Daenek. He grinned at his image in the mirror hanging on the wall of the translator’s compact room.
Pulling the cloth cap closer to his eyes, he rocked back on his heels and admired the effect. There was a small chit of paper in his pocket that told how much would be taken from his first month’s wages for the cap, the leather jacket slung over the end of the translator’s bed, and the miscellaneous clothing and items stowed in a heavy canvas bag. The supplies clerk, deep in one of the farthest recesses of the caravan, had shuffled from cabinet to cabinet amassing the stuff, then handed the pile over his counter to Daenek with a bored expression on his face.
Just give me a chance, he said to the image in the mirror.
The words formed in his head in the mertzer tongue. Daenek felt a little gravel-eyed from lack of sleep, but pleased and satisfied to have spent all night up with the old translator, roaming ceaselessly through the corridors and chambers of the caravan, greedily soaking up the names of things, and how these men spoke of them and each other. The members of the night crews were greeted at their stations, the men’s faces green-lit by the dials of engine and guidance controls. Through the walls of the sleeping quarters he had been able to hear the rasp and snort of the universal sleepers’ language.
The mertzer language was like English (or at least to Daenek it seemed similar) but with rhythms and cadences like that of the great engines pulsing in the caravan’s center. The whole language, complex but of one piece, lay in Daenek’s mind now.
The door opened behind him and the old translator stuck his head into the room. “The captain wants to see you on the bridge. Right now.”
Daenek turned away from the mirror and grabbed the leather jacket from the bed. Great, he thought with satisfaction. He had somehow felt sure that there would be some kind of ritual, however slight, to mark this transition into a new life—a rebirth, actually. “I can find my way,” he told the old man. “You go ahead and get some sleep.”
As he emerged onto the caravan’s deck, the morning sun broke over a distant range of hills. The cranes and hoists, towering even when folded in upon themselves, were bathed in red light. Daenek savored the cold air as he headed along the walkway towards the control tower. His lungs tingled pleasantly as he entered the tower and mounted the stairs.
A surly “Come in” answered his knock upon the bridge’s door.
Daenek pushed it open before him. The glass-walled room was filled with the morning’s light, but here it seemed grey and numbing. He looked around and saw the captain and the head mechanic looking at him. Then his heart froze for a beat as he turned and saw to one side the militia captain and two of the subthane’s men.
“That’s him,” growled the trio’s leader, pointing to Daenek.
“He’s what we came for.” A swath of dirty bandages covered half of his skull. His face was rigid with anger. He stepped towards Daenek but the captain waved him back.
“Can you understand what this fellow’s saying?” The captain turned and spoke to Daenek.
“Yes.” Daenek’s heart raced with tension. “I—”
“Never mind.” The captain unfolded a square of paper, creased and smudged with dirt. “They probably don’t have anything more to say than what’s on this letter they gave us when we picked them up out of the middle of the road. The translator said its about you being wanted by the subthane over by the stone-cutters’ village. Doesn’t say what you did, though— I’d like to know what a young busker could do to make so much trouble, for his hide to be worth this much.”
Daenek’s fists clenched as his eyes travelled from the captain’s face to the leader of the subthane’s men and then back again.
“Give me five minutes head-start,” he said hoarsely. A sick hollowness had formed in his gut, the loss of his hopes. “Just that, and—”
“Headstart?” The captain scowled as if puzzled. “What for?”
“Aren’t you going to put me off? Hand me over?”
“What! To some puny little subthane’s grubby henchmen?”
“You’re a mertzer now,” spoke the head mechanic. It was the first time he had ever addressed Daenek directly. “Mertzers don’t hand each other over to such as these.” He jerked a contemptuous thumb, the nail rimmed with black grease, at the three.
The captain scribbled on the blank side of the letter with a pen he took from his coat. “Here,” he said, holding the paper out to the uncomprehending figure. “Have somebody read this for you when you get back home.”
Silent, the militia captain took the paper. His face darkened as he suddenly understood. He stepped back and drew a knife from his shirt. “Get him,” he said to his comrades, pointing to Daenek.
The two others rushed towards Daenek, but before they had crossed the room, the captain slapped the knife from their leader’s hand and slammed him against the control panel with an echoing crash. The chief mechanic caught one of the others on the point of his fist. Daenek scrambled out of the way as the mechanic collared the second man and dumped him into a heap with the first.
“Drop these overboard,” said the captain to another pair of mertzers who had appeared in the doorway. He flung the staggering leader towards them.
As the subthane’s men were carried out, Daenek noticed a tiny drop of blood by his foot—one of the men had bloodied his nose on the mechanic’s massive forearm. As Daenek looked, he felt dizzy and the red dot grew, swelled into an ocean, a universe of blood. The mute watcher was there, drowning, and below him the Lady Marche. And even further in the depths, so far he
could not discern his face, was his father. More deaths, a trail of them like a stream of air in the blood. I’d forgotten, thought Daenek, paralyzed with horror and anguish, I’d forgotten about all that. A mertzer now? Something other than myself? Never—no world can claim me but this one, the one of blood and death. He knew it like a stone in his heart.
“What’s the matter with you?” It was the captain’s voice. “You look sick.”
“Nothing.” Daenek looked away from the drop of blood. The vision dissolved from around him.
“Then get out of here. I’ve got work to do. And so do you. Report to the main engine room after you get stowed away.”
“You’ll be sharing your sleeping quarters with the other new man that got signed on.” The translator stopped in front of one of the doors that lined both sides of the corridor. “He’s probably at work already down in the engine room, so just go ahead and get settled. Here’s the key.”
Daenek watched the old man walk slowly down the corridor and mount the metal steps that led to the caravan’s upper levels.
The artificial light seemed strangely cold in the deserted hallway.
The translator had acted distant somehow, as if sensing something he hadn’t before. Maybe he smells the blood, thought Daenek. He winced, trying to squeeze the memory of the vision in the blood drop from his eyes.
A few seconds passed and then Daenek inserted the key into the door’s lock. It clicked and he pushed the door open.
The room was small, barely large enough to contain two beds, a folding screen and a pair of bat-tered footlockers. A few shelves were mounted on the walls, with curling flakes of paint exposing the metal beneath.
One bed had no blankets on it. Daenek tossed his bag of clothes onto it, then his cap. His gaze quickly surveyed the little cubicle. There was the sound of running water coming from another door opposite the entrance. He crossed the room in two strides and opened the door.
In a bathroom even smaller than the sleeping quarters, someone was standing in front of a sink, stripped to the waist and with hands and fore-arms covered with lather from a bar of soap. “How about some privacy, fellow?” A soapy hand slammed the door in Daenek’s face.
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