The Cloud Hunters

by Alex Shearer

  But then, maybe we’re the ugly ones, all of us out here in the light. We just think we’re better looking, but we’re not. It’s only what we’re used to. Maybe we’re the monsters. It’s all, as people say, in the eye of the beholder. And if sight is not one of your senses, then the apprehension of beauty must lie elsewhere, in forms other than visual ones: in scent, in sound, in touch.

  Either way, whatever the evolutionary truth of it, we saw some of the ugliest and most grotesque things float by us as we sailed between the Islands of Night. There were things that looked like living gargoyles and things that must surely have escaped from experimental laboratories. There were creatures that appeared to have been made inside out, or the wrong way round, with their innards where their outsides should have been. They were nightmares incarnate: your worst dreams made real.

  ‘Pretty, eh?’ Jenine said, as one of these mutations went past. It swivelled its head towards us at the sound of her voice, showing an eyeless face and scale-covered skin. It opened its mouth, emitted a high-pitched shriek of terror, and sped off. I was glad to see that it found us as frightening and repulsive as we found it.

  At least that meant it would keep its distance.

  I found Jenine’s hand in the darkness, and I held onto it, tight.

  27

  dark lives

  The further into the dark we travelled, the more numerous the creatures became. Some were all but transparent. Many were sightless. But some had huge eyes, the size of plates, hungry for any available light. And those night creatures all seemed to be predators, living in a state of constant warfare, preying on the next in line along the food chain.

  I saw one animal swim into our spotlight and it was as clear as crystal. Inside it was another creature, which had taken up residence in its innards. Either that or it was lunch. Who was eating whom was quite impossible to determine. Maybe they were simultaneously eating each other, and neither quite knew yet who was the diner and who was the meal.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Parasite,’ Kaneesh said. ‘This place is full of them. Everywhere’s full of them.’

  I got that impression that Kaneesh didn’t really hold a very high opinion of the local wildlife.

  He stood at the prow, a boat hook in his hand. Now and again he prodded and jabbed at any creatures that ventured too close.

  Usually a prod was enough to repel them. Once it wasn’t. So he stuck the point of the hook right into a passing sky-slug. It squealed and scurried off, oozing some substance that looked too black to be blood, but who knew?

  ‘How long until we’re through and out the other side?’ I asked.

  ‘Another eight hours or so,’ Jenine said.

  I was cold. I sat on a pile of rope and blew into my hands. I didn’t much like the darkness. There was a smell, too, of damp and weed and salt; it was fetid and malodorous, as if things were decaying all around us.

  The spotlight picked out a tangle of creepers ahead. It was impossible to see if they grew downwards from above or upwards from beneath. They waved lazily in the air, matted together like dreadlocks.

  ‘Stingers,’ Jenine said.

  Kaneesh nodded to Carla. She touched the helm to slightly change course and the boat avoided them.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Just don’t touch one,’ Jenine said. ‘Or you’ll find out.’

  As she spoke, another sky-slug came into view. It was giving the creepers a wide berth, but they seemed to sense its presence and drifted towards it, as if reaching out to grasp it in a friendly embrace.

  Too late, the slug took evasive action. The creepers were upon it. They left deep, black weals where they touched its flesh. The sky-slug writhed and squirmed. Then it was suddenly quiet and the creepers enveloped it.

  ‘Good,’ Carla said. ‘They won’t bother with us now.’

  We sailed on. I looked back. Already the creepers were unravelling. The slug had gone. There was nothing left of it. The creepers shook themselves loose and drifted down again to form a curtain. They looked decorative, attractive, even enticing; rather beautiful in their way, not lethal at all. They looked something else now too: plump, sleek, and well fed.

  ‘Look . . .’

  Jenine pointed to the side of the boat, where one of the creepers had scraped along the hull. It had left a dark trail.

  ‘Wow . . .’

  Unthinkingly, I reached out. She knocked my hand aside.

  ‘Don’t touch it. What are you doing?’

  ‘It’s still toxic?’

  ‘Of course it is. You’ll lose your fingers.’

  Kaneesh brought a hose over and sprayed the hull. There was a hiss and a burst of steam and the water sizzled.

  On we sailed.

  Every now and then we spotted debris entangled in creepers. Or the spotlight would pick things out lying on the surface of the island below. There were the struts of masts, the remnants of sails, pieces of broken solar panels, shattered hulls, flotsam and jetsam, lost or abandoned cargoes. It was a junk dealer’s paradise. Though no junk boat would venture here; they’d stick to easier and safer salvage.

  ‘How many ships don’t get through?’ I asked.

  ‘The careless ones don’t,’ Jenine told me.

  Yet I doubted it was that simple. I didn’t think it was solely a matter of skill and good skymanship. I felt you had to be lucky too.

  ‘Why do so many risk coming this way?’ I said.

  ‘It saves days of travelling, of course. The shortcut’s worth the danger. And besides, not everybody wants to use the Main Drift. There are too many custom patrols around there for some people’s liking.’

  I suspected that included Kaneesh. He wouldn’t want to meet a customs and excise patrol. They might pull him over, ask to see his documentation, his authorisations and clearances, his licences and permissions, his identity card and all the other necessary papers that he no doubt didn’t have.

  They might even ask to see his tax and insurance records. Then he would definitely be in trouble. He probably hadn’t paid a cent of income tax in his whole life. And he no doubt intended to keep things that way.

  For the next hour we sailed steadily on, avoiding the dangling creepers and trailing fronds, and discouraging the curiosity of any passing, would-be predators, tempted to find out if we were edible. Kaneesh kept busy with the boat hook, fending off anything that got too close.

  After a while he got tired – or bored – and handed the boat hook to me. So I put on a display of bravado and prodded energetically away, as I had seen him do, at any creature that ventured too near.

  The spotlight on the prow cut a swathe through the darkness. Another few hours and we would be back out in the light. But just when I assumed that things would be easy and straightforward from now on, a shape loomed out of the gloom above us. It wasn’t a creature this time. It was a boat. With creatures on it, certainly. But human creatures like us.

  Kaneesh took the boat hook back from me.

  ‘Carla!’

  He called to draw her attention to what he and I and Jenine had just seen.

  ‘Who are they? What is it?’ I whispered.

  ‘Barbaroons,’ Jenine said. ‘Proper ones. Not just water thieves. Serious pirates.’

  ‘What do they want?’

  ‘What do you think, Christien? What do pirates usually want? Your money, maybe?’

  ‘I don’t have any money. Well . . . not much.’

  ‘How about your life, then? You’ve got one of those, haven’t you? At least for the time being.’

  The approaching ship was close enough for me to make out its occupants, even in that gloomy darkness. It was propelled by a galley of rowers, paddling the air with wide, flat-tipped oars. The rest of the crew lined the decks, armed with knives, cutlasses and swords. They were grim and terrifying.

  And, somehow, what made them even more terrifying was that every single one of them was blind and unseeing, with sightless eyes that stared blankly, or with dark
, empty hollows, like the faces of skulls.

  But despite that, each one of them also seemed to be watching us closely, as if they could discern the very fear on our faces and the mounting dread in our hearts. I told myself not to panic, but I could feel the sweat trickling down my back.

  I looked at Kaneesh and saw that even on his face small beads of perspiration were forming. If Kaneesh was worried, then there was something to worry about. And that frightened me, even more.

  When even the fearless start to look fearful, you know that you’ve got problems.

  28

  barbaroons

  ‘They’ve got no eyes. They can’t –’

  The moment the words were out of my mouth, every head on that approaching deck turned towards me.

  ‘They don’t need to . . .’ Jenine whispered. The heads moved again, to face her.

  Kaneesh hammered the boat hook against the side. The rattling noise lured the sightless faces to turn in his direction. He sprang along the deck, banging and crashing as he went. Then he ran across to the other side and did the same. Carla took up a knife and rapped the hilt of it against an empty basin.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘Trying to dupe them,’ Jenine said. ‘To make them think there are more of us. If they imagine there’s a full crew, they might not risk attacking.’

  At each new sound, heads and ears turned.

  ‘But surely everyone with any sense must try to deceive them like that?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean it won’t work. They’ve got to decide whether to risk it; whether it’s real or a bluff. Come on. Grab something. Make a noise. Loud as you can.’

  We joined in the hubbub, making as much noise around the boat as we could. The Barbaroons went on listening, their heads cocked to one side; they looked like curious, exotic birds.

  ‘How can they be pirates if they can’t see?’ I said, as I struck out with a ladle and whacked resoundingly at an empty water barrel.

  ‘They live in darkness,’ Jenine said. ‘They don’t need to see.’ She rattled a cup and a bowl together.

  ‘And if they capture a ship, what do they do?’

  ‘Take it. And seize its cargo.’

  ‘And the people on board?’

  ‘Give them a choice. The way the Quenant do.’

  ‘What choice? Choice to do what?’

  ‘Join them or be killed.’

  ‘But in that case –’

  She already knew what I was going to say.

  ‘In that case why are they all blind?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘If you want to live, and agree to become one of them, then that’s just what you become. They blind you. So you’re the same as they are. No eyes. No sight. No unfair advantages. You’re committed.’

  ‘But . . . that’s so – barbaric.’

  ‘They’re Barbaroons.’

  ‘But surely, if they had someone sighted on board –’

  ‘Maybe. Or maybe that someone might try to escape. Or to take over. But once you’ve lost your eyes, then you’re with them. What other choice do you have then?’

  ‘Plenty. The fact that you can’t see doesn’t mean –’

  ‘No. But how are you to escape? Where do you escape to? Except over the side.’

  ‘Are they going to let us by? Do you think we’ve fooled them?’

  ‘Don’t know – we’ll soon find out.’

  ‘Well, at least we can see.’

  ‘Don’t count on that to save you,’ Jenine said. ‘Don’t you know about the Valley of the Blind?’

  I did. It was a story we had studied once at school. There used to be a saying that, ‘in the Valley of the Blind, the one-eyed man is king.’ In the story, a one-eyed man hears this and so he journeys to the remote Valley of the Blind, thinking to make himself their ruler. But what he discovers is that the blind populace are far more attuned to their familiar surroundings than he will ever be. And far from becoming their king, he is forced to become their slave.

  The ship drew nearer. We went on making as much racket as we could, trying to sound like a full crew: one armed to the teeth and capable of inflicting dire casualties.

  But we must have tried too hard. We had overlooked the obvious: full complements of crew don’t make such a commotion. A full crew would have been quieter. Even a hundred men can be silent when they have to be, holding their collective breath. A full crew might have kept deliberately quiet, to incite an attack, knowing that they would take the upper hand. They would have pretended silence. Only the outnumbered would so pathetically bang and crash in an unconvincing show of bravado.

  Empty kettles make the most noise and the noise we made proved our hollowness and vulnerability. When you hear someone whistling in the dark, the chances are he’s only doing it to keep his spirits up. More than likely, he’s alone. He doesn’t have an army, following two steps behind him.

  The Barbaroons’ ship was now little more than a hundred metres away. The crew lined the deck and they were certainly no beauty pageant. The ones who didn’t look like killers simply looked like something worse. The kinder of them might put you out of your misery; the others would delight in putting you into it.

  The one I took for the captain, if only because he was taller, broader and more vocal than the rest, was at the prow, his head held at an angle, as if his ears were eyes and he could hear what was going on as clearly as an ordinary man could see it.

  He reached for a harpoon gun, raised it and aimed. Kaneesh swiftly spun the tiller, simultaneously adjusting the buoyancy of the ship. We floated up, but the other man sensed it, and he raised the harpoon gun as we ascended, following our trajectory every step of the way.

  Then he pulled the trigger.

  The bolt fired out and shot across the space that separated us, embedding itself in our hull. As it did, three more harpoons simultaneously exploded and our ship was caught, like a speared fish on the end of a line.

  The Barbaroons held the ropes tightly and began to winch them in. The ships drew closer. Kaneesh ran to the side and tried to hack through the securing ropes. But they were thick and took a lot of cutting and some were out of his reach. Or he would cut one rope loose, only for another bolt to embed itself into the side of the boat, coming perilously near to killing him.

  He shouted to Carla. ‘The pump. Start it up!’

  She ran to the compressor. The Barbaroons were closing in. Their captain was cursing and yelling, laying about him indiscriminately with a lash, telling his crew to pull those ropes in, damn them, or he’d give them even worse across their backs.

  Soon they’d be near enough to board us.

  ‘The pump!’ Kaneesh yelled again. ‘Start that pump!’

  Carla tried the compressor. It shuddered and misfired, then it caught.

  The Barbaroons were so close now you could smell them. And they didn’t smell good. They stank of slept-in clothes and unwashed bodies; of lice-ridden hair; of foul breath, unbrushed teeth, and rotting gums. That’s one thing you don’t hear so much about pirates and brigands: the fact is that for a lot of the time, they stink, to high and low heaven.

  Jenine and I were with Kaneesh at the side. We were leaning over, blades in our hands, trying to hack at the harpoon ropes which tethered us. As I cut through one of them, I heard a whoosh and felt a breath of air, then heard a reverberating twang as a thrown knife embedded itself into the hull, not two centimetres from my ear.

  Not a bad shot, I thought, for a blind man.

  Maybe next time, he wouldn’t miss.

  The compressors were humming.

  ‘Turn them up!’ Kaneesh yelled. ‘Top speed!’

  Carla moved a lever. The hum became a loud throb, then a drone.

  ‘All right. Now!’

  Kaneesh ran to the compressor’s intake hose. He grabbed its nozzle and pulled at the reel. The hose unravelled. He ran back with it to the side. There was a crash of wood on wood and metal on metal as the two boats collided. The Barbaroons
were upon us now. Just a step away. Hands extended, they groped for holds; their bare, calloused feet edging their way ahead. Their knives and swords were at the ready. So close were they, I could see rust and dried blood on the blades.

  ‘Now!’ Kaneesh shouted to Carla. ‘Reverse it! Full power!’

  Carla threw the compressor into reverse. There was a second of silence, then a great torrent of water spumed from the hose, white and pluming, under enormous pressure. It shot out like a liquid bullet. Kaneesh had to steady himself to avoid being thrown overboard by the sheer force of the water streaming from the hose.

  The jet from that water cannon hit the Barbaroons with the force of a swung hammer. One of them, his foot already on deck, his sword held high, took the full impact of it in his chest. He was lifted bodily off his feet and swept clean over the side. All we saw of him after that was what we heard of him, as he plunged into the darkness; he landed with a muffled thud on the lower Island of Night far beneath.

  More of them came to board the ship. Kaneesh repelled two of them. Carla fended one off with a boat hook. Jenine and I went on desperately trying to cut the mooring ropes. She had to lean right over, as I held onto her, in order to reach the last of them. As she hacked with her knife, the Barbaroons yelled and cursed in chaos and confusion. The water cannon knocked their legs from under them. They skidded on the deck and crashed painfully to the boards.

  ‘That’s it!’

  The rope was cut. I pulled her back up.

  ‘Full speed!’ Kaneesh yelled. ‘Full speed!’

  He kept the water cannon trained on them while Carla went to the tiller. She opened up the engines to full power and away we sailed. We were on the reserve batteries, but it wouldn’t be long until we were back in the light – if the Barbaroons didn’t catch up with us first.