"Two more trips and mad Jehu will have the lays to buy a fine chandler's store near the quay. And be a man of leisure and pleasure and treasure."

"Still haven't said if that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d could be alive."

"Been stories of it happening. They comes out much changed, so they says. With their mind set to wandering and their skin all-"

"Hold thy noise, thou pinheaded loon!" the captain yelled.

"Aye, Captain. I'll hold my tongue so thrtth ogn-luur..." Jehu gripped himself literally by the end of his tongue so that his words became instant garbled gibberish.

The ship fell silent.

Ryan was joined at the rail by the rest of the crew, peering down at the ruined carca.s.s. The head remained untouched, but much of the meat of the sides and back and belly had already been hewed from the pale bones. Each of the flensers had a safety rope tied around his waist, to help him keep his balance on the slick flesh.

"I hear something!" called one of the men, from down below, standing with head on one side, as though that might somehow help his hearing.

Then they all heard it, soaring above the banshee wailing of the gulls, silencing them and sending them wheeling away to the north like etched shadows on the blue sky.

The sound was m.u.f.fled, but distinct. A human voice crying for help.

"Quickly, my lads." Cyrus Ogg broke the spell of stillness that fell upon every man on the ship.

The two hands standing deepest in the b.l.o.o.d.y wreckage began to cut and slice with a renewed vigor, opening up more of the noisome stomach of the whale.

"Watch ye do not f.u.c.king cut him apart with the lances! "Walsh yelled.

"Something's moving!" shouted one of the men, clambering clumsily away from where a glistening expanse of pale yellow intestine could be seen rippling like a polecat trapped inside a silken bag.

Ryan watched with the others, seeing that the swallowed seaman still lived and fought to tear himself free of the sack of guts that held him a squealing, mewling prisoner.

Like the birth of some mutie lizard, the stomach wall tore open.

And Jacob Lusk emerged... What had once been Jacob Lusk.

Now it was as white as Jak Lauren's hair, bleached by the powerful acids in the stomach of the whale, acids that had already eaten away the shirt and pants from the seaman's body, and left his skin wrinkled and partly raw. The face seemed worst afflicted as Jacob Lusk turned it toward where he sensed the sun still shone.

He could only sense it, for his eyes had been seared from their sockets, leaving raw, weeping holes in the scoured bone. The lips had been eaten away, and the tongue and soft flesh of the inside of the mouth, so that all that came out was a gargling scream of horror.

"Virgin save us!"

There was a collective indrawing of sighing breath from every person there.

The creature stood, balanced, waving its peeled arms, fingers spread and oozing blood, crying out in its terrible choked voice. It was like seeing some dreadful embryo born, full grown, yet not properly complete.

"Fireblast!" Ryan called to the flensers on the carca.s.s. "Chill the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Cut him down, someone. Chill him!"

The cry was picked up by Jehu and by Donfil, by Johnny Flynn and a dozen more, until every man of the Salvation was calling out for Jacob to be set free from his misery.

Only Pyra Quadde said nothing, watching the nightmare scene from the rail of the quarterdeck.

But Jacob Lusk was quicker.

Some tattered shreds of consciousness remained in the dark skull, and he flung his arms together above his head with a damp, clinging, slapping sound. Without another cry he dived neatly off the dead whale into the welcoming waters of the Lantic.

They watched his whitened body as it sank into the gray-green deeps. It seemed to go down forever, until the rippling waves finally wiped the image clear away.

Ryan lifted his eyes to the horizon, seeing the first triangular fins of the hunting sharks that had taken over possession and lordship of so many of the oceans of the world.

Pyra Quadde had also seen them.

"No use watching him sink. Take him an hour or more to reach the mud around these deeps. Sharks coming after the blubber. After our blubber. Set to, cullies. Set to!"

Ryan shook his head. More gut-wrenching labor before they could rest. It crossed his mind at that moment to wonder where Krysty might be and what she might be doing.

"No sun dreams, Outlander Deadman," Cyrus Ogg said at his elbow. "Unless thou dost want to face some punishment from our captain."

"No, thanks," Ryan replied, readying himself to pull on the hooked cords.

Then he heard the shout from the lookout in the crow's nest, high above the blood-slick deck. "Sail ho! Sail on the larboard beam! A ship!"

Chapter Twenty-Five.

DARKNESS HAD ONCE AGAIN come upon Claggartville. J.B., Krysty, Jak, Doc and Lori had been model prisoners, causing no trouble for the sec men who'd captured them. It seemed as if the outlanders were clearly resigned to their fate, eating the food provided and only leaving the narrow room when one of them wanted to go down the wooden stairs to the row of white-painted earth privies in the rear yard. And when they did that there was always a pair of armed men to take them and bring them back.

Within the group, the only note of discord had been struck by Lori Quint.

The tall blond teenager had started to become restive halfway through the first morning of their captivity, moaning on the bed, blaming Doc for having gotten her into such a threatening situation.

"Let's do what they wants us to do," she kept repeating. "Don't mind work. Just hate being stuffed up in this f.u.c.k-place."

Lori knew well enough how much Doc hated to hear her using obscenities, and he rose to the bait she offered.

"Please try to remain calm, my dainty pearl of the far Orient. Every cloud has a silver lining of threads amongst the gold." He hesitated a moment, pa.s.sing a weary hand over his brow. "I fear that I have made some error in the recollection of the old saying, my most lovely angel of-"

Lori pulled a sulky face at him. "Shut up, you silly old crumbly! That's what you is."

"Are," he corrected automatically, his eyes showing his hurt.

"You are, are, are!" she yelled. "Old and no use for anything."

Krysty had stopped the fight, walking past Doc and staring at Lori. "Just one more

word, girl, and I'll slap your eyes sideways. Shut up."

Lori had done as she was told, shutting up to the extent that she hardly spoke a

word to any of them for the next two days. She slept alone and only picked at the food offered. The girf was so withdrawn that J.B. took Krysty and Jak to one side on the last day in the ville.

"Think she'll whistle on us?" he asked, the afternoon sunlight bouncing off the

polished lenses of his round, wire-rimmed gla.s.ses. His fedora was pushed to the back of his head, and he looked more worried than usual.

"No," Krysty said.

"Mebbe," was Jak Lauren's answer.

"Could chill her," the Armorer suggested, as calm and taciturn as ever.

"No," Krysty vetoed. "Doc might actually double-freak and crazy out on us.

That'd bring the sec men on us like a thresher on wheat. I say leave her. Watch

her."

"Could be time of month," Jak said with all the wisdom of his years, ducking as Krysty aimed a blow at him, only half joking. "What I say?"

J.B. HAD WANTED to be the one to set the killing ball rolling, but he'd been overruled by the others in their intense, whispered discussions.

"Has to be woman," Jak said. "Watch me, you and Doc like gators watch ducks. Get chilled straight off."

"Don't like it much, but I guess you're right. Try during the day if they'll let you two, Krysty and Lori, go to relieve yourselves together. My guess is that they will. If they do, then that's the way we'll do it when it's time."

The sec men never questioned the need of the two attractive young women to go down to the privy together. The armed pair simply escorted them down the stairs and,waited outside for them, blasters still stuck negligently in their broad leather belts.

"Ready, Lori?" Krysty asked, feeling the latent power of the Earth Mother trembling through her body. On occasions when desperate measures were needed, she could lock herself into the power source, calling on Gaia to aid her. But it left her totally weakened for some time after. Also, she had been drilled constantly by her own mother, Sonja, back in the ville of Harmony, that the power was something so special that only life or death merited its being used.

The sec men were something she felt confident she could handle on her own.

With a little help from Lori.

"You ready?" she repeated.

"Yeah, course. Don't keep on at me. I know what I'm got to do."

It was late, full dark, with the usual mist that sidled along the alleys and hung around in the cobbled courtyards. It was particularly thick near the river, where the Phoenix, under her skipper, Captain Will Deacon, was making ready to go to sea on a whaling voyage that would take them close by the waters where the Salvation was known to sail.

Krysty had gone into the privy, intending to simply sit there for a couple of minutes and then come out into the shadowy patio area to confront the guards. But the tension brought pressure on her and she eventually dropped her pants and squatted on the wooden seat. Once she'd finished she peeked through the heart-shaped hole carved in the oak door, making sure n.o.body else had come out to join the sec men. Lori's door swung noisily open and Krysty came out to join the blonde.

"Have ye done, ladies?" asked the taller of the sentries.

"Yeah."

"Then let us escort ye both back to your quarters, if we may?"

He made a mocking half bow, echoed by his short companion.

"Thank thee," Krysty replied, locking her fingers together and clubbing the man on the back of the neck, a ferocious, chopping blow that laid him out, instantly unconscious, on the damp stones of the yard.

Lori took a half step in closer to the other sec man, driving her knee into his groin with all her strength. The air exploded from his lungs, followed by most of the contents of his stomach, splattering noisily on the stones. He fell to his knees, mouth open, both hands clutching his genitals. Though he was crippled and out of the action, Krysty knew that it wouldn't be good enough. Half measures meant half failures.

"Put him down," she whispered.

Her own victim lay on his face, arms outstretched. He was breathing slowly but regularly. He could recover any time in the next half hour.

Krysty judged her aim carefully in the dim half-light. If she miscalculated she could cripple herself. She dropped with all her force on her right knee, all her weight striking the unconscious sentry on the exposed neck, snapping it like a dry branch. His body convulsed and he gave a very small cry. And died.

The other guard's mind was tucked away, trying to cope with the sickening pain that paralyzed his legs and stomach. Lori slapped him contemptuously across the face, sending him sliding into the cold dirt. He moaned, and threads of vomit straggled from his pale lips.

"You f.u.c.k!" the girl gritted, putting all her seething resentment into the vicious kick to the base of his skull, just below and behind the right ear.

Krysty heard a sound like a large orange being violently squeezed. Soft and wet. The sec man's legs kicked out like a brain-hit rabbit, then he, too, lay still in the swirling mist.

"Walk the road alone." Krysty stopped by the nearer corpse, taking the weapons from the belt.

Lori hadn't finished. She swung her leg back and kicked at the man's head again, the toe of her boot splitting open the skin of his cheek.

"Leave him! He's chilled. Can't feel anymore, Lori. Get his blaster and knife and let's go. Time's sliding."

"Sure," the girl muttered. "Why can't we stopping running some day? I'm tired, Krysty. Real tired, tired, tired."

"We all are. Gaia! This isn't the time or the place for this, Lori. Get his weapons and let's move."

The taller of the dead sec men was carrying a chromium-plated Smith & Wesson .38, which had a rare Wichita winged rib sight a.s.sembly on top of the barrel. The man wasn't carrying any kind of knife in his belt. Krysty rolled the dead corpse deeper into the shadows near the rear wall of the yard and straightened up. She could see that Lori had plucked a pair of small pistols from the other body. The light was poor and Krysty wasn't any kind of expert on blasters, but she guessed that the little guns were Beretta .22s. Lori also hefted a long knife. More like a small sword, broad bladed with an ornate bra.s.s hilt.

"There." The girl grinned, her blond hair gleaming like spun golden wire, condensation from the drifting fog glistening in the long strands like thousands of tiny diamonds. Now that they'd successfully achieved the first part of the plan, the teenager's good humor had been restored.

THE BACK STAIRS of the tavern were quiet and deserted. It was late enough for most of the inn's drinking customers to have already gone home to their own beds. And the crew of the Phoenix would be busy down on the docks, readying the whaler for her voyage. From the kitchens of the Rising Flukes they could hear the melodious voice of one of the serving girls, singing as she finished the evening's washing up.