A Company of Heroes Book Five: The Space Cadet (21 page)

He threw his duffel over his shoulder and moved to leave them, then turned and said to Birdwhistle:

“You’ll understand that my believing in your being a Patrol officer won’t help you any more now than if I’d stayed forward. I might convince the skipper before long; so could you before long; but it’d be the worst thing that could happen. You’d die, somehow, and your death’d be listed in the official log as accidental and one of the mates’d witness the entry. That’s evidence in court. I could swear only to my belief, after you’re dead, and that wouldn’t help you.

“But,” he added, lowering his voice, “I’ll have the lower bunk in Glom’s room.”

Then he was gone.

“There’ll be somebody on each side of that passage, continually,” said Judikha. “Things are coming to a head.”

“I’m too tired to think about it,” said the lieutenant. “I’ve got to get some sleep. I’m on watch again in a few hours, don’t you know. I can’t even consider taking any action until I regain my energy.”

Judikha watched the graceful man lift himself painfully and slog off to the quarters of the second watch. For a moment she felt pity for the lieutenant. He was, after all, a product of both breeding and training, and was altogether unprepared and unfitted for the role he was now forced to play. She had to give him credit, however grudgingly, that for all of his complaints he did his best.

She had just risen from her seat when the lanky figure of the engineer slipped from the darkness. Seeing her about to greet him, he held a finger to his lips. “Shhh!” Over the sound of the engines and pumps could be heard the scraping of a knife on a stone.
Wheeze wheech
.

“Hear it, lassie?” he said earnestly. “Hear the great beast a-grinding his knife? Is it for me or you? You soaked him well with the slops and I’m thinking he’s a beastie to be watchful of. Musrum, but it makes me nervous—to hear that sound.”

“It’s for you,” said Judikha. “It’s for you. He told me he’d kill you. He’s not afraid of you.”

“Get away from me, you time-serving hussy!” MacHinery said angrily, raising his hand. Judikha leaped back quickly, snatching at a length of pipe. The man was obviously scared witless and she had no wish to be within striking distance of a witless man with a weapon. It was equally obvious that the man was teetering on a knife edge of outright insanity and she saw no reason not to take advantage of an opportunity to give him a nudge.

“He says,” she persisted, “that he won’t allow you or anyone else to lay hands on him again. He’s says you’re nothing but a white-washed Crotoyan sheepherder—”

“Hush, you bag of bad tidings,” cried the exasperated engineer. “A damned Crotoyan, am I? Me, a MacHinery? Out of my sight, hussy, or I’ll—”

He advanced toward the retreating girl, but Judikha, grinning in the darkness, kept talking.

“Never mind that,” she said. “The question is: what about the cook? He’s sharpening that knife for one of us—perhaps both. What do you think we ought to do?”

“How do I know? It’s a mortal sin to hurt a ship’s cook. He’s a sacred person. Didn’t you hear the second mate call me down on it? But I can try the effect of moral suasion. I’ll even put an edge on the broadaxe.”

The engineer left her and soon enough the sound of a grindstone came from his shop, and the steady grating of cold steel pressed against its wet surface. It drowned the
wheeze wheetch
from the galley.

A chime sounded from the annunciator. “Eight bells,” thought Judikha. “Four more hours for me.”

-VII-

When the first watch turned out at 2400, it was Judikha who had the helm for the first two hours. In her Patrol training she had learned as much about astrogation and the handling of a ship as any common spaceman needed to know, but had not acquired that sense of feedback which enables an experienced merchant spaceman to operate a ship almost by feel alone. After repeating the drill given by her predecessor, and swinging the ship back and forth with unnecessary vigor, she gradually brought the
Rasputin
under her control. Her nerves were steady and her judgment good; she handled the freighter in a way that brought no complaint from Glom, though he frequently scrutinized her instruments and she often caught him staring at her distinctive profile as though he were trying to puzzle out a trick picture. He would then resume his ponderous pacing of the deck. Twice before two bells had struck, he had stepped out of sight into the companionway; Judikha knew that it was forbidden for him to leave the helm officer less. Each time he returned, she could detect the sour tang of alcohol. The second time, he spoke to her in a thick, conspiratorial voice.

“What’s up between you and the cook?”

“Nothing, sir. I just lost my head and dumped the slops on him.”

“What’d he do?”

“Not much, but he looked like murder and I let it go.”

“You doused him well, according to what MacHinery says,” he chortled. “But keep a look out. He’s a bad proposition. Killed two men last voyage with his bare hands.”

“Then you’ve shipped with him before, sir?”

“For three years—all my time in space, in fact. See? I ain’t been at it that long. Could never a told, could you? I licked a growed man my first voyage and I took the fight outta the cook the second. He’s afraid to look sideways at me now. And I licked the second mate last passage home. That’s why I got his place. That’s what a skipper looks for in an officer. You can learn all you like and be the best spaceman there is but unless you can whip men and win every time you’re no good aft.”

“So I should think,” Judikha agreed, humbly. “I guess I’d never do. I can work, but I can’t fight. Never could, sir.”

“Well, you wanta brace up and learn to fight, and—another thing: stick to your skipper and learn as—ash—ashtrogation. I’m halfway through it now. No good swingin’ a wrench your whole life. What part of Terria you from, anyway?”

“Ah—Tamlaght, sir. Port Blavek.” She thought better about lying—surely he’d already recognized her accent.

“I’m a Tamlaght boy m’self,” said Monkfish. “From Deedner. You know, you do look almighty like a kid I went to school with—Juh, Juh, Judikha was the little bitch’s name. But she was a skinny little runt. ‘listed with the Patrol and never heard from again, least up to the time I shipped out.”

“Think she’s dead, sir?” Judikha was breathless to hear how her disappearance had affected the people she’d known.

“Hope to Musrum she is. She was a hellion for th’ size of ‘er. Took on a whole slew of fellers an’ got ‘em in hot with th’ p’lice. I wasn’t in it from th’ first, but I was one of th’ gang what done ‘er up later. She’d got run outa school for being a thief and skipped town.”

“So she was a thief, too, sir?”

“Well, I guess not; to give the little devil ‘er due, she wasn’t. At least not that time, but it sure enough looked that way. ‘Sides, she was such an almighty snot no one ever doubted she done it. Came out months after she skipped, little by little. She was just trying to shield the real thief, pet brother of a kid she was stuck on. Got herself all mixed into th’ mess. Anyway, th’ boy got th’ dope straight somehow an’ made his brother own up. Upshot was their dad took ‘em both outa school—”

“Rhys made his brother do that?” Judikha blurted.

“Hey! That’s ‘sir’ when you’re speakin’ to me!” he growled in drunken dignity. Judikha, knowing she had made a fatal mistake, anxiously studied his face; she could see the realization thickening, then curdling. “‘Rhys’ is it?” he said, finally. “Who said anything ‘bout ‘Rhys’? Hey? That’s th’ kid’s name, right enough, but I’d never have remembered it without hearin’ it. ‘Rhys’ eh? Say...I know who you are. I’m onto you, Judikha, an’ I’ll make you crawl before I’m done with you! What’s your game, anyhow?”

“No game, sir,” answered Judikha, her hands slippery with perspiration, her skin and mouth as dry as flannel. “I’m only listening to what you’ve been saying. I don’t know these people. I don’t know who this Judikha is. How could I?”

“How could you? D’ye mean to stand there an’ deny you’re th’ Judikha I knew? Then how’d you know that kid’s name?”

“You’d just mentioned it, sir,” she lied. “And not knowing anything else about him, I repeated the name. I was just interested, that’s all. Not all boys would have done what he did. Turn in his brother and all, I mean.”

“I b’lieve you’re lying. How could I’ve said his name when I’d forgotten it?”

“You must have remembered it subconsciously, sir. Such things happen. I’m not your Judikha, Mr. Glom, whoever she was. My name is Veronica beRothesay and I’ve never heard of these other people before.”

“Well, it’s mighty strange, that’s all I gotta say. If I find you’re lyin’ to me, I’ll make it so hot for you you’d suck vacuum rather than have me get my hands on you!”

The mate turned just in time to meet the captain coming in through the hatchway. The man glowered blackly at his officer.

“Now look here, Mr. Glom,” he said angrily, holding up a fist that looked as grey and solid and hard as a stone, “I want you to understand something before you’re one minute older. I’ve been listening to this pow wow and I let it go on, wondering just when you’d stop. If you don’t know no more than to talk to the man at the helm you’d better get back to the engine room until you do know something! I don’t want to have to tell you this a second time!”

“Aye, aye, sir,” replied the chastened officer as the skipper stepped up to the console and scrutinized the instruments. He nodded with satisfaction. Had he looked even a second earlier he would have seen that their course had been a full point off. Now the instruments showed nothing amiss. He gave Judikha a curt nod and left. Glom immediately turned on her and snarled,
sotto voce
: “I got that on your account, damn you. Just watch out, that’s all I got t’ tell you. Watch out!”

-IX-

At eight bells Judikha was mustered into the engine room to be counted with the rest—as was customary at the change of the night watches.

She sought out Birdwhistle and told him about Glom’s suspicions. The lieutenant, sleepy, cross and sore, was unsympathetic. He only reiterated his standing order for her to play her part—to submit to whatever abuse, whether oral or physical, in order that she could be at hand when wanted, rather than clapped uselessly in irons.

“Besides,” he concluded, “it’ll do you good to be pushed around a little when you can’t push back. It’ll develop your self-control. I suppose you already know that both watches are planning to protest against the menu right after breakfast. If they do, keep in the background and let the others do the talking.”

Judikha turned in and, being both young and conscienceless, lost only a few minutes before dropping into a dreamless sleep. She awakened with the others at seven bells. As she had agreed with her watch mates, she ate no breakfast. Both watches intended to preserve their meal intact to show the captain what the miserable mess looked like—in the naïve conceit that he had no idea. One of the others had told her, with a confidence she found altogether insupportable, about a past experience where victory had been the result of a similar episode. Nevertheless, when eight bells sounded, the crew arose with no little anxiety. Carrying their uneaten breakfasts, they trooped out and waited for the other watch to obtain its share of food from the galley. Then they marched aft in a unified body, where they were met by Mr. Wopple, looking down upon them with a steely, unsympathetic eye. Bob, the spokesman, told Wopple that they wanted to see the captain. Wopple looked at the sailor warningly, but without saying a word went to fetch Captain Krill. When he returned he was carrying a five-thousand-watt DeLameter. Following him were the captain and Glom, each with a similar burden, and a tall, watery-eyed, bland-looking man who carried his right arm in a sling. Judikha had no trouble recognizing Mr. Queel, the first mate. He held a light-weight thousand-watt toaster uneasily in his left hand. As these grim-looking men ranged themselves along the catwalk, they were joined by the engineer, hefting a four-foot jet-wrench, and the cook, who was as bristling with glinting knife blades as the fretful porcupine. Seven armed men looked cooly down on the two dozen space-slaves with never an irrelevant glance between them.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen,” said Captain Krill, as he balanced the cathode of the big toaster on the railing, “what do you want?”

“Just this, sir,” said Bob, holding up his pan of whack. “We ain’t looking for any trouble and we don’t want to say nothing that’ll bring on any toasting, sir, but we just want to ask you, sir, if this is the right kind of mess to feed men on, sir. We ain’t got nothing to say about it’s being government whack, because that’s all we signed for, but we don’t sign for maggots, sir—they’re not in the scale of provisions, sir.”

“No,” replied the captain evenly, “they’re not. Your getting them extra as good, fresh meat over and above your allowance. Mr. Queel,” he said to his first mate, “d’ye recognize your man?”

“I do,” answered the officer, a peculiar shimmer in his cloudy blue eyes. “That tall, dark-haired hussy sneaking back of the others there.” He raised his toaster unsteadily in his left hand and the men parted before it, leaving a kind of corridor with the toaster’s nozzle at one end and Judikha at the other. She had no more than a quarter of a second to appreciate the horror of her situation—just long enough for her jaw to drop. He touched the trigger and she fell to the deck as though struck by lightning, which was more or less the truth.

“By Musrum!” cried Wopple. “That was murder! That girl wasn’t turned to until four o’clock that morning. She were doped and in her bunk until Mr. Jone’s pulled her out!”

“Shut up!” thundered the captain. “Shut up, or I’ll clap you in irons yourself! Sure of your man, Mr. Queel?”

“Sure, sir?” answered the mate with a smirk. “Of course I am. I’d recognize her face and shape right enough. It weren’t no man I grappled that night.”

“You’re wrong,” protested Wopple. “Your dead wrong, Mr. Queel. That girl was stupid in her bunk all through that watch. Mr. Glom’ll bear me out. He turned her to at eight bells, too dopey to know her own name.”

Mr. Queel swung the muzzle of his toaster until it nearly touched Wopple’s stomach, his watery eyes like slivers of glass.