The Rosetta Codex (11 page)

Engines revved up again, more lights appeared from somewhere, and gunshots cracked. Terrel crouched at the wheel, jerking it from side to side as they picked up speed. Cale stayed on his hands and knees, gripping the doorframe for support. The cabin windows cracked and splintered, projectiles ricocheted from the ship's hull, and a muffled explosion sounded from up near the bow. The boat shuddered as they scraped against the bank, and Terrel twisted the wheel once more, freeing them.

The jetboats were quicker than the
Skyute,
and Cale watched two of the boats pass them, swinging around to cut them off. Terrel stayed focused and kept the boat in full reverse, constantly zigzagging while trying to get out to the wider canal, where they might have a chance. Flashes and popping sounds came from the jetboats, followed by a couple of small explosions and splintering wood and plastic across the
Skyute
decks. A shattered piece of railing hit Cale in the head and he flattened himself out on the deck; when he touched his forehead, his fingers came away wet with blood.

He stayed down now, face pressed hard against the gritty surface of the deck, no longer trying to follow what was happening. The boat miraculously continued to swerve backward along the channel, occasionally scraping against the banks, or possibly into one or more of the jetboats—it was impossible to tell. The gunshots and cracks from other weapons increased, along with shouts and cries from the pirates. Cale turned his head and looked back at Terrel, who
bobbed up and down trying to catch glimpses of their position, the throttle locked full, one hand on the wheel and jerking it back and forth, the other firing his Spitzer, swearing nonstop all the while.

Suddenly they were out of the narrow channel and in the canal. Terrel swung the boat in a wider, sweeping turn, overrunning another of the jetboats. He cut the throttle as he took the engines out of reverse, then engaged them full forward.

Cale rose to his hands and knees and nearly fell back again as the boat accelerated, then pulled himself up to his feet. He could see four or five jetboats still giving chase, two already pacing them. Then the boat surged forward, as if Terrel suddenly found more power in the engines, and they began to slowly pull away.

A flare of light appeared from the nearest jetboat, then another, and Cale heard bursts of shattering wood and glass, but couldn't see the hits. The
Skyute
continued to slowly but steadily put more distance between it and the jetboats. More shots, but no major hits.

For several long moments nothing changed. They appeared to be heading farther from the heart of the city, into a deeper darkness, when suddenly Terrel slowed the boat, swung the wheel hard right, and they veered into another channel. Cale watched the jetboats follow them, gaining ground for a few moments. Terrel accelerated once more as a series of brighter flares and screeching thumps burst around them.

The
Skyute
was rocked by a violent explosion that nearly knocked Cale from his feet once again. A terrible grinding roar erupted and the deck shuddered beneath them; then
the boat slowed precipitously as the engines sputtered twice, caught twice, then died altogether.

“Fuck me!” Terrel shouted. He had his own gun in hand now and he turned to Cale, his face shiny with sweat and glowing with the flashing lights around them. “Shoot as many as you can,” he told Cale.

“Just give it to them!” Cale shouted back. “They're going to get it anyway.”

Terrel shook his head and gave him a crazed smile. “No, they won't. I'll burn the shit up first.” Then he ducked out of the pilothouse, swung around, and dropped down into the cargo hold.

Everything became strangely quiet, no sounds other than the jetboat engines idling as they surrounded the now motionless
Skyute.
Cale saw figures standing along the banks on both sides of the canal, men and women holding wavering lanterns and watching the boats out on the water. The eyes of some animal glowed red in the reflected light. Then he looked at the pirates in the jetboats, most of them armed and wary now as their own craft idled and drifted slowly toward the
Skyute.
He dropped the gun and held out his arms, hands open and facing outward, and cautiously emerged from the pilothouse.

Surprisingly no one shot at him. The pirates seemed far more concerned with the figures on the banks than they were with him or Terrel. He took a few more steps, and still nothing happened; it was only just now sinking in that he had been, and might still be, in real danger of being killed.

No one moved, no one spoke. The idling jetboats rocked gently on the dark water, and the pirates paid Cale no attention. Instead, they warily eyed the figures on either bank,
who in turn watched the pirates and the
Skyute.
Then the pirates slowly, carefully engaged their engines, turned the jetboats around, and headed away.

Terrel's face appeared at the entrance to the cargo hold, grinning. He started to pull himself up when a muffled explosion shook the deck. He lost his grip and fell back into the hold; a few moments later flames appeared from one of the vents. Cale ran to the cargo hold entrance and peered into the darkness now being sliced with wavering orange and red light. Heat rushed up into his face and he put up his hand in a futile gesture.

“Terrel!”

Another explosion knocked Cale onto his side. He tried to get to his feet, but slipped and fell to the deck. He heard a cry, and he sensed the heat in the deck, heat from a fire that must now be raging below.

Somehow mustering the necessary energy and will, Cale struggled to his feet once again, and searched for some means of escape. Flames licked up through all the vents as well as the main hold entrance. Cale heard a splash, then a scream and another splash, but the sounds told him nothing about what was really happening. All he knew was that he had to get off the boat.

He stumbled toward the stern; confused by the smoke in his eyes and lungs and the spitting and popping of burning wood, he somehow got turned around and found himself inside the pilothouse again. Reorienting himself, he pushed his way back out.
Get off the damn boat!
he shouted to himself.

The deck erupted before him in an explosion of flames and wood, oil splattering his face and blinding him. He screamed once, tried to cover his eyes with his hands, but it
was too late. His eyes burned and watered and he staggered back, legs shaky and unsure beneath him. Suddenly he was falling and he threw out his hands. But he kept falling, for far longer than seemed possible.

He hit the surface of the canal, and the fetid water engulfed him. It cooled his burning face, but when he opened his eyes as he slowly sank, he couldn't see a thing. Remembering it was night didn't reassure him.

Cale stopped moving. He didn't try to swim, just drifted as he remembered that night all those years ago when he'd plunged into the freezing cold lake in his attempt to escape Petros and his clan, when he'd nearly let himself sink to the bottom, and he wondered if this was his time to do just that—if he was being offered another chance, another opportunity to leave this life behind, and perhaps find a semblance of peace.

He held his breath and remained motionless, undecided. He felt himself slowly floating toward the surface. Let someone else decide, he whispered silently to himself.

Someone did. When he finally floated to the surface, he felt hands grab him and turn him over, and he opened his mouth and choked and desperately sucked in the cool night air. But when he opened his eyes, he could not see his savior.

He lay sweating and feverish on a cot, not knowing whether it was day or night. The bandages and compresses on his eyes felt hot and sticky, as though fused to his skin.

His memories of that night were fragmented by pain. He remembered being dragged blind and burning from the foul canal waters, though it now seemed the burning had been his imagination—his skin appeared to be generally unharmed except for cuts and scrapes that were already scabbing over, itching wounds he fought against scratching. He remembered someone telling him that Terrel was dead, drowned. The boat had burned and sunk, and by now, he imagined, the pirates or someone else had sent divers to the bottom of the canal in an attempt to salvage what they
could of cargo certainly not worth someone's life, though that was now the cost.

He had no idea how or when he'd ended up in this room. A physician had been brought to him, a woman with cool dry hands and a coarse but comforting voice. She'd cleansed his eyes and put a salve in them which eased the burning, applied compresses, and wrapped bandages around his head to hold the compresses in place. As she'd cleaned his eyes he had seen soft red flares of light and the shadows of her face, her fingers, so that he'd known he was not yet completely blind. Would he see again? he'd asked her. She couldn't say.

Couldn't say or wouldn't say, he wanted to know, but he didn't know if he'd asked that question aloud, or only in his thoughts. Either way, she was gone by then, and he was left alone with delirious visions and fevered dreams, wondering if he would ever see again.

 

Harlock stands swaying before the blazing tree, arms outstretched as if to take the flames into a final embrace.

“A screaming comes across the dark and starless sky!” he cries. “Artificial light . . . artificial darkness . . . artificial life.”

Saliva rolls down his jaw, scatters as he resumes speaking.

“Jewel around a star . . . resurrect the dead . . . resurrect the living. . . .”

Then Harlock spins and stares at Cale with wild and glittering eyes seemingly devoid of intelligence, but filled with pain and rage and a window into the future . . . or the past. He reaches out to Cale, who pulls back, then the imbecile turns and leaps into the roaring flames.

 

The tree seemed to burn before him, hot and searing, then the tree transformed into the boat, and he thought for a moment that he was on the bank of the canal, watching Terrel's boat burn in the night, flames hissing in the water. Then he felt a warm, dry hand on his arm, and his whole body jerked, bringing him fully awake. Breathing hard, he realized where he was.

“Hush,” a woman said softly to him, her voice soothing. Not the physician.

Why did she say that? he wondered. Had he cried out in his sleep? Or was it even sleep? Delirium, perhaps.

She laid a cool wet cloth on his forehead, another one across his chest and neck. “Nightmare,” she said. “It's just a nightmare.”

The wet cloths felt wonderful, soothing him. “Where am I?” he asked.

“Sit up,” the woman ordered. “Eat.”

“Who are you?”

She didn't answer him. She fed him bitter congee soup, spooning chunks of fish and roots and stringers into his mouth, wiping clean the broth that dripped down his chin.

“The demons won't find you here,” she said. “We'll hide you.”

“From who?”

“The demons who killed your friend and burned his boat.”

“It was pirates. Just pirates, trying to steal our cargo.”

“Demons,” the woman insisted, then laughed deeply and
heartily, and he wondered if she was laughing at him or at some private joke. Maybe she was crazy. Crazy or not, she fed him the rest of the soup.

 

“You ever been with some kinda woman?” Feegan asks. Feegan is old and fat and stinks, but has taken a fatherly interest in Cale. On the outskirts of Morningstar, they sit huddled around a ceramic firepot, warming their hands and feet. Hail clatters on the shed roof.

It takes Cale a moment to realize what Feegan means, then he shakes his head.

“No?” Feegan says.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Cale shrugs.

“You hank after a man instead?” Feegan asks.

“No.”

“Shit, I can arrange it for you, you want. A woman, I mean.”

“That's all right,” Cale says. Then adds, “Thanks anyway.”

Feegan sniffs and closes one eye. “A clean woman.”

Cale shakes his head. Feegan sighs and says, “Suit yourself.”

They sit in silence, both of them hungry and without any immediate prospects for food, but Cale feels strangely content.

“How old are you, kid?” the old man asks.

“Don't know,” Cale answers. “Seventeen, eighteen. Maybe twenty?”

A snort and a nod. “Kid, your eyes look a lot older than the rest of you.”

“My eyes?”

“They've seen some things.”

Cale smiles faintly and sadly at that. “Yeah, they've seen some things.”

 

He came alert with a sudden, almost painful inhalation of stifling air, and abruptly sat up in the darkness. Or was it truly darkness? He reached up and gingerly touched the bandages over his eyes.

Dream or memory or strange vision? Cale wasn't sure whether he'd been awake or asleep.
Yeah, they've seen some things.
He remembered saying that to Feegan. That fat old man who'd taken him in on his arrival to Morningstar and taught him how to live in the city and who'd fallen while drunk one rainy night, fallen and hit his head and gone into a seizure and died. Cale wondered now if his eyes would ever see anything again. Maybe he'd end up with mek eyes like the Sarakheen; a shudder rolled through him, a strange chill within the depths of his fever. He'd never see Feegan again, no matter what kind of eyes he had, and for some reason that saddened him more than it ever had in the months since the old man had died. A strange thing—he missed Feegan, and he only now realized that he always would.

 

Terrel stands shirtless and smiling on the riverbank, his dark, dark bronze skin shining with sweat. His hair hangs in knotted cords to his shoulders. Cale climbs the steep, muddy slope to stand beside him, and they look out over the dark green water, watching rings of flowers drift past from some funeral upstream.

“I should introduce you to my sister,” Terrel says. “You could share your grief. Maybe eventually you could share more.”

“Grief?” Cale asks. “Why grief?” Though he somehow understands.

Terrel doesn't reply. His smile widens and he spreads his arms and looks up at the hot sun above them and then he leans out over the edge of the riverbank and falls toward the water. . . .

 

The woman led him down a hallway to the toilet, then back to the stifling room and his damp cot.

“You stink,” she told him. “I'll see if we can't arrange for a shower or bath for you.”

“Do you know when the doctor's coming again?” Cale asked.

“Tomorrow.” She handed him a cup of ice water. “Someone's been asking about you on the streets.”

“Who?”

“Don't know. Beatt thinks the Rakasha. She thinks they want you dead, because of the boat and whatever it was went down to the bottom.”

Cale lay back on the cot, resting the cup on his chest. “I don't think it was the Rakasha. Pirates were after the cargo.”

“Ah, I know it's not the Rakasha. They probably don't give a shit about you. They don't give a shit about anyone who isn't in their way. Besides, it was a woman with a messed-up face asking about you. Didn't look much like Rakasha to me. More like one of their victims.”

The Rakasha were the dominant bloc of organized criminals in Morningstar, and Cale had never had anything to do with them, so they shouldn't care what happened to him, let alone want him dead.

“Gotta go,” the woman said.

“What's your name?” Cale asked for the third or fourth time.

There was a long silence, then the woman eventually said, “Karimah.”

“I'm Cale,” he said.

“I know,” Karimah said. “You've told me more than once.”

Cale nodded and said, “Thanks for everything.” Karimah didn't reply, and he thought he could hear her get up and move away from the bed. When he heard the door close, he sat up, drank the rest of the cold water, and carefully set the empty cup by feel on the table beside the cot. He sat without moving for some time, listening to the quiet sounds in the building, people moving about, talking to each other, and wondered one more time if he would ever see again.

 

His right eye was healed, but the left would need more time. Now that he could see a little, he discovered that the doctor was taller than he'd imagined, and big-boned. She rebandaged the left eye, using a different salve and a smaller compress, her fingers firm but comforting on his forehead. His vision out of the right eye was almost normal except for a slight blur around the edges and a strange halo effect when he looked at the lamp. She gave him a tube of salve and a small bottle.

“Don't take off the bandage for three more days,” she said. “Then use the salve the way I did, and five drops of this, three times a day. Keep the bandage on at all other times. Don't run.” She smiled and said, “Don't let anyone
hit you on the head, if possible. In a few days, ask for me, or another doctor, especially if you notice any pain or headaches developing.”

“And it'll be okay?” Cale asked.

“Probably. If you're careful and take care of it.” She stood and packed up her satchel.

“Thanks,” he said. “I don't know how I can pay you. At least not for a while.”

“You don't owe me anything. Terrel's my brother.”

Cale regarded her silently with his one eye, now seeing the resemblance; more than that, though, he noted the tense she used.

“It's not your fault he's gone,” she went on. “If anything, it's his fault
you
almost died. The least I can do is save your eyes.”

“What do you mean by gone?” he asked.

She leaned forward and spoke quietly. “He's not dead, but it's better that everyone
thinks
he is. He made too many enemies this time, cost too many people too much money. He left Morningstar, and I don't know if he'll return. I doubt you'll ever see him again. I don't know if
I'll
ever see him again.”

He didn't know what else to say, and neither, apparently, did she. She laid her hand briefly on his shoulder, then turned and left.

As soon as she was gone, another woman came into the room. She was short but sinewy, hair and eyes dark, black shirt and trousers nearly as dusty as her boots. The whites of her eyes were tinged with yellow, and Cale wondered if she was ill. She looked down at him, waiting for him to say something.

“Karimah?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Where am I?”

“You really don't know?” she said. “Terrell didn't tell you?”

Cale shook his head, confused. “I don't understand.”

“He was bringing you to us.”

“Us?”

She nodded. “The Resurrectionists.”