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 carcass. "Chill the poor bastard. 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 Salvationwas 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 ourblubber. 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 fuck-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, passing 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 girl 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 glasses. 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 Salvationwas 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 nobody else had come out to join the sec men. Lori's door swung noisily open and Krysty came out to join the blonde.