Paolo Bacigalupi: Ship Breaker

A few scrabbling sounds drifted down from above, scraping and tearing.

“Sloth?”

The sound stopped, then started again.

“Come on, Sloth. Help me out.”

He didn’t know why he bothered. She had made her decision. As far as she was concerned, he was already a corpse. He listened as she busied herself with stripping out the rest of the copper. His fingers weakened. The oil crept up around his chin. Fates, he was tired. He wondered if Jackson Boy had also been betrayed by his crew. If that was why the licebiter hadn’t been found until a year later. Maybe someone had let him die on purpose.

You’re not going to die.

But he was lying to himself. He was going to drown. Without a ladder. Or a door-

Nailer’s heart suddenly beat faster.

If this was some room accidentally filled with oil, then there had to be doors. But they’d all be down below the surface. He’d have to dive down and risk not making it back up. Dangerous.

You’ll drown anyway. Sloth’s not going to save you.

That was the real truth. He could hang on for a little longer, getting weaker and weaker, but eventually his fingers would fail and he’d slip off.

You’re dead already.

It was a curiously liberating thought. He really had nothing to lose.

Nailer slid slowly along the wall, questing down into the murk with his toes, feeling for some bump or ledge that would tell him a door lay below. The first time, he found nothing, but the second, he let himself sink lower, oil lapping up around his jaw. His toes brushed something. He tilted his nose to the sky, letting the oil lap higher, up around his cheeks, closing around his mouth and nose.

A ledge. A rim of metal.

Nailer ran his toe along its width. It could be the top of a doorway, he guessed. It wasn’t much more than three feet wide. The ledge itself was a boon. He could almost rest, letting his toes cling to it, taking some of the pressure off his trembling fingers. The ledge felt like a palace.

You can rest now, he thought. You can wait for Pima. Sloth will tell her you’re down here. You can wait it out.

He killed the hope. Maybe Pima would come save him. Probably, though, Sloth wouldn’t say anything about him at all. He was on his own. Nailer balanced on the ledge, on the edge of decision.

Live or die, he thought. Live or die.

He dove.

IN A WAY, the black muck of the oil was no worse than the blackness above. Nailer let his hands do the work of seeing. He quested down along the rim of the door, sinking deeper, reading its outline.

His hands touched a wheel lock.

Nailer’s heart surged with relief. The wheel was the kind used to hold back seawater if a hull breached, a solid airtight door. He tugged at the wheel, trying to remember which way to turn it. It didn’t budge. He fought down panic. Yanked on the wheel again. Nothing. It wouldn’t move. And he was running out of air.

Nailer kicked for the surface, using the wheel to launch himself upward, praying that he’d make it. He surfaced, flailing. His fingers scrabbled for the thin pipe, miraculously caught hold before he sank again. He wiped frantically at his face, clearing his nose and keeping his eyes shut. He blew air through his lips, pushing oil away from his mouth. Sucked in a fume-laden breath.

With his eyes still closed, he felt again for the doorframe with his toes. He thought he’d lost it for a second, but then he scraped rust and a moment later he was perched again. He smiled tightly. A door with a wheel. A chance. If he could make the damn thing turn.

More scrabbling echoed from above. Sloth at work still.

He called up to her. “Hey, Sloth! I got me a way out. I’m coming for you, crewgirl.”

The movement stopped.

“You hear me?” His voice echoed all around. “I’m getting out! And I’m coming for you.”

“Yeah?” Sloth responded. “You want me to go get Pima?” Mockery laced her voice. Nailer again wished he could reach up and yank her down into the oil. Instead, Nailer made his voice reasonable.

“If you go get Pima now, I’ll forget you were going to let me drown.”

A long pause.

Finally Sloth said, “It’s too late, right?” She went on. “I know you, Nailer. You’ll tell Pima no matter what, and then I’m off crew and someone else buys in.” Another pause, then she said, “It’s all Fates now. If you got a way out, I’ll see you on the outside. You get your revenge then.”

Nailer scowled. It had been worth a try. He thought about the door waiting below him. It might be locked from the far side. Maybe that was why the wheel didn’t turn. Maybe…

If it’s locked, you die. Same as everything. No use worrying about it.

He took a deep breath and went down again.

This time, with more air, and knowing what he was trying to do, he found the wheel quickly and then took his time working it. He braced his feet on the hatch frame, felt around for the latch handle. First he needed to unseal with the wheel, then he needed to yank the handle. He tried to turn the wheel again. Nothing. He leaned against it, bracing himself sideways and using his legs, fighting to keep a grip.

Nothing.

He hooked his elbow through the wheel. He was running out of air, but he didn’t want to give up. He pulled. Pulled again, harder, the wheel digging into the crook of his arm. His lungs were bursting.

The wheel turned.

Nailer redoubled his efforts. Gold and blue and red pulses filled his vision. The wheel turned again, loosening. He was frantic for air, but he stayed down, fighting the urge to kick for the surface, turning the wheel faster and faster until his lungs were heaving. He launched himself upward again, hope running wild as he surfaced.

Eager now, he hyperventilated a final time, huffing high in the blackness.

Dove.

Spinning, spinning, spinning the wheel, his lungs bursting, all or nothing, reckless with the need to get out. Nailer yanked the latch handle. For a second he worried that the door swung inward and that he would never be able to drag the thing open against the pressure of oil holding it closed-

The door blew open.

Nailer was sucked through in a black torrent. He slammed into a wall. Curled into a ball as he tumbled. Oil roared around him. His forehead smashed against metal and he almost took a breath, but forced himself to curl tighter, letting himself be turned and swirled and bounced and slammed through ship corridors like a jellyfish thrown by breakers onto a reef.

He blasted into open air.

Nailer’s stomach dropped out of him. Free fall. Involuntarily, his eyes opened. Stinging oil and scalding sun. A mirror bright ocean, almost white with its intensity. Blue waves rushed up to meet him. He had only a second to twist-

He smashed into water. Sea salt swallowed him. The surge and swell of an oily sea. The roll of breakers. Nailer surged upward, kicking for the surface. Broke out into sunlight and waves, gasping. He sucked air, flooding his lungs with shining clean oxygen, starved for all the life he’d been sure he’d lost.

Above him, a tear in the tanker’s hull still spewed oil, marking where the ship had vomited him into open air. Black streams of crude traced down the ship’s hide, running in slick rivulets. Fifty feet of fall into shallow water, and he was alive. Nailer started to laugh.

“I’m alive!” he shouted. And then he was screaming, feeling a flood of victory and released terror, drunk on sunshine and waves and the people staring at him from shore.

He swam for the beach, still laughing and drunk on survival. Waves caught him and pushed him into the shore. He realized that he’d been doubly lucky. If the tide hadn’t come in, he would have slammed against sand instead of plunging into water.