Philip Palmer - Hell Ship

He took deep breaths. Gathering his energies.

“I know. But Sai-ias-I swam it! I swam around the entire island, touching the force shield at every point. If there had been a crack, a gap-I would have perceived it. I would have known. And I could see the Tower! And the pebbly beach. And the tides.”

“Sleep, Sharrock. You have a long way to go before you are well.”

“The tides, Sai-ias, do you hear me? The tides.”

That day I carried Sharrock on my back to the well of life, so that he could drink its waters directly. I tipped a pail of water over his head and saw his skin start to regain its dark-scarlet colour. I sucked the water in through my own tentacle tips and felt my own energy grow.

The water was, I knew, haunted by the spirit of the Ka’un; but it was also possessed of a truly magical power. It was the power of revival; water from the lake or from the rivers was merely water. This water however had the power to heal, and could even hold Despair at bay.

“The sun,” said Sharrock.

“Too bright?”

“Warm,” said Sharrock. “It’s good.”

Sharrock stood up totteringly, and eventually got his balance.

Then he practised walking on his weak but now unbroken legs. It was clumsy, like a barrel turning corners, but he didn’t fall once.

“You did well,” I conceded, “to swim to shore, through waters so angrily turbulent. Even though it took you several days.”

Sharrock made the sound that I knew to be his laugh.

“Once,” he bragged, “a warrior of my tribe swam the entire Halian Sea. And then, once he reached the other side, he slew a dozen warriors of the Southern Tribe.”

I made a tinkling noise which I used with many bipeds to indicate my laugh. (In reality, for most species my laughter is of too low a tone to hear.)

Then I stopped laughing, abruptly, and said: “Why?”

Sharrock was disconcerted by the question.

“There was a war,” he explained. “It was a noble cause. The warriors of the South had failed to pay fealty to our empire. War was inevitable.”

“But was anything achieved?”

“Much glory was got,” he said feebly.

“The only glory is in love,” I told him, softly.

“Not so!” Sharrock retorted.

“You fool! You blood-thirsty savage!” I raged.

Sharrock’s face was bright scarlet now with emotion.

“You are a fool, your people were fools, I have no patience with you any longer,” I continued, unable to stem my flow of fury.

“Maybe,” said Sharrock softly, “you are right. But Sai-ias-the tides! I saw the tides.”

Over the days that followed, I nursed Sharrock. I brought him food, I bathed his body with healing waters. And I made him walk to strengthen his legs. I would slither along behind him, ready to prop him up with my tentacles if need be. But he resisted all assistance, and wobbled and waddled along the path that leads beside the well of the waters of life; the path that I had designed and which Quipu had built out of small jewelled stones hewn from the mountains.

And as his strength grew, we talked.

“Perhaps there is,” Sharrock said to me, “glory in love. But there’s no love here, on this weeping-tears-of-blood fucking ship. We are prisoners, and we have to kill our gaolers and escape.”

“Impossible,” I explained, but he persisted in his folly.

“Listen to me! You said there would be storms. And yes, there were indeed storms. You said I would not be able to reach the Tower. And you were right, I could not reach the Tower. There is an invisible shell surrounding it.”

“So I am entirely right, and you are entirely wrong?” I summarised.

“Hear me out! It’s more complicated.” Sharrock paused. He was out of breath. I expanded a tentacle until it became a chair for him to perch on. He sat on my limb. I listened, attentively, to his words.

“Here’s the strange stuff. When I first touched the invisible shell, there were no storms. A touch of rain; no clouds; no more. But the longer I stayed, the worse the weather got. And I could hear it.”

“Hear what?”

“A high-pitched whine. Like a nocturnal animal’s echoing cry. Or, more accurately, like a proximity detector. We used them to guard our buildings; it’s a simple electronic safety device. No magic.”

There was an urgency to his tone; a certainty that commanded my rapt attention.

“And I was so close, I could see the Tower clearly,” Sharrock continued. “It is made of silver brick; and is indeed a beautiful creation, tall and vast, yet seemingly gracefully slender, its oval windows filled with coloured glass. We have buildings in our cities of this shape, but this was more beautiful than anything I had ever seen.”

As he spoke, I could picture the scene. Sharrock had the gift of storytelling, the ability to make you feel that you were there.

“Above me,” he said, “flew the aerials but none of them could fly close to the Tower, as you know. But then I looked at the pebbly beach, and I saw the waves sweep over the pebbles. And I waited, treading water, for half a cycle until the tide had gone out and the full reach of pebbles was revealed.”

And finally Sharrock reached his point: “The lake has tides! It’s an artificial effect, I assume the Dreaded are fond of waves. But the fact that the tide can go out on this pebbly island beach means-it means there must be a gap. An underwater path or route from the island’s shore to the main body of the lake. There’s a hole in the force projection field, in other words, below the water line.

“And once I had realised this, I dived down. And down, and down, clinging on to the soft force projection field with my finger tips until I touched air. And then I swam under, through the gap, and into the water on the other side of the invisible barrier, and on to the beach itself.

“And I reached the other side, Sai-ias. I was this close to the Tower!

“And then I heard a sound again. Another proximity detector; and that’s when the real storms began. A wind started up; a wind that whipped my face, and made me stagger as I walked.

“Then I saw a giant approach. Ten times my height and made of metal, stomping towards the beach. I had no chance of defeating him, so I dived down into the water again, and swam back under the force projection field.

“And then I was in the midst of the storm; and the winds broke my bones and the water drowned me. And when I woke, I saw your face glaring down at me. Never have I been so glad to see such a forsook-by-all-the-deities ugly fucking face as yours, Sai-ias.

“But there are tides, Sai-ias. And there is a way in. We can reach the Tower, Sai-ias. We can do it!”

I was stunned by Sharrock’s words, and for the first time in many aeons, I did not know what to do.

Should I convey this information to the others? Or keep it as a secret?

Sharrock had, I knew, been foolish in telling me so much. For the air that translates and that brings the light can also hear our every word. The Ka’un are like gods; they know everything that happens, and everything that is said. Which means they already knew of Sharrock’s venture into the Tower; and they knew too what he had just told me. We were both in deadly peril. Sharrock was an idiot if he didn’t realise this!

And I thought about the prospect of death-in-Despair and I realised I feared it. My life was bleak enough; but the alternative was far worse. For if the Ka’un caught me, and declared me to be a rebel and a trouble-maker, then they would punish me in the most terrible of ways. Despair indeed might prove to be the best of my options.

“Do you see what this mean?” Sharrock said.

“Of course I do,” I said, calmly, hiding my terror.

“Then we must-”