Fritz Leiber: Ship of Shadows

“Not a witch cat, Keeper,” Spar repeated, although he was having to swallow hard to keep from spewing. “Only a well-behaved stray, who has already proved his use to us by killing one of the rats that have been stealing our food. His name is Kim. He’ll be a good worker.”

The distant blur of Kim lengthened and showed thin blurs of legs and tail, as if he were standing out rampant from his line. “Assset izz I,” he boasted. “Ssanitary. Uzze wasste tubes. Sslay ratss, micece! Sspy out witchchess, vampss ffor you!”

“He speaks!” Keeper gasped. “Witchcraft!”

“Crown has a dog who talks,” Spar answered with finality. “A talking animal’s no proof of anything.”

All this while he had kept firm hold of barrel and finger. Now he felt through their grappled bodies a change in Keeper, as though inside his blubber the master of the Bat Rack were transforming from stocky muscle and bone into a very thick, sweet syrup that could conform to and flow around anything.

“Sorry, Spar,” he whispered unctuously. “It was a bad night and Kim startled me. He’s black like a witch cat. An easy mistake on my part. We’ll try him out at catcher. He must earn his keep! Now take your drink.”

The pliant double pouch filling Spar’s palm felt like the philosopher’s stone. He lifted it toward his lips, but at the same time his toes unwittingly found a shroud, and he dove swiftly toward the shining torus, which had a hole big enough to accommodate four barmen at a pinch.

Spar collapsed against the opposite inside of the hole. With a straining of its shrouds, the torus absorbed his impact. He had the pouch to his lips, its cap unscrewed, but had not squeezed. He shut his eyes and with a tiny sob blindly thrust the pouch back into the moonmist cage.

Working chiefly by touch, he took a pouch of corn gruel from the hot closet, snitching at the same time a pouch of coffee and thrusting it into an inside pocket. Then he took a pouch of water, opened it, shoved in five salt tablets, closed it, and shook and squeezed it vigorously.

Keeper, having drifted behind him, said into his ear, “So you drink anyhow. Moonmist not good enough, you make yourself a cocktail. I should dock it from your scrip. But all drunks are liars, or become so.”

Unable to ignore the taunt, Spar explained, “No, only salt water to harden my gums.”

“Poor Spar, what’ll you ever need hard gums for? Planning to share rats with your new friend? Don’t let me catch you roasting them in my grill! I should dock you for the salt. To sweeping, Spar!” Then turning his head toward the violet fore-corner and speaking loudly, “And you! Catch mice!”

Kim had already found the small chewer tube and thrust the dead rat into it, gripping tube with foreclaws and pushing rat with aft. At the touch of the rat’s cadaver against the solid wrist of the tube, a grinding began there which would continue until the rat was macerated and slowly swallowed away toward the great cloaca which fed the Gardens of Diana.

Three times Spar manfully swished salt water against his gums and spat into a waste tube, vomiting a little after the first gargle. Then facing away from Keeper as he gently squeezed the pouches, he forced into his throat the coffee—dearer than moonmist, the drink distilled from moonbrew—and some of the corn gruel.

He apologetically offered the rest to Kim, who shook his head. “Jusst had a mousse.”

Hastily Spar made his way to the green starboard corner. Outside the hatch he heard some drunks calling with weary and mournful anger, “Unzip!”

Grasping the heads of two long waste tubes, Spar began to sweep the air, working out from the green corner in a spiral, quite like an orb spider building her web.

From the torus, where he was idly polishing its thin titanium, Keeper upped the suction on the two tubes, so that reaction sped Spar in his spiral. He need use his body only to steer course and to avoid shrouds in such a way that his tubes didn’t tangle.

Soon Keeper glanced at his wrist and called, “Spar, can’t you keep track of the time? Open up!” He threw a ring of keys which Spar caught, though he could see only the last half of their flight. As soon as he was well headed toward the green door, Keeper called again and pointed aft and aloft. Spar obediently unlocked and unzipped the dark and also the blue hatch, though there was no one at either, before opening the green. In each case he avoided the hatch’s gummy margin and the sticky emergency hatch hinged close beside.

In tumbled three brewos, old customers, snatching at shrouds and pushing off from each other’s bodies in their haste to reach the torus, and meanwhile cursing Spar.

“Sky strangle you!”

“Earth bury you!”

“Seas sear you!”

“Language, boys!” Keeper reproved. “Though I’ll agree my helper’s stupidity and sloth tempt a man to talk foul.”

Spar threw the keys back. The brewos lined up elbow to elbow around the torus, three grayish blobs with heads pointing toward the blue corner.

Keeper faced them. “Below, below!” he ordered indignantly. “You think you’re gents?”

“But you’re serving no one aloft yet.”

“There’s only us three.”

“No matter,” Keeper replied. “Propriety, suckers! Unless you mean to buy by the pouch, invert.”

With low grumbles the brewos reversed their bodies so that their heads pointed toward the black corner.

Himself not bothering to invert, Keeper tossed them a slim and twisty faint red blur with three branches. Each grabbed a branch and stuck it in his face.

The pudge of his fat hand on glint of valve, Keeper said, “Let’s see your scrip first.”

With angry mumbles each unwadded something too small for Spar to see clearly, and handed it over. Keeper studied each item before feeding it to the cashbox. Then he decreed, “Six seconds of moonbrew. Suck fast,” and looked at his wrist and moved the other hand.

One of the brewos seemed to be strangling, but he blew out through his nose and kept sucking bravely.

Keeper closed the valve.

Instantly one brewo splutteringly accused, “You cut us off too soon. That wasn’t six.”

The treacle back in his voice, Keeper explained, “I’m squirting it to you four and two. Don’t want you to drown. Ready again?”

The brewos greedily took their second squirt and then, at times wistfully sucking their tubes for remnant drops, began to shoot the breeze. In his distant circling, Spar’s keen ears heard most of it.

“A dirty Sleepday, Keeper.”

“No, a good one, brewo—for a drunken sucker to get his blood sucked by a lust-tickling vamp.”

“I was dossed safe at Pete’s, you fat ghoul.”

“Pete’s safe? That’s news!”

“Dirty Atoms to you! But vamps did get Girlie and Sweetheart. Right in the starboard main drag, if you can believe it. By Cobalt Ninety, Windrush is getting lonely! Third Hold, anyhow. You can swim a whole passageway by day without meeting a soul.”

“How do you know that about the girls?” the second brewo demanded. “Maybe they’ve gone to another hold to change their luck.”

“Their luck’s run out. Suzy saw them snatched.”

“Not Suzy,” Keeper corrected, now playing umpire. “But Mabel did. A proper fate for drunken sluts.”

“You’ve got no heart, Keeper.”

“True enough. That’s why the vamps pass me by. But speaking serious, boys, the werethings and witches are running too free in Three. I was awake all Sleepday guarding. I’m sending a complaint to the Bridge.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Keeper solemnly nodded his head and crossed his left chest. The brewos were impressed.

Spar spiraled back toward the green corner, sweeping farther from the wall. On his way he overtook the black blob of Kim, who was circling the periphery himself, industriously leaping from shroud to shroud and occasionally making dashes along them.