Fritz Leiber: Ship of Shadows

His hand found the sponge, stopped, investigated, found the wet part, then went toward the middle of his face. He sniffed.

“Well, boys, at least we know none of you are vamps,” he observed softly. “Else we’d found you sucking at her ear.”

Rixende said very rapidly in a monotone, “I didn’t come for a drink, I swear to you. I came to get that little bag you lost. Then I was tempted. I didn’t know I would be. I tried to resist, but Keeper led me on. I—”

“Shut up,” Crown said quietly. “We were just wondering how you paid him. Now we know. How were you planning to buy your third double? Cut off a hand or a foot? Keeper… show me your other hand. We said show it. That’s right. Now unfist.”

Crown plucked the pendant from Keeper’s opened hand-blob. His yellow-brown eye-blurs on Keeper all the while, he wagged the precious bauble back and forth, then tossed it slowly aloft.

As the golden blur moved toward the open blue hatch at unchanging pace, Keeper opened and shut his mouth twice, then babbled, “I didn’t tempt her, Crown, honest I didn’t. I didn’t know she was going to hurt her ear. I tried to stop her, but—”

“We’re not interested,” Crown said. “Put the double on our tab.” His face never leaving Keeper’s, he extended his arm aloft and pinched the pendant just before it straight-lined out of reach.

“Why’s this home of jollity so dead?” Snaking a long leg across the bar as easily as an arm, Crown pinched Spar’s ear between his big and smaller toes, pulled him close and turned him round. “How’re you coming along with the saline, baby? Gums hardening? Only one way to test it.” Gripping Spar’s jaw and lip with his other toes, he thrust the big one into Spar’s mouth. “Come on, bite me, baby.”

Spar bit. It was the only way not to vomit. Crown chuckled. Spar bit hard. Energy flooded his shaking frame. His face grew hot and his forehead throbbed under its drenching of fear-sweat. He was sure he was hurting Crown, but the Coroner of Hold Three only kept up his low, delighted chuckle and when Spar gasped, withdrew his foot.

“My, my, you’re getting strong, baby. We almost felt that. Have a drink on us.”

Spar ducked his stupidly wide-open mouth away from the thin jet of moonmist. The jet struck him in his eye and stung so that he had to knot his fists and clamp his aching gums together to keep from crying out.

“Why’s this place so dead, I ask again? No applause for baby and now baby’s gone temperance on us. Can’t you give us just one tiny laugh?” Crown faced each in turn. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongues?”

“Cat? We have a cat, a new cat, came just last night, working as catcher,” Keeper suddenly babbled. “It can talk a little. Not as well as Hellhound, but it talks. It’s very funny. It caught a rat.”

“What’d you do with the rat’s body, Keeper?”

“Fed it to the chewer. That is, Spar did. Or the cat.”

“You mean to tell us that you disposed of a corpse without notifying us? Oh, don’t go pale on us, Keeper. That’s nothing. Why, we could accuse you of harboring a witch cat. You say he came last night, and that was a wicked night for witches. Now don’t go green on us too. We were only putting you on. We were only looking for a small laugh.”

“Spar! Call your cat! Make him say something funny.”

Before Spar could call, or even decide whether he’d call Kim or not, the black blur appeared on a shroud near Crown, green eye-blurs fixed on the yellow-brown ones.

“So you’re the joker, eh? Well… joke.”

Kim increased in size. Spar realized it was his fur standing on end.

“Go ahead, joke… like they tell us you can. Keeper, you wouldn’t be kidding us about this cat being able to talk?”

“Spar! Make your cat joke!”

“Don’t bother. We believe he’s got his own tongue too. That the matter, Blackie?” He reached out his hand. Kim lashed at it and sprang away. Crown only gave another of his low chuckles.

Rixende began to shake uncontrollably. Crown examined her solicitously yet leisurely, using his outstretched hand to turn her head toward him, so that any blood that might have been coming from it from the cat’s slash would have gone into the sponge.

“Spar swore the cat could talk,” Keeper babbled. “I’ll—”

“Quiet,” Crown said. He put the pouch to Rixende’s lips, squeezed until her shaking subsided and it was empty, then flicked the crumpled pliofilm toward Spar.

“And now about that little black bag, Keeper,” Crown said flatly.

“Spar!”

The latter dipped into his lost-and-found nook, saying quickly, “No little black bags, coroner, but we did find this one the lady Rixende forgot last Playday night,” and he turned back holding out something big, round, gleamingly orange, and closed with draw strings.

Crown took and swung it slowly in a circle. For Spar, who couldn’t see the strings, it was like magic. “Bit too big, and a mite the wrong shade. We’re certain we lost the little black bag here, or had it lifted. You making the Bat Rack a tent for dips, Keeper?”

“Spar—?”

“We’re asking you , Keeper.”

Shoving Spar aside, Keeper groped frantically in the nook, pulling aside the cages of moonmist and moonbrew pouches. He produced many small objects. Spar could distinguish the largest—an electric hand-fan and a bright red footglove. They hung around Keeper in a jumble.

Keeper was panting and had scrabbled his hands for a full minute in the nook without bringing out anything more, when Crown said, his voice lazy again, “That’s enough. The little black bag was of no importance to us in any case.”

Keeper emerged with a face doubly blurred. It must be surrounded by a haze of sweat. He pointed an arm at the orange bag.

“It might be inside that one!”

Crown opened the bag, began to search through it, changed his mind, and gave the whole bag a flick. Its remarkably numerous contents came out and moved slowly aloft at equal speeds, like an army on the march in irregular order. Crown scanned them as they went past.

“No, not there.” He pushed the bag toward Keeper. “Return Rix’s stuff to it and have it ready for us the next time we dive in—”

Putting his arm around Rixende, so that it was his hand that held the sponge to her ear, he turned and kicked off powerfully for the aft hatch. After he had been out of sight for several seconds, there was a general sigh, the three brewos put out new scrip-wads to pay for another squirt. Suzy asked for a second double dark, which Spar handed her quickly, while Keeper shook off his daze and ordered Spar, “Gather up all the floating trash, especially Rixie’s, and get that back in her purse. On the jump, lubber!” Then he used the electric hand-fan to cool and dry himself.

It was a mean task Keeper had set Spar, but Kim came to help, darting after objects too small for Spar to see. Once he had them in his hands, Spar could readily finger or sniff which was which.

When his impotent rage at Crown had faded, Spar’s thoughts went back to Sleepday night. Had his vision of vamps and werewolves been dream only?—now that he knew the werethings had been abroad in force. If only he had better eyes to distinguish illusion from reality! Kim’s “Sssee! Sssee shshsharply!” hissed in his memory. What would it be like to see sharply? Everything brighter? Or closer?

After a weary time the scattered objects were gathered and he went back to sweeping and Kim to his mouse hunt. As Workday morning progressed, the Bat Rack gradually grew less bright, though so gradually it was hard to tell.

A few more customers came in, but all for quick drinks, which Keeper served them glumly; Suzy judged none of them worth cottoning up to.