Chris Wooding - The Black Lung Captain

Besides, he wasn't sure if Pinn was even smart enough to feel pain in the way other humans did. It was more like separating animal companions in a zoo, and watching one of them pine for the other.

Eventually, Pinn put them all out of their misery and wandered off back to the Ketty Jay. The mood lightened immediately, though not by much. Crake had been hoping for a raucous night, ending in oblivion, but Frey was too preoccupied and Malvery had something on his mind.

Well, at least there was the booze. He didn't need much more than that.

At one point, they bumped into Grist, Crattle and a few men from the Storm Dog in the street. Grist seemed to be having a similarly frustrating time. Crake, nicely smashed by this point, allowed himself a bitter smile. Good. He'd come to despise Grist, and was quite scared of him. No matter how much Crake had wanted to plunge a machete into Hodd's neck himself, it was inexcusable that Grist had lost control like that. What was a man if he didn't have control? Nothing better than those savages from Kurg.

Let Dracken disappear without trace, he thought. She outwitted us. Move on.

When they got to a bar, Crake and Malvery were largely left to their own devices while Frey went to work charming the clientele. They took their drinks to a corner and set to work on them. Conversation was minimal. Malvery kept on glancing at him, as if he was about to speak, and then didn't.

'What?' Crake asked irritably.

'Nothing,' said Malvery.

It was the eighth or ninth bar they'd visited, and they were both unsteady on their feet, when Malvery broached the subject he'd been working up to all night.

'Know how long I've been an alcoholic?' he asked.

Crake picked up their bottle of rum and filled Malvery's mug, narrowly avoiding igniting the sleeve of his coat on the candle that sat in the centre of the table.

'Oh, you're not an alcoholic,' Crake said. 'You just like a drink.'

Malvery barked a laugh. 'No, mate. Whatever way you cut it, I'm an alcoholic. Five years now.'

Crake didn't quite know what to say. 'How's that going?' he managed eventually.

Malvery grinned. 'Suits me, actually. I don't mind a bit.'

'Hmm.'

They both drank from their mugs. Crake had a suspicion that something more was coming, but he wasn't going to be the one to prompt it.

'Listen,' said Malvery. He leaned forward. His green-lensed glasses sat askew on his broad nose, and droplets of rum hung from his big white moustache.

Crake waited. When Malvery still hadn't said anything after several seconds, he said, 'Um . . .'

Malvery held one thick finger in the air to silence him. 'Remember . . .' he said. 'Remember I told you what I did?'

There was only one thing he could be referring to. Several years ago, he'd operated on a friend while drunk, and killed him. It had cost him his livelihood, his wife, and everything he had.

'I remember,' said Crake.

Malvery's eyes drifted out of focus. 'I always thought . . . things could've gone two ways that day,' he said. Suddenly he snatched up the bottle of rum and held it between them. 'See, I could've said, "Oi, mate, you know who killed your friend? That bottle in your hand! Get rid of it!" And I'd have gone clean and sober. That would've been the sensible thing to do.' He put the bottle down. 'But instead I just drank more. Wanted to. I wanted to block it out. To forget.'

Crake was watching the mesmerising play of candlelight in the curve of the bottle. 'That, I understand,' he said.

Malvery wiped his moustache with the back of his hand. 'Let me tell you. Doesn't work.' He tapped the bottle with a finger. 'This bottle ain't gonna forgive you, Crake. You've got to do that yourself.'

Crake's eyes went to Malvery's. 'Some things can't be forgiven,' he said.

'Then they can't be forgotten, either,' Malvery replied.

'I suppose not,' Crake conceded.

Malvery sat back in his chair. 'So you can't forgive yourself and you can't forget. Fine. Now what?'

Crake was confused by that, and irritated by the turn of the conversation. 'There is no "now what",' he said.

"Course there is,' said Malvery. 'You just keep on living, don't you?'

Crake shrugged.

'Look, mate. It was you that persuaded me to pick up a scalpel again, after all those years. We saved Silo, between us. Remember that?'

'Of course I do.'

'Now I ain't never going to be the surgeon I once was, and I've still got a liver blacker than pickled shit, but I know how to save a life. Maybe I've got ten years left, maybe just one, but maybe in that time I can save someone else. Maybe you.'

'What's your point? That you figured out how to be a doctor again? Malvery, you're still drinking.'

'It's far too late for me,' he said. 'Besides, I'm a damn good alcoholic.' He swigged his rum to prove the point, then wagged a finger at Crake. 'But I ain't nobody's role model. Why'd you wanna go this way?'

'I'm not your bloody apprentice, Malvery,' Crake said. 'This isn't about you.'

But Malvery wasn't about to be put off. 'You're a smart feller. Careful. Polite. You think things through. But lately, mate, you've been getting nasty when you drink. And that's not you.'

This was ridiculous. Crake felt like he was being preached at, and it made him angry. 'So what's the diagnosis, doc?' he said, his voice dripping with scorn. 'How do you propose to cure me?'

'I faced my daemons, mate. You made me. Now you gotta face yours.'

'What do you know about my daemons?' Crake sneered.

Malvery shrugged. 'Not much, not much. But I know you've got 'em, and they're big ugly bastards at that. Otherwise you wouldn't be spending half your life in a bottle.'

'More than half,' Crake said, refilling his mug. 'So what?'

Malvery studied him for a moment. 'How'd it feel, when you fixed that door for us?'

'What do you mean?'

'The door in the dreadnought. The one you popped open.'

Crake thought about that. 'It felt good,' he said. 'I felt useful.'

'You like all that daemonist stuff, don't you?'

'I wouldn't be a daemonist if I didn't,' Crake replied. He ran his fingers through his scruffy blond hair. 'Obsession comes with the territory. Once you've seen the other side . . .'he trailed away.

'And how much have you done, these last couple of months?'

'Excuse me?'

'How much daemonism, mate? New stuff, I mean. Testing your boundaries, learning your craft, all of that.'

'I don't see what you're driving at.'

Malvery leaned forward on his elbows. 'I see the stuff you've made. Frey's cutlass, your gold tooth, those little ear thingies the pilots wear, that skeleton key you've got. Some of those things are real damn clever.'

'Thank you.'

'Now how many of them did you make in the last six months?'

Crake opened his mouth to reply, then shut it again.

'I expect you've been all tied up in research, trying out some new method or something, ain't you?' Malvery prompted. 'Maybe you're working on something really special?'

Crake glared at him. Malvery- sat back and folded his arms. Point made.

Crake took a resentful swallow from his mug. Being called an alcoholic was easy enough to take, but he didn't like having his commitment to the Art questioned. And yet, he couldn't deny Malvery had a point. He didn't have any excuses. He'd stopped practising daemonism almost entirely of late. The thrill of it, the allure of new discoveries, had disappeared.

For a while, he'd rather enjoyed the challenge of working aboard the Ketty Jay. Being without a sanctum forced him to think of creative ways to get the best out of his portable, sub-standard equipment. But as the weeks passed there were fewer and fewer hours in the day when he was clear-headed enough to study the formulae he needed. He seemed to be always hungover or drunk, and it became a huge effort to turn his brain to the complex problems of daemonism. Easier to leave it until the next day. He told himself he'd do some work then. But the next day was the same as the last, and somehow it just never happened.