Ethan Rutherford - The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories

At that point there arose from the sands a muffled shriek, and from behind where we had parked came a sound like the earth squishing open. We turned in time to see the dirwhal leap his enormous bulk directly out of the sand. For a moment in his breach, he crossed the sun, hung in the air, and we were in shadow. Then he landed like a hammer of God directly on top of the second mate’s buggy, which disappeared below his belly with a muffled and sickening thud of dust.

It’s possible we heard the call not to fire. It’s possible in our haste we ignored it. The moment before impact, I saw a flash of razor teeth, a perfectly smooth gullet; a breath-smell that was like ammonia wormed up my nose. Then twelve bomb-lances landed more or less simultaneously, and burrowed their tips in its skin. We had been instructed to aim for the head. In our enthusiasm, we did not. The bombs concussed; the center of the beast atomized into a red and white mist, and we fell back in wonder at what we’d done.

Immediately we’d known the chance of survival for our friends was negligible—if they had not been crushed and killed instantaneously by the dirwhal’s crashing bulk, the explosion from our lances would certainly have finished them—but we also knew enough to try. Bushard and I affixed chains to the dirwhal’s flukes. The mates hoisted the carcass onto the sled. As we moved that great body, we saw our three companions, half-buried in the sand. It was impossible to tell if it was their blood or the blood of the dirwhal we were seeing. That somewhere below the boredom of our expedition lay tremendous risk was something we’d forgotten, or stopped considering, or purposely ignored. Renaldo sat down hard in the sand. The rest of us removed what we could from the crushed buggy, zipped most of that in bags, and we set toward our ship. We were greeted by those still aboard the Halcyon as if we’d conquered Rome.

The cutting and rendering will last for the majority of the next few days, and will require all hands. Captain Tonker has scheduled a funeral for three days from now, and instructed that the remains of those lost be kept in cool storage. He mentioned that in all of his years on the sand, he’d never lost a member of his crew. It is difficult to tell if this has touched him in any way at all.

april 20

Too tired to relate much of the day. Everything is taking longer than it should, no doubt because many of us have never set foot on a cutting platform, let alone performed such grotesque surgery. Every part of the ship smells as if it’s been brined with vinegar and putrid rot, a stench so overpowering and permanent seeming that we’ve taken to wearing our sun-suits below deck to mitigate the odor.

In order to render properly, the meat must be cut clean from the carcass and the flanks hoisted aloft. From there, the small cutters flay those strips into liftable squares, and feed them in correctly measured amounts onto the belt so the works aren’t overwhelmed and are able to render at the appropriate temperature. The blue flame from the burner flowers at the base of the cauldrons and licks the sides with such ferocity that we have to ladle in shifts to avoid collapsing from the heat.

This evening Bushard, along with some of the other hands, expressed concern that something might be wrong with our catch. When Tom cracked the head-case, there’d been a hissing sound, which was followed by a geyser of liquid the color and consistency of cream long gone off. Everyone in the immediate vicinity became sick. Eventually the foul-spout subsided, but it took an hour for anyone to feel well enough to venture near the head in order to butcher it. There was discussion about whether the head would cook or not, given its strangeness; and if it did, whether it would contaminate the other batches when mixed in at the cooper’s station. Captain Tonker, however, waved his hand, and told Bushard the next time he wanted to waste his afternoon, to come find him in his quarters, where he’d be taking a nap.

All things considered, everyone is in good spirits. Renaldo informed me that even though we’re now in one of the farther circles, near the outer edge of the hunting grounds, for the last few days we’ve been receiving transmissions from outside the basin. I asked him if there were any messages for me. He shrugged, and said there was a backlog. When I checked myself, my box was empty. “No news is good news,” Bushard told me. I nodded. I must have looked upset. “I’m just trying to help,” he said, and walked away.

I’ve written to my sister with the news of our catch, and am now awaiting a response. I sit, now, in the galley near the telecomp, transcribing my thoughts in this log. For the last two hours I haven’t written a word. Members of the crew come and go. Tuva, if only you would write I could fall asleep. It wouldn’t even matter to me what you said. Describe your misery. Tell me about the cold. Call me a coward for leaving. Be angry at the world for providing you with a brother who could not protect you. Tell me you will never forgive me. Anything would be better than nothing.

april 22

Tradition holds that after an expedition’s first catch, the mates and steerers buggy a mile from the ship and her illuminated works to make a show of celebration. In our case, it would also serve as a send-off to those we lost in the hunt. At dark, those of us remaining aboard gathered near the hoops and bow-struts to watch them go. At an agreed-upon signal, they crossed their lances, and fired into the sky. According to this ceremony, wherever the farthest dart lands is where we will find our next dirwhal.

Seeing this tonight, I became so full of emotion that I had to grip the rail to steady myself. It wasn’t sadness for those we lost. It wasn’t relief that we had finally begun our journey in earnest. It was odd and expansive, a mysterious state that turned almost as quickly as it rose, to the point where all I could say about it now was that it felt like pity crossed with exultation, and as the lances blazed up on the distant sand I pushed as far back in my memory as I was able and conjured an image of family happiness inexplicable even to myself.

“Watch my arm,” Bushard said. I was holding it. I apologized, and made my way below.

may 20

Four weeks have passed since my last entry, and in that time a bout of misfortune has found the Halcyon . One of the coopers put the gris through a series of tests, determined it had in fact contaminated the batch, the whole of which was now unusable. In an attempt to find new hunting grounds, we’ve pushed farther out into the basin, into relatively uncharted sand, and as a result have had our first run-in with the Firsties. They appeared two weeks ago, three small and fast-moving shipper-tanks cresting over the dunes. Most of our crew were in buggies running charges miles to the south of us; those of us left aboard were not prepared to fend the Firsties off. They struck quickly and retreated. The damage was one inoperable buggy, a tar-bomb affixed to one of our treads that didn’t fire, and a series of unwanted leaflets that were launched from a distance and rained over the deck. We are now posted on watch twenty-four hours a day to guard against further raids, but have yet to see any further evidence of their ships on the dunes. No tread tracks, no transmissions, nothing but the damage to our ship to indicate they had ever been here.

In addition: three days ago, one of the mates fell from the bridge while repairing navigational equipment, and was buried without fanfare.

The result is such that our spirits, having momentarily lifted, are now deeply plunged. Annoyance and chagrin, the twin poles of our previous and collective emotional lives aboard the Halcyon, have given way to a disgruntled fatalism that no one is proud of and no one can shake. Thus far our expedition has amounted to this: we lanced a sick beast, boiled him down, and poured him back into the sand. Talk in the fo’c’sle is of a cursed voyage—the lingering stench of the dirwhal our unlucky, haunting talisman—but even as that superstition is passed around out of boredom and desperation, we know better. Years ago, someone discovered that the dirwhals crowding the Gulf could be rendered into usable energy, and made a fortune. After that, anyone who was able to scrape a shipper-tank together and get backing made his way to the sands. After that, expeditions became longer, to account for the travel time it took to reach new hunting grounds. Now, a generation later, anyone who puts on a sun-suit and stands for hours on deck like we do is forced to confront what Bushard has recently taken to calling the natural limit of optimism—as in, what’d we expect? The history of the world is the history of diminishing returns. You hunt something to the verge of extinction, it stays dead. It’s not a curse, it’s history getting the better of us; it’s simply time catching up.