The Beast of Cretacea Read online

  The last of the chase-boat crewmen to climb aboard is slighter of build, with white hair balled into a knot that rests like an egg on top of his head. Long white strands escape from the topknot, and his uniform is blood-spattered and ripped at the elbow and knee. But his expression is calm, a faraway look in his dark eyes. Without a word to anyone, he crosses the deck and disappears through a hatch.

  The powerful winches have drawn the furious terrafin close to the ship. Ishmael is startled by its relative slightness of size. The span of its thick, powerful wings can’t be more than twelve feet, and its thin, whiplike tail is barely three yards in length. Still, it is completely unlike anything he has ever seen before, its back as black as its underside is white, with dashes of white around its large midnight eyes.

  Incredibly, the nearer the terrafin is pulled to the ship, the greater its resistance grows, flinging itself about with such terrific force that it seems to spend more time above the water than in it. At the same time, the sky above the ship’s stern teems with white, gray, and brown flyers circling and screeching.

  The new arrivals gawk.

  “Stop!” a voice suddenly shouts. Heads turn. A man stands on a short tower above the deck beside the glass-encased compartment where the winch operator works. He wears a neatly pressed black uniform, and sunlight reflects off his dark, round glasses. A carefully folded black bandanna holds back his spiky, jet-black hair.

  The winches stop. Ishmael sees why: At the bottom of the slipway, the terrafin has wedged itself into the corner where the ramp meets the hull. Were the winches to continue to take in line, the harpoon would be yanked out, and the creature would escape. Indeed, as the beast’s wings pound thunderously against the ship’s hull, all can see that one of the harpoon’s bloody barbs is slowly pulling out of the creature’s back.

  “They better get another stick in it before that one works itself out,” Charity says.

  The man in black bellows from the winch tower at the crowd of sailors below: “A thousand for the next stick!”

  Ishmael catches his breath. It’s a ludicrous amount of money, and he expects the sailors to fight for the chance to earn it. But the crowd goes silent, eyes hidden beneath the shading visors of their caps. The only sounds are the thrashing of the terrafin and the squawking of the flyers winging overhead.

  “Two thousand!” the man shouts.

  “Is that the captain?” Gwen asks.

  Charity shakes her head. “Starbuck, the first mate.”

  “Three thousand!” Starbuck yells.

  Queequeg leans toward Ishmael and whispers, “It would take years to earn that back on Earth.”

  Still, no one takes the offer.

  At the mouth of the slipway, the terrafin continues to battle and flail. One of the harpoon’s barbs has now pulled completely free.

  “Four thousand!” Starbuck beseeches. A small fortune! Just to do something that won’t take more than a few seconds. Ishmael knows it would go a long way toward saving up the money he came to this planet to make. But he’s only been on board a few hours; would they even consider him for the task?

  Before he can decide whether to act, a hand in the crowd goes up, and a wiry, dark-haired sailor steps forward.

  “Abdul took the bait,” Charity whispers. “Wish him luck. He’s going to need it.”

  The sailor is given a helmet, body armor, a clear shield, and a shoulder-mounted harpoon launcher. His eyes shift nervously and his hands are trembling. Sweat runs from under the helmet and down his temples. Someone clips a heavy wire to a hook at the back of the armor.

  With the shield raised and the harpoon launcher balanced on his shoulder, Abdul takes short, careful steps down the slipway. The terrafin’s thrashing sends spray against the clear shield. The flyers dive and shriek more frantically, as though sensing the tension in the air.

  Halfway down the slipway, Abdul stops and looks back.

  “What are you waiting for?” Starbuck yells impatiently.

  The other sailors concur. “Go on!” “Don’t be scared!” “Think of the pot, mate!”

  “He’d best go through with it now,” Charity whispers. “They’ll never let him live it down if he doesn’t.”

  “The harpoon!” A sailor in the crowd points. The second barb has worked free of the wound.

  “Go!” Starbuck barks at Abdul. “Before we lose it!”

  Abdul takes another step. Just then, the terrafin grows still. A hush settles over the crowd. Now that the beast has been brought to the mouth of the slipway, the ship’s engine has been silenced and its propellers have stopped churning. Riding the ghost of momentum, the vessel glides slowly and silently ahead.

  “Go on!” Starbuck shouts.

  Abdul lowers the shield and takes aim at the impassive creature half out of the ocean below. Its black hide glistens in the sunlight.

  Even the flyers have momentarily quieted.

  “Do it!” Starbuck commands.

  But the terrafin acts first. In less than the blink of an eye, it arches its back and whips its tail forward. Abdul buckles and collapses, the harpoon launcher clattering unfired to the slipway floor.

  Small waves splash against the ship’s stern where an instant ago the terrafin was pinned. The creature is gone, the bloody harpoon dangling uselessly from the towline. Abdul lies on the slipway, a long, pointed white spine driven through his neck. With each beat of the sailor’s heart, a stream of bright-red blood pulses from his wound.

  Starbuck and the short, round man with the eye patch hustle through the crowd and down the slipway to the fallen sailor. Starbuck cradles Abdul’s head in his lap while the other man once again fumbles in his black bag and pulls out a derma-jet infuser.

  But his hand stops in midair.

  Blood has ceased pulsing from the wound.

  Starbuck’s shoulders slump. “Forget it, Doc.”

  The man with the eye patch slips the infuser back into his bag, and the first mate gently lays Abdul’s head on the slipway.

  It’s not the first time Ishmael has encountered death: Back in Black Range, if you rose each day at dawn to get on the Natrient line, sooner or later you would come across the corpse of someone who’d been a victim of robbery the previous night, or drunk too much benzo, or faced too much despair. But he has never seen someone perish right before his eyes and, from the looks of it, neither has any of the other new arrivals. Slack-jawed and pale, they stare while Starbuck orders sailors to carry Abdul’s body up the slipway.

  “Wh-what was th-that th-thing in his neck?” Billy stammers.

  “We call it a skiver,” Charity answers, shaking her head grimly. “Welcome to your new life, kids.”

  They sat around the ancient baclum table, its faint bioluminescent emissions barely enough to outline the glass and jar on its surface. The rest of the small kitchen was veiled in darkness, those sitting around the table little more than silhouettes.

  “How much longer?” Ishmael asked.

  “Nine hours,” replied his foster father, Joachim.

  “It doesn’t matter, Ish.” Archie’s voice came out of the dark. “I want to go. You were stupid to file that appeal. I’ll be fine.”

  “Isn’t Eliza’s Law supposed to stop things like this from happening?” Ishmael asked.

  From out of the shadows Old Ben leaned forward. With a trembling hand, he picked up his half-full glass of benzo. “That only applies to jobs in this solar system. Once you’re out past the Oort cloud, it’s more or less anarchy.” The glass was empty when he returned it to the table.

  “If you can go, I can go, Ish,” Archie insisted. “Besides, I bet they send me someplace easy. Like that planet where all the nutraceuticals come from. What’s it called?”

  “Permia,” said Joachim.

  “I hear they just sit in labs all day, testing for impurities,” Archie said. But then he added, “Though I guess that can’t pay as well as working on one of those crazy planets with active volcanoes and earthquakes and people dying i
n mining accidents.”

  Old Ben leaned forward just enough for Ishmael to see his bushy eyebrows and white hair. He picked up the jar and refilled his glass with the clear, syrupy liquid. “Whatever they pay,” he said, “it’ll be better than what you’ll get around here . . . if you can even find a job.” As the plant manager of the Zirconia Electrolysis station — the only employer left in Black Range — Old Ben knew better than anyone the grim prospects facing Ishmael and Archie’s generation.

  “He’s right,” said Joachim.

  Although Ishmael would never say so, it bothered him that his foster father seemed untroubled about Archie’s going away. True, missions only lasted for one year — unless you decided to renew — but no matter what you were paid, it was worth it only if you survived.

  Outside, the wind whistled and Ishmael thought he heard rough scratches of dirt and grit against the roof.

  On the table, Old Ben’s glass was empty again, but when his hand went in search of the jar of benzo, it was gone. Ishmael assumed that was his foster father’s doing.

  “Could be a storm kicking up.” Joachim rose to his feet. “You’d better get home, Ben. Get the POLE, Ishmael.”

  “Should I take a gun?” Ishmael asked. At night it was usually advisable to carry one.

  From outside came the rattle of a wind-tossed can careering down the street. Joachim hesitated, then nodded. “Hard to imagine that kind out in weather like this, but you never know.”

  Ishmael went to the storage closet, where he got the gun, and, after feeling around the disorganized shelves in the dark, found the Portable Organic Light Emitter. By now the wind was whistling more loudly and they could hear dry thunder in the distance. A storm was indeed approaching.

  As Ishmael made his way through the gloom toward the front door, he glimpsed the barely visible silhouettes of two people, heads bent close, speaking in low voices. He stopped and listened.

  “The station’s down to one coal delivery a week,” Old Ben was whispering. “And soon it’s going to be one every other week.”

  Joachim sighed. “I’m worried about Archie. . . . Surely there’ll be some form of Eliza’s Law where they send him, won’t there?”

  So Joachim was worried, Ishmael thought.

  “No way to know.” Old Ben placed a reassuring hand on the taller man’s shoulder. “But even if there isn’t, he’s a smart and resourceful boy. And you know this is the way it has to be.”

  “What’s the way it has to be?” Ishmael asked.

  Both men jerked their heads up, startled.

  “It’s nothing, Ish,” Joachim said. “You’d better get Ben home. Take goggles and a mask. It could get nasty on the way back.”

  Outside, the wind stank of chemicals and soot. Except for a dim glow in a window here or there, it was pitch-black. Even on the clearest of nights, you couldn’t see more than half a dozen feet before everything bled into inkiness. When Ishmael was younger, he’d sometimes pictured himself walking down the street and falling off a cliff, or perhaps off the edge of the earth itself, and plummeting forever into the empty vacuum of space. But if what he’d heard was true, at least that vacuum would benefit from the illumination of stars.

  He and Old Ben followed the Portable Organic Light Emitter’s beam down the cracked and broken sidewalk, the wind gusting at their backs, particles pricking their ears and necks. Sometimes months passed and the foul smoky air under the Shroud barely moved. Then a storm would blow in, followed by days of digging out.

  A particularly bad stretch of broken sidewalk lay ahead, and Ishmael took the old man’s arm to steady him.

  “You’re a good boy,” Old Ben said as they passed the tall ghost poles where it was said streetlights had once hung. “Don’t worry about Archie. He’ll be okay.”

  The words did little to alleviate Ishmael’s fears. Who really knew what life was like on those distant feeder planets so many light-years away? Everyone you talked to had a different story, but these were always second- or thirdhand; Black Range was a filthy blight, and the reason people signed up for missions was to earn enough money to leave and never return.

  They passed a flickering outdoor holovid, one of the tallest sights in Black Range after the huge smokestacks that rose from the Zirconia Electrolysis station. A beautiful forty-foot-tall woman beckoned to them in an audio track blemished with gaps and breaks: “Want to . . . zzzt . . . new worlds filled with . . . zzzt . . . Enlistees make an excellent . . . zzzt . . . never been a better time to . . . zzzzt . . . Safe travel aboard a modern fleet . . . zzzt . . . Adventure and excitement . . . zzzzt . . . a secure financial future . . . zzzt . . . Volunteer today and . . . zzzt.”

  Ishmael winced. Why had he told Archie he’d enlisted? Then again, he couldn’t have just vanished without warning — that would have been unthinkable. Was there anything he could have done to stop Archie from hobbling down to the Mission Office and enlisting as well?

  The truth was that it had never occurred to Ishmael that his foster brother would do such a thing — or even if he did, that the Mission Board would accept him. That’s why Eliza’s Law existed, right? To make sure children and people with disabilities couldn’t be exploited. A wave of remorse swept through Ishmael. Maybe he shouldn’t have enlisted in the first place. It would have meant all of them spending the rest of their lives here in dark, dismal, dilapidated Black Range, but at least Archie would be safe.

  The flying grit was starting to sting by the time they got to Old Ben’s place, which had once been one of the nicest homes in Black Range but was now in serious disrepair. Ishmael helped the old man through the door, wrinkling his nose at the stale, musty odor inside.

  “Have a seat,” Old Ben said, wheezing in the dark.

  “But the storm’s coming.”

  “Sit. We have . . . to talk, son. It’s . . . important.” Though the walk had not been far, it had left the old man breathless.

  Knowing Old Ben wouldn’t keep him in weather like this unless it was truly urgent, Ishmael felt for a chair and sat. The old man disappeared into the dark and returned with a jar and a glass. Benzo was a homemade concoction that impaired the nervous system and gave people the tremors. But Ben was old, maybe forty-five or even fifty, and surely couldn’t have many years left. His thick beard and hair were pure white, save for a bit of gray at his widow’s peak, and, like just about anyone still alive at his age, he had a clip on his nose feeding pure oxygen into whatever was left of his ravaged lungs. He sat down hard and inhaled deeply through the clip. Ishmael could barely make out his face in the shadows.

  “There are things I have to tell you, son. . . . Things I couldn’t say before . . . and now there isn’t time to explain everything because of this Earth-forsaken storm.” With quaking hands he poured himself a glass, some of the benzo spilling onto the tabletop. Ishmael had always been amazed by how much Old Ben could drink and still remain lucid. “Now, you know that your foster parents and I have been friends for a long time . . . but what I’m going to tell you, even they don’t know. So you have to swear to me that this stays between us. You can’t repeat a word of it.”

  Ishmael hesitated. He might not tell his foster parents everything, but he and Archie had no secrets.

  “Not even Archie,” the old man added knowingly. “Maybe someday, but not now. Swear?”

  “Why?” Ishmael asked.

  “Because . . .” The old man took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s a matter of life and death, son. That’s why.”

  Ishmael felt his chest tighten. Outside, the wind buffeted the windows. A fine cloud of dust seeped in through the leaky door gasket.

  Ben went on: “There’s a great deal that you and your family don’t know, Ishmael. Things nobody in this town knows because the Trust doesn’t want them to know.”

  “The Trust?” Ishmael repeated.

  “Just bear with me, son,” Old Ben said. “Now, you’re a smart boy and probably wondering how a broken-down old man like me, who’s spent m
ost of his life working in that decrepit Zirconia Electrolysis station, could know anything you don’t, so I’m going to show you something.” He pulled up his sleeve and placed his left arm on the table, with his wrist turned out. “Put your wrist next to mine so our registries are facing each other.”

  Ishmael leaned closer and did as he was told, the foul, fermented odor of the old man’s benzo breath filling his nose. Old Ben slowly drew Ishmael’s arm nearer his own until a sudden spark of blue light leaped between their wrists. The mild shock startled Ishmael. He yanked his arm back.

  “Our registries just greeted each other,” Old Ben explained.

  Ishmael had never heard of such a thing. Registries were forms of identification. “What does that mean?”

  The windowpanes rattled. The dirt peppering the outside walls made a hissing sound. Old Ben waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t have time to explain. There’s too much else I need to tell you. But remember what you just saw.

  “Now, you’ve heard that the coal supplies are running out? That soon there won’t be enough fuel left to power the systems that sustain life on this planet?”

  Ishmael nodded. Those rumors had been around for as long as he could remember.

  “Well, I hate to say it, son, but this time it’s true. We’ve nearly depleted all known supplies.” The old man paused to let it sink in. “Oxygen production’s started to dip below acceptable levels. You’ve probably noticed that there are days now when it seems hard to catch your breath?”

  “I thought that was the carbon monoxide,” Ishmael said. When the Zirconia Electrolysis station atomized carbon dioxide, the result was oxygen and carbon monoxide — in high enough concentrations a poison itself.

  “That’s partly to blame. But it’s mostly oxygen deficiency.”

  Ishmael felt goose bumps rise on his arms. If what Old Ben said was true, didn’t it mean the end of life on Earth? “Are you sure? Joachim and Petra would’ve told me —”