"Ship Breaker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bacigalupi Paolo)

10

IF HE WAS HONEST with himself, Nailer could admit he had no idea what he was doing. He was making it up as he went along, some new version of a future, and all he really knew was that this strange swank girl needed to be part of it. This rich girl with her diamond nose jewel and her gold rings and fingers all intact, with her dark glittering eyes alive instead of dead.

He sat on the far side of their furniture fire, arms wrapped around his knees as he watched Pima give her the rest of the orange. Two girls, two different lives. Pima dark, strong, and scarred, tattooed with light crew information and lucky symbols; crop-haired, hard-muscled, and sharply alive. This other one, a far lighter brown, untouched by sun, with long black flowing hair, and movements all smooth and soft, polished and precise, her face and bare arms unmarred by abuse or stray wiring or chemical burns.

Two girls, two different lives, two different bits of luck.

Nailer tugged at his wide-bored earrings. He and Pima both had their share of marks, everything from the tattoos that let them work the crews, to their own carefully worked ink skin scars, showing blessings of the Rust Saint and the Fates. But this girl wasn’t marked at all. No decorative tattoos, no work marks, no light gang tats. Nothing. A blank. He was a little shorter than her, but he knew he could kill her if he had to. He couldn’t beat Pima in a fight, but this one, she was soft.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

Nailer startled. The girl’s eyes were open again, watching him across the fire, reflecting the blaze of shattered ship furniture and picture frames. “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?” she whispered.

Her words were cultured, exquisite in her mouth, clipped and close and precise. As if she were one of the boss men who came down to watch the work and paid out cash bonus for good salvage. Perfectly formed words, with not a break in them, not a hard edge. She accepted the last of the orange slices from Pima and ate them, taking her time and seeming to savor them. Slowly, she pushed herself upright again.

Her eyes went from Nailer to Pima. “You could have just let me die.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with the palm of her hand, licking at the last of the orange’s juice. “I couldn’t get out. You could have been rich with my gold. Why?”

“Ask Lucky Boy,” Pima said, disgusted. “It wasn’t my idea.”

The girl looked at him. “You’re called Lucky Boy?”

Nailer couldn’t tell if it was an honest question or if she was making fun of him. He stifled his unease. “Found your wreck, didn’t I?”

Her lips quirked. “I guess that makes me a Lucky Girl then, doesn’t it?” Her eyes twinkled.

Pima laughed. She squatted beside her. “Yeah. Sure. Lucky Girl. Damn lucky.” For a moment her eyes lingered hungrily on Lucky Girl’s hands, on the gold glittering against her brown skin. “Damn lucky.”

“So why not take my gold and walk away?” She held up her hand where the thin slivers of their blades had cut. “You could have had my fingers for Fate amulets, right? Could have had my gold and my finger bones, too.”

Her smooth features had hardened. She was clever, Nailer realized. Soft, but not stupid. Nailer couldn’t help thinking that he’d made a mistake letting her live. It was hard to tell when you were being smart, and when you were being too smart for your own good. And this girl… she already seemed to be taking over the space around the fire. Owning it. Asking the questions instead of answering them.

Lucky Strike always said there was a fine line between clever and stupid and laughed his head off every time he said it. Watching this girl across the fire taunt and tease him, Nailer suddenly had the feeling that he understood.

“I think one of my fingers would have made a nice amulet for you,” she said to him. “Would have made you exquisitely lucky.”

Pima laughed again. Nailer scowled. Dozens of futures extended ahead of him, depending on his luck and the will of the Fates… and the variable that this girl presented. He could see those roads spinning away from him in different directions. He was standing at their hub, looking down each of them in turn, but he could see only so far, one or two steps ahead at best.

And now, as he stared at the sharp eyes of this perfectly unblemished swank, he realized that he had missed a factor. He didn’t know anything about the girl. He knew about gold, though. Gold bought security, salvation from the ships and the breaking and light crew. Lucky Strike had gone down that road. Nailer would have been smarter to simply let Pima pigstick the girl and be done with it.

But what if there were other roads? What if there was a reward for this rich girl? What if she could be useful in some other way?

“You got crew who’ll come looking for you?” he asked.

“Crew?”

“Someone want you to come home?”

Her eyes never left his. “Of course,” she said. “My father will be hunting for me.”

“He rich?” Pima asked. “Swank like you?”

Nailer shot her an annoyed glance. Amusement flickered across Lucky Girl’s face. “He’ll pay, if that’s what you’re asking.” She held up her fingers. “And he’ll pay you more than just my jewelry.” She pulled a ring off and tossed it to Pima. Pima caught it, surprised. “More than that. More than all the wealth I’ve got on my ship.” She looked at them seriously. “Alive, I’m more valuable than gold.”

Nailer exchanged glances with Pima. This girl knew what they wanted, knew them inside and out. It was as if she were a beach witch, and could throw bones and see right into his soul, to all his hunger and greed. It pissed him off that he and Pima were so obvious. Made him feel like a little kid, stupid and obvious, the way the urchins looked when they were hanging out behind Chen’s grub shack, hoping he’d toss out bones for them to pick over. She just knew.

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Pima asked. “Maybe you’ve got nothing else to give. Maybe you’re just talking.”

The girl shrugged, unconcerned. She touched her remaining rings. “I have houses where fifty servants wait for me to ring a bell and bring me whatever I want. I have two clippers and a dirigible. My servants wear uniforms of silver and jade and I gift them with gold and diamonds. And you can have it, too… if you help me reach my father.”

“Maybe,” Nailer said. “But maybe all you’ve got is some gold on your fingers and you’re better off dead.”

The girl leaned forward, her face lit by the fire, her features suddenly cold. “If you hurt me, my father will come here and wipe you and yours off the face of the earth and feed your guts to dogs.” She sat back. “It’s your choice: Get rich helping me, or die poor.”

“Screw it,” Pima said. “Let’s just drown her and be done.”

A flash of uncertainty crossed the girl’s face, so quick Nailer might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching closely, but he caught the slight widening of her eyes.

“You should watch yourself,” he said. “You’re alone. No one knows where you are or what happened to you. You could be drowned in the ocean for all anyone knows. Maybe you just disappear and the wind and waves don’t remember you even existed.” He grinned. “You’re a long way from your swank servants.”

“No.” The girl drew her blankets around her like a cloak and looked out at the moonlit ocean and the far waves. “The GPS and distress systems in the ship will tell them where to look. It’s only a matter of time now.” She smiled. “My ‘crew’ will be coming very soon.”

“But right now, you’ve only got me and Pima,” Nailer said. “And you definitely ain’t our crew.” He leaned forward. “Maybe your people really will hurt us bad-yank out our guts, cut off our fingers-but that doesn’t scare us, Lucky Girl.” He drew out the words of the nickname, mocking. He waved back toward the ship-breaking yards. “We die here every day. Die all the time. Maybe I’m dead tomorrow. Maybe I was dead two days ago.” He spat. “My life isn’t worth a copper yard.” He looked at her. “So the only way your life is worth more than that gold on your fingers is if it gets us out of this place. Otherwise, you’re just as good dead.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he realized it was true. He was in Hell. The ship-breaking yards were Hell. And wherever this girl came from, whatever she was, it had to be better than anything else he knew. Even Lucky Strike, who everyone thought lived like a king, was nothing in comparison to this spoiled sleek girl. Fifty people answering to her. Lucky Strike could muster Raymond and Blue Eyes and Sammy Hu, and that was enough for most of his leg-breaking jobs, but it was nothing outside. And even Lucky Strike smiled and scraped when the big bosses from Lawson amp; Carlson rolled in on their special train to inspect the breaking, before it rolled out again to wherever swanks lived. This girl was from a whole different planet.

And she was going back to it.

“If you want to stay alive,” he said, “you take us with you when you go.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”

“She’s lying,” Pima said. “Buying time, that’s all. She’s not our crew. As soon as her people show, she’s gone and we’re back in the yards.” She glanced back to where the invisible hulks of the wrecked ocean vessels lay along the beach. “If we’re lucky.”

“That true?” Nailer studied the swank carefully, trying to divine if she was a liar. “You going to ditch us? Dump us back with the rest of the ship breakers while you go back to being swank?”

“I don’t lie,” the girl said. She didn’t look away from his gaze. She held, hard as obsidian.

Nailer took out his knife. “Let’s see, then.”

He came around the fire to her. She flinched away, but he grabbed her by the wrist, and even though she struggled, he was stronger. He held the knife in front of her eyes. Pima grabbed her by the shoulders, steadying her.

“Just a little blood, Lucky Girl. Just a little,” she said. “Just to make sure, right?” The girl didn’t stand a chance against Pima’s strength.

Nailer dragged her hand toward him. She fought all the way, jerking and twisting, but it was nothing, and soon he had her hand outstretched before him. He pressed the blade to her palm and looked up at her, smiling. “You still swear now?” he asked, looking into her eyes. “We going with you when you go?”

The girl was breathing fast, scared and panicky, her eyes going from the blade to him and back again. “I swear,” she whispered. “I swear.”

Still, he studied her face, hunting for signs that she’d betray them, that she’d pull a Sloth and stab them in the back. He glanced at Pima. She nodded a go-ahead.

“Guess she wants it.”

“Guess so.”

Nailer slashed her palm. Blood welled and the girl’s hand spasmed, fingers trembling at the gash. He was surprised she didn’t scream. Nailer slashed his own hand and made a fist with hers.

“Crew up, Lucky Girl,” he said. “I got your back, you got mine.” He held her eyes with his own.

Pima jostled the girl. “Say it.”

Lucky Girl stuttered, but she said the words. “I got your back, you got mine.”

Nailer nodded, satisfied. “Good.”

He pried open her bleeding hand and drove his thumb into the slash of her open wound. She gasped at this new pain and then he pressed his thumb to her forehead. She flinched as he applied the bloody tattoo between her eyes, a third-eye mark of shared destiny. She trembled and closed her eyes as he marked her.

“Now you mark him,” Pima said. “Blood with blood, Lucky Girl. That’s how we do it. Blood with blood.”

Lucky Girl did as she was told, her face frozen as she drove her own thumb into his palm and marked him well.

“Good.” Pima leaned close. “Now me.”

When it was done, they went down to the black water and rinsed the blood from their hands before hiking back up into the vegetation. The sea was all around, leaving the three of them alone in the darkness as they slowly climbed up to their beacon fire. Nailer’s shoulder was tender and inflamed from all the activity and it made climbing difficult. Lucky Girl scrambled ahead of them, loud in the vegetation, unused to climbing, breathing heavily, her clothes torn. Nailer watched her slim legs and smooth form under her skirt.

Pima smacked him. “What? You think you’re getting with her after you stuck a knife in her hand?”

He grinned and made a shrug of embarrassment. “She’s damn pretty.”

“Probably cleans up nice,” Pima agreed; then she lowered her voice. “What do you think? Is she really crew?”

Nailer paused in the climb, rotating his shoulder carefully, feeling the sear of his wound across his back. “Being crew wasn’t worth a scrap of rust with Sloth. Crew don’t mean anything except that we’re all sweating together on the same ship.” He shrugged and winced at the pain again. “Still, it’s worth a gamble, right?”

“You serious about leaving here?”

Nailer nodded. “Yeah. That’s the smart thing, right? The real smart thing. Nothing here for us. We need to get out, or we die here same as everyone else. Even Lucky Strike got trashed in the storm. Being light crew boss didn’t do Bapi any good at all. Just got him killed.”

“Lucky Strike did a lot better than us.”

“Sure.” Nailer spat. “That’s what the pig in the pen says when his brother gets knifed for dinner.” He shrugged. “You’re still in the pen. Still gonna die.”