Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон - Страница 14

She said: “Could you please help me with poor Captain Roberts?”

She wanted him to go outside, that was clear, and Mau got up quickly. The bad bread wanted to escape, and the smell of the fire was giving him a headache.

He staggered up and out into the fresh afternoon air. The girl was standing on the ground, by the big gray roll Mau had seen yesterday. She looked at him helplessly.

“Poor Captain Roberts,” she said, and prodded it with her foot.

Mau pulled away the heavy cloth and saw the body of an old trouserman with a beard. He was lying on his back, his eyes staring up at nothing. Mau pulled the cloth down farther and found that the man’s hands were holding a big circle of wood, with things like wooden spikes all around the edge of it.

“He tied himself to the ship’s wheel so that he wouldn’t get washed away,” said the girl behind him. “I cut the ropes but his poor hands wouldn’t let go, so I found a hammer and knocked the pin out of the wheel, and I tried and tried to bury him but the ground is too hard and I can’t move him by myself. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind being buried at sea,” she finished, all in one breath.

Mau sighed. She must know I can’t understand her but she goes on talking, he thought. She wants this body buried, I can tell. I wonder how long it took her to scrape that pathetic little hole in the rock? But she’s lost and far from home, like me.

“I can send him into the dark water,” he said. He made wave noises and wave shapes with his hand. She looked terrified for a moment, and then laughed and clapped her hands.

“Yes! Yes! That’s right! The sea! Whoosh, swoosh! The sea!”

The man and the wooden wheel together were too heavy to lift, but the cloth was very thick and Mau found he could drag the body quite well over the crushed vegetation of the track. The girl helped him with the difficult bits, or at least tried to, and once they reached the shore, the gray roll slid well enough on the damp sand, but it was a long tiring drag to the western end of the beach. At last Mau managed to get the captain into the waist-deep water at the very edge of the reef.

He looked into the dead eyes, staring straight ahead, and wondered what they would see down in the dark current. Would they see anything? Did anyone see anything?

The shock of the question hit him like a blow. How could he think it?

Once we were dolphins and Imo made us into men! That was true, wasn’t it? Why did he even wonder if it wasn’t? And if that wasn’t true, then there was just the dark water and nothing was anything….

He stopped those thoughts before they could run away with him. The Daphne girl was watching him, and this was no time to be uncertain and hesitant. He twisted papervine together to fasten stones and pieces of broken coral to poor Captain Roberts and his wheel. Papervine got tighter when it was wet and didn’t rot for years. Wherever poor Captain Roberts was going, he was going to stay there. Unless he turned into a dolphin, of course. Then, quickly, Mau made the cut to release his spirit.

On the rocks behind him, the girl sang a song. It wasn’t all na-na-na this time. Somehow Mau could hear her voice better, now he’d heard her speak. There were words, probably, although they had no meaning to Mau. But he thought: It’s a trouserman chant for the dead. They are like us! But if Imo made them, why are they so different?

The captain was almost underwater now, still holding on to the wheel. Mau held the last stone in one hand and pushed the floating captain forward, feeling all the time with his toes for the edge of the rock. He could sense the cold of the deeps below him, too.

The current was down there. No one knew where it came from, although there were stories of a land to the south where the water fell like feathers. But everyone knew where it went. They could see it. It became the Shining Path, a river of stars that flowed across the night sky. Once in a thousand years, it was said, when Locaha looked among the dead for those who should go to the Perfect World, they would climb that path and send the rest back to be dolphins until it was time for them to be born again.

How does that happen? Mau thought. How does water become stars? How does a dead man become a living dolphin? But those were a child’s questions, weren’t they? The kind you shouldn’t ask? The kind that were silly or wrong, and if you asked why too much you were given chores to do and told that’s how the world is.

A wavelet broke over the captain. Mau fastened the last stone to the wheel and, as the captain slid gently under the water, gave him a push out into the current.

A few bubbles came up as the captain sank, very slowly, out of sight.

Mau was just turning away when he saw something rising through the water. It broke the surface and turned over slowly. It was the captain’s hat, and now that it had filled with water, it began to drift back down again.

There was a splash from behind him and the girl of the Daphne clan floundered past, her white dress floating around her like a huge jellyfish.

“Don’t let it sink again!” she shouted. “He wants you to have it!” She plunged forward, grabbed the hat, waved it triumphantly — and sank.

Mau waited for her to come back up, but there were just bubbles.

Could it possibly be that there was someone in the world who couldn’t —

His body worked without thinking. He ducked under the surface, grabbed the biggest lump of coral he could see, and dived over the edge and into the dark water.

There below him was poor Captain Roberts, drifting gently down toward posterity. Mau went past in a rip of silver.

There were more bubbles below, and a pale shape disappearing at the farthest reach of the sunlight.

Not this one, Mau thought, as loudly as he could. Not now. No one goes alive into the dark. I served you, Locaha. I walked in your steps. You should owe me this one. One life back from the dark!

And a voice returned from the gloom: I recall no arrangement, Mau, no bargain, covenant, or promise. There is what happens, and what does not happen. There is no should.

And then he was tangling in the sea anemone of her skirts. He let the stone continue into the dark, found her face, breathed the air from his bursting lungs into hers, saw her eyes open wide, and kicked for the surface, dragging her behind him.

It took forever. He could feel the long, cold fingers of Locaha grabbing at his feet and squeezing his lungs, and surely the light was fading. The sound of the water in his ears began to sound like whispering: Would it hurt to stop now? To slide back down into the dark and let the current take him? It would be the end of all grief, a blanking of all bad memories. All he had to do was let her go and — No! That thought brought back his anger, and the anger brought strength.

A shadow fell across the light and Mau had to swim out of the way as the gently sinking captain went on past, on the last voyage he’d ever make.

But the light was no nearer, never any nearer. His legs were like stones. Everything stung. And there it was, the silver line, coming back to him again, pulling him forward into a picture of what could be —

— and rock was under his feet. He kicked down, and his head broke through the surf. His feet touched the rock again, and the light was brilliant.

The rest of what happened he watched from inside himself as he dragged the girl onto the rocks, and tipped her upside down and slapped her on her back until she coughed up water. Then it was a run along the beach to lay her down by the fire, where she vomited up more water and groaned. Only then did Mau’s mind explain that his body was far too weak to have managed all this, and let it fall backward into the sand.

He managed to turn over in time to throw up what was left of the dreadful cakes and stared down at the mess. Does not happen, he thought, and the words became a declaration of triumph and defiance. “Does not happen,” he said, and the words got bigger and dragged him to his feet, and “Does not happen!” he shouted at the sky. “Does not happen!”