Nation - Пратчетт Терри Дэвид Джон - Страница 34

There was the stone Mau had first dived for. It looked free of coral now, but where it had been broken away there was the corner of another cube, in the unmistakable white stone. What did all this mean? Not more gods, he thought; we’ve had enough trouble with the ones we’ve got.

He ran his fingers over the shape cut in the first of the new stones. It looked like a tool from the trouserman toolbox, one that he’d held in his hand and wondered about, until Pilu had told him what it was for. But there had been no trousermen around even when his grandfather was a boy, he knew that. And coral was ancient. One of these cubes had been right inside the rock, even so, like a pearl in an oyster. He would never have found it if the wave hadn’t smashed up the reef.

He heard the splash above, and a hand reached past him and snatched the hammer. He looked up into the furious features of Ataba, just as the old man brought the hammer down on the stone. Bubbles rose as the priest man shouted something. Mau tried to grab the hammer and got a surprisingly powerful kick in the chest. There was nothing for it but to swim for the surface with what breath he had left.

“What happened?” asked Pilu.

Mau hung on to the side of the canoe, wheezing. The old fool! Why did he do that?

“Are you all right? What is he doing? Helping at last?” asked Pilu, with the cheeriness of someone who doesn’t know what’s going on yet.

Mau shook his head and dived again.

The old man was still hammering madly at the stones, and it occurred to Mau that he didn’t have to risk getting another kick. All he had to do was wait. Ataba needed air, just like everyone else, and how much of it could that skinny chest hold?

More than he expected.

Ataba was hammering wildly as if he intended to be down there all day… and then there was an explosion of bubbles as the last of his air ran out. That was chilling, and also quite insane. What was so dangerous about a rock that the old fool would waste his last breath trying to smash it?

Mau fought his way down through the running tide, grabbed the man’s body, and dragged it back up to the surface, almost flinging Ataba into the arms of the brothers. The canoe rocked.

“Drain the water out of him!” he yelled. “I don’t want him to die! I can’t scream at him if he’s dead!”

Milo had already turned Ataba upside down and was slapping him on the back. A lot of water came out, chased by a cough. More coughs followed, and he lowered the old man to the deck.

“He was trying to smash the new stones,” said Mau.

“But they look like god anchors,” said Milo.

“Yes,” said Mau. Well, they did. Whatever you thought about the gods and their stones, these looked like god anchors.

Milo pointed to the groaning Ataba. “An’ he’s a priest,” he said. Milo believed in laying out the facts of the matter. “An’ he was trying to smash the stones?”

“Yes,” said Mau. There was no doubt about it. A priest, trying to smash god stones.

Milo looked at him. “I’m puzzled,” he said.

“One of those down there has got calipers carved on it,” said Pilu cheerfully. “The trousermen use calipers to measure distance on their charts.”

“That means nothing,” Milo intoned. “Gods are older than the trousermen, an’ they can make what they like on the stones — Hey!”

Ataba had jumped over the side again. Mau saw his feet disappear under the water.

“That was the caliper stone he was trying to smash!” he growled, and dived.

The water was pouring through the gap now. It grabbed Mau as he swam after the skinny figure, tried to play with him, tried to throw him against the jagged coral.

It had got the priest already. He was struggling down toward the blocks, but the racing tide snatched at him, banged him against the coral, and tumbled him away, struggling, with a thin trail of blood blooming in the water behind him.

Never fight the tide! It was always stronger! Didn’t the old fool know that?

Mau swam after him, curving his body like a fish, using all his energy to keep away from the edges of the gap. Ahead of him, Ataba struggled to the surface, tried to grab a handhold, and was spun away into the foam.

Mau rose to take a breath and swam on —

Blood in the water, Mau, said Locaha, swimming alongside him. And there will be sharks outside the reef. What now, little hermit crab?

Does not happen! thought Mau, and tried to swim faster.

Demon boy, he calls you. He smiles in your face but tells people you are mad. What is he to you?

Mau tried to keep his mind blank. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the gray shadow, easily keeping up with him.

There’s no shell for you here, little hermit crab. You are heading for the open sea.

Things happen or do not happen, thought Mau, and he felt the deep water open up under him. The sunlight shone blue through the waves above, but below Mau it was green, shading to black. And there was Ataba, hanging in the light, not moving. Blood uncoiled in the water around him like smoke from a slow fire.

A shadow passed over the sun, and a gray shape slid overhead.

It was the canoe. As Mau grabbed the priest, there was a splash, and Pilu swam out of a cloud of bubbles. He pointed frantically.

Mau turned to see a shark already circling. It was a small gray, although when there is blood in the water then no shark is small, and this one seemed to fill the whole of Mau’s world.

He thrust the old man toward Pilu but kept his attention on the shark, looking into its mad, rolling eye as it swam past. He thrashed around a little to keep its attention on him and didn’t relax until, behind him, he could feel the boat rocking as Ataba was hauled up for the second time.

The shark was going to rush him on the next pass, Mau could tell. And —

— suddenly it didn’t matter. This was the world, all of it, just this silent blue ball of soft light, and the shark and Mau, without a knife. A little ball of space, with no time.

He swam gently toward the fish, and this seemed to worry it.

His thoughts came slowly and calmly, without fear. Pilu and Ataba would be out of the water now, and that was what mattered.

When a shark is coming at you, you are already dead, old Nawi had said, and since you were already dead, then anything was worth trying.

He rose gently and gulped a lungful of air. When he sank back down again, the shark had turned and was slicing through the water toward him.

Wait… Mau trod water gently as the shark came onward, as gray as Locaha. There would be one chance. More sharks would be here at any second, but a second passed slowly in the arena of light.

Here it came….

Wait. Then… Does not happen, said Mau to himself, and let all his breath out in a shout.

The shark turned as if it had hit a rock, but Mau did not wait for it to come back. He spun in the water and raced for the canoe as fast as he dared, trying to make the maximum of speed with the minimum of splash. As the brothers hauled him aboard, the shark passed underneath them.

“You drove it away!” said Pilu, heaving him up. “You shouted and it turned and ran!”

Because old Nawi was right, Mau thought. Sharks don’t like noise, which sounds louder underwater; it doesn’t matter what you shout, so long as you shout it loud!

It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea if the shark had been really hungry, but it had worked. If you were alive, what else mattered?

Should he tell them? Even Milo was looking at him with respect. Without quite being able to put words to it, Mau felt that being mysterious and a little dangerous was not a bad thing right now. And they would never know that he’d pissed himself on the way back to the canoe, which as far as sharks were concerned was nearly as bad as blood in the water, but the shark was unlikely to tell anyone. He looked around, half expecting to see a dolphin waiting for him to throw it a fish — and it would feel… right… to do so. But there was no dolphin.