11

Jack tore at the floor boards with grim determination. It wasn’t long before his shirt and his hair were soaked with perspiration. He removed the shirt and kept working. Breaking through the floor seemed a futile, almost suicidal gesture—like a man trying to escape from a burning plane by jumping into an active volcano. But he had to do something. Anything was better than sitting and waiting for Kusum to return.

The rotten odor of rakoshi wafted up from below, engulfing him, making him gag. And the larger the hole in the flooring, the stronger the smell. Finally the opening was big enough to admit his shoulders. He stuck his head through for a look. Kolabati knelt beside him, peering over his shoulder.

It was dark down there. By the light of a solitary ceiling emergency lamp off to his right, he could see a number of large insulated pipes to each side of the hole, running along just under the steel beams that supported the flooring. Directly below was a suspended walkway that led to an iron-runged ladder.

He was ready to cheer until he realized he was looking at the upper end of the ladder. It went down from there. Jack did not want to go down. Anywhere but down.

An idea struck him. He lifted his head and turned to Kolabati.

“Does that necklace really work?”

She started and her expression became guarded. “What do you mean, ’work’?”

“What you told me. Does it really make you invisible to the rakoshi?”

“Yes, of course. Why?”

Jack couldn’t imagine how such a thing could be, but then he had never imagined that such a thing as a rakosh could be. He held out his hand.

“Give it to me.”

“No!” she said, her hand darting to her throat as she jumped to her feet and stepped back.

“Just for a few minutes. I’ll sneak below, find my way up to the deck, unlock the door, and let you out.”

She shook her head violently. “No, Jack!”

Why was she being so stubborn?

“Come on. You don’t know how to pick a lock. I’m the only one who can get us both out of here.”

He stood up and took a step toward her but she flattened herself against the wall and screamed.

Jack froze, confused by her response. Kolabati’s eyes were wide with terror.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I can’t take it off,” she said in a calmer voice. “No one in the family is ever allowed to take it off.”

“Oh, come—”

“I can’t, Jack! Please don’t ask me!” The terror was creeping back into her voice.

“Okay-okay!” Jack said quickly, raising his hands, palms out, and stepping back. He didn’t want any more screaming. It might attract a rakosh.

He walked over to the hole in the floor and stood there thinking. Kolabati’s reaction baffled him. And what she had told him about no one in the family being allowed to take the necklace off was untrue—he remembered seeing Kusum without it just last night. But it had been obvious then that Kusum had wanted to be seen by his rakoshi.

Then he remembered something else.

“The necklace will protect two of us, won’t it?”

Kolabati’s brow furrowed. “What do you—oh, I see. Yes, I think so. At least it did in your apartment.”

“Then we’ll both go down,” he said, pointing to the hole.

“Jack, it’s too dangerous! You can’t be sure it will protect you!”

He realized that and tried not to think about it. He had no other options.

“I’ll carry you on my back—piggy-back. We won’t be quite as close as we were in the apartment, but it’s my only chance.” As she hesitated, Jack played what he hoped was his ace: “Either you come down with me or I go alone with no protection at all. I’m not waiting here for your brother.”

Kolabati stepped forward. “You can’t go down there alone.”

Without another word, she kicked off her sandals, hiked up her sari, and sat on the floor. She swung her legs into the hole and began to lower herself through.

“Hey!”

“I’ll go first. I’m the one with the necklace, remember?”

Jack watched in amazement as her head disappeared below the level of the floor. Was this the same woman who had screamed in abject terror a moment ago? Going first through that hole took a lot of courage—with or without a “magic” necklace. It didn’t make sense.

Nothing seemed to make much sense anymore.

“All right,” she said, popping her head back through. “It’s clear.”

He followed her into the darkness below. When he felt his feet touch the suspended walkway, he eased himself into a tense crouch.

They were at the top of a high, narrow, tenebrous corridor. Through the slats of the walkway Jack could see the floor a good twenty feet below. Abruptly, he realized where he was: This was the same corridor he had followed to the aft cargo hold last night.

Kolabati leaned toward him and whispered. Her breath tickled his ear.

“It’s good you’re wearing sneakers. We must be quiet. The necklace clouds their vision but does not block their hearing.” She glanced around. “Which way do we go?”

Jack pointed to the ladder barely visible against the wall at the end of the walkway. Together they crawled toward it. Kolabati led the way down.

Halfway to the floor she paused and he stopped above her. Together they scanned the floor of the corridor for any shape, any shadow, any movement that might indicate the presence of a rakosh. All clear. He found scant relief in that. The rakoshi could not be far away.

As they descended the rest of the way, the rakoshi stench grew ever stronger. Jack felt his palms grow slick with sweat and begin to slip as they clung to the iron rungs of the ladder. He had come through this same corridor in a state of ignorance last night, blithely unaware of what waited in the cargo hold at its end. Now he knew, and with every step closer to the floor his heart increased its pounding rhythm.

Kolabati stepped off the ladder and waited for Jack. During his descent he had been orienting himself as to his position in the ship. He had determined that the ladder lay against the starboard wall of the corridor, which meant that the cargo hold and the rakoshi were forward to his left. As soon as his feet hit the floor he grabbed her arm and pulled her in the opposite direction. Safety lay toward the stern…

Yet a knot of despair began to coil in his chest as he neated the watertight hatch through which he had entered nad exited the corridor. He had secured that hatch behind him last night. He was sure of it. But perhaps Kusum had used it since. Perhaps he had left it unlocked. He ran the last dozen feet to the hatch and fairly leaped upon the handle.

It wouldn’t budge. Locked!

Jack wanted to shout, to pound his fists against the hatch. But that would be suicide. So he pressed his forehead against the cold, unyielding steel and began a slow mental count from one. By the time he reached six he had calmed himself. He turned to Kolabati and drew her head close to his.

“We’ve got to go the other way,” he whispered.

Her eyes followed his pointing finger, then turned back to him. She nodded.

“The rakoshi are there,” he said.

Again she nodded.

Kolabati was a pale blur beside him as Jack stood there in the dark and strained for another solution. He could not find one. A dim rectangle of light beckoned from the other end of the corridor where it opened into the main hold. They had to go through the hold. He was willing to try almost any other route but that one. But it was either back up the ladder to the dead end of the pilot’s cabin or straight ahead.

He lifted Kolabati, cradling her in his arms, and began to carry her toward the hold, praying that whatever power her necklace had over the rakoshi would be conducted to him as well. Halfway down the corridor he realized that his hands were entirely useless this way. He put Kolabati back on her feet and took two of the Cricket lighters from his pockets, then motioned to her to hop on his back. She gave him a small, tight, grim smile and did as directed. With an arm hooked behind each of her knees, he carried her piggy-back style, leaving his hands free to clutch a Cricket in each. They seemed ridiculously inadequate, but he derived an odd sort of comfort from the feel of them in his palms.

He came to the end of the corridor and stopped. Ahead and to their right, the hold opened before them. It was brighter than the passageway behind, but not by much; darker than Jack remembered from last night. But Kusum had been on the elevator then with his two gas torches roaring full force.

There were other differences. Details were scarce and nebulous in the murky light, but Jack could see that the rakoshi were no longer clustered around the elevator. Instead, some forty or fifty of them were spread throughout the hold, some crouched in the deepest shadows, others slumped against the walls in somber poses, still others in constant motion, walking, turning, stalking. The air was hazed with humidity and with the stink of them. The glistening black walls rose and disappeared into the darkness above. The high wall lamps gave off meager, dreary light, such as a gibbous moon might provide on a foggy night. Movements were slow and languorous. It was like looking in on a huge, candlelit opium den in a forgotten corner of hell.

A rakosh began to walk toward where they stood at the mouth of the corridor. Though the temperature was much cooler down here than it had been up in the pilot’s cabin, Jack felt his body break out from head to toe in a drenching sweat. Kolabati’s arms tightened around his neck and her body tensed against his back. The rakosh looked directly at Jack but gave no sign that it saw him or Kolabati. It veered off aimlessly in another direction.

It worked! The necklace worked! The rakosh had looked right at them and hadn’t seen either of them!

Directly across from them, in the forward port corner of the hold, Jack saw an opening identical to the one in which they stood. He assumed it led to the forward hold. A steady stream of rakoshi of varying sizes wandered in and out of the passage.

“There’s something wrong with these rakoshi,” Kolabati whispered over his shoulder and into his ear. “They’re so lazy looking. So lethargic.”

You should have seen them last night, Jack wanted to say, remembering how Kusum had whipped them into a frenzy.

“And they’re smaller than they should be,” she said. “Paler, too.”

At seven feet tall and the color of night, the rakoshi were already bigger and darker than Jack wanted them.

An explosion of hissing, scuffling, and scraping drew their attention to the right. Two rakoshi circled each other, baring their fangs, raking the air with their talons. Others gathered around, joining in the hissing. It looked as if a fight had begun.

Suddenly one of Kolabati’s arms tightened on his throat in a stranglehold as she pointed across the hold with the other.

“There,” she whispered. “There’s a true rakosh!”

Even though he knew he was invisible to the rakosh, Jack took an involuntary step backward. This one was huge, fully a foot taller and darker than the rest, moving with greater ease, greater determination.

“It’s a female,” Kolabati said. “That must be the one that hatched from our egg! The Mother rakosh! Control her and you control the nest!”

She seemed almost as awed and excited as she was terrified. Jack guessed it was part of her heritage. Hadn’t she been raised to be what she called a “Keeper of the Rakoshi”?

Jack looked again at the Mother. He found it hard to call her a female—there was nothing feminine about her, not even breasts—which probably meant that rakoshi did not suckle their young. She looked like a huge body-builder whose arms, legs, and torso had been stretched to grotesque lengths. There was not an ounce of fat on her; each cord of her musculature could be seen rippling under her inky skin. Her face was the most alien, however, as if someone had taken a shark’s head, shortened the snout, and moved the eyes slightly forward, leaving the fanged slash of a mouth almost unchanged. But the cold, remote gaze of the shark had been replaced by a soft pale glow of pure malevolence.

She even moved like a shark, gracefully, sinuously. The other rakoshi made way for the Mother, parting before her like mackerel before a great white. She headed directly for the two fighters, and when she reached them, she tore them apart and hurled them aside as if they weighed nothing. Her children accepted the rough treatment meekly.

He watched the Mother make a circuit of the chamber and return to the passage leading to the forward hold.

Jack looked up toward the ceiling of the hold—actually the underside of the hatch cover, invisible in the dark. He had to get up there, to the deck. How?

He poked his head into the hold and scanned the slick walls for a ladder. There was none. But there, at the top of the starboard aft corner of the hold—the elevator! If he could bring that down…

Buf to do that he would have to enter the hold and cross its width.

The thought was paralyzing. To walk among them…

Every minute he delayed in getting off this ship increased his danger, yet a primal revulsion held him back. Something within him preferred to crouch here and wait for death rather than venture into the hold.

He fought against it, not with reason but with anger. He was in charge here, not some mindless loathing. Jack finally mastered himself, although with greater effort than he could ever remember.

“Hold on!” he whispered to Kolabati. Then he stepped out of the corridor and into the hold.

He moved slowly, with the utmost care and caution. Most of the rakoshi were caliginous lumps scattered over the floor. He had to step over some of the sleeping ones and wind his way between the alert ones. Although his sneakered feet made no sound, occasionally a head would lift and look around as they passed. Jack could barely make out the details of their faces and would not know a puzzled rakoshi expression if he saw one, but they had to be confused. They sensed a presence, yet their eyes told them nothing was there.

He could sense their pure, naked aggression, their immaculate evil. There was no pretense about their savagery—it was all on the surface, surrounding them like an aura.

Jack still felt his heart trip and fumble a beat every time one of the creatures looked his way with its yellow eyes. His mind still resisted complete acceptance of the fact that he was invisible to them.

The reek of the things thickened to a nauseating level as he wound his way across the floor. They must have looked a comical pair, tiptoeing piggy-back through the dark. Laughable unless it was remembered how precarious their position was: one wrong move and they would be torn to shreds.

If negotiating a path through the recumbent rakoshi was harrowing, dodging the wandering ones was utterly nerve-wracking. Jack had little or no warning as to when they would appear. They would loom out of the shadows and pass within inches, some pausing, some even stopping to look around, sensing humans but not seeing them.

He was three-quarters of the way across the floor of the hold when a seven-foot shadow suddenly rose from the floor and stepped toward him. Jack had nowhere to go. Dark forms reclined on either side and the space where he stood between them would not allow a rakosh to pass. Instinctively he jerked back—and began to lose his balance. Kolabati must have sensed this for she pressed her weight rigidly against his spine.

In a desperate move to keep from toppling over, Jack lifted his left leg and pivoted on his right foot. He swiveled in a semicircle to wind up facing the way he had come, straddling a sleeping rakosh. As it shuffled past, the creature brushed Jack’s arm.

With a sound somewhere between a growl and a hiss, the rakosh whirled with raised talons, baring its fangs. Jack didn’t think he had ever seen anything move so fast. He clenched his jaw, not daring to move or breathe. The creature asleep between and beneath his legs stirred. He prayed it would not awaken. He could feel a scream building within Kolabati; he tightened his grip around her legs—silent encouragement to hold on.

The rakosh facing him rotated its head back and forth quickly, warily at first, then more slowly. Soon it calmed itself and lowered its talons. Finally it moved off, but not without a long, searching look over its shoulder in their direction.

Jack allowed himself to breathe again. He swung back into the path of clear floor between the rakoshi and continued the endless trek toward the starboard wall of the hold. As he neared the aft corner, he spotted an electrical conduit leading upward from a small box on the wall. He headed for that, and smiled to himself when he saw the three buttons on the box.

The shallow well directly under the elevator was clear of rakoshi. Perhaps they had learned during the time they had been here that this was not a good place to rest—sleep too deeply and too long and you might be crushed.

Jack didn’t hesitate. As soon as he was close enough, he reached out and jabbed the DOWN button.

There came a loud clank—almost deafening as it echoed through the gloomy, enclosed hold—followed by a high-pitched hum. The rakoshi—all of them—were instantly alert and on their feet, their glowing yellow eyes fixed as one on the descending platform.

Movement at the far side of the hold caught Jack’s eye: The Mother rakosh was heading their way. All the rakoshi began to shuffle forward to stand in a rough semicircle less than a dozen feet from where Jack stood with Kolabati on his back. He had backed up as far as he could without actually stepping into the foot-deep elevator well.

The Mother pushed her way to the front and stood there with the rest, eyes upward. When the descending platform reached the level of ten feet or so from the floor, the rakoshi began a low chant, barely audible above the steadily growing whine of the elevator.

“They’re speaking!” Kolabati whispered in his ear. “Rakoshi can’t speak!”

With all the other noise around them, Jack felt it safe to turn his head and answer her.

“You should have seen it last night—like a political rally. They were all shouting something like, ’Kaka-ji! Kaka-ji!’ It was—”

Kolabati’s fingernails dug into his shoulders like claws, her voice rising in pitch and volume that he feared would alert the rakoshi.

“What? What did you say?”

“’Kaka-ji.’ They were saying, ’Kaka-ji.’ What’s—?”

Kolabati let out a small cry that sounded like a word, but not an English word. And suddenly the chant stopped.

The rakoshi had heard her.