Chapter 9 - Second Split
Passed deeper into the Engi, still in northerly course. Snow and Wind throughout night. Wind unpredictable, keeping sail furled. Low visibility, but flora and fauna definitely more scarce. Glaciers loom larger each night; expect to pass soon into new environment.
One hour before waking, came upon fork in striation. Two branches, one northwest, one north. After day passes, will switch tracks to…
The Man stopped his quill short of the completed sentence. He paused with the tip suspended over the notebook, then returned the quill to the ink bottle. The bottle sat on a rubber mat in a corner of the desk. The mat prevented things from sliding and spilling when the ship rocked.
From the same mat, The Man took a still-steaming bowl of grain stew.
The Man looked up from his desk. On one side of the exit curtain, the Phaen’s pile of rope lay empty. The bird itself breathed in peaceful sleep on the opposite flank of the curtain. It slept atop the two silken bolts The Man had taken from the multiship. Suspended above it on two wall hooks, the reclaimed spear shone silver in the light of the desk candle.
The Man pushed his chair back from the desk and went to the viewing glass.
The shiny metal fork of the striation stood out sharply against the black night of a pre-waking sky. A lake of clear glass spread around the fork, before each branch disappeared into a narrow river. Packed dust-ice formed tall, jagged banks on the sides of either channel, and tuberous plants grew in scanty patches across the upside-down, craggy Engi.
The Man soon lost vision of either branch. Both ran straight, but a windy, swirling haze of light snow reduced sight to two hundred meters.
Even though he couldn’t see them, however, The Man sensed the great, dark shapes of the glaciers to the north. Each day he’d felt their approach. Each day he’d expected to enter a realm of towering ice walls. Each day the Engi simply grew coarser and more jagged, the glaciers becoming only larger silhouettes.
The Man ate while he contemplated the fork. He ate with a broken wooden spoon held together by baling twine (he’d forgotten to grab a set of silverware from the derelict multiship). Each spoonful of hot moist grain tasted chalky, and gritty pieces of bran stuck to his gums and the roof of his mouth. The multiship captain had cut corners buying rations. Still, the stew was energy.
The Man saw the Wind flurry the snow beyond the window. He swayed to accommodate the tilting floor. He heard a scurry from behind. The Phaen had risen. It poked its pale face around the corner of the desk. It stared at him and cocked its beak.
Squatting, The Man set the rest of his stew on the ground. He felt neither hungry nor tired, despite a long night’s spinning. He cupped the bowl between his boots and waved The Phaen over. The bulky raptor moved carefully so as not to bump his desk; The Man had taut it that. It bent over the bowl between his feet and pecked at the warm stew.
The Man stroked the Phaen’s bristly spine feathers. He let the heat and hum of the furnace wash away higher thinking. He relaxed his eyes upon the white, flurrying sky. He saw a plume of snowflakes rise up in front of the ship - a wave of Wind crashing against his prow. He leaned forward subconsciously to counter the tilt.
The shell nose tilted up at a slight angle. The Man heard a metal ring behind him as the spear shifted on its wall-hooks.
Then The Man heard something louder. Something boomed behind him, in some other chamber.
It was The Man’s only warning. He had no time to turn from the curved window. He saw as the nose of the shell pointed suddenly up, and saw the glass of the window rush to meet the glass of the sky. The two smacked together with a sickly crunch. The metal striation pressed against the window, and a spiderweb crinkled across the glass.
The Man found himself suddenly upon a steep slope. He fell backwards. Beside him The Phaen squawked and beat the air. The Man’s legs hit the edge of his desk. The desk held its place, bolted as it was to the floor. The Man, and the ink pot, and all the journals and quills and pencils atop his desk, however, tumbled over the top. The Man hit the sloping floor with his chest. He slid toward the curtain, gaining speed. He slammed against the frame of the door and tried grabbing hold. His momentum jarred him loose. The Man thudded off the frame, slid past the skewed-falling plastic curtain, and dropped into the long corridor.
The Man skidded down the full length of the hall. He tried stopping. He ground his heels and hands against the floor. His palms burned and bled. His boots tore insulation; loose feathers floated in his wake. The Man struck the doorframe of his spinning room and rebounded off. He lost all control and fell in a wild tumble.
Half a second later, The Man landed on his back, against the furnace chamber bulkhead, with his right shoulder-blade hovering over the curtain door. For the second time in a tenday, his lungs expelled every atom of air.
The Man arched his spine. He lay against the bulkhead, gasping and wide eyed like a fish from the barrel. He was still gasping when the sound of beating wings drew his attention. His wide eyes turned to the study. The white-feathered mass of the Phaen erupted from the curtain. It squawked and skittered down the slope toward The Man.
As it emerged, one of the Phaen’s beating wings knocked the extra spear loose from the study room wall hooks. The Man saw the spear tumble from the room.
The spear slid past the Phaen. Down the corridor. Gaining speed. The spear hit a tiny warp in the insulated floor and deflected into the air. The weapon fell as if fired, blade first, toward The Man.
Still breathless and gasping, The Man threw himself sideways. He shifted to avoid the spear punching through his shoulder. He shifted too slowly to avoid it entirely. The spear’s tip sliced through his silken shirt and carved a groove across his right tricep. It sailed past The Man into the furnace room.
A second later the flapping Phaen hit The Man.
After that, things seemed to stop falling at The Man, at least temporarily. The Phaen’s thick talons poked into his belly. He shoved the bird to the other side of the door. It perched precariously on the bulkhead ledge. It raised a shrill, worried cry.
The Man finally managed a few good inspirations. Then, fire in his arm grabbed his attention. Pain scorched outward from the spear cut. The searing, sharp quality of it overrode the lesser aches of tumbling and landing on his back. The Man grasped the wound and - ignoring the fresh sting it produced - squeezed the skin shut. Warm blood trickled around his fingers.
The Man listened. He no longer heard the gentle hum of the engine. The fire had been snuffed by the sudden shift. Now the shell lay silent as an occupied tomb, the only sound his own quick breaths.
The Man understood the event.
A portion of his new cargo down in the hold had shifted when The Wind pushed the shell nose up. It caused a chain reaction of sliding ballast. Probably all the heavy bricks down in the hold had shifted to one side of their respective containers. The shell had become unbalanced, the nose had tilted until it hit the glass, and The Man had fallen backwards nearly the full shell’s length.
With a churn of stomach, The Man realized his shell was now supported by one lonely track. The other two would be slack with his bow tilted up to the glass. The Man had always assumed any number less than three would cause the lines to snap…
The Phaen seemed to think The Man had collapsed now as he had during the Puga. It tried to crawl back atop him.
The Man shoved his bird away. He looked up the length of the corridor. The grade was steep, but The Man thought it climbable. He would have to ascend it somehow.
The Man eased himself up from the angled wall and set his chest flat against the floor. The Man guessed the angle to be about sixty degrees. He planted the edges of his boots against the slope, but the semi-loose insulation made him slip. Still holding his gouged tricep skin together with one hand, The Man used the other to wipe away spots for footholds. He set the edges of his boots against the holds while lying flush with the floor. He was able to rise off the bulkhead.
Thus, The Man climbed. His path was steep, loose, and slow. To make footing on the floor The Man had to continually scrape insulation with his right hand, while still holding his skin shut with the left. Both hands were bloody from the scraping fall regardless.
Even on the gritty metal, footing was uncertain. The Man slipped back twice, fortunately early in the ascent. The Phaen watched from below and raised a worried scree.
By the time he reached the study door The Man was drenched in salty sweat. It stung his cut hands and cut arm. He let go of his wound just long enough to pull himself into the study. It bled like a hose, but The Man didn’t think he’d cut an artery.
First, The Man checked the rounded viewing glass. It held, though the striation had made a radial crack. Snow massed on the damaged glass. It gave The Man a sense of being buried.
Next, The Man tied himself to the clawed foot of a bolted-down bookshelf. He used the rope from the Phaen’s pile. He draped a second, prickly skein around his torso. He’d need it to organize the cargo hold and balance his shell.
The Man jumped across the angled, open curtain to the starboard side. With the study candle snuffed and the snow obscuring the starlight through the broken window, the room had turned umbral. The Man stumbled over his fallen chair. He struck the wall with an elbow.
Wincing through pain, The Man waved his arm in half-blindness until he felt the cool surface of the glass cupboard. The impact hadn’t damaged it. The Man opened it by feeling for the deadbolt. He shifted his coilspear to the side and grabbed a long, flat box.
The Man dropped back to the wall beside the curtain. He settled into it and opened the box. Inside was a medical kit, little more than gauze, a needle, stitching thread. There was also a small bag of painkilling, purifying Hairax leaves.
The Man pulled the thread and needle out. Then he set them back.
It would be hard to sew his wound in the dark. Besides, the silence of the engine; the crunching, scraping noise the window made every time the Wind blew the shell; the thought of the lone cable bearing all that shell’s weight; these matters weighed greater in The Man’s mind.
He pulled the gauze instead. He bound it tightly around the cut of his right arm. He touched the dressing until he was sure it wouldn’t leak. He wrapped his palms as well, skinned from the fall and the climb up the corridor.
The Man took one deep breath. Then, with the distressed Phaen’s cry reverberating below, and with every moment bringing the shell’s halls closer to the black freeze of the derelict multiship, and with the Wind working continually against the window and cable, The Man set out to right his vessel.
Later, The Man reentered the study. He walked across an even floor and picked up his stiff brown chair. One of the curved wooden pegs on the back had broken, with the splintered pieces held in by glue. The Man knocked them loose. He picked up his journal as well. He set the chair and journal by the desk. He turned and looked out the window.
The scene came with a feeling of perverse deja vu. It felt like days since he’d eaten grain stew and watched the snow flurry, not hours.
Only now, the glass was cracked. Now, The Man was hungry and tired. And, wounded.
The Man checked the dressing on his arm. It had not bled through. There seemed no need now for stitches. The Man kept no liquor on the shell, so he would need to rely on boiled water and Hairex leaves to stop the cut from festering.
The plastic curtain rustled as the Phaen stalked in. A soft gasp of fabric told The Man it had settled on the pink silk pile. The hooks above were empty now. The Man had moved the spare spear to the furnace room.
The Man sat heavily at his desk. The inkpot had shattered on the metal wall. Its ink and glass and quill mingled with the packed floor insulation. The Man took a new bottle and quill from a drawer. He set them on the rubber mat, dipped the quill in fresh ink, and went to pick up from his last words: “After day passes, will switch to…”
The Man was surprised to see his hands shaking. He looked up from the writing. The Phaen lay with its eyes closed, as if it had already forgotten the event. The Wind moaned low, and the floor of the shell tilted to the right. If The Man didn’t look at the spiderweb fracture on the window behind him, all seemed normal.
The Man set his quill down, set his cleaned and bandaged palms atop the brown wooden surface, and took deep breaths. After a moment the shaking in his hands stopped.
The Man returned to the journal.
After day passes, will switch to left track.
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