The Beast of Cretacea (34 page)

He’s surrounded by whitecaps, the whistling wind blowing foam off the crests, making streaks across the gray waves. The sea comes heaving up, and the chase boat rocks violently. Ishmael has to grab the gunwale to keep from tumbling out. Each time a wave threatens to tip the boat, he must scramble to the high side to stabilize it.

This goes on for hours, until Ishmael, exhausted and weak, gradually gives in to oblivion.

For an instant, Ishmael thinks he’s back home under the Shroud — until he feels the boat rocking beneath him and remembers that even on Cretacea, there are nights made extra dark by thick cloud cover. Driving rain and sea spray pelt him. Soaked and shivering, he tries to get up, only to be held down by a rope lashed around his waist. He remembers that the last thing he did before he passed out was tie himself to a seat to keep from being tossed out by the riotous waves.

The rain is welcome, and Ishmael catches what he can in his hands, funneling the fresh water into his mouth. But the shower passes before he’s had enough to quench his thirst. All that remains from the rain is dirty water covered with a patina of oil, sloshing around in the bottom of the chase boat. Ishmael knows what he has to do if he wants to survive. As sickening as the thought is, he lowers his face and drinks.

The sun is hot and glaring; the ocean as smooth as a mirror. Ishmael lies with his head under a seat to shield his face from the scalding rays. Thirst, he’s learned, is a much harsher companion than hunger. Thirst demands; hunger merely bides its time. In the scant shadow, with his head against the floor, he listens to the never-ending slosh of sea against hull and wonders if he’ll ever be found.

He has lost count of how long it’s been since he escaped the pirate camp, days and nights blurring together, but there have been many. Kept barely alive by the filthy water that collects from time to time in the bottom of the boat, he does not know how much longer he can survive without food. Everything feels illusory: He can no longer distinguish between wakefulness and dreaming.

Something thumps the bottom of the chase boat. Dazed and nauseated, Ishmael drags himself to the gunwale and looks over. The sea beneath him has gone white, as though the boat is bobbing on an alabaster ocean. An enormous black eye rises out of the water a few feet away.

In it Ishmael can see his thin, haggard reflection, but he realizes this must be a dream, for staring deeper into the black sphere, he also sees lush green jungles alive with brightly colored flyers, furry tree-dwelling quadrupeds, and all manner of slithering, crawling ground creatures. He sees oceans filled with glimmering schools of scurry, and larger predatory beasts. In this black globe is an entire world, untouched and unspoiled by human hand.

As if the beast knows that she has shown him enough, she slowly slides back into the sea. Ishmael lowers himself to the floor and feels the chase boat rock when the colossal creature glides away.

“Friend or foe?” a voice calls. On the floor of the chase boat, drifting in and out of consciousness, Ishmael assumes he’s dreaming again.

“Friend or foe?” the call repeats. The voice sounds like a woman’s.

Another voice joins in: a boy’s. “I see him! He’s just lying there.”

“Careful,” the woman cautions. “Could be a trick. Put out the bumpers.”

The chase boat shudders, and suddenly Ishmael suspects it might not be a dream after all. This time when the woman shouts “Friend or foe?” she sounds closer. A strong smell of scurry is in the air.

Ishmael gathers what little strength he still possesses and props himself up a few inches. His skull feels like it weighs a hundred pounds, and his arms and shoulders tremble with the strain. A trawler has come alongside, and two blurred figures stare down at him from the railing. The larger of the two — Ishmael thinks it’s the woman — is holding something long and dark that might be a shotgun.

“Friend or foe?”

Ishmael tries to swallow. His throat is so dry and sore he isn’t sure that words can crawl out, but somehow he manages to croak, “Even if . . . I were . . . a foe . . . I’d have to be . . . crazy . . . to say so.”

His head drops back to the chase-boat floor. The effort to hold it up has exhausted him.

Sunlight pours in through a porthole. Ishmael is lying in a cushioned bunk, covered by a thin blanket. It takes several moments before he figures out that he’s on the trawler, which is moving slowly, rocking this way and that. He vaguely remembers being pulled from the chase boat, and someone coming in now and then to give him water and food.

When he tries to rise, he feels woozy and dazed, but he waits for his mind to clear and slowly stands. Feeling his way along the wall to steady himself, he makes it to the head.

The face in the small mirror over the sink is gaunt and sunburned, with hollowed cheeks and protruding cheekbones. Though not thick, his mustache has grown in, as has the patch beneath his lower lip, but the hair on his chin is sparse and scraggly. Sliding his hands down his sides, Ishmael can feel his ribs and hip bones. How long was he stranded at sea? Even if he finds his way back to the
Pequod,
is he already too late to save Queequeg and prevent the pirates from attacking the islanders?

When he exits the head, he’s aware of a fracas coming from above. He finds a tunic and pants, which are too large and must be cinched with rope, then climbs the steps to the deck barefoot. From the moisture in the air and the position of the sun, he can tell that it’s midmorning.

The trawler is at the center of a cloud of flapping, wheeling white flyers making a tremendous ruckus. The woman and boy are in the stern, retrieving wet line through a pulley hanging from a boom overhead. They are wearing boots and bright-yellow overalls made of some slick waterproof material. The boy is young — maybe eleven or twelve. The woman has a stocky build and short gray hair; something about her is familiar. Clamped between her teeth is a stem with a small bowl at the end. Now Ishmael remembers: This is the trawler that traded pinkies for supplies with the
Pequod
months ago.

“Well, well, look who finally woke up.” The woman chuckles. “Sure two days of sleep was enough for you?”

“Yes, ma’am. And thanks for saving me.”

“See you found the clothes. Had to pitch your uniform overboard. Never smelled anything so awful.”

“I understand, ma’am.”

“Ever clean scurry?”

“Sorry, ma’am?”

The woman holds up a medium-size silver scurry. Its belly has been slit open and the innards removed, revealing pink meat.

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, you’re about to learn. Go back down and get yourself a bib, some boots, and gloves.”

Ishmael does what he’s told. While below, he sees through a porthole that Chase Boat Four has been secured to the starboard side of the trawler. If he ever gets back to the
Pequod,
Starbuck and Stubb will surely be pleased that he’s brought the boat back with him.

When Ishmael returns to the deck a short time later, the woman and boy are winding in netting and the flyers are in a frenzy, diving and trying to steal whatever morsels they can. The net begins to rise out of the water, bringing with it the huge, squirming ball of sea life. Ishmael expects to see wriggling pinkies, but instead the net is filled with a squirming silver-and-blue mass of scurry.

When the net is entirely out of the water, the woman and the boy swing it over the deck, spilling out a writhing blanket of scurry in all sizes. The intense screeching of the flyers is matched by an unexpected roar of applause — the desperate clapping of hundreds of scurry flopping on the deck.

“Round ’em up before they slip through the scuppers!” the woman yells, grabbing scurry by their tails and tossing them into buckets. Ishmael and the boy join in. The deck is glazed with scurry slime, and several times Ishmael slips and almost loses his balance until finally both feet shoot out from under him and he goes down hard on his butt.

The boy offers him a hand.

As Ishmael reaches for it, their wrists graze.

The shock catches them both by surprise. The boy freezes and stares at Ishmael in confusion. Once again, Ishmael has serious doubts about Pip’s claim that greeting registries are a sign of the Gilded. How could this boy be one of them? Why would any member of such an illustrious group want to crew on a smelly trawler on this harsh, backward planet?

The boy doesn’t ask what the shock meant, and Ishmael doesn’t offer to explain. Instead, the boy tightens his grip on Ishmael’s hand and helps him up.

“Show him what to do,” the woman shouts over the din of screeching flyers while she sorts through the buckets of twitching scurry on the deck, picking out the biggest and dropping them through a hatch.

“Come with me!” The boy leads Ishmael to a narrow table covered with gouges and small iridescent scurry scales. Laying a scurry on its side, he demonstrates how to slit its belly open, and uses his gloved fingers to scoop out the entrails. The “cleaned” scurry go into pails beside the table.

Ishmael gets to work, but he is much slower than the boy, who can deftly clean a scurry in seconds. Ishmael struggles to pin the flailing, slippery creatures on the slimy table and feels uncomfortable jabbing the knife into a living thing. And even though he’s wearing gloves, his hands and fingers are stuck repeatedly by the spiny fins. But he slowly catches on.

By the time they’ve finished with the scurry, Ishmael’s hands are sore and bloody. But the day’s work is still not done. He and the boy must hose down and scrub the cleaning table and deck until every bit of slime, entrail, and scurry scale has been washed through the scuppers and into the sea.

All the while, enticing smells of cooking seep out of the wheelhouse. Finally, the woman calls them to lunch in the small saloon belowdecks. The meal is fresh-cooked scurry, biscuits, and some sort of steamed green. A fold-out table is set with a tablecloth, cloth napkins, plates, and silverware.

While Ishmael eats ravenously, the boy and the woman take their time, handling their silverware with ease and refinement.

“This is delicious, ma’am.” Ishmael dabs his lips with his napkin. “I really appreciate it.”

“Please, call me Grace,” the woman says.

Grace . . .

Ishmael stops in mid-chew. He hasn’t forgotten what Old Ben said that last night back on Earth:
“All I knew were Grace and the ocean. . . . The captain of our pinkboat.”

When Ishmael takes a moment too long to reply, Grace says, “And you are?”

“Call me Ishmael.”

“Nice to have you aboard, Ishmael.” Grace tilts her head toward the boy. “And this is my son, Benjamin.”

Feeling light-headed, Ishmael stares at the boy. The distinguishing facial characteristics are there — the broad forehead, the thick hair, the widow’s peak. Is he actually Old Ben? The thought is completely unsettling. It’s not possible — is it? The old man’s prophecies about Cretacea, the
Pequod,
Grace, and the pinkboat have already come true. But how in the universe could this boy end up an old wreck of a man in Black Range? How could he have lived there for more than thirty years
before
Ishmael even left for Cretacea? And yet, that last night in Black Range, hadn’t Old Ben also said,
“I wasn’t on a mission. Cretacea’s where I grew up.”

“Ahem.” Grace clears her throat.

“Sorry.” Ishmael realizes he’s been staring. Grace knits her brow. “Are you okay?”

Ishmael takes a deep breath to stop his head from spinning. “Yes, ma’am.”

“May I ask how you came to be floating in the middle of the ocean?” Grace asks. “In a stick boat from the
Pequod,
if I’m not mistaken.”

Ishmael swallows, then tells them the story.

“You were captured by pirates?” Benjamin asks with wide-eyed wonder.

Ishmael nods.

“Well, you’re in luck,” Grace says. “In a few days we’ll rendezvous with your ship to drop Benjamin off. He’s going back to Earth.”

“I said, I’m not going!” The boy crosses his arms defiantly.

“You must get an education, Benjamin,” Grace says patiently, in a way that makes Ishmael think she’s said this many times before.