The Beast of Cretacea (35 page)

“No, I mustn’t,” Benjamin protests. “I want to stay here with you.”

Meanwhile, Ishmael feels his insides churn while he recalls Old Ben’s warning: “Do not rendezvous with the Pequod.
When Grace tells you that’s what she’s going to do, you have to stop her. . . . Lives are at stake.
”

It may have once seemed impossible, but there’s no longer any doubt in Ishmael’s mind: This boy sitting in this trawler on this vast ocean on sun-blessed Cretacea will somehow grow into Old Ben on bleak, sooty, Shroud-covered Earth.

Unless Ishmael can stop them from meeting the
Pequod.

“That story about you escaping from pirates really true?” Grace asks while she lights the bowl she has clamped in her teeth. Wisps of pungent smoke drift into the air. She and Ishmael sit on a narrow bench outside the wheelhouse and watch the sunset of pinks and purples over the vast blue ocean. They’ve finished dinner, and Benjamin is below in VR.

Ishmael cocks his head. “Why would you doubt it?”

“Been sailing these oceans a long time. Heard a lot of stories about pirates taking prisoners, but never heard of anyone getting away. Guess it was a good thing we found you when we did. You looked like you might not have lasted another day.”

“Not sure how long I’d have lasted if I hadn’t escaped in the first place,” Ishmael says, once again feeling an ache about leaving Queequeg behind. “Do you ever have trouble with them?”

“The pirates? No. They’re shore huggers, afraid of the open ocean. Don’t have a clue about navigation. As long as we stay out at sea, we don’t have to worry.” She points at the tiny terrafin skivers in his ears. “What about these?”

He tells her about his time with the islanders, but not about the terrafin pens.

Grace gives him an uncertain look. “Islanders? Never heard of them.”

“You’re serious?” Ishmael’s surprised.

“Well, like I said, we stay in deep waters because that’s where the scurry and pinkies are plentiful.” She relights her bowl. “Still, seems like you’ve covered an awful lot of ocean for someone who says he’s been here only a short time.”

Ishmael hears loud and clear what’s gone unsaid: She’d like to believe him, but isn’t convinced she should. But he’s curious about her, too. “How long have you been on Cretacea?”

“More than half my life at this point.” Grace lets out a puff of smoke. “I left Earth the day I found out there was a place like this, with real daylight and all sorts of living creatures and endless, beautiful ocean. Guess I was born with the sea in my blood. Why anyone would want to remain on that filthy, dark world is beyond me.”

“Then why send Benjamin there?”

“All he’s ever known is the ocean, but that doesn’t mean it’s in his blood, too. I made a choice about what kind of life I wanted to live. He deserves to have the choice as well.”

“But what makes you think he’d ever choose Earth? Like you said, it’s so ugly there.”

“Not everywhere.”

Ishmael absorbs this. It still seems incredible to him that there are places on Earth that aren’t as bad as Black Range. But he knows there must be. Like High Desert, where Billy’s family lives. And Pip, of course, comes from a place that must be much different, where there’s enough water to fill swimming pools, and people don’t depend on Natrient to survive.

But no matter where Grace thinks she’s sending Benjamin, Ishmael knows that eventually the boy will end up a broken-down benzo fiend living alone in Black Range. His insides are in turmoil. He promised Old Ben that he’d do whatever he could to stop Grace from rendezvousing with the
Pequod,
but that was before he knew that Queequeg’s life might depend on him getting back to the ship to organize a rescue.
And
before he knew the lives of the islanders might depend on him as well. Finally, it was before he knew that Archie was somewhere on Cretacea.

He knows he should tell Grace the truth, try to persuade her that Benjamin is better off on her pinkboat than he ever will be on Earth. That they shouldn’t interact with the
Pequod . . .

But something else has begun to niggle at him:

It was Ben who discovered him and Archie in the foundling home, and who brought Petra and Joachim to see them.

It was Ben who persuaded Ms. Hussey to let Joachim and Petra take both boys when it became obvious that they were inseparable.

It was Ben who always said they could have better lives than anything the Zirconia Electrolysis station could offer.

Finally, it was Ben who encouraged Ishmael to go on this mission.

Is it possible . . . that Ben planned this from the beginning? So that he wouldn’t have to be sent back to Earth?

Has everything that’s happened to Ishmael since the day Ben spotted him in the foundling home been leading to this one moment, when Ishmael has the power to change the course of the old man’s life?

Has Old Ben simply been using him all this time?

No, Ishmael can’t believe that. He
won’t
believe that.

But even as he tells himself that, other suspicious thoughts worm their way in.

The Ψ9,000 he sent back . . . was it
really
for his foster parents?

You can’t think this way,
he tells himself.
You’ve got to trust.

But what about meeting up with the
Pequod
?

Ben’s is only
one
life. What about Queequeg and the islanders? Can he choose one man’s life over so many?

The trawler rocks gently on the waves. The sun is below the horizon now, but the clouds are still orange, pink, and purple. Fifty feet off the bow, a large scurry leaps out of the sea and splashes back down.

“I thought this was a pinkboat,” Ishmael says, watching the spreading rings of water where the scurry jumped. “I remember we traded with you a few months ago.”

“It’s a pinkboat when the pinkies are running. When they’re not running, we have to take whatever we can get, which means scurry.”

“Do you trade with ships besides the
Pequod
?”

Grace chuckles. “When all you’ve got are pinkies and scurry, you’ll trade with any ship you can.”

“Ever encounter one called the
Jeroboam
?” Ishmael asks.

Grace gazes off into the distance. “No.”

In the morning Ishmael wakes to the scent of red berry. His body aches and his hands are sore from cleaning scurry the day before, but he rises and goes into the head, where he decides to shave his chin but keep the mustache and patch beneath his lip.

When he gets to the galley, he gladly accepts a steaming mug from Grace.

“Benjamin’s up on the deck,” she tells him. “It’s a beautiful morning. Why don’t you join him?”

Mug in hand, Ishmael heads abovedecks. Benjamin, wearing a gray jersey with shortened sleeves, is in the bow. Ishmael sits beside him. The trawler drifts on the nearly flat ocean.

“So what’s it like on Earth, anyway?” the boy asks sullenly.

Ishmael takes a sip of red berry and answers carefully. “I guess it depends on where. Some places aren’t so great. . . . But it sounds like Grace wants to send you somewhere that’s better than most.” He feels a spasm of guilt. He hates being deceitful. But how can he tell this boy the truth as he knows it?

“What about the place you’re from?”

Before Ishmael can reply, they become aware of a distant speck in the sky and a high-pitched whine that grows louder until a drone hovers before them. Grace comes out of the wheelhouse, and it occurs to Ishmael that this drone is here to inspect them. Trust is a rare commodity on the open seas. They are supposed to meet the
Pequod
soon, and someone on that ship wants to make sure everything on this trawler is as it should be.

The drone circles the trawler and then returns to inspect the crew, coming within a few feet of Ishmael and lingering a moment longer.

“Get the feeling someone’s surprised to find you aboard?” Grace asks.

“Can’t blame them,” Ishmael answers.

Another moment passes, then the drone zips off.

Realizing what the drone’s visit signified, Benjamin shoves his hands into his pockets and pouts. “I’m not going.”

Grace lights her bowl. “There’s a lot more to life than living on this boat.”

“
You
like it,” Benjamin shoots back petulantly.

“It’s a choice I made after many years of seeing what else was out there,” says Grace. “It’s time for you to make your own choice.”

“This
is
what I’d choose,” Benjamin insists.

“You’re too young to know that. You have to get an education, and then, if you decide you still want to work on a trawler, no one will stop you.”

“I hate you!” The boy springs to his feet and goes below, slamming the hatch behind him.

Grace doesn’t react, but Ishmael sees a great sadness in her eyes. As much as she seems convinced that this is the best thing for Benjamin, the decision to send him so far away must be terribly painful.

Seeing her heartache, Ishmael can no longer resist the obligation he feels toward the old man he left back in Black Range: “I know this is none of my business, but have you been in touch with anyone back on Earth lately? I get the feeling that things aren’t so good.”

“I’ve been assured that he’ll be well cared for.” Grace waves at the nets and ropes and winches. “This is no way for a child of his age to live. No friends. Nothing to do but work. Where he’s going he’ll have access to . . . certain advantages. Once he experiences them, he may find he wants more from life than this.”

Ishmael feels a prickly sensation spread over him.
Certain advantages?
Is she saying what he thinks she’s saying — that Benjamin
really is
of the Gilded?

By midafternoon, the
Pequod
is in sight. From a distance it resembles a huge reddish-brown-and-black-striped creature. Crewmen line the railings. The drone returns and circles the trawler watchfully.

Grace tells Benjamin to get his things. The boy wrinkles his nose angrily but does what he’s told. As soon as he disappears belowdecks, his mother rubs tears out of her eyes. Earlier in the day she’d told Ishmael that her husband, Benjamin’s father, was washed overboard in a storm when Benjamin was still a toddler. That must make sending her son to Earth even more wrenching.

A chase boat is lowered from the
Pequod
and starts toward them. Among the crew Ishmael spots bright-yellow hair and a familiar hulking figure: Daggoo and Bunta, together again. Thanks to the drones, they must know by now that he’s aboard the pinkboat. Is that why they volunteered to be part of the welcome party?

“Will you keep an eye on my son?” Grace asks, her voice almost breaking.

All at once, Ishmael knows he can’t hold back any longer. The battle that has raged in his conscience has abruptly ended. He has to tell her the truth.

“Don’t send him back,” he blurts out. “It’s bad back there, where Benjamin is going. You need to keep him here, with you.”

Grace’s eyes widen, then narrow. “I don’t know what business it is of yours, but I told you, he’s got people who’ll look after him. He’ll be all right.”

“He won’t!”
Ishmael insists. “Listen to me! Something goes wrong when you send him back. I can’t explain it, but I’m telling you the truth. He isn’t going where you think — or even
when
you think. The Earth he’s going to is dying, and he’s going to die right along with it!”

Her expression hardens. “You can’t possibly know that. He has to go.”

The chase boat is a hundred yards away now — close enough for Ishmael to see that Starbuck is also on board.

He takes a breath and lets it out in a rush: “Please, Grace, just listen. I know it sounds crazy, but . . . I knew Benjamin back on Earth. In a bad place called Black Range. Only he wasn’t a boy then. He was an old man who’d lived a very hard, very sad life. And before I left for Cretacea, he told me about you. He made me promise I wouldn’t let you send him back.
‘Don’t let Grace rendezvous with the
Pequod. . . .
Lives are at stake.’
That’s what he told me. And I promised him I wouldn’t. So you can’t do it, Grace. I beg you!”