He examined the door. The shackle of a laminated steel padlock had been passed through the swivel eye of a heavy-slotted hasp welded firmly to the steel of the door. Simple but very effective.
Jack dug out his pick kit and went to work.
10
Kolabati had started calling Kusum’s name when she heard the footsteps on the deck above her cabin; she stopped when she heard him rattle the lock on the outer door. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty, she simply wanted to see another human face—even Kusum’s. The isolation of the pilot’s cabin was getting to her.
She’d spent all day racking her brain for a way to appeal to her brother. But pleas would be of no avail. How could you plead with a man who thought he was salvaging your karma? How could you convince that man to alter a course of action he was pursuing for what he was certain was your own good?
She’d even gone so far as to look for something she might conceivably use for a weapon but had discarded the notion. Even with one arm, Kusum was too quick, too strong, too agile for her. He’d proved that beyond a doubt this morning. And in his unbalanced state of mind, a physical assault might drive him over the edge.
And still she worried for Jack. Kusum had said he was unharmed, but how could she be sure after all the lies he’d already told her?
She heard the outer door open—Kusum seemed to have been fumbling with it—and footsteps approaching her cabin. A man stepped through the splinters of the door. He stood there smiling, staring at her sari.
“Where’d you get the funny dress?”
“Jack!” She leaped into his arms, her joy bursting within her. “You’re alive!”
“You’re surprised?”
“I thought Kusum might have…”
“No. It was almost the other way around.”
“I’m so glad you found me!” She clutched him, reassuring herself that he was really here. “Kusum is going to sail back to India tonight. Get me out of here!”
“My pleasure.” He turned toward the shattered door and paused. “What happened to that?”
“Kusum kicked it out after I locked him in.”
She saw Jack’s eyebrows rise. “How many kicks?”
“One, I think.” She wasn’t sure.
Jack pursed his lips as if to whistle but made no sound. He began to speak but was interrupted by a loud clang from down the hall.
Kolabati went rigid. No! Not Kusum! Not now!
“The door!”
Jack was already out in the hall. She followed in time to see him slam his shoulder full force against the steel door.
Too late. It was locked.
Jack pounded once on the door with his fist, but said nothing.
Kolabati leaned against the door beside him. She wanted to scream with frustration. Almost free—and now locked up again!
“Kusum, let us out!” she cried in Bengali. “Can’t you see this is useless?”
No reply. Only taunting silence on the other side. Yet she sensed her brother’s presence.
“I thought you wanted to keep us apart!” she said in English, purposely goading him. “Instead you’ve locked us in here together with a bed and nothing but each other to fill the empty hours.”
There followed a lengthy pause, and then an answer—also in English. The deadly precision in Kusum’s voice chilled Kolabati.
“You will not be together long. There are crucial matters that require my presence at the Consulate now. The rakoshi will separate the two of you when I return.”
He said no more. And although Kolabati had not heard his footsteps retreating across the deck, she was sure he’d left them. She glanced at Jack. Her terror for him was a physical pain. It would be so easy for Kusum to bring a few rakoshi onto the deck, open this door and send them in after Jack.
Jack shook his head. “You’ve got a real way with words.”
He seemed so calm. “Aren’t you frightened?”
“Yeah. Very.” He was feeling the walls, rubbing his fingers over the low ceiling.
“What are we going to do?”
“Get out of here, I hope.”
He strode back to the cabin and began to tear the bed apart. He threw the pillow, mattress, and bedclothes on the floor, then pulled at the iron spring frame. It came free with a screech. He worked at the bolts that held the frame together; amid a constant stream of muttered curses he managed to loosen one of them. After that it took him only a moment to twist one of the L-shaped bars off the frame.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“Find a way out.”
He jabbed the six-foot iron bar against the cabin ceiling. Paint chips flew in accompaniment to the unmistakable sound of metal against metal. The same with the ceiling and the walls in the hall.
The floor, however, was made of heavily varnished oak planks. He began to work the corner of the bar between two of them.
“We’ll go through the floor,” he said, grunting with the effort.
Kolabati recoiled at the thought.
“The rakoshi are down there!”
“If I don’t meet them now, I’ll have to meet them later. I’d rather meet them on my terms than Kusum’s.” He looked at her. “You going to stand there or are you going to help?”
Kolabati added her weight to the bar. A board splintered and popped up.
11
Jack tore at the floorboards with grim determination. His shirt and hair were soon 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 the 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.
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 running along just under the steel beams that supported the flooring. Directly below hung 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’d 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 rose and took a step toward her but she flattened herself against the wall and screamed.
“No! Don’t touch it!”
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!” The terror crept back into her voice “Please don’t ask me!”
“Okay-okay!” Jack said quickly, raising his hands, palms out, and stepping back. Didn’t want any more scr
eaming. 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’d told him about no one in the family 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.”
“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—piggyback. 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 load of courage—with or without a “magic” necklace. Didn’t make sense.
But then, 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: the same corridor he’d followed to the aft cargo hold on his first visit.
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. But 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 on the iron rungs of the ladder. He’d come through here 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’d been orienting himself as to his position in the ship. He’d 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 neared the watertight hatch through which he’d entered and exited the corridor. He’d secured that hatch behind him last night. He was sure of it. But perhaps Kusum had used it since. Perhaps he’d left it unlocked. He ran the last dozen feet to the hatch and fairly leaped upon the handle.
It wouldn’t budge. Locked!
Damn!
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’d 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.
12
Kolabati was a pale blur beside him as Jack stood 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. 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 lowered Kolabati back onto her feet and took two of the lighters from his pockets. Then he 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 piggyback style, leaving his hands free to clutch a lighter in each. They seemed ridiculously inadequate, but he derived an odd sort of comfort from them.
When he reached the end of the corridor he stopped. Ahead and to their right, the hold opened before them. Brighter than the passageway behind them, but not much. Darker than Jack remembered from last night. But Kusum had been on the elevator then with his two gas torches roaring full force.
He noticed other differences. Details were scarce and nebulous in the murky light, but Jack could see that the forty or fifty rakoshi were no longer clustered around the elevator. Instead they’d spread throughout the hold; some crouched in the deepest shadows or slumped against the walls in somber poses; others were 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 waning moon might provide on a foggy night. The creatures’ movements were slow and languorous. Like looking in on a huge, candle-lit 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 snapped his 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. Looked like a brewing fight. br />
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 thing, Jack took an involuntary backward step. 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 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—nothing feminine about her, not even breasts, which probably meant that rakoshi didn’t suckle their young. She looked like a huge bodybuilder whose arms, legs, and torso had been stretched to grotesque lengths. 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, 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, pulled them apart and hurled them aside as if they weighed nothing. Her children meekly accepted the rough treatment.
He watched the Mother make a circuit of the chamber and return to the passage leading to the forward hold.
He looked around. How the hell do we get out of here?
Jack looked up toward the ceiling of the hold—actually the underside of the hatch cover, invisible in the dark. Had to get up there, to the deck. How?
He poked his head into the hold and scanned the slick walls for a ladder. None. But there, at the top of the starboard aft corner of the hold—the elevator. If he could bring that down.…
But to do that he would have to enter the hold and cross its width.