The Cloud Hunters Read online

  ‘Christien? What’s wrong? You look ill.’

  Jenine was by my side. I didn’t answer her.

  ‘Hey, what’s the matter? You look green. Are you sky-sick?’

  I raised my head to look at her. Her eyes seemed genuinely sympathetic, her expression concerned. Her face, like mine, was damp with moisture; droplets of water clung to her braided hair like small, smooth diamonds.

  ‘How could you – how could he?’

  ‘What? What is it? What?’

  She was truly mystified, which only served to make it worse. She was baffled. Kaneesh had just killed a man, slit his throat in a squabble over a few clouds, and he had come back proud of it, looking for approval and congratulation, neither of which were stinted upon. And that was fine. And she wondered what I was upset about.

  ‘How could he do that?’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Kaneesh. What he did.’

  ‘He was protecting us. We have to fight. We need to stand up for ourselves. Or we’re finished. If we back down once, we’re finished forever.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you have shared?’

  ‘It’s the custom, the law of the sky. We were first. They were our clouds. They knew they were in the wrong.’

  ‘But to do that?’

  ‘What? What do you mean? What was so bad?’

  I drew my forefinger across my throat in dramatic imitation of Kaneesh, simulating the gesture he had made, and all he had conveyed by it.

  Jenine looked at me, first perplexed, then slightly offended, and then somewhat amused. She began to laugh. Kaneesh and her mother looked across, wondering what had got into her.

  ‘Honestly, Christien,’ she said to me. ‘Your imagination’s got the better of you. I think you’ve been reading too many books.’

  ‘You can never read too many books,’ I said, sullenly, not liking being laughed at when I didn’t know why. What was funny about killing someone?

  ‘Then maybe you could try reading some different ones,’ she said. ‘Something not so bloodthirsty.’ She called across the deck. ‘Kaneesh! Come here, come here.’

  ‘I’m busy!’ he snarled. Though as far as I could see, the compressor was doing all the work. The only thing he was currently busy with was admiring his new scar and seeing whether it lived up to his old ones.

  ‘No, come here, come here.’

  He padded over the deck, like an inquisitive cat.

  ‘What?’

  Jenine pointed at me.

  ‘You know what Christien thinks you’ve done?’

  ‘What?’

  Jenine raised her forefinger to her throat and made the slicing motion.

  ‘That’s right,’ Kaneesh said. ‘I did. And what about it?’

  ‘Tell him what you cut,’ Jenine said.

  ‘The compressor pipe, of course,’ Kaneesh said. ‘What else?’

  I felt myself go hot with embarrassment. Even in the greyness of the surrounding cloud I was sure my face must be glowing red like a beacon.

  ‘He thinks you cut the captain’s throat!’ Jenine said. Kaneesh looked at me, an expression of disgust on his face. He shook his head.

  ‘Idiot,’ was all he said. Then he padded back across the deck to check on the performance of the compressor.

  And that was just how I felt. Like an idiot. A complete one. One who wins prizes for it.

  ‘I can’t begin to apologise . . .’ I stammered.

  ‘Then don’t,’ Jenine said.

  ‘Have I upset him?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t think so. He’s not easily upset. He’s probably pleased that you think he’s capable of it.’

  ‘He probably is, isn’t he?’ I said.

  She shrugged in reply, as if to say, What do you imagine?

  ‘Well, I’m sorry anyway,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, well, it just shows what you really think of us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No, no, really, no. I didn’t think that, I just . . . misunderstood.’

  She shrugged again, as if it didn’t really matter one way or the other.

  ‘Maybe next time, you’ll try to have a higher opinion of us,’ she said. ‘Give us the benefit of the doubt?’

  ‘I do. I have. I mean, I will,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t look so serious,’ she said. ‘I’m only teasing you.’

  I didn’t know what to say to her half the time. Or I knew what I wanted to say, but was incapable of saying it, as I was too afraid to open my mouth for fear of finding my own foot in it.

  She sat down on the deck and patted the space next to her as an invitation for me to sit too. I sank down and squatted by her.

  ‘I can’t believe you thought that,’ she said. ‘Did you really?’

  ‘Well – you know.’

  ‘Kaneesh? Slit someone’s throat?’

  I glanced over towards him. He was sitting on the deck now too, his legs in the lotus position; he was sharpening his knife on a small stone and polishing the blade with a rag.

  Yes, I thought, you might smile, Jenine. And you might know him a whole lot better than I do. But I still think he’s capable of slitting throats. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that he had slit a few already and was making plans to slit some more at the first opportunity, when nobody was looking. Yes, he looked like quite an experienced and accomplished throat-slitter to me.

  I realised that my hand had gone to my own neck and that my fingers were gingerly touching my Adam’s apple. Kaneesh looked up at me, and saw me there, with my hand protectively around my throat. He gave me a white-toothed, sardonic smile, and went on whetting his knife.

  18

  bugs

  We hovered there, in the cool, damp mist, with only the sound of the compressor for company. The other boat had long gone. Gradually, the cloud thinned around us, vacuumed from the sky. I could feel the beginnings of warmth permeate through it and make out small patches of blue, which gradually widened, like rips in a piece of cloth.

  There was a gurgling sound. Kaneesh turned the compressor off and the world was silent again. There was a slight overspill of water, which washed up on the deck. Kaneesh detached the compressor hose and let the run-off trickle into a cup.

  ‘Well?’ Carla asked.

  He tasted the water, seemed happy with it and handed her the cup. She passed it on to Jenine, and then it found its way to me. The water was cool and fresh, with a slight, indefinable taste to it, maybe the taste of some mineral, maybe just the taste of the sky. It seemed like a respectable vintage, in my estimation. Not that I was an expert.

  It was night once more, by the clock at least, if not by the light. Our water was all collected and it was time to sleep. Carla turned the boat around and set a course for home. As before, we took turn with the watches.

  Carla did not sleep on deck, but went below. And then it was my watch. Kaneesh had gone below too. I supposed he wanted to get out of the light and to sleep in some proper darkness.

  When Kaneesh took over the watch from me, I lay down in my sleeping bag on the deck. I draped my T-shirt over my eyes, but I couldn’t get to sleep. So I took the T-shirt off my face and just lay there, feeling the motion of the boat as it drifted through the sky.

  I looked across at Jenine, who lay asleep, half curled into a ball. I felt that I wanted to be nearer to her, and so I wriggled across the deck, moving in my sleeping bag, slithering like some chrysalis – telling myself that a chrysalis was truly a butterfly inside, given the time and opportunity to hatch out.

  I was close to her now. So close that I could almost feel her breath. I moved closer still – just to smell the scent of her hair, to see the movement of her eyes behind their closed lids, as she dreamed.

  Abruptly, she moved in her sleep, with a sudden violent motion, flailing both arms and legs around, and as she did she caught me an almighty blow across the head with the back of her hand and her knee went into my stomach. I yelped and rubbed my nose and rolled away, clutc
hing at my midriff.

  It took a good few minutes for the pain to go. When it finally did, I heard the sound of soft laughter. I raised my head and saw Kaneesh, leaning against the wheel. He had seen everything.

  ‘Ask first, next time,’ he chuckled. And he laughed some more, then he turned away, and checked that the boat was on course. Then he looked at me again. ‘You know your trouble, boy,’ he said. ‘You try too hard.’

  But as far as I could tell, Jenine was still asleep. I didn’t think that she had hit me deliberately.

  I lay a while, looking at the sky. Kaneesh moved to the prow of the boat. I slithered nearer to Jenine in my sleeping bag.

  ‘Jenine –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You awake?’

  ‘No. I’m fast asleep.’

  ‘Jenine –’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you ever feel lonely?’

  She rolled round to face me and opened her eyes.

  ‘Sometimes. Why?’

  ‘Lonely, even though you’re not actually alone?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Me too.’ We were silent a while. Then, ‘Are you lonely now?’ I asked.

  ‘A bit,’ she said.

  ‘We could cuddle up,’ I said. ‘And then we wouldn’t be so lonely. Would we?’

  She sighed. ‘No, Christien,’ she said. ‘I guess not.’

  ‘So is that OK then?’

  ‘Yes. That’s OK.’

  So I got a bit closer and I put my arm around her and she covered my hand with hers. And we fell asleep.

  But we didn’t sleep for long. When I woke she had gone. All that was left of her was her sleeping bag.

  What woke me was a loud succession of violent thumps and bangs, each coming rapidly after the other and causing the whole hull to shake. I experienced the distinct feeling that the boat was dropping down from the sky, losing buoyancy and sinking fast towards the heat beneath us and to the furnace of the sun.

  And it was.

  ‘Hey! Boy!’

  Kaneesh’s big toe dug into my ribs. It seemed to be his principal method of attracting my attention. I yawned and looked up at him.

  ‘What is it?’

  He was holding a boat hook.

  ‘Take this and get to work. We’ve got visitors.’

  I stumbled to my feet, still half asleep. I looked around. Jenine was at the helm. Carla was at the rail, leaning over and peering down. She had a crowbar in her hand and was busy using it, trying to prise something off the hull.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  I got to the rail and looked. My question was immediately answered. Looking up at me was one of the ugliest, most repellent faces I had ever seen. It seemed like an immense bedbug or head louse. I’d viewed pictures of those, taken through microscopes and magnifiers. But no microscopes were needed for these examples. And no picture would ever do them justice.

  The face I saw was flaccid and grub-like, with a cascade of chins. It had a sharp, pointed proboscis, like a hammer-drill head, topped by two sets of feelers and two glistening, vacuous eyes. The creature’s body was both beetle- and slug-like. It seemed to have more arms and legs than could possibly be needed, while tufts of bristle and ragged hair protruded from its flesh.

  ‘What are they? Sky-riders of some sort? I’ve never seen them like that before.’

  ‘No,’ Kaneesh said. ‘They’re lice.’

  ‘Where did they come from?’

  ‘Who knows? Off the back of a sky-whale. Anything.’

  When you hear of a sky-whale with fleas, you appreciate the fact that you have hands. It is one of the greatest privileges to have arms and hands and the ability to scratch yourself; an itch then turns from an irritation to a luxury. It’s a thing you can almost wallow in, the pleasure of a good long scratch.

  But to be a sky-whale, out in the air, with a parasitic flea holding on to you and trying to burrow into your skin, with no means of getting rid of it, unless you can find something to rub yourself against, or find a friendly tooth-fish to groom you, is nothing but torture.

  When sky-whales grow sick and die, they fall down into the sun. But sometimes they dive there deliberately, to put an end to their misery.

  ‘Those fleas have got wings!’ I hadn’t expected that.

  I saw the translucent wing cases, and the wings beneath them, twitching. The lice were huge, at least a metre tall. If one of them landed on you, or if that proboscis went into you, or if that revolting face with that mouthful of teeth . . .

  ‘Prise them off! They want the water. It’s moisture they’re after.’

  They were trying to drill through the hull and into the tanks. They had proboscises like chisels.

  ‘How do I get them off?’

  ‘Like this.’

  Kaneesh took a boat hook, slid it down between the louse and the hull, and wrenched the little monster away. The louse fell for a short distance, then opened its wings, flew back up and reattached itself.

  ‘Or if that doesn’t work . . .’

  This time he raised the boat hook and aimed for the creature’s neck, not to prise, but to stab. The point sank in; the louse shuddered, lost its grip and slid away. This time it didn’t come back. Carla was beating at the others with the crowbar in her hand. Jenine was holding the ship steady.

  I gingerly looked down and chose a louse to start on. I hesitantly pushed the boat hook forward. The louse looked up at me and swatted at the shaft with a feeler. I got the hook properly under it and tried to prise it off, but it seemed stuck on with glue.

  ‘Don’t play with it!’ Kaneesh snarled at me. ‘Get rid of it.’

  I pulled the hook back up to get some leverage. This time I rammed it down hard, with all my strength.

  There was a disgusting noise, nearly as repellent as the louse’s appearance. The thing gurgled and looked up at me – almost reproachfully – its antennae twitching violently and its feet scratching desperately to hold on to the hull. It began to fall. It made an awful, high-pitched scream. As it went, it left a streak of blood along the hull. Its blood was yellow.

  It took us two exhausting hours to get rid of them. Afterwards the hull remained sticky and glutinous, with patches of slime from where they had latched on. There was a smell of offal and decay in the air, which took a long time to go. It seemed to cling to the boat, travelling with us for hours.

  I pumped some water out and washed my hands. As I stood scraping the last of the yellow goo from my fingers, Kaneesh came over and slapped me on the back.

  ‘Good sport, huh!’ he said. ‘Good sport!’

  Well, it might have been his idea of sport, but it wasn’t mine.

  ‘The barnacles are even worse,’ he added.

  Personally, I didn’t see how they could be.

  ‘Get a barnacle on your back, that’s some fun!’

  Kaneesh chuckled to himself at some happy reminiscence of barnacle-bashing. Then he went below to the cabins. At least he didn’t seem to dislike me quite as much as he had.

  I saw him later, whittling a mark into the mast. It was one of many. There was a whole selection there of five-barred gates: four vertical lines and one diagonal. I asked Jenine what they represented.

  ‘His kills,’ she said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Sky-lice. And other things.’

  ‘Does he keep a record of everything he’s put an end to?’

  ‘More or less,’ she said.

  I saw that there were further marks on other parts of the boat. I presumed that they were nothing to do with the mast tally, but represented something else. I didn’t ask what they stood for. I really didn’t want to know. Maybe it was the barnacles. If so, it was an impressive reckoning. Some barnacles were reputedly as big as a man’s torso and it was said that they could crush your rib cage flat.

  But I kept thinking of the sky-lice, and of one of them landing on you, and enfolding you in its appalling embrace. I hoped the ones we had killed didn’t have friends wh
o would want to avenge them. But maybe lice don’t really have friends, just competitors.

  ‘How many of them did you kill?’ Jenine asked me.

  ‘Fifteen – maybe twenty. And got rid of a lot more.’

  ‘Not bad. We’ll make a Cloud Hunter of you yet,’ she said.

  She may not have realised – and she may not have meant it – but she said just the right thing.

  19

  back home

  I had forgotten all about the homework until the last moment. We sat on the deck, with home in sight, hurriedly working through the exercises. We finished five minutes before we docked.

  As soon as we tied up, Kaneesh went to find one of the water dealers and brought him to the boat, while Jenine and I cleaned and tidied up around the deck.

  The water dealer soon arrived, short-legged, over-sized, and very out of breath as he tried to keep up with Kaneesh. He waddled up the gangplank, bowed to Carla, then went and sat down with her while Kaneesh drew off a jug of the water from the tanks. Kaneesh brought the jug over with two cups and set it down on the deck between them.

  Carla poured the water out and proffered one of the cups to the dealer. He accepted it. He sniffed it, looked down at it with feigned distaste, then raised it cautiously to his lips. He took a sip, letting the water run around his mouth and over his tongue. He grimaced and finally swallowed.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Well?’ Carla said. ‘How much?’

  ‘Well,’ the dealer sighed, ‘it’s not a lot of use to me, water of this quality. But I dare say I could take it off your hands. Maybe somebody might buy it. It’s all right to wash with, I suppose, or bathe in, or to water the plants.’

  Kaneesh glared at him. The dealer knew full well that the water was of the finest quality. He just had to try and beat the price down. It was more than a habit with him, it was an instinct.