Beside her knife hand was the black hair of a man. Kickaha came up onto the shelf. The man was a Tishquetmoac, and he was sleeping soundly.
Anana smiled and said, “He was sleeping when I came out of the water. A good thing, too, because he could have speared me before I knew what was
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going on. So I hit him in the neck to make sure he continued sleeping.”
The shelf went in about four feet and was bare except for some furs, blankets, a barrel with the cartograph for gin on it, and some wooden metal-bound caskets that contained food—he hoped. The bareness meant that the smuggled goods had been removed, so there wouldn’t be any influx of swimmers to take the contraband.
The smoke from the lamp rose toward a number of small holes in the ceiling and upper wall. Kickaha, placing his cheek near some of them, felt a slight movement of air. He was sure that the light could not be seen, by anyone on the deck immediately above, but he would have to make sure.
He said to Anana, “There are any number of boats equipped with these chambers. Sometimes the captains know about them; sometimes they don’t.”
He pointed at the man, “We’ll question him later.” He tied the man’s ankles and turned him over to bind his hands behind him. Then, though he wanted to lie down and sleep, he went back into the water. He came up near the anchor chain, which he climbed. His prowlings on the galley revealed no watchmen, and he got a good idea of the construction of the ship. Moreover, he found some sticks of dried meat and biscuits wrapped in waterproof intestines. There were no eagles in sight, and the patrol boat had drifted so far away that he could not see bodies—if there were any—in it.
When he returned to the chamber, he found the man conscious.
Petotoc said that he was hiding there because he was wanted by the police—he would not say what
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the charge was. He did not know about the invasion. It was evident that he did not believe Kicka-ha’s story.
Kickaha spoke to the woman. “We must have been seen by enough people so that the search for us in the city will be off. They’ll be looking for us in the old city, the farms, the countryside, and they’ll be searching every boat, too. Then, when they can’t find us, they may let normal life resume. And this boat may set out for wherever it’s going.”
Kickaha asked Petotoc where he could get enough food to last the three of them for a month. Anana’s eyes opened, and she said, “Live a month in this damp, stinking hole?”
“If you want to live at all,” Kickaha said. “I sincerely hope we won’t be here that long, but I like to have reserves for an emergency.”
“I’ll go mad,” she said.
“How old are you?” he said. “About ten thousand, at least, right? And you haven’t learned the proper mental attitudes to get through situations like this in all that time?”
“I never expected to be in such a situation,” she snarled.
Kickaha smiled. “Something new after ten millennia, huh? You should be happy to be free of boredom.”
Unexpectedly, she laughed. She said, “I am tired and edgy. But you are right. It is better to be scared to death than to be bored to death. And what has happened …”
She spread her palms out to indicate speech-lessness.
Kickaha, acting on Petotoc’s information, went topside again. He lowered a small boat, rowed ashore, and broke into a small warehouse. He
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filled the boat with food and rowed back to the ship. Here he tied the rowboat to the anchor and then swam under to get Anana. The many dives and swims, hampered by carrying food in nets, wore them out even more. By the end of their labors, they were so tired they could barely pull themselves up onto the shelf in the chamber. Kickaha let the rowboat loose so it could drift away, and then he made his final dive.