I was in a sweat the whole of this time, thinking that Paul or Lorraine would come on us out of the dark, or a flock of drones flying as quiet as bats, with their red eyes winking as they sighted on us and spit out fire.
Nothing like that happened. By and by, we come to the shaking room, and I touched the opener to the plate that was on the wall there. It worked yet again. The door broke in two parts and let us in.
We didn’t have no idea how to make the shaking room go up or down, but Monono told us how to do it. “The buttons on the wall there, Koli-bou. They’re numbered. The deck has got to be zero. Zero is the one that looks like a duck’s egg.”
I looked for the duck’s egg, but didn’t find it right away.
“In the middle,” Monono said. “Put out your finger and count with me from the bottom. One – two – three – four – five – six – seven – eight – nine rows up. Wow. Whatever they’ve got down below decks, it must be big.”
I was going to push the duck-egg button as soon as I found it, but that count and them words on top of it give me pause. They made me think of the message that was left in my room. You’ve got to see what’s down below.
“It’s that one,” Cup said. She pointed, then she pressed on the button her own self. The room gun to shake, which meant we was going down. I kept on thinking about the message. Not the words of it, for I couldn’t read the words, but the spiky zig-zag lines lying every which way across the paper like they just spilled right out of someone’s head and landed there. There was something hid in them jagged lines – something of fear and hurt – that I couldn’t put out of my mind.
Sword is ready.
Don’t let them reach land.
The doors of the shaking room opened. It was all dark out there, but I knowed we was come to the deck because there was stars and a sickle moon. Cup stepped out, then looked round at me when I didn’t follow.
“Come on, Koli.”
“I’m going down further,” I told her. “I want to see what’s under the decks.”
“What? We’re looking for lifeboats, ain’t we? They’re not like to be down in the cellar.”
“But what are they keeping in all that big space?” I said. “We got to see.”
“Why?”
“Because the message said to.”
Cup throwed out her hands. “The message said not to trust Stanley too, and then he give us the opener. We don’t need to listen to the damn message. We’re meant to be finding a way off this boat.”
“I know, but I don’t want to go before we find out what’s going on here.”
“Who cares what’s being done? As long as it’s not being done to us, I’m fine with it!”
I tried to come up with some words to say that would convince her, but I didn’t even know myself why I thought it was important. Before I knowed what I was doing, I hit one of the buttons that was under the zero. As the doors closed, Cup jumped back inside.
“You don’t got to come,” I told her.
She punched me hard in the shoulder. She was really angry. “Of course I got to come. If we split up, we’ll never find each other again. But this is a waste of time, and we don’t have no time to waste!”
“It can’t hurt to find out what’s down there,” Monono said.
“Yeah, it can! Dead god damn it, am I the only one here that’s got a brain inside their head?”
The room shaked for the space of maybe ten breaths. Then it come to a stop with a great deal of creaking and scraping. The doors opened. On the other side of them there was nothing but black, thick and solid like a curtain. There was not a single sound, and the air didn’t move.
The thought of stepping out into that dark made my legs feel weak and watery, but Cup was rightly furious that I had brung us down here without her say-so. I felt like it had got to be me that went out first.
“Nothing’s stirring out there,” Monono said. “I think you’re safe.”
That give me just about enough heart to move. I took one step, and then another. I went as soft as I could, but the floor was metal plates and my feet as they come down raised a great clatter of echoes that run out into the dark and then back to me. I knowed from how long the echoes lasted that the space in front of me was a lot bigger than any other room on the ship. It might even be bigger than Senlas’s cave back in Calder, where more than a hundred people made their home.
I was about to take a third step when the lights come on.
So many lights.
The black was turned to staring, dazzling white. I cried out and throwed my hands up in front of my eyes, for I was half-blinded. I still didn’t see no further than my nose: the brightness hid what was in front of us just as well as the dark had done.
When she heard me yell, Cup come out at a dead run with her knife in her hand. She come so fast, she run up against a metal rail and almost tipped herself over it. It was well she didn’t. As our eyes got used to the light, we seen the drop that was there. It was twenty feet or more down to the floor. If she had gone over, she most likely would of broke her back in the fall. The walls was metal, sheer and smooth. The floor was metal with lines and grooves stamped into it. There was a heavy smell in the air, of grease and dust and sourness.
Down at the bottom, right under us, there was great dark shapes ranged in lines like pieces in the stone-game before you make your first move. They was not game pieces though, or anything like. As our eyes got used to the light, we seen that they was drudges. Hundreds and hundreds of drudges, all standing shoulder to shoulder like people that was come to the gather-ground to hear the Ramparts make a speech.
“Dandrake’s balls!” Cup gasped. She backed away from the rail until her shoulders was up against the doors of the shaking room. Which was now closed on us.
I lifted up the opener to set it against the silver plate next to the doors. There wasn’t no silver plate there. I set it against the doors instead, but that didn’t do nothing at all. My hands was shaking so bad it made a tap-tap-tap sound against the metal.
“Koli,” Cup whispered. There was a shake in her voice too. “Get us out of here.”
“I can’t,” I said. I tried the opener again. “It’s not working.”
“Don’t panic,” Monono said. “Not yet anyway. I already told you, nothing’s moving. Those things down there are asleep.”
“They’re not like to stay that way for long,” Cup hissed. “They got to know we’re here. We already made too much noise.”
“Yes, you did,” Monono said. “So shush now. Just listen.”
We listened. Except for our own ragged breaths, there was no sound in all that enormous room.
“What are them things doing down there?” Cup growled. “Did they move yet?”
“Not an inch,” Monono said. “And I’m not reading any sound or movement elsewhere in this hangar. I’ve got big ears, Cup. If anyone was creeping up on you, I’d hear them coming.”
Cup relaxed a little. Not enough to tuck her knife back in her belt, but enough to unfold herself from off the wall and look around.
“We can’t get out,” she said. “You got us stuck down here, Koli.” But then the both of us saw that we was not all the way stuck. There was steps going down from the end of the platform into the bigger place below us – the place where the drudges was all standing.