Part 6 (1/2)
”Coffee.”
”What?” Simna and Stanager blurted simultaneously.
”It says it wants coffee. Not too hot, if you please. Tepid will do fine. With sugar. Lots of sugar.”
It was the Captain who replied. ”You're joking, landsman. I know it must be you because nothing that looks like that is capable of making jokes.”
”On the contrary, though this is the first Kraken to come to my personal acquaintance, I know from experience in the shallow waters below my village that squid have a very highly developed sense of humor. But it is not joking. It wants coffee. I admit that it is a request that puzzles me as well.”
”Well, that's something, anyway, if you're as bemused as I am.”
”Yes,” he admitted. ”What exactly is 'coffee'? I gather from the description that it is some kind of food.”
While Simna slowly and carefully elucidated to his tall friend the nature of coffee, explaining that it was a warm beverage not unlike tea, Stanager conferred with the s.h.i.+p's cook. They had tea and coffee both.
Not being an addict, the Captain had no difficulty with agreeing to sacrifice their store of the darker beverage. Parting with an entire sack of sugar, more than half the s.h.i.+p's supply, was another matter. The alternative, however, was surely more dispiriting still.
”Have you a cauldron?” Ehomba asked her. ”Perhaps for rendering out seal blubber?”
”This is not a fis.h.i.+ng boat. Cook will use her largest kettle to prepare the brew.” Stanager peered past him, to where the Kraken continued to hover like a mariner's worst nightmare hard by the port bow of theGromsketter. ”It will have to be big enough.”
As matters developed, the iron kettle was more than sufficient to hold the multiple gallons of dark, aromatic liquid. After the sugar was added and stirred in and when it had cooled to a temperature Ehomba thought appropriate, it was presented with some ceremony to the waiting cephalopod.
A tentacle powerful enough to rip a s.h.i.+p's mainmast right out of its footing reached over the railing. The prehensile tip hooked beneath the kettle's st.u.r.dy handle. Without spilling a drop, the Kraken lifted the heavy iron over the side. Ehomba's companions rushed to the railing, expecting to see the contents of the kettle vanish down that clacking beak in a single prodigious swallow. Instead, the monster tipped the kettle ever so slightly forward, and sipped. A vast, invertebrate sigh rose from within, and the Kraken seemed to slip a little lower into the sea. As it drank, other tentacles dipped and waved.
”What's it saying, bruther?” An enchanted Simna looked on as his friend strove to communicate with the many-armed visitant.
”It is wondering why it is drinking alone, and why we do not join it.”
Stanager replied absently. ”It was our entire supply of coffee that went into that kettle.”
”Tea will do,” Ehomba a.s.sured her. ”I could do with a cup myself. This has been thirsty work.”
”Hoy, and I'll have a cup as well, Captain!” Simna grinned broadly.
”Just remember that I am the master here,” she growled back at him, ”and not some serving wench put aboard for your amus.e.m.e.nt.” Muttering to herself, she went once again to confer with the cook.
So it was that Etjole Ehomba and Simna ibn Sind came to sit on the railing near the bow of the graceful sailing vessel, their sandaled feet braced against the rigging, delicately sipping tea while the herdsman conversed on matters of wind and weather, tide and current, the nature and flavor of various seafoods, and the vagaries of men who set forth to travel upon the surface of the sea, with as intimidating and alien a beast as ever plied the deep green waters.
In the course of their conversation the Kraken's skin would undergo dramatic s.h.i.+fts not only in color but of pattern. Merely by willing it so, it could generate the most captivating designs and schematics utilizing its own body as a canvas. By the time it was reproducing intensely colorful herringbones and checkerboards, the crew had abandoned its initial fear in favor of spontaneous bursts of applause.
”Just how,” Stanager asked Ehomba as she stood nearby sipping her own tea, ”does the Kraken develop a taste for something as foreign to the ocean as coffee?”
Putting the reasonable question to the multiple-limbed sea beast, the herdsman received an immediate and unequivocal answer. ”It was once dozing on the surface at night when it collided with a merchant s.h.i.+p cruising down the eastern coast that now lies far behind us. Furious and alarmed, it reacted instinctively, and attacked. The merchantman was slow but well laid up, and fully loaded from a trading expedition to the eastern reaches of the Aboqua. Included among its cargo were several tons of coffee. The smell, I am told, was quite powerful.
”Aboard the merchantman was another like myself who speaks the tentacle-claw-finger language of the sea. Attempting to convince their enormous a.s.sailant to grant them their lives and allow them to continue on their way, they plied it with every manner of goods on board. Some the Kraken accepted, like a pair of live bullocks. Others it rejected. None carried the weight of persuasion until it tasted the coffee one crewman brought on deck for the agitated Captain. It also ate the crewman, but apparently humans go well with coffee, and so the overall effect was not significantly diminished.” Ehomba drained the last of his tea.
”It held the merchantman in its grasp and its galley busily brewing until there was no more coffee to be had from its stores and cargo. Only then, with both its taste and anger a.s.suaged, did it allow the s.h.i.+p to depart. Ever since, whenever a vessel has sailed near, it has risen from the depths in hopes of encountering that dark brown liquid again. Until now, it was always disappointed.”
Stanager nodded understandingly. ”In every country that I know of, tea and wine are far more common libations than coffee. It is a luxury.” She made a face. ”One that will now be denied to us for the duration of our journey across the Semordria.”
”Better to complete that journey with thirst unslaked than perish with full cup in hand,” the herdsman admonished her sagely.
”I agree, but I know of drinkers of this beverage who would not. To them it is not a refreshment, but an obsession.” Looking past him, she watched the monster gingerly drain the last drops from the iron kettle.
”Who would have thought to count the Kraken among their number. I hope,” she added at a sudden afterthought, ”that having quenched its fancy it will not now request someone to munch upon. I am fond of every member of my crew, and would not willingly give the least of them over to such a fate.”
”The Kraken was angry with the s.h.i.+p that ran into it.” Ehomba did his best to rea.s.sure her. ”It is not angry at us.” Long, supple fingers moved rapidly. ”On the contrary, it is delighted to have received the best coffee it has ever tasted.”
As if to underscore the herdsman's observations, a ma.s.sive tentacle reached back over the railing to place the empty kettle conscientiously on the deck. Sending a surge against the side of the s.h.i.+p, the Kraken slowly moved away as its tentacles wove a complex pattern in the air. A pattern only one man aboard theGromsketter could unravel.
”We are free to go, with thanks and in friends.h.i.+p.”
Nodding tersely, Stanager turned and shouted orders. Shorn of their many-armed source of wonder and entertainment, sailors snapped out of their phantasmagoric reverie and back to work. Sails were made ready, lines drawn taut.
”Several days we lost because of the winds you freed from the old fisherman's bottle, and several more from making repairs and waiting down in the valley in the sea.” Achieving only partial success, she tried to keep the irritation and impatience out of her voice as she spoke to her tall pa.s.senger. ”If the winds are favorable we might make some of it up. If not, the lost time will see certain of our stores sorely thinned.”
”Maybe there is a way to regain a little of the time we have lost.” Turning back to the rail, Ehomba wagged his fingers energetically at the drifting Kraken. Simna paid little heed, certain that his friend was bidding their exotic erstwhile drinking companion good-bye. In point of fact, the herdsman had something different in mind.
Strikingly different.
Returning to the s.h.i.+p, the immense cephalopod promptly wrapped all ten of its tentacles one after the other around the vessel's st.u.r.dy sides. Startled seamen were shaken loose from the lower rigging or knocked off their feet by the repeated impacts. With its arrow-like tail pointing westward and its beak hard up against the prow of the s.h.i.+p, the Kraken held her in an unbreakable t.i.tan's grasp.
A gasping Stanager had instantly stopped handing out orders and directives to stumble back to Ehomba's side.
”What's going on? What went wrong?”
”Wrong?” Utterly unperturbed, Ehomba was as calm as the heavens. ”Nothing has gone wrong, Captain.” He gestured at the mammoth-eyed beast that even as they spoke continued to tighten its grip on the s.h.i.+p. ”You expressed a desire to recover some of our lost travel time. I have coaxed our new friend into a.s.sisting us in this enterprise. See?” He gestured forward.
Seeing that he was trying to point out something beyond the bow, Stanager moved warily forward and looked down. At the base of the Kraken's mantle, a pale yellow tube had emerged. The translucent organ was pulsing slightly, as if readying itself to perform some unknown function. Having eaten many a squid, Stanager Rose was more than familiar with the organ, but not with its function. This was about to be made clear to her and to the rest of theGromsketter 's crew.
”I suggest you grab something and hold on to it.” Looking past her, Ehomba repeated the warning even as he took a firm grip on a nearby stay. ”Everyone hold on tight!” Noticing the stocky helmswoman still standing at her post far back on the helm deck, he added as loudly as he could, ”You too, Priget!”
”Just a minute.” Stanager put a restraining hand on his arm. ”If Priget steps down, who's to steer the s.h.i.+p?”
The herdsman nodded once more at the bulbous bulk that now blocked much of the view forward. ”I have already given our friend a heading. You see, Captain, I have been watching you these past many days, and have learned much. It is my nature to be curious about everything, including the operation and navigation of a vessel like this.” Looking down, he saw the cylindrical yellow organ contract slightly.
”Hang on. I am going to.” So saying, he turned away from her and made sure his fingers were wrapped tightly around the stays.
”Why?” she snapped. ”What's going to hap-”
Impelled forward by the stream of water ejected by the Kraken from its rearward-facing siphon, the great sea beast shot westward across the surface of the sea. Held firm in its tentacular grasp, the Gromsketter went with it. Several sailors who had failed to fully heed Ehomba's warning were nearly left behind as the deck was all but yanked out from under them. The term ”jet propulsion” was one that was as yet unknown to Stanager Rose and her crew, even as it applied to squid of all sizes and species, but the practical effects of the process were abundantly evident in their astoundingly swift progress across the water.
Her bow lifted largely clear of the surface, s.h.i.+p and squid shot across the sea at a velocity no sailing craft, however well crewed and captained, could ever hope to match. Once she was convinced of the stability of the arrangement, Stanager Rose ordered all sails reefed and pennants and flags broken out and hauled aloft, determined to show the Kraken that it was not the only one that could alter the color and design of its appearance.
How much lost time this astonis.h.i.+ng tandem journey recovered Stanager was not prepared to say, though it was evident from her expression when the Kraken, tiring of the game, finally let them go, that it was significant. Flas.h.i.+ng a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns at them as it sank beneath the swells, the sea's most intimidating monster disappeared back into the depths from which the king of crabs had originally called it forth.
The lesson of the extraordinary encounter was not lost on the members of theGromsketter 's crew. To wit: Never wag an unknowing finger at a squid, and when crossing those stretches of ocean that are endlessly wide and eternally deep, always carry a sufficiency of coffee.