Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

“It’ll hunger when it’s done with Turk. You see if it won’t!” shouted Melis. Jorvan turned and slapped him hard across the face. He subsided. Jorvan looked to the rest of the crew. “It must die,” he said, “else it will kill us all. We must find a way to kill it.”

“What would you suggest?” asked Deacon. “Chiselling a hole through the armour on its head so we can get a great knife into it?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” asked Torrin.

“Oh, I haven’t forgotten that I am going to cut your throat once we are back in port,” said Jorvan.

“Let him speak,” said Deacon.

They all gazed at Torrin with hostility and waited for what he had to say.

“It speaks,” said Torrin.

“And this means what?” asked Jorvan.

“It means we might be able to… negotiate.”

Jorvan and the rest of the crew gazed at him disbelievingly. Jorvan turned and stared pointedly at the spread of gore across the deck, the tangled remains of the captain’s hammock.

Melis moaned deep in his throat before speaking out. “Let him negotiate with it then,” he said.

There was no verbal agreement and no denial. As one the eight crewmen turned on Torrin and grabbed him.

“No! I didn’t mean! NO! PLEASE NO!”

Six of them bore him above their heads, whilst two—Deacon and Calis—went ahead and opened the hatch. They stood ready at the hatch with harpoons, little use they would have been.

“Steady lads, let’s not kill our negotiator,” said Jorvan sneeringly.

They lowered him into the hatch, gave him a chance to grasp the rungs of the ladder there, used the points of the harpoons to prod him lower and lower down until they could close the hatch cover on him.

“Please! Please let me out!”

Torrin sobbed when he heard the latch slam across. He stayed as high on the ladder as he could, crammed against the rough wood. It was not completely without light in the hold, for it came in through the uncaulked holes in the deck. But it was too dark for Torrin to make out more than the barrels of shark oil and stacked hides of the jable shark. After his last outburst he kept as still and as quiet as he could, but for the occasional sob he could not prevent. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the darkness.

The thanapod’s stalked eyes glowed in the gloom and the blood on its carapace was a slick wet glitter. The dark bulk that stood in front of it he finally discerned as the barrelman, his name gruesomely fitting now the thanapod had eaten his arms and legs.

“Come down,” a voice bubbled, and Torrin realised the absolute futility of his position. The thanapod was large enough to rear up and knock him from the ladder without even climbing. If it wanted to kill him, it could do so with ease. He peered beyond it to the bulkhead where a door gave access to the midhold and crew quarters. If he could get to that…

“Come down,” the voice insisted.

Was it feeling lazy? Did it like the idea of its meals walking to it? Torrin climbed to the bottom of the ladder and began to edge towards the doorway.

“What do you want?” he asked, no better question occurring to him.

“I want to go ashore,” came the bubbling of the dead barrelman’s voice.

Torrin paused at this. What could it mean? None of the ocean-going creatures ever went ashore. “Why should you want to go ashore?” As he asked this question, he spotted something glistening beside the creature. Squinting in the darkness he finally discerned a pile of glassy spheres the size of human heads. He swallowed dryly.

“Men have stopped us,” the voice bubbled.

“I don’t understand,” said Torrin, still edging towards the door.

Suddenly the thanapod was moving and Torrin screeched and ran. It crashed down between him and the door and turned its nightmare head toward him. Its mouth was a mass of dripping shears and toothed mandibles. The barrelman, hanging underneath it, spoke for it again. “Men came and seeded the sea round the islands. All thumb shark and hammer whelk to feed and kill. Where do we lay our eggs? On the sargassum and so we survive,” it said.

Torrin felt sick. The monster had become suddenly very articulate, and he had just shit his pants. He was going to die and he didn’t need much imagination to see how, since he’d seen how. He knew that if it moved towards him again his legs would give way, and he fought the temptation to just close his eyes. Then he remembered what the crew had just done to him, and a species of dull anger drove him to speak. He’d show them ‘negotiator’. “Perhaps we can make a bargain,” he said.

“Bargain,” hissed the voice.

“If you kill us, you won’t get ashore, and this ship will just drift and eventually sink,” said Torrin.

“I must feed.” The creature moved closer to him and suddenly the shaking of his legs stilled. It continued, “Not all are essential.”

“No,” said Torrin. “I am, because I am the bosun, but there are others.” He turned his attention from the grinding mouth to the stalked eyes above. “Now listen to me. This is how we can do this…”

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