The three of them managed to put down Saks’s latest rebellion without too much trouble. But they knew now that he was too far gone to reason with. He had to be tied up. They used Fabrini’s belt. They knotted his arms behind his back and threaded the belt through an oarlock, knotting it again. At last, Saks was harmless. He wouldn’t hurt them or himself now.
But it was pathetic, Cook thought, having to do something like that in the first place.
What was it all coming to?
“At least, at least now we can breathe, now we can relax,” Menhaus said, still not sounding so sure of it. “We can figure out things.. . maybe get out of here.”
“There’s no getting out,” Crycek said. “Not yet, maybe not ever. We’re drifting… can’t you feel it? We’re being drawn deeper into this place.”
He had a point and nobody dismissed it. Where before the weeds had been in isolated little patches and clumps drifting about, now there were great banks of them. The water was still open for the most part, but the islands of weed were so huge you couldn’t see where they ended. They just faded off into the mist like headlands. And they were massive and thick, steaming and verdant and stinking of jungle swamps.
“He’s right, you know. Crycek. We’re all going to die,” Saks said almost cheerfully. “Each and every one of us. Look at those weeds.. . sooner or later they’re gonna snare us up and that’ll be all she wrote.”
“Shut the hell up,” Fabrini said.
“You better shoot me if you want to shut me up,” Saks told him.
It looked like Fabrini was indeed considering it.
“Maybe… maybe some day the weeds will part and this lifeboat’ll drift out same way we drifted in… except there’ll be five skeletons in it. It’s happened before. A whole ship one time.. . went missing three years, then it just showed up one day and-”
“Want me to gag him?” Fabrini asked.
Cook seemed to be in charge now. He was the most level-headed one of the bunch. “I don’t know. We’ll leave it up to Saks. Why do you say, dumb ass, do we have to gag you or are you gonna be a good boy?”
Saks went quiet, but you couldn’t wipe the look of grim certainty off his face or erase the mad dog glare of insanity from his eyes. These were constants. Things the others had to pretend they weren’t seeing. But it was no simple matter to look lunacy in the eye and ignore its ramifications. To know, deep down, that under the right conditions, it could take anyone, anytime.
And no one knew this better than Cook.
Nobody in the world.
He’d felt it that day he’d killed his father. The blinding, white-hot, ice-cold slow burn that was true madness, whether temporary or permanent. And until you experienced it, tasted it, filled your belly with it, you could never appreciate it or how ugly it all really was. Because once you’d tasted it, you never got that awful flavor out of your mouth.
Cook didn’t like the idea of being in charge. He would have preferred a very democratic sort of leadership, a council made up of him and Fabrini and Menhaus. Maybe even Crycek because now and then he made sense. But it wasn’t going to be that way. Surely Fabrini was tougher and more physically able than he. Menhaus had been around more, had more experience. And Crycek… if he wasn’t so loopy.. . he was an experienced sailor. Yet, they seemed to be looking to Cook for leadership. He seemed to have the final say whether he liked it or not.
But all he really wanted was to sleep.
He was dead tired… yet he didn’t dare close his eyes. He had to watch Saks and watch him close. If trouble was going to come, it would come from his direction.
At least, that’s what Cook was thinking.
And then something hit the boat.
And then hit it again.