The Beast of Cretacea Read Online Free PDF Page A

abovedecks. No trails of dark soot rising into the air like back home.
    “There used to be nuclear power on Earth, too,” Queequeg adds. “Before the Shroud. But without lots of water, reactors can’t work.”
    Ishmael lets the hot water splash against his face, wondering how Queequeg could know all of this.
    “And the way it got him with that skiver thing in its tail,” Queequeg is saying later. Their meager possessions neatly stowed, the nippers have gathered between bunks to talk about Abdul’s death. “Ever see anything like that?”
    “Of course not,” Pip says condescendingly. “It’s an ocean-dwelling creature and there are no oceans on Earth.”
    “Oh, yes, there are,” Queequeg says. “Not much now, but there was a time when more than three-quarters of Earth was covered by water.”
    Pip snorts. “Rubbish.”
    “Oh, yeah? What if I told you I saw one once?” Queequeg asks.
    Pip laughs. “That’s rich!”
    “May lightning strike me if it’s not true.” Queequeg crosses his heart. “My father took me. We walked on dirty gray salt for a week.
Crunch, crunch
all day long.”
    “So, wh-what made you th-think there w-was an ocean?” Billy asks.
    “The wreck we found. Of a ship like this. Just a huge, rusted hull lying on its side.”
    No one speaks, not even Pip. When Ishmael thinks of the dry, filthy planet he left, the idea of most of it once being covered by water does sound outrageous.
    “Finally we came to these cliffs,” Queequeg continues. “I think my dad was afraid that the salt might give way and we’d fall in and never get out, but then we saw some coral —”
    “Coral?” Billy repeats.
    “Colonies as hard as rock under the ocean made by tiny creatures long since dead,” Queequeg says. “There were once huge reefs of them in all sorts of strange shapes.”
    “Oh, for Earth’s sake, what nonsense.” Pip harrumphs, then says to Billy and Ishmael, “You believe that from someone who doesn’t even have a registry?”
    “Th-that’s right,” says Billy. “How’s that p-possible? I th-thought everyone g-got a registry at b-birth.”
    Queequeg averts his eyes. “Not everyone.”
    “Perhaps you’d like to explain?” Pip asks.
    When Queequeg doesn’t answer, Pip turns to Billy and Ishmael. “Keep that in mind the next time he tells you one of his tales.”
    As strange as it is that Queequeg doesn’t have a registry, Pip is something of a mystery as well. He enunciates his words the way the voice-overs in VR do. And there’s his chubbiness, and his neatly trimmed hair and nails — all things nearly impossible to achieve in the barren and dim households of Black Range. Finally, when the nippers were settling in, Ishmael noticed that the items Pip pulled out of his travel bag were brand-new and still in their original packaging.
    But before he can ask about any of that, the door of the men’s quarters opens and three sailors come in. Ishmael recognizes them from earlier: The one with the bright-yellow hair, the one with the white topknot, and the brute with the shaved head, his left arm now in a sling. The sailor with the topknot climbs into a bunk decorated with many teeth and what look like terrafin skivers, but the other two saunter over to the nippers. The one with the shaved head is built broad and deep, a concrete block of a man with bulging muscles ridged with thick veins. How long must he have served on this planet to have attained such a physique?
    The muscular sailor reaches into Pip’s sleeper with his good hand and grabs a T-pill that Pip just removed from its box.
    “What do you think you’re doing?” Pip demands. “Give that back!”
    The brute ignores him and displays the electronic sleep aid to his mate. “Nice, eh, Daggoo? And good timin’ ’cause mine just broke.”
    “It’s not yours,” Pip snaps indignantly, and addresses Daggoo. “Tell him to return it at once!”
    Daggoo chuckles and pretends to obey. “Hear that, Bunta? You’d better