Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [64]
We were all silent for about five seconds, our pale guests unaware that anything was amiss, and then Jeffree began crying. Actually no, crying implies one subtle tear down a somber cheek. Wailing is more apt. Wailing and praying at the same time. The sobs made the individual words difficult to decipher, but when he cried out “It’s the end of the world!” into Carlton Damon Carter’s shoulder, it was impossible not to hear him.
It was only then, as my cousin turned from the embarrassment of the engineer, that he seemed to remember our guests were even there.
“It appears we have a problem,” Booker Jaynes told Arthur Pym, who was before this moment marveling over an electric reading lamp in the corner by the couch, turning it off and on. Catching his attention, our captain continued. “We had planned on bringing our collection of snow monkeys and you back to civilization.”
“Yes, I am here. As are Hunka and Krakeer,” Pym said as the other two, apparently recognizing their names, revealed themselves, coming from behind the more average-heighted of their species. “We are here, and we are in your employ. We are ready to go.”
“Well see, that’s the thing,” I intervened. “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go to, at the moment. We’re trying to reach the rest of the world, and it doesn’t appear to be, you know, answering. We’re not going anywhere, at least not at the moment.”
There was a bit of commotion on their side at this revelation, and our crew watched the cloaked figures having an animated discussion with their disconcerting vocalizations. They were making such a violent fuss that once again the size of them was really impressed upon me: they were so damn big. It was after a lengthy discussion directly with the aged Khun Knee that Arthur Gordon Pym said to me, “The debt, it has begun with our employ. If you are not to take us, then Khun Knee says our price must be paid immediately.”
“Well, we don’t have the bounty now, do we? Would he take something else in its place? Some matches, perhaps? Blankets?” More snow beast discussion followed. I noticed that the more the old beast Khun Knee talked, the more the room smelled of herring.
“He says the debt must be repaid,” Pym translated. “If you lack the bounty, you can work it off.”
“Work? Well shit, how long will that take?” the captain shot back at him. His voice had risen an octave. There was something about a white man saying you had to work for him that I knew repulsed Booker Jaynes to his core.
“A few hundred cycles.”
“What’s a cycle?”
“The time from darkness to light,” Pym responded, and although his voice still seemed a bit distant, numb, I detected a bit of nervousness on his part as he kept glancing at the beings around him as if to avoid ownership of those words.
“A hundred days? You’re trying to tell us we owe you a hundred days’ labor for a deal that didn’t even go through?” The captain was getting exceedingly agitated at this point. The strain of the past hours, of this improbable discovery and the fate of all that we had left behind had finally overtaken him.
On orders from Khun Knee, the warriors under his control suddenly stood at attention. In response to the elder’s barked command, the soldiers bore arms. Literally bore arms, rolling up their sleeves to reveal horrifically muscled and veined biceps and triceps that seemed as hard and heavy and white as marble.
“Not days.” Angela stared at the approaching soldiers, her voice shaking slightly with each of their steps. “The nights here last all winter, right? And the days the entire summer too. He’s not saying we owe a hundred days of work. He’s saying we owe a hundred years.” The uncertainty in her lovely voice had nothing to do with her lack of faith in her own interpretation of this contract. It came from a deeper anxiety, one that in that moment fluttered through every black heart in that room.
And thus our slavery began.
* To the horror of both of us, I’m sure.
† Imagine the farthest cloud, on the brightest day, in the bluest sky. Imagine that just past the very top of that cloud was a hard,