The Black Lung Captain - Chris Wooding [29]
“Papa died the same. Picked a fight with some feller, Murthian like him, while they was haulin’ rubble in a quarry. Smashed his head in with a rock. Sammies took him away and he didn’t never come back.”
Jez hadn’t heard Silo talk at such length before. She was reluctant to speak in case she interrupted his flow, but she felt the moment demanded something.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“Nothin’ to be sorry about. There’s what is and what ain’t.”
Jez wished she’d kept her mouth shut. For a while, there was only the sound of the forest and the rain. Then:
“I got the rage too.”
Really? she thought. You? I’ve never seen you anything but calm. But she didn’t say a word.
“Used to be proud of it,” he said. “They was afraid of me when I was young. I’d take on kids twice my age and give ’em worse than I got. Every day, I was angry. Angry that they kept us in chains ’n’ pens ’n’ camps. Murthians ain’t like the Daks. Five hundred years and they still ain’t tamed us.” He took a drag and blew it out. “Lately, I got to thinkin’ maybe that’s the problem. We’re so damn proud of defyin’ the Sammies, they’ll never let us out from them chains. Bit more smarts and a bit less angry, and they’d think we was tame. We’d be like the Daks, in their homes, runnin’ their businesses, lookin’ after their children.” A pause. “That’s when we’d kill ’em.”
Jez kept her eyes on the forest. She’d always felt a faint bond with the Murthian. Both of them, in their own way, were exiles from their own race. She’d always suspected he felt the same. He spoke to her most out of all the crew, though usually about matters of engineering. Machinery was their common ground.
Now it occurred to her that Silo was reaching out to her. Offering something. Making a connection.
“There was a woman once,” he said. “We was both young, but old enough. I hadn’t seen anythin’ like her. Thought there weren’t no finer thing in the world. And she thought likewise about me. That’s what she said.” He shook his head, blew out a jet of smoke. “Hardheaded woman. Loved her fierce, but she drove me crazy. We’d fight and make up, over and over. Harsh ’n’ sweet, harsh ’n’ sweet. She had a temper too.”
Jez had a horrible feeling she knew where this was going.
“One time we both went too far. The rage got me. Only for a second, but that was plenty. Won’t never forget the look on her face, her holdin’ her cheek like that. Saw it in her eyes. I’d lost her, right then. Didn’t matter how I begged nor pleaded, she wouldn’t look at me again. Never.”
Why are you telling me this?
“Damn, I was sick with the rage after that. Like an animal. They had to chain me down for a week. But the madness passed, and when I was well again, things was different. Every time I saw her after that, with some other man in the camp, I’d think: That’s what rage did for you. And I swore I wouldn’t never let it out again.”
“And did you?” Jez had to ask.
“Only one time,” he said. “Years later. Day I escaped the factory where they had us makin’ aircraft. He had a gun; I just had fists an’ teeth. Don’t remember much of what happened after, but I’m here and he ain’t.” He flicked away his roll-up, and it was extinguished by the rain. “Sane man wouldn’t have charged him like that. But I weren’t sane, not then.”
He got to his feet. Standing, he towered over her.
“Point I’m makin’ is, you ignore your bad side, it eat you up. Like my papa and my brother. You got to face it. You got to make it a part of you, control it. Maybe one day it save your life, yuh?”
Jez looked at him, startled. How did he know? How did he have any idea of the struggle within her, the push and pull between human and Mane?
He answered her question before she could ask it. “Think I don’t see you walkin’ off on your own, worryin’, workin’ things out? I see you. You the same as everyone else, Crake ’n’ me ’n’ all of us. Think you better off keepin’ it all to yourself.” He turned to her, eyes dark in the shadow of his hood. “You ain’t.”
Jez met his gaze. Of all the people to tackle her about this, Silo was the most unlikely. Of course, the