Chapter 15: Forty Names

Damon turned around with his hands open and a look of patient sorrow.

"Veda," he said, loud enough for the whole deck. "I know how this looks."

"It looks like a sale."

"It looks like a hospital ship that will take forty sick people off our hands, with real doctors, real beds, and a warm ward."

He said it so well that she almost heard it as true.

All along the rail, passengers had begun to gather.

They had come up from the ballroom in twos and threes, in blankets, with children on their hips.

Nobody had told them to come.

Word ran through a ship faster than any radio.

"She's angry because her man is sick too," Damon told them, gently. "She wants everyone to stay and share what's left."

"That's not mercy. That's a slow way for all of us to die."

A few people nodded.

Veda felt it slip, the crowd that had knelt to her two days ago, tilting back toward the warm voice.

She had no speech.

She had never been the one who talked.

"Tobias," she said.

He stepped out beside her, thin and swaying, with the axe held in front of him.

Nine hundred people looked at the man who had been on the comfort list.

"I'm not going to say much," he said. His voice was hoarse, and it carried anyway. "I just want to ask them something."

He turned to the long row of deck chairs.

"Ma'am, in the green blanket. Do you know where you're going?"

The old woman who had been waving looked up.

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