Free Easton by Paul Butler Page A

not in response to any spoken command but through some internal twitch of Easton’s brain. He finds himself degenerating through the dream into a multi-limbed spider-like creature, able to perform many tasks at once in answer to Easton’s will. He dreams that as he refills Easton’s goblet he hears a low, rhythmic crying sound which swells and dies with the swaying of the ship. Easton, his face pulsing in the sulphurous candlelight, says nothing but whispers at him in thoughts to ignore it.
    When George wakes he finds that the ship really is swaying and pitching. He sits up quickly, throws off the bedclothes and lowers his feet onto the rug. The floor rises and tips and odd noises like an unsteady drumbeat vibrate somewhere deep beneath the floor—perhaps some unsecured cargo rolling against a beam.
    His first thought about the previous night is that his talk with the woman might have been part of his dream. But this already slim chance slips further and further away with each moment. With every tip and sway of the cabin floor, his dreamland retreats, leaving a clear memory only of his waking hours. The conversation did take place, and the slave woman was not lying. After she left he sat for an hour or more taking it in. Then suddenly hunger pangs came over him. He tried to push them back, but his stomach was raging. He wandered over to the tray and drank the wine the slave had poured. He looked down at the meat, which was unsalted pork, another small miracle, as it meant Easton kept and regularly slaughtered pigs onboard. He went back to the bed and struggled hard with himself. He
cannot
partake of another feast bestowed by a man he knew for certain was a cold-blooded murderer. For a while it looked as though this admonition might win through. But the wine on an empty stomach had the dual effect of increasing his hunger and weakening his resolve, and the meat had looked glistening and moist. He ate hungrily, then, throwing back another goblet of wine, he went to bed willing sleep to come quickly.
    Now, as he sits remembering, the wine and pork repeat in his gullet. The knowledge comes to him that Easton is much worse than any ordinary cold-blooded murderer; he is a murderer who lies. And he lies not through fear of detection, but through the sheer joy of the power it brings him. He leaves his lies open for discovery, almost daring anyone to name them, and if George were to name them, what then? He feels a sharp pain in his Adam’s apple which quickly grows and encircles his neck.
    George listens to the storm—to the constant roar and moan of the boiling sea; the rattle and drum from deep below; the whistling, hissing noises of the wind and spray. A growling thunder begins to sound, and it seems distant enough to have come from beyond the rim of the world. The porthole flashes twice. George feels as though a great nameless hunger surrounds him. He feels as though the ship is bouncing in an enormous, living belly. The creak and groan of the vessel’s beams are merely a prelude to the implosion that will occur when they are ingested by the surrounding tempest.
    He should have tried to escape Easton when he had the chance. The impossibility of such an attempt has grown like the storm into monster proportions. The word “escape” is accompanied in his imagination by a vision of himself diving off the deck rail naked into the sizzling, heaving sea a thousand miles from land. A few days ago Easton was a pirate outside George’s home port. A pirate with a sense of defiance, but merely a lawbreaker nonetheless. Now he seems like a wicked monarch, commanding armed ships and legions of men without even needing the whip. He is a politician, executing his enemies while keeping his righteous tongue.
    George looks over the past days and nights and wonders whether there was anything he and the admiral should have done to curtail this growth from rogue to demigod. Then he realizes. It’s merely a matter of perception. Easton was