She hummed to herself as she walked through the main hall of the noisy depot. She realized that her humming was resonating in her skull in harmony with the ever-present background buzz of the machinery that kept the place functioning.

She followed the trickle of oily water down the slope a little way until she noticed a kind of canteen or saloon carved back into one of the walls. She walked in and stepped up to a bar at nearly the height of her chest. It was broad and made of dark wood from which decades of drinkers had worn away the original shellac coating. A universe of spilled drinks had stained it to a mottled gray color. As in all the remote places of the world, the bar was well stocked. Rows and rows of partially empty bottles of brown liquors were lined up behind it.

The man behind the bar was yet another giant, but only in the vertical direction. Rail thin, somewhat like Bastian, except for a paunch around the belly. Years ago, Percy had had a friend who would have described him as ‘a skinny, fat guy.’ He was grizzled about the face, like a piece of meat that had not been cleaned properly before being laid down in the frying pan. He was missing an eye which he did not bother to cover with a patch and wearing a stained leather apron. “Whatcha need there, lady?” he asked Percy.

“Give me something brown from that middle row there.” She took one of her new coins from the heavy leather satchel Miss Mai had given her and laid it down on the wood of the bar.

As the bartender set up a glass and leaned to pour it, Percy continued the conversation, despite the fact that the bartender did not particularly look like he would want to. “Actually, I’m looking to hire some crew. I have a boat, and we’re short a few people. Thought you might be able to steer me in the right direction to where the hiring is done around here.”

“Most of the steering I do is towards the bottles,” said the bartender. “You want crew, you’re better off down on the dock. Usually there’s some fuckin’ greenies hanging around, going boat to boat and just askin’ for work even. Useless fuckers, skills wise, but always seem to be present.” He thought for a few seconds while he finished off the pour. “On the second hand, a lot of big boats have come through in the last week or so. It’s possible they’ve hired up all the greenies. Big fuckin’ boats. Two hundred meters and more.”

“Yeah, that kind of boat is always hiring. Shit, that doesn’t sound good. I’m a little desperate.”

The bartender squinted up the side of his face where his eye would have been considering for a few seconds. “Hrmm. Well, if yer fuckin’ desperate…bartendin’ is my side-gig. My main business, and much more profitable I might add, is pimpin’.”

“You don’t fuckin’ say.”

“Thing about pimpin’ in a place like this is sometimes you gotta take risks on the folks ya bring over from the mainland to work. Beggars can’t be choosers, ya might say. So once in a while I end up with whores I can’t pimp out. Or at least not at a price that makes them worth the food they eat.”

“Always difficult to balance those books, I hear ya,” said Percy.

“Anyway, right now I got me this chickilette that got off a boat a few weeks ago. But she’s skinny and small. Waif-like, I say. You know what I mean?”

Percy nodded.

“The tastes of most of the folks who come through here are into something a bit…harder. Here’s the big thing, though: she’s got just the saddest fuckin’ face. And she’s too shy. Even I can’t bring meself to bein’ comfortable-like pimping her out. A pimp has got to have a heart, you know.”

“So you’re saying you’ll let me hire her off you because she makes you too fucking sad?”

The bartender shrugged. “Plus a finders-fee, like,” he said, and Percy knew she had made another negotiating mistake in letting the bartender see the heavy satchel full of coins she was carrying.

“Thing is, I need a sonar operator. I don’t care if she’s tiny, but do you think she has good ears?”

He shrugged again. “Well, I’ll tell you this: those whores of mine have a record player in their quarters. Drives me fucking crazy, but when I tried to dispose of it I had a large-scale fuckin’ whore-revolt on my hands. That little waif in particular, I noticed, listens to the fuckin’ records all the time. Does that suggest anything about her ears?”

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“Might mean she’s deaf already.” She sipped her drink. “Fuck it. It’s not like I’m going into battle. If she’s not completely deaf, we can have her sit sonar watch during long runs. She won’t be entirely useless.”

“Swell,” said the bartender. “I need that depressing little shade out of my life.” He called down the bar to where a small group of girls were drinking from a row of shot glasses that a couple of men had purchased for them. “Cassandra! Come over here. I have someone I want you to meet.”

A short girl with stick arms and huge eyes walked towards them. She was wearing a slip of a blue dress made of worn cotton. She had sharp fingernails, brightly painted but chipped in places.

As she got closer the bartender said, “This lady might want to hire you.” And turned away to deal with some other customers.

“Fuck,” said Percy, “can you see in the dark with those eyes, girl?”

“I don’t know,” Cassandra said, looking down.

“Look, I’m not trying to fuck you here. I’ve got a boat, and I’m leaving in less than forty-eight hours and need to crew up. Your friendly bartender-pimp says you might be willing to work on a boat instead of whatever it is you do now. You ever work on a boat before? Or anything technical? Maybe sonar or something sonics related?”

“No. I’m a whore. Or, supposed to be. Apparently I’m not very good at that.”

“On a boat nobody cares how good you are at fucking. All I need is someone who is good at being alone for long periods of time and listening to mind-numbing ambient noise on the sonar for hours on end without going insane. Think you could do that? Think you might want to do that kind of work?” Percy looked at the skinny young girl skeptically, though in the back of her mind she remembered that her start on submarines had not been much different than this.

Cassandra nodded firmly without saying anything, still looking at the floor.

“Good.”

“But, wait… isn’t working on submarines dangerous? In general, I think I’d rather live in this hole in the ground here than die in a hole out there in the sea.”

“It’s incredibly fucking dangerous. I won’t lie to you about that. But we’re compensated for the danger: it pays very well, enough for us to live by our own terms. Enough to buy you out of your current job. That’s primarily because there’s a limited number of people willing to go out there and carry out their lives encased in a steel tube and surrounded by dangers and fears that would liquefy the guts of most folk. Submariners are an elite class, in their own filthy way.”

“What good is wealth and freedom if you are dead though?”

“Look, there’s dangerous and there’s really fucking dangerous. You’d be mostly working sonar, at least at first. That’s about as dangerous as tuning your stereo. You wouldn’t have to work down in the engine room or throw lines or anything like that. Heck, you couldn’t lift a line even if I needed you to.” Percy glanced at Cassandra’s arms. “You’d be facing the same base-level danger we all face on a submarine. If we are in a situation where you might die, we’ll all be in that situation together. My boat has been running for decades without taking the whole crew down, and I expect she’ll run for a couple more decades. That means you aren’t going to die any time soon on this boat. Can you live with that?”

Cassandra nodded slowly.

“Now I’m only giving you this little motivational speech about the glories of being a submariner once. If you take the job it’s on you to make it a part of yourself, and keep your fear bottled and your mind clear when you are working. Understand? Running a boat is a lot of work and more than anything else I need a crew that can motivate their own fucked-up souls to do their jobs. It’s not war, it’s commerce.”

Cassandra looked around at the dingy canteen and then directly at Percy for the first time. “OK, I’ll do it.”

“Fine. Get your things together and come down to slip four this evening, ready to leave this place behind you. At the slip ask for Hemi. He’ll get you settled and explain how the pay rates work for a green crew member. We’ll train you on board after we’re underway in a couple of days. For now, just stay out of the way and keep your mouth shut until someone specifically asks you to do something. Make sure you’re always nearby to help the crew, but don’t volunteer for anything since you don’t know how to do anything. The crew know how to ask for your help when they can use it, and they don’t want your help doing things you might fuck up.”

“I understand.”

Percy put a heavy hand on Cassandra’s shoulder and then turned away from the bar.

“Ahem!” The bartender turned towards them and looked at Percy with one eye and one socket. He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together in the air in front of him.

“Right.” She pulled a stack of coins out of the leather satchel, counted out more than a fair amount, and stood them on the bar. She looked at Cassandra. “That was your first paycheck. Sorry it had to go to that fucking asshole, but it’ll be the last one that does.”

The bartender put a knuckle to his gristly eyebrow in a mock salute as they turned away again.

“Here,” said Percy, handing Cassandra a few coins, “that’s an advance on your next paycheck. Buy some tougher clothes.”

With a shy smile Cassandra turned to take the ramp towards the stairs to the next level up where the barracks were located. Percy turned down the ramp, feeling like it was probably time to get back to her boat and see how repairs were proceeding.