Legacy (Eon, 1) Page 28

  “Is it a racer?” Soterio asked.

  “Racers don't smoke,” Randall said. “Two ships. They're burning something.”

  “Steamships, then,” Salap said.

  “Likely.”

  “Brionist,” Soterio said, hoping he would be contradicted.

  “Sure as hell not out of Calcutta or Jakarta or Athenai,” Randall said. “Get the captain up here.”

  Keyser-Bach came on deck in an apron, hands still gloved. He shed the apron and gloves and handed them to Thornwheel, then took the binoculars from Randall. After a few minutes’ scrutiny, he said, “No flags. Of course, that may not mean anything.” He looked up and shook his head. “We didn't set our flag after leaving Martha's Island. They're ten miles away. They've seen us.” He lowered the binoculars. “They're turning to cross our course.”

  Shatro took the apron and gloves from Thornwheel and handed them to Cassir. They all needed something to do. Nobody spoke for a few minutes. Keyser-Bach watched the lines of smoke with a face as blank as a child's. Then he pulled his chin with three fingers and said, “Ser Soterio, bring her about and we'll hope for some wind.”

  I looked up at the sails. A puff of wind had struck my back, and I saw the limp, sad cloths bat and slap. Every morning at this hour, winds of varying speed and direction would slip up on us, forming fine small chop on the water but neither refreshing the air nor offering much speed to the Vigilant. The wind did not mean much. There had been no good wind for four days.

  The captain, however, started to whistle through his teeth. He strode to the bowsprit and watched the four of us gathered there. Soterio followed him and said, “There isn't enough wind to bring her about.”

  “There will be,” the captain said, pulling the whistle back through his teeth, then sucking on the teeth speculatively, making a small, sharp hiss-squeak.

  “He can feel it,” Randall said. They both looked up at the sails, and for a moment, I felt as if I were in a dream, an entertaining muse about being lost among superstitious savages somehow more deeply connected to nature, able to feel the presence of gods and spirits ... and wind.

  “Can't you catch it?” the captain asked, as casually as if we were discussing tonight's dinner in the mess.

  “The sea has the color,” Randall said.

  Soterio peered over the gunwale, then straightened. He looked lost.

  “If those are Brionists, and they're riding steam, they don't need any wind,” Shatro said, just to be part of the conversation.

  The captain raised his binoculars and peered southwest, four points abaft the port beam. “There it is,” he said.

  We all turned. A bank of thick cloud had risen beneath the southernmost thunderheads, like a predator stalking immense gray giraffes.

  “We've been carried into its circle,” Salap said. “It's far north on its accustomed track.”

  The captain raised his hands to his chest and gripped them there, supplicating.

  Salap sat on the butt of the bowsprit. “It's been stroking us with its feelers for three days,” he said. “The little puffs of wind each morning.”

  “What are you going to do?” Soterio asked, licking his lips and glancing around the small circle.

  “Nothing right now,” the captain answered. “We'll wait until we see who's going to catch us first.”

  “There'll be more wind,” Salap said. “Enough to maneuver. If we wait here, the storm will suck us toward it.”

  The captain handed the binoculars around for us to see. Shatro took them from Thornwheel; I was still ranked last. He handed them to me after a few seconds, face pale. I looked.

  “What do you see?” Salap asked.

  “Sparkles,” I said. “Like mica flecks in water.” I swung the glasses around. Beneath the lines of smoke I could make out two funnels, one each surmounting long white hulls. The steamships were sailing at about ten knots. They'd be upon us within an hour and a half.

  The storm's cloudy mass was perhaps forty miles away. The feelers, as Salap called them, had already gained strength.

  “Should we hail them on the radio?” Randall asked.

  “No,” the captain said. “I do not doubt where they're from, or why they're here. We're a prize if they can catch us.” He jerked abruptly, muscles taut in his jaw and neck, and gave his orders. The sails bellied and Soterio immediately pulled the starboard watch together to bring the ship about. We would face into the wind and tack across a course headed due south. The steamships would see the storm and perhaps decide they did not want us so much.

  Soterio called out the port watch. Salap crossed the deck and put one hand on my shoulder, the other on Thornwheel's. “This is truly going to be what the captain calls primary science,” he said. The wind pulled his black beard and hair. “I will station all my researchers around the ship, and one in the tops ... Ser Shatro, please join Ibert on the maintree.”

  Shatro put on a face of unexpected hurt, but went to the shrouds. He had climbed shrouds before, but not for some time. “Ser Olmy, you will stay at the bow with Ser Thornwheel. Ser Cassir, you and I will stand by the bulwarks port and starboard amidships. We will record wind speed and direction, and anything else that happens to be interesting.” He pulled slim paper notebooks from his pocket, and small carbon pencils.

  The captain kept turning the glasses from the steamships to the storm.

  “It is going to be very complex,” Salap said. “The sparkles in the clouds must be how it regulates its temperature and pressure. I suggest they are very light tissues of different reflectivity born by winds controlled and directed by formations in the ocean.”

  A sharp gust hit us and the ship shuddered, swung around by the fore course and jibs like a horse on a rope. When the wind was on our port beam, Soterio ordered the jibs furled, the fore course reefed and the spanker raised. We practically spun about in the water.

  “If we end up in the thick of it,” Salap said, “we can learn how it keeps itself going.” He clapped the captain on the shoulder and walked aft with Cassir. The captain did not seem to notice. The ship heeled over ten degrees. Salap lurched on the tilted deck, yet still kept some dignity, his long coat flapping out like a tail. Cassir grabbed a brace for support and Soterio snatched it from him. “Not that one, sir,” he said, chin jutting.

  “Sorry,” Cassir murmured, and took his position.

  Sails set, Soterio put Shirla at the wheel, replacing an exhausted Kissbegh, and stood behind her. Now came the waiting. The distance between the steamships and Vigilant briefly increased. Then they turned as one and followed, applying more steam. The smoke from their stacks billowed thick and gray like the breaths of two tiny volcanoes on the head of the sea.

  “It's a chase, all right,” Soterio called from behind the wheel. Thornwheel, standing beside me, braced himself as the wind kicked at the ship from ahead with increased force. The deck lurched. Soterio ordered both watches to unfurl all courses and the lower topgallants and swing the yards about to take full advantage of running close-hauled. The captain was intent on narrowing the angle of each tack, to give us maximum speed away from the steamships.

  But it was clear from the beginning that we were not going to win this particular race. The storm grew tall and showed long, thick black skirts; the sea became a lively green all around the ship, flecked by vigorous tall whitecaps. We veered onto the next tack and the ship heeled to starboard. After half an hour, with the storm barely thirty miles away and the wind increasing to twenty knots, the captain kept the ship on a steady course, running on a beam reach at ten knots, clearly hoping to round the northern extent of the storm and slip away from both storm and pursuing ships. But the ships were not dissuaded by the advance of the storm.

  “They're fools,” Thornwheel muttered. “They don't know this monster.”

  “Will the captain take us into the storm?” Thornwheel asked. “You've sailed with him longer than I have.”

  “He might,” I said.

  “But it terrifies hi
m,” Thornwheel said, raising his voice over the hum and whistle of the wind in the rigging.

  I shook my head and smiled. “Better that than Brionists. He's no coward. But he wants to get this ship to Jakarta.”

  On the main deck, Cassir and Salap stood by the rails port and starboard. Aloft, Shatro clung miserably to the shrouds, and Ibert stared ahead and to the west intently, shouting observations to the captain and Soterio that we could not hear. Randall came forward, grinning like a happy dog. “Breath and fates,” he shouted at us, “we're in the claws now, if not the teeth. Time to show more courage, eh, Olmy?” I had never seen him in such a mood.

  We tacked back and forth for another hour. The storm towered above us, having swallowed and decapitated the thunderheads, which spread out above the dark gray and brilliant white mass in long separate streamers of cloud. These were quickly dissipated.

  I wondered if the captain had miscalculated. We might soon be faced with winds sweeping around from behind, hitting us from the starboard quarter, and we'd have to fight to keep from bring drawn into the body of the storm.

  Somehow, it did not seem to matter. I had always known the triviality of my life, something not common among my peers, surrounded by the thick armor of Thistledown's immensity. I had always calculated the risks taken against my basically ephemeral nature, gambling the benefit of sensation and knowledge against the danger. To fall into this storm would be an experience to remember, and if that memory lasted only a short time, fell quickly into oblivion, at least there was the real moment of experience ... Like nothing I would ever have seen on Thistledown.

  I held this brave attitude, stalwart and admirable, for only a few minutes before my unfettered body told me, without allowing for debate, that it was terrified. I sweated despite the chill of the winds, and my hands trembled. Thornwheel squinted west and then north, and tied a short coiled rope around the butt of the bowsprit. For a minute, I ran around the deck looking for another coil, cursing my luck, and finally found one hanging from a belaying pin. I wrapped it around the bowsprit and squatted on the deck. Along the length of the ship, sailors stationed on deck were tying similar lines from bulwark to bulwark, or to the hatch tie downs and the trees. Looking aft, as the fore and main courses were reefed to give the helm more control, I saw Shirla at the wheel, and Soterio behind her, and felt a stab of regret.

  Then my calm returned. There was nothing more I could do. I held my pencil and notebook and clenched my jaw. Thick spats of rain hit the deck and blew across the sails.

  Behind us, the flying jib tore with a loud bang and was carried out beyond the jibboom like a mad ghost. Kissbegh and Ridjel leaped past us and climbed out along the bowsprit to cut it loose.

  Over my shoulder, I saw the sky suddenly dip below the bow, as if pushing hard on the horizon of rough water. The ship shivered and leaped. The sky suddenly retreated at the rise of a wall of water; the bow plunged into a trough between waves and we nosed into that green wall. It slammed against me and I snapped to the end of my line like a fish and seemed to half swim, half crawl along the submerged deck. Then the water fell away like a heavy curtain and sloshed to all sides, running in rivers, and I spread out on my back on the deck, coughing water, wiping my face. My pencil and notebook were gone. Forward, Thornwheel clung to the rail, hair in his eyes, sputtering. Kissbegh climbed back along the bowsprit, very lucky to be alive; Ridjel stood on the jibboom like a sea sprite, arms wrapped around the forestays, and I laughed at his grace and presumption.

  “Shit on you!” Kissbegh shouted at me, scrambling onto the deck and helping Ridjel over the tangle of ropes. “Shit on you all!”

  Thornwheel got to his feet despite the pitching of the deck. The waves had come on us so suddenly that the ship took several long, tense minutes to turn into them. Both watches reefed and furled sails frantically. The fore course had ripped halfway and snapped its ragged tails like a cracking whip. The wind now came strong from the starboard quarter, as I had feared, drawing us into the storm.

  I could see nothing of the steamships. We had made our gamble, and chosen what suddenly seemed the greater of two evils. I could picture myself surviving among pirates; surviving the storm seemed much less certain.

  “How many knots?” Thornwheel shouted. He still gripped his notebook, though it was sodden through.

  I watched the spray being whipped from the dripping gunwales, and from the forestays and jib sheets. “Forty,” I guessed.

  Thornwheel tucked one arm under his rope where it was tied to the butt of the bowsprit, squatted, and wrote the figure meticulously into the limp notebook. Then he looked up and cried out, “What time is it?”

  I did not know.

  Our world seemed confined to the forecastle deck. The storm and sudden waves had knocked loose all sense of minutes or hours. I could not get to my slate, still secure—I hoped—in my bunk a few meters below. “Afternoon,” I said. Thornwheel screwed up his face and shook the dripping notebook in disgust.

  The wind quickly grew to fifty knots. The Vigilant was now rigged for a storm, all but her fore and main courses furled and those reefed close to their yards, straining alarmingly at their gaskets. I could see men and women running along the deck, a few descending the shrouds with exquisite slowness, hanging on for life, but could not pick out their features through the stinging spray. Personality did not seem to matter in the noise. So long as I kept my position, I could not be accused of shirking my duty—and that mattered suddenly more than I would have believed it could. I did owe everything to my shipmates, my captain, the ship itself; if I did not owe them all, then I was not part of something strong and capable of surviving. I might as well be lost in the foam on the waves. I could picture that vividly. I saw myself surrounded by volumes of cold water. My lungs halted in the sudden whoop of spray-heavy wind and my body thought I was drowning; it no longer trusted my senses.

  The captain sidled forward, gripping the ropes tied at regular intervals between the mast bits and the gunwales. Salap followed, and at one point we shipped another sea across the port bow and both of them had their legs swept out from under. Standing again, tightening their safety ropes about their waists, they made their way to the forecastle desk, climbed up, and came to the bows.

  Salap saw that I had no notebook and shook his head sadly. “Ser Olmy, how will you pass this on to posterity?” he chided. “I hope you've kept a record,” he shouted to Thornwheel.

  “We don't know the time,” Thornwheel said.

  That stopped Salap. He looked at the captain, who looked at all of us, and then broke into a braying laugh. “My god, it's half past sixteen hundred,” Keyser-Bach said. “I think.” We all seemed to be made equals by the storm, like small children at play.

  “Cassir just dropped a note stuffed into a spare deadeye. Damned near brained the mate,” Salap said. “They claim to see still water ahead, about a mile off the starboard bow.”

  “They're out of their minds,” Keyser-Bach yelled, straining to see through the spray from waves slapping at the striker and parting along the bow. The waves had declined a little in the past few minutes, however.

  “Do they see any ships?” Thornwheel asked.

  “No,” Salap said. “I hope the bastards sink!” His smile was broad and wild, his eyes black and wide like a man caught in a fight he deeply enjoyed.

  The wind blew as strong as ever—the gauge registered fifty-five knots—and the ship climbed and bounced and cut through waves, but the waves were diminishing even more. I saw floating objects in the glistening hills of water flying past, gray and pink shapes like closed umbrellas rising from the water. We shipped another formidable scoop of ocean and clung miserably to our ropes and whatever else we could grab. Thornwheel raised his notebook triumphantly above a rushing floor of blue sea, then rose sputtering and whooping. Salap slipped and was washed along the deck until his line snapped him to a halt; he swung at the end of the line, his robe drenched and wrapped around scrawny, scrambling legs, his face and
beard streaming. The captain managed to stay on his feet, but he looked battered and kept his eye out for the patch of calm as if it might be our only hope.

  I looked up at the trees and yards, the furled sails, the rigging, the greenish-gray sky beyond. All leaped and surged but the sky, which formed thick gray bands perpendicular to the length of the ship. Within those bands I saw a constant twinkling, a coruscating flow of myriads of corpuscles one moment brilliant white and the next black.

  The ship spun about like a skater suddenly thrown down and sliding on his rear. With a shudder, the Vigilant seemed to leap over the border between one kind of madness—the sea that threatened any second to break her back and kill us all—and another.

  Astern, as the hull settled, its pitching and rolling much reduced, we saw furious waves and a haze of driving spume. But all around and for hundreds of meters ahead, the waves were flattened, subdued, by thick layers of brown and red and yellow pads. In the center of each pad rose a growth like a folded umbrella, and at the tip of each umbrella, a fan or paddle spread, perhaps two meters in diameter, black on one side, white on the other. We seemed caught on the field of some impossible sport. The wind still blew unabated through our rigging, but it could not ruffle this tightly controlled field of sea within the storm.

  The wind blew off the starboard quarter. I turned and the wind whooped through my half-open mouth, making me a living bottle-organ. I struggled to pull air back into my lungs. Salap gripped the gunwale and leaned out to peer into the water beneath the bow. I did the same, and saw the cutwater pushing through the broad pads, shoving aside the fans, some of which bent and spun before our faces, just beyond the forward rails. On the edges of the pads, thick flattened growths like gear teeth meshed with adjacent pads and propelled them as they slowly spun. When the ship's bow forced the pads apart, with a sound like tiny suckers popping, the water between was black as night.

  Above the ship, great flocks of silvery triangles from a few centimeters to half a meter on a side blew through the sky, half hidden, and then entirely revealed, in thick curtains of moisture. The air blew alternately freezing cold or hot and moist, as if the ship were caught in some uncertain gradient between winter and tropic summer.