Cut Off (28 page)

Ness leaned in for a better look. The map was in a language he'd never seen before, but above a bayside city labeled Olongapo, the icon of a boat was clear enough. "Port city?"

Sprite nodded, t-shirt bandana flapping from his head. "If we strike out there, Manila's not too far away, either."

"Know what, we should bump this to the top of our queue. For all we know, there's a hundred yachts down there fueled and set to go."

Sprite saluted. "When do you want me to cast off?"

"This one's a group mission," Ness said. "Sebastian, too. I don't want to leave him alone. Besides, every now and then, he's useful in the funniest ways."

He got Sebastian, who helped pull the boat onto shore and set to disassembling and cleaning its outboard motor, tools flashing in his pincers. Ness went back to the barn to measure the remaining sugar in the first vats, which were thick with sluggish bubbles and smelled powerfully of yeast.

It was another few days before they were finished fermenting. Once it was as ready as it was going to get, he brought a red gas can down to the boat, the engine of which Sebastian insisted he'd fixed.

Ness filled it up, stepped back, and spread his hand at the boat. "All yours."

Sebastian gazed at him unblinkingly, then interpreted the figure of speech for what it was, wrapped a tentacle around the engine's cord, and pulled. It took three times before it droned to life.

They loaded up and puttered down the coast, trying to stay where the ocean was too shallow to get rowdy, yet keeping far enough from shore that nobody would have a good shot at them. They exited the bay and got going south. Within minutes, Sprite spotted the steady shine of a sail a mile to the west. Ness got out his binoculars, acutely aware of the blatter of their engine. The other sailboat began to turn, facing them. Ness touched his laser, reassuring himself it was there. Just as he was about to shut off the motor—not that that would do much good at this point—the sailboat turned its nose and struck out in the other direction.

"Clear," Ness gestured to Sebastian, who was hidden under a spare canvas. Speaking aloud to Sprite, and signing to Sebastian, he said, "Maybe we ought to cut the engine and learn how the dang sail works."

"It's easy, dude," Sprite said. "Biggest worry on a boat this size is making sure the tiller doesn't clobber you."

"You know how to sail?"

"Little bit. Most of the bridges between the islands were captured, or destroyed to keep outsiders out. When you want to go somewhere, why kill yourself rowing when the wind works for free?"

Ness shut down the motor and Sprite treated him to a crash course in sailing, which on a vessel of that size involved little more than making sure the sails weren't luffing and that the tiller was pointed in the direction you wanted to go (or, more accurately, its opposite). They futzed around with this throughout the day, Sprite running off on tangents about how it worked with bigger ships where you had jibs or multiple masts to worry about. Ness had brought along a pen and paper to keep a record of interesting events/landmarks and so forth and used this to take notes. Once he quit worrying about pulling the tiller too far and tipping the whole ship, he found he enjoyed the relative quiet of the wind swelling the sail and the ship slapping through the waves.

Now that they were running silent, Ness guided the boat closer to shore to get a better look at what might be docked along the way. The answer to that was nothing much: the towns and villages strung along the shore rarely showed any sign of boats bigger than their own, and on the two occasions they spotted a mast, it turned out the boats were beached and damaged beyond repair.

"Typhoons," Sprite declared, accompanied by an authoritative nod of his head.

Ness lowered his binoculars from the hulled vessel. "What if they've destroyed everything at Olongapo, too?"

"Then it wouldn't be much of a port, would it?"

He supposed that was true. As the sun got down near the ocean, they put in at a sandy beach, hauling the boat up the shore and striking the sails. In the morning, Sebastian helped drag it back into the water and they resumed their course along the coast. Cook fires rose from the trees surrounding a small town, but the fields and forests otherwise appeared uninhabited. Ness had grown used to traveling below water, and seeing so much land with so little evidence of people, he thought he ought to feel sad, or nostalgic, or something. Instead, what he felt was rightness.

Hugging the coast, they swung southeast. Miles away, the gentle slopes of a volcano hung in the haze. Its peak was gone, torn away in a series of jagged bites. The land continued to curve until they found themselves headed north into a calm bay two miles wide and at least five long. Low green hills overlooked the shores. Two small islands split the bay's mouth.

"Let's pull in at one of these," Ness said to Sprite, who had resumed control of the tiller since they'd turned into the wind and had been forced to zigzag forward.

Sprite nodded and guided them around the small, sperm-shaped island guarding the approach to the larger one. The sea floor zoomed up beneath them, light blue sand mottled by darker coral. They landed on a sandy beach and threaded through a few hundred feet of jungle that ended on the edge of a man-made lagoon and a swimming pool gone green with algae. Cottages littered the north beach, roofs robin's egg blue.

It appeared uninhabited, but they stayed within the treeline, scanning the inner bay. An airport sat a couple miles to their right. To the left, a gigantic industrial port interrupted the greenery. Sunken cargo ships angled from the water. Towns encrusted much of the bay, including a large city another mile past the airport.

"There have got to be people here," Ness spoke-signed. "We can rule out the port. Too many goods to have been left alone. Anyway, we need something with a sail, not some mile-long container ship."

"Sporting marina," Sprite said. "Downtown waterfront?"

"We'd have to go there to find spare sails and such anyway." He pointed to a yellow patch on the shore behind the airport. "I say we put in there and search on foot. The bay's too exposed for my tastes. What do you think, Sebastian?"

"This or I swim you to Hawaii," the alien gestured.

Ness snorted. They got into the boat and struck east, then hugged the shore leading to the airport. Previously, the ocean had smelled pretty much like your typical ocean, but the inlets held the richer, muskier scent of water interacting with earth and plants. They guided the boat onto the strip of sand on the airport's back side and heaved the aluminum vessel up past the treeline. Gregarious birds cawed from the canopy.

"Stay here with the boat," Ness signed. "We'll have a look at the docks. Back in two hours."

Sebastian nodded. Ness led the way to the airport. It was a local field, just two full-size jets amidst a number of prop and business jets. He had the brief vision of using one of these instead of a boat—he had played several flight simulators in his day—but discarded that as soon as he saw the hose dangling from the fuel compartment of the largest jet. If these had been drained, no doubt the airport's fuel tanks had been sucked dry, too. Anyway, he didn't know shit about flying.

They walked briskly past the silent tarmac. A highway sliced past giant warehouses with curved metal roofs. Vast paved lots were stacked with multi-colored containers, creating makeshift mazes. Someone had dragged chain link and barb wire into the passages, snarling them. Ness moved to the far shoulder of the road. Small metal tubes projected from the dirt: spent brass, tarnished with age. He moved on.

They crossed a small river. A pier projected from another container yard. Ness watched the grounds a minute, then crossed the concrete for a look, but the only boats were bizarre things like floating trailers supported by pontoons on either side. Two had been pushed into shore by storms. A third was crunched into the pier, broken boards creaking with each sway of the meager current. Ness stared glumly at the wracks.

Sprite pawed at his shoulder, pointing north. "Check it out."

Less than a mile away, the coast turned to run east-west. As it swung about, an arm of water extended into the city. A series of piers thrust into the body of the sub-bay. Most appeared to be shipping-related, but through his binoculars, Ness spied dozens of small white boats docked in the deepest recess of the inlet.

The marina turned out to have five docks, each of which housed an array of private vessels ranging from cigarette boats to yachts. Many were sunk and virtually all showed heavy damage from storms and the wear of the sea, but on the marina's right flank, forty more boats sat on dry land. Three of these were sailing yachts ranging from thirty to fifty feet in length. They were filthy with accreted dirt, but the sails were tucked neatly away inside their holds and their hulls appeared intact.

Ness and Sprite scouted around for any signs of habitation, then backtracked to the airport. Inside the cover of the trees, Ness filled Sebastian in on what they'd found.

"You are excited," Sebastian gestured.

"Shouldn't I be? We've got our choice of boats and all the replacement parts we'll ever need!"

"And it is good to see you break your inside ice."

They ate and napped. After dark, they pulled the sailboat into the water and guided it to the marina, lugging it aground and taking down the sails, which would be a dead giveaway of recent use. The plan was simple: get a yacht up and running, then sail it back to their farmhouse in the north, where Ness would continue generating the fuel they'd need to help make sure they could get to Hawaii.

Sebastian scuttled off to the warehouses beside the marina and emerged with three sacks clanking with tools. He climbed inside the cabin and went to work. Ness decided the best use of his time was to keep watch, but by the first hints of dawn, there had been no sight or sound of other humans.

After sleeping, he went from boat to boat, checking their fuel levels. Each one had been drained long ago. In an administrative building, he found an expansive maritime library. Some of the books were written in local languages, but many of the official texts were English. As Sebastian mucked about with the engine, and Sprite practiced rigging the beached boats and moved on to the semi-seaworthy vessels at the marina, Ness read and read, skimming where appropriate, homing in on anything related to long-term maintenance and extended voyages.

It was in this way that he discovered their plan had no chance of success.

"Oh fuck." Ness dropped the manual to the table with a thunk and jogged into the blaring daylight.

No sign of Sebastian. He waved his hands over his head, then jumped up and down, turning in a slow circle. From the mast of the yacht beside the one they'd claimed, a piece of the rigging detached and waved back. Ness blinked and Sebastian resolved from the ropes. Ness jogged across the cracked asphalt to meet him.

"We're making the wrong kind of fuel," Ness gestured.

"What is wrong?"

"Ethanol. You can't use it in boats."

"Is this law? There is no more law."

"Not a law of people. A law of nature."

"I do not see," Sebastian signed. "Your fuel was used in the smaller boat."

Ness nodded. "That's because it only had to get us fifty miles. Long-term, it dissolves gaskets and such and leaves the engine full of water. It'd kill our engine halfway through the trip."

"Why do you have one fuel for one thing and another fuel for another? All things go the same."

"I imagine that, a long time ago, two guys had different ideas about which system was best, so we wound up with both."

"Not elegant." A bird winged past and Sebastian flicked up one of his sense-pods. "What can we use instead?"

"Gasoline, but it's all bad by now. Jet fuel would probably work, but the airport got tapped long ago."

"Can you make more gasoline?"

"Not a chance."

"Shit!"

Ness laughed out loud, but his humor didn't last. "Could try it with sails alone. But I don't care for that option. We don't have nearly enough experience."

As if to prove his point, at that very moment Sprite was wrestling with the rigging of a twenty-foot sloop as it drifted across the calm waters of the marina. The rocky shore loomed nearer and nearer. Moments before impact, Sprite glanced up, went wide-eyed, and cannon-balled off the side with a yelp. The sloop crunched into the rocks.

"Can you make diesel?" Sebastian signed.

"That's a million times more complicated than ethanol. Why?"

"Because that is what this boat likes."

"It's a diesel engine?" Ness closed his eyes, unable to take any more. "Then ethanol would never have worked in the first place. This is hopeless."

"I will think," Sebastian gestured. "We will find our way."

While Sebastian noodled on that problem, Ness dived into the issue of navigation. The marina library came through big time: while determining latitude was relatively straightforward—it could be done by measuring the angle of the sun or stars versus a chart, something that could be done with a sextant or octant, which the library display cases featured several of—the discovery of longitude had apparently been a centuries-long international quest involving many of history's brightest minds, not to mention million-dollar prizes from England, France, and various other historical powers who'd once had a vested interest in figuring out how to quit depositing their navies at the bottom of the ocean.

Very interesting, and Ness intended to return to these histories once they were at sea, but for the time being, all he cared about was the solution. This turned out to require nothing more than an accurate clock, something that had been a bitch to get right back in the day, but had become trivial in the modern era.

Which they were no longer in. Mechanical clocks were about to get extremely valuable—as were those who could maintain and build them. If they were ever able to put an end to the Swimmer shadow war, Ness thought he might enjoy learning to become a clockmaker. It seemed right up his alley, and it would be nice to prevent navigation from regressing by hundreds of years.