Ocean of Dust (19 page)

His door was ajar, and he sat at his desk
with opened books spread before him. He wore the same heavy, faded
green robe. Did he have any other clothes?

"Mister navigator, sir," she said, knocking.
"I've brought you refreshments."

He looked up and rubbed his drooping eyes.
"Oh, you again."

He arced his back and his bones cracked.
Behind him, his cot bed swung gently from squeaking chains. The
drapes at the rear windows fluttered in a light breeze. She stepped
inside and set her tray on the corner of the desk, careful not to
disturb anything.

"Why are you here?" he croaked, and slurped
the wine.

"It's my duty to wait on the officers." She
held out the plate of buns.

He frowned, shook his head, and then snatched
a bun and jammed it into his mouth.

"Odd that mine is the only cabin you deliver
to," he said, spraying crumbs in all directions. He stopped
chewing. "These are good. Delicious filling."

He took another.

"I want to make it up to you for damaging
your book. I can write. Neat too. Please let me copy the damaged
pages for you."

He pushed the second bun between yellowed
teeth and stared at her. She fought the urge to flinch, and shifted
her gaze to the floor. He swallowed, and then slurped more
wine.

"A little girl who can write," he murmured.
"Fetch the ledger from the top shelf there."

She found the book, its curled pages plain to
see.

"Take that globe, sit down, and show me your
writing. I’ll make no promises." He returned to his books.

She found the dormant globelight, its smooth
stone set into a pewter hand carrier, and ran her fingers across
the metal base. The stone glowed. On the low table, she found
several sheets of blank paper, ink and a pen. Sitting cross-legged
on the floor, she opened the damaged book at random. Five columns
of twenty tiny numbers filled the page, of which a quarter had been
smudged beyond recognition.

Using the tray as a smoother surface than the
scratched and pitted table, she adjusted the pen to its narrowest
nib, and slowly and carefully copied each number. She tuned out the
croaking sounds as he cleared his throat, his noisy drinking, and
the shouting of men about the ship. She focused all her attention
on the numbers before her.

"I've finished a page," she said a while
later.

He swiveled around and held out his hand.
Shoulders straight and head high, she gave him her page and the
book. He placed both beside the globelight on his desk, scrunched
over them and ran his finger down each column in the book. Moments
later, he spun back around and stabbed his gnarled fingers onto her
page.

"Where did these numbers come from? The ones
unreadable on the original? I didn't ask you to make up any old
number." He slammed the page onto the desk, and she flinched.

"These tables have to be perfect." He coughed
repeatedly, and then sipped at his wine.

"They... they're the right numbers." Her
cheeks were on fire. "I was very careful to get them right."

"Liar. How can they be correct?"

"I know they are. Please check them."

"Preposterous. There's a precise mathematical
relationship governing the data in this ledger." He waved it in the
air. "Ugh. Why am I arguing with a stupid girl?"

She cringed against the table and her jaw
dropped. Why was he angry instead of pleased that she was fixing
his book?

"I... I don't know anything about those
mathematical things," she mumbled, "but it wasn't difficult to
figure out what the missing numbers were, and..."

She faltered. His face had turned an ugly
purple and his eyes bulged. The veins on his forehead pulsed.

"I thought you'd be pleased," she added. "I
thought that's what you wanted me to do."

"You figured out the missing numbers," he
roared, loud enough for the entire ship to hear. "Just like
that?"

He coughed several times and yellow spittle
dribbled from his mouth.

"You simply figured them out? Leave."

"Sir?"

"Get out!"

Chapter 17 - Jealousy

Lissa soon got nauseous again. It didn't make
sense considering how long she had been on the ship. No one else
seemed to be affected. That evening, after they had cleaned up
supper, she and Branda went up on deck to get some fresh air. The
stars were dazzling in the cloudless, inky sky. Medepo and Labago,
the two largest moons, had yet to rise.

Lissa and Branda scrambled on top of an
equipment locker to get out of the way of the crew, who gathered in
groups with beer mugs and pipes. Despite the thick, spicy pipe
smoke, Lissa breathed deep and her stomach felt calmer.

Once again, the metal arms stuck out from
each side of the ship, and she stared at the sparks of red and blue
that arced along them. She twisted her hair around her fingers,
first one way then the other.

"Such pretty colors," she said.

"What is?" Branda replied.

"Oh, just thinking aloud." She was sure that
Branda, nor anyone else could see the colors. That didn't make any
sense either. Her head throbbed, stabbing with each spark. That had
happened last time too. She rolled over on to her belly and scanned
the crew as they chatted and laughed.

"I wonder why they're so happy tonight."

"Men always like this after shore leave,"
Branda replied.

"Really? I'd have thought they'd be sad to
leave the island. I am."

"Ship their home. They happy to return."

She shot Branda a sideways glance. Sometimes
she said the most adult things. Were all Valinese like that?

Pete laughed as he wrestled another boy,
while a crowd cheered them on. He threw his opponent, another boy,
to the deck and sat on him. Then Pete held up his own arms with his
hands clasped together in victory, and grinned as the men slapped
him on the back. Lissa smiled. He was obviously enjoying ship life.
Branda didn't seem to mind it either.

What did the future hold? Would Pete end up
as crew chief, like Sam, or even deck master or captain? That
seemed unlikely. Captains probably came from rich families. Would
one of the girls become the cook one day? She pictured an elderly
Alice having galley girls of her own, and grimaced. Their lives
would be miserable. Did people swap between ships, or spend their
entire lives serving the same captain? "Better the seas you know
than those uncharted," she had heard the older sailors say. Was
that why they accepted Farq's cruelty, or did they just have no
choice?

Movement on the forward deck caught her eye.
The stretched shadows of two people protruded from behind the stack
of cargo. She pictured Alice and Mampalo together. Why should she
suddenly think of them?

"Stay here," she whispered to Branda. "I'll
be right back."

She moved silently along the side of the
ship, beneath the huge winches. Halfway along, she crouched and
listened to heated whispering.

"The time is soon, mark my words," one man
hissed.

"It's too risky. We need to prepare more,"
the other replied.

"Enough plans. Get ready, or get out of our
way."

Lissa's foot rattled a metal ring set into
the deck. The rope tied to it snapped loose and twanged up onto the
cargo crates. She clapped her hands to her mouth and glanced behind
her. Too far to run. Spotting a narrow gap between two crates, she
squeezed into it, scraping her arms. She heard the patter of bare
feet hurrying toward her. There was no more room behind her to hide
deeper.

"Just a broken tie," one of the men said,
standing right in front of where she hid. “I’ll climb up and find
the loose end.”

"Look, just think about it, all right," the
other said as they walked away.

She stayed for as long as she could stand the
rough wood against her skin, and then scurried back to Branda,
covering her grazed arms with her sleeves.

* * *

A whole eight-day passed, and Lissa tried to
spend as much time as possible on deck. Watching the crew had
become her favorite pastime. Sometimes Branda joined her, but this
particular hot afternoon Lissa sat alone on the foredeck, once
again using the crates of cargo as shelter against the airborne
dust. The wind always blew stronger at the front of the ship, and
many of the crew pulled bandanas over their mouths when working
there.

A group of apprentices huddled on the
triangular platform erected on the ship's prow. Mampalo taught them
how to point the sighting device toward each sun. The focused
suns-light reflected down onto metal dials. Every few moments he
fiddled with the hoops and beads strung in his hair as the wind
tangled and knotted them. He cycled through each boy in turn,
giving him equal attention.

One of them put his eye to the sighting tube
and swung the device toward Eldrar, close to the zenith. Lissa
startled and glanced at Mampalo, but he was bent over the dials,
pointing something out to another apprentice.

Oh no, he’s going to blind himself.

"Stop," she cried. "Take your eye from the
tube."

The boy jumped and tumbled against the rail.
Another boy pulled him to safety. Everyone looked at her. Had she
broken some cardinal rule?

"What are you doing?" Mampalo asked her,
frowning.

"That boy was about to look at Eldrar through
the sighting tube."

"Is this true?" he asked the boy, hand on his
shoulder.

The boy stared at his shoes and fidgeted.

"No, no, no. Listen. Never sight the suns
unless you want to lose an eye. Guide it like this." He swung the
device with one hand. "Then fine tune it until you see the
reflection below. Only use the sighting tube for the stars or any
of the moons. Clear?"

He gathered the boys around him and embarked
on another lesson.

Lissa relaxed and listened to his intriguing,
singsong voice as he explained the markings on the dials. He made
them practice reading the numbers aloud, and it reminded her of the
navigator's book. Was this where the numbers came from? Why had he
been so mad when she had fixed his page?

"Enjoying the fresh air?"

She jumped, and gave a small smile as Mampalo
slid down beside her.

"You've a healthy tan already," he added.

She hadn't thought about it, but he was
right. In less than half a Sunturn, her light skin had turned
bronze. He brushed her hand and her stomach flipped. Her pulse
quickened.

"I've a couple of promising ones," he said.
"The rest are hopeless."

"Eh?"

"The apprentices. I don't know how you knew
what Jeffsa was doing, but thanks for saving his eyesight."

She nodded and tried not to think of his hot
body touching hers. A warm numbness spread through her.

"What are you all doing anyway?” she said. “I
thought Oban was the navigator."

"Oh, for sure, he is. He does the important
things. We just take the sightings to check our position. So we
know where we are."

She had guessed that, but his voice turned
her insides gooey. She glanced up at his smiling face. He removed
the chains from his hair clips, untangled them and put them back.
Finding herself lost in his extraordinary yellow eyes, she blinked
to break his spell.

"Can you teach me how to do sightings?"

"What in Totey's name for?"

"Because it looks interesting, and I want to
see if I can."

He chuckled. "I'd wager you can. You're a
smart girl, Lissa. That trick you pulled at the festival was neat.
I'll slip my basics book to you later. Make sure no one catches you
with it, or we'll both be for the whip,” he whispered.

She nodded vigorously. "I'll be careful."

"I know you will." He hurried off.

On her way back to the hatch, her gaze was
drawn to a dark smudge on the starboard horizon. Could it be land
so soon? She looked for someone to ask, and then heard the clanking
of chains and screech of metal on metal. Men hauled on the
horizontal wheel of the winch, adjusting the flux vanes. Shadows
swung across the deck, and the ship turned slowly away from the
dark horizon. She scurried out of their way, climbing belowdecks
back to the galley.

Her mind was far from her work as she helped
the other girls cook supper. She replayed everything that Mampalo
had taught his apprentices, certain that if she understood the
numbers she might be able to figure out what all the squiggles,
lines and symbols meant on the navigator's charts. It would mean
defying the navigator though. Could she even learn it all? The
apprentices probably took several Sunturns to become
proficient.

When she hung her scheepa that night, she
found a small book inside, its cover faded and dog-eared. She
clutched it to her chest, peered both ways along the empty hallway,
and then undressed, climbed into her scheepa, and rubbed her
fingers across the book cover.

"Navigation for Neophytes using the suns,
moons and stars," read the title.

She gingerly opened it at page one and began
to read. There were many pictures and diagrams, and she spent extra
time studying them, peering intently at every detail. Some of the
pages were filled with numbers like those in the navigator's book.
She forgot everything around her, and turned each page in wonder of
what she would learn next.

Most of the diagrams featured triangles,
surrounded with mathematics explaining how to use the relative
positions of both suns to the moons. She grasped the concept, but
the calculations were like an alien language. One section described
how to translate sighting numbers into a location on the map. She
leaned back and remembered the navigator’s map rulers.

When she reached the end of the book, she
grunted, having wanted more. She marveled at the knowledge bouncing
around her mind. An incredible new world. Her legs cramped and her
side ached, so she stretched her whole body, wincing as her neck
bones cracked. How long had she lay there reading?