On Stranger Tides
Authors: Tim Powers
TIM POWERS is the author of several acclaimed works of speculative fiction. His books have won both the World Fantasy and the Philip K. Dick Memorial Awards, twice. He has received the Locus Award three times. He lives in San Bernardino, California.
TIM POWERS
WINNER OF:
THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD THE INTERNATIONAL HORROR GUILD AWARD THE PHILIP K. DICK MEMORIAL AWARD THE LOCUS AWARD
âA brilliant writer... wonderfully original.'
WILLIAM GIBSON
âPhilip K. Dick felt that one day Tim Powers would be one of our greatest fantasy writers. Phil was right.'
ROGER ZELAZNY
âTim Powers has long been one of my absolutely favourite writers, those whose new books I snatch up as soon as they appear⦠Narrative sparkle, great dialogue, speculative imagination, and emotional power.'
PETER STRAUB
âPowers knows that science poses its questions in search of a premeditated answer, [his writing] is a swift, colourful pursuit of the truth visible only to those with humility and a sense of wonder.'
DEAN KOONTZ
âTim Powers is the apostle of gonzo history, and On Stranger Tides is as good as story-telling ever gets. It promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all. You'll stay awake all night reading it, and when you finally do sleep, you'll find this story playing through your dreams.'
ORSON SCOTT CARD
âPowers orchestrates reality and fantasy so artfully that the reader is not allowed a moment's doubt.'
NEW YORKER
âOne of the most original and innovative writers of fantasy currently working⦠The quality of Powers's prose never falters⦠His writing defies characterization and he never repeats himself⦠Keeps you reading for the joy of it.'
WASHINGTON POST
âTim Powers is an uncommon literary talent. If heavenly muses were to put Dean Koontz, John Le Carré and Robert Parker into a creative blender, then moulded the mix into a brand new writer, the result would be something akin to Tim Powers.'
DENVER POST
âPowers has forged a style of narrative uniquely his own, one filled with sharply drawn characters, fully imagined settings and elaborate underpinnings.'
LOS ANGELES TIMES
âPowers' novels are big in every sense: vast in scope, philosophically deep, impeccably wrought.'
GUARDIAN
âMeasured and pitch perfect prose⦠Powers levitates your incredulity like a masterly stage magician.'
INTERZONE
âFantastical⦠eclectic worldbuilding unlike anything else you may have read, except, maybe, another Tim Powers book.'
SF SIGNAL
Also by
TIM POWERS
The Skies Discrowned
An Epitaph in Rust
The Drawing of the Dark
The Anubis Gates
Dinner at Deviant's Palace
The Stress of Her Regard
Declare
Three Days to Never
FAULT LINES SERIES
Last Call
Expiration Date
Earthquake Weather
TIM POWERS
First published in the United States of America in 1988 by Subterranean Press
This paperback edition first published in the UK in 2011 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Tim Powers, 1988.
The moral right of Tim Powers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-84887-512-8
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85789-460-1
Printed in Great Britain.
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
Ormond House
26-27 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ
To Jim and Viki Blaylock, most generous and
loyal of friends and to the memories of
Eric Batsford and Noel Powers.
With thanks to David Carpenter, Bruce Oliver,
Randal Robb, John Swarzel, Philip Thibodeau
and Dennis Tupper, for clear answers to
unclear questions.
And unmoored souls may drift on stranger tides
Than those men know of, and be overthrown
By winds that would not even stir a hair...
âWILLIAM ASHBLESS
“The bridegroom's doors are open wide
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.”
He holds him with his skinny hand,
“There was a ship,” quoth he...
âSAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
THOUGH THE evening breeze had chilled his back on the way across, it hadn't yet begun its nightly job of sweeping out from among the island's clustered vines and palm boles the humid air that the day had left behind, and Benjamin Hurwood's face was gleaming with sweat before the black man had led him even a dozen yards into the jungle. Hurwood hefted the machete that he gripped in his leftâand onlyâhand, and peered uneasily into the darkness that seemed to crowd up behind the torchlit vegetation around them and overhead, for the stories he'd heard of cannibals and giant snakes seemed entirely plausible now, and it was difficult, despite recent experiences, to rely for safety on the collection of ox-tails and cloth bags and little statues that dangled from the other man's belt. In this primeval rain forest it didn't help to think of them as
gardes
and
arrets
and
drogues
rather than fetishes, or of his companion as a
bocor
rather than a witch doctor or shaman.
The black man gestured with the torch and looked back at him. “Left now,” he said carefully in English, and then added rapidly in one of the debased French dialects of Haiti, “and step carefullyâlittle streams have undercut the path in many places.”
“Walk more slowly, then, so I can see where you put your feet,” replied Hurwood irritably in his fluent textbook French. He wondered how badly his hitherto perfect accent had suffered from the past month's exposure to so many odd variations of the language.
The path became steeper, and soon he had to sheathe his machete in order to have his hand free to grab branches and pull
himself along, and for a while his heart was pounding so alarmingly that he thought it would burst, despite the protective drogue the black man had given himâthen they had got above the level of the surrounding jungle and the sea breeze found them and he called to his companion to stop so that he could catch his breath in the fresh air and enjoy the coolness of it in his sopping white hair and damp shirt.
The breeze clattered and rustled in the palm branches below, and through a gap in the sparser trunks around him he could see waterâa moonlight-speckled segment of the Tongue of the Ocean, across which the two of them had sailed from New Providence Island that afternoon. He remembered noticing the prominence they now stood on, and wondering about it, as he'd struggled to keep the sheet trimmed to his bad-tempered guide's satisfaction.
Andros Island it was called on the maps, but the people he'd been associating with lately generally called it Isle de Loas Bossals, which, he'd gathered, meant Island of Untamed (or, perhaps more closely, Evil) Ghosts (or, it sometimes seemed, Gods). Privately he thought of it as Persephone's shore, where he hoped to find, at long last, at least a window into the house of Hades.
