The Changes Trilogy (40 page)

He worked his way around to the stern, gave a final kick and heaved himself over, barking his belly a little. His legs felt empty and boneless, like one of those toy animals with zippers that women keep nighties in. Or used to, anyway. Heaven knows what they did now. He had a struggle getting Sally in—she was near the end of her strength—but managed it with a lot more noisy splashing than he cared for. There weren't any oars in the dinghy, of course, but at least he could paddle with the footboard. He moved to the bows and hauled on the painter until a blue stern solidified in the fog.
Schehallion IV
it said—Major Arkville's boat. Well,
he
wouldn't mind lending his dinghy.

“Where's
Quern
?” he whispered.

“Further down on the other quay, but it's no use going there. You want a boat with
sails
, Jeff. This one would do. You could always make a wind.”

“I'd rather have an engine.”

“But you haven't got the
stuff
. They burned it all, every drop they could find. I saw it. There was a great big whoof noise, and fire everywhere. The poor old mayor got roasted, because he stood too near.”

Geoffrey felt obstinate. She was probably right, providing he
could
make a wind (but in that case who'd steer, supposing he “went under” like when he made the fog, if he
had
made it? And anyway, if he could sail so could they—faster, probably, and the wind would blow the fog away). But he wanted to see
Quern
again, if only for Uncle Jacob's sake. He didn't want to ask Sally about Uncle Jacob, because he knew something must have happened to him. There'd have been no question of drowning kids if Uncle Jacob had been about. He paddled clumsily away from the blue stern.

Quern
was tucked right in under the quay, with a line of sailing boats lashed outside her. He tied the dinghy to the outermost and crept across the decks. The ones nearer the quay were in a very lubberly condition, but
Quern
herself seemed okay. Somebody (himself, Sally said) had been looking after her. Let's hope he'd been looking after the engine too. He lifted the hatch.

The engine was speckless, but the tank was quite empty. Geoffrey ducked into the cabin and crawled through the hatch in the forward bulkhead to where Uncle Jacob kept the spare cans. (“As far from the engine as possible, laddie. Fire at sea is a terrible thing. I've seen it.”) There were three big jerricans, all full, which had evidently been missed at the time of the mayor-roasting. He lugged one back and rummaged for dry clothes in the port locker. Two oily jerseys, two pairs of jeans—terrific.

Sally was peering down into the engine hatch, shivering.

“It's like one of my pictures,” she said.

“You'd better get into these.”

“But they'll beat me if they find me wearing trousers. It isn't
womanly
.”

“If they find you they'll … ach, never mind. But I can't remember whether it's womanly or not, and no one else will see you. Off you go, and I'll try and get this thing running.”

She crept into the cabin, and Geoffrey bent to the engine. He filled the tank, turned the petrol switch, closed the choke, flooded the carburetor and swung the handle. It wasn't as stiff as he expected, which meant that he must have been turning it over from time to time. He swung again. Nothing. And again. And again. Nothing. He looked at the filter glass under the carburetor and found it was full of water—of course. There'd have been quite a bit of condensation in the tank. He unscrewed the glass and let the petrol flow for a little into the bilge. As he was preparing to swing again he realized that the magneto cover was loose, and lifted it off. No magneto. No hope then. Wait a sec, though; there might be a spare. Uncle Jacob was a maniac for spares, always taking up good locker space with things he'd be unlucky to need once in a lifetime. His cronies had said that he sailed about with a complete spare ship on board.

There was a magneto in the big locker in the cabin, sealed in a polyethylene bag. Sally gasped when she saw it.

“Jeff, that's what you were putting in the oven when they came and banged you on the head. Really they'd only come to ask for a night shower. Did you know?”

“In the oven?”

Oh, yes, of course. If he'd been looking after the boat he'd have taken the magneto up from time to time to dry it out. Bad luck to be caught with it. He adjusted the spare, clipped the cover into place, and swung the engine again. It coughed, died, coughed again and caught—though it didn't sound too happy. He opened the choke a little, adjusted the engine to idle, climbed the iron rungs to the quay and cast off every rope he could see. There was a babble of shouts from the direction of the town. A window slammed up above his head and a woman, screeching, began to throw candlesticks at him. He jumped down into the cockpit, put the throttle hard down and the gear to forward, and swung the wheel to port. The whole raft of boats started to move. There was open water between them and the quay. A noise of boots running on cobbles came through the fog. The locked boats wheeled out into the harbor, slowly, slowly. There was a four-foot, a five-foot gap now, with the black harbor water plopping muddily against weedy timbers. A man, a bearded man in a knitted cap, jumped with a grunt onto the deck, but only just made it. As he stood teetering with his knees against the rail, Sally charged yelling out of the cabin and butted her head into his stomach. He went over backward, arms windmilling, with a luscious splash. Now they were in the middle of the harbor, safe until boats could be got out.

Geoffrey, one hand still on the wheel, throttled down, put the gear to neutral and felt in the fire-fighting locker for the hatchet. Still there. He ran along the deck, hacking through the painters that lashed them to the other boats. The last ropes parted with a slap and twang. Back in the cockpit he revved up and put the gear to forward. Free after five years' idleness,
Quern
danced away down the harbor (a rather sick dancer).

“Well done, Sal.”

She laughed, and he recognized at last the six-year-old he'd known.

Chapter 2

THE CHANNEL

Twenty minutes later they came out of the fog: a soft south wind was putting a tiny lop onto the water, making it flash, million-faceted, under the sun. It heaved sleepily too, stirred by the slow remains of Atlantic rollers. England, behind them, was still lost in grayness.

Geoffrey went into the cabin and found his gold robe. The saltwater stains were leaving it mottled and blobbed, but it was still too damp to show how bad the final result would be. He took it out to spread on the cabin roof. Coming out, he noticed how much sicker the engine was sounding than when he'd started, and realized at the same time how much the spear-prick in his chest was beginning to hurt. The first-aid box was in its proper locker. (“Never stint yourself for splints and bandages, laddie. I've seen men die for want of a proper dressing.”)

“What happened to Uncle Jacob, Sal?”

“The weavers killed him. They came from all over Dorset and threw stones at him, and the neighbors watched out of their windows. It was because of something he was trying to do in the big shed by the stream. Shall I help you with that?”

She wasn't much help, not knowing how adhesive tape worked, but he managed quite a neat patch, with some analgesic cream (rather thick and crumbly with age) on the actual cut. Then he decided he ought to do something about the engine, or try to. He'd watched Uncle Jacob tinkering often enough, and done simple jobs himself, but he knew that it would have to be something pretty easy and obvious if he was going to tackle it alone. At least the tools would be there. (“No use trying to do a complicated job with a knife and fork, laddie. I've seen ships lost at sea for the lack of the right wrench.”) He put the engine into neutral and stopped it. When he opened the hatch a blast of scorching air weltered up at him and there was a guggle of boiling water in the cooling system.

Oil? He'd been so cock-a-hoop about finding the petrol that he'd forgotten to check the oil. Just like him to get this far and then land himself, by sheer stupidity, with a hopelessly buckled crankshaft. But the dipstick, too hot to hold without a cloth, showed reasonably clean oil up to the “Full” mark, though it smoked bluely and gave off a bitter smell of burning.

Cooling system, then? Yes. There was far more water in the bilge than there should have been, and both hoses were dripping and hissing. He took off his jersey and bent down to try the intake hose. Damn! His arm seemed to come back of its own accord, like a recoiling snake, five inches of skin scorched white by the quivering metal. He rubbed some cream in and tried again more carefully. Both hoses were perished, useless.

“Is there anything for me to do, Jeff?”

“I don't think so. Wait a sec while I look at the spare hose.”

There was a decent length of it in the locker, but this too was mostly cracked and powdery. He needed about eight good inches for the intake: the outlet could take care of itself, really, provided they didn't mind a bit of bailing. One stretch in the middle of the spare felt not too bad, and while he was reaching down to measure it against the rotten piece his eye was caught by the filter bowl under the carburetor. It was dark with little crumbly bits of brown stuff, like coffee grounds—rust off the inside of the jerricans. Much more of that and the jet would be choked. He went into the cabin and found two plastic buckets and a plastic sieve.

“Look, Sal, if you pour the petrol out of this can into those buckets through this strainer, all but a little bit, you can give the last drops a good swill around and empty it over the side. Then you can pour it back into the can through this funnel—and we'll have some clean petrol. And keep an eye on the coast. This sun will clear the fog up in a jiffy and they'll spot us.”

“You could make another one.”

“I dunno. I've a feeling that's all there is, by way of fog, for the moment. It takes an awful lot of cold. You can't make bricks without straw. I daresay I could make a calm.”

“They've got rowing boats, quite big ones. They go terribly fast. Do you really mean that you can't remember how you make weather?”

“I can't remember anything, Sal. It must be something to do with being hit on the head. You'll have to explain to me what's been going on.”

“The Changes, you mean? I don't know much. We weren't supposed to talk about them.”

“Well, tell me what you know later. It's more important to get that petrol clean now. And keep a good lookout.”

He went back to the perished hose. The good bit of spare would just about do. The trouble was that to get a screwdriver into the bulldog clip at the inner end involved working with his hands slap up against the scorching cylinder block. He got a towel out of the cabin, soaked it in the sea and hung it, hissing, down the side of the engine. The screw was very stiff, and before he got it to move the towel was dry and turning toast-brown in places. He soaked it again, and this time moved the screw a quarter-turn before he had to damp the cloth again. Three more goes and it was loose. The other end ought to be easy.

“Jeff, there are boats putting out.”

She was right; he could see half a dozen water beetles, just outside the mole, scratches on the surface of the blue-glass sea.

“Okay, Sal, I'll see what I can do. When you've finished that you might see if you can do something about the outlet hose—this thing here. I haven't got enough spare to change it, but if you cut a piece out of one of the sou'westers in the cabin—there ought to be scissors in the galley drawer—you could bind that round and round with insulating tape—here—as tight as you can. Several layers, and then it shouldn't do more than drip. I don't know how long I'll be.”

He hadn't put his jersey back on, so the robe lay next to his skin. The gold threads were full of the warmth of the sun. All around the Channel basked, like a sleeping animal, and on its skin the beetles moved toward them, murderous. They were larger now. He sat on the roof of the cabin with his chin on his knees, judging his time.

Now.

A squall, from the southwest. Airs gathered over the Atlantic, moving steadily eastward under the massaging of the high stratospheric gales, in their turn moved by the turning world, dangling behind it like streamers. The march of airs flawed and splintered on meeting the land mass of Europe, some sucked back in whirlpools, some shoved on in random eddies, funneled by invisible pressures. One here, now, crumpling the water, a fist of wind, tight, hard, cold, smashing northeast, hurling a puny fleet of beetles about in a pother of waters and broken oars and cries that carried for miles, then on, inland across the unyielding oaks of the New Forest, to shiver into eddies and die out among the Downs
.

When he came to, Sally was making a neat finish to the outlet hose. She had bandaged it over and over, like the broken leg of a doll. She smelled of petrol and looked sad.

“I hope there wasn't anyone we know,” she said. “You broke two of the boats, and the other four picked a lot of people out of the water and they all went home.”

“Fine.”

“Look, Jeff, I found this in the cupboard where you got the tape from. I didn't know you had another one.”

“That's an ammeter. You use it for measuring electric currents. What do you mean, another one?”

“Oh,
but
… oh, Jeff, it was your talisman—the thing they took away when they hit you on the head. They thought you couldn't make weather without it. You wore the other one on a gold chain round your neck, and you
hit
me once when I touched it. You're much nicer, now, since they tried to drown you, you know.”

“I'm sorry, Sal.”

Funny, he thought. Perhaps if you have powers that seem magical you are a bit frightened of them, and so you have to pretend to yourself that the magic isn't in you but in something that belongs to you, a talisman. He still felt like that—superstitious, so to speak—about the gold robe. It would be interesting to try and make weather, something easy like a frosty night, without even that. Not now, though. He took the robe off and lay on the deck planks to detach the outer end of the hose and fit the new piece. The cylinder block was cool enough to touch now.