The Dream Vessel (17 page)

Big Tom, in a sense, had become a red-legger himself.

They had shackled him to an orange tree in his own walled garden, and he wanted to know what comedian had chosen the garroting tree with its rusted collar still in place. His wrists and ankles bore genuine circles of chapped red under the metal cuffs. At the base of the tree, between two large roots, was a worn spot where he habitually sat. A couple of feet away were two smaller holes where he propped his heels.

The manacle chains were mercifully long, not only allowing him to sit, but also to circle the tree and relieve himself on the other side. They hadn’t even brought him a bucket to sit on.

For the last two weeks, his only visitor had been his son, Little Tom, meekly bearing trays of grilled fish or chicken soup. Never a vial of powder. Never a trace of bourbon. Little Tom, still dark skinned and presumably alone now in the mainhouse, was preparing the meals himself. His lack of kitchen expertise was very apparent.

He would appear on the white, pebbled path through the neglected shrubbery, eyes downcast. Wads of cotton were stuffed into his ears—the mutineer’s technique. He could claim he had not heard the captain’s ranted orders, and thus had disobeyed no one.

Little Tom would set the tray in the grass, and quickly retreat. For the first few days, Big Tom had screamed his throat bloody raw each time the young man appeared. Then he had tried to trick the lad—say, “Hey, Little Tom”—hoping he would hear through the cotton and instinctively lift his head. Proof that he was not deaf.

But now, his headaches and shakes had subsided, and he had taken to awkward, metal-clanking calisthenics to put his body into shape. He listened intently to the whitting and hammering wafting up from the shipyard and tried to guess at the new ship’s progress. (How could it possibly be going well without him?) And when Little Tom arrived now with the food tray, Big Tom said nothing anymore—just gave him that wearing, fatherly scowl that eventually would force the captain’s way through the pressure of guilt.

He could barely recall that evening two weeks ago. He’d had a faceful of powder, half a bottle of bourbon. He’d visited the garden shed and—gawd, it still wrenched his ample stomach—found Gregory and Moori bare assed in the peat moss, of all places.

The rest was a blur of violent images, and he imagined he had done quite a bit of damage to the interior of the mainhouse. Most of the veranda doors up there on the third floor were shattered and hanging at angles from their hinges. He recalled flying ashtrays and vases, smashed furniture and paintings and sculpture, and the clepsydra cartwheeling down the main stairway. Even now, Big Tom thought, his anger seemed intact and he might still be capable of the same destruction.

He recalled, too, a montage of powder-distorted faces swirling around him in the foyer: Bark scowling, and Bishop, Little Tom and that muscler from the mainland, Guinness. It took all of them to clap the cuffs on him and drag him shrieking and flailing to the garden. Chain the bastard to a tree—that was the best cure they could think of.

Big Tom heard the gate at the east wall rattle. He glanced at the sun’s position and knew that it was not yet lunch time. Then Bishop came crunching up the stone path, drawstring pants nearly falling off of his skinnier-than-ever hips.

The little guy was smiling and had a manacle key in his hand.

Big Tom had dragged his drawing table over to the telescope in his office, where he could compare the skeletal scructure down in the shipyard to the blueprint tacked out in front of him. The inner hull planking was starting to edge its way up the framework of the new ship.

“Excellent, excellent,” he said, moving his gaze from the eyepiece to the diagram and back again. “Bishop, you’ve checked the keelson assembly yourself?”

“Oh ya, Big Tom…. She’s letter perfect…. To yer blueprint, anyway. The splinting is solid.” The assistant, fearing some retribution for the captain’s shackling, gave his words haltingly.

“Bishop, I’m going ta call her the Nina, after a mythical ship of the ancients. This is a dream, Bishop, the building of Merqua’s largest ship—probably the entire world’s.”

Upon his release, Big Tom had gone first for a soak in the mainhouse tub, then slipped on a fresh tunic and marched straight down the mountain to his office. His eyes glinted and he swung his long, sopping hair merrily.

“Mmmm. Ya ever seen a fantail stern like this one?” the captain asked, peering through the telescope again.

“None that big, of course. Nothing like it.”

“But the knee ’n’ sternpost….”

“Solid, Big Tom.”

Big Tom adjusted the focus, and his face fell grim. “Interior, now, Bishop,” he said. “What is this with the framing?”

“Oh.”

“What is it Bishop?” Big Tom gave the telescope a small push and it swiveled away. His eyes were narrowed and his jovial nature had vanished.

“Oh. Uh, Bark said ya warn’t to be bothered in the garden—no questions, total isolation. But it was clear as Belle’s Water that the framing wouldn’t hold up. It’s to specs, mostly, but I had it reinforced is all.”

“With eight-by’s, Bishop, stem ta stern? You know how much weight that would be?”

“She’s got ta hold up, Big Tom. I don’ get it,” Bishop said, still speaking cautiously with his newly freed captain. “Five hunnerd feet. Even with the strength of those Douglas firs what the Government sent in, ya know the first storm would kick her in half. Ya going ta sprinkle fairy dust on her maybe—that’ll hold her together?”

Big Tom glanced up from his work, smiling now sardonically. “Ya, Bishop. Fairy dust. You leave the fairy dust to me—and I’ll sprinkle it on when we’re done with tha inner planking.”

Bishop wore that determined, narrow-eyed exasperation that persuaded Big Tom to relent. The trade master opened the drawer under the surface of the drafting table and selected a drawing lead. He whittled it in the sharpener four times and sketched light, erasable lines diagonally across the hull in the blueprint.

“Now’s as good a time as any,” Big Tom muttered, “but this must remain a trade secret—one our lives’ll depend on. Look here. Between the early planking and the outer, we’ll run steel strapping ta brace the structure—crosswise like this.”

“Steel?”

“Ya, steel. Quarter inch thick, five inches wide—the stuff I ordered back with the quarry supplies. We can reinforce a mast with steel, why not a hull?”

“Don’t seem right,” Bishop huffed. “Steel in tha body of a ship.”

“An’ since when did I give a pig-poke about what seems right? Now, let’s go down to the shipyard. Those eight-by’s gotta come out. And then we gots lots more work—lots of fairy dust to sprinkle.”

Gregory paused on the sidewalk under a large oak growing yellow and red as demanded by November. He rechecked the address he had scrawled on the edge of that morning’s news sheet, found it to be correct, and opened the gate.

It was an ancient mansion, three stories of stuccoed elegance, blinding white in the clear morning. The wide porch felt cool, shaded as it was by the overhang and dozens of dangling plants. Gregory pulled the porcelain knob set into the wall and heard a muffled chime inside.

When she opened the door, Gregory felt instantly inadequate in his faded blue jump suit. Her delicate brown eyes fluttered as she took him in, her hair was a pleasing disarray of large black ringlets, and she carried about her the irresistible odor of fresh book paper.

“Yes?” she asked.

No. This was not right. “I, uh, I am sorry,” Gregory stammered. “I had asked at the, uh, shelter, and they gave me this address. I was expecting a manservant. Name of Billister. I am told he is a little shorter than I. Slender?”

She smiled, and Gregory began to sweat. “My name is Glacoń,” she said, pushing the screen door open. “Please follow me.” Gregory wondered how she could be so trusting.

The foyer was a mosaic of large, polished clay tiles, and the high ceilings were timbered with dark-stained oak. Down the central hallway, they passed a series of niches scooped out of the wall, each of them bearing a stone statue. Nude women, mostly. Gregory blushed.

Glacoń opened a set of double doors, held up a finger indicating that he should wait, and then disappeared behind them. After a moment’s conversation in the room beyond, she opened the doors wide, stepped politely around Gregory, and vanished.

Inside, a young man sat behind a heavy desk, back-dropped by sentries of leather bound books. A ledger was open on the desk, and its master was holding a fountain pen aloft as if he were in mid-calculation. The man was dark skinned, head and face shaved clean. He wore a pristine, starched cotton blouse with a burgundy string tie. His forehead pressed up quizzically as he regarded his guest.

“The name is Gregory, with the new Government. I am inquiring after a man name of Billister, a Rafer house boy, in just this summer from Thomas Island.”

The dark man set his pen in its holder patiently. “I am Billister. I was born a Rafer, started as house boy, but since I have taken employment here”—he cast up his hands in good-natured dismay at the study packed with books and files—“my duties quickly expanded.” He motioned for his surprised guest to take the stuffed chair near the desk.

Gregory began his pitch before he had even settled into the comfortably worn leather. “I am in charge of recruiting for a Government expedition—a project for which you are especially qualified, if my sources are correct. Am I right—that you are fluent in several languages? Rafer? Spanish? French?”

“Mmm. And Latin. And don’t forget English.”

Gregory laughed, and he felt more at ease. “Aside from that, you also grew up among seafarers on Thomas Island and are well acquainted with Big Tom and his men….”

A shroud of ill mood fell over his host’s face.

Billister spoke evenly, almost angrily: “Please get to the point. What is this”—he waved his left hand airily—“expedition?”

“Um. Well. As you know, the new Government has just formally declared itself, although it has in fact been in place and effecting its policy changes for some months. Well, in opposition to the Monitor’s paranoia, it has been decided that we must see what has become of the civilizations overseas. It is quite likely that we will encounter people who can instantly advance our technology by decades. Can you imagine—having the medical knowlege amassed by the ancients, for instance? Or mechanical flight?”

Billister rolled his eyes. “Flight? Not possible.”

“No. Not legal. Until now. The inventor Cred Faiging has been commissioned to study the science of aircraft.”

“And you want to cross the Big Ocean somehow—flap your wings, perhaps….”

“No, in a large ship, which is being built by Big Tom.”

“And Big Tom will captain?”

“Um, yes—at his insistence, as you might suspect. And also by default. Who else could captain such a vessel?”

Billister sighed. “There are tempting facets to your invitation, Mr. Gregory. But I must ask you to consider a few details that would make me a bad choice for your expedition: That it was Big Tom who killed my mother when I was an infant. That I grew up a servant in his household, and that this summer he sold me as a common red-legger to pick tobacco.”

Gregory wiped his moist chin. “It is an unavoidable matter of circumstance,” he said, “that with whatever crew we assemble, there will be a considerable amount of personal animosity to overcome. Whether you join us or not.”

Billister stood, squinting in thought, and paced to a large map on one wall. He clasped his hands behind his back and studied the map’s details—or, more accurately, the missing details.

It was hand drawn and hand colored, showing a swath of continent 2,500 miles wide. The brown shading represented the two vertical ribs of mountain range, one east and one west. Green showed the inhabitable lands, and amber depicted the radiation fields. The land mass was flanked by two Big Oceans (perhaps the same body of water—who could know?). To the far north were the woodlands and then the wastelands of ice. To the far south the amber radiation fields, depicted with dubious accuracy, were so dominant as to make exploration there of questionable value.

Beyond the oceans, there were no details on the map, save for a Rafer inscription on the eastern edge. Billister pointed to the markings and translated for Gregory: “Here be monsters.”

Gregory frowned. “Surely you have more faith that humans survived in the other lands,” he said.

Billister laughed. “I suppose that I do. In a moment of idleness I penned that, but I did so in my native language because I was not sure that the casual observer would realize that it was a joke.” He waved a hand vaguely at the map. “The cartographer, by the way, might be of interest to you—H. Fenstemacher Lapp, down on Zealander Street. The best. Any captain what sails outa Chautown harbor would ask for his charts first. A natural instinct, he has.”

Billister returned to his desk chair, where he closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a long, silent meditation. “Add to my previously stated reservations,” Billister finally said, “the fact that my personal circumstances in Chautown are more favorable than ever before in my life. I started work here as house boy, ya, but rapidly fell into better service for the merchant who owns this premises. Oh, the linguistics help a little with any kind of trade, but he’s found me invaluable now for my accounting abilities. And best of all—well, you have met his daughter, Glacoń. My fiancee.”

“No!”

Billister smiled. “Yes. Fiancee.”

Gregory stood slowly, sensing defeat.

“And the island?” Billister asked timidly. “How are—”

“Big Tom—powder crazy, worse than ever. Last I saw him he was talking to a stuffed cat in the garden shed.”

“Talking to a stuffed cat? As one would with a Cantilou?”

“Ya,” Gregory replied, surprised. “He called it that—Cantilou.”

“Hmph, brain rot. Big Tom used to ask me to tell him all of the Cantilou legends, the Rafer myths about the lion with the head of a boy. After that he grew maniacal about the garden shed—wouldn’t let us in, went there to blow the steam off, we thought. Like the powder, the fabled Cantilou is best left alone.”

Gregory turned for the door.

Billister toyed with his fountain pen. “If you have been on Thomas Island with Big Tom,” he said, “uh, you might know how things are with one of his wives—Moori?”

Gregory’s face sagged even more. “Moori, hmph. Ya, she’s fine. I got her off the island, brought her here….”

Billister’s eyebrows rose. “To Chautown?”

“Ya. But she won’t see me now. Seems to have caught the attention of a wealthy clothier—Lasalle, something like that.”

“Ah. Probably Lesoli.” Billister cleared his throat sympathetically. “Well, if you are in need of a linguist, I have a recommendation—although he, too, has little love for your shipbuilder Big Tom. He’s right there on Thomas Island, a waterfront hermit name of Saple.”

Gregory’s brow wrinkled at the name. “The beach hermit, Jersey Saple? He knows languages—ones what might be of use on the other side?”

“A mile west of the docks,” Billister said, seeming fond of the memory, “little shack set back from the water. Even knows Rafer. Taught ’im myself.”

Gregory nodded goodbye to Glacoń as unlustfully as he could and turned to descend the porch steps. When he hit the yard, he felt a sharp pang as if the sunlight were a dagger thrust between his eyes. He stopped, hunched his shoulders, and pinched his brow between thumb and fingers. Sweat suddenly drenched his body like a sticky shower. As the pain subsided into a dull throb, he hoped these headaches would be a temporary malady.