A Ruby Beam of Light

by Tom DeMarco

  The bearded young man was called Edward. Pease watched as he led a group of people about the task of turning one of the yachts. They passed a line around the outside and levered the bow around, using a deck winch. Then they walked the boat to the end of the ramp and around the corner so that it was facing down the channel. The yellow haired girl (Pease hadn’t yet caught her name) was calling off names from her clipboard. As she called the names, individuals and small family groups stepped up the ramp and onto the boat. Finally she announced that someone called Claymore Layton was to be their captain. The short man with the gray crew cut stepped aboard and took his place at the helm. There were two men stationed at the main mast, ready to set sail. At the nod from their captain, they began to raise the Genoa jib. They evidently were going to sail away from the dock. Imagine that, they weren’t even going to start the engine, something they wouldn’t even have considered if it were their own property they were playing around with. He noted that the vessel was the sloop Columbia, seventy feet long and worth maybe three quarters of a million dollars. The wind was gentle and favorably slanted to sail all the way down the channel and out into the sea. Captain Claymore called for the jib sheet to be taken in. As the vessel surged forward, he nodded to the two women handling bow and stern lines. They tossed the lines aboard the boat. With jib alone, the vessel gained momentum, sailing almost parallel to the dock. It was headed directly for a piling. Claymore held his course coolly, allowing speed to build up as much as possible, then he brought the vessel’s nose up into the wind briefly to roll over the piling, then put it back on its course down the channel. Very neatly done. The two who had raised the jib headed back to the mast to put up the main. Loren walked along the pier beside the departing vessel, shouting out final instructions. Pease caught most of what he said: “Keep to zero-nine-zero for two hours and then hold up to wait for the rest of us. Anchor if you have to. You should have no more than 30 feet underneath you by that time.”

  Back on the dock, a second vessel was being walked around into the channel. The yellow-haired girl was calling off names for its crew. The second vessel was the ketch Kiruna. A black man stepped on last and took his place at the wheel. He must be the one named Williams. A few moments later, the Kiruna was away under sail, adroitly handled past the one piling, and headed down the channel.

  If it wasn’t already strange enough for there to be a senator and university president among the highjacking party, Pease now noticed the manager of the Grand Marina hotel, Gina McCree, was also taking part. She was standing beside a pile of knapsacks and duffel bags holding the hands of her two daughters. It looked like she was just waiting to be called for one of the boats. Why wasn’t she doing something to stop this nonsense? She kept peering out toward marina road, and Pease tried to convince himself that she was waiting, as he was, for the squad car to arrive and set things to rights. As he watched, she suddenly let loose the hand of one of the little girls and began to wave. Pease looked to his right toward the road. There he saw a party of perhaps fifteen bicycles, pedaled by a scruffy assortment of teenagers, most of them black and Hispanic. There was an adult on the lead bicycle, a man that Pease recognized as the manager’s husband, Ted McCree. The teenagers all seemed fairly excited, as though they were off on a great adventure.

  The yellow haired girl with clipboard came running back toward the new arrivals. McCree stepped up to her, joined by his wife and two daughters. They were close enough for Pease to overhear:

  “They’re the kids from my settlement project. I just couldn’t go without them. I think they will just be invaluable. They are full of vinegar. You need them. And they need to be needed.”

  “Of course,” said the young woman. “We’re a little short of our numbers anyway. Let me get their names.”

  “We thought we might bring the bicycles, too. They could come in handy.”

  “We decided not to bring bicycles. There will be plenty of them there. But it might be nice to have two of them, just for the initial period. Pick two nice ones and hand them up to any two of the marked boats. Tell people to tie them down on the deck.” She moved into the group, taking down names and assigning the young people among the remaining boats. Stacey and Curtis began handing out Dramamine tablets and cups of water.

  Pease was trying to memorize the vessels’ names as they departed. He thought they had walked nearly twenty of them out into the channel by now, and he went back over the names so as not to forget any of them. He looked up. The yellow haired girl was standing above him. The one called Loren was at her side.

  “Mr. Pease,” she said. “My name is Kelly Corsayer. I would like to talk to you for a moment. I want to take off your gag. But you have to give me your word of honor not to shout. Will you do that?”

  He thought for a moment. Nothing to lose. He nodded.

  She bent down over him and unfastened the scarf. Pease worked his jaw. Kelly sat down on the dock beside him. “Mr. Pease, do you have a wife?”

  “Dead,” he spat out.

  “I’m sorry. Do you have any children?”

  “No one who would send a ransom, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  She smiled slightly. “No, that’s not what I’m thinking. Are your children here and dependent on you?”

  “I’ve got one daughter who lives in California. She’s an out of date flower child. If you ask her for a ransom, she will send it to you in daffodils and raisins, and tomatoes from her garden. Lots of luck. She doesn’t even have a phone.”

  “So there’s no one here. You’re alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not even a dog or a cat?”

  Pease looked pained. “Dead,” he said. “An old cat. Died a few weeks ago.”

  She turned to the young man beside her. “Let’s take him Loren. He’s got no ties here, none at all. And he’s a nice man. I want him. Homer said we ought to have 200 and we’ve got just 199. Mr. Pease will be our 200th.”

  “What?” Pease was aghast.

  Loren nodded. “Sure, Kelly. It’s your call.”

  “You’re going off on a grand adventure, Mr. Pease. A sailing excursion and then we’re going to found a whole new society.”

  “Like hell I am…”

  The dark haired woman approached the group. “What’s up?”

  “Mr. Pease has decided to join us,” said Kelly.

  “Like hell I have!”

  “Let’s get him aboard Irena, then,” said Sonia. “The sun’s almost up.”

  “Wait!” Pease was sputtering.

  Sonia bent down and grabbed the coils of line around his chest. She lifted him effortlessly. Kelly grabbed his legs. They carried him up the ramp into the cockpit of the Irena. Kelly went back to fetch the cushion, which she now arranged behind his back.

  “I get seasick,” said Pease in a wail. The little girl was almost immediately at his side.

  “One full Dramamine tablet for Mr. Pease,” she said. She popped the tablet into his mouth. Pease went to spit out the tablet, but she put her hand over his mouth. “Now, Mr. Pease. You be good. Just swallow your medicine. If you don’t, it’s going to get all bitter in your mouth. She lifted his chin slightly, and Pease felt the tablet slide down. She took the proffered cup of water from Curtis and held it to his lips. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

  The vessel ahead of Irena was now being led into the channel. Edward and Sonia hopped aboard. There was no one left on the dock except for Kelly and Loren and the old man, still asleep on Pease’s lawn chair. He had his mouth open. Kelly was waking him gently.

  Stacey and Curtis had settled down in the cockpit beside Pease. They watched the old man as he awoke, still a little foggy from his nap. “That’s Doctor Homer Layton,” said Stacey. “He’s the one that has planned this whole thing. He is our leader. He’s the smartest man in America.”

  “That’s not saying much,” said Pease.

  He watched as the old man was led to the Palomar by Kelly and helped up into its cockpit. She cast
off the stern line as Palomar gathered way, with the lasso woman at the helm. At his side, Stacey was waving to her parents on the Palomar. Kelly ran back to take Irena’s bow line and begin leading the twentieth and last vessel toward the channel. He could hear the sail being raised ahead of him.

  A few moments later Irena was under way. Kelly hopped aboard at the last moment. Loren was at the helm. He turned his face into the wind as though he had been all his life at sea. Pease listened to the sound of their movement through the water, a gentle hissing gurgle. He noted it all for the record, and out of personal curiosity as well; this was his first time ever on a sailing vessel.

  Loren luffed up past the piling, barely giving it a glance. The fore and aft sails were being set simultaneously. There were half a a dozen or more people on the deck and perhaps that many more down below, some of them children. As they sailed out past the long public jetty, Pease saw a young couple waving gaily. They appeared to be lovers, out to watch the sunrise. He looked forward over the bow where the first glint of the sun’s rim was showing in the east.

  By the time the vessels paused to regroup, the coast of Florida was only a fine line on the horizon. The fleet was at anchor, most with their sails still set. They had stayed in line, Columbia still in the lead. Her jib and mainsail were backwinded on opposite sides, a maneuver that Pease thought he recognized from his reading as “heaving to.” In any event, she was riding peacefully at her anchor in spite of the freshening breeze. Evidently these people knew their stuff as far as sailing went.

  Loren jibed the Irena and ran back down the line of anchored yachts, calling out the new course. Pease got to hear that instruction 19 times. They were to sail from here on a course of one-eight-zero, due south. You didn’t live all these years in Florida without learning what landmass lay immediately to the south. They were headed for Cuba.

  None of the captains showed surprise at the new course. They had printed instructions, which some of them waved to acknowledge. Also, the vessels were in contact with small walkie-talkie radios. Loren took up position at the end of the line, with sails backwinded on opposite sides, to wait for the others to lift anchor and proceed. Within ten minutes they were all under way again in a long evenly spaced line to the south.

  There was the smell of bacon being fried below. There had been some difficulty getting the stove started, something that Loren and Kelly had had to communicate to the other boats. Along with most of what was happening, this made no sense to Pease. They weren’t to use matches to start the stove for some reason. They had to get a taper of newsprint smoldering by using a magnifying glass in the sun, and then blow on it gently to gradually induce it to burn, then use this to start the stove. Evidently each one of the boats had been equipped with a magnifying glass for just this purpose. Seemed silly. If they thought so far ahead, why not equip each boat with matches? He would have given up long ago trying to make sense of what was happening, but he just wasn’t that sort. For D.D. Pease, this was a more and more intriguing puzzle. Why the little ceremony with the tapers? why hadn’t they used the engines? why hadn’t they stolen fast motor yachts that would give them a better chance of getting away? why were all these seemingly respectable people highjacking fancy sailing yachts to Cuba? He was turning over in his mind the thought that this might be a bizarre religious cult, opposed to motorboats, matches and capitalism.

  Kelly came up from below and took a place to his side. “Well, we need to talk a bit, Mr. Pease. There are a lot of things you don’t know.” She had clear gray eyes, smiling eyes, even though she was being serious at the moment.

  Pease grunted.

  “Lots that you don’t know. I haven’t had a minute, or I would have explained before. After I’ve explained, and you’ve understood, we can get those awful ropes off you. Because then you’ll be with us and not against us.”

  “I doubt that.”

  She smiled broadly. “Do you have a quarter in your pocket?” she asked.

  Pease nodded. “Probably.”

  “I’m so confident that I’m willing to bet you a quarter. This is a rare amount of confidence for me. I’m not a betting woman. By the time I’m done, you will be one of us, I will have untied these lines and you will have paid me a quarter. Is it a bet?” She pulled a quarter out of her shorts and placed it on the cushion beside him. Pease shrugged.

  “Your gun wouldn’t have fired if you had pulled the trigger, did you know that?”

  “It wasn’t loaded.”

  “Oh.”

  “I was always worried about shooting my foot or shooting some college kid. You don’t win any medals shooting college kids in Fort Lauderdale.”

  She smiled again. “Our guns weren’t loaded either. And from now on, nobody’s gun is ever going to be loaded again. I’ll tell you why that is.”

  Part way through the explanation, he stopped her. Those who knew him knew he had an exasperating habit of reciting odd bits of poetry on almost any subject. As he began to understand why they were under sail rather than motor, he quoted some lines from an old book of Greek legends:

  Now is the season of sailing…Weigh thine anchors, and unloose thy hawsers, O mariner, and sail with all thy canvas set: this I, Priapus of the harbor, bid thee, O man, that thou mayest sail forth to all thy trafficking.

  “Now is the season of sailing,” she repeated. “Now and for a long time to come.”

  At the end of an hour, Kelly let him loose and collected her quarter. Pease stared down at the array of evidence she had used to teach him about the Effect and to indicate what had happened during the night. He wondered if he was being hoodwinked, a poor old man, the victim of parlor tricks. But he thought not. He was beginning to believe in and even like the people around him on the Irena. As soon as he was free, they came by, one after the other, to shake his hand and say they were glad he was along. After that, Pease sat down again beside Kelly and stared off to the south, trying to imagine, along with everyone else, what was going to happen next.

  PART III

  BARACOA

  18

  JIHAD

  For most of our nation’s history, government has been a part-time enterprise. Legislators were unwilling to stick around after the dog-days of May. Then in the early 1920s came what at first seemed to be an invention of minor import, the electrical air conditioning machine. A G.E. advertisement in the Washington Star of June 6, 1926, stressed the luxury and health-giving effects of cool dry air through the summer months, all for the reasonable price of $22. The product caught on, and not only in the private sector. By the end of Coolidge’s term, most congressional offices and the White House had been fitted with air conditioning. Government took to working a full twelve months. The volume of laws passed in 1928 exceeded the volume of laws passed in 1918 by a factor of nearly three.

  The ubiquitous air conditioners of Foggy Bottom were connected though BX and Romex cables to service boxes provided by DC Power and Light in the basements of their respective buildings. From there they were connected through transformers to the 600 volt conduits under the city streets. These conduits hooked up to the 1800 volt grid running along the far side of the Potomac River, and from there to the generating plant 11 miles away in Engleside, Virginia. The Engleside plant was a diesel fired generator, depending for its continued operation on the quick release of potential energy stored in number 6 kerosene, a refined fossil fuel formed by the breakdown of organic material under pressure. The organic material (well, this is how we learned it in public schools in the twentieth century) was made up of the decomposed bodies of dinosaurs. And the dinosaurs lived during the Mesozoic period when t-prime was firmly fixed at its base value.

  None of that had seemed to matter before the world went dark during the early morning hours of the 16th of May. Since then it mattered. With the Layton Effect injected into the earth’s magnetic field by a small device now located some 1300 miles south and east of Washington, number 6 kerosene (all fossil fuel, in fact) exhibited markedly different prope
rties. It refused to flash. It could be made to burn by slowly raising its temperature to something over 1250 degrees Fahrenheit, but it would not explode under pressure in a generator’s combustion chamber. The generator would not turn. The 1800 volt grid had become a 0 volt grid. No power flowed from the Engleside plant north along the river; no power passed through the transformers; no power entered the service boxes of Foggy Bottom, and no power turned the motors of the air conditioning machines. So it was hot. Damned hot.

  Nolan Gallant stared despondently out the window of the Watergate Office Building cafeteria. The others were taking their seats around him at the meeting table, but he paid them no heed. What a comedown to be forced to meet like this in a room with open windows and natural light. This was a meeting that by all rights ought to take place in a basement room with no windows and a closed soundproof door with a Marine guard on watch in front of it. Of course there were guards spotted by the cafeteria entrance now to keep outsiders outside. But open windows! Who could feel secure in such a place? He wondered how government had ever functioned in the pre-modern world, how it would ever function again in the screwed up present? For screwed up it certainly was. They couldn’t even run a shredder. How could a government function without a goddam shredder?

  Whispered bits of conversation around the table had died down. They were waiting for him to begin the meeting. Let them wait. Gallant was having a moment of monumental pique. Why was he even bothering to run this candyass country, a country that had let itself be hogtied by some creaky professor and his runny nosed staff of graduate students. He couldn’t believe the state things had come to. No limousines, no command centers, no guns, no helicopters, no squadrons of jet planes to rattle the teeth of lilly-livered dissenters. It wasn’t just that nothing could function anymore. It was that the exercise of power had been deprived of its just rewards. What was the fun of being at the top of the heap? Now that he was giving the orders, most of the orders were impossible to carry out. He could send an aide scurrying out of the room to do his bidding, but the moment the man was outside, the reality of the situation would come back to him. The fellow couldn’t phone the order to a subordinate because there were no phones and no subordinates. He couldn’t use force or the threat of force to effect his goal because there was no very meaningful force left to use. As often as not, the aide would wander away and forget about the order, looking for some relief from the heat.