The Vanishing Island

by Barry Wolverton

  “You could have a bright future here,” said McNally. “Your father has shown me your schoolwork, so I know you have his mechanical skills. I also know you have his devilish memory. And it’s right and good that a boy should learn his father’s trade.”

  Bren didn’t know what to say. When McNally referred to his father’s devilish memory, he meant that David Owen could take one long look at a detailed map and then duplicate it with hardly another glance at the original. Bren could do the same. He could have told you where every book he had ever browsed at Black’s was shelved, and he remembered the final position of every chess game Black had played with Bren’s mother. But so what? Perhaps it made his father’s job—making copies of existing maps, for the most part—easier. But it didn’t make it any more interesting to Bren.

  “But you don’t want to be a mapmaker,” said McNally, “you want to be an explorer! Well, come with me.”

  Bren followed McNally out of the drafting room, down stairs leading toward the back of the building. They walked down a long hallway until they approached a pair of large, gold doors. Bren’s heart began to beat faster. He knew where those doors led—the Explorers’ Club, where Rand McNally hosted the most famous adventurers of the day, the men who had been to the remotest parts of the world and back. The club had made McNally’s a destination for more than just maps. Guests enjoyed fine tobacco, wine, brandy, and dinners prepared by a French chef. And in return, of course, McNally got first dibs on new maps, discoveries, and collectibles. Bren had never been inside, but he often fantasized about walking through a sea of deep leather chairs, and hearing a half-seen man begin a story that would trump anything he had heard in the Gooey Duck.

  “This way,” said McNally, leading Bren away from the gold doors down a hallway to a single, ordinary, non-gold door. “You didn’t really think I was going to invite you into the club, did you?”

  Bren blushed. McNally pulled out an iron ring jangling with keys.

  “Boom times these days for explorers,” he said, unlocking the door. “More guests in the club than ever before. My man Rupert could use a hand. And let’s face it, I don’t have to pay you.”

  Rupert?

  When McNally opened the door onto a darkened room, windowless except for slits near the ceiling, Bren’s stomach dropped. He knew exactly where he was.

  “Welcome to the vomitorium,” said McNally. “Where you will attend to the needs of respectable citizens who have overindulged.”

  There were only a few lamps, for the privacy of the “guests,” but Bren could tell McNally was smiling. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could see that the room was divided up into small nooks, each with a cot. At least two men, well dressed but in sorry states, were there. One was still asleep, but the other sat up and proceeded to convulse and breathe heavily. A middle-aged man dressed like a valet rushed over to him, bowing slightly and holding out a bucket just in time for the man to puke his guts out.

  “Look at the bright side,” said McNally. “You get to be around real explorers. You can pretend you’re swabbing the deck of a ship. And who knows, maybe down the road, mapmaking won’t seem so objectionable to you.”

  And that was that. He ushered Bren into the street, to enjoy his last afternoon of freedom. Mr. Black was wrong: Bren hadn’t gotten off easy when he was handed over to Rand McNally. He had been given a life sentence.

  CHAPTER

  5

  THE VOMITORIUM,

  OR

  THE WORST JOB ON EARTH

  Normally Bren would have gone to the Gooey Duck for breakfast before work, but something told him it would be better to report to the vomitorium on an empty stomach.

  The attendant from the day before was waiting for him. McNally hosted a rowdy Explorers’ Feast in the Explorers’ Club every Saturday night, so the place was full and the stench was horrible.

  “I’m Rupert,” said the attendant, but when Bren extended his hand to greet him, Rupert handed him a mop. “You’ll need to fetch at least four pails of water from the well to begin with. Start with the floors, then move to the walls, and if necessary the ceiling.”

  “The ceiling?” said Bren.

  “You’d be surprised,” said Rupert. “Wash everything you can down that drain there in the middle of the floor. Then walk all the waste buckets to the River Dory and empty them there.”

  “The River Dory?” said Bren. The river was Map’s western border, and at least a quarter mile from the vomitorium.

  “Well, we can’t just dump them in the streets, can we?” said Rupert, which made Bren wonder if Rupert had ever walked around Map.

  “If there are still guests here when you arrive, be deferential, of course. It may not be a glamorous position, but it does require a certain skill and finesse. To be able to anticipate when a gentleman may require a bucket, merely from the way he stirs on his cot, or sits up with a certain look of distress on his face, or by detecting the faint sounds of an imminent up-chucking from his vocal regions, or an expulsion of gas from his nether regions. Also, never let your gaze linger on their trousers,” Rupert continued, “for a gentlemen who has had too spirited an evening generally sleeps heavily, and may fail to recognize an urge during the night. And if he does, the chances of successfully unfastening his trousers and keeping his aim on the bucket true are remote at best.”

  Bren looked down to see what he was standing in.

  “Proffer a linen,” said Rupert, pointing to a table of stained white handkerchiefs, “with your arm extended and your eyes averted. A slight bow is a nice touch.”

  Rupert demonstrated his version of a proper bow, and after a minute Bren realized he was waiting for Bren to do the same. And thus began the first day of what he assumed would be the worst job of his life.

  The basics of it all seemed simple enough, but it was hard work. Bren was tired by the time he had hauled the water pails in. The buckets were heavier than he expected, especially with his left arm still hurting. He also quickly learned that the floor drain was easily clogged by even smallish chunks of undigested food. Map was a coastal town, and so clams, mussels, and oysters were among the most common foods. Raw or barely cooked, these muscular, rubbery mollusks were natural drain-chokers—especially when clotted together in a thick chowder of puke. More than once Bren had to unclog the drain with his bare hands, lying on the floor and sticking his long, thin arms as far down as possible, which felt like reaching inside the guts of a dead animal.

  Bren had hoped that taking the waste buckets to the River Dory, and getting to breathe fresh air, would offer some relief. But he was quickly reminded that with grammar school out for the summer, other kids were roaming about, and Bren had never been very popular in school.

  “Hey, Puke Boy!” someone called after him.

  “No, Rupert is the official Puke Boy,” another corrected. “That makes Bren Assistant Puke Boy.”

  “Were you too dumb to get a job as Village Idiot?” called a third.

  By the time he made it back from the river, he had been called the Prince of Poo, the Viscount of Vomit, and the Duke of Dookie. Basically every British noble title, military rank, or official office could be cleverly turned into a bodily function.

  The only duke that mattered, though, was Duke Swyers, and to Bren’s relief, Duke wasn’t around. At least something was going right.

  “One more thing,” said Rupert, meeting Bren at the door when he returned. “Cloudesley Swyers offers valet service every Sunday morning after the feast for anyone whose wig has become, shall we say, befouled. I’ve collected any wigs that need to be cleaned over there by the door. You are to wait for the valet, then you may leave.”

  Uh-oh, thought Bren.

  Sure enough, when the knock came and he opened the door, there stood Duke, dressed in an ill-fitting silk jacket and holding a wicker basket.

  “Owen.”

  “Duke. The wigs are over there.”

  “Pick them up and put them in the basket,” said Duke.


  “I think pickup is your job,” said Bren.

  Duke dropped his basket and yanked Bren outside by his shirt. He threw him facedown in the dirt and sat on his back. “This is to pay for the wig,” said Duke, then he pulled out a jackknife and began chopping off chunks of Bren’s hair. When he was done he stood up, and Bren rolled over, gasping for breath.

  “My father already paid your father for the wig.”

  “Oops,” said Duke. He tossed the clumps of hair aside, gathered up the dirty wigs, and walked off.

  Bren lurched to his feet, dusting himself off. When he got home later, his father looked at his very bad haircut.

  “I guess it could have been worse,” he said, more concerned about the new hole in Bren’s trouser knee. That would require mending. His hair would grow back.

  “Don’t you see how dangerous is it working there?” said Bren.

  “You did bring this on yourself,” said his father.

  Later, when he sought refuge at Black’s, Bren discovered that his older friend wasn’t any more sympathetic. “You did steal that man’s wig.”

  “I never admitted that,” said Bren. “And no one proved that I did.”

  “Well, as you can see, the finer points of law are of little concern to teenage bullies,” said Mr. Black.

  Bren began to wonder if both Mr. Black and his father had something to do with arranging his punishment in the vomitorium. If so, it was a clever plan. By the end of the summer he might well be eager to start his life as a mapmaker. It wasn’t just the Angels of the Four Winds conspiring against him. It was everyone.

  Bren wasn’t sure of the exact point during his sentence when he became more disgusted by the men he was attending to than the filth he was cleaning up. These were men who actually felt it was their right to have someone like Bren hold a bucket for them, or hand them a kerchief to wipe themselves. (He never, ever bowed.) Worse, Bren was supposed to be, in Rupert’s words, “deferential.” To avert his gaze. What sort of a man thought he was better than you even when he had soiled himself?

  Actually, Bren could pinpoint when he became more disgusted by the clients than the filth. It was his second Sunday of duty, after a particularly rowdy Explorers’ Feast. A swashbuckler named Lord Byron Bertone had been the guest of honor. He was the son of the Duke of Trembly and a well-known privateer who had successfully robbed a large Iberian ship of gold. He was due in London for an audience with Queen Adeline, but no one could resist one of McNally’s famous feasts.

  The next morning, in addition to Lord Byron and his men, Bren found Cloudesley Swyers facedown on a cot in the vomitorium, a large wig lying curled up next to him like a King Charles spaniel. When Bren woke him (by repeatedly banging his mop against the cot), Swyers sat up, delicately reset his wig upon his head, oblivious to the fact that it had chunks of vomit trapped in the curls, looked at Bren with contempt, and tossed a penny on the floor at his feet before staggering out.

  “Exploration requires investors,” McNally explained when Bren complained about the wigmaker. “Investors need to feel important.”

  Bren began to notice that many of their “guests” were “investors.” He felt like a child; he should have known better. But it left a sour feeling in his stomach to realize you could just buy your way into the Explorers’ Club.

  He also found himself disliking Rupert more and more every time he saw him. Not because Rupert left all the cleanup duties to Bren, so that he could devote more of his time to what he called “hospitality.” Nor had the middle-aged attendant wronged Bren in any way. He was angry with him for much the same reason he was angry with his father—that McNally had apparently convinced him this was as good as it got for men like him. A privilege even, to do what he did. David Owen’s work may not have been as loathsome as Rupert’s, but to Bren they were the same. Neither had any chance of improving their lot in life, and they were supposed to be content with that.

  On his fourth Sunday of duty—his fourth Explorers’ Feast to mop up after—Bren walked in on an imposing man hovering over one of the cots, where another man lay on his back.

  “Up, Mr. Richter,” said the tall man, rapping his walking stick against the cot. “Rise and shine.” Rap, rap, rap.

  The drunk man lifted his head, barely, saw who it was, and said, “Bugger off, Bowman,” snoring again before his head hit the pillow.

  After a month working in the vomitorium, Bren had developed the low-light vision of a screech owl, and he took in the imposing figure. Tall and trim, he wore the sober outfit of a white, high-collared shirt, black coat and waistcoat, and black breeches tucked into an expensive-looking pair of tall black leather boots. Blond hair curled rakishly out from under a wide-brimmed black hat, and he had a trim blond mustache and beard that tapered to a point. In his right hand was the wooden walking stick with which he was tormenting the drunk man, its brass knob carved into the shape of a fox head.

  Even though the other man was on his back, Bren could see he was shorter and fatter. He also wore a white shirt and black coat, but his waistcoat was a fancy jacquard pattern with silver buttons, and his calves and feet were covered with white silk stockings and polished black leather shoes with showy silver buckles.

  As if he sensed being watched, the tall man turned toward Bren, smiled faintly, and said, “I don’t envy your job of getting layabouts like my friend out of here.” He spoke English but with a Germanic accent.

  “No, sir,” said Bren.

  “What’s your secret?”

  “I mostly just make enough noise that they can’t stand to be in here,” said Bren.

  The tall man laughed. He raised his walking stick, and for a second Bren thought he might beat his companion’s brains in with it. Instead he hooked the fox head under the man’s knees, forcibly swinging his legs off the cot and onto the floor. He then grabbed a fistful of the man’s fancy waistcoat and pulled him to his feet.

  “If I let go, Mr. Richter, will you keep standing?”

  The man responded with a string of un-Christian oaths, the likes of which Bren had never heard.

  “Very good,” said the tall man, and keeping his grip, he led the other man out of the vomitorium like a horse that had wandered from its stable.

  When he finished work and carried his buckets outside, Bren noticed something was in the air, besides rain and the usual bad smells. The town was in a tizzy, and people were rushing toward the harbor. It reminded him of the time long ago when the Dutch ship carrying the Exhibition of Oriental Wonders had arrived. And then he remembered the tall man’s Germanic accent. . . .

  Bren stood there, holding a full bucket in each hand, trying to decide what to do. He could practically hear his father now: Did you not just hear Judge Clower tell you not to go to the harbor?

  No, thought Bren. He said I am not to be seen at the harbor.

  With a glance around to make sure no one was looking, Bren tossed both buckets behind a scrub of bushes along the nearest road and hurried to catch up with the crowd.

  He took the jagged steps to the pier two at a time. The harbormaster was running back and forth, shouting at people to move and trying to clear paths for the dockworkers. Bren ducked his head and wormed his way through the crowd until he found it there at the end of the dock—a long, lean ship with extraordinarily tall masts, and a bowsprit that leaped out of the water like a swordfish. Even at anchor, something about it seemed faster and more impressive than the ships around it. Atop the mainmast flew a single bright orange flag, and the figurehead was a blond mermaid, naked except for a pair of strategically placed clamshells.

  Bren began pushing his way closer until something made him pull up short—the lumpy profile of Duke and his three friends who followed him around like he was a mother elephant. Bren altered his course, using cargo and crowds of sailors for cover as he sneaked his way closer to the ship.

  It had been almost two years since a Dutch yacht had docked in Map, and there it sat, either coming from or going to all those exotic a
nd forbidden places Bren had secretly mapped on his bedroom walls. Word had spread, and clearly Britons were eager for a chance to get their hands on anything new from the Orient. Bren, though, wasn’t concerned about what it might have brought back so much as what it could take away—namely, him. Suddenly a small tropical island with sugar grass seemed like small potatoes.

  The men and children who had never seen a yacht of the Dutch Bicycle & Tulip Company were curious about all the rumors, the same ones the people at the dock were spreading now: that Dutch ships had enchanted sails; that they sailed above the water on conjured currents; that the hulls of their boats were carved from the bellies of dragons. At least, those were all the things Bren had wondered when he first saw one.

  And then someone grabbed him. For a moment he was afraid it was Duke, but when he turned around he saw it was worse: Mr. Hannity, the harbormaster.

  “I have orders to shoot you on sight if I catch you down here,” he said, his hand nearly pulling Bren’s shirt over his head.

  “From whom?” said Bren. “Rand McNally? My father? Mr. Black?”

  Mr. Hannity looked shocked. “How many different folks are you in trouble with, boy?”

  “A lot,” said Bren.

  The harbormaster let go and pulled a letter from inside his jacket. “Here, you work for McNally . . . save me a trip. Tell him it’s a message for Admiral Bowman.”

  “What is it?” said Bren, remembering that the drunk man had called the tall man Bowman.

  “It’s none of your business, that’s what,” said Mr. Hannity. “Just deliver it. And I’ll know it if you don’t!” He wagged a finger in Bren’s face, close enough for Bren to see the flecks of earwax and mucus on the tip.

  Bren turned and ran to McNally’s, hoping he was right—that this Bowman was the admiral of the Dutch yacht. Before he went inside, he examined the note, but it was sealed. It would be obvious if he snooped.

  Skipping the lift, he ran upstairs to McNally’s office, which was down a hallway from the drafting room. The hall was dimly lit, and Bren didn’t see the short, fat man standing in the doorway until it was too late—he ran square into him.