The New Hero: Volume 1

by ed. Robin D. Laws

  On this matter, the angel is conspicuously silent.

  The prize crew for the Spanish vessel is assigned, trustworthy men and good sailors all, ones who will handle the broad-beamed craft well, and who can be relied on under any circumstance.

  The prisoners have their wounds cleaned and bound. Their weapons are taken from them, and they are searched. Those who attempt to hide blades are treated roughly; those who attempt violence upon their captors are met with violence, swiftly. One or two inquire about joining Palache’s crew. They are rebuffed, for they are fools to ask in front of their shipmates, and weak-willed to have their alliance so easily swayed. Others, later, will show more cunning in asking, and they will be listened to, and judged.

  A trusted few men descend into the hold to see what plunder might be held there. Surely there must be something to make the ship ride so low in the water. The young and foolish among the crew ask about gold, or silver. The wiser wonder if there are cannon on board, their brass weighting the ship down until she wallows. But all are disappointed. The first man down below curses, and reports the bitter truth: Rocks. There is naught to be found but great heavy stones, packed into the hold to make the ship ride low. Had stormy seas come upon her, those rocks would assuredly have sent her to the bottom. Such was the gamble the Spaniards had taken, such was the risk they were willing to run to take Reb Palache. It was a compliment, after a fashion, but like most compliments, best not dwelt on. Disappointed, the men tell Palache what they have found. He thinks on it, and goes to see for himself, then issues his orders. Such men as can carry them heft stones overboard, so that the ship might ride better, and endure stronger seas. Below decks, the sound of the stones breaching the surface of the sea is like thunder.

  A course is set: north and then east-northeast. The Reb and the man assigned to captain the Spanish ship confer, and agree. The sun is going down, and there are clouds in the distance, and night and weather may conspire to separate them. The prize crew captain knows his work, knows how to set the prisoners ashore far from any Spanish patrols, knows the name and address of Reb Palache’s factor in Amsterdam. For even if the hold was filled with rocks, there are muskets and pistols and swords to sell, Spanish armor and the ship itself. Such is the way of the corsair; such is the necessity of the sea.

  And finally, when all this is done, Reb Palache retires to his cabin and tends to his own wounds. He removes the garb of battle, and untucks his beard, and sees to where he has been cut, or burned, or battered. He pours himself a mug of wine, blesses it and drinks it, and thinks about food, and prayer, and about the sailor who fell to his death in the sea.

  This is not yet ended, the angel says to him, and Palache nods. There is one thing left that he must do. Why the angel speaks to him, he does not know. He has studied the Zohar for some clue as to why, or how, or what it might mean, but there is no answer, or at least none that he has found. And in the meantime, when there is no hint of battle, he and the angel speak of chochma, and the number of plagues with which Egypt was smitten, and whether it might be possible to teach others among the crew to play chess.

  ‘Send him in,’ Reb Palache says, just loud enough to be heard outside, and the angel goes elsewhere. He can feel its absence now as once he felt its presence, and the thought worries him. The aspect of the Divine will not be with him now; perhaps it is for good reason.

  But the door opens, and there is no more time for wondering.

  The Spanish captain enters. He is clean-shaven, and his cuts have been tended to, and his hands are bound before him. His eyes roam around the cabin—across the small swinging lamp of the Ner Tamid and the small ark below it, the shelves of scrolls in their watertight casings, and the physician’s tools and herbs. The bed is a straw pallet, the furnishings rough save for an elegant carpet that covers the floor of near the whole cabin. There is a chair, in which Reb Palache sits, and a stool, which is empty.

  ‘Sit,’ Palache says, and gestures to the stool.

  The Spaniard sits. ‘My quarters are much finer,’ he says, ‘and my ship better. You should move across. It would be more fitting, oh pirate king.’

  Palache says, ‘I like this well enough,’ and pours his prisoner some wine. ‘Here.’

  ‘I will not drink your wine,’ he says, and makes no move to take up the mug. After a moment, Palache shrugs, and set it aside in easy reach.

  ‘What am I to do with you?’ Palache asks. ‘It would seem ignoble to kill you, yet foolish to allow such a…capable enemy to go free, and to try his fortune against me again some day.’

  The man shrugs. ‘Perhaps I have learned my lesson. I might not make such a bad pirate, now that I think on it.’

  Palache snorts back laughter. ‘You wish to join my crew? I think not.’

  ‘No, no. Merely that I will not be well-received at court, even should you put me ashore safely. I might do better, and live longer, as a corsair.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ A smile quirks at the corner of the rabbi’s mouth. ‘But you will need a ship, and money to hire men, and to outfit her. Where would you find such things?’

  The Spaniard leans forward. There is hunger in his voice now, and Palache thinks on the angel’s warning from before. ‘There is treasure still on my ship. I know you did not find it. Come with me and I will show you. And you, perhaps, could leave me half, as an act of good faith, and I could swear on the holy Cross that never would we cross swords again.’

  Palache nods, and scratches his beard thoughtfully. ‘A generous offer, and you expect generosity as well.’ His mouth opens as if he is going to counter-offer, or agree, but there is a sudden knock on the door. ‘Yes?’ Palache says to the door, and ‘Pardon me,’ to the Spaniard.

  A sailor pokes his head inside. ‘Reb, I just wanted to let you know, we have done as you ordered. The rocks have been removed from the other vessel.’

  Palache looks at him for a moment, searching for something in his face. ‘All the rocks? Impressive work.’

  The sailor, who is young and somewhat callow and prone to believing every tale he has heard of Reb Palache, swallows visibly. ‘Yes, Rebbe. Every last stone.’ He pauses and swallows again. ‘She rides high in the water now.’

  ‘I will wager she does.’ He waves a negligent hand. ‘Thank you. You are dismissed.’

  The sailor thanks Palache and the door closes.

  ‘Does he know about your angel,’ the Spaniard asks.

  ‘Most do, in one fashion or another. A few even believe.’

  ‘And should I?’ The man’s tone is mocking. ‘My father’s priest would find it hard to believe that an angel would talk to a lowly pirate.’

  Palache stares at him for a moment. ‘I am a pirate, as you say, but not a lowly one. And I have seen many things, I think, that your father’s priest would not believe.’ And Palache observes as he stares—the sudden nervous energy that courses through the man, the surreptitious glances toward the door.

  ‘If we cannot speak of angels,’ the Spaniard says, ‘perhaps we can speak of emeralds. We should go now, before the sailors you have assigned to my ship find them.’

  ‘Your ship? Mine, rather, and if they find them, they will bring the emeralds to me.’

  ‘Nonetheless, we should hurry.’ The Spaniard stood. ‘We are at sea. Accidents happen. I would hate for your fortune and mine to be lost, or for the ships to become separated so that you might not find the treasure before putting me ashore.’

  ‘It has waited this long,’ says Palache, ‘it can wait a while longer. Sit. Drink your wine.’

  ‘I don’t want the damn wine!’ the Spaniard thunders, and kicks the stool. It spins away and crashes into the wall. ‘I want to go back to my ship, and—’

  There is a thunderous explosion, and the ship heels suddenly, sharply to starboard. Outside there is shouting, and the clatter of pieces of wood falling to the deck. A tendril of smoke curls under the door.

  ‘No,’ howls the Spaniard. ‘No!’

  ‘But yes,’ says Pala
che. ‘An ingenious trap, I must confess. Weight the ship down so that the infernal devices rigged to it are below the water line, and thus inert. And once the unnecessary ballast in the hold is removed, the ship rises, and they dry out, and then it is just a matter of time. No wonder she ran so slow—were the bombs on the outside of the hull? I think so.’

  The Spaniard stares at him, wordlessly. His eyes are wide and full of hate. ‘It was brave of you to attempt to lure me over there, I admit. Willing to sacrifice yourself, along with your crew. That is the stuff of the old aristocracy, not often seen these days.’

  ‘You.’ The Spaniard’s jaw works against the air. Sounds occasionally emerge from it. ‘You knew.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But your men! And yet you sit there calmly!’

  Palache permits himself a smile. ‘My men? Why, they are my rocks, the strong bones I depend on. All were removed. You heard the man himself say such a thing.’

  ‘So you left my men to die? Bastard!’ And with that, the Spaniard flings himself on Palache. But his hands are tied, and Palache has been hardened by the sea. He dodges the blow, and strikes heavily at the Spaniard’s face, ribs, and gut. The man falls, wheezing on the rug. He bleeds a little from the mouth where he has been struck. The blood and drool puddle on the rug, jarring against the pattern.

  ‘My…my crew,’ he manages to wheeze. ‘You let them die.’

  ‘You let them die,’ Palache corrects him. ‘You were ready to sacrifice all of them as well as yourself to kill me. It does not seem fair for you to judge me for what you yourself would do.’

  ‘They were my men! Sworn to follow me, to death if necessary.’ He stands and staggers to the cabin door, pounding upon it with bound fists. It does not give, does not open.

  ‘You’d do better to lead men to life,’ Palache says, and stands. He walks to the door and taps it once. It opens.

  And the Spaniard sees his ship, still sitting low in the water. Perhaps she is a bit higher than before, perhaps it is for good reason. Near her is the wreckage of one of ship’s boats, blown to flinders. Half a powder keg floats beside it. Small chunks of charred wood are on the deck, evidence of the meticulous nature of the deception. The air smells like burned pine.

  And aboard Palache’s ship, he sees his men being marched to the brig. They do not resist.

  ‘Your men deserve a better captain,’ Palache whispers. ‘Perhaps they will find one.’

  ‘Pah! What will you do with them?’

  ‘What I have promised. You, however, will get what you desire.’

  The Spaniard spins, suspicious. ‘I do not like the sound of that.’

  Palache does not smile, does not blink. ‘No? But it is what you want, yes? Your ship back? I give her to you, with my compliments. I wish you joy of her, and her joy of her captain.’

  ‘What!’ The man’s eyes bulge with rage. ‘You cannot! You are a devil! I see that now! A devil!’

  Two of Palache’s sailors take the Spaniard and drag him, relentlessly, toward the edge of the deck. He is still shouting insults and curses as he goes, calling Palache a demon, a monster, a fiend. Palache merely watches him until he is safely aboard his own vessel, and his bonds are cut. Then he orders that the lines be cast off and the Spanish ship be set on its way, and that course be laid in for Rotterdam.

  There is a whisper of wind that none feels but him, and the angel returns. You are cruel, the angel says.

  ‘Less cruel than he,’ Palache replies, as the Spanish ship begins to diminish. ‘He has food, and water, and good sails. If he does not deplete his stores too fast, she will not rise much in the water before she is driven upon land.’

  That is not what I mean, says the angel, unnamed and inscrutable. You could have perhaps made more of him. There was greatness in him, had it been nurtured.

  ‘There was more murder, and long years of damage to be undone. And I am growing old. Let him find greatness elsewhere, if he survives.’

  There is a pause, and then the angel tries one last tack. You could have shown more mercy.

  ‘Ah,’ says Reb Palache. ‘But that was all I had.’

  And he shuts the door, and turns to his shelf, and takes down a copy of the Arba’ah Turim that he might study. Later, he and the angel will debate on aspects of the Hoshen Mishpat, but that is later. For now, the Spanish ship can still be seen, and the lone man upon it, and the great hungry ocean beyond.

  On Her Majesty’s Deep Space Service

  Jonny Nexus

  New Chatham Spaceyards, Low Earth Orbit

  29th December 1988

  Three hundred miles below the departure lounge’s windows, a blue-brown Africa floated.

  Four years ago I’d volunteered for a tour in the Belt to escape the consequences of my then best-friend’s unwise decision to leave his fiancée in my care while he underwent basic training. (Nice girl. Hope he found it in his heart to forgive her.)

  Now I was about to embark on the final leg of my journey home to England, just as soon as the spacesuited maintenance crew finished checking out the Supermarine shuttle that floated just feet away, connected to Chatham by an umbilical docking tube. A young man in a Royal Space Force Leading Spaceman’s uniform floated up beside me and threw the slow, cautious salute that Newton’s Third Law mandates whilst in zero-G.

  ‘Space Lieutenant Stone?’

  After four years in plain-clothes, half of that undercover on Soviet ’roids, it was strange to be back in uniform, and stranger still to be answering to a rank. I nodded.

  ‘Message for you,’ he announced cheerily, holding out a sealed envelope. There was a name tag on his uniform. Johnson. I noted the name, more from habit than anything else.

  I ripped the envelope open.

  ‘Going to any New Year’s parties?’ the young ranker asked.

  I quickly read the message that had been inside the envelope. It didn’t take long; there wasn’t much.

  LEAVE CANCELLED STOP PROCEED TO PORT TRANQUILITY STOP GO TO VICTORY BAR 0100 1ST JAN STOP CARSTAIRS

  ‘Apparently not,’ I told Johnson. ‘Contact Control. I need my duffle taken off that shuttle.’

  Johnson gave me a cheery smile. ‘No problem sir. Going anywhere nice?’

  ‘No.’

  Approaching Port Tranquility, the Moon

  Late evening, 31st December 1988

  Two days of travel on an RSF intra-space tug later, I was dropping down to the Moon at what passed for terminal velocity at point one six gee, our downward progress interrupted only by occasional control jet bursts fired by the tug’s cheery Glaswegian pilot.

  ‘Be down in about five minutes, sir,’ he promised.

  Port Tranquility lay a few dozen miles downrange of us, a small settlement set inside an ancient crater with, as the old joke went, a big American dome, an efficient German dome, an elegant French dome… and a British dome.

  A couple of hours and a few drinks in the officers’ mess later, I slid into a chair at the Victory bar opposite the sour face of my boss. Carstairs didn’t look best pleased to see me but, to be fair to him, I was thirty-five minutes late.

  ‘Jack Daniel’s, Coke, ice, no slice,’ I told the waitress.

  ‘Nice of you to turn up,’ Carstairs drawled sarcastically.

  ‘I wouldn’t have done at all if you hadn’t made it a direct order. I just arrived back after four years in the Belt and I’m owed six months leave.’

  ‘You’ll get your leave.’

  ‘When?’

  The waitress chose that moment to return with my drink. In the American dome I’d most likely have got a little umbrella and a smile. Here I got neither.

  Carstairs screwed up his little piggy eyes in what he presumably intended as a commanding stare. ‘I’ve got a job needs doing. You’re not the right man for the job, but you’re here and at least notionally qualified.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I need you to meet someone.’ He waved in the direction of the shadows at the back of the bar. One
of the shadows stood up and walked out of the gloom, becoming ever more recognisable with each spotlight that hit her. Princess Sophie, Queen Elizabeth II’s eighteen-year-old eldest grand-daughter. The palace called her ‘confident’, the press called her ‘headstrong’, and the blokes in her protection squad allegedly called her ‘trouble’. Word in the Force had it that this was one filly who needed breaking in, but whatever poor bastard took on that job would then be doomed to a lifetime walking one pace behind her.

  She took a seat next to Carstairs and grinned at me.

  ‘So you’re the one who’s going to protect me?’

  ‘Apparently.’

  Carstairs slid a sealed envelope across the table. ‘Details are in there, but in summary, the transfer asteroid Liberty’s heading through Earth space as we speak en-route to Mars, and the Royal Solar Yacht Club are commemorating the event with a race from Lunar orbit to Liberty and then back to Earth.’

  ‘I do read the papers. What’s that got to do with me? Or her?’

  He nodded at Sophie. ‘There’s a British entry in the race whose pilot, for obvious security reasons, isn’t being announced until just after launch.’

  Sophie giggled. ‘Officially, I’m just here to watch.’

  ‘Right. But aren’t solar yachts generally one-man craft?’

  Carstairs glared at me. ‘They are,’ he growled, in a voice whose tone indicated a strong desire for me to not get any ideas. ‘But the race doesn’t launch until tomorrow and then there’s a one day layover in Liberty. Your job is to protect the princess during those two periods.’

  ‘Why me? I don’t do protection.’

  ‘Because you’re available.’

  Sophie grabbed hold of my arm and put on an undeniably appealing pout. ‘Don’t be grumpy, it’ll be fun. Promise! Anyhow, let’s go celebrate 1988 turning into 1989.’

  I showed her my watch, which was showing a time of half-past one in the morning. ‘It’s already 1989. Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep?’