Rising Tides

by Taylor Anderson

  “No!” Rebecca exclaimed, glancing darkly at Lawrence.

  “No! No! Goddamn!” came a shrill, indignant cry from above.

  Silva shrugged. “Well, whatever the little bugger is, he talks as good as you, Larry.” He looked at Rebecca. “He’s gotta leave off chewin’ on our rope, though.”

  The others in the suspended boat began to stir.

  “What’s happening?” Sandra asked. “Is it over?”

  Despite her bedraggled state, Silva couldn’t suppress a thrill at the sight of her pretty, morning face. He physically shook himself. Damn! He told himself. Don’T even Think like That! It was hard not to after all this time. He’d even occasionally caught himself looking speculatively at Sister Audry. She was a damn fine-looking gal, after all. Such a waste . . . He shook himself again.

  “ERRRrrrrrr!”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothin’. What do you mean, ‘is it over’?” He shook his still groggy head, deciding to answer Sandra’s first question before pondering the second. “The squirt wants a new pet. The bloom’s wore off poor Larry, I guess.”

  “That’s not true!” Rebecca scolded. “And Lawrence is not a pet!”

  “What is a pet?” Lelaa asked.

  “A dog,” Lawrence said, a little wistfully.

  “Pets ain’t all dogs,” Silva retorted, “but dogs can be pets. A pet’s just about any critter that likes it when you pet ’em on the head.”

  “My God, Mr. Silva, you are a philosopher!” Sandra exclaimed, still muzzy herself.

  “Yep. All I need’s a Navy-issue Greek suit.”

  “Hand me a piece of biscuit, if you please,” Rebecca demanded. Half asleep, Rajendra grumpily fished in a canvas bag and produced a mildewed cracker. Snatching it away, Rebecca held it up to the creature, near the falls. “Here you are, little fellow!” she entreated. “Won’t you come down and eat? Show yourself! That’s a good little creature!” Tentatively, perhaps coaxed by her pleasant voice or the smell of food, the little vandal eased back out of the shadows.

  “Why, it looks like an archaeopteryx!” gushed Abel Cook. The young midshipman/naturalist-in-training had improved considerably over the last few days. He was still weak, and like them all, literally covered with mosquito bites, but the lightly feathered creature sniffing its way skeptically down the falls had stirred his interest. It wasn’t much bigger than a cat, with a long neck and a toothy head just like any other lizard bird they’d seen, but its abbreviated wings and long, feather-vaned tail looked more suited to gliding than flying. Silva chuckled as the light improved because the thing was colored predominantly greenish blue and yellow. The creature retreated at the sound, hissing at Silva with an open mouth full of small, razorlike teeth.

  “Sure looks like one o’ your relations, Larry,” Silva prodded.

  Lawrence hissed at him too. Rebecca gave them both withering stares.

  “Come on, little fellow!” Rebecca cajoled again. “Wouldn’t you like something to eat?”

  “Eat?”

  “Yes!” Rebecca teased it with the cracker. “Eat!”

  “Eat!” the creature mimicked doubtfully.

  “Yes, eat!”

  Quick as a shot, the little thing raced down the falls, snatched the cracker, then disappeared again in the canopy above. Rebecca checked her fingers to make sure they were all there while Silva laughed. A moment later, they heard another querulous cry from above.

  “Eat?”

  It was immediately echoed by others. “Eat? Eat? Eat!”

  “Uh-oh, now look what you’ve done!” Silva said, turning serious. In a blurry streak, what looked like the first creature bolted down the falls and bounded around the boat shrieking, “Eat! Eat! Eat!”

  It bounced off Dennis’s leg and dug in its claws—which hurt—but it wasn’t even as heavy as it looked. Lawrence took a swipe at it with his sword, but it was just too fast.

  “Well ... give it something to eat!” Rebecca commanded. The entire canopy above was beginning to thrum with the chant “Eat! Eat! Eat!”

  “You feed that thing, it’ll never leave!” objected Silva. “Them other bastards’ll be down in a instant and eat us too!”

  “Feed it!” Rebecca ordered, and Rajendra obeyed, tossing another biscuit at the creature.

  “No!” Sandra almost shouted. Dennis was right, she thought, but it was too late. Seizing the morsel, the creature stuffed it in its mouth, showering crumbs in all directions. Lawrence was trying to get close enough to take another swipe with his sword when another, similar creature swooped down into the boat and defiantly demanded, “Eat!” To their amazement, the first one launched itself at the second, spewing crumbs and shrieking, “Eat! Goddamn!” It struck the stationary “intruder” like a bullet and, as quickly as that, in a shower of feathers and blood, the intruder was dead. Frizzed out now, its meager plumage standing on end, the first creature scampered back up the falls almost to the limbs above and spread its long arms, feathery, membranous wings taut. With formidable claws bared at the ends of long fingers, and its neck stretched out, teeth exposed, it gobbled thunderously like a tom turkey. All protests of “Eat!” ceased in the branches above, and triumphantly, the little creature strutted warningly back down the falls. Finally, hopping the distance to its dead cousin, it clutched the corpse and tore away a feathery gobbet. “Eat!” it chirped contentedly. “Goddamn!”

  “Goddamn!” echoed Dennis Silva approvingly. “Little guy’s got the basics down!”

  “Look,” breathed Sister Audry, pointing at the brightening world around them.

  Sandra gasped. For nearly the last week, while they swayed between the tree trunks, living a miserable, virtually seagoing existence with all the attendant hardships and inconveniences (particularly on the ladies), Yap Island had worked with shiksaks. It had been almost like watching maggots in meat, except these maggots were nearly as voracious toward one another as they were intent on their primary goal. Mating pairs coupled everywhere, briefly and violently, and the act ended, as often as not, with the death of at least one of the participants. Abel speculated the fighting was the natural outcome of cramming so many highly territorial carnivores together in one place for any reason, but it seemed utterly senseless and unnatural to everyone else. Males died, females died, shiksaks of both sexes died fighting over the carcasses of the slain. When a clutch of eggs was laid, almost as casually as defecating, they were often eaten or crushed by their own mothers. Despite Abel’s speculation, he was at a loss to explain this aspect of their behavior, this utter disregard for their offspring.

  Apparently, once laid and forgotten, the eggs were safe unless a creature just happened upon them, so maybe they exuded no attractive scent or maybe, as they’d speculated before, shiksaks just didn’t have a welldefined sense of smell out of the water. There was no telling. Abel and Brassey had calculated that despite this apparently self-destructive behavior, there would still be a net increase in the ultimate number of shiksaks. Even given the inevitable infant mortality, this annual smorgasbord/ orgy might be the only way the creatures had to keep their numbers at a sustainable level. At sea, they had no (known) natural enemies except mountain fish and one another. Sandra was surprised that even Sister Audry allowed that, sickening as it was, God may have allowed shiksaks to sort this hideous arrangement out for themselves, since she was incapable of believing he’d designed it thus. Secretly, Sandra reflected that Courtney Bradford would have felt somewhat vindicated after Audry had so violently attacked his faith in a partnership between creation and natural selection. She was glad he wasn’t here to crow about it.

  That morning, however, when the day began to break upon the virtually denuded, devastated ... battlefield ... that Yap now resembled, all that remained of the great infestation was the destruction left in its wake—and the wake of something else that had happened in the night they still didn’t understand. Bloated, festering carcasses lay scattered among fallen trees and sandy, almost rippled soil. The whole plac
e looked like reels Sandra had seen of Poland after the Nazis bombed whole areas into desolation, except that instead of dead livestock, dead shiksaks were littered about. She was fascinated to see green kudzu shoots already bursting forth from some of the dead, and wondered if those that had eaten of them had been infected as well. In all her view, there remained only a single, badly wounded shiksak, and it was determinedly dragging itself toward the sea.

  “They’re gone,” she murmured in wonder.

  “Gone,” Rajendra agreed. Until last night, he’d still maintained that Silva’s scheme of “riding things out” had been a mistake. Now he seemed as relieved as anyone else.

  “Gone and washed away, by the look of things.” Silva said. “I would’ve expected even more bodies ... and look, there’s puddles all over the place, with junk all tangled up like after a flood.” Silva looked at Sandra. “Say, what did happen last night? I musta been ... preoccupied.”

  “You were drunk,” Sandra said scornfully. “Not really your fault, I suppose. I should’ve stopped you, but I had no idea ...”

  “A surge of seawater, like a tidal wave, came in shortly after midnight,” Abel said seriously. “Several surges, in fact. All were relatively gentle in a sense—no monstrous, crashing waves—but for a while, seawater surged right beneath the boat at the base of the trees. It gave us some concern,” he added as an understatement. They’d been very concerned that their trees might be undermined and fall, as a matter of fact.

  “So it wasn’t all a dream,” Silva muttered. “Did Rajendra really squeak?”

  “I wouldn’t have heard it over your yodeling!” Sandra said in an accusatory tone. She rubbed her brow. “Chorus after chorus of ‘In the Jailhouse Now,’ for God’s sake!”

  Dennis looked at her blankly. “I cain’t yodel,” he said.

  “No,” Sandra agreed, “you can’t. Never do it again. That’s an order.”

  Silva arched his eyebrows and looked at Lawrence. “Ever seen anything like this before? A tide high enough to cover an island like Yap?”

  “Yes, ’ut only when the ground shakes. Large tides cross Tagran then. Tagranesi feel earth shake, go to high grounds.” He looked worried. “Tide cross here, it cross Tagran too. Ground not shake, late at night, Tagranesi ’ight not go to high grounds ...”

  “The surge came from the southwest. Perhaps it didn’t reach as far as Tagran,” Brassey said, trying to reassure Lawrence.

  “Let’s get down and out of here,” Rajendra urged angrily. His carpenter agreed.

  “Not so fast,” Sandra replied. “Captain Lelaa?”

  “The surge, or whatever it was, has completely subsided now. We should be able to cross the breakers with the tide around midday,” Lelaa replied, glancing at the moon beginning to rise. “We have sufficient time to observe a while longer, to make sure the infestation is indeed over. All I see is that one injured creature, but it is possible more will arrive. We should not wait too long, though, if we want to leave today.”

  With the full sun, there were no more shiksaks, and the stench of rotting corpses and vegetation became overpowering. Sandra was convinced they needed to leave regardless. Thank God they still had sufficient rum-dosed fresh water. She doubted that any uncontaminated water would be found on the island for some time. Carefully, they lowered the boat to the damp, mushy ground. Abel could help a little this time, and all others were sent down by rope before they made the attempt, both for safety and to decrease the weight.

  Silva was annoyed to see how far Rebecca’s new pet had chewed through one of the ropes. Another few minutes might have done for them. “Stupid shit,” he muttered accusingly at the creature, which seemed perfectly content to remain with them.

  “Stupidshit!” the parrot lizard agreed enthusiastically. Uncharacteristically, Silva was at a loss to come up with a clever name for the thing, and that left him a little morose. He’d always thought he had a talent for names. His perpetual fallback, calling it “Spanky,” fell on deaf ears as usual. (Nobody knew why he always suggested naming anything ridiculous or inconvenient after Walker’s engineering officer, but he apparently had a reason.)

  “Stupidshit Eat?” The thing demanded hopefully after the boat touched the ground.

  “Hey!” said Dennis, inspired. “Let’s call him ‘Stupidshit’!”

  “Absolutely not!” Rebecca decreed, coaxing the creature out of the boat and onto the ground.

  “Stu’idshit sounds good to ’e,” Lawrence agreed.

  “No.”

  “Hmm,” said Silva, coiling and stowing the falls after Lelaa brought them down. Rajendra and his men were positioning the rollers. All were alert, but in spite of everything, a festive mood prevailed. “Let’s see. Eat—Pete! We can call him Pete!”

  “I think General Alden might take some offense at that,” Sandra observed dryly.

  “Well ... let’s call him ‘Petey’ then! That’s a fine, upstandin’ American pet name!”

  Sandra giggled. “What, make him a member of ‘Our Gang’?” Of course, the reference was lost on everyone else.

  “Petey!” shrieked the gluttonous tree-leaper. “Petey Eat?”

  “I guess that’s settled,” Silva quipped in the face of Rebecca’s glare. “C’mon, let’s get a move on. I’ve seen enough o’ this dump. Time to get back in the Navy.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Mid Eastern Sea

  USS Walker was steaming at twenty knots—her best, most economical speed—almost due east through moderate seas into the rising sun. Commodore Harvey Jenks stood on the starboard bridgewing, enraptured by the seemingly effortless sense of motion. His hat was held tightly under his arm and his hair whipped in the breeze. The pitching, streaming bow tossed occasional packets of spray in his face as it sliced the marching swells, and he laughed like a kid, with closed eyes and a drooping, dripping mustache. O’Casey was beside him, crowding the lookout, and despite having experienced it before, he seemed to be enjoying it just as much as Jenks. Their immediate past had been put far behind them and the two men had apparently resuscitated their old friendship to a degree at least as strong as ever.

  Lieutenant Blair of the Imperial Marines was the only other Imperial officer aboard, but he’d brought a small detachment of his men from Achilles and was currently drilling them alongside Chack’s Marines, aft. He was a bright officer, and he’d learned a hard lesson in warfare at Singapore. He’d also become a fervent convert to Allied infantry tactics—particularly now that he understood and respected them. He even made valuable tactical suggestions, regarding the addition of muskets to the shield wall, that Chack was perfectly willing to test. Later that day, they planned to “shoot at shields” again. Apparently Chack and Blair both thought they’d figured “something” out.

  “Skipper on the bridge!” came Fal-(Stumpy)-Pel’s high-pitched cry.

  “As you were,” replied Matt, and Jenks and O’Casey stepped into the pilothouse to see an amused Captain Reddy, towing a beaming Courtney Bradford in his wake. “It looks like you’re enjoying yourselves, gentlemen,” Matt said, taking in their semi-soaked appearance.

  “Captain Reddy,” Jenks practically gushed, “before now I could only imagine what it must be like, but now I’m utterly smitten, sir!”

  Gray stomped up from below, pushing Bradford forward. He’d heard the exchange. “This is twenty knots,” he growled proudly. “If the sea was a little calmer and we had the fuel to throw away, we’d show you thirty!” He leered at Jenks’s expression of wonder. “Once upon a time, she’d crowd forty! Might still can, when we get a fourth boiler back in her.”

  “Lord above, to experience that!” Jenks muttered.

  Matt’s grin spread. No skipper is immune to compliments about his ship. “I don’t know about that, Boats,” he demurred, “but if any crew could coax it out of her, this one could.” He chuckled. “Spanky’s been running around like a mother hen, checking every little thing. Him and Miami. I think now that Tabby’s finally back on limited duty, h
e might take a breath.” He shook his head, looking at the Bosun. “I tried to leave her behind, you know. Send her home on one of the supply ships after it shows up and offloads. She’s still got a lot of lung damage. Spanky actually insisted on it. Told her she could rejoin her pals—the ‘other’ Mice—when she was fit.” He looked proudly back at Jenks. “She said she’d quit the Navy if we left her behind! Wouldn’t fight, wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t teach a soul a thing she knew! I thought Spanky was done for. His face was so red, I started to call Selass!”

  Gray laughed.

  “You have quite a crew, Captain Reddy,” Jenks said, complimenting him.

  “Yes, I do.” Matt’s grin faded. “Now, what you and I have to do, over the next week or so before we reach your home, is figure out how best to accomplish our mission without anybody—particularly this crew and the people we’re trying to rescue—getting hurt. Obviously, I want to do that while making sure some other deserving people do get hurt.” He glanced at Norm Kutas, who still had the conn. “Carry on, Quartermaster.” To the talker: “Please pass the word for Captain Chack, Lieutenant Blair, Misters Steele, Campeti, Reynolds, and McFarlane to join us in the wardroom.” He looked back at Jenks and O’Casey. “Gentlemen?”

  “I don’t really know what more I can add,” Jenks said, sipping hot tea from a cup. Spread out on the green-topped table between them was a chart showing the four main, or “Home,” islands of the Imperial heart. Matt had seen it before, but in the past Jenks had always covered the coordinates to salve his conscience, since it was treason to reveal the location of the islands. For a long time now it was understood that Matt knew precisely where they were, and under the circumstances, such fictions no longer existed between them. Jenks would doubtless be called a traitor by the Company when his story was told, but he considered the Company—and the Dominion—a far graver threat to the Empire than the Grand Alliance was.