“Well, it’s mostly general navigation, of course,” the Least Wrangler responded. “It doesn’t really matter to a navigator whether the acceleration comes from cage or sail.”
Wong asked why, if sails gave an added boost, all ships were not hybrid ships.
“Because it’s cheaper to add another cage.” Fife did not know fusion, but he did know cost-benefit ratios, and he had dealt with enough wayward asteroids in his time. “Cage-handling is simpler and you don’t need to carry two berths with two different skill sets.”
“There was another factor,” Grubb offered. “Have you ever heard The Ballad of Sveyn Kim-Yung?” Securing shaken heads in response, he explained. “It tells of an old sailor who wants to pass on his skills to an apprentice, but there’s no one who wants the position. That’s what happened. No one wanted to learn an obsolete technology. The schools stopped teaching it and eventually all its practitioners retired.”
“All except Ratline and Satterwaithe,” said Twenty-four.
“And Corrigan,” said Ivar, defending, as he thought, his instructor.
Grubb nodded sagely. “Aye, and a few others scattered here and there. Corrigan’s one of the youngest of the lot, and he’s pushing forty from the wrong side.”
“So it has always been in history,” Fife replied, moving a piece of carnic to his lips. “New ways come, old ways go. There is always great talk about how much better—‘more human,’ you often hear—the old technology was, but you’ll notice that no one ever goes back. We don’t chip flint arrowheads any more, either.”
When all engines were pulsing nicely in that four-square marching beat that Gorgas knew so well, he turned to Corrigan. “Well, Number One, are you ready?” Rightfully, it should be the sailing master who directed from the bridge, but Gorgas understood Satterwaithe’s decision to work directly at the sail-handling stations. That equipment had not been used in twenty years. It was best that the two more experienced sailors be on the spot.
Corrigan nodded and Gorgas waited and when a moment more had gone by, the captain said, “What order do I give?”
“Raise the mains’l,” Corrigan told him.
Gorgas nodded in irritation. He ought to have guessed that much. “Very well. Do it.”
“Mains’l, aye. Ship, start the bunghole, and mains’l aloft.”
“Clarification requested,” Ship responded and, listening down in engineering, Bhatterji snickered. Miko frowned and whispered into her own hushmike.
“Clarification acknowledged,” Ship announced to Corrigan’s intake of breath (which he let out in puzzled fashion, as he had clarified nothing). “Primary sail deployment port opened. Main sail loop feeding through primary winches.”
“Very well,” said Corrigan and turned to Gorgas. “Mains’l away,” he said.
Gorgas nodded. “And now what?”
“The control shrouds run up through the way-grommet. Then we kick amps.”
“And then?”
“The hoop stress from the current causes the loop to circularize. That will take, oh, two hours for a loop that size, even with the flux pumps. That gives the shroudmaster time to attach the working shrouds at the compass points.”
“Two hours?” said Gorgas (and again, below, Bhatterji snickered).
“The sail is sixty-four kilometers wide,” Corrigan said, knowing that he sounded defensive. “It takes time to inflate it. Attitude control will be tricky until it stiffens.”
Gorgas could not keep a quizzical look from his countenance, and even The Lotus Jewel forgot her vow and looked directly at Corrigan. She could not remember any such boring interval from the morphies she had watched. It had always been “sails up and catch the wind.” The grand moment that Corrigan had imagined came to seem, even to him, somewhat comic. Yet even a useless gesture is better than no gesture at all.
And down below Bhatterji roared. “No wonder that technology went into the dustbin.”
“Ms. Satterwaithe?”
The acting second officer and reserve sailing master looked up from the distance into which she had been gazing and away from the faded memories and dreams that lingered there. Alone in her own quarters as she was, she was too far from the loft to hear the drum rolls as the lines fed out or the hum of the compressors as they metered coolant to the cladding; yet somehow she did hear them. Perhaps she would always hear them. “Who is that?”
“Ship. Message for your information. The mains’l is away.”
Satterwaithe nodded slowly. “Yes. I understand. Thank Mr. Gorgas for me.”
“Clarification requested.”
“Gorgas. Thank the acting captain for the message.”
An uncharacteristic and irritating pause intervened before Ship responded, “Acknowledged.”
Alone once more—if she had ever been unalone in her life—Eugenie Satterwaithe raised her gnarled hands to her face.
The Ghost
When Gorgas opened his cabin door that evening to find the wranglers and the engineer’s mate en masse and weirdly costumed and crying out “Trick or Treat!” he could not for the life of him decide whether they had gone mad or he had.
It was all Akhaturian’s idea, of course. If he could convince his berth to help him scrape varnish, it was child’s play to get them to roam the ship and collect sweets. He had thought of it a few days before and at first it had been only a notion to help Twenty-four decompress and to celebrate the torch-lighting. But Okoye had overheard them planning and Akhaturian invited her to join them. Once Evermore saw that Okoye would participate, he joined in too, as if he were doing everyone a big favor, and indeed, as if it had been his idea all along. Okoye, in turn, went off and convinced Miko, who had never heard of any such a thing as Hallowe’en.
There is little in the way of costuming available on a tramp freighter, but a few odds and ends and a bit of imagination would do. It was, as Evermore commented, a little like connecting the dots. Wear enough dots and the costume would fill itself in.
Nkieruke Okoye portrayed a witch, though it could be argued that this was hardly a disguise for her. Yet she was not a witch as Europeans—even European witches—might imagine. She wore no pointed hat, placed no broom handle between her legs. However, by finding a bin-full of fibrop connector cables and fixing them to a belt, she did manage to approximate a grass skirt. With considerable patience, she braided her hair into a certain pattern that her mother had once taught her, and found enough colors among the greases and oils in the maintenance bins to decorate her face and arms and legs in the proper uli symbols. Uli bu ife umunwanji ne de naru, as folks said. She hesitated on the cusp between modesty and authenticity before deciding to wear the regalia overtop of a black singlet.
“There,” she told the apparition in the mirror, “you look just like the witchy-woman that people go to for advice.”
“Do not be so silly, child,” her mother answered her. “When did you last see anyone dress in such a way? Only at the folk festivals, I am thinking. How many women paint uli any more? Besides, you have gotten one of the cornrows wrong. And who ever heard of a witch-woman wearing a singlet?”
“Well,” Okoye said, ensuring that the zipper was fully up, “I don’t want anyone to see them yet.”
“Anyone, or a certain one?”
“Mother!”
“’Kiru?” said Rave Evermore, rapping on her hoígh plate, “are you ready?”
“Not yet,” ’Kiru told him and told her reflection and told the voice she sometimes heard in the stillness. “Not quite yet.”
Evermore’s garb was “high concept.” In a few odd hours, he had fabricated a genuine gizz. The gizmo had lights that blinked and wheels that went round and noises that came out of it from time to time. It didn’t actually do anything, but then it didn’t have to. It was kick just to watch it run. Evermore whitened his hair with flour stolen from Grubb’s stores, wore an old machinist’s apron, and carried the gizz in his left hand like a holy icon. When Akhaturian asked him what he was supposed t
o be, he said he was Thomas Edison, the Great Inventor.
He was waiting outside Okoye’s stateroom when the Igbo girl emerged and for a moment his heart stopped because her aspect was so frightening. Sharpened teeth and a face like a demon and…In the next moment, his heart rebooted like Bhatterji’s engines because, what with the bare arms and legs and the black singlet, he thought that she was naked. Okoye would not have lacked for a broomstick, had she actually wanted one.
“You look wonderful,” he said and tried to make it sound like he admired the realism of her costume; but Okoye heard his voice true and had to doubt his senses because she had made herself as hideous as she knew how.
“Where are the little girls?” she asked in a cackling voice, for the witchy-women used to snatch the young girls at midnight and take them into the forest to teach them the secrets of womanhood. It was supposed to have been a frightening experience, but Okoye had learned such things in a bland schoolroom in a far more pedestrian manner, and from a teacher who made it all sound simply awful, and so she often romanticized the old ways.
The only little girl available for abduction by witches was Twenty-four deCant, who in most regards could no longer be called “little,” nor was there much she could be taught in a forest clearing that she did not already know. Prudence, perhaps. She was the only one of the group who had transed her gender and had made a few odds and ends of scrap metal do for a suit of armor and a pole for a sort of lance. A buckler made of board stock and covered with metallic foil bore the motto Defend the Right! Evermore asked her if that meant she would not defend left-handers, which earned him a tongue, so Okoye told him that deCant would be his champion because he had fashioned the Wonderful Gizz and deCant had sworn to defend the Wright. This earned her a tongue too; so Okoye and Evermore really did have something in common.
A decent respect for symmetry demanded that if Twenty-four deCant were a knight in shining armor, Ivar Akhaturian ought to be a damsel in distress; and indeed there would be some merit to such a guise. His particular distress might not be entirely evident, but deCant really had saved him from it. Recall that Akhaturian’s own mother had, in effect, sold him to a band of gypsies. That might trouble even the most filial of minds. DeCant had snatched him from the arms of that dilemma by taking him in her own. If his future was now not exactly untroubled, at least the troubles were different.
However, symmetry wasn’t in it. The Least Wrangler had not the time or materials to make for himself a proper gown and so contented himself with a winding sheet and whitened hair and a faux beard. He called himself Socrates, and never mind that it was the Romans and not the Greeks who wore the toga. He did not know very much about Socrates, save that he was a famous philosopher. Had he known of the hemlock, he might have scrounged up a sequined gown after all.
Only Mikoyan Hidei of all that motley crew disdained a costume, wearing in addition to her duty coveralls only a wry smile, as if secretly amused by it all. She really was too old for childhood antics, she suggested with her mien, although her meaning was less clear—for she did not spurn any treat offered her. She tagged along, as she said, only to ensure that the others did not get into trouble. It was Miko, for example, who suggested that they inspect the fruit they received from Ratline for hidden razor blades.
She was utterly wrong about Ratline, but a guard’s duty is to be wary, not insightful. While Ratline was easily the scariest sight encountered that evening—’Kiru not excluded—he regarded the youngsters with a special affection and after they had departed for other prey, the old man, behind closed doors, wept for their innocence.
Satterwaithe was not the weeping sort, but the Hallowe’eners amused her and she was a hard one to amuse. She herself was once wont to go a-roaming on that fey night, and she derived an hour or so of wistful reminiscence from the visit, so it may be that, at this one stop, the youngsters gave more than they received.
Still, it was Grubb who was the target of opportunity, and the group made sure to end their odyssey in his demesne, where they received sweetballs and sherbets and nectars of various and wonderful sorts. Even Miko abandoned her aloofness after a few treats. Grubb dug out his concertina and sang songs and Miko—perhaps conditioned by the sweets—even joined in with the others on a chorus or two.
Wong and Fife came, and later The Lotus Jewel and Bhatterji, as well, for children often come in different sizes. The sysop knew a number of stories and Grubb turned the lights down so she could tell them. There was the Hairy Hand of Hunterdon County, and the Jersey Devil, and the Phantom Cyclist of Route 31, and to each of them the assembly gave delighted shivers.
Grubb gave a discordant squeeze on his concertina and in grave tones announced that none of them ghosts and such were any cause for worry because they all dwelt many megaklicks sunward of The River of Stars. “But there’s one, he ain’t all that far off, and that’s Ugo Terrell.”
“You go to where?” asked Evermore, for he would play even with ghosts.
But Grubb’s concertina screeched most abominably, so that the wranglers all sat suddenly back, and The Lotus Jewel as well. Bhatterji, who lounged behind the circle with his arms folded, said, “Are you certain you want to draw Ugo’s attention, Grubb?”
“Well, it ain’t me he’s rightly pissed at, is it? Though I don’t think he likes people making fun of his name.” He nodded toward Evermore, but did not look at him. The boy laughed and leaned to the witch woman beside him to whisper, “He thinks he can get me going.” But Okoye only said to Grubb, “Did you know the man?”
The chief shook his head. “No one knew him, not even those who did. He come on board this vessel a stranger and he left her the same way. There remain aboard this very ship only two who ever met him and you know the two I mean.” Grubb began pumping a strange tune on his instrument, one that wandered about a minor key without ever quite finding it, nor did it rightly have a tempo, for it would hasten or slow with Grubb’s words. “Who can say what may drive a man mad?” the chief intoned. “There are toxins and chemicals, yes; but these only simulate genuine madness, for true derangement must well up from deep within. There must be something loose inside your own heart, something that plays and wobbles until it breaks through all the barriers. This is what shredded Kurt John Jaeger, and I said ‘shredded’ for he chewed his own soul to tatters.
“He was a sailing master and one of the best, for only the best can ship on The River of Stars. He had guided Gullwing through the Io Tube. He had taken Empress of Cathay down to kiss the lips of the sun during the Solar Max expedition of Forty-Six. But what can even the best do, when they are aboard only for show? Had The River never raised sail, he might have borne it and, if not, he might have gone alone when he went. But the webfeeds demanded a show. All those ounces to Save the Riv’!” (A shout of triumph here.) “The old tramp had to don her gauds and caper one last time. They say that is what killed his heart: to perform for mere spectacle what had once been his life. Yet even that he might have borne, but for the mockery of Ugo Terrell.” When Grubb paused to drink a fruit bomb, the name seemed to linger in the empty air. It was almost, Okoye thought, that she heard it whispered afar off, but that was only a trick of the acoustics. Yet The Lotus Jewel too twisted to look over her shoulder with a small frown on her face. Bhatterji and Fife wore grim smiles, though for two very different reasons.
“Not that Terrell intended any mockery,” Grubb continued, “and what mockery can be crueler than that? For an engineer, for a Farnsworth man, he was much interested in sails and this was his misfortune, for his interest was ‘historical,’ as another man may find interest in ancient ruins. All those questions Terrell asked of the sailing master—they were all in the past tense, and that is the cruelest tense of all, for there is no hope in it. It began to seem to the inner Jaeger that the questions were meant to hurt, that it was done with malice aforethought.
“The River was not a happy ship in those days. She’d been but recently converted and those old hands that remained d
id not care for the new engines. Terrell—and his three mates and his five flame monkeys—were not welcomed, not at all.”
(“I wish I had the berth he had,” Bhatterji muttered aside to The Lotus Jewel, “the engines would have been back on line in days.” And the sysop whispered back, “The ship had more income in those days.”)
“Shortly after The Riv’ left Panic Town, Jaeger was in the mess hall—that very mess hall that we now use—entertaining the older hands with his tales. Terrell was sitting a little apart at another table listening with some of the younger crew while Jaeger told of the Great Flare of ’73 when he was master on Cloudray. He had gotten to the point where the CME, the coronal-mass-ejecta, had hit the magsail and induced such a current transient that the hobie quenched and the wire whiffed.
“And Terrell laughed.” (Grubb’s concertina wheezed with sick amusement.)
“That was really not the proper thing to do, because Jaeger and his mates done heroes’ work that day, running out a new sail and inflating it during the storm of the century. Terrell had laughed from surprise, not derision, for he had not realized that a hoop could fail in just that way; but Jaeger froze up on hearing it. He stood and left the mess with never another word nor a look back. That night, he came to the engineer, and Terrell, unmindful of the mortal offense he had given, let the man in. But Jaeger had come to him with a smile and a reefing knife and—some say—he did not come alone.
“There was no struggle, the coroner later concluded. That may mean that Terrell offered himself as a holocaust for the sins of the Farnsworth, as some sailors claimed, or it may only mean that he was taken by surprise. Or it may mean that others held him fast while Jaeger found his heart.
The Wreck of the River of Stars Page 34
