Pirates of the Timestream
Page 27
“And,” Mondrago put in, “we have absolutely no idea of where their base planet is. And . . .” He came to a halt of horrified realization.
“Go ahead, Alexandre,” Jason urged.
“Well, sir . . . this is just speculation. But I can’t help wondering. What if the Trahshumanist underground knows how to get in touch with them, and does so—or has done so, or will do so—at some point in time? Remember, the Transhumanist equivalent of our temporal displacer is relatively small and compact and, therefore, portable. I know it can only work within, and in relation to, a planetary gravitational field. But there’s no reason that planet has to be Earth.”
For a moment, they all stared nightmare in the face.
“We’ve always been told that nothing can change recorded history,” said Grenfell, speaking at least half to himself. “But whose history? If there are in fact surviving Teloi today, presumably they keep written records.”
“Well,” said Rutherford briskly, “it is obvious that from now on our interstellar exploration vessels are going to have to be constantly on the alert for evidence of Teloi survivals.” His briskness did not deceive Jason. Underneath it lay an old man’s dreary realization that the assumed truths on which his life had been built were slipping away into the dim and dusty realm of aging memory, as though they had never really been, leaving him to wonder what his life had really meant.
“In fact,” said Mondrago, unintentionally deepening Rutherford’s depression, “all exploratory expeditions from now on probably ought to have armed escorts.”
“That’s not the half of it,” Jason added. “We’re going to need to institute a whole new survey program, moving outward much faster than the kind of leisurely in-depth exploration we’ve done so far because it will be a very narrowly focused Teloi hunt.”
“Those ships will definitely have to travel in armed convoys,” Mondrago nodded.
Rutherford turned brisk again. “Well, that’s outside our purview, although I will of course pass these observations on to the appropriate authorities. That, and the fact that law enforcement agencies must redouble their efforts to root out the Transhumanist underground in the present day—and, most especially, find their temporal displacer. But for the present, our own job is done, thanks to you, Jason.” His eyes narrowed as he studied the younger man. “And yet I can’t avoid the impression that something about this mission is still bothering you.”
“What? Oh, nothing, really. It’s just . . .” Jason flashed a self-deprecating smile. “Silly of me, but I still can’t help thinking it was a rotten trick to play on Morgan. It was like killing—or at least stealing—a part of his life.”
Chantal gave him an appraising look. “You liked him, didn’t you?”
“On a certain level, yes, I admit it. He was a . . . character.”
Rutherford raised one primly disapproving eyebrow. “He was also a wicked cutthroat.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect.” Jason chuckled. “Alexandre, do you remember what he said to us after we went along with his idea of going after the Teloi battlestation?”
“Yeah,” Modrago grinned. “He said you and I were buccaneers at heart.”
Chantal looked from one of them to the other and smiled. “I think he may have had a point.”
Rutherford did not smile. “I’m inclined to agree. And . . . I believe that in the times ahead, that may be exactly what we need, and what we’ll be grateful to still have.” He blinked, as though surprised at himself, and hastily wrapped around himself the persona that was expected of him, dismissing the meeting with a few dry, meaningless words.
Jason was departing along the corridor when he heard a hesitant voice call his name behind him. He stopped and turned around.
“Yes, Chantal?”
“If you have moment . . . I wanted to ask you something about Zenobia.”
“Yes, I couldn’t help noticing your interest in her.”
“I recall you mentioning that you had suggested to her the possibility of subsequent expeditions to give her aid in combatting the Transhumanist cult and any stranded Tuova’Zhonglu Teloi that might be assisting it.”
Yes, thought Jason, come to think of it, your eyes did light up on hearing that. “Yes. I wanted to make sure she’d be willing to accept such help. But, as you’ll recall me saying, I made no promises to her. That would have exceeded my authority. And besides, I have to rate the likelihood of it actually happening as very low, given the cost—at least given the technology available to our side—of temporal displacements.”
“Still, if you lend your support to the idea . . .”
“Maybe. Tell me: why are you so interested?”
Chantal blushed slightly. “Well . . . I am, after all, sort of the resident expert on the Transhumanists, and she is working against them, and . . . well . . .” She sought for words and failed.
But further words were unnecessary, for Jason finally understood. She was cherishing a hope that, at some point, the Authority would trust her sufficiently to send her back in time again, to meet the formidable female Transhumanist renegade.
“Hey,” he told her with a grin, “maybe Alexandre and I aren’t the only ones around here who are buccaneers at heart!”
Leaving her spluttering in search of a response, he turned and departed with a jaunty wave, whistling the tune of a sea shanty he had learned under the Caribbean stars.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
It would be dishonest to deny our continued fascination with the pirates of the Caribbean, even though it probably says something about us that we would rather not hear.
Some readers may feel that my depiction of Port Royal, Jamaica, a.k.a. “the Sodom of the New World” in its piratical heyday of the 1660s must be just a mite exaggerated. They may be assured that everything I have written about the place is fully supported by contemporary sources. If it were still in business today it would be a favorite destination for Spring Break.
Likewise, Henry Morgan’s 1669 expedition to Maracaibo and subsequent getaway, which reads like something out of an over-the-top Hollywood pirate movie, is absolutely factual—and, as far as we know, accomplished without assistance from time travelers. Equally factual, for that matter, is Morgan’s later taking of Panama with a two-thousand-man pirate army he led across the isthmus in a march of incredible privations to fight and win a pitched battle against two-to-one odds. Think about that for a moment. Try to imagine forging a disciplined army out of two thousand Jack Sparrows. The man’s leadership ability must have been off the charts. Indeed, the entire career of this remarkable (if deplorable) figure is proof of the old chestnut that truth is stranger than fiction. It seems safe to say, as the Jamaicans still do, that his was a very powerful duppy. And it is eminently appropriate that a brand of rum is named after him.
Zenobia aside, all the pirate captains I have named as associates of Morgan are factual, and commanded the ships I have assigned to them. I know of no evidence that Roche Braziliano (roughly translatable as “The Brazilian Rock,” which sounds like the professional wrestler he would probably be if he were around today) was with Morgan at Maracaibo. But since he did not disappear from history until 1671, it is not impossible that he could have been. I challenge anyone to prove he wasn’t.
Don Alonzo de Campos y Espinosa is also a true-life portrait. On his return to Spain he was court-martialed for the Maracaibo fiasco by the War Tribunal of the Council of the Indies, but his conviction was voided. The feeling seems to have been that it wasn’t his fault that he had been up against a genius of sorts.
I couldn’t make up the names of the Port Royal whores if I tried. They are authentic, although I can’t prove that all the ladies named herein were practicing their profession at the time of the story.
There seems to be some disagreement on how far back the word “privateer” goes. It may not have been coined until the eighteenth century. But the people of the seventeenth century were nothing if not familiar with the concept, so even if the word itself i
s an anachronism I consider it a permissible one in the interest of clarity. And “pirate” was a fighting word—especially among privateers. Henry Morgan’s sensibilities were deeply wounded whenever anyone called him a pirate. You didn’t want to wound Morgan’s sensibilities. You really didn’t.
Dates in the historical sources are often imprecise, and the course of events immediately preceding the captains’ council off Cow Island is especially unclear. One account seems to suggest that HMS Oxford joined Morgan there and arrested Le Cerf Volant, only becoming Morgan’s flagship afterwards. I find this impossible to believe. Without the instantaneous global communications we take for granted today, her captain would have had no way of knowing Morgan and his fleet were going to be rendezvousing there and therefore no reason for going to that particular speck of land. I have accepted the other version, which is that Oxford reported to Governor Modyford at Port Royal, and that Morgan subsequently took her to Cow Island. This involves a certain amount of “random motion,” but the math works. Incidentally, Morgan actually had a total of twelve ships there before the Oxford disaster, and eight for his descent on Maracaibo. I have added one: the Rolling-Calf, which is imaginary, as is her set-to with the equally fictional L’Enfer.
Likewise fictional (needless to say) is my version of the Oxford explosion’s cause, although everything else about it is supported by contemporary accounts. These accounts sometimes contradict each other; I have picked and chosen, taking the elements that seem most plausible and rejecting things like the mainmast falling across Morgan’s dinner table. The mere fact that he survived at all was so extraordinary that it seems to have lent itself to embellishment.
The Afro-Caribbean syncretic religions are a complex and fascinating subject to which I have endeavored to do accurate and respectful justice. The same goes for Jamaican folkways, but our information on these goes back only to much later periods. I have used aspects of the “Nine Night” funeral ceremonies and of the “Koo-min-ah” as it was witnessed among the Maroons as recently as the 1930s, and have attempted to “reverse-engineer” these practices back to the seventeenth century, with reference to their West African origins. The resulting synthesis should be considered, in its totality, a product of the author’s imagination. But the elements from which it is synthesized are authentic—except, of course, for the innovations introduced by Zenobia, which needless to say are entirely imaginary. In the same manner, the fictional rites in Chapter Sixteen—aside from the participation of a Teloi—are cobbled together out of actual practices of the Secte Rouge that were attested to in the same period of the 1930s. In all of these matters, I make a point of acknowledging my indebtedness to Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse.
The buccaneers’ articles of agreement described in Chapter Thirteen are also something of a composite, incorporating some provisions drawn from similar articles dating from the early eighteenth century. I doubt if these things changed much in fifty years or so.
There is really no meaningful way to compare currencies across the centuries, but it has been estimated that a piece of eight was the equivalent in purchasing power of a little over fifty turn-of-the-twenty-first-century U.S. dollars. An English pound was worth about four pieces of eight. To put it in perspective: under the provisions of typical articles like those described herein, a buccaneer who lost his right arm on a successful expedition got something over $30,000 in “disability compensation.”
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
AUTHOR’S NOTE