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Maggie's prophecy was quickly fulfilled as she powered up the Soft Cell's onboard electronics and fell in line with the ever-gathering herd of small craft: The Freaky Kon-Tikis sure were something else.
The open water near Friday Harbor brimmed from shore to shore with an immense flotilla. Much of the Raft had again fabricated itself into an artificial island, with the Kalakala somewhere near its core. But for the Races, the Raft had coalesced around a two-hundred-yard stretch of open water that constituted the playing for the Freaky Kon-Tikis.
Late to the party, Maggie cut her engine and floated the Soft Cell into place, lashing up to the outer rim of the makeshift structure. Even before she'd had a chance to position her bumpers or secure her sails, a dozen other craft were already lashing into place around her. Like iron filings drawn to a powerful magnet, the Soft Cell was quickly packed away tightly into the expanding mass of vessels.
Soon, merrymakers were stumbling across the deck, making for the open water at the center of the Raft. They were happy, halfway drunk and laughing and stumbling from boat to boat. Anyone who caught sight of Maggie called out her name and applauded. She was a hero once again. Cheers of “Maggie the Blockade Buster” rose up. Maggie smiled and waved.
Rachael and Maggie moved slowly across decks, limping and picking their footholds carefully. They were moving towards the large outline of the Kalakala close to the center of the Raft.
The Races were already underway, a strange array of craft gathered at one end of the long cut of water nested at the center of the artificial island. More were arriving through a thin channel, kept open to the north for contestants. Tiny strangle craft, only large enough to hold one person, bobbed on the waves.
“It always starts with the youth devision,” Maggie said as they were climbing down off the bow of an eighty-foot pleasure yacht to the stern of an old fishing trawler. Maggie had caught sight of Rachael watching the Race setup, shielding her eyes against the growing warmth of the sun. “The under fourteens. That's how it all started, you know, so they always have the honor of the first race.”
“Race?” Rachael watched as the ridiculous, patently handmade craft moved to form some sort of straight line. It shamed her to admit that she'd paid no attention to the Kon-Tiki festival from onshore, though she knew of its existence. It had always seemed so foreign and so remote, though it took place no more than fifty miles from her office.
“Man-powered boat races. That's how it began. The Ahab, that's our school ship, the students had a science project. Studying energy or momentum or something. Build a man-powered craft. It was only after school kicked out for the summer that the kids got the idea to race them. I don't remember who won. But the whole thing took off from there. Rafters like nothing better than an engineering challenge. Other kids got into the act the next years, then the adults, then the dryfoot sponsors and the news broadcasters. But at its core, it's still really about kids and their pedal boats. They go first. Four times around the track, one full mile. Winner takes all. Later, there's the divisions for the adults, some pedal-powered, some more exotic. Solar is always fun, at least when there's enough sun to make it go. Steam is always interesting. And of course, after dark it's all rocket powered.”
“Rockets?” Rachael said with alarm.
“Yeah, that's a real crowd pleaser.” They'd cleared the deck of the fishing trawler and climbed over to a three-mast sailing sloop that abutted the Kalakala. “But you got to be well liquored up before you voluntarily climb into one of those machines.”
“I had no idea,” Rachael said. There was a crack of a starter's pistol and the thin, haphazard line of rickety craft stuttered forward from the starting line. As if it were a comic attempt to look entirely unlike a boat race, the contestants in the youth pedal boats made slow going of making a lap. One boat sprang a leak and listed dangerously to its port. Two others appeared to lose control of their rudders and began to circle in a tight loop. Three craft, though, attempted to make a real race of it, rapidly – well, at least with a great show of churning water – making a full circle of the open patch of water at the center of the Kon-Tikis.
“As you might guess,” Maggie sighed, pausing to watch the start of the race. “The Ahab isn't exactly a magnet engineering school.” The pedal boat that had sprung a leak sank completely underwater. A pair of teenagers in orange life vests paddled a canoe out into the open water to rescue the pilot. “But God love them, they try.”
Maggie didn't wait to find out the winner. She turned and took a gangplank down off the large sailing ship and onto the car deck of the old ferry. All around, from every vessel, Rafters had gathered to watch the race, cheering. Thousands were watching the comedy unfold on the water with breathless anticipation. The Raft was loving it, this was their holiday. Rachael could feel the electricity in the air. This was the Raft's Fourth of July, its Christmas and its Easter, all wrapped up into one: The Freaky Kon-Tikis, the Raft kids' soapbox boat races. Somehow, it fit so perfectly.
Rachael smiled. Maybe a little bit of her now understood why the Rafters were so dead set on risking their lives to get here, unwilling to miss even a moment of the first race of the day. If Galahad had fully comprehended what his blockade was attempting to keep the Raft from, maybe he wouldn't have attempted it. It was hard to say.
Oh God, Gandalf, Rachael remembered, looking off down the gangplank after the hobbling Maggie.
Tiger Print. She didn't know.
The Raft Page 50
