by Isaac Asimov
“You okay?” Jane took his hand and helped pull him up into a sitting position.
“Yeah.” Steve looked up toward the deck of the ship. He couldn’t see much from the dinghy, but the sounds of the fight were continuing. “Anybody notice?”
“If they did, they didn’t care. Besides, as soon as we went over the rail, we were out of sight.” She looked at him. “Now what?”
“Well …” Steve pointed to the green coast of Jamaica. “I think we’d better row for shore. It’s not too far. And I think the current will help us.”
“Okay.”
They sat next to each other on the center bench, each taking an oar. At first they had trouble coordinating their strokes, and the dinghy banged against the side of the ship several times. Finally they got into a steady rhythm and slowly began to move toward the shore.
Rita stayed with MC 2 at the rail of the Hungry Hawk as it approached the Sidonia from the side opposite the Cadiz. Roland had joined the buccaneer attack while Rita and MC 2 watched from safety. MC 2, however, was becoming more agitated as he watched.
“Don’t interfere,” said Rita. “These buccaneers belong to this time. Take care of me, and of Roland if you can.”
“You are safe here,” said MC 2.
Rita strained to follow Roland’s movements as he darted about on the Sidonia. Sails, masts, and the crowd of fighting men all obscured her vision. MC 2 watched intently, however, with his robotic concentration. Suddenly he jumped on the rail and ran across the gangplank.
“Hey, wait! MC 2! Stop!” Rita shouted in surprise. When the robot ignored her instructions, she realized that the First Law was requiring MC 2 to act. She watched him as long as she could, but soon he, too, was lost in the crowd on board the other ship.
Even on the sidelines, Rita was thrilled. Nothing could match seeing the history she had studied for so long being made right in front of her. The clanging of the swords and occasional bang of flintlock pistols scared her a little, but she reminded herself that this was the buccaneer life-style.
Wayne was standing by the helm of the Old Laughing Lady with Captain Tomann, watching the other two ships attack their prey up ahead. They were drawing very close now. The previous night, Wayne had begun to make friends with the short-tempered buccaneer captain. He had not yet sought his help. First he had wanted to establish some rapport.
He had also known that he would have to tell Captain Tomann some kind of phony story. Thinking of one had taken a little time. Now, however, he decided the time to approach the captain had arrived.
“Captain,” said Wayne. “I have another business proposition for you.”
“Eh? Now? What would that be?”
“It appears to me that we are arriving a little late this time. That is, we might not get a full share of the booty. Don’t you agree?”
Captain Tomann glowered, resting one hand on his sword hilt. “If we board before the fighting ends, we’ll take our share in any way we must.”
“Of course. But, uh …” Wayne glanced around suspiciously and motioned for the captain to step away from the man at the helm. “Maybe you and I can make a special profit from all this, if you’re willing.”
“Well, now. What’s all this, then?”
“A short, slender man is on board the Hungry Hawk. I want him.”
“To kill him?”
“No, no. As my prisoner.”
“What’s in it for me, then?”
“Ransom,” said Wayne.
“Ransom?” Captain Tomann looked at him sharply, truly interested for the first time.
“You and I can split it evenly. No need to inform anyone else, though, is there?”
“Who is he?”
“His name is MC 2, but don’t say it aloud. Someone else might overhear and figure out who he is.”
“Goes by his initials, eh? So that’s his name — but who is he, that someone’s going to pay ransom to get him back?”
“The younger son of a colonial, up on the mainland.”
“A rich man’s son, is he? Who’s his father?”
“No, no. If I tell you everything, then you don’t need me anymore.”
Captain Tomann grinned at him, showing broken teeth. “Aye, you’re a sharper fellow than you look. Well, then, how much ransom can we get for this fellow?”
Wayne thought quickly. He decided to err on the side of generosity. “What would you say to one full chest of gold coin?”
“I would say, two are better.”
“We’ll get it.”
“Ah! So what’s the proposition, exactly?”
“You help me snatch him and hold him. In the meantime, I’ll arrange the ransom.”
“I think you need me more than I need you. I’ll take more than half the share.”
“Well …” Wayne shrugged.
“I can find out who his father is when I get my hands on him. But without me, you have no way to catch him and no place to keep him.”
“That’s right,” said Wayne.
Captain Tomann, who had expected an argument, blinked at him in surprise. “You agree?”
“Sure. You take two shares to my one, whatever the ransom turns out to be.”
“Why?” Captain Tomann scowled and leaned his wild-eyed face close to Wayne’s. “Why would you give up so much of the ransom so easy?”
“Call it a … grudge,” Wayne said quickly.
“Eh?” Captain Tomann cocked his head and grinned slowly. “A grudge, you say.”
“That’s right,” said Wayne, seeing that his companion accepted the explanation. “A personal matter.”
“Aye, a personal matter. Now, that I can understand. All right, mate. We have a bargain, then.” He pounded Wayne on the back.
“And like I said before, there’s no need to tell anyone else, right?”
“Right you are, mate. It wouldn’t do for my crew to know I was getting more than my normal captain’s share. Now let’s find this fellow. We’re almost in position.” He turned and waved toward the man at the helm. “Hard to port, there! Hard to port!”
The buccaneer at the helm suddenly turned the wheel. He strained to hold it in position. Slowly, the ship began to turn.
The prow of the Old Laughing Lady came up closely on the three grappled ships. Some buccaneers were ready with grappling hooks. Others were hanging in the ropes above them with their weapons. The ship angled carefully toward the free side of the Hungry Hawk, opposite where it was grappled to the Sidonia. When the old Laughing Lady came alongside, the buccaneers grappled the Hungry Hawk.
“Come on, then!” Captain Tomann punched Wayne in the arm and strode forward.
Wayne followed carefully. He was concerned about getting into the fight, but was a little more confident now that he had an ally in the fierce buccaneer captain. Besides, this might be his best chance just to grab MC 2 and go home with him.
Ahead, the buccaneers in the rigging swung for ward on ropes to the Sidonia; the others hoisted gangplanks and ran across them.
The Hungry Hawk was nearly empty, since its crew was fighting on the Sidonia. The buccaneers from the Old Laughing Lady made their way across it quickly, anxious to earn their shares of the loot by joining in the taking of the Sidonia. Captain Tomann ran across the gangplank, his cutlass in one hand and his pistol in the other. He jumped down to the deck, looking around.
Wayne climbed up carefully on the gangplank, which shifted back and forth as the two ships under it swayed on the waves. He nearly lost his balance and pitched into the narrow space between the ships. Finally, his heart pounding, he ran across after Captain Tomann and caught up with him.
Captain Tomann pointed to a lone figure with his cutlass. “Who’s that little fellow, standing by the rail?”
Wayne recognized Rita and shook his head. “That’s not him, but it’s a friend of his.”
“A friend?”
“A friend who can help us,” said Wayne. He decided that MC 2 must have been forced by the First Law t
o interfere with the fighting. “Well, come on!”
Wayne followed him, worried that Captain Tomann might hurt her. The buccaneer captain ran up behind Rita and grabbed her arm. She jumped and tried to pull away.
“I say, mate!” Captain Tomann still held her, but straightened in surprise as he looked at her carefully. “She’s no buccaneer. It’s a woman. You know that?”
“Easy,” said Wayne to Captain Tomann. “Let’s get her back to the ship. I can talk to her there.”
“So be it, then.”
“I’m Wayne Nystrom. Your name is Rita.”
“That’s right.”
“We need to talk.”
She just looked at him, warily.
“Come on.”
Wayne and Captain Tomann each took one of her arms and led her back to the Old Laughing Lady. She said nothing, but did not seem particularly scared. Wayne wondered why she was being so cooperative.
Steve strained against the oar in the dinghy. N ext to him on the middle bench, Jane was also working hard. As they rowed for the coast of Jamaica, they were facing away from the ships. Swaying on the gentle waves, each ship sent its masts angling high against the blue sky. At such a great distance, the few buccaneers Steve could see on deck were mere specks. None of them had taken any notice of the dinghy.
“It’s just as well we’re getting away,” said Steve, breathlessly.
“What do you mean?”
“We told Hunter we could take care of ourselves with the pirates, but we didn’t really do too well. Since we don’t know where either one of the robots is, we don’t have their protection any more. We’ll be safer on dry land again than in the middle of a bunch of pirates during a fight.”
“I think we handled ourselves just fine for a couple of people from our time.”
“Well, I guess.” Steve shrugged. After that, they used their energy only for rowing. Jamaica wasn’t too far, but their progress was slow.
15
EVERY SO OFTEN, Steve glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were heading in the right direction. Finally, after a long time, he realized that they didn’t have to keep rowing to reach the shore. He let out a deep breath of relief and shipped his oar.
“We can take a break.”
“What? We can?” Gratefully, Jane shipped hers, “too. “Are we there?” She turned around to look.
“Not yet,” said Steve. “But the current and the tide have taken us. We couldn’t row our way back out now if we wanted to. So we might as well take it easy.”
“I know people must have seen us go overboard, but I guess nobody saw us rowaway.”
“No one who cared, anyway,” said Steve. He looked back at the big ships. The first two pirate ships were still grappled to their prey. However, the Old Laughing Lady had pushed off again and was under sail, leaving the other ships behind. On its present course, it would pass them some distance away on its trip back to Port Royal.
He turned around on the bench, to face forward toward Jamaica.
“What’s our next plan of action?” She turned on the bench also, bumping him with one shoulder.
“It looks like we’ll have quite a hike back into Port Royal, so that’s going to take up the rest of the day, I think.” Steve looked down the coastline as far as he could.
“Are we going to land near the spot where we first c appeared, do you think? Along the Cagway?”
“I’m afraid we’ll have a much longer walk than that. We’re going to land outside the Cagway, which means we’ll have to walk the entire length of the peninsula. Or maybe we can get a ride on a farmer’s cart or something.” He looked up at the sun in the west.
“What’s wrong?”
“I doubt we have enough daylight left to reach Port Royal.”
“We might have to camp out on the way.”
Jane glanced at him. “Camp out? Just … out in the woods?”
“I don’t know if we’ll have any choice.”
She was silent for a moment. “Well, it’ll be warm enough. But I guess we should contact Hunter with the transmitters at some point. Since his receiver is internal, it won’t matter if buccaneers are with him; they can’t hear it.”
“Yeah!” Steve grinned. “I forgot about those in all the excitement. But let’s wait until we land, so he can home in on a fixed location.”
“He won’t have a way to reach us here, unless he steals a boat or swims.”
“He won’t have to,” said Steve. “We’ll arrange to meet him on the docks.”
“Sounds good to me.”
They relaxed a little and let the water carry them in toward the shore. Steve finally felt a release of tension. They were about to land safely.
“You know,” Steve said. “I feel pretty good, really. I actually survived a sword fight with a real pirate, even if I did have to jump overboard to get away.” He laughed. “Not exactly a success, but I’m still here.”
“I’d say it was a success,” said Jane, smiling at him. “Thank you for stepping up and facing him. I … never went through anything like that before.”
“You’re very welcome. And thank you for dropping this boat down to rescue me.”
“And you’re welcome in return.”
Steve grinned at her. He wanted to put his arm around her, but he didn’t know if that was a good idea or not. After surviving the attack on shipboard, he felt closer to her than ever. Still, he wasn’t sure how she would take such an action, and they had to work together for a long time yet. Instead, he just looked ahead to the shore, which was growing closer all the time.
Finally the dinghy ran aground in shallow water. Steve and Jane jumped out into the surf, throwing spray on themselves, and pulled on the bowline. Steve’s feet sank into soft sand and he struggled for traction. The dinghy, freed of their weight, came farther forward. Their clothes, which had finally dried out in the sunlight, became drenched all over again. Then the dinghy got stuck once more.
They waded out of the water, up onto an empty beach. For a moment, neither of them spoke while they caught their breath. By then the sun was low over the water in the west. The breeze was cooler than before.
Steve reached for his communicator. He didn’t feel it. Worried, he looked down where it should have been.
“What’s wrong?” Jane asked.
“My communicator’s gone. It must have come off when I hit the water.”
“Uh-oh.” Jane checked for hers quickly, then looked up at him. “Mine’s gone, too.”
“That must be it, then,” said Steve. “It’s a long jump from the deck of that ship. We hit the water hard.”
“Hunter won’t have any idea where we are,” said Jane.
“He may have seen us in the boat,” said Steve. “Otherwise, all we can do is get back to Port Royal and head for the docks. He’ll probably get there first.”
“Yeah.” Jane nodded. “Shall we go? We have a long walk ahead.”
Hunter lay motionless on the deck of the Sidonia. Around him, the fighting had finally stopped as the Spanish crew surrendered. Then the combined crews of all three ships examined their new booty. As night fell, they lit torches and celebrated again. Hunter, concerned that any further action he might take would violate the Laws of Robotics in ways he did not comprehend, did not move, though all of his senses were still operating.
Around him, the buccaneers drank more rum, whooped and fired pistols into the air, and staggered around the deck singing.
“Hey, mate,” said a drunken buccaneer. He leaned over Hunter, his head and shoulders a dark shadow against the stars in the clear sky above them. “You hurt bad, are ya?”
“No,” said Hunter.
“Well, here.”
Hunter felt the buccaneer and a couple of his companions lift him under his arms and pull him up into a sitting position against a rolled sail. Then, hoisting tankards of rum, they wandered away. Hunter remained where he was, gazing across the deck to the dark, open sea beyond it.
The three sh
ips were ungrappled again and under sail for Port Royal. The night weather was so good that little work was required. Hunter could see the torches burning on the decks of the other ships in the distance. All three buccaneer crews were celebrating their excellent fortune; even the man at the helm of the Sidonia had a tankard in one hand.
Even in his uncertainty, Hunter was still alert for MC 2 or Rita on board the ship. As usual in the dark, he was using voiceprint, heartbeat, footsteps, and even breathing patterns to identify the humans within in his hearing. These supplemented his infrared vision, which was only useful for detecting people in his line of sight.
Hunter was burdened by a new contradiction, but this time it was self-induced. He felt certain that he had to have made some sort of error that had caused Jane to hit him. It had to be an error of a magnitude he estimated to be very unlikely in a positronic robot, especially a robot of his new and highly specialized design. Until he solved that puzzle, he was afraid to take any action for fear of compounding the error.
He was certain that the error had resulted from the stress he had already felt concerning his efficiency in obeying the First Law. Such stress had always been known to affect robots adversely; it was a side effect of the ultimate priority of the First Law. Figuring out what his error had been was now a prerequisite to normal action; without his identifying and correcting it, the First Law would not let him risk harm to humans by taking any chance of repeating it.
On the other hand, the fact that he had made an important error at all told him that his thinking was faulty. So he really did not know if he was capable of figuring out what his error was. That contradiction kept him sitting right where the buccaneers had left him.
Other buccaneers staggered past from time to time, taking a look at him. Since he was not visibly injured, they left him alone. Hunter heard one of them comment that he was obviously drunk, and deservedly so.
As Hunter remained almost in a stunned state on the deck, he was also uncertain as to what he should do next even if he could summon the will to do anything. He wanted to get his group in one place again; at the very least, the First Law would be easier to obey if all the humans on his team were with him. However, he was not sure if he was worthy of continuing his mission. The First Law might require that he simply return with the team, leaving MC 2 behind, and advise the Oversight Committee to find a replacement for Hunter.
