The Voyage of the Minotaur

by Wesley Allison

  Terrence washed his face in the bowl of water sitting on a large crate. He didn’t know how it had gotten there. Then he pulled out his straight razor and shaving powder. Once his face was smooth, he peeled off his undershirt and replaced it with a clean one, then covered it with a clean shirt. He ran a comb through his hair.

  “You look almost smart enough to be seen with me,” said Yuah.

  “Shouldn’t you be seeing to your father or Miss Lusk? You heard what happened of course?”

  “My father is sleeping and there are more people seeing to Egeria than will fit into her room.”

  Terrence shrugged, and then offered her his arm, as they stepped out into the bright sunlight. Yuah led the way down the hill in a northeasterly direction. A leisurely walk of about a mile found them on a small grassy knoll overlooking the sea. Here on the opposite side of the promontory from the small bay where the HMS Minotaur was anchored, the waves crashed against a long sandy beach.

  Setting down the picnic basket, Yuah opened its top and removed a small yellow plaid blanket, which she spread out. The two sat down side by side, and she began removing wrapped package after wrapped package from the basket.

  “Curried egg?” she offered.

  He took one and bit into it.

  “Mrs. Colbshallow’s?”

  “No, I made them.”

  “I had no idea that you could cook.”

  “Oh, I’m talented.” She unwrapped a sandwich and handed it to him. He lifted up the dark rye bread and examined the thinly sliced but thickly piled meat, onion, cress, and mayonnaise.

  “I didn’t think we had any bread.”

  “That is thanks to Mrs. Colbshallow. She baked two dozen loaves yesterday in the first oven set up here. I was just lucky enough to get one of them.”

  Terrence took a bite of the sandwich. It was good. He looked at it and realized that the bite he had taken out seemed abnormally large, so he took a second smaller bite to cover it up. As he chewed, he looked up and watched a group of circling winged reptiles being pestered by equally numerous small birds.

  “So, do you have a date for the wedding?” asked Yuah.

  “What wedding?”

  “The wedding of Corporal Bratihn and Mrs. Kittredge. The wedding everyone is talking about.”

  “Why would I want to go?”

  “You have to go. You are one of the founders of the colony.”

  “Iolanthe is the founder of the colony.”

  “You are very important. People look up to you. You have to be there.”

  “All right, I’ll be there.”

  “Who will be your date?”

  “Why do I need a date?”

  “It’s a social event. Everyone needs a date.”

  “I don’t want to take anyone.”

  “Then you can take me.”

  “You want me to take you to the wedding?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “First a picnic lunch and now a date to this alleged social event. You’re daft if you think you can get me to marry you so that you can move up in the world.”

  Yuah jumped to her feet, balled up her fists at her side, and gritted her teeth. Then she kicked the picnic basket and sent it flying across the grass, trailing sandwiches and desserts.

  “I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in Birmisia!” she screamed, and then she shook for a moment as if she needed to scream and nothing would quite come out. Finally she hissed at him. “You pathetic, rat-assed tool.”

  She kicked again. This time planting the pointy toe of her shoe in the meat of his shoulder, she knocked him onto his back. By the time he sat back up, she was stomping her way up the slope. As he watched her disappear over the top of the hill, he fumed over her inability to take a joke. Then he fumed at himself because he knew he hadn’t been joking. He picked up the sandwich and angrily tossed it towards the sea. It flew apart into its various components in the air, one of which was caught by one of the flying reptiles swooping down from the sky.

  Terrence lay back on the blanket and tried not to think about anything, particularly not Yuah. He really wanted her to come back. He wouldn’t apologize and neither would she. They would just pretend nothing had happened and go back to the way things were. But she didn’t come back. Finally he stood up, gathered together the few utensils lying here and there, wadded up the blanket, and picked up the picnic basket, placing everything inside. Instead of following Yuah’s direct path back up the hill, he started a slow circumnavigation, anti-clockwise, somewhat following the shoreline.

  He could hear the sounds of the Result Mechanism, once again chugging away, long before he reached it. The clanking of gears and the hiss of steam was clearly audible over the louder but more distant whine of the power saw, a sound that was now ubiquitous. As he approached the giant calculating device, he could see Professor Calliere working the buttons and levers along the side and an adolescent boy standing at the close end catching papers as they spewed forth from the printing slot. When the Professor saw him, he waved and stepped away from the machine to meet him.

  “I say, my good fellow,” said Calliere. “You’ve come along at just the right time.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I really need a break from working these plungers. This isn’t really my cup of tea, you know. I designed it, but the idea was to have my assistants actually working the Result Mechanism, and now I don’t have any.” He paused. “No offense. I don’t blame you a bit for shooting Murty. Always knew there was something wrong with the man, but I never pegged him for a deviant and a murderer. Still he was a fine watchmaker and a decent mechanical engineer too.”

  “How is Miss Lusk?” asked Terrence.

  “Oh, I understand she’s going to make a full recovery, thanks to the Church acolytes and Dr. Kelloran. Talk about your brilliant mind. Miss Lusk actually designed this program, you know. Take a look at this.”

  He stepped over to the boy waiting with a stack of papers and took the top few from the pile. Moving to stand beside Terrence, he held two of the sheets side by side.

  “Miss Lusk measured out the entire peninsula with a survey team. I punched in her data and voila. You see, these output files fit together to form a map, very detailed too. It shows where the best locations for water and gas lines are, which areas should be zoned commercial and which residential. Just think what a city Brech would be today if only Magnus, the King of Zur, had a device like this.”

  “Very impressive.”

  “I have my eye on a nice little piece of real estate, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Right over in that direction,” Calliere pointed to some distant spot. “Just beyond where the promontory meets the ridge that runs east, there’s a very nice piece of land. I intend to file a claim and establish my family estate right there.”

  “Have you sent for family to join you here?”

  “No, but that brings up something that I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Terrence waited.

  “I wanted to ask your permission, formally as it were, to court your sister?”

  “Iolanthe?”

  “Yes.”

  Terrence laughed. “If you think you’ve got the bullocks for the job man, jump in.”

  “Really?”

  “By all means,” said Terrence. “Welcome to the family.”

  Calliere beamed with pleasure and bounced back to his monstrous machine, which was beginning to whistle a bit from the build-up of steam. Terrence shook his head and strolled up the hill. He had just about reached the top near the northern most barracks, when he heard the sound of a ship’s horn. A moment later, another ship’s horn sounded. The different tones indicated that they were from two different ships at two different distances from shore.

  Turning on his heel, Terrence headed back down the hill again, this time in the direction of the harbor dock. Quite a few others, having heard and recognized the sounds, were doing the same thing. By the time he reached the dock,
quite a crowd of colonists had gathered there. The lone little dock office, nothing more than a shack in reality, swayed with the weight of four boys sitting atop it for the view.

  Slowly cutting its way through the still water of the bay, a dark grey ship slid up alongside the HMS Minotaur. It was a smaller ship and did not possess the many guns both great and small of the battleship. All along the prow of the vessel stood scores of men, women, and children staring in silence at the colonists on shore, who were in turn, staring right back. With a loud bang, which made many of the people, both on shore and onboard, jump, and then a long series of clangs, the ship dropped its anchor. Terrence looked at the flagpole sticking up from the vessel’s stern. Just visible, hanging limply in the still air, was a black and yellow flag.

  “This is interesting,” said Iolanthe, just behind his right ear.

  “You shouldn’t sneak up on a person. You could frighten them to death.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re never frightened.”

  “Almost never. What do you think is so interesting?”

  “You’ve been picnicking.”

  “And that’s worthy of the adjective ‘interesting’?”

  She shrugged. “That’s a Freedonian ship.”

  “Yes,” agreed Terrence. “That is interesting. It’s full of Freedonian immigrants, by the looks of it. Why aren’t they going to a Freedonian colony? Why come here?”

  “Well, they must have their reasons.”

  The two siblings and more than a hundred others watched as an officer from the Freedonian ship began speaking with a megaphone directed at the Minotaur. A reply came back from the battleship, also from an officer with a megaphone. An echoing conversation continued for several minutes. Though Terrence’s Freedonian was limited mostly to phrases such as “which way to the gentleman’s club” and “how much if you stay the entire night” and of course “where can I find some white opthalium”, he could tell that the officer from the Brech ship was inquiring as to the destination and the business of the newcomer.

  When the conversation was done, Terrence and Iolanthe watched as an officer from the Minotaur left the ship in a launch and headed toward the dock. When it arrived, he stepped out and walked toward them. It was Lieutenant Staff. He acknowledged Terrence with a nod, but his eyes were only for Iolanthe.

  “It’s the S.S. Acorn. Thirty-five hundred settlers,” he said. “They left Freedonia almost two months ago, but none of the Imperial colonies will take them.”

  “Why not?” asked Iolanthe.

  “They’re Zaeri, and Zaeri are not very popular in Freedonia right now.”

  “They’re not popular anywhere,” said Terrence.

  “Tell them they may stay here,” said Iolanthe. “We’ll have to rig up some tents in the short term.”

  “You were expecting them, weren’t you?” Staff asked her.

  “Was I?” But she said nothing more.

  Staff lingered for a moment, watching Iolanthe, then nodded and returned to his boat. Terrence turned and looked at his sister with a raised brow.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “Zaeri?”

  “What difference does it make to you?”

  “None, really.”

  “Are you going to start crossing yourself like Augie? The only time I’ve heard you mention Kafira was when you were cursing.”

  “I’m not the one who petitioned the Church to establish itself in the new world. How do you think they’ll feel about this becoming a Zaeri colony?”

  “This is a crown colony. As for petitioning the Church, that was expedient, and so is this. Besides, I thought you were an atheist.”

  “Oh, I believe in God,” said Terrence. “Kafira too, for that matter. I’m also pretty sure they both hate me.”

  Chapter Seventeen: The Refugees from Freedonia

  “Look at all these lousy zeets,” said Graham Dokkins, as he and Senta walked between the hundreds of makeshift tents on the southwest side of the hill from the barracks.

  “What are zeets?” asked Senta.

  “That’s what they’re called. My Da says they’re evil, and they don’t even believe in Kafira.”

  “Zurfina doesn’t believe in Kafira either. I mean, not like us. She says the Church is all bullocks.”

  “Yeah, well my Da says she’s evil too.”

  If Senta was offended at the idea that anyone would call Zurfina evil, she didn’t let on. She bounced ahead, her skipping steps seeming to defy gravity. In one hand she carried a stick and in the other her doll. Graham stomped after her.

  “Why do you gotta carry that doll everywhere?” he asked.

  “Cause I’m a girl, stupid.”

  They reached the edge of the tent village. Some of the women from among the Freedonian refugees had set up a series of clotheslines and were hanging up clothes. Almost every piece was black, white, or grey.

  “They don’t seem any different to me,” said Senta. “Except they talk funny.”

  Suddenly several of the women who had been hanging clothes began to scream and they all began to run toward the tents. Looking up, the two children saw a steel colored streak flying downward from out of the sun. The steel dragon buzzed the tops of the women’s heads and then zipped along parallel to the clothesline and with a flick of its tail, knocked every other piece of clothing from the line into the dirt. Spreading its wings out to their full six-foot breadth, it stopped in mid-air and dropped to the ground at Senta’s feet. It opened its mouth to the sky and a small puff of smoke shot out.

  “Funneee,” said the dragon.

  “It’s not either funny, you potty twonk. You’re going to get everyone angry, and who’s going to get in trouble? Not you. Me, that’s who.”

  Despite Senta’s declaration that the dragon’s actions were not funny, Graham was laughing heartily. The dragon hopped over to his feet and rubbed his head against the boy’s leg as if to share in his mirth. Graham, still laughing, slapped his knee. The dragon suddenly bit his hand.

  “Sod it!” shouted the boy, his laughter suddenly gone.

  The dragon looked up in the air, with feigned innocence.

  “See, now you’ve made Graham angry too,” said Senta. Both the girl and the dragon looked at the boy, who had gone all white and sweaty.

  “My Da didn’t say it, but I think dragons are evil.”

  “Pet,” said the dragon, in a pleading tone.

  “Yeah, all right,” Senta said, fishing a small brown bottle from the pocket of her baggy black dress. “But if you bite anyone else, I’m going to need a new bottle of this.”

  She poured the draught from the bottle onto the wound on Graham’s hand. The liquid bubbled and fizzed on contact with the boy’s blood, but after a few moments nothing was left of the injury but a small scar.

  Senta, Graham, and the dragon looked up to see they were completely surrounded by a crowd of people. The reptile leapt to the girl’s shoulder in one swift motion and curled up around her neck. Graham stood up next to Senta and took her hand in his. The people began to whisper amongst themselves. Finally one of the women stepped forward.

  “Sorry about your clothes,” said Senta.

  “Der drache is, how you say, vunterfull,” said the woman.

  “Oh yeah, he’s great,” said Graham, sarcastically.

  “He is bootifull. He is yours?”

  “Yeah, sort of,” said Senta.

  “You bet he’s hers,” said Graham. “She’s a really powerful sorceress and he’s her dragon. And they’re really scary and magical. Just look at them. And that’s her magic doll.”

  He suddenly started laughing. The dragon made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a smirk.

  “We’ve got to go now,” said Senta. “I’ve got to lock up my dragon and my troll here.”

  “Hey!” shouted Graham, following Senta who was already hurrying through the opening in the crowd that magically parted before her. “Who you calling a troll, monkey face?”

  The two
children walked up to the top of the hill and parted without saying goodbye, but with the innocent expectation that they would see each other later and continue on just as they had. Senta made her way to a quiet place that she had found next to the protective wall. She plopped down in the grass and the steel dragon climbed off her shoulders. She stretched out and he curled up beside her and placed his whiskered snout on her stomach.

  Senta held her doll up and looked at it. The doll had on an outfit just like hers. She called the dress she was wearing her doll dress for that very reason. The doll had the same hairstyle that she did. She could almost imagine that the doll was made especially for her. But it hadn’t been. She had seen it many times in the toy store before she had purchased it.

  “I wonder what Geert’s doing now?” she mused. “He’s my cousin,” she explained to the dragon.

  She heard the approach of voices and pushed the dragon’s face off of her stomach so that she could roll over and see who it was. It was Miss Dechantagne. She was walking along holding the arm of the blond officer from the ship. She had on a stunning yellow dress with white lace trim. It had at least seven layers on the skirt, ruffles and fringes on the shoulders, and a magnificent bow on the bustle. The matching hat trailed a long piece of yellow silk down her back.

  “That’s the kind of dress I want,” said Senta quietly.

  “No,” said the dragon.

  “Shh.”

  “The house will be just over there,” said Miss Dechantagne. “There is a beautiful piece of land just south of the beach.”

  “That will be nice,” said the officer.

  “Tell me you’ll be back and it will be waiting for you. I will be waiting for you.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  The couple walked past, eyes only on one another, never noticing the girl on the ground. Senta crawled on her knees like a commando and followed them.

  “Come on,” she whispered to the dragon.

  Though Senta was crawling, she could keep up with the two adults, who strolled arm in arm at a leisurely pace. The dragon slithered along on its belly right beside her. The couple stopped at one of the barracks. The woman opened the door and stepped inside. The man followed her, but not before looking around to see if anyone was following. Senta flattened herself out. The man went inside, closing the door behind him.