by Dan Simmons
Well, thought Shrue, no one would be paying to fly to the Cape of Sad Remembrance after the recent tsunamis. He focused his glass on the flat top of the tower.
There were tents and people there—scores of both—which was both reassuring and dismaying. Whoever these potential passengers were, it looked as if they had been waiting a long time. Laundry hung from ropes tied between old tents. The sky galleon, however, looked more promising. Nestled in its tall cradle-stays, this ship—smaller than the other two—looked not only intact but ready to fly. The square-rigged sails were tidily shrouded along spars on the foremast and mainmast while lateen-rigged canvas was tied up along the two after-masts. A bold red pennant flew from the foremast some sixty or seventy feet above the galleon’s deck and Shrue could make out brightly painted gunports, although they were closed so he could not tell if there were any actual guns or hurlers behind them. At the bottom of the cradle, sunlight glinted on the great ovals and squares of crystallex set in as windows along the bottom of the hull. Young men—Shiolko’s sons was Shrue’s wild guess—were busy running up ramps and clambering expertly through the masts, lines, and stays.
“Come,” said Shrue, spurring his panting and sulky megilla. “We have our galleon of choice.”
“I’m not climbing sixty flights of rusting, rotting stairs,” said Derwe Coreme.
“Of course not,” said Shrue. “There is a lift.”
“The lift platform itself must weigh a ton,” said Derwe Coreme. “It has only a cable and a crank.”
“And you have seventeen marvelously muscled Myrmazons,” said Shrue.
· · ·
The owner and captain of the sky galleon, Shambe Shiolko, was a short, heavily muscled, white-bearded beetle-nut of a man and he drove a hard bargain.
“As I’ve explained, Master Shrue,” said Shiolko, “there are some forty-six passengers ahead of you—” Shiolko gestured toward the muddle of sagging tents and shacks on the windswept platform where they all stood six hundred feet above the river. “And most of them have been waiting the two years and more that I’ve lacked the extract of ossip and atmospheric emulsifier which allow our beautiful galleon to fly…”
Shrue sighed. “Captain Shiolko, as I have tried to explain to you, I have the ossip phlogista for you…” Shrue nodded to Derwe Coreme, who lifted the heavy sealed vat out of his trunk and carried it over, setting it on the boards of the platform with a heavy thunk. And from his robes, Shrue produced a smaller lead box which still glowed a mild green. “And I also have the crygon crystals for the atmospheric emulsifier you require. Both are yours without cost as long as you book us passage on this voyage.”
Captain Shiolko scratched at his short beard. “There are the expenses of the trip to consider,” he mumbled. “The salaries for my eight sons—they serve as crew, y’know. Food and water and grog and wine and other provisions for the sixty passengers.”
“Sixty passengers?” said Shrue. “There need only be provisions for myself and this servant…” He gestured toward Mauz Meriwolt who was largely disguised within a diminutive Firschnian monk’s robe. “With the possible addition of another member of my party who might join us later.”
“And me,” said War Maven Derwe Coreme. “And six of my Myrmazons. The rest can return to our camp.”
Shrue raised an eyebrow. “Certainly, my dear, you have other more…profitable…undertakings to pursue? This voyage will be of an undetermined length, and, indeed, might take us all the way to the opposite sides of the Dying Earth, and that by a circuitious route…”
“Nine of you then,” grumbled Captain Shiolko. “Plus the forty-six who have waited so long. That will be provisions for fifty-five passengers, and nine crew of course, counting myself, so sixty-four mouths to feed. The Steresa’s Dream has always set a fine table, sir. Mere provisions, not including our salaries, will come to…mmmm…five thousand, three hundred terces for the vittles and a mere two thousand four hundred terces above that for our labors and skills….”
“Outrageous!” laughed Shrue. “Your sky galleon will sit here forever unless I provide the ossip extract and emulsifier. I should be charging you seven thousand five hundred terces, Captain Shiolko.”
“That is always your privilege to do so, Master Shrue,” grunted the old sky sailor. “But then the cost of your passage would rise to more than fourteen thousand terces. I thought it easier the first way.”
“But certainly,” said Shrue, gesturing to the crowd, “these good people do not want to take such a long and…I confess…dangerous voyage, since I would insist that our destination, which is not yet even fixed, will be the first one to which we sail. You can return for them. This amount of ossip phlogista alone should levitate your beautiful galleon…”
“The Steresa’s Dream,” said Captain Shiolko.
“Yes, lovely name,” said Shrue.
“Named after my late wife and the mother of the eight crewmen,” murmured the old captain.
“Which makes it even more lovely,” said Shrue. “But, as I was saying, even if we were to meet your exorbitant demand for recompense, these good people should not wish to endanger their lives in such a dangerous voyage when they desire simple transit to less problematic destinations.”
“With all due respect, Master magus,” said Shiolko, “look at them what’s waited here so patient for two years and more and understand why they will insist they be aboard whenever Steresa’s Dream departs its cradle. The three there in blue finery—that is Reverend Ceprecs and his two wives and they booked passage on our fine galleon for their honeymoon cruise, and that was twenty-six months ago, sir. The Reverend’s religion forbids him to consummate the happy trio’s marriage vows until they are officially on their honeymoon, you see, so they have waited these two years and more in that leaking old burlap tent you see over near the comfort shack…”
Shrue made an indecipherable noise in his throat.
“And the seven persons there in working brown,” continued Shiolko. “They be the Brothers Vromarak who wish nothing more than to bring the ashes of their dead father home to their ancestral sod hut on the Steppes of Shwang in the distant east Pompodouros so they can return to Mothmane and resume work at the stone quarry…”
“But the east Pompodouros almost certainly will not be on our way,” said Shrue.
“Aye, Master,” said Shiolko, “but as you say, if you won’t be wanting transport back to here, we can drop the Brothers on their way—and only for an additional eight hundred terces from each of them for my inconvenience. And that tall, tall fellow there, that is Arch-Docent Huáe from Cosmopolis University…he’s been waiting nineteen months now in that cardboard shack you see there…and he cannot complete his thesis on the effect of antique effectuations on working-glass gloam-mine gnomes unless he visits the city of fallen pylons across the Melantine Gulf. I will charge him only a modest surcharge of fifteen hundred terces for that detour. And then, near the back of that group of orphans, there is Sister Yoenalla, formerly of Bglanet, who must…”
“Enough!” cried Shrue, throwing up his hands. “You shall have your seven thousand five hundred terces and your ossip and your emulsifier and you may load the paying menagerie as well. How long until we can sail?”
“It will take my sons only the afternoon and night to load the necessary viands and water flasks for the first weeks of our voyage, Master Magus,” grunted Shiolko, showing only the slightest flush of pride at his success. “We can sail at dawn, should the treacherous sun choose to favor us with one more sunrise.”
“At dawn then,” said Shrue. He turned to reason with Derwe Coreme but the woman was already choosing the six Myrmazons to accompany her and giving the others instructions about their return to the Myrmazon camp.
· · ·
And thus began what Shrue would later realize were—incredibly, almost incomprehensibly—the happiest three weeks of his life.
Captain Shiolko was true to his word and Steresa’s Dream lifted away from its docking
cradle just as the red sun began its own tortured ascent into the deep blue sky. The galleon hovered for a moment like a massive wood-and-crystal balloon some thousand feet above as what looked to be the entire population of Mothmane Junction turned out to watch its departure, and then Shiolko’s eight “sons” (Shrue had already noticed that three of them were young women) shook out the canvas sails, the captain engaged the atmospheric emulsifier at the stern—which thickened the air beneath the sky galleon’s hull and rudder sufficiently to allow it to make way and to tack against the wind—and, following Shrue’s directions after the diabolist had consulted his little box holding Ulfänt Banderōz’s nose, set the ship’s course south-southeast.
All forty-six of Shiolko’s original customers as well as Derwe Coreme and her Myrmazons, Meriwolt (still in his robes), and Shrue himself then pressed to the railings of the mid-deck or their private stateroom terraces and waved to the shouting crowds below. At first, Shrue thought that the thousands of Mothmane Junction residents, peasants, shopkeepers, and rival sky galleon workers were roaring their approval and best wishes up to the voyagers, but then he saw the low morning sunlight glinting off arrows, crossbow bolts, rocks, and a variety of other things flung up at Steresa’s Dream and he realized that the first departure of a sky galleon in more than two years was not an occasion held in unalloyed affection and approval. But in a few moments, the galleon had gained several thousand feet in altitude and, after first following the River Dirindian south for a few leagues, banked off southwest above the wooded Kumelzian Hills and left Mothmane Junction and its muted roars far behind.
For the next several days and then weeks, Shrue’s and the ship’s routine blended into one.
At sunrise each morning, the diabolist would rise from his place in the double hammock he shared in the comfortable suite with Derwe Coreme and—even before meditating according to the Slow Discipline of Derh Shuhr—Shrue would scramble up the manropes to the Gyre’s nest near the top of the mainmast and there use Ulfänt Banderōz’s guiding nose to take a new course reading. That course would be checked via the nose box several times during the day—Captain Shiolko was a master at making the slightest adjustments—and for the final time, by the light of the binnacle (when one of Shiolko’s male or female sons was at the wheel), just at midnight.
Steresa’s Dream itself was one of those rarest of avas in the later Aeons of the Dying Earth—a machine with complicated machinery inside it—and on the first day of the voyage, Captain Shiolko proudly showed off his beautiful ship to Shrue, Derwe Coreme, robed Meriwolt, and many of the other interested passengers and pilgrims. Shrue immediately then understood that the tiny crew of eight “sons” could manage such a complicated craft not due to the usual reason—magic—but because the huge sky galleon was largely automated. Controls on the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship (which was Shiolko’s private preserve unless the captain specifically invited a passenger to come up) or other controls down in the aft engine and steering compartment helped reef and furl the sails, shift and shorten the countless ropes and lines, move ballast as needed, and even calculate wind and drag and mass so as best to move the ossip phlogista through the maze of pipes that honeycombed the hull, masts, spars, and sails themselves. The emulsifier machine so fascinated Shrue with its magickless glows and throbs and safety devices and arcane gauges and bone-felt spell-less vibrations that often, when he could not sleep, he came down to the engine and steering compartment to watch it all work.
The sky galleons had been built for passenger comfort and even those paying the fewest terces found themselves in comfortable surroundings. For Shrue and the other high-paying passengers, it was sheer luxury. The diabolist’s and Derwe Coreme’s stateroom at the third level near the stern had a wall of crystal windows that looked out and down. Their double-sized hammock rocked softly and securely in even the worst night storms. After Shrue had checked their course and done his Discipline rites in the morning, he would wake his warrior roommate and the two would shower together in their own private bath. Then they would step out onto their private balcony to breathe the cool morning air and would go forward along the central corridor to the passenger dining area near the bow where there were crystal windows looking ahead and underfoot. The sense of vertigo in these glass-bottomed lower rooms faded with familiarity.
On the fifth day, the Steresa’s Dream passed east out of known territory. Even Captain Shiolko admitted that he was excited to learn what lay ahead of them. Over wine with Shrue and Derwe Coreme late that night, the captain explained that although his sky galleon was built as a world-traveler, Shiolko’s wife Steresa, while she lived, so worried about dangers to her husband and children that, in his love and deference to her, the captain had stowed away his impatience to see the farthest lands and satisfied himself with transiting passengers to known (and relatively safe) destinations such as Pholgus Valley, Boumergarth, the former cities on the Cape of Sad Remembrance, and towns and ports in between. Now, said the captain, he and his sons and the brave passengers and the fine ship that Steresa had loved and feared so much were outward bound on the sort of voyage for which Steresa’s Dream had been designed and built centuries before Shiolko or his late wife had been born.
· · ·
After the first week, Shrue had become impatient, eager to rush to the Second Ultimate Library, sure that KirdriK had been bested and eviscerated somewhere in the Overworld and that even now the Purples were returning to Faucelme’s evil band, and he’d urged Captain Shiolko to take the galleon high up into what was left of the Dying Earth’s jet stream—up where the wind howled and threatened to tear the white sails to ribbons, where ice accumulated on the spars and masts and ropes, and where the passengers had to retreat, wrapped in furs and blankets, to sealed compartments to let the ship pressurize their rooms with icy air.
But he’d seen the folly in this even before Derwe Coreme said softly to him, “Can Faucelme’s false Finding Crystal lead him to the other Library?”
“No,” said Shrue. “But sooner or later he—or more likely, the Red—will understand that they’ve been tricked. And then they’ll come seeking us.”
“Would you rather they find us frozen and blue from lack of breath?” said the warrior maven.
Shrue had shaken his head then, apologized to the captain and passengers for his haste, and allowed Shiolko to bring the Steresa’s Dream down—in a slow, dreamlike descent—to the lower, warmer altitudes and more leisurely breeze-driven pace.
During the second week of their voyage, there were some memorable moments for Shrue the diabolist:
For a full day, Steresa’s Dream wove slowly between massive stratocumulus clouds that rose nine leagues and more before anvilling out high in the stratosphere. When the sky galleon had to go through one of these cloud giants, the ship’s lanterns came on automatically, one of Shiolko’s sons activated a mournful fog horn on the bow, and moisture dripped from the spars and rigging.
For two days, they flew above a massive forest fire that had already devoured millions of hectares of ancient woodland. Steresa’s Dream bucked and rolled to the violent thermal updrafts. The smoke became so heavy that Shiolko took the ship as high as she could go without incurring icing, and still Shrue and the passengers had to wear scarves over their noses and mouths when they went on deck. That night, the fifty-four passengers—including Derwe Coreme’s Myrmazons and Mauz Meriwolt, who no longer bothered wearing the monk’s robes—dined in awed silence, staring down through the dining room’s crystal hull-floor as the inferno raged and roared less than a mile below them.
As they neared a coastline, the sky galleon flew low over the last stages of a war, where a besieging army was attacking an iron-walled fortress city. Several of the ancient, rusted walls had already been breeched, and reptile-mounted cavalry and armored infantry were pouring in like ants while the defenders blocked streets and plazas in a last, desperate stand. Derwe Coreme’s experienced eye announced that there were more than a hundred thousand besi
egers set against fewer than ten thousand defenders of the doomed city. “I wish they could have hired my three hundred and me,” Derwe Coreme said softly as the galleon passed above the carnage and burning port and floated southeast out to sea.
“Why?” said Shrue. “You would certainly be doomed. No three hundred warriors in the history of the Earth could save that city.”
The war maven smiled. “Ah, but the glory, Shrue! The glory. My Myrmazons would have extended the fight for weeks, perhaps months, and our war prowess and glory would be sung until the red sun goes dark.”
Shrue nodded, even though he did not understand at all, and touched her arm and said, “But that could be mere weeks or days from now, my friend. At any rate, I am glad you and your three hundred are not down there.”
The Steresa’s Dream sailed due east across a green, shallow sea and then they were above what both Captain Shiolko and Shrue believed was the legendary Equatorial Archipelago. The passengers lunched on their terraces and looked down as Shiolko brought the galleon low to less than a thousand feet above the tropical-foliaged isles and green lagoons. The islands themselves seemed uninhabited, but the inter-island waterways, bays, and countless lagoons were filled with hundreds upon hundreds of elaborate houseboats, some almost as large as the sky galleon, and all a mass of baroque wood designs, bright brass festoons, crenellated towers and arching cabins, and each carrying more flags, banners, and colorful silks than the last.
They left the archipelago behind and crossed further south and east into deeper waters—the sea went from green to light blue to a blue so dark as to rival the Dying Earth’s sky—and the only moving things now spied below were the great, shadowy shapes of whales and the sea monsters who ate the whales. In the dining room that night, the ocean below was alive with a surface phosphorescence underlaid by the more brilliant and slow-moving biological arc lamps of the Lampmouth Leviathans. Realizing that one of those beasts could swallow the Steresa’s Dream whole, Shrue was as relieved as the other passengers when Captain Shiolko took the galleon higher to find more favorable winds.
