Emperor of Gondwanaland (4 page)

Now all meanness, Merino barked an order at the Fanzoy.

“Tess, you bloody snake! Clear these dishes away!”

What happened next was uncanny.

Tess arose and approached Merino. When she was less than half a meter away, the captain began to stand, unwillingly, like an automaton, as if his muscles were under another’s control. When he was upright, his arm swung in a similar fashion. At the end of its arc, it touched the Fanzoy’s cheek.

He stroked Tess’s face once or twice in a horrible mechanical parody of affection.

Tess broke the tableau. She gathered the plates and walked away. Merino collapsed sobbing into his seat.

I averted my face.

After a time, he ceased weeping. All his hostility had turned now to solicitude. Which emotion was the real one? Or were both?

“You must return to your ship, to begin ferrying us supplies. Let me escort you to the rail.”

He stood. Apparently on impulse, he buckled the short scabbard and dagger lying before him onto his belt.

Tess emerged inescapably to accompany us.

We left the tenebrous cabin for the brilliant sunlight.

V. Return to the
Melville
, and the Unexpected

To step outdoors was to be reborn.

Never had I so appreciated the tropic breezes, the balmy light, the spumy air. The dark cabin seemed now like a grave, and I marveled that I had escaped.

How much more keenly must Merino have felt it, after inhabiting the cabin for a year.

I could see that in the hours I had been with Merino, our two ships had drifted closer together. Now only seventy meters or so separated the two vessels, one so clean and wholesomely gay, the other unkempt and exhaling an almost visible miasma of doom.

Merino, Tess, and I walked toward the rail where sturdy old Belgrano kept his post, a bluff watchdog if ever there was one.

A light pattering behind me caused me to turn.

Eighty Fanzoii or more—what I took to be the full number aboard—now followed us at a discreet distance. Their buff robes and peachy flesh made them seem like a pale wall mottled with skyrr-lichen which was toppling endlessly toward us. Their inexpressive faces were more alarming at the time than the ugliest masks of human hatred.

In their midst, through a gap, I thought to glimpse poor Purslen Monteagle, herded like a lone sheep among wolves. His face exhibited an agonized alarm; his mouth worked, yet no sound emerged.

My heart went out to the inoffensive man. I almost stopped to demand that Merino extricate him from the tangle of Fanzoii. Yet how could I justly interfere? The
Cockerel
was Merino’s command, no matter how shabbily he had performed so far. How would I react if he began to give orders aboard my ship? No, I had no say here.

Perhaps if I had known it was the last time I would see the Sanctus alive, I might have acted differently.

We reached Belgrano.

“Anything to report, Master Belgrano?” I queried.

“Nary a thing, captain,” he replied, looking relieved at my long-delayed reappearance. His face bore an expression that said that if I had asked for his opinion of the
Cockerel
and her captain, he would be glad to disburden himself of a few choice words.

“Very good.” I turned to Merino. “Perhaps I can yet persuade you to abandon this mad scheme of continuing to the Nameless Land. You yourself mentioned that you cannot regard the Fanzoii as cargo any longer. Is it that they have expressed a wish to go there?”

Intense emotions flickered across Merino’s saturnine face. “No, they’re not cargo, and yet—we must go on sailing. It seems it will be forever. If only—but it cannot be. You must help as best you can.”

His jumbled speech seemed the sign of an increasing tumult in his weary brain. Surely he would die ignobly not long after we parted, by his own hand or by Fate’s.

“I have tried all I can to make you see sense. Failing that, I cannot deny you any materials I can legitimately spare without endangering my own ship. We will warp our two vessels together, and thus make loading easier. My first gift will be an anchor for your wayward craft.”

I gripped Belgrano’s shoulder. “Let’s be off.”

My mate descended first. I had one leg over the rail when Merino shouted.

“Wait! I must go with you. If only to be off this ship for a minute.”

I regarded him searchingly from my awkward position, striving to detect any ulterior motive. He continued to beseech me silently. I deemed him truthful at last in wishing only a change of scenery, however small.

“Follow me, then,” I said.

Once in the cutter, I looked up.

Merino descended the rope with weak limbs.

Tess came after him

I almost urged Belgrano to pull the cutter away, rather than have the Fanzoy set foot in it. Yet that would have left Merino dangling literally at the end of his rope. I doubted he could make it back up in his ineffectual fashion. Would the Fanzoii on the deck help him? Maybe, and maybe not. I could not leave him in such a strait.

I let Merino and Tess enter the cutter, despite my irrational loathing of the native.

“Master Belgrano.” I ordered, “take us back to the
Melville
.”

We motored off smoothly.

I felt my heart lightening as we neared my ship and left Merino’s behind. The glum and high-strung captain of the
Cockerel
failed to match my spirits however. He seemed abstracted and lost, buried in private speculations.

We reached the
Melville
’s port side, whence we had departed hours ago—hours that loomed as years. I grabbed the wet netting lying athwart the hull. I was in good spirits again, my usual self.

“Come aboard, Captain Merino,” I declaimed, “and let me return your hospitality. Bring Tess too.” (As if they could ever have been separated this side of death!) “I’ll have my mate run a line back to your ship and we’ll begin the warping. You can step back aboard her when we’re done.”

Merino looked longingly at my vessel, returning the curious gaze of my men gathered at the rail. “I—I can’t,” he said. “I can’t come aboard. Thank you, though. Thank you.”

This I liked little. Yet who could account for the whims of an unstable mind?

“In that case, I’ll ascend and toss down the line. Mate Belgrano will stay with you.”

I wasn’t about to lose my cutter at this stage, if Merino took it in his head to abscond.

Up the netting I scrambled, and was soon on deck. How welcome it felt! The first thing I noticed was my men’s shocked faces, as when they had first sighted the drifting hulk. Events seemed to be repeating themselves in an endless cycle.

I looked back to the cutter.

Merino had come unsteadily to his feet in the rocking dinghy. His dagger was unsheathed and upraised. Belgrano was still rooted to his seat in amazement, but in the process of shifting to stand. Tess was sitting calmly.

The dagger began its plunge toward the Fanzoy’s breast.

It was arrested in midair, Merino’s hand caught fast in some invisible grip.

Things happened with baffling speed. Belgrano stood and moved on the Fanzoy. Either unable or unwilling to stop him as she had stopped Merino, she resorted to physical means, striking him an unexpected and massive blow across his thighs from her seated position. He toppled backwards and overboard.

Merino’s dagger began to reverse its course, heading slowly toward his own heart.

His face was frozen in a rictus of fear.

Tess was immobile and dispassionate.

I glanced frantically around on the deck. The tree-cutting lasers lay where the men had first dropped them upon coming aboard, not stowed because of the strange happenings.

A slovenly failure I would certainly have upbraided them for. But now—what an unexpected blessing!

I snatched one up, rested its snout on the rail.

Before Merino could bury his blade in his own heart, I had driven a beam of light through the Fanzoy’s chest.

She died soundlessly.

Merino collapsed over the gunwale, his head dangling just over the waves.

VI. The Slaughter, and Its Aftermath

Now the sun was falling in the west, as we fished Belgrano—unhurt—out of the water, and brought him and the unconscious Merino aboard.

The corpse of Tess we heaved into the uncomplaining water, watching it sink like an unattached anchor out of sight.

Once we were all aboard the
Melville
, we turned naturally toward the
Cockerel
. It had drifted closer to us in the meantime.

All the Fanzoii were clustered silently at the rail. They still seemed nonthreatening.

Suddenly a human scream filled the air. I knew it instinctively for the death cry of the Sanctus. A shudder went through my crew.

The scream served to awaken Merino, who got unsteadily to his feet. He passed a shaky hand across his wracked features, as if brushing unseen cobwebs away. I was at a loss what to do, and awaited Merino’s insights into the situation. Clearly the Fanzoii were murderers and brigands and had to be stopped. But how?

Merino stumbled to the rail and rested his hands upon it. He looked toward the
Cockerel
, like Lazarus at his vacated tomb.

There was a parting of the ranks of the quiet Fanzoii. Two individuals walked forward with the sheeted statue from Merino’s cabin.

So now they were planning to taunt Merino with sacrilege, I thought.

Merino blanched as if drained of blood.

The Fanzoii whisked off the sheet.

A man—clearly of flesh and blood—was revealed. He began to jig and prance and wave his arms, in a grotesque and obscene parody of a tarantella.

Merino spoke in a voice empty of all emotion, as if from beyond death. “It is my cousin Sadler. He is no longer truly alive.” He turned imploring eyes on me and his voice rose in a shriek. “My God, sink that ship of devils and end his misery!”

With that he collapsed onto the deck once more.

I have said previously that I have always tried to live by a certain code. One tenet of that code was never to attack a helpless foe. For all the grief the Fanzoii had caused, I could not bring myself to fire upon them. What I would have done had they not escalated the battle I do not know. Perhaps tried to capture them unharmed, and so have doomed myself and all those who relied on me.

As it was, the
Cockerel
’s laser pistols suddenly appeared in the hands of the Fanzoii.

One shot the dancing Sadler through the head.

The rest began firing on us.

The beams were not meant for such long-range work. Yet one freak shot scorched the hand of Topps, the meekest among us.

A deep and furious rage came upon me then, and I shouted, “Up with our own lasers, lads, and hole the bastards below the waterline!”

The men fell to with a will. Four beams—much more powerful than those of the pistols—concentrated on one spot, causing the water to steam and boil.

Soon the beams ate through the hull. The
Cockerel
canted thirty degrees and began to sink.

Fanzoii jumped into the water. Some started to swim our way.

Then did I violate my own code irreparably. I have never fully trusted myself since.

With a thickness in my throat I said, “Fire on any who approach—to kill.”

The men complied.

When the carnage was over—and there were never any screams or cries, only the hiss of the beams biting—my men and I felt as one, that we would retch and never stop.

Our only casualties were Belgrano’s bruised limbs and Topps’s burned skin. Both took painkillers and proclaimed themselves well.

We winched the cutter aboard, and set sail from the tainted bay.

If any Fanzoii escaped to Encantada Island and there prospered, I cannot say. I have never been back after that fateful voyage.

Night fell. Merino regained consciousness in my cabin, on the bunk where we had laid him. After he took a meager meal, he remained seated at my table, myself opposite him, in a reprise with variations of our earlier encounter.

How different those two sessions seemed at that moment! My bright and well-appointed quarters contrasted immensely with that dank and unhealthy cave of his that now lay beneath the waves. Security and goodwill flourished here, in place of danger and suspicion. Yet a whiff of the
Cockerel
’s malaise lingered, seemingly immune to being exorcised.

Merino sat with a gray blanket wrapped around his hunched shoulders. He sipped now and again at a small tumbler of medicinal brandy. He had not spoken during his meal, and I had not forced him.

Now, however, without prompting, he began to tell me the true story of his voyage, holding my eyes with his own tormented ones.

“There was no storm,” he commenced. “Or rather, there was a storm, but it came later, after the real damage had already been done.