Seeking the Mythical Future (3 page)

‘Not possible,' Kristiensen said. He opened the door to his cabin and went swiftly round the chart-table to a cupboard in the corner, unlocking it with a small silver key he took from his pocket.

‘You sound very certain.'

‘Shut the door.' Kristiensen began to take medical supplies from the cupboard: phials of coloured liquids, tubes containing emollients, bandages, salt tablets, and various other preparations. He glanced up and said in a flat expressionless voice: ‘I'm certain the airship isn't still afloat because there
is
no airship.'

The First Mate smiled apologetically. ‘You mean the airship has been lost? I'm sorry, I don't—'

‘I mean that there is no airship,' Kristiensen said distinctly. ‘There never was.'

‘He isn't from an airship?'

‘No.'

The First Mate regarded him blankly.

‘I had to spin the crew a tale to calm them down. It wouldn't take much just now to panic them. But he's no more from an airship than you or I. I've seen the uniforms they wear, and this man belongs to no service that I'm familiar with.'

‘But we found him in the middle of the ocean. He's not from a sailing vessel, that much is clear, so what other explanation is there?'

‘I don't know,' the Captain said thoughtfully. He placed the supplies in a small canvas bag and handed it to the First Mate. ‘But I suggest we find out as quickly as possible.'

They found Mr Swann and several of the men clustered round the bunk in which the man lay, still attired in the one-piece garment and showing no signs of recovery. The Second Mate moved aside to allow Kristiensen access, saying, ‘His breathing is shallow but I don't think he's injured in any way. There are no wounds or bruising that I can see.'

‘His skin,' Mr Standish said. ‘It's so white.' He couldn't yet fully take in what the Captain had told him: that here was someone who had appeared as if by magic from nowhere. But of course there had to be a sensible, rational explanation. No educated person, especially in this advanced age, believed for a moment in the inexplicable, the extra-ordinary. There was always a reason to explain everything, from the behaviour of people to those events which at first seemed to defy common sense. For those who didn't conform to this belief there was the inescapable reality of
Psy-Con
, which no one in his right mind would deny.

Kristiensen told the crew members to clear out of the way,
and it seemed for a moment as if the Summarian might object, but then Mr Swann made a gesture which was unambiguous in its intention. He closed the cabin door firmly behind them and stood with his back to it.

Kristiensen leaned over the unconscious man and carefully cut the material away with his knife until he was naked to the waist. His flesh seemed to glow, as if illuminated from within; and Mr Standish, his eyes straining in the dim light, started involuntarily and said, ‘You can see his bones.'

‘And also his blood vessels,' the Captain added.

Indeed it was true: the man was translucent. His flesh was solid enough to the touch and yet it was possible to see below the surface, to see actually inside him – the vague milky outline of the skeleton and musculature, the tenuous network of arteries and veins, the shadowy bulk of the inner organs, like pebbles seen darkly at the bottom of a murky pool. And there was something else. Kristiensen touched the man's left shoulder and traced the shape that was imprinted there, as though branded into the flesh. It was a circle with a bar set diagonally through the lower right-hand arc. It was the letter Q.

The First Mate said wonderingly, ‘Is he a man? Is he human?'

‘He's a man all right,' Kristiensen replied. ‘Though where he comes from and to what race he belongs I haven't a notion. Mr Swann, what do you make of this?'

The Second Mate stepped forward, his dark square face sober and perplexed. He gazed his fill at the figure on the bunk, and then his brows grew close together; his arms hung by his sides, impotent, urging some kind of action. He looked towards the Captain as if seeking some friendly reassurance, a sensible and rational explanation.

Kristiensen held a tube to each of the man's nostrils and squirted something inside which dispersed like mist in the nasal cavity. They waited for a moment but there was no response.

‘What does the mark on his shoulder signify?' Mr Standish asked.

‘It's not a birthmark, at least I don't think so,' Mr Swann said. ‘It's too exact and well-formed.'

‘A badge of rank perhaps.' Kristiensen said, which was less a query than an inward musing.

‘But where is he
from
?' Mr Standish said. ‘A man adrift on the ocean must come from somewhere.' He looked at the others; for some reason he felt light-headed and was aware of a trembling in his fingertips. There was no threat of danger, so why should he feel so odd? The mystery of it deepened his anxiety.

The Captain spread an emollient preparation over the man's chest and shoulders and smoothed it into the skin. His large broad hands had a surprising delicacy of touch. He took a strip of cloth from a bottle containing a pale amber liquid and placed it underneath the man's left armpit. After a second or two he removed the strip and examined it; Mr Standish noticed that it had changed colour, from dark red to pink.

‘His body temperature is normal,' Kristiensen said. ‘There's little we can do for him except keep him under observation, above all keep his temperature down, and immediately he shows signs of recovery—'

‘Captain!' Mr Swann said. He stumbled forward.

The man's eyelids were flickering. A muscle moved in his shoulder and a spasm of nervous energy contracted the muscles of his chest. His lips trembled and tried to form themselves into a word. The First Mate experienced a sudden cold prickling down his spine and his mouth was hot and parched.

Kristiensen was straining to hear what the man was trying to say. The words, when they came, were mingled with his breath, barely above a whisper.

‘What is it? What does he say?' asked Mr Swann.

The Captain straightened up, the lines like furrows on his forehead. ‘It's difficult to make out. He keeps repeating the same words, something that sounds like “Time no longer” or “Will be time no longer”. Does that make sense to anyone?'

The Second Mate said grimly, ‘I wouldn't expect it to make sense, not coming from him. He's a queer cove, as is obvious to anyone with eyes in his head.'

‘Will he be all right?' Mr Standish asked.

‘I believe so.' Kristiensen stood up to his full height, his head almost touching the beams. ‘We must let him rest, then feed him as soon as he's conscious. Mr Swann, is there a man you can trust to keep watch over him? We need someone of a calm disposition who can keep his mouth shut and not blab to the rest of the crew. Any more shocks or surprises and we'll have a mutiny on our hands.' He stepped into the passage, the First Mate close behind, and they returned to the Captain's quarters.

There was an atmosphere aboard the barque that night that was almost tangible: a presence pervading everywhere, above and below deck. The air was sultry, the vessel drifting languidly beneath the canopy of stars on its silent lonely course; behind it the knife-edge track of bubbling phosphorescence stretching like a slug's trail to the black horizon.

Kristiensen found sleep impossible. He tried to read a book which dealt with the origin and meaning of ancient symbols – hoping to find and identify the mark imprinted on the man's shoulder – but his concentration kept sliding off the page, and after a while he snapped the book shut and went up to the quarter-deck where Mr Swann was taking the second watch. Because of the presence of the man at the wheel they talked of inconsequential matters, avoiding any mention of the stranger and striving to keep their voices calm and unconcerned. From deep below, within the bowels of the ship, there came now and then the sharp crack of a whiplash followed by a dull murmur of dark voices which gradually faded into the night; nothing else disturbed the calm.

Towards dawn, with the vessel still asleep it seemed, the seaman whom Mr Swann had chosen to keep watch over the stranger – he was a boy of eighteen – appeared on deck and ran like a shadow to the companion-ladder, calling for the Second Mate to come quickly. Kristiensen stepped to the forward rail and demanded sharply to know what was the matter. The boy came up on to the quarter-deck, his sunburnt face almost invisible in the darkness and his bleached hair gleaming like a cap of silver.

‘They're in the cabin, I couldn't stop them.' The boy was gasping and visibly trembling. ‘They said he had a curse upon
him and would make the ship founder. I could do, nothing, they—'

‘How many of them?' Kristiensen said crisply.

‘Four, five, I'm not sure. The Summarian said—'

‘I might have known he'd have a hand in this; the others wouldn't have had the nerve on their own. What was it he said?'

‘He – he said,' the boy stuttered. ‘He said the man, the stranger, had the mark of the beast upon him. He said the brand on his shoulder was the sign of the Evil Eye and that we would all perish if he wasn't cast back into the sea.'

The Second Mate spoke urgently in the Captain's ear. ‘Mr Standish has the cabin adjoining. Do you think he's safe?'

‘He has a pistol, he should be able to defend himself if necessary. But we must hurry if we're to save the stranger from harm.' Kristiensen addressed the boy: ‘Can you handle a flintlock?'

‘I think so. Yes, sir.'

‘Good lad. Mr Swann, break out the arms locker in my cabin, two flintlocks apiece. We must check this before it erupts into open mutiny.' As he spoke the first rays of morning light began to streak the southern sky. The ocean was a dark sluggish mass of purple under the fading stars. Once again it was going to be a day of stifling heat and humidity, the slack breeze barely filling the yellow sails.

The Second Mate returned with the flintlock pistols, loaded and primed, and Kristiensen led the way down the companion ladder and across the deck. There was no sound from below. The Summarian and his fellow conspirators were moving with the stealth and cunning of bilge rats, down there in the creaking passageways and shadowed cabins. For such a big man Kristiensen was light as a cat on his feet, creeping down the ladders below decks with Mr Swann close behind and the boy nervously bringing up the rear. Approaching the cabin they heard (‘Ssshhhh!' Kristiensen said) the muffled sound of voices; and then all at once, in the near blackness, very close to them, something moved – what Kristiensen instantly took to be the look-out posted by the Summarian – and raised his pistol, cocked the hammer, and shot Mr Standish straight through the
head. The young man gave no cry, made no sound, but fell immediately to the floor, all life extinguished from his body. The lead ball had split his skull in two like a pomegranate and the contents were stuck to the walls and bulkhead.

Kristiensen stepped over the remains and rapped with the butt of his pistol on the cabin door. There was no sound or movement from within. He gestured to the Second Mate and the boy to take up positions on either side of the door and then called out:

‘This is the Captain. No harm will befall you if you lay down your arms and open the door. But ifƒ you resist I shall slaughter you to a man, without hesitation or mercy. You know I am a man of my word.'

There was a movement behind the door, and then: ‘You are forgetting, Captain, that we have the hostage.' It was, unmistakably, the wheedling nasal croak of the Summarian.

‘The stranger means nothing to me.' Kristiensen replied. ‘It is the safety of the ship which is my chief concern.' He winked at Mr Swann. ‘Will you obey the order or shall I use force?'

‘One moment, Captain.'

There came the sound of rapid, muttered conversation and the occasional oath or two, then eventually the Summarian's: ‘The game is not worth the candle. We have your word? Is it a bargain that we shall receive no punishment?'

Kristiensen smiled but his voice was without humour. ‘Absolutely. You have my word.'

A bolt was drawn back and the door opened to reveal, in the dim yellow light of a smoking oil-lamp, the slitted wary eyes of the Summarian peering from an olive countenance and behind him the fearful expression of three members of the crew – all four holding an assortment of weapons and semi-poised in the shadows, prepared to fight if need be, yet none of them so keen as to make a premature move.

Beyond them, glowing like a pale ghostly incubus, Kristiensen could see the figure of the stranger in the bunk; the Captain stared and it was all he could manage not to utter a cry of amazement: the stranger's eyes were open and he appeared to be fully conscious. And even as Kristiensen watched, the
stranger's hands gripped the sides of the bunk and he began to rise up into a vertical position, whereupon the Summarian and his fellow conspirators, following the Captain's gaze, dropped their weapons and fell to their knees, a babble of craven supplication and incoherent fear on their lips.

*

The day, as Kristiensen had expected, was heavy and lethargic. The barque moved fitfully through the low waves, occasionally throwing up a spumed peak of pinkish froth which glistened against the black tar-coated timbers above which the unicorn's horn of the prow pointed unchangingly towards New Amerika.

It seemed to Kristiensen – as it always did at this point – that this was a voyage without end. Perhaps there would actually come a time when they wouldn't sight land, when the lookout in the crow's nest would strain his eyes day after day, searching the horizon in vain for the thin hazy sliver signifying journey's end. But meanwhile his charts reassured him that within twelve hours, twenty-four at the most, they would be leaving the doldrums and picking up the northward-sweeping currents of the Main. Then it would be plain sailing into the Bay of Granada and past the clusters of tropical islands which comprised the Granadian Chain.