The Dream Vessel (10 page)

Big Tom could not stand the pudgy jailer’s whine, nor his urinelike odor, so he hoped this could be dispensed with quickly. His nose still twitched with his first-thing-in-the-morning knife-load of powder. While the tradesman doubted that there was any better standpoint from which to greet a new day, the drawback was that the powder seemed to heighten each unpleasant sensory experience. Wind chimes became annoying gongs in his ears; Bishop’s ratty visage became a painful, surrealistic painting to his eyes; a sour-smelling body became rancid mountains of meat under his nose.

In this nerve-jangled mood, he followed the bouncing mass of flesh named Jay-Jay down the lockup hall, with Bishop and Moori trailing behind. As if a merchant’s everyday life did not present enough problems, a madman showed up on his porch last night howling to the stars, and it took four musclers to cuff him and drag him into the red-legger holds.

“Right ’ere in number three,” the fat jailer shrilled as he clanked open the window to check the whereabouts of his prisoner—procedure before opening the cell door. “Lucky this was to happen soon after the lass ship-off, else I don’ know where we’d a had room for him.” He fit a key into the lock, and heaved the slab of metal back.

Big Tom hesitated at the door and turned to Moori. She was still squinting with sleep, whisking along barefooted in one of the long cotton dresses she wore about the mainhouse most mornings. “Why don’t you stay here, ’til we see what he’s about?” Big Tom said.

“Oh gawd.” It was Moori’s plaintive tone, the one that usually persuaded her husband to do her bidding. She stabbed a finger toward the cell. “Lookit. He’s just sitting, head down, probably just brain-burned from too much powder last night—something like that. Made him gullybonkers. What’ll I tell the others? That a blond banshee rattled my house like the island’s never seen—but Big Tom chopped his throat afore I ever got ta see him? Haw! I’ll tell ya, I can not go back without a full look at this tattoo they’re talkin’ about.”

Big Tom scowled, glanced at the silent prisoner, then back at his number one wife, this frowning red-haired lady with the freckled face. He shrugged and motioned for her and Bishop to follow him into the cell.

Bishop was swinging a truncheon, almost scraping the tile with it, he was so short. He put a boot against the prisoner’s shoulder and pressed the guy’s back to the wall. The young man was awake, his eyes so bloodshot that it reminded Big Tom of a long bout with the ale bottles. The stranger had been so maniacal the night before that they left him cuffed, ankles and wrists. During the night he had shed a set of skin wraps. The matted fur skirt lay to his side, and the vest dangled by its armholes from his wrist chains. A wild picture whirled across his chest.

“What’s your name? Where’er you from?” Big Tom was using his interrogation voice. Authoritative, with underlying menace.

The prisoner’s dry lips parted, quivering. “Greggie,” he said.

“Greggie?” The merchant’s tone was mocking.

“The long way,” the prisoner stammered, “you…ah, you say it ‘Gregory.’” He showed a faint smile. “You…do you all here speak English?”

The three islanders glanced to each other wide-eyed, and broke into laughter. Gregory looked bewildered, but then ventured a small laugh himself.

Bishop let his foot fall away from the prisoner’s shoulder, leaving a smudge on his skin. “Boss, he’s a retard, all right,” Bishop said. “Like Jay-Jay said, he’s a retard—look.” Big Tom’s assistant pointed with his truncheon to the round scar on Gregory’s forehead. “An’ it looks to be, from that skin picture, that the Rafers had hold of him. Gawd knows what they did to ’im.”

Big Tom grunted and wiped at his nose. “Stand up, lad.”

Gregory pushed himself up weakly, his back scraping up the rock wall. “Where…where is Tym?” he asked. “The water woman, the dark lady?”

Moori answered quickly, “Greggie, you’re on Thomas Island now, and we don’t know where you came from.” As she spoke his name, the prisoner’s face fell into a gawk of complete trust. Their eyes met, and Moori knew that she would not allow the man to be killed. She leaned her face forward to inspect the detailing of his tattoo, and the prisoner took that to be some gesture of kindness.

“From?” Gregory’s face brightened even more, happily oblivious to his iron-laden wrists. “I am from Blue Ridge, on the mainland of Merqua. I come from under a mountain.”

Bishop haw-hawed, and Gregory looked hurt.

“True,” the prisoner said. “True, true, ya, true. Grew up there.”

Moori was starting to say, “We could let him…” when Big Tom broke in: “Thass a long way, son. The Blue Ridge, thass up north even of Chautown and inland. A long wander, I’d say, to end up on my porch.”

“It was the Government sent me,” Gregory replied. He stared at the ceiling, hoping the fog would clear from his mind. “Government, Mr. Webb, said to come.”

Bishop was sitting on the floor mattress, chuckling, assured that there was no physical threat. He tapped his club onto the dingy tile. “You wouldn’t be the Monitor, would ya—run the Government yerself?” he asked, toying with Gregory. “Monitor, I thought he was ’sposed to have three heads or something.”

The sarcasm did not escape Gregory. He arched his shoulders defiantly and replied, “The Monitor—he’s a dead pig poker. Dead. An’ I’m sent by the new Government, ta find a builder what can make a ship ta cross the Big Ocean.”

Bishop and Moori giggled, but Big Tom’s brow furrowed into four erratic, worried rows.

Operating the forty-foot skimmer Kapinta was a family affair. Lyle and Nob, fraternal twins, were arguing on the bow as she plowed along on three sails—Lyle formally the captain (more conservative, wiser) but only nominally in charge, and Nob the grunt (flashier, but an ale hound). Younger sister Belinda, the first mate, had a hand on the helm.

Lyle was kneeling, fiddling with the right eyepiece of his binoculars. He was not sure if the problem was focus or sea spray, but he glanced from his brother’s blouse to his own and found nothing clean enough to wipe the lenses with.

“Dunkin Island’s been more picked over than a corn cob,” Nob complained.

Lyle scanned the island’s tree line again, pressing his nubby cheeks back in a smile, happy that the focus had improved. “Big Tom said to gather up the red-leggers double-time this swing out an’ he’d pay a bonus on top of the bounty, ya? Well, if my theory proves right, we’ll find more ’n we can hold right hereabouts, not two days out of Thomas Island. The boss’d be pig-grin pleased at that.”

“How ya figure it, though?” Nob asked. “The entire fleet came out after the sinking! And then Big Tom came out hisself on that six-shooter The Tooth of Horan to look at the wreck. If there’s even a mosquito left on Dunkin Island that ain’t been buggered, we’d never find it.”

Lyle stayed focused on the hump of land growing bigger in the spyglass. “Brother, if you got even a pea for a brain…” he paused for effect “…make some soup, honey, ’cause it’s gone to mush. You heard the rumors about the Lucia. Somewhere there is a booger of truth—about most of the red-leggers escaping instead of drowning like they shoulda; about some missing gold. Now, think: Why is Big Tom in a hurry to sell more red-leggers—because he’s got to build another skimmer? He’s got dozens of skimmers!” Lyle slapped at the deck under him and continued. “No. But could it be that he’s short of cash? Ah, mayhap.”

“An’ you think maybe some of those red-leggers are still hid out on Dunkin?”

“Or the nearabout islands. Or maybe they was gone and come back—like for the gold, if they seen something during the wreck. Maybe there’s even dozens of ’em around, got they little peenie boats all put together already and go zip back and forth like they lived here a hunnerd years.”

“Oh, if they had boats already, they’d a lit off by now,” Nob said, scratching in his beard doubtfully. Unlike his brother the captain, he rarely shaved.

Lyle handed Nob the binoculars. “What ya make of this? The birds—halfway down the eastern slope?”

Nob squinted through the glasses and followed the crown of Dunkin Island down to his right. Four large birds soared in slow circles just above the tree line. As each in succession banked and caught the sunlight, they flashed brilliant plumage—blue, green and red. Their heads silhouetted against the pale sky were shaped like large spring hooks.

“Well, damn,” Nob said, “vulture macaws.”

Lyle shrugged his shoulders in mock modesty, as if it were possible his deductions were wrong. “Ho, well, it’s just that I’ve never known ’em to flock very far from humans,” he said. “Seems to me they take a liking to a fresh garbage pile, often as not.”

Nob snorted and wiped his nose on a sleeve. “Hmmn. Often as not, ya.”

Lyle pointed grandly toward the birds over the backboard side and Belinda dutifully corrected her course.

Just short of the beach they anchored, loaded their gear into a small inflatable raft, and the three swam ashore with the raft in tow. Lyle handed out the equipment in bored, routine motions: two of the hoop-shaped whip traps per person, four handbombs, and a snub gun apiece. They already had knives strapped to each calf—standard wear. Each piece of equipment bore the oval Cred Faiging stamp—would have seemed inadequate without it.

Being lighter on her feet, Belinda was assigned to sprint up the beach and climb the opposite side of the ridge. Nob followed Lyle straight up into the troublesome mangrove and pigtail vines. Knives out, they quietly snicked their way through the tendrils, knowing that a machetelike slashing would raise an alarm.

Once inland, the sea breeze was lost, and the jungle pressed close with its envelope of steam. Their noses dripped sweat. No words were spoken. The captain signaled orders to his brother with minute flickers of the hand.

When Lyle judged they were high enough, they cut to the right, scabbing the hillside until they came to the trail they knew they would find. In some ways, Lyle often said over an evening ale, humans are the simplest beasts to hunt.

The slavers followed the trail up again until they came to the right spot—a clearing where a patch of sunlight glared onto the path, followed by a section of deep shadow as it plunged into low underbrush. In the shadow, Lyle lay the hoop of his first whip trap, nestling the rim under the leaves, then reeling out the trip wire, and hooking it to the charge pin on the opposite side.

Farther up the hill they found the ratty camp. It was empty, but told the silent hunters something about their prey. A dubious lean-to had been built by vine-lashing three cross supports to the arcing roots of a banyan tree and then thatching them over. Crude wooden roasting tools lay about the rock-rimmed campfire coals. The vulture macaws clawed at small skeletons with their vicious talons: primarily small fish, perhaps a couple of tiny wild pigs.

Seasoned outdoorsmen did not live here.

Nob was startled to suddenly find Belinda grinning among them. She had appeared silently, like a khaki ghost, breathing normally despite her jog up the ridge. Lyle pointed the two of them in opposite directions and drew circles in the air—the signal for them to plant their remaining whip traps at the periphery of the campsite. That done, they toured the border together to review where the traps lay. If a melee broke out among red-leggers and slavers, it was strategic to know the location of the crippling devices. To stumble into one during battle could prove disastrous.

Then came the most mind-numbing part of the hunt. The wait. Lyle crouched at the trail head, Nob squatted near the small trash pile to keep watch on the east approach to the camp, and Belinda searched once more—fruitlessly—for hidden weapons, and then planted herself on a stone near the dead fire.

The sun rose, the flies hummed, the vulture macaws had for lunch the same thing they had had for breakfast.

And finally Lyle’s whip trap blew—like a distant shotgun blast—down the hillside, the first one he had hidden. The vulture macaws took to the sky in a blue-green clatter of wings. The slavers broke into a quiet hunter’s trot single file down the trail, handbombs bouncing on their belts, until they reached a black circle, still smoking on the path. Ten feet to the side of the trail, hurled into the underbrush, lay a grizzled man in shock, thoroughly cocooned by a webbing of minuscule barbed wire threads.

To step into a whip trap is rarely fatal, for to set a killer snare would defeat the purpose of slaving. The charge detonated by the trip wire actually is directed away from the victim, in the shape of a circle. The blast throws out an intricate, spring-loaded netting of barbed wire thread which instantly compacts again around the hapless person or animal that set off the charge.

It is a painful and stunning entrapment, but to struggle against the restraint is even worse—the effect of dragging hundreds of miniature knives across the skin simultaneously. Instinct will not allow that more than once.

The three slavers approached their wire-bound quarry cautiously nevertheless, scanning the jungle for more fortunate companions. There seemed to be none.

Belinda began clipping the wires away, cooing softly in a universal language designed to calm a new prisoner. Her hands darted about his body, methodically snipping the metal threads and peeling them off like bloodied briars. As each hand or leg came free, Nob set a cuff in place.

As the prisoner’s shock subsided his breathing grew shallow and rapid. His maniacal eyes followed Belinda’s hands and an occasional whine gurgled deep in his lungs when she tore away the barbed strands. He wore filthy drawstring trousers, and his bare feet were in sorry shape—where they weren’t bruised there were red-cracked calluses.

Lyle kicked around in the surrounding pigtail vine looking for hand weapons. Instead, he found a length of cloth wrapped around three small sea bass.

“The pig-poker netted hisself a right sorry dinner,” Lyle called to his brother and sister, holding the fish up by their tails. He tossed them farther into the vines and tramped back.

Belinda had cut the prisoner’s head free, and Lyle worked his fingers into the matted, sun-scorched hair and pulled his face out of the dirt. The captain winced at the open sores under the blond gnarls of beard, the cracked and peeling skin.

Nob grunted. “Ya think he could be off the Lucia’s crew? Bark said there weren’t but a few red-leggers in the holds that weren’t Rafers.”

“Pig-brain,” his sister responded as she finished up the wire-clipping. “He was crew, he’d a had a dozen chances to get hisself rescued. They’s had more skimmer traffic here lately than Thomas Harbor. This’s one we can sell, I’d say.”

“Ya, but juss one,” Nob said, slapping at Lyle’s thigh, “not the great harvest some of us was expecting.”

Lyle was soberly studying the stranger’s face, and Nob slapped him again, encouraging him to join the banter. The skimmer captain declined with a silent shake of his head, and he carefully eased the wild-eyed man’s head onto the blast-torn jungle floor.

“You can pig-poke what you was expecting,” Lyle murmured. “This one was on the Lucia, all right—but mayhap a swagger that was not eager to be found, if the rumors are true. The one we’ve whip-trapped here is Little Tom.”