The Dream Vessel (2 page)

“What we really need is a very large ship.”

Rosenthal Webb’s words boomed over the chatter in the Revolutionary Council meeting room. The other conversations withered. Surprised faces turned toward the old warrior. Virginia Quale was standing at the front of the room where she had tacked up a map of Merqua’s eastern sectors (from New Chicago to the coast, for the most part). Her hand dropped away from the map, and her lips pressed into an impatient corrugated circle.

“I was attempting a discussion of rail lines, Mr. Webb,” she said. “The tracks what you and your boys were detonating just a year ago must be laid new now if we’re to have sufficient supply lines.”

As was his habit, Webb drummed the four finger nubs of his right hand against the dark polish of the conference table. He repeated himself: “But what we really need is a large ship. Ta cross the Big Ocean. It’s been our policy long-standing that we would assess what has become of the other continents if we ever came free of the Monitor.”

Winston Weet thrust his round face out over the table to interject. He waved a hand toward the map. “The Monitor’s nay dead but a few months,” he said, jowls waggling. “There’s a mountain of arrangements to be made before we dare announce our new…uh, proprietorship of Merqua.”

“And priorities,” said Eliot Kohrn, the dark-eyed man to Webb’s left. Kohrn rarely spoke up in the large council meetings, but felt more comfortable as long as he did not have to compete with the babble of three or four people at a time. “Shouldn’t we repair our homeland afore we off an’ tip-toe through some foreign radiation fields? There are the work camps to set to voluntary, no? The timber camps, hmm? The farm camps? Slavers to scuttle?”

Webb fell back against his chair impatiently, pushing a long sigh out his nostrils. His skin flushed red, giving an odd glow to the tendril of a fresh tattoo that wound around his neck. He said no more.

Quale looked uneasy. “Um, Winston, I gully you have a report on our infiltration of management in New Chicago? Would you give the briefing now, please?”

Winston Weet obediently rattled open a folder of papers as Quale strode to the hatch leading into the hallway. Before disappearing through the small door, she stared in Webb’s direction, arching her eyebrows. The aging Revolutionary caught the signal, pushed away from the conference table, and limped out after her.

The black-lacquered piping against the hallway ceiling gave just enough clearance to allow Webb to stand erect. But he hunched down anyway, looking like a schoolboy about to be punished.

Knowing the direction that the conversation would take, Webb started in himself: “Well, I never did pretend to be a detail man—sit there an’ plant railroad ties or whatever.”

Quale did not look perturbed now, just concerned. “Rose, there is much to do yet,” she said. “How can we justify the expense of commissioning an ocean craft—even if there were a builder what knew how? There are boat builders here and there, ya, but none that’s made a ship like that. Not since the ancients self-destructed.”

Her words echoed away down the dark corridor. The two Revolutionaries, the tired bomber and the graceful administrator of headquarter operations, could hear Winston Weet droning on in the conference room about Revolutionaries taking on responsible positions in New Chicago.

It was not like Webb to be without a quick response, and Quale read mischief in his eyes.

“Okay,” she demanded, “what is it?”

Webb shrugged.

“What is it? You’ve done something, no?”

Webb nodded. “I sent Gregory out. Sent ’im to find a boat builder in the Out Islands.”

Quale’s eyes widened. “Any boat builder out there is a pirate, most likely. Or a slaver. Either one would deserve ta hang, but you would like to keep one in business?”

Webb nodded again. “You’re worried about spending money on a ship? Well, I gully a slaver would hammer us a fine one free of charge—juss to keep his balls swinging where they ought.”

Quale frowned. “Gregory’s gone. Hoo. I guess there’s no surprise that you’d proceed without council approval. But we’re going to stop with this, Rose. When Gregory returns to report, nothing more happens until a full council vote. Understood? Ya?”

Webb nodded his head in unenthusiastic consent. Quale kissed him quickly on the chin and thrust herself back through the hatch into the meeting room. Webb almost followed, but decided against it. Instead, he followed the corridor until he came to the metal ladder disappearing into holes in the floor and ceiling.

He climbed down two floors to Level Five, hand over hand on the steel that gleamed from decades of wear. It occurred to him that its usefulness was coming to an end—the whole smothering under-the-mountain complex would no longer be needed for hiding once it was announced that the Monitor had been killed. A month, maybe—four or five at most. The bunker smelled dank to him now, rotting.

On Level Five, he paced wearily down the circular hall past the identical plank doors until he came to his small, private warren. He pushed it open, slammed the door after him, and tore off his shirt furiously, letting the buttons clatter to the floor. Webb turned up the dim bulb over his dresser—overtaxed generator be damned—and checked himself out in the spotty mirror.

His new tattoo was 100 percent now—all of the scabbing had fallen away to reveal a large swirl of red, yellow and black. Its core was an intricate cross-hatching of color three inches wide on his lower chest. Four tendrils spiraled away from the center to wind around his neck, under each arm and into his crotch.

He turned to the side and squinted, admiring the artistry—damned Rafer artistry. The tattoo was a souvenir of his last mission, the killing of the Monitor. They had given him no more choice about having it needled into his skin than he’d had in losing four fingers years before. He recalled the dark-skinned fighter Tha ’Enton returning to his Rafer encampment victoriously, a partner in the killing of the foul Monitor. Naively, Webb and Gregory had followed the strutting Rafer, anticipating a celebration. The entire night was a druggy blur, but Webb was thankful to have left the village alive, albeit decorated.

The lightbulb dimmed abruptly, then returned to full power. In a pang of guilt, Webb set the lamp’s switch back to its lowest setting and flopped onto his bunk. He stared at the ceiling and wondered how Gregory was faring—a young man set adrift so quickly into yet another strange land. A young man with so much life ahead of him. A long life to live as a walking Rafer tapestry.

Big Tom was daydreaming. Pinned to one of the oversized drafting tables in his office was a schematic of his latest creation, the Lucia. He could take in everything from here: this penciled beaut tacked down before him, and the shipyard outside where she was actually built—the past, present and future.

He leaned his large belly into his walking stick and again and again savored every detail of sailing perfection. A shipbuilder may father hundreds of handsome and servicable craft in his good years, but rarely does he experience the sweet satisfaction of having spared nothing—time, materials and design—to build a skimmer absolutely right. The Lucia, he told himself, was the perfect blending of the forces of nature and the needs of man.

Just below there in the shipyard, over the veranda rail and down near the bay, were the drydocks where she painstakingly took shape. It was the ideal, linear shipbuilding layout: From the offload dock, into the yard of lumberstock, into the millhouse, and out to the construction yard, the long and awkward timbers never needed to be turned, not even at a right angle, on their path to becoming a sea skimmer.

It was from this office that Big Tom watched the Lucia’s delicate skeleton rise and her graceful body fill in over the months. Meticulous craftsmen would spare no effort under the burning scrutiny of the Caribbean’s most powerful—and brutal, some say—tradesman. And just down the dock from the shipyard was the empty slip that the Lucia would return to any day now with new cargo. Maybe even this afternoon.

For a monied man like Big Tom it took a conscious effort to maintain the casual, bare-wood atmosphere in his office. He liked the dirt-kick quality. One of his wives would appear at the rear entrance with a northland wool rug, or a porcelain nude maybe—some campaign to bring civilization to the workplace. His hands would flutter like spooked herons—“Blast it! Take it to the mainhouse.” And then her face would wilt into a scowl and he’d have to figure out how to make it up to her. Some nice smoke, or the powder, maybe.

He liked it here—the weathered-gray planking, the encircling veranda and the louvered doors pushed open on all sides. Here, he could think like a seaman, not some blubber-butt monk.

Out the east and west windows loomed the steep slopes of Crown Mountain, arcing around to form the bay, God’s amphitheater. His office was a simple structure set into the base of the mountain, stilts out front, one story, a roof done in curved red tile salvaged from one of the ancient hotels gone to rot. From this spartan shelter he commanded Thomas Island and the largest known shipping line, Thomas Exports.

Big Tom lit a cigarette—fine mainland tobacco, machine rolled even, one of the silly luxuries he had come to allow himself. He exhaled, and the satisfying sting webbed onto the tip of his tongue. He was turning his jowly face back to the schematic of the Lucia when Bishop shuffled in on sandals, drawstring pants low on his gaunt hips.

“You look pounded,” Big Tom said. “’Nother night sucking ale bottles at Sanders’s, I’d say.” His jaw muscles bulged rhythmically. He drew again on the cigarette. “Well, we can’t have it both ways—can we?—your kinda social life, and on toppa that a job what’s supposed to start at first light. You look pounded! Like New York City musta looked on Big Bang Day.”

Bishop, five feet tall, rolled his eyes up at Big Tom painfully. “Sorry,” he muttered. He was walking haltingly toward a round table in the corner, as if he had an equal limp in each leg. There a beaker of hot coffee perched on its rack over a candle stub. Big Tom watched the slow agony, the quivering hand taking the beaker and pouring sloppy spurts into a stained mug.

Bishop slurped, paused, felt no better, and slurped again. “I am sorry ta be late on ya,” he said. His eyes stared dully into the room at nothing in particular. Bishop seemed to be searching in misery for each word, even the easy ones. “It was really work, ya know, ya could look at it like that—I was doin’ a job what needed doing, that mess with the tug captain.”

Big Tom’s face relaxed, the folds of flesh easing down again. “You were working on our problematic Captain Bull? What, got ’im drunk—now he’s hung over as you? Wouldn’t be the first time he took to sea hung over, I’d say.” He pointed a fat finger out the window. “The Lucia’s still not in, ya see. If you bought us any time at all, well it ain’t enough.”

Bishop looked hurt. “I done better.” He slurped. “I done better than that. I tole him we need a day was all, and he said no. He’s got a Government schedule up and down the mainland coast what he can’t break. He doesn’t care that we got forty some red-leggers coming in any minute—that we’d have to feed ’em for a month ’fore he got back. Said he’d leave today with whatever we got already, he’d put off with an empty barge or two if he had to. These Government guys….”

Big Tom was nodding. He heaved into the walking stick, hobbling to a chair where he sat heavily and picked at the stuffing. “We hold red-leggers a month in the cells they’d rot away. Subtract the cost of feeding ’em well….” He stared at the ceiling, calculating. “They wouldn’t be worth coconuts by time we sold ’em. Government wouldn’t give us coconuts for ’em, nope. Timing, this business is timing. Some day, mayhap, the day will come that we can touch mainland with our own ships, our own cargoes, and pig-poke the Government. Ach.”

“Ya, I tole him all that about the feed costs, and he didn’t give a whit,” Bishop said. “So I says to him that it’s okay. We value his business—our official pipeline to the mainland—so much that we wanted him to have a send-off present, even if he couldn’t wait.”

Big Tom stopped picking at the stuffing. His eyebrows rose.

“Two fourteen-year-olds. Twins. I tole him I knew two teeners what would service him in any way was his pleasure.”

“Girls or boys?”

“Girls. So I says let’s have a few beers at Sanders’s Shebeen, they gonna meet us there sometime, I dunno when….”

“You don’t know any twins like that. Not on Thomas Island.”

“But he don’t know that.” Bishop gulped now at the coffee. It was cooler. “So we get piss drunk at Sanders’s waiting for the two kids—‘Where are they?’ I keep saying. ‘They’ll be here in a bit, I’ll buy a couple more ales meantime.’”

Big Tom was starting to see it now. “I feel a fight coming on….”

Bishop grinned slightly through his stupor. “Right,” he said. “Eventually, Captain Bullshit is coming back from the can, zipping up with one hand an’ a bottle in the other. He’s taking a swig an’ he bumps into a table where Eric and Larry—the shrimpers?—they’re playing chess and a coupla pieces get knocked over. And then Captain Bull gets knocked over and—well, when he wakes up today, he’ll find himself in the brig owing Sanders 10,000 centimes for damages.”

“There isn’t 10,000 worth in the whole shebeen. If you broke every chair and every bottle, well, 5,000 centimes at most.”

“Ya, but that’s what Sanders is asking, 10,000. Hey, it could take days to negotiate him down. An’ you gotta talk to the brigsman today—none of this bend-rules-for-the-captain, uh-uh.”

“So Sanders and Eric and Larry are all in on this.”

“Oh ya. It was quite a trick movin’ that table in that captain’s way, but we’d a gotten a fight going somehow.”

Tym disliked this foolishness. She was not trained to be a teacher, had no inclination to be one. But every few months, her name came up in the rotation to fill in for Lupa and Manfred, the real teachers who seemed quite talented at escaping the classroom.

She would much rather be spearing boar, or plucking lobster off the sea floor. Anything but the classroom, those twenty sets of moist noses and wide eyes demanding wisdom. The little ruggers filled four collapsible benches under an open-air tent, which was dyed varied shades of green and brown to hide it amid the jungle vegetation. Collapsible was a dominant concept when you moved every few weeks, dodging enemies and following food.

“Todaaaay….” She let the word linger, as an announcement that the lessons were beginning. Finally even Pilsey, the jumpy six-year-old, had her grubby hands folded primly. “Today, we are going to talk about destructivism. Does anyone know what destructivism is?”

Silence.

Patiently, she began to pace in front of the class. She hooked her thumbs into her cut-off trousers and patted her long brown fingers against her thighs. She was bald, or nearly so—just a couple of days’ growth. Being out of the sun, she wore no shirt.

“You talked about it before…”

“What, Jim-Jim?” She turned quickly. The older kid, maybe twelve, the one with no left hand, had said something.

“You talked about it before….”

“Yes, Jim-Jim, I discussed destructivism the last time that I was honored with teaching duty. But do you remember my rule? I want you to speak up when you have something to say—speak up loudly. But before you do, please raise your hand. I’ll know to watch your lips. Remember, ah don’ hear so good.” She thrust her hip out and propped her right hand on it.

Giggles.

Tym pointed. “What, Luci?”

“Ummm…ah don’ hear so WELL,” squeaked Luci, the little one down front, naked except for sandals.

“Correct. Yes. I don’t hear so well. Now, Jim-Jim, please define destructivism.”

“It’s…” His voice was croaking, sounding like it hurt. “It’s, well, that things are getting worse.”

“Well, not quite. There’s more.”

“Well, there was the Big Fire! Hundreds of years ago. The bombs that blew up most the mainland.”

Tym was beckoning now, waving her hand in little strokes—come on, come on, come on—her eyes fixed on his rippling mouth. But Jim-Jim seemed to have run out of knowledge.

“Okay,” Tym said, “that was very good, as far as you went. But you were lacking one idea: That sometimes things have to get bad, there must be destruction, before things can get any better. Out of destruction—historically, over long periods of time—comes progress. And this idea, this theeeeory, is called…what?”

Jim-Jim’s hand shot up: “The Big Bang Theory!”

“Right.” Maybe teaching wasn’t so bad.

Tym adjusted the mirror again. She cursed the incorrigible spin it seemed to have, dangling as it did from the overhead cross brace of her tent. When the mirror seemed nearly still, she dragged her stool a few inches to the left to follow the reflection. This repeated action had left several sets of zigzagging lines in the dirt.

She raised the straight razor again, head dipped, eyes on the glass, and proceeded to shave her head in short scrapes. She winced, slapped her hand into the pot of boar fat, smeared it onto her bristly dome, then started anew.

This could take half an hour, she knew, maybe more. Shave a little patch, stop the spin, drag the stool, shave. One of the extravagances of her youth—oh, ten years ago—had been braids down to her tailbone. But now practicality ruled. Just while swimming, the drag caused by hair merited the shaving. But add to that the danger of entangling it while sprinting through the island bramble—or of giving an enemy something to grab.

Every few days she dutifully chased her mirror around the tent. There was an answer to this foolishness of the spinning mirror, of course. Hanging the mirror from two strands of twine, not one. She would work on that—hoo, any day now—next time she found the spare minutes to hunt down the string.

Later, Tym would not think of the next sequence of events as continous time. She would remember it in a series of three vivid snapshots.

First, there was the numbing roar—an explosion of green tent canvas, singed rope, smoke and fire.

Second, unaccountably mobile, she was on her feet and bounding across the suddenly hellish tent yard toward the jungle.

Third, trapped. Flailing in a net like a frantic beast in the dark. Then a large mean weight fell upon her, another human, maybe two or three, and there was a flash of steel—in her own hand. Tym was going down in a hard way, but someone else was going to be sorry he had tackled a wild animal holding a shaving razor.

When she came to, Tym found herself shackled to a bench in the belly of a slave ship called the Lucia.