October Light (22 page)

“Don't shoot!” he cried out. He grabbed the Captain's pistol with one violently shaking hand, Jane's arm with the other. “Come with me!” He dragged them to the cabin. “Sit down, be quiet!” he said. The cannon boomed again, and again there was a splash, much closer.

“We'll die like foxes in a hole!” Captain Fist whispered hoarsely. He was indignant but also, again, distinctly crafty.

“Be still,” Peter Wagner said. His heart was whamming and his tongue tasted brassy. He'd read that that happened.

The
Militant's
engines went off, and now they could hear voices. Holding Jane's hand, Peter Wagner crawled over to the door to peek out, just in time to see the cannon belch smoke and flame. The muffled report of the cannon and the crash, somewhere above his head, were almost simultaneous.

“We're hit!” the Captain whimpered, clutching his heart.

“Sh!” Peter Wagner said.

Then came rifle fire. Six shots, a pause, four more. The
Militant
was right alongside them now. If they fired the cannon it would knock the whole cabin off. The searchlight swung around and slammed the deck and bulkheads like the flat of a hand; every bolt or bar, twist of rope, slant of cable was like a razor cut.

“We surrender!” Peter Wagner shouted, then instantly ducked back—a premonition. They machine-gunned the cabin door.

Then everything was still. They listened to each other's breathing in the cabin. Except for the lapping of the water, it was all they could hear. Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman, down in the flooded engine room, made no sound.

“Why don't they sink us?” Jane whispered. She lay pressed to the floor, sheltered under Peter Wagner's arm.

“Sh!” he said. But he too had been thinking about that and believed he knew the answer. He felt foolish, plotting like some cowboy in a thriller—felt revulsion, in fact, thinking of the alphas in biological laboratories, the animals that always won out because they thrived on challenge, stress—but he also felt, puppet of the universe or not, exuberant, bound to be victorious. “Give me your guns,” he said.

“You're crazy,” Captain Fist whispered, but he gave up his gun: Peter Wagner had snatched it from his hand before the whisper was out. Jane gave him the rifle. He rose up off the floor cautiously, balanced like a gibbon, moved to the cabin door, and tossed the guns to the foredeck, one at a time.

“That's all we've got,” he called. “Don't shoot! I'm coming out!” He took a deep breath, raised his arms, and stepped through the door. He had a brief sense of noise and of being hit in the chest, like a dream of death, and he felt himself fainting for a split second, but nothing had happened. His innards were like jelly, but only for a moment. He stood waiting, and little by little his eyes adjusted to the reddish light. Three men stood on the
Militant's
deck, two blacks and an Indian. Two had rifles, aimed at the
Indomitable's
fore and aft decks; the third, a heavy-set, bearded black man, handsome as a king, had a machine gun aimed at Peter Wagner's belly.

“We want to talk,” Peter Wagner said. His throat closed with fear, such fear as not even the bridge had made him feel, though he'd been drunk then, granted. But this was a greater fear nevertheless, such fear as one feels of snakes or scorpions, things living and in some sense intelligent—such fear as the black feels of whites in an unfamiliar alley.

“What have we to say?” the black with the machine gun asked. He had dark glasses and a beard, and though he smiled, his face showed …

There was a gap. She leaped it like a spark, reading on:

… with a grapnel and threw it up onto the
Indomitable.
Before Peter Wagner could reach it to help, the Indian jerked it back with a whip-snap, and the grapnel dug in. In seconds the gunnels were lashed together and the three-man crew of the
Militant
was climbing aboard.

“Get us the gentleman who understands about engines,” the leader said. The accent was not English, Peter Wagner realized, but universal Shakespearean. He stepped up onto the bridge and looked around, cradling the machine gun in his left arm, the fingertips of his right hand in his suitcoat pocket; then he leaned the machine gun against the wheelhouse door. “But first, if you don't mind—” he nodded toward the bulkhead. Peter Wagner leaned on his arms to be frisked. When it was over he went back to the hatch, the lean black following him, and called down to Mr. Nit and Mr. Goodman. When he returned to the bridge, Captain Fist and Jane had their hands against the bulkhead and the leader was checking them for weapons, a pistol in his hand. He stepped back. “That's fine,” he said. “You may lower your arms.”

“Where's Dusky?” Captain Fist said.

“He died,” the man said. “Made the great decision—

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing
…”

“Died, you say,” Captain Fist said.

“Deceased.”

Captain Fist looked dubious.

Mr. Nit appeared in the searchlight's glare, popping his knuckles, the muscles of his face twitching as if separately alive. Mr. Goodman came a moment later, the black prodding him with his rifle.

“Good evening,” the leader said with a bow, two fingers on the brim of his Tyrolean. The machine gun was once more under his left arm, casual as an umbrella. Peter Wagner thought of stories he'd read about smiling, sweet-talking murderers—the Jones-men of Detroit, the innocent-eyed Green Berets of Viet Nam who pushed captured enemies out of helicopters to make their comrades talk, or Mafia men who took friends out to lunch and carried home their bodies in the trunks of their Lincoln Continentals. Such things were unthinkable for an ordinary man, even for Peter Wagner who'd sailed the seven seas. Yet they happened in the world, like other fictions; killers spoke their trivial, predictable lines, laughed, offered cigarettes, talked about the weather; and then, when the time arrived, out came the pistol, or the acid or the knife, and one more poor sucker, still laughing, was lightly blown away. It was difficult to believe, though he carefully fixed his mind on it. He was not so naïve as to doubt that the trashiest fiction is all true, as the noblest is all illusion. Yet for all Peter Wagner's fear of him, the man in the Tyrolean seemed too good for trash: his majestic looks, his seemingly unstudied gentleness, his accent, suggesting good background and education, his Stratford gestures, they all hinted some story more noble and interesting than the one he'd apparently been chosen for. Yet one thing was sure: he'd shot at them, and shot to kill. It was purest luck that Peter Wagner had jumped back when he'd fired his machine gun at the door. So he too, Peter Wagner, was committed to trash drama, if he intended to survive. Like all the world, Peter Wagner thought. One meets no King Lears in the ordinary world, no Ophelias.

“Good evening,” the leader said, more urgently, as if aware that his charm was unconvincing, frightening—or, rather, frightening because convincing.

Mr. Nit couldn't answer, tiny eyes darting. Mr. Goodman merely whispered.

“Inside, please,” the leader said. He took a flashlight from his suitcoat pocket, switched it on, and motioned with it toward the Captain's cabin, automatically leading with his wrist, again like an actor. The crew of the
Indomitable
went in, single file. The leader of the militants nodded them toward the bunk, then came in, shadows flying out around him like birds, and sat, himself, in the Captain's chair. He laid the gun across his lap and shined the flashlight up and down, helping the fat, quiet Indian look for the lightswitch. When they found that the lights were dead—they depended on the engine—the leader set his flashlight on the Captain's desk. The shadows, settling at last, took on weight. At a nod from the leader, the Indian went back out onto the bridge and stood with the other man, watching the door. The leader called to them, “Perhaps you gentlemen would go below and check out those engines.” They disappeared.

“Now,” the leader said, getting himself comfortable. He sounded, just this moment, like a diplomat or a minister high in the establishment. He picked off the sunglasses and dropped them into his inside suitcoat pocket. He had large, handsome eyes, remarkably like a Pharaoh's. He smiled—warmly, or so it seemed at first—at Captain Fist. Captain Fist trembled, white as chalk, and said nothing. His hatred of the black man was as evident as a smell.

Peter Wagner squinted, thinking about that, thinking about the black man's exaggerated caution, his finger never straying from the trigger of the gun, the fingertip trembling, a tremor just visible, like that of, say, a plucked guitar string.

The man said, “Call me Luther—Luther Santisillia.” As he spoke he turned sociably toward Peter Wagner, but only for an instant; then his eyes were back on Fist. “These people know me well enough. As for you, it's a pleasure to meet you.”

He nodded.

“And your name?” Santisillia asked, and glanced at him.

“Excuse me. Peter Wagner.” He was sorry to give it—sorry to give Santisillia any clue.

“Good. Excellent. How do you do.” Then he was silent, watching Fist, mouth smiling, large eyes veiled. It was clearer and clearer, the fear of him, buried in the act. He was a mere man on a stage, fleshy sweating mortal in the costume of effortless heroics. Santisillia said: “I believe you were going to propose a deal?”

“Just this,” Peter Wagner said, watching him. “We get the
Indomitable
running for you, and then you let us go.”

The black man pretended to consider it a while. With a smile like a child's, he said, “Man, I'd have to be crazy.”

“Why?” Jane said. She put her hand on Peter Wagner's arm.

“We could've returned your fire,” Peter Wagner said. (Re
turned your fire,
he thought.
Television talk.)
“We showed our good faith.”
(We showed our good faith.)

“You jivin me, man.” He laughed, dropping into the Harlem language. He spoke it as if it amused him, pleased him like a toy. “We'd have sunk you sure, so you decided you'd just play it cool and come rip me off later.” Then, returning to the elegant English, still smiling gently: “You have nothing with which to deal, it seems.”

“You think you can get this boat going yourself?”

The black man smiled, head tilted, and considered it. The five of them, huddled in the bunk, waited. The water lapped softly, the gunnels of the two boats crunched together, a sound like garbage cans scraping on concrete. Outside the cabin there was dull red light; Peter Wagner could see a few large stars beyond, filtered. Then the tall, lean black blocked out the door, the Indian just behind him. Santisillia turned slowly. The black man shook his head, and after a moment Santisillia turned back to them and sighed.

“Ok,” he said. He touched the machine gun. “You, mechanic—go down there, please.”

“It's no use, Santisillia,” Peter Wagner said. “He won't work out of fear if he knows you'll kill him anyway.”

“Why would I kill a mechanic?” he said and smiled.

Mr. Nit got up from the bunk.
Ok,
Peter Wagner thought. His chest filled with misery.
“Eels,”
Peter Wagner whispered to Mr. Nit. “We're on a wooden bunk.”

Mr. Nit looked, puzzled, at the bunk.

“What's that?” Santisillia said.

“He can't fix it anyway,” Peter Wagner said. “It's the
electricity.”
He pushed the word crazily, hoping the idea would hammer down into Mr. Nit's frightened head. “The
electricity,”
he said again.

“What you tellin the cat?” the lean black said. His rifle moved to aim at Peter Wagner's chest. The man's earrings jiggled.

“He'd have to hook up to a
secondary source,”
Peter Wagner said. His heart beat wildly. It was clear that his plan was hopeless; it depended on Mr. Nit. He tensed, half believing he would jump the bearded black. Impossible, of course. Mr. Nit had half turned, looking wildly at Peter Wagner as if only Peter Wagner's madness threatened him.

“It would take a
live source,”
Peter Wagner said, and then, to the man in the Tyrolean, “Interesting animal, electricity. Cheap to feed, it can live in either air or water—”

Mr. Nit backed away, but light was dawning.

“Take him down,” Santisillia said. The lean man pulled Mr. Nit out the cabin door and they were gone. At a sign from Santisillia, the Indian stayed.

“Let me help him,” Peter Wagner said. He started to get up.

Santisillia smiled. “Not a chance, baby.”

They sat for perhaps five minutes, silent. Peter Wagner was limp now, unnaturally calm, still watching, cold as a machine. Jane's hand was on his arm. Captain Fist's breathing was uneven and hard, a sound like an old man's snoring.

Then, from somewhere in the belly of the ship, there came a boom like the noise of a cannon. Santisillia's face turned quickly for once, and the Indian vanished from the doorway, padding down the bridge steps and over to the hatch. A moment later the Indian reappeared. “Knocking a hole in the bulkhead,” he said. His voice was like an adolescent's, soft, even girlish. “Man says got to run a wire to a secondary source. Be done in five minutes. Man says to give him a signal when you're ready.”

Santisillia smiled. “Tell him I'll thump the deck.”

The Indian gave a nod and vanished.