The Dream Vessel (16 page)

When Moori stood she led him to the rail of the open peat moss bin. Propped on the ancient two-by-four, she hiked her skirt and pulled him to her, a hand on each side of his buttocks. Gregory obliged, disbelieving. The danger seemed to linger only distantly—in a cobwebbed corner of the shed like some banished ghost. He ran a stroking hand under her thigh and found more moisture. Moori pulled him backward and together they fell into the earth-smell of the peat moss.

Gregory supposed he had been drowsing. The slivers of light knifing through the dusty air had dimmed. Moori seemed to be asleep, naked in the soft grime of the peat moss. The tip of her nose, one cheek, and her rump were covered in gold and brown flecks. What a mess she was. An alluring, warm, satisfying mess.

It was an odor that first stopped his heart. The sour reek of bourbon. And then Gregory heard the scritch-scratch of someone shuffling by. The shed suddenly felt very, very small. Gregory tried to remember: Had Big Tom been wearing his shin blades today? Probably—he usually did. Then he thought of the merchant’s powerful red hands, and then of the garroting tree just out in the garden.

Gregory heard Big Tom’s voice boom, almost a ritual chant, “Cantilou, ha, Cantilou, Cantilou, good evening.”

The reply that came—from where?—was a horrifying, high-pitched keening that goaded the old merchant: “Soooo, how goes the Government work? The ship building? Now that you have no flesh to harvest? Eh, pirate? Eh, Government man?”

Moori was beginning to stir, responding to the voices, and Gregory carefully placed the palm of one hand over her mouth. Beyond that, he dared only to move his head the two inches necessary to see under the bin rail, enough to see Big Tom lifting knife-loads of powder to his nose in the dim light. Gregory’s suspicion was correct, and he felt ill: Big Tom was speaking both parts—his own voice and the imagined rantings of the cat beast.

“Gumment, pah, the new Gumment,” came Big Tom’s natural voice. “It may a commissioned the big sea skimmer, but they’ll not have her unless I’m aboard as captain. Hah.”

“Or, they’ll use yer ample body for trollin’ bait first voyage.”

Gregory watched as the slaver, weaving over by the manure sacks, paused for another snort of powder. A trail of white now streaked down his moustache and beard, and he held the knife aloft dramatically as his face brightened. “Trolling bait! That’s what we will have, Cantilou, when I find who it is that broke into the garden shed. Thank you—trolling bait. Did you see who it was Cantilou?”

“Is not for me to say,” came the whine, “but a careful rapscallion would have locked the shed after he left….”

And Gregory stiffened when he heard Big Tom complete the thought in his own voice as he turned toward the peat moss bin. “…unless he has not had time to leave at all!”

At the rail, Big Tom propped each elbow and let the knife dangle casually between thumb and forefinger. His red eyes darted back and forth between his captives, and his mouth under that bush of beard fell into a somber O-shape. He smelled more of whiskey than Sanders’s Shebeen itself. He whispered, “Moori.”

Gregory sat forward, still naked and ready to bolt. Moori was fully awake now and pulling on her blouse and skirt—somewhat foolishly, Gregory thought, as they would be no help against a maniac’s blade.

All ebullience had drained from Big Tom’s face, and he suddenly looked very old. That’s what it looks like to watch a man die, Gregory told himself. The merchant’s lips began to quiver. Shoulders hunched, he about-faced and returned to the stuffed cat. He cradled the long-dead animal in his arms, fell to his knees on the dirt floor and wailed in a crazed mixture of adult voice and soprano Cantilou.

Gregory was over the rail, trousers in one hand and tugging Moori with the other. When he glimpsed her face, Gregory thought there was a hint of glee—could she have planned it this way? No. Maybe.

They sprinted over the white stones through the twilight garden, clothes fluttering under their arms. At the edge of the garden Gregory hesitated: Up the hill to the protection of Fel Guinness? Staying on the island would eventually mean a confrontation with Big Tom, perhaps a bloody one. Gregory wanted to live, and Big Tom had to finish the Government’s ship. Better to leave the island altogether. After a moment’s consideration, Gregory sprinted up the porch of the mainhouse, dragging Moori.

“He’ll find us here,” she said.

“Two minutes,” he answered, breathless. “Grab some things. Clothes, cash, trading metal. A weapon?”

Big Tom’s pitiful wailing pealed up and down Crown Mountain in the dying daylight. Moori looked sadly toward the garden shed. “Okay,” she said, “but the Government boys—your boys—took all of his bangers.”

When they reached the docks all that remained of the sun was a strip of crimson along the horizon, a slice of melon lying on its side. Gregory wore a small backpack; Moori lugged a stuffed satchel in each hand. The shipyard just east was quiet now, the musclers, the wood whits, Bishop, Bark and the rest of the island having retired to Sanders’s for the evening. The mammoth ship-in-the-making cut a mountainous silhouette against the harbor.

But Gregory was looking for another craft, and much to his relief it was lolling, low and long and double masted, in a berth near the end of the platform. The boat was dark and the gangplank hauled in, so Gregory pulled the cord wrapped twice around the near piling. A high-pitched bell tinkled on deck, and a voice responded, thick with Southland twang: “Lay off a that son—pull yer own rope.”

The tip of a fat cigar then glowed bright on deck, and Moori pointed as she made out the form: a four-foot man in a folding chair, feet propped on the backboard rail.

The little man’s bare feet fell to the deck in a lazy whump-whump. He stood and sauntered, stretching, cigar clenched in his teeth. As the dwarf neared, Gregory made out a face familiar from those foggy house boy days: a wide, oversized head, a scarred and flattened nose, as if the cartilage had been whittled out by a backwoods surgeon.

“Steinbrenner,” Gregory said.

The man nodded his large head. “Gregory, Moori, ’lo. Something wrong with the potatoes I brung ya?” he drawled.

“Not at all,” Moori whispered. “We need your help.” She glanced back down the dock. Big Tom had ceased his bawling, leaving all of Crown Mountain and its dwindling population eerily silent—save for the occasional hoo-hah emanating from Sanders’s pub. God knows what Big Tom was up to now. “We need to leave the island immediately—you must take us. To the mainland, preferably Chautown.”

Steinbrenner snorted. “Ah. A lady used to havin’ her way.”

Gregory unfolded a sheet of white paper and handed it to the produce boatman. Steinbrenner snapped it open and squinted at the writing. “Mmmm…by authority of the Revolutionary Council…please afford all courtesies necessary for the…mmm…signed Rosenthal Webb, chief of Revolutionary active forces.” He stretched over the rail and handed the letter back to Gregory. “And just who’s this Mr. Rosenthal of yours an’ why should I give a pig poke?”

“The new Government—you been to Chautown lately, you’ve heard,” Gregory replied.

“Rumors is what I heard, ya. A few toughs strung up some farmers—same musclers what got a strangle on Big Tom here, made ’im stop the red-legger trade.” Steinbrenner shook his head. “Bad year for Big Tom. No wonder he doin’ so much a the powder.”

Gregory shrugged off his backpack and unbuttoned the top. “Okay,” he said, tossing the boatman a drawstring bag the size of an orange, “whatcha say to this?”

Steinbrenner snatched the bag out of the air with his left hand. He broke the string in his teeth and shuffled out part of its contents—large, ornately engraved coins.

“They’s fourteen of ’em there, worth close to 10,000 centimes,” Gregory said.

“But this’s Rafer brass.”

“Man like you does all sorts of trade—would know how to make use of ’em. No? Let’s pitch off now.”

The produce man snorted and counted the disks twice. Then he threw his weight onto his gangplank and teetered it over the rail until it slammed onto the dock. Gregory and Moori undid the lashings and boarded.

“Moori, you’re running now from Big Tom, like all his other wives did.” There was reproach in the seaman’s voice. “If thass so, not a word to anyone about how ya made off.”

They were center-harbor before Steinbrenner had all of his sails set. Moori approached him at the helm.

“How do you know how much a the powder Big Tom’s been using?” she asked.

The captain grunted and kept his eyes straight ahead. “Young lady, you sure I shouldn’t let ya off with the trugs at Cell Island?”

Gregory was leaning on the starboard rail, somberly watching Thomas Island fall away into the darkness. “Steinbrenner’s a produce man,” he said. “Where do ya think Big Tom gets the stuff, ’cept from the likes of him?”

Seven aging, somber faces circled the conference table. These were the masterminds of the Revolution—a band of eccentrics who had spent decades of their lives under a remote mountain in the range known among the ancients as Blue Ridge. The Revolution was done. Mission accomplished, partly at the hand of this youngster summoned before them for interrogation.

Gregory stood nominally at attention at one end of the table. Feet apart, hands behind his back. He had been home for forty-five minutes.

Virginia Quale was fripping at the corner of a note pad covered in her furious scribblings. She leaned back into the chair padding and sighed. “My goodness, it is a harried life that you have been leading these past couple of years, Gregory.” She was beginning slowly. “And it is well recognized by every member of this committee that your adventures and endangerment and injuries have all been in the service of the Revolution and its subsequent Government. Now….”

Winston Weet could not contain himself. He thrust his pudgy face forward: “But dammit Gregory, you had been ordered by Mr. Webb merely to contact this Big Tom, to determine his willingness to construct an ocean ship—not to begin the construction of one! And your actual orders, you may or may not know, did not even carry the weight of this council.”

“My orders were to contact the old slaver about the possibility of making a ship, ya,” Gregory responded rigidly. “And after my accident my instructions, as relayed by the Rafer Pec-Pec, were to recuperate on Thomas Island until travel worthy.”

Quale jumped in again. “You are being elliptical, Gregory. Our concern is that there have been many other matters in Merqua to be straightened out before we can allocate resources to a mission over the Big Ocean. Just how is it, then, that this Big Tom on a remote island is constructing an expeditionary vessel for the new Government?”

Gregory gripped his hands together behind his back and felt his scalp growing sweat-moist. Webb was sitting there appearing unemotional, except for the nervous thrumming of his finger nubs against the conference table. Webb, Gregory’s long-time mentor, had set the project in motion with the complicity of the Rafer magic man Pec-Pec. That would not sit well with the angry council.

Gregory surveyed the ring of dour faces and made his decision: He would employ a common Revolutionary field technique designed to alleviate vexing dilemmas among human beings. He would lie. With just enough truth to make it seem plausible.

“Forgive my, uh, ’liptical testimony,” Gregory began, “but there’s a sequence of events what makes my actions clearer. After my injury, the island Rafers delivered me to the home of Big Tom the tradesman and shipbuilder—the very man I had been sent to find—where they apparently thought I would receive the best medical care. By irony, it was another Rafer, Pec-Pec, who brought me around.”

Quale still fripped impatiently at her pad of paper.

“When I regained my full faculties on Thomas Island, ya see, circumstances had changed since I was given my orders—juss to approach Big Tom. Boatsmen were bringing in rumors from the mainland that the Monitor was dead, that there was a new Government, and that it was hanging all enforcers of the old system of forced labor.” Gregory shrugged. “I knew that much was true. It was also rumored that a crew of new Government musclers were sailing for the islands, an’ that meant doom for Big Tom and his men.”

Gregory paused and cast his eyes down for a humble effect. “I had feared that the loss of Big Tom would be the loss of Merqua’s best shipbuilder, now and for all time. So with Pec-Pec’s help, I persuaded Big Tom to start immediately the construction of the Government’s ocean ship. Even yer gentleman Fel Guinness would know better than ta whack a man working on a project for the new Government, former slaver or no.”

Eliot Korhn was wearily resting his forehead on his fingertips. “Now that the plans fer the ship are drawn an’ the construction’s begun,” he said, “what’s ta stop us from, uh, whacking Big Tom now and completing the craft ourselves?”

Gregory pressed his lips together. “True, any builder could follow the old bugger’s blueprints, except for one thing: Big Tom says the plans are not complete. Built as the plan specifies, the ship ’ud go down in the first heavy sea. There’s some structural detail he’s left out, something that can be added late in the building.”

“But at some time the ship must be absolutely finished,” Weet put in. “And from that point any rack of sailors could take her ta sea if Big Tom were, uh, absent.” While his words were diplomatic, his expression showed his distaste for the slaver.

Webb laid his hand flat on the table, his sign for an emphatic pronouncement. He spoke for the first time in the meeting: “Get your minds right, please people, that we’ll not be putting Big Tom away anytime soon. He aims to captain the ship, ya see. And even as detestable a man as he may be, that would do little harm. But the good it would do us: Well, he’ll not only see the ship finished, but he’ll see her rigged right, and seaworthy, and across the Big Ocean. That’s a seaman’s pride we can count on.”

“If I could be dismissed now?” Gregory interjected. He let his shoulders sag an inch to illustrate his fatigue.

“Of course, Gregory,” Quale replied in that motherly tone that no one took to be genuine. “How long a rest would you say your body requires?”

“Through the night would be it,” he answered. “Twelve or thirteen hours.”

Quale leaned over and spoke quietly into Webb’s ear, then listened to his whispered response, nodding. She drew a timepiece from the side pocket of her blouse and clapped its copper cover open and closed again. “So gentlemen, we shall meet at ten A.M.? Now that it seems inevitable that we will have an ocean craft, against the wishes of some of us, I believe it will be in order to brief Gregory on his next assignment in the morning.”

Gregory felt the sickening disbelief churn his stomach. All spring and summer he had spent in a head-pounded haze. Now he would be allowed to rejuvenate just a day or so before shipping out again.

He marched silently to the opposite side of the room, pulled the exit hatch open and thrust himself through it. After being away for so long, he found the dim corridors smothering. He stooped instinctively to avoid the lacquered black piping and conduits—a lifetime of that did not dissipate so easily. Footsteps were clacking up the concrete after him. It had to be Rosenthal Webb. No one else had that limping pace, that determination in his stride.

“The Revolution,” Webb began explaining, even before he had caught up. “The Revolution is done, but it means nothing unless we put the rest of it in place, Gregory. You can not stop. I’m sorry. The Government alone will take years to recreate. The ocean ship must sail—there is speculation that parts of ancient Europe might have gone untouched. Can you imagine what that would mean?”

Gregory stopped by the hatch in the corridor floor where the ladder, bolted to the wall, would take him to the sleeping quarters down on Level Five. Already, mentally, he was checking in at the desk, taking the fresh sheets and spreading them out….

“No, Mr. Webb, what would that mean? Another Government to overthrow? Eh? What are the chances that whatever form of rule we find over the Big Ocean is going to be of our liking? The rumors point the other way, don’t they?”

Webb pressed his lips together and put a friendly hand on Gregory’s shoulder. “You sleep now.”

“Hard ta sleep when you’ve juss had yer butt chewed by the council of the new Government”—he jabbed a finger angrily—“while lying to protect you.”

Webb smirked. “And a good lie it was. They see it was a mistake ta put Guinness into the field like they did—he killed many people unnecessarily, and could have killed Merqua’s best shipbuilder. Embarrassed as they are, an’ with the ship already under construction, I’m sure they’ll give the rest of the expedition the go-ahead.”

Gregory mounted the ladder and began to climb down. “Well, excuse me. I’d better give sleep a try if I can calm down. I’m the one what’s gotta leave soon on a new mission.”

“The next assignment, what Quale has in mind is not so bad,” Webb said. “We want you to gather the crew and emissaries for the ocean ship, those that aren’t already on Thomas Island. It should take long enough, the recruiting, that you probably wouldn’t be done much before Big Tom finishes the ship—spring, hey.”

“You want me to recruit the expedition?”

“Ah, within limits. Ya. An’ most people of use to us, I would think, could be found in Chautown—it being such a shipping center.” The old man’s eyebrows rose suggestively. “You know anyone in Chautown? Any friends?”

“Ah,” Gregory replied. “I did leave Moori there, didn’t I?”

“One lass thing,” Webb said. “That part about Big Tom’s blueprints—that was part of the lie, right? That the ship would collapse?”

Gregory looked perplexed. “Not at all. He’s holding something back.”

As Gregory climbed down the ladder into the blackness, he thought about the word elliptical. How appropriate. Putting aside the chance to see Moori again, he still seemed to be circling farther and farther from what he really wanted for himself—but what did he really want?