Horse of a Different Color

by Howard Waldrop

  Dick Deadeye, in the rigging, put his charge in the wooden trough. Good thing Buttercup had gotten them these. Anyone could have Congreve rockets as H.M.S. issue. These were the new Hale spin-stabilized kind, with angled vents for the exhaust gasses, so there was no need of the unwieldy sticks. Dick shrugged on his leather coat and face-mask with the big mica eyepieces and awaited the command from Captain Rackstraw. Five more charges waited on the arm beside him.

  “On my command, volley fire,”said Rackstraw. He watched through his spyglass. “Fire!”

  The air became a massed streaking of fires that converged on the pirate tub. Followed by five more volleys in rapid succession.

  “Damn!” said the Pirate King. “Who the hell uses rockets except to signal anymore?” He ducked as a low one, the size of a man, crossed above the deck.“We’re not some heathens to be scared by noise and smoke!”

  “Pardon, Your Majesty,” said the first mate. “But our sails, rigging, yards, and masts are afire.”

  “Put out the fargin’ fires!” he yelled. “Prepare to show ’em what-for.”

  Then there was a terrific explosion that took away all the masts and sails and everyone on the deck of the Pirate King’s ship.

  “What in hell happened?” asked Rackstraw. “The whole damn thing blew up. Did they set off their own magazine?”

  “Uh-oh,” said the first mate. “Look, sir, beyond.”

  Rackstraw saw through the ghost forest of broken spars and burning canvas of the stolen ship a larger ship looming behind it, a huge cannon to port. That ship, too, flew the Roger. It was coming to get them.

  On the mountainside, the smoke signals grew more frantic.

  It had been a beautiful day, with only broken cloud and a bright sun, the kind made for wash day, sunning mer-folk, and Indian dances.

  “Weather abaft!” shouted down the lookout to the hook-handed captain. The crew was waiting for Large Willy to cool before throwing in more powder-bags.

  “Weather?”yelled up the captain. “We’ve not seen weather in five months. Are you drunk up there, Cecco?”

  “I’m not drunk nor fooling,” yelled the Italian. “And when I say weather, I mean weather!”

  The captain was conflicted.

  “Ahoy!” he screamed. “Simultaneously batten down the deck and prepare to fire!”

  The crew looked at him.

  “You heard the captain!” yelled the first mate, perplexed as the crew. “It’s the caress of the hook to anyone doesn’t follow orders!”

  They all tried to do three things at once. It’s a wonder hands or feet weren’t nailed to the deck in haste.

  “Weather on us!” yelled the lookout, as all their hats and scarves blew off their heads.

  It was dark as midnight under Silver’s skillet. They grabbed whatever they could hang on to; rails, rigging, each other. The gale whipped the lagoon to a froth. Wrack and spume obscured the man-o’-war—no telling where it was. It was useless even to yell; the words whipped away like paper.

  As soon as the lookout warned of a change in the weather, Rackstraw had the ship battened down and the slow-matches taken below, and the men ordered from the riggings. It hit like the hurricane the Pinafore had gone through under Corcoran six years ago. The ship seemed to jump its cable length as the storm hit. “Put out a sheet anchor!” Rackstraw yelled to the crew. At least they wouldn’t be dashed on the rocks, though they might be rounded.

  The men tensed at the rails. All the gunports on the gun deck were opened toward where the original pirate ship had been. There was a glow through the rain, orange-yellow, where the burning ship might be.

  “When the blow’s over,” yelled Rackstraw to the bosun, very close by, “prepare to go pick up those hostages on shore.”

  “If they’re not blown away, too. Aye, sir,” said the bosun.

  Through the roiling wet, as much water as air, a shape formed, came near, from windward. After a second it turned into the second pirate ship, coming broadsides.

  Everyone in both ships yelled behind their pistols, rifles, and cannon, ready to fire. It was going to be dreadful.

  And then both lookouts screamed at the same instant: “JESUS H. CHRIST!” Everyone turned their heads to seaward.

  A huge black galleon of two centuries gone came by, sails furled, moving against the scud and wrack, surrounded by corposantos, trailing a blur of dying sparks.

  Everyone on the British man-o’-war and the huge pirate ship stood still, trying to avert their eyes (as if they could keep from looking). The ship sailed on, the storm blew off to its stern and faded away to westward. The sun came out and a gull squawked from above.

  The sound of tom-toms came on the still, calm air.

  “Make about to the river anchorage!” yelled the hook-handed captain.

  “Prepare to pick up hostages,” yelled Rackstraw.

  The two ships moved apart without so much as a backward glance at each other.

  Sunset. The Pinafore had picked up the hostages and set course back for Wales.

  The hook-handed captain’s ship lay at anchor off the creek and river. Out toward sea, the mermaids were back on their rocks, singing each to each.

  “Yo!” yelled Jukes from the lookout. “Four specks and a spark to westward!”

  “He’s back!”yelled the hook-handed captain.“This time, he’s mine!” He turned to the crew. “Ready Large Willy. He’s still primed to fire. Maximum elevation, hit them when they cross.”

  The crew cranked at the elevating jacks.

  The specks grew larger against the darkening east. The spark circled them like an electron in orbit, as described by Rutherford.

  “Fire!” yelled the captain, bringing down his hook, and Large Willy deafened them, and a load of horseshoes and nails flew upward like shot at a grouse.

  Far to the east, the Pinafore sailed on toward its port. Below, on the decks, Rackstraw and the officers danced with the general’s daughters. Lanterns hung in the rigging and on the rails; concertinas vied with fiddles and guitars; a mouth-organ joined in. On deck, all was gaiety and merriment; the men singing along to those sentimental ballads they knew.

  Far above in the rigging, Dick Deadeye leaned over the crow’s nest side. He looked westward, aft, from whence they had come, and the world of the island was fading, like a half-remembered dream, on the night.

  Dick Deadeye was crying.

  Afterword Avast, Abaft!

  Another pre-Wheels-Coming-Off story.

  Jeff VanderMeer (of Florida) was flown in for a Turkey City Writers’ Workshop in September 2005.

  I noticed A Lot of the workshop stories were about pirates, but just thought everyone was under the sway of Johnny Depp or something. (I remember one story where someone yelled out “Kraken storm!”)

  It was only after he left that I found out he and his wife Ann were publishing a pirate fantasy anthology. Then everything became clear.

  I’d been thinking about this story since around 1968 when I was reading Ernest Newman’s biographies of Richard Wagner. No; really.

  I was trying to get The Wandering Jew into the story I’d imagined back then.

  No matter what else J. M. Barrie wrote (a whole lot), he’ll always be known for Peter Pan. Yes, sometimes it’s cloying in that especially vexing Victorian-Edwardian way, and, yes, Barrie was somewhat of a Case.

  But the work will live forever, like the titular creation.

  Well, as soon as I started writing this (October to November, 2006) everything—Hook, Gilbert & Sullivan, especially Dick Deadeye—fell into place. (See Topsy-Turvy if you haven’t.)

  It was accepted and published in Fast Ships, Black Sails, published in 2008 while I was hospitalized. Hartwell picked it up for his Year’s Best Fantasy 2009.

  The title is what sailors yelled when they farted on a sailing ship.

  Frogskin Cap

  The sun was having one of its good days.

  It came up golden and buttery, as if it were made of egg yolk. />
  The dawn air was light blue and clear as water. The world seemed made new and fresh, like it must have seemed in previous times.

  The man in the frogskin cap (whose given name was Tybalt) watched the freshened sun as it rose. He turned to the west and took a sighting on a minor star with his astrolabe. He tickled the womb of the mother with the spider, looked away from the finger, and read off the figures to himself.

  A change in light behind him gained his attention. He turned—no, not a cloud or a passing bird, something larger.

  Something for which men had sometimes taken dangerous journeys of years’ duration, to the farthest places of this once green and blue planet, to see and record. Now it was just a matter of looking up.

  The apparent size of a big copper coin held at arm’s length, a round dot was coming into, then crossing, the face of the morning sun.

  He watched the planet Venus seemingly touch, then be illuminated by the light, which suffused all around it in an instant. So it was true, then: there was still an atmosphere on the planet, even so close to the sun as it had become (there was once an inner planet called Mercury, swallowed up long ago). This Venus had once been covered with dense clouds; its atmosphere now looked clear and plangent, though no doubt the sunlight beat down unmercifully on its surface.

  He wished he had brought his spectacle-glass with him instead of leaving it up in his tower. But he knew of tales of others, who, looking directly into the sun with them, had become blind or sun-dazzled for years, so he sat on the wall and watched, out of the corner of his eyes, the transit of Venus ’til the big dot crossed the face of the sun and disappeared, to become another bright point of light on its far side.

  He had found his frogskin cap while exploring some ruins in search of books many years ago. The skin was thin and papery, as living frogs had not been seen within the memory of the oldest living being, or his grandfather. The cap, then, was of an earlier time, when there still had been frogs to skin, probably while there still had been a Moon in the sky.

  The first time he had put it on, it seemed made for him. Another sign from an earlier age to his times. From that day forward, his given name, Tybalt, was forgotten, and people only knew him as “the man in the frogskin cap.”

  This morning he was fishing where a stream rose full-blown from a cave in a cliff-face. He had a slim withy pole and a 6-horsehair line. On the end of his line was a fine hook cunningly covered with feathers and fur to resemble an insect. He was angling for fish to take to town to trade to some innkeep for lodging (and a fine meal). He was bound for Joytown, where they would be celebrating the Festival of Mud, after the return of the seasonal rains, delayed by a full month this year (due no doubt to strong fluctuations in the sun).

  The fish in the stream at the cave mouth were eyeless of course, which did not make them lesser eating. That they had come out of the darkness was testament to the usual dimness of light from the sun.

  His artificial fly landed on the water near a rock. He twitched the line several times, setting off rings of ripples from the fly.

  With a great splash, a large blind fish swallowed the fly and dove for the bottom. Tybalt used the litheness of his pole to fight the fish’s run. In a moment, he had it flopping on the bank. He put it in the wet canvas fish-bag with the three others he’d already caught, and decided he had more than enough for barter.

  He wrapped his line around his pole and stuck the fly into the butt of the rod. Carrying the heavy bag over his shoulder, he continued on to Joytown.

  The festival was at full peak. People were in their holiday clothes, dancing to the music of many instruments, or standing swaying in place.

  Those really in the spirit were in loincloths and a covering of mud, or just in mud, returned from the wet-hill slide and the mud-pit below.

  Tybalt was heartened to see that primitive sluice-machinery kept the slide wet. Perhaps the spirit of Rogol Domedonfors had never died through all the long centuries of Time. Not all was left to magic and sorcery in this closing down of the ages. The quest for science and knowledge still simmered below the swamps of sorcery.

  “KI-YI-YI!” yelled someone at the top of the wet-hill slide, and plunging down its curving length became an ever-accelerating, ever-browner object before shooting off the end of the slide and landing with great commotion and impressive noise in the muddy pit beyond.

  Polite applause drifted across the watching crowd.

  Tybalt had already traded the fine mess of fish (less one for his own meal) for lodging at inn. At first, the publican, a small stout man with a gray-red beard, had said “Full-up, like all other places in this town.” But as Tybalt emptied his bag on the table, the man’s eyes widened. “A fine catch,” he said, “and supplies being somewhat short, what with the crowd eating anything that slows a little all week . . .” He stroked his chin. “We have a maid’s room; she can go home and sleep with her sisters. This mess of fish should be enough for—what?—two nights let’s say. Agreed?”

  They put hands together like sawing wood. “Agreed!” said Tybalt.

  She was a pretty girl in less than a costume. “Kind Ladies. Strong Gentlemen,” she said in a voice that carried incredibly well. “Tonight, for the first time, you will see before your very eyes the True History of the Sun!”

  She stepped to one side in the cleared space before the milling crowd, now beginning to settle down. “To present this wonder to you, the greatest Mage of the age, Rogol Domedonfors, Jr.”

  The audacity of the nom du stage took Tybalt aback. The one true Rogol Domedonfors had lived ages ago, the last person dedicated to preserving science and machinery before mankind waned into its magics and superstitions.

  The man anpeared in a puff of flame and billowing smoke.

  “I come to you with wonders,” he said, “things I learned at the green porcelain palace which is the Museum of Man.”

  “All wanders are known there,” he continued, “though most are studied but once, then forgotten. If you but know where to look, the answers to all questions may be found.”

  “Behold,” he said, “the sun.” A warm golden glow filled the air above the makeshift stage. The glow drew down into a ball, and the simulacrum of a yellow star appeared in the wings. It moved from the east, arced overhead, and settled westward. A smaller silver ball circled around it.

  “For centuries untold, the sun circled the Earth,” he said. “And it had a companion called the Moon, which gave light at night after the sun had set.”

  Wrong, thought Tybalt, but let’s catch his drift.

  The sun-ball had dropped below the leftward stage-horizon while the Moon-ball moved slowly overhead. Then the Moon-ball swam westward while the sun began to glow and came up in dawn on the eastward of the stage.

  “Oooh,” said the crowd. “Ahhhh.”

  “’Til,” said Rogol Domedonfors Jr., “Men, practicing their magick arts, conjured up a fierce dragon which ate up that Moon.”

  A swirling serpentine shape formed in the air between the Moon-and-Sun balls, coalescing into an ophidiaform dragon of purest black. The dragon swallowed the Moon-ball, and the sun-ball was left alone in the stage-sky.

  Wrong, thought Tybalt again, and I get your drift.

  “Not satisfied,” said Rogol Domedonfors Jr., “Men, practicing their magic arts, pulled the sun closer to the Earth, even though they had to dim its light. Hence, the sun we behold today.”

  The sun-ball was larger and its surface redder, great prominences curled out from it, and it was freckled like the fabled Irishman of old.

  “So man in his wisdom and age has given himself a sun to match his mood. Long may the Spirit of Man and his magicks last, long may that glorious sun hold sway in the sky.”

  There was polite applause. From far away, on the slide-hill, another moron dashed himself into the mud-pit.

  It had begun to rain. They were inside the inn where Rogol Domedonfors Jr. and his companion, whose name was T’silla, lodged. T’silla placed before
her a silver ball and three silvered cowbells.

  “Ah!” said Tybalt. “The old game of the bells and the ball.” He turned back to Rogol Domedonfors Jr.

  “Great showmanship,” he said. “But you know it be not true. The Moon was swallowed when Bode’s inexorable law met with the unstoppable Roche’s Limit!”

  “True physics makes poor show,” said the mage.

  T’silla moved the cowbells around in a quick blur.

  Tybalt pointed to the center one.

  She lifted the bell to reveal the ball, quickly replaced it, moved the bells again.

  Tybalt pointed to the leftward one.

  She lifted that bell and frowned a little when the ball was revealed.

  Listen to the rain,” said Rogol Domedonfors Jr. “The crops will virtually spring up this year. There will be fairs, festivals, excitements all growing season. And then the harvest dinners.”

  “Aye,” said Tybalt. “There was some indication that wind patterns were shifting. That the traditional seasons would be abated. Changes in the heat from the sun. Glad to see these forebodings to be proven false. Surely you ran across them when you were Curator of the Museum of Man?”

  “Mostly old books,” said the mage. “Not very many dealing with magick, those mostly scholarly.”

  “But surely . . .”

  “I am certain there are many books of thought and science there,” said Rogol Domedonfors Jr. “Those I leave to people of a lesser beat of mind.”