All the Colors of Time

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

  Finding it was easy enough (I gave my memory a pat on the back), but reaching it was something else again. There was a pile of burlap bags between me and it, all packed to the seams with something. Peat, I realized as I began my climb.

  I reached the top of the heap without too much difficulty and poked my head up into the shaft above it. The view was not terrific, but it beat the inside of the TeGrEn all to pieces.

  Iron bars crisscrossed a sweeping panorama of satiny decking, coils of rope, the butt of a nearby cannon and the juncture between deck and mainmast. I could also just see the starboard rail, and feet—lots of feet.

  It was fairly quiet outbound and I’d hoped to be around for her approach to Bombay where I had read there would be a thirteen gun salute and an honor guard waiting to see her in. Here, there would be people lining the docks, watching—but they would be concerned merchants, wives, children, urchins longing to be on the outbound tide.

  I sighed.

  “So ye like the sights hereabouts, do ye?” The voice shocked me out of my daydream about half a second before a strong pair of hands grasped the tail of my coat and the seat of my britches and hauled me down off the peat pile.

  I tumbled all the way to the bottom and came out upside down against a plowshare, staring cross-eyed into the black silhouette of Mr. Piggott.

  He let out a wheeze of laughter. “Ain’t ye just a wee bit auld for these shenanigans, son?”

  oOo

  Captain Charles Dunbar eyed me with what I took as suspicion. I stood trembling in his cabin waiting for the worst case scenario to be played out: I am killed and thrown overboard or let off politely quay-side while my Temporal Grid sails blithely to Bombay without me.

  Of course, it would never make Bombay. After two months sans time traveler, its recall mechanism would do one last all-out search for my vitals and, not finding them, Shift back to its original coordinates in London-future where QuestLabs and Oslovsky U. would decide if I was worth rescuing. I would be either dead or stranded in 1805 regardless.

  Right now, it was all I could do to keep my head up and my eyes level with the Captain’s, praying the name “Black Charley” was a comment on his startling coloring and not his personality.

  He strode right up to me—not quite towering above me, but seeming to—and put his nose nearly against mine. “Est-ce que vous êtes Francais, monsieur?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” I replied immediately. “I’m Am- uh, English.”

  “Ah! Mais vous comprenez le langue, non?”

  “Vous comprenez Francais, aussi, monsieur. Etes vous Francais?”

  I had him there. He could hardly accuse me—in French, no less—of being a French spy on the grounds that I spoke the language. He scratched the corner of his mouth. It was threatening to curl into a smile. I felt a tingle of hope.

  “Are you sure you’re not a French spy, boy?”

  “No, sir. I don’t think so, sir. I was born in York.” (Okay, so I was born in New York—close.)

  “York?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He glanced aside at his First Mate, Reardon by name, who stood silently aside, watching.

  “Not Paris?” (“Pah-ree”, he said, quite properly.)

  “Not Paris.” I stressed the “s” at the end of the word.

  “Have you been to Paris?”

  “No sir, I have not.”

  “Yet you speak the language.”

  “Preparing for the worst, sir,” I said before I could stop myself. I cringed.

  He stared. He sent his mate a wide-eyed look. Then he threw back his head and roared. “Not a spy at all. A jokester.”

  I nodded, relaxing.

  “Then what the bloody blazes are you doing aboard my ship, scurrying beneath-decks like a damned bilge rat?”

  I had never heard anyone seriously use the term “bilge rat” before and it completely up-ended me. I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized to his scowl. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that. I’m a—a student, sir. And my family have an eye to a career in medicine. But I . . .” I paused and gazed around, my eyes going to the windows of the transom. “I’ve always loved the Sea.”

  Well, I couldn’t have said better. The Cap’s frosty gray eyes lit up and went into pinwheels like a McCaffrey dragon’s, though other than that, his expression remained unchanged.

  “Know your way around a vessel, do you?” he asked.

  “I think so, sir.”

  He nodded, then put his fist in front of my nose and beckoned me to follow him. He led me from his cabin and up on deck, the silent First Mate bringing up the rear. In the open hatchway, he pointed forward. “What’s that, then?”

  I followed his finger. “The mainmast, sir. Any fool knows that.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest. “Name me the sails on her. Bottom-most up.”

  I grinned. Among her suite of sixty-three sails, the Essex carried several not found on other ships. Black Charley evidently expected me not to know that.

  “Yes sir!” I said and recited, “Mainsail, lower topsail, upper topsail, topgallant, royal, skysail . . .” I paused just long enough to see a slow smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Cloudscraper, moonraker, stargazer,” I finished in a rush and was gratified to see a glint of surprise in the Master’s eyes.

  “You know the Essex, then?”

  “I do indeed, sir,” I said with only half-feigned eagerness. “She’s the finest ship afloat.”

  “You’re small, soft, and too glib for your own good,” Black Charley informed me. “Can you think of any reason I shouldn’t throw you overboard or send you home on a channel barge?”

  Actually, I couldn’t.

  The First Mate cleared his throat. The sound so close behind me nearly induced heart failure. “The young man did say he’d studied medicine, Cap’n.”

  “So he did.” Charley’s grappling hook eyes caught me by the throat. “Do you know aught of medicine, boy?”

  “Well, I—I’ve only had two years, but—”

  “We’ve no doctor on this voyage. Old one died at sea and the new man’s been held up, it seems. Little matter of a wedding, I hear. Your two years bests any man aboard . . . Doctor . . .” He wrinkled a black brow—just one, like Mr. Spock. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced. What’s your name, young man?”

  For a split second, I courted the idea of saying “Dr. McCoy,” but no one would get the joke for almost two hundred years. In another second I was wondering what he’d do if I told him the truth—that I was just as much a Dunbar as he was. No, I thought, he’s superstitious—might take it as a bad omen and chuck me over-sides. I took a page from the book of another time traveler. “Foreman,” said I. “Arthur Foreman.”

  I’d hesitated too long and his eye noted it with a head-to-toe sweep. “You’ve no need to prevaricate with me, boy. I’ll not squawk to your family.”

  “No, sir. Of course not, sir,” I murmured.

  “Ah, well, keep your secret, then.” He turned his attention to Mr. Reardon. “Set him up in the Doctor’s quarters if you would, Jimmy. We’ll be under sail in another hour.” He turned and strode off, then, leaving me in the First Mate’s able hands.

  I was shown a cabin and told that if I had any belongings in the hold, I’d best get them up before the crew found them. I brought up only items that a nineteenth century stowaway might be expected to carry—a pocket watch, a diary, some clothing, a few books. One had a flat-screen monitor in the back cover that went with the touch-sensitive ultra-thin keyboard worked into the front cover. Without coded voice activation (the magic words: open sesame), it would stolidly remain a book through all prodding and prying.

  As I was ferrying my goods topsides, I recalled the disclite, which I’d pocketed just before I was discovered. I certainly didn’t want to be caught with that. I reached into my pants pocket and felt empty air. The light was gone.

  Adrenaline pumping, I stowed my gear, then returned to the hold to make a
careful search of the area around where I’d fallen into the arms of the inestimable Mr. Piggott. Nothing turned up.

  Exasperated, I tried to think where else I might have dropped the thing. Really, it was stupid of me to have taken it outside the Crate. Unless I found it, it was quite literally history.

  A scraping sound sent me a foot straight up into the hold’s dim, turgid air. I spun just in time to see a tall, narrow shadow melt into the general gloom to the port side of the ladder. If that was a rat, I was in trouble. If it wasn’t a rat, I was in trouble. I made my way quickly to the main deck.

  We were nearing the mouth of the Thames and the air changed noticeably, taking on a fresh, tangy perfume that the city’s pollution had muted to a stale, briny smack. The crew began to scramble now, like rats in the rigging, preparing to unfurl the sails. I gazed up at the neatly collected stargazer and wondered if it had ever seen duty. On deck, the Captain ordered men to the capstan.

  The activity was at its height and our tug cast off when the Mate called down from the helm. “Lighter approaching, sir! Off the port beam.”

  Captain Dunbar turned, frowned at his First Officer, then ordered his crew to stand down from the capstan. He took the view from the port rail, then waved down at the approaching boat before ordering a ladder thrown over-side.

  On his way to the poop deck, he glanced my way. “Well, Arthur Foreman, I think you’d best clear your quarters and think of a reason I oughtn’t send you home on that lighter. We’ve got us a real doctor now.”

  A real doctor was not all we had. We had a real doctor’s wife.

  Mary MacCormac was stunning as a starry night. Hair the color of a sailor’s delight sunset (a yard of it, at least), creamy, white-cap skin, sea green eyes. Here, I could hear every man aboard thinking, is a proper woman for a mariner. She had a sweet, graceful manner as well—shy, warm smile that could turn quickly saucy; fey glint in the eyes. She was mesmerizing.

  Her husband, on the other hand, seemed hardly worthy of her. Ian MacCormac was a dark, curly-haired, faun-like man. A colorless man—unremittingly gray and black. Odd, I thought, how a man so like Black Charley in coloring could seem so drab in comparison—so insignificant. But then he would look colorless next to Mary, and because of Mary we did not like him.

  I had already begun to think of myself as a member of Essex’s crew, but I was not that, and her master quickly reminded me of the fact.

  “Well, Mr. Foreman,” he said when the MacCormacs had been ushered below. “Have you thought well about what will induce me not to send you back to town in that lighter?”

  I hadn’t thought of it at all, actually. I had been thinking of Mary MacCormac. I could only comfort myself that he was probably toying with me. If he really wanted to throw me off the ship, we wouldn’t be standing here discussing it.

  “I don’t know, sir,” I murmured.

  “Well, have you any special talents? Do you sing or dance or play the pipes or fiddle?”

  I am, as Providence would have it, a most untalented individual. I could think of nothing except—“I am possessed of a certain . . . clairvoyance, sir.”

  Charley laughed. “A fortuneteller?”

  I shrugged. “I see things.”

  “Do you now? And what do you see about me, eh? What’s in the future of Charley Dunbar?”

  I looked thoughtful for a moment. “A record-breaking voyage. The ownership of three of your own vessels. Retirement as a wealthy man to a large estate in . . .” I rubbed my temples. “Hampshire.”

  He blinked. “I’ve always fancied Hampshire. But you no doubt could’ve guessed that or taken it from Reardon. Tell me something else or . . .” His eyes wandered to the rail where the pilot of the lighter was hobnobbing with the Bosun and Cargo Master.

  I could see the situation called for more imagination on my part. What could I tell him without breaking some unwritten Law of Time Travel?

  “Well?”

  “Today is the twentieth of June,” I said. “Tomorrow the East Indiaman Warren Hastings will be taken by a French vessel. A . . . a frigate . . . The Piémontaise.”

  Charley goggled at me. “The Hastings ships forty-four cannon and possesses one of the finest crews in the Fleet—you ask me to believe she can be taken by a single frigate?”

  I nodded. “And towed to port in record time.”

  His eyes narrowed and he waggled a finger at me. “Clever boy. You’ve told me a tale I’ll not be able to verify ’til we make our first port o’ call.”

  I smiled affably.

  “Very well, then, Arthur Foreman. I’ll let you ship on the Essex . . . maybe . . . if you tell me one more thing—your real name.”

  I ran down the list of possibilities and came up with only one I was willing to live with. “Dunbar, sir,” I told him. “Arthur Dunbar.”

  His pale eyes widened. “And will you now claim to be my illegitimate get, or some such?”

  “No, sir. I know both my parents quite well. My father is Curtis Dunbar—a doctor out of York.” (Queens, actually. And he was a particle physicist. Close enough, though. He’d doctored a lot of quantum theories in his day.)

  “I’ve people in York. You figure we’re related?”

  “I really couldn’t say, sir.” I really couldn’t. That would be breaking a Law.

  He eyed me up one side and down the other, then made an explosive sound between his lips. “Ah, you’ve tweaked my curious bone, boy. But if you’re to have passage on this vessel, you either pay or earn your way. I suppose you’ve no coin?”

  “I do, sir, but I don’t want to be a passenger. I want to serve on the Essex.”

  “How well do you think you can handle the lines?” He nodded at Essex’s towering masts.

  “I’ve sailed small boats, sir. Nothing bigger than a large fishing yawl.”

  “I’ll teach you then. Piggott’ll teach you. For now, you start at bottom. Consider yourself my cabin boy. Get your things into that wee cabin next to mine.”

  I nodded vigorously and thanked him, but he was already off, calling the hands to stations, yelling at the lighter to cast off. As I went below, the fore capstan had begun to turn and Essex’s fore course to blossom.

  oOo

  Our first two weeks at sea were remarkably uneventful. There was no sign of the French and the Captain teased me daily about my prophetic utterance, at the same time prodding me for further predictions. I demurred, saying with affected grief that I couldn’t make prognostications in the face of such skepticism.

  I spent a lot of my free time (when Charley didn’t have me dancing the hornpipe) searching the forward hold for my disclite. No luck. I began to pray that it had been eaten by a large and desperate rat, but knew there was little hope of that.

  I also managed to spend some time with the incredible Mary MacCormac. Everybody managed to spend time with her, from the youngest swabbie to the hoariest tar. There was an absolute rash of minor ailments and injuries aboard the Essex; ailments and injuries the doctor would patiently check before sending the suffering to his inestimable wife for liniment or bandage or sympathy. And while good Mary worked on the poor, wounded souls, they would gaze up into her great ocean eyes and smile and dream of mermaids.

  I was not nearly so clumsy. I simply frequented the MacCormac’s province as a matter of friendliness and courtesy.

  So did Captain Charley. He dined with them every evening, placing them before any of the rather wealthy passengers at his table. I was also included in the select “head-of-the-table” grouping, I suspected, so that Ian MacCormac would have someone to talk to while Charley monopolized his wife.

  She was bright as well as beautiful and charming, and I wondered how the young doctor had been so lucky as to catch the eye of such a girl. So, apparently did Charley, for he made a point one evening of asking her how they met.

  Mary dimpled splendidly, then flashed her quiet husband a brilliant smile. “Well, I must own, it was all due to my clumsiness.”

  Ian Mac
Cormac colored. “Nonsense, darling,” he murmured. “You are not capable of clumsiness. It was that idiot horse of yours.” His eyes worshipped her, and I liked him a little more for that.

  Mary laughed and continued with her story. “I was riding in the park when my gelding took exception to a feathered hat. I agree with him that it was in the most dreadful taste, but I’d not have bolted at the sight of it. Strawberry, however, found it quite alarming and took off at a dead run. He shied again at a gaggle of white geese—I can only assume because they were also wearing feathers—and off I came. Ian—”—and she covered his hand with hers—“was out for a stroll and witnessed my unseating. He very kindly bundled me up and took me home and looked after my poor concussed head. He looked in on me every day for a week and by the time I was right again . . .”

  She blinded us with another smile which, ultimately, ended up caressing the enviable Ian. He smiled in return and I grudgingly admitted he was not completely without charm, grace or beauty. Obviously, though, this was the sort of patient-doctor attraction one finds in psychology texts.

  “You’re a lucky man,” I told MacCormac as we strolled the deck after dinner. We had caught the Trade winds and were now heading into the Horse Latitudes; the weather was mild and pleasant.

  He followed my gaze to where, up on the poop deck, Captain Charley allowed Mary to handle the wheel.

  “I’m well aware,” he said. “Well aware. Although, I must admit, I sometimes wish my dear wife was a bit more homely. I’d love her regardless, and other men might not be so attentive.” He laughed and shook his head. “Oh, I’m wrong about that, I know. She could have the face of a cow and still be Beauty incarnate. You know what I mean,” he added, seemingly embarrassed.

  “I do,” I assured him.