The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  Ezra could only nod. It must seem like a terrible thing to the poor guy -- talking to help, then for them to go quiet without a word. He hoped Charles would understand.

  Needless to say, Ezra was awake and present when Colonel Levi called Charles. “CQ Evans.”

  There was a startled sound. “Evans. God! Where have you been?”

  “Gone to do some lookie-loo,” Colonel Levi told him. “Sorry, but did you see that mountain this morning?”

  “Mountain? No. Are we getting close to land?”

  “Well the good news is, that a sharp-eyed sailor aboard your ship probably called ‘land-ho’ either yesterday evening or first thing this morning. The problem is that by the HOG laser on my bird, that mountain dwarfs anything known in our solar system. Its peak is maybe forty, forty-two thousand feet above sea level, and God knows how deep the water is there. It’s probably a couple of thousand feet deep, at least. Oh yeah, the mountain is a volcano and is smoking.”

  “Is this important?”

  “Ask your talking dictionary if the ground shakes in their town. I took some pictures of the mountain earlier. Not too many people, perhaps a thousand or so in the town. A very rocky harbor.”

  There was a gurgle of frustration on Charles’ end. “You are so full of joy! Is there anything else?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. Are they consistent with what time of day they take you topside in the morning?”

  “As soon as the sun is fully above the horizon. Although I think that the Big Moon is going to block that tomorrow.”

  “It will,” the colonel agreed. “There is a chance, mind you just a chance, that your ship will be intercepted by an unknown.”

  “Denise told me about that ship. It’s close?”

  The colonel cursed about sloppy security and Charles heard Ezra’s voice in the background. Whatever the colonel told Ezra in return sounded like a minor ass-chewing.

  “Then you know we don’t know about who might be on that ship. That ship has a radio, so perforce we think it will be armed like the Tengri vessels are -- with cannon. If you even get a hint that another vessel is in sight, you get your ass down below and crawl under something heavy. Cannonballs actually aren’t that dangerous -- but wood splinters are.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “It’s Irina, Cadet. Think of me as your guardian angel.”

  “Okay, Colonel Irina.”

  She chuckled. “Come to Israel, son. We need men like you! Now, if that ship heaves into sight, you’re going to have to do the best job you can of hiding the radio. Did you keep the lid?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Good, if all else fails, if you’re not a hundred percent positive you can hide it, you can swallow it. Don’t try to warn us that they’re attacking, we’re watching you real time.”

  “What is the UAV’s fuel state?” Charles asked.

  “That would be a good question, Cadet, except we’re Jews. We run on hot air. We never run out of that! How are your language lessons progressing?”

  “I’ve taken foreign language courses before, but never with a threat like this one. Worse, they’ve made it clear the woman dies too if I don’t learn. I want nothing more than to kill all of the bastards.”

  “We’ll see. Right now you have to stay small, Charles. Don’t make them angry. Study hard.”

  Charles laughed. “I’ve found that memorization, rote memorization, seems to be something you can learn. I’m keeping a wordlist in my head and at least every hour, and usually twice, I run down the list. Two hundred and fifty-six at last count!”

  “That’s the spirit! Try to learn anything from the woman you can about their town. People, defenses, earthquake risk... anything. Now, here’s Ezra.”

  “I’m sorry for the delay, Charles, but we had to take a look at where you’re going.”

  “I understand. I was just surprised.”

  “Well, I can’t talk about it, but the UAV isn’t going to run out of gas anytime soon. We took a minor risk the other day when we came low enough to drop the radio, but the rest of the time we’re at fifteen thousand feet. It’s invisible from the ground.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to keep calm, keep collected and keep thinking that we’re going to get you out of there. Major Sandusky told me a while ago, that he’s bringing a special team here for this and not to worry.”

  “I’m keeping busy, sir.”

  “Good, keep busy. Keep calm, keep learning. There is no such thing as too much intelligence, not about the littlest thing.

  “I can’t tell you much about tomorrow. If you see black faces on that other ship, you’re going to have to think very carefully. That will make them likely Tengri, and from what I’m told, the servitude you’re in now is nothing compared to what you’d find with them. If you’re captured and hauled east... that’ll be a problem. The radio on the UAV only has a range of about two hundred and fifty miles.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “Good, now kick back, get some sleep and be ready in the morning. There is nothing you can do except stay alive, do you hear? Stay frosty!”

  * * *

  Charles put the whole radio back together again and contemplated what he could do to hide it. Having emptied himself into a bucket for days, the issue from his body wasn’t the problem it might once have been. But still, who wanted to rub your fingers through shit if you could avoid it?

  They had given him a pair of ratty pants to replace the shorts that had been falling apart from the first. They’d given him a bucket of salt water and a bar of soap and he’d gotten the worst of the blood off. When he’d offered the water and soap to Melea, the minders took them from him, and one of them raped her again and that was that. He wasn’t sure but he thought the pants were a sign of some sort of status -- Melea was nude.

  He’d been able to twist the spines off the radio’s ball -- they were simply screwed on and he’d dug them into the wall near where he was chained. Finally he retrieved one of the spines and screwed it back into place, and then he stuck the spine through his pants, down near his ankle, the point down so the radio wouldn’t fall out. He patted it, and promptly stuck his ankle with the spine.

  He searched around and found a plug of something soft and flexible between the planks of the side of the ship. He took some of that, fashioned a small ball of it, and put the point of the spine in that.

  He ran through his vocabulary list one more time before closing his eyes.

  * * *

  Shouts and cries awoke him and for a second he wondered what it was about. It didn’t sound like “land-ho” to him. As if to emphasize that, the ship heeled over. They were running northeast, he thought. That was odd. Then it dawned on him that they were trying to outrun another ship.

  The door was thrown open and the leader came in and stood in the door, looking at Charles. At first Charles wasn’t sure what the other was looking at, and then he saw the man turn and look in the direction where the other ship must have been.

  With a curse, the man spat in Charles’ face, slapped the woman hard and went back out. The door was left open and Charles saw the man simply reach the ship’s railing and go over it, without hesitation.

  Was it a cowardly thing to run? How far were they from shore? Was there something the other didn’t dare be tortured and reveal? There were so many possibilities!

  Melea looked at him and shrugged. “What?” she said.

  “Enemy of these men come,” he told her.

  In the distance came a sound like thunder, a dull rumble. Cannon, Charles figured. Probably the shot across the bow. If these men were the Rangar pirates, what would they do? Fight to the death? Try to run? What would they do their prisoners?

  A minute later the answer was clear. The ship hadn’t changed course and a hurricane of iron swept through the rigging. The thunder was terrible, and then came the sounds of ripping sheets, a few very heavy thuds that shook the small ship, and then prolonged crashing o
f heavy objects raining down on the deck.

  Charles smiled slightly. There was a reason why frigates in the Great Age of Sail had more than one mast, right?

  The deluge of sound as wood, blocks and ropes rained down on the deck tapered off. Something obscured the door to their compartment, even as the ship slewed hard around. At first Charles thought that the pirates tried a desperate maneuver, but that wasn’t it -- the ship kept turning, going in a circle.

  Faintly came the sound of bowstrings, then the bang of muskets. That close! He shivered, bracing himself.

  The sounds of musket firing grew louder, and then stopped. He laughed, belatedly remembering the warning to take cover when the cannons roared.

  There were vague indistinct sounds, then a hard bump that would have staggered him, if he’d been standing.

  There was a twang of a bowstring and a dozen musket shots in reply. After that came the waiting. Melea cowered as far from the door as she could reach, terrified. Charles could, just barely, stand up. He got as far as he could to interpose himself between the woman and the door.

  So much, he thought bitterly, about keeping a low profile. No wonder Sir Walter Raleigh ended up dead!

  There were sounds, then tearing as a knife slit the canvas covering the entrance to their compartment. He psyched himself up, and stood as tall as he could, going into something like a boxing stance, trying to show he was ready to defend Melea.

  A man looked in, his musket ready. He saw Charles, started and looked again. He called to another man who joined him, his musket also at the ready. The two of them conferred, and then the second man went away. The first man motioned for Charles to back up and sit down.

  You lose so much drama, Charles couldn’t help notice, when you can’t brandish your hands more than waist-high and you can’t stride forward. He tried to rattle his chains dangerously, if that was possible.

  The man looked at him curiously, but didn’t move.

  A few moments later running feet were heard, and two men came in, pistols drawn, leveled at Charles.

  Sure, he’d been told to keep a low profile. He didn’t feel like a low profile today and they didn’t seem angered. So he growled and shook his chains once more.

  One of the pistols waved at the bench for him to sit. Charles made finger pistols and fired them at the man. The man promptly handed his pistol to the first man who was still watching, and then came up to Charles and pushed him back against the wall, and forced him to sit. Once Charles was seated, the man called something loudly.

  Ah! Charles realized, when he heard more footsteps. An officer! Probably a noble! Maybe even the captain of the other ship!

  At first, he was startled. The newcomer was a woman in her late twenties. She too had a pistol drawn, and it promptly centered on his belly. Still, it was clear she was paying only the least amount of attention to Charles, but more attention to Melea. She barked a command and feet outside pounded away.

  A few moments later another man with a tool box came in. He knelt next to Melea and hammered on the shackles, then on her collar. Melea cowered in fear, but the woman spoke soothingly. Charles was sure Melea didn’t understand a word.

  They helped Melea to her feet and from the kindness of it, Charles couldn’t help speaking. “Be gentle with her, she’s had a bad time of it. These beasts are nearly as bad as Tengri.”

  The woman stared at him as spoke, only reacting at the last word. “Tengri?” she gestured at him.

  Charles laughed, and spat on the deck. “Tengri? No! Tengri?” He twisted his hands if he was wringing a neck.

  He gestured at the now empty chains that had once held Melea. “Break chains!” He did as he’d heard Kris Boyle say once, she’d done. She had signed breaking chains so he did as well and then he tapped his chest. “Break chains!”

  The woman gestured at the chains that bound him and all Charles could do was shrug. He mimed holding a musket and said, “Bang!” Then a few more bangs, then he clicked his tongue and bowed his head.

  That seemed to startle the woman. “Bang?”

  He motioned at one of the muskets. “Bang!”

  She motioned at the ship and mimed a bow.

  “Not Tengri,” he said and shook his chains.

  There were glows of happiness on the faces around him. The woman launched into a speech and after a few dozen words, Charles shrugged his shoulders, having not understood a word.

  The woman stopped, laughed bitterly and motioned for the man with the tool box forward. In a moment, Charles was free. He bowed slightly to the woman. “Thank you,” he intoned.

  She made the chain breaking sign, and then said the word “Tengri” and then waved around the ship.

  Again he tried to sign that these people weren’t Tengri, but they were slave takers. He wasn’t sure that she understood. From the depths of his memory he remembered once Kris Boyle speaking in a lecture. She’d been learning the Tengri language from her adoptive daughter or ward or whatever she was. She had been trying to show how far apart Arvalan and Tengri languages were. The word for “friend” was totally different between the two languages.

  He sighed. Kris Boyle could speak a little Tengri. He didn’t wish her to have gone through what he had gone through.

  Without warning, the woman flipped the pistol she carried around and handed it to Charles, butt first. Startled, he accepted it. She led it up to her forehead and looked him in the eye.

  There were growls of anger around the room, but one of the men barked an order that was clearly “stand down!”

  Charles shook his head, and put the pistol on the bench next to him, after carefully letting the hammer uncock. She laughed at that, and patted him on the shoulder. She turned to the others and said something and then motioned for Charles to leave the cabin.

  He went outside. There were dirty heaps of rags here and there where the pirates had died. Including the one who’d tormented Charles the most. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, he thought. He who laughs last, laughs last, or whatever. That fat lady had been busy singing a lot this morning.

  He was taken gently by the arm and hustled along the deck of the small ship and up a steep ramp, without railings, to a larger ship, larger being a relative term.

  Charles saw the mountain in the distance, and when he was safely on the deck, he pointed to it, and then pointed to the ship they’d just quit, and showed one finger. Then pointed at the mountain and showed two hands of fingers.

  The woman laughed, but nodded in understanding.

  They broke away from the pirate ship and one of the men of the crew threw a large wicker basket across to it as they moved away. A minute or so later there was a plume of smoke, and then flames.

  The ship he was on turned east. It was worth a try, Charles thought. He pointed north. The woman looked at him for a few moments and shrugged, and then said something he didn’t understand.

  It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it was close. Just then Charles moved and he felt the little ball rub his ankle. That was the radio. On the other end of the radio were Andie Schulz and Kris Boyle, probably the two smartest people in the world. Wasn’t there a former Tengri slave in Arvala? Couldn’t he call them and have her put on the line? She could translate what this woman who commanded this ship had to say, if she spoke Tengri, the former slave girl could translate it to Arvalan and Andie could tell him what was being said.

  It was roundabout, tedious and probably fraught with errors. It also meant giving up the radio. He looked up into the sky, not knowing what to do. Unless they put him with Melea, he wasn’t going to be learning Arvalan. The imperative here wasn’t what it had been, but practically, it was as if the last nine days hadn’t happened, so far as language was concerned.

  He stopped. The leader of the pirates had jumped overboard! He’d escaped. Charles looked at the mountain. It was miles and miles away; how could anyone swim that far? People swam the English Channel; people even swam between Florida and Cuba. This wasn’t that far, so...
>
  The other ship was now blazing merrily and they’d moved upwind, so that none of the sparks could reach them. Charles wondered if he should tell them that someone had tried to swim to land. It was absurd, he realized. They’d laugh. The odds were good the man was dead.

  He looked over the compact war vessel. He really hadn’t had a good look at it before, and from his current vantage point, he still couldn’t see much of it. One thing though, that stood out was a copper wire running from a pole behind the wheelhouse, up to the main mast.

  Ah! The radio antenna! Christ! Ezra and the others were going to be so pissed! And if he misjudged these people, he was going to be so dead! Still, he was sure that they hated slaves and hated Tengri who made people slaves. If ever there was a common language to bond two peoples -- or three -- that should be enough.

  The woman gave an order and they moved further away from the burning ship, heading back east. He touched her shoulder and one of the men hissed in warning. Charles didn’t care. He pointed at the wire. The woman turned wary.

  He made a talking gesture, pointed at the wire, then a wave, and then made the wave for a long time, pointing east. He cupped his hand to his ear, signing someone listening. She nodded, clearly reluctantly.

  He swallowed, dipped down and fumbled with his trousers leg, unclipped his radio. He untwisted the top, put the ear bug in and said conversationally as he pushed the button. “Okay, I’m a fuck up. Is anyone listening?”

  “You are not just a fuck up, Cadet,” the Israeli colonel told him, “you are a spectacular fuck up.”

  “I need to speak to Ezra.”

  “He isn’t an Israeli, Cadet. He’s mortal and asleep. Wait a few.”

  The captain of the ship was staring at him in incomprehension, and then she understood. She talked to one of the men and he pelted off. Good luck, Charles thought, these radios are a light year better than yours... well, a century or so.