Clean Turban had a widow’s peak showing under his turban. His beard shone black and curly; it was trimmed very short and came to a neat point. Just like a Nineteenth Century portrait of Satan, Joe thought. The Moor looked at the Alice’s men contemptuously and asked something in raucous Arabic. When no one answered he tried another language.
“I’m captain,” Joe said in English. The Moor didn’t understand but it got his attention. It occurred to Joe that Arabs of this period studied Aristotle. He tried to remember some Greek. “Egó imi keleustes.” No, damn it!—that meant oarsmaster. What did he want to say? “Navarchos.” But there was no sign of understanding. “Magister,” Joe essayed. Maybe this joker knew Latin. Against was no soap. He tried Raquel’s Tenth Century Spanish and light dawned in the Moor’s eyes. “¿Christiano?” he asked. The Moor pronounced it with a kh sound like the Greek Chi.
“Some of us are.”
“What land?”
“América.”
The Moor frowned. “¿Almeria?” he asked.
Joe shook his head. “It lies west of here.”
“I have heard of this land,” the Moor said thoughtfully. “But the people are savage with hair like a black horse’s tail. What do you here?”
“Blown off course. Our food is nearly gone.” Might as well get in a line about how little loot we have to offer. “Why did you throw fire at us?”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
The Moor shrugged.
“Where are you heading?” Joe asked.
“Malaga. Our cargo sells at Granada.”
“Black men?”
The Moor nodded.
“You’ve taken care not to kill us. What will you do with us?”
The slave trader shrugged again. “Isn’t that obvious? Your ship is strange,” he reflected. “Still, it’ll bring more money than the lot of you.” He frowned at the Alice’s crew. “How many did you lose?”
Joe puzzled for a moment, then saw what the Moor was driving at. “I lost no men.”
“It would take twenty hands to hoist that mains! alone.” the Moor said contemptuously, “and Allah only knows how many to set that which blew away.”
“Of your men, yes,” Joe agreed. “But we have—” He was about to say magic when he realized that an Allah fearing Moslem might decide magicians were better off dead. “We’re skilled sailors,” Joe amended. “Our ways are different.”
Clean Turban stroked the underside of his beard. Joe tried to guess what was on his mind. The Moor couldn’t understand how the yawl sailed. His felucca was a man-killer with no winches and only primitive blocks in her rigging. She’s probably lost a few men on the run up from the Slave Coast. With a load of unbroken Negroes, Clean Turban needed every man for safety. Other ships were drawing up now but he had no intention of sharing his prize. He waved them angrily on. “What weapons have you?” he asked.
“None,” Joe lied. He was acutely aware of the pistol in his belt. Thank Neptune he hadn’t used it or they might all be dead. Why hadn’t he been searched? Perhaps because no one aboard the Alice wore a sword or dagger and pockets hadn’t been invented yet. He glanced at the crew and counted his meager blessings.
The Moor was going to wonder about the pistol soon unless Joe drew his attention elsewhere. He took the binoculars from around his neck.
“What is that?” Clean Turban demanded.
“A gift with which Allah has favored us. I must invoke the Hundredth Name and then vou shall see.”
Holding the binoculars before him like a chalice, Joe bowed and chanted:
“These boys never saw a pocket.
Keep your hands at attention
Or the jig is up.
Amen.”
“Amen,” Clean Turban responded.
“Amen,” Cook and Guilbeau chorused.
“If you are among the blessed you will see. But there is danger here. Do you face Mecca five times daily?”
Clean Turban nodded.
“Do you fast on the appointed days?”
“Certainly.”
“Have you eaten the flesh of unclean animals?”
Clean Turban shook his head.
“Have you lusted after pagan women?”
The Moor hesitated a moment before answering.
“You may catch a glimpse of the Prophet’s throne in Paradise. But if there is falsehood and evil in your heart—” Joe paused dramatically. “—Then Allah will strike you blind.” He fiddled surreptitiously until the binoculars were out of focus and handed them over. Clean Turban put them clumsily to his eyes. “I see nothing,” he said.
“You are not looking toward Heaven,” Joe explained. He pointed up and the Moor turned. Eventually, with Joe’s help, he lined up on the sun and dropped the glasses with an ululating howl. Joe caught the strap and swung them back over his own neck. “See,” he said comfortingly, “you are not such an evil man after all. Allah has only warned you. You are not blind, are you?”
Clean Turban blinked tears and released a shuddering sigh of relief. “Truly,” he said, “you are men of the One God.” He turned and shouted instructions. Moments later a bent old man with scanty white beard was handed over to the Alice along with several prayer rugs and bundles. The boarding party started going back aboard the Felucca. “The imam, and I will travel with you,” Clean Turban said, “along with ten men-at-arms.” Which was not exactly what Joe had hoped for, but it was better than being murdered.
“All right,” he shouted, “turn to and remember to keep those hands out of your pockets.”
Gorson started wrapping a long splice into the mainsheet while the others, realizing that even under new management the ship had to be worked, went forward to take in sodden pieces of spinnaker. With patience and a great deal of stitching something might be salvaged.
Something else had been bothering Joe: Raquel was nowhere in sight. He looked around the deck again and his suspicion was confirmed. Not only was the girl missing—so was Howard McGrath.
An hour passed before Gorson rove the mainsheet. The hindmost of the slavers was nearly abreast. With a little luck, Joe thought, they might dawdle behind until there were only the twelve men aboard to deal with. The prize crew had marvelled over blocks and sheeting winches. The yawl’s wheel was a mystery for men who had known only tillers but a young man, apparently son or nephew to Clean Turban, took it. After a few spins and one near jibe he steered without difficulty.
Joe and Clean Turban faced each other across the galley table. Dr. Krom sat in a corner and surveyed the aged imam across the gulf of no common language. They had guided Clean Turban and the imam on tour of the electronic gear and had, with Freedy’s collusion, managed to give the Moors a shock here and there to discourage meddling.
“What’s that?” the Moor wanted to know. He was pointing at the vacuum still. Joe gave some fanciful explanation, only half paying attention to what he was saying. As carefully as possible he had searched for Raquel and McGrath. He wanted to ask if anyone had gone overboard in the melee but that would give them away for sure. Clean Turban and his men had been surprisingly decent so far. Prolonged conversations in English might change their attitude.
He still had the pistol stuck in his belt. He could perforate Clean Turban and the imam point blank, but there weren’t shots enough to take care of all the guards.
Clean Turban was looking thoughtfully at Joe. “Didn’t you say you had no weapons?” he asked.
Joe held his breath. The pistol seemed to swell in his belt until it assumed the proportions of a rocket launcher.
“We are peaceable men,” he said. “Pirates are unknown in our waters.”
Clean Turban smiled evilly. “And yet you throw fire?”
Joe gave a cracked laugh. “It’s not a weapon,” he explained. “We use the flares for signalling.” How many left? To hell with them; sacrifice anything to relieve Clean Turban’s mind. He got the flare pistol and explained its workings. Clean Turban was doubtful until Joe explained what a para
chute was and why it held the flare up.
The imam said something in Arabic and Joe suddenly wondered if he understood Spanish. If he did Joe might be on thin theological ice. Some kind of miracle which didn’t set well with the Koran could easily get the lot of them axed for sorcery.
“You’re traders,” Clean Turban said, “yet I see no stock. What do you sell?”
Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Seconds passed and still Joe could think of no answer. After this stall it had better be good! “A rare commodity,” he finally said. “More precious than gold or ivory, worth more than silk or pepper. Our Stock weighs nothing and takes no space in our ship. Yet it is worth more than the finest oils of Macassar.”
Clean Turban looked at him with a light, cynical smile. “What can possibly be so precious?” he asked.
Joe smiled back at him and answered, “Knowledge.”
When an avalanche of. Infidels swept across the Alice’s deck one quick look was sufficient for Howard McGrath. Joe’s warning about crusades had made the situation woefully clear to Howie—and he wasn’t very interested in dying just at this moment. There was great commotion on deck, footsteps and much shouting in the Devil’s tongue. Belowdecks, Howie raced about frantically. The chain locker was too open and obvious. Besides, that murdering heretic of a girl had her clothing in there and if he had to touch it Howie knew he could be sick.
He scurried through the ship, searching for a hiding place. Captain’s quarters would be the first place they’d look. Lazarette? Full of rye and there wasn’t room. Rushing to look for another place, he stumbled on the cabin sole. Rose must have been working on the engine, for the linoleum covered floorboard was slightly out of place. There was, Howie remembered, barely room to stretch out alongside the engine.
He kicked the floorboard over a little farther and dived. Abe must’ve had a mattress down here while he worked, for the landing was soft. Too dark to see for sure. Then inexplicably, the mattress snarled and sat up to jerk the floorboard back in place over their heads.
Howie’s flesh crawled. His whole being wanted to erupt and run shrieking from this den of iniquity. Not enough to be penned in darkness with a murdering pagan, On top of it all she had to go and be a woman!
What would his mother say? But Howie faced the dreadful choice between should and must, for the footsteps were belowdecks now. Directly over his head someone was shouting in Satan’s tongue. With Death standing over him and Eternal Damnation wedged tightly beside, there was only one thing left: Howie fainted.
The captain of the Alice had no time for such luxuries. Clean Turban was apparently satisfied with his cock and bull yam about a Point Four program, but it was chow time. The Moors wouldn’t eat off plates. Cook finally put half the sheep in a dishpan and passed it up on deck with a few loaves of bread. “Fewer dishes to wash,” he philosophized. Joe couldn’t remember whether Tenth Century Arabs drank coffee. After a taste, Clean Turban’s men passed up the burnt rye brew in favor of water. They sat around the dishpan, digging in with right hands, and emitting volcanic belches after each mouthful. “I’ll get some bicarb,” Cookie offered. “When do we jump ’em?” he added under his breath.
“They like your cooking,” Joe explained. “They’re being polite.” He tried to throw in a mysterious smile in answer to the second question.
The Alice had been built with accommodation for ten. With Krom and Lapham aboard she carried twelve—Raquel made thirteen. Clean Turban and his imam brought it up to fifteen. And then there were ten men-at-arms. But it turned out that the Moors did not care for bunks, so the Alice’s men slept undisturbed. The weather was clearing and with the Moors standing watch it began to look as if the Alice’s crew might get a full night’s sleep for once. Joe took a final turn around the deck and Gorson clutched his sleeve. “What’re we going to do now?” the chief demanded when he had pulled Joe behind the dinghy.
“I don’t know,” Joe said. He was shocked at the sudden realization that he hadn’t been giving much thought to the matter of escape. “Something will turn up,” he said comfortingly. Gorson grunted and disappeared.
Clean Turban’s young relation was still at the wheel. He steered confidently by the wind, ignoring the binnacle in front of him.
“Do you know what that is?” Joe pointed at the compass. The steersman smiled and shook his head. Joe started to explain about compasses until the young man said something in Arabic and shook his head again. This one, at least, didn’t know Spanish. But he knew where he was going.
Joe sighed and headed for his cabin. He found the white bearded imam squatting on his bunk, peering with much interest into the pages of Bowditch’s Navigation. “Can you read it?” Joe asked.
“No,” the imam replied to Joe’s surprise. The old man had given no indication of understanding Tenth Century Spanish. “But the diagrams and numbers make me suspect its subject matter.”
Joe collapsed into the chair. Throughout the afternoon he had alternated between hope and despair. Now he knew the imam was going to accuse him of sorcery. The storm, the responsiblity of command, the nights of interrupted sleep, all had led him past exhaustion. Was that why he had given up so easily? He wondered if he could have made a better fight of it and tortured himself with thoughts of all the things he might have done. He had saved their lives—most of them, anyhow. If McGrath and Raquel were alive it was only a matter of time before they’d be caught. And when they were, Clean Turban might be less inclined to trust him. The imam was still looking at him with a peculiar intentness in his rheumy eyes.
“There is no joy in losing,” the old man said.
“How would you know?” Joe muttered.
The imam laughed a short hard cackle. “Do you think I was born a holy man?” he asked.
Joe stared.
“You claim to be a stranger,” the old man continued. “I don’t read your language but your maps are detailed and, I suspect, somewhat better than our own.” He laughed drily. “Are you Moslem?”
“There are very few Moslem in our country,” Joe hedged.
“Christian?”
“I doubt it,” the young man sighed. “Three equals one always looked like unsound mathematics to me; I’ve never made much sense out of the Trinity.”
The imam smiled. “Then you believe in one god who does not go about splitting himself into disconnected particles?”
Joe thought a moment. “There was a Jew in our land whose name was—” In the search for words he unthinkingly translated a proper name into its roots. “One Stone spent a lifetime studying the nature of God. Before he died he left us the Unified Field Theory. It proved that everything was controlled by the same law and that there can be no exception to the Law. I believed this man.”
“I think,” the imam said slowly, “that you are a Moslem.”
“Suppose I were,” Joe sighed, “what would it gain me?”
“I was born on an island which your map calls Corfu.”
“You must’ve been Christian!” Joe exclaimed.
“Slave or free, we go on living,” the old man continued. “I truly believed in the divinity of Christ and in the Holy Trinity.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I was fourteen when they took me from my father’s sardine boat. I spent two years as a camel boy in Alexandria.
“No, I wasn’t mistreated. My master was a simple, devout man who prayed daily for my guidance and conversion.
When he died I was willed to the mosque and there a muadhdhin taught me to read.
“Conversion—” He waved a scrawny hand and spat. “I learned Arabic years before I could read my native Greek—which, incidentally, you pronounce very poorly. As a Christian I might still be drawing water and hewing wood. As it is, I’ve passed a pleasant and scholarly existence. God may judge me in the next life. Let Him do it in the knowledge that I made the best of this one.”
“You think I should turn Moslem?”
“What can you lose?”
�
�My men and my ship.”
“Already gone. But if you’ll be circumcised and profess Islam I may be able to keep you together. As long as you’re together, who knows?”
“Why do you tell me this?”
The imam stroked his scant white beard and shrugged. “Two reasons. I had four wives and twenty-one sons, no counting how many daughters. It’s hard to remember their faces. Age makes fools of us all. But with each year I remember one face more clearly.”
Joe looked a question at him.
“I remember an old woman who died in Corfu, never knowing what became of her son. I was an only child, you know.”
Joe was silent for a long moment. Suddenly and irrelevantly, he remembered Ariadne Battlement. The last he had heard she was knitting socks and turning collars for another Bright Young Man.
“Sidi Ferroush is a fool,” the imam said, “but he is a kind fool.”
Joe boggled for a moment, then realized the imam referred to Clean Turban. “What was the second reason?” he finally asked.
“I have seen perhaps a hundred books in my lifetime, but never any like yours. I would hear more of your land. Oh, yes,” he added parenthetically, “do not use that thing you keep trying to hide in your belt. Things will turn out better than you expect.”
V
HOWIE CAME to in cramped darkness and immediately wished he could faint again. The engine was digging cruelly into his back but it bothered him not so much as the softer protuberances which rubbed against his front. He was facing the she-devil—that much he could tell even in darkness. And she also faced him. But why, oh merciful God, did they have to be jammed in here end to end?
He felt cautiously about, trying to move a fraction of an inch away and cringed when his hand touched forbidden fruit. But if the she-devil intended to seduce him her tactics were highly unorthodox. A knee came in violent contact with his nose. Minutes passed while he breathed through his mouth, waiting for the fountain to clot. He wanted to snuffle or blow but Satan’s emissaries were talking right over his head.
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 6