“How many you?” the girl was insisting.
“Many,” Joe said. “Brave men, well-armed. Where is your camp? Are you natives?” He was only talking to two girls now. He wondered when and where the others had disappeared. “We were on our way to Rome,” one girl explained.
“Where from?”
The name was meaningless to Joe. “Were you going to Rome or being taken there?” Again the girls opted not to understand. “Do you want to go to Rome or back home?”
“Rome!” they clamored. “Rome, Rome! No home, Romel”
“What’s all this about Rome?” Gorson asked.
“The girls want to go.”
“What was all that pointing awhile ago?”
“Trying to get my bearings,” Joe said hastily. “We’d better get back down before they start worrying.”
“But why no clothes?”
“A good question,” Joe decided. He asked.
The girls gave him an odd look. “Hot,” one finally said. “Same as you.” Again Joe was reminded that he and Gorson wore only gape-fronted skivvy drawers.
“Well,” he said awkwardly, “we’ll see you later. Got to get back to the ship, you know.”
“Stay,” the girls insisted. One grabbed Joe’s arm and rubbed against him.
“Really,” Joe said, “We must be going. We can, uh talk about it later.” He turned around. “Gorson! On your feet now, let’s go!” He caught the chiefs arm and dragged him off downhill.
There was a noise below them, a murmur of male voices, a tramping of feet. Joe felt a sudden shrivelling. Their only path back to the Alice was cut off.
Girls hove into sight again, skipping gaily up the path with the agility of the island’s goats. Behind them scrambled the entire crew of the Alice.
Joe stared aghast. They were all there—Cook, Guilbeau, Freedy, Rose . . . The Moorish prisoners scrambled along with the rest, all with eyes only for the naked blondes. Even Dr. Krom and the imam panted along in the rear of the pack, a highly unpaternal gleam in their ancient eyes.
“Whaddaya think of that?” Gorson marvelled.
Joe didn’t know what to think. The girl was pulling on his arm, rubbing against him again. “Do you have anything to eat?” he finally asked.
The girl had been in business long enough to realize that some hungers are stronger than others. “Goat,” she said. “Snared one last night.”
The men of the Alice came momentarily to their senses at the sight of Joe and Gorson.
“Ain’t you ever seen a woman before?” Gorson growled.
“Not for several weeks,” Guilbeau answered.
“How many girls are there on this island?” Joe insisted.
“Enough to go around,” one of them answered.
“Any men?”
“Been some time since the men’ve had liberty sir,” Gorson suggested.
“There’ll be time enough for that later. We’ve got to get water aboard and try to catch some of these goats. Here now, all hands come back here!”
Guilbreau had caught a blonde and they collapsed in a giggling heap behind a rock. Several new girls had appeared, all wearing only anklets and bracelets. One, Joe noted, was not blonde. She was dark and looked like a slightly more voluptuous version of Raquel. She was squirting wine from a goatskin into Dr. Krom’s mouth.
And where was Raquel? She must have stayed alone aboard the Alice. He looked for Gorson but the chief had disappeared. So had the blonde who clung to him.
“All hands now, come on and stop this foolishness. We’ve got to get to work!” The clearing was empty. Joe walked away from the spring and stumbled into a hollow between two oaks. “Beat itl” Schwartz snapped. “Go find your own girl.”
Joe wandered incredulously around the clearing. He’d lost complete control. Neptune curse all women! No wonder no captain in his right mind would have them aboard ship.
Joe’s historian half had been probing for several minutes. What was the name of the island where Circe turned Ulysses’ men into pigs?
Rounding another boulder, he came across the aged imam. A redhead with a half-sprouted figure was feeding him grapes. The grapes were very small and the comers of the imam’s beard dropped dark purple stains.
So what’s wrong with me? Joe wondered. After all, it is a good liberty port. He looked around but there were no unattached girls in sight. Oh well, he sour graped, at least he wouldn’t be on sick list nine days from now. He wondered what Raquel was doing back on the Alice. He ought to go back down and see if she was all right. But why go alone? In an hour or two he could pry the men loose and they could come back with a load of wood or water or something.
For the time being no one was going to listen to him. He would only make things worse by flapping around like a mother hen. Might as well climb to the top of the ridge and get a look around. If they really were in the Aegean there might be another island in sight.
He climbed slowly to the top of the ridge, acutely conscious by now that he should have gone back for his shoes. There was neither soil nor tree above the spring but the black volcanic rock had weathered so that the broken-bubble edges of its numerous small caves did not cut his feet.
After fifteen minutes of leisurely climb he topped the ridge and sat. The tiny horseshoe harbor and a miniature Alice were laid out below him like a scale drawing. While he watched, a faint gust rippled the harbor’s narrow surface, the ripples breaking as they crossed the long painter stretching from the yawl’s bow to the pinnacle. The Mediterranean, as he recalled, was not much for tides. That was one less worry. He looked about the cloudless horizon. A faint smudge to the northwest might be land but he wasn’t sure.
Going down was harder than climbing up. His stubbed toes were bleeding by the time he reached the spring.
The fine edge of the Alice’s collective appetite was dulled by now. They had emerged from their several nooks for a more leisurely debauch. The goat revolved over a small fire. The Alice’s men, paired off with the blondes and single brunette, were guzzling wine.
Gorson reared up on one elbow to stare blearily at him. “Shay, Mr. Rate,” he asked, “what year we in?”
There was sudden silence as every eye fixed on Joe,
Damn you, Gorson. lshtar shrivel your gonadia! He had planned to break the news gently. Or had he intended to tell them at all? They stared, suspicious now and distrusting. He sighed and took the bull by the horns. “Last night,” he said, “remember that bump when we stayed underwater so long and all at once Freedy got a different fathometer reading? It must’ve been working right after all.” A bell was beginning to ring somewhere in Joe’s head but he ignored it “This time we came out at low tide or something. Anyhow, we weren’t at sea level.”
“What year is it?”
“I don’t know. About 28 or 30 B.C.”
“Before Christ?”
Joe started to explain about Augustus.
Gorson turned to the rest of the crew. “Know what I think,” he said, “I think he done it on purpose. He’s a history nut. He wants to go on back instead of getting us home!”
The silence was more ominous now. Lapham, Dr. Krom’s college boy assistant, looked uneasily at Joe. “Is it true?” he asked.
“No,” Joe said distractedly, for he was suddenly aware that he knew how their time jumps were happening.
“When you gonna take us home?” Rose asked.
“How should I know?”
“You’re supposed to know everything,” Gorson growled.
“I know one thing,” Joe snapped. “If you want to get home it’ll be easier after you’ve forgotten these trollops and got some water in the Alice’s tanks. And how about snaring a few dozen goats so we can dry the meat—providing the Roman coast guard doesn’t patrol here too often.”
The blondes were restless with all this talk. They had the entertainer’s instinct for crisis even if they didn’t understand the language. One appeared from nowhere, bearing several fresh skins of wine.
/> “Three cheers for Mr. Rate,” Cookie yelled. “It’s been at least a month since I’ve had a liberty like this!”
Gorson swayed to his feet. “You can t get away with this,” he growled. “I’ve read the book. I know my rights.” From four feet away the brunette squirted an unerring red jet into Gorson’s mouth. He choked on the wine and began coughing. While the others were still laughing Joe walked off.
What were these girls doing here in the first place? Where was all that wine coming from? It took a press and vats to make wine. This island was honeycombed with caves but he was sure none was big enough to hide that kind of installation.
Away from the noise of the party, he collapsed on the shady side of an oak and piled handfulls of damp leaf mold over his bleeding toes. He’d probably get hookworm or bilharzia but he was too disgusted to care. He dozed off and dreamt of a triumphal march through the streets of Rome. The triumph disolved into a gladiatorial display with Joe on the wrong end of the sword. He woke abruptly and rolled off the rock which had been stabbing him.
The sun had gone down and the hours of inactivity without clothing or cover had left him thoroughly chilled. He clambered stiffly to his feet and limped back up to the spring. There was no sound now. The Alice’s men sprawled in weird attitudes around the demolished goat. Joe shook one. He grunted but did not waken. Worriedly, Joe made the rounds. All were breathing but he didn’t believe they could be so uniformly drunk. Thank Neptune he hadn’t tasted the wine.
There was not a girl in sight.
With a sinking in his stomach, Joe realized what was up. Should have stayed awake, he told himself. Should have gone down to the Alice. But he hadn’t. Come to think of it, what could he have done alone? He threw branches on the embers where the goat had barbecued and when that blazed up he found the broken bottom of an amphora the girls had kept wine in. The spike bottomed jar fragment held about a gallon.
Straddling Gorson, he poured a gallon of spring water. The bos’n sputtered. By the third slosh he was on his feet and swearing.
“Yes, I did it,” Joe said. “Now listen you turgid testicled slob—you bigmouthed yourself into this, now bigmouth yourself out. You’re captain from now on.”
Gorson gazed blearily about the clearing and saw the Alice’s men. Abruptly, he was wide awake and sober. “Jesus, what do we do now?”
Joe savored his moment of glory. “One of the first things you can do is stand at attention when you address your captain.”
Gorson gulped. “Yessir,” he said. “I’m sorry sir, I—”
“Get these men on their feet and let’s get back to the ship.”
Gorson grabbed the amphora bottom and started carrying water. Ten minutes later they stood in the firelight. Dr. Krom’s bushy head fitted his sheepish look. “All right,” Joe growled, “you’ve hit your first foreign port on this cruise. You’ve been rolled and you’ve probably all got a dose. Are you ready to go back aboard?” He stopped and looked at them carefully. Raquel, he knew, was aboard the Alice. Someone else was missing. “Where’s McGrath?”
“His Holiness stayed aboard,” Villegas said.
The cold knifed deeper into Joe’s stomach. McGrath had been increasingly unstable since that clout on the head. Was Raquel safe? At least the little god shouter hadn’t stampeded ashore after those blonde trollops. He remembered the tooth marks and Raquel’s cryptic comment. They’d been alone all day. But what the hell, he thought, she can take care of herself. If she wants to.
The Alice’s men still stood in a numbed group, awakening slowly to their position. They had carried no weapons to begin with. Now their pockets were empty. Joe put them to gathering rocks. When each had filled his pockets and bagged a few inside his shirt they lit firebrands. The oak would not blaze long but with luck it would light them partway down the hill.
Joe’s feet were so sore by now that he could hardly walk. Ought to make Gorson carry me. But he didn’t. They started down the valley. Joe tried to remember if there’d been a moon last night. It was very dark now under the oaks and they had not progressed a hundred yards before a torch went out. Halfway down the slope the last brand was extinguished. They fumbled along, bumping into trees, stumbling over roots.
There was a splash as Red Schwartz abruptly found himself neck-deep in the bay. He splashed a great deal and took the Lord’s name in vain before he caught an outstretched hand and pulled himself back ashore. They fanned out, searching for the Alice’s mooring line. They didn’t find it.
“Gotta be here,” Gorson was grumbling. There was a worried tone in his voice. “Whole canyon’s not a hundred yards wide. How could we miss it?”
Joe glanced back uphill at the faint glow where they’d left the fire. It was not the fire he was seeing. The moon was about to rise from behind the ridge. It did and there was no sign of the Alice.
Weaponless, miserable, hungover, they looked hopefully at Joe. “Does anyone think this is my fault?” he needled.
The imam and his Moors huddled to one side, looking even more disconsolate. Joe decided not to rub it in. The moon rose higher until its direct rays illuminated the pinnacle in the small harbor’s center. And there they saw the Alice. Someone had cut the stem line and taken up on the bow line. It was a good, hundred yards to the yawl’s stem.
Joe turned to the imam. “Ask your men if they can swim,” he said.
“Why ask?”
Dr. Krom would probably have a heart attack if he tried. “How about the rest of you?” The navy men nodded. “Can you do it with rocks in your pockets and come up fighting?” This time they weren’t so sure.
Joe put them to gathering logs. There was neither time nor tools to make a raft but they could swim the trunks out, using them to rest on. He tried to imagine what they would face aboard the Alice. The girls would all be there, of course. Soft and alluring as they might seem, Joe suspected they would be a match for exhausted hungover men trying to pull themselves aboard the Alice. And what if they had a few men of their own along?
Again he wondered how they’d happened to land on this island. If the girls had been going to Rome they must’ve been shipwrecked or marooned. If shipwrecked, what sort of miracle drowned the whole crew while they saved not only themselves but apparently hundreds of gallons of wine?
Retaking the Alice was not going to be easy. But . . . whoever boarded her had to sail her away. Engines would be an impenetrable mystery. Perhaps the halliard winches were also beyond them. Had they already discovered they couldn’t sail her? Probably just waiting for a wind. He was composing a silent prayer for continued calm when the first ripple of breeze hit them from behind. The Alice could cut loose and drift out of the harbor mouth now.
“Will you get on the ball with those logs?” he snapped. A rumble and splash answered him as they finally manhandled one into the water. “All hands in and see if it’ll support us.”
It could, so they began swimming. “Not crossways, for Christ’s sake!” Joe growled. “Turn it lengthways.” Strung along both sides, they paddled with one hand and kicked their slow way toward the Alice.
What had happened to Raquel and McGrath by now? Something else bothered him too. It kept bothering him during the twenty minutes it took to paddle out. Finally, as the log bumped gently into the Alice’s stem, he remembered the name of the island where Circe had turned Ulysses’ men into pigs. It was Aeaea.
VII
THE LOG bumped again and Joe mentally cursed. No one seemed to be standing watch. Gorson and Cookie had already pulled half the crew on deck. The log bumped a third time and Joe forced himself between it and the stem. The breeze kept pushing it toward them but he couldn’t cast it adrift until everyone was aboard. He wondered why the Alice stood stem to the breeze until he came aboard and saw that she had drifted round and round until the bow line was hopelessly snarled. The pinnacle was grinding paint away from the bow. “Women!” he muttered.
The deck was deserted. Gorson went forward with half the men while Joe led the remai
nder to the after scuttle. With rocks at ready they oozed down both hatchways and converged on the galley.
The forecastle was dark. The only light aboard glowed dimly in the curtained galley. Joe stood in the after hatchway and saw Gorson staring aghast from the forecastle. Between them the galley was stuffed with girls. Not nude-naked was the only word.
Facing a bulkhead, Howard McGrath cringed in one corner. He had both arms firmly over his face. Raquel, still wearing a dress, sat with the other girls, listening intently to an enormously fat woman dressed in the remains of a flowing, Grecian style garment. She squatted crosslegged on the settee and spoke in an unknown language.
When she glanced up and saw Joe her bulging cheeks rearranged themselves into a smile which exposed several gold teeth. “Tell me, sonny,” she said, “did A1 Smith win or are we still stuck with Prohibition?”
I’m going nuts, Joe thought dazedly. But he realized he was cutting no ice with the crew by standing there looking stupid.
“Cat got your tongue, sonny?” the fat woman asked. “From the looks of the still I’d say were still in prohibition.” A tremendous sigh rippled up and down her abdomen. “It’s been a hell of a while since I had a drink of good stuff.”
“Wha—What year are we in?” Joe finally managed.
“Couldn’t say, sonny. When I first hit town I looked for a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Near’s I make it, there ain’t a Christer in town.”
Gorson elbowed through the mass of naked femininity. “Where you from?” he asked the fat woman.
“Windy City,” she wheezed. “You can call me Ma Trimble. Sorry about making you swim, sonny—I wasn’t expecting the navy.”
“Why didn’t you come back for us?”
“We were going to if we ever got untangled from this danged rock. Hell, sonny, I never could drive a flivver, much less a boat.”
McGrath squirmed in his comer. Still hunched with arms over eyes, he turned. “Mr. Rate,” he asked, “is that you?”
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 9