“Sorry about him,” Ma Trimble said. “One of my girls chunked a rock at him when we came aboard. When he came to—”
McGrath peeped out cautiously. He immediately ducked his head between his knees again. “I thought I’d gone to hell,” he said muffledly.
Red Schwartz stepped over a couple of blondes and lifted the befuddled puritan to his feet, half carrying him into the forecastle.
Joe surveyed the packed galley helplessly. “What did you intend to do with my ship?” he asked.
Ma Trimble shrugged. “Anything beats starving to death on a rockpile. How was I to guess you were Americans?”
“But how are we all—don’t you have beds or anything ashore? And damn it, Mrs. Trimble, you’re going to have to get some clothes on these girls.”
“Look who’s talking,” the old woman laughed.
Joe glanced down at his shorts. “We can’t all sleep here,” he said. “How did you happen to land on this island, anyhow?”
Ma Trimble waved a pudgy hand. “That, sonny,” she warned, “is a long story.”
It was indeed, and Ma Trimble told it complete with expansive gestures and colorful expressions that set McGrath to trembling anew. What it all boiled down to was that Ma Trimble had grown a bit desperate when three of the best customers at her establishment had gone blind from the booze she served. The booze was sold to her in accordance with what the mob politely called an “exclusive contract,” and Ma had no desire to cause the boys to lose their politeness—but if only there were some way to make the stuff drinkable!
A friend came to the rescue. He knew, he said, a guy who’d “studied chemistry down at Joliet,” and this worthy gentleman thought he could rig up a rectifying still to salvage the stuff. Ma Trimble grasped at the straw, the still was constructed on a houseboat out on Goose Island, and—
WHAM!
She awoke alone, afloat on an endless blue sea. Lake Michigan’s sky could not possibly be this blue. Besides, Ma suspected Lake Michigan was not salty.
Four days passed before a trader from Britain took her off the sagging houseboat. Despairing of ever realizing a plugged denarius from this fat old savage, he deposited her bedraggled and friendless on Tyre’s waterfront.
Ma Trimble was the type who would land on her feet anywhere, and that included ancient Tyre. Even so, there were several terrible months while she learned the language, the angles, and the local law’s blind spots. It was nearly a year before she acquired a tiny crib and stocked it with a sloe-eyed, shopworn Syrian bint of some fourteen winters. She taught the girl a couple of Midwest tricks which hadn’t as yet caught on in the Middle East, and the establishment flourished, adding four more girls in the course of time.
One of her most frequent customers was one Publius
Suilius Libellus, the Roman Colonel of this gook garrison town. He was, in fact, such a good customer that when Ma Trimble pointed out the many advantages he could gain by taking Ma and her girls to the Rig City—as opposed to the disadvantages of Ma’s confiding all she knew to Publius’ wife, the daughter of his commanding officer—Publius then and there decided he’d always wanted to get back to Rome.
The Astarte was still in sight of Tyre’s chalk cliffs when it began blowing, and there wasn’t much the crew could do about their course, which was now in the general direction of Athens. By the fourth day out, though, a cone-shaped island thrust itself inexorably out of the sea before them. A wreck was obviously unavoidable, so Publius, a Roman soldier to the end, had himself and his wife lowered in a boat along with the crew, abandoning Ma and her girls along with the doomed Astarte as he made for shore.
It was the small boat which went under, however, swamped by a huge wave. Four of Ma’s girls continued pumping water from the Astarte’s bilges with the ship’s bucket and chain apparatus, while one of them promised a white rooster to Hecate. Without pressure on her helm the ship wallowed straight for vertical cliffs. The girl upped her offer to two roosters. When the cliffs were a hundred paces away she made her final firm bid of five roosters.
The ship slipped easily into a small, horseshoe-shaped harbor.
They got some wine ashore and removed their supplies up to the spring. Next day they’d return to the half-sunk hulk and dive for their clothes. That night the storm front collasped and sea level raised two inches. The hulk floated gently away.
Joe stretched and looked around the Alice’s crowded galley. McGrath had returned to the galley doorway and permitted his eyes to rest for longer intervals on the naked blondes, an odd, almost calculating expression on his face.
Now that he had his ship back, Joe wondered what he was going to do with the women. “We’ll, maybe we can give you a lift someplace where you can catch a boat for Rome,” he said hopefully.
Ma Trimble gave a short, hard laugh. “Not on your tintype, sonny. It would’ve been rough enough with protection. You won’t catch me going there without old Publius.”
“But what can I do?”
“You’re navy, sonny. You can take a distressed American citizen home where she belongs.”
“But what about these—” He groped for a word to describe the girls.
“It’ll look awful funny if you leave ’em behind,” Ma Trimble said. “Mr. Hoover’d call ’em refugees.”
Joe looked helplessly around the Alice. Freedy and Rose focused their attention on the ceiling. McGrath studied Joe with an odd, eager look. Guilbeau and Villegas were silently communicating with a couple of girls. So was Schwartz. Dr. Krom and his civilian assistant studied the cabin sole. Cook glanced at Joe and shrugged. Gorson added his own shrug. “I think we’re stuck, sir,” he said.
The imam and his boys understood nothing so Joe ignored them. Raquel had picked up some English; he wasn’t sure how much. Remembering all the dresses she’d taken from the Viking women, he said, “How about getting these girls covered up?”
Raquel nodded and visibly thawed toward him.
“All right,” Joe said. “Gorson, take a couple of men and get that bow line untangled.” The moon was high, so they had little trouble warping the Alice back ashore. Joe posted watches and went to bed.
Dawn brought a strange boat to the harbor mouth. Joe studied it through binoculars. Nobody aboard. The caique was typically Greek, with high bow and a fiddle pegged stem post like a gondola. Joe wondered how far the eighteen footer had drifted from its fishing village. And why couldn’t it have turned up’Jast night when he’d needed a skiff?
He turned the Alice inside out and found no chlorine tablets. The spring water was sweet but the rocks were lined with moss. In three weeks time the Alice would draw green streamers from her faucets. There was neither time nor dry wood to boil it all.
McGrath edged up, still wearing that odd, eager look. “Mr. Rate,” he asked, “why can’t we stay here?”
“Too close to Roman shipping lanes,” Joe answered. “The coast guard’s liable to drop in on us any day.”
The little god shouter nodded and walked silently away.
Joe put the girls and all hands to relaying water downhill in such buckets and amphorae as were available.
“How about the wine?” Ma Trimble asked.
Joe was not entranced with its vinegary, turpentined taste but it might keep the water from turning. Mixed with water It would also be less likely to make the crew turn. “Pour it in the tanks,” he said, and inspected Ma Trimble’s cheese. It was white and hard, could be crumbled only with a mallet. Joe hoped it didn’t carry dysentery. The wheat flour she’d saved would help relieve their diet.
Rose produced a hammer and saw. He and Gorson began rigging bunks in every comer.
Goats overran the island, but one bullet was worth more than one goat. Joe wondered if they had an archer aboard and learned the Moors were all swordsmen. Slinging, he learned after a few wild throws, was hopeless—and the goats were too smart to walk into a pitfall.
He was unenthusiastically considering a catapult zeroed in on the trail when Dr
. Krom edged up apologetically. “They drink water, don’t they?” the old man asked.
Joe cursed himself and began fencing the spring. Three days later they had no difficulty running down goats. Cookie and Lapham rigged drying racks and organized Ma Trimble’s girls to keep seagulls from stealing the meat. None appeared. Joe was mildly surprised. Birds were abnormally sensitive to air pollution. He wondered if the extinct volcano was still giving off a trace of gas which scared them away. The water was chilly and the weather noticeably rawer on the open side of the island. He asked Dr. Krom about it and the old man thoughtfully, inverted test tubes in the water around the Alice.
Next day the water in the tubes had been partially displaced by something. The old man sniffed one and spent several hours fussing over the others with his small cabinet of reagents.
A week passed and they had flour, rye, and dried meat The mid-harbor pinnacle’s rope-worn grooves left Joe scant hope that they could remain long unvisited here. Shortly after supper Red Schwartz edged up to him. “Mr. Rate,” he asked, “you seen Howie today?”
“Why no, wasn’t he off with the woodcutters?”
“He didn’t come ashore this morning. I thought you’d kept him aboard on some other detail.”
“He’ll turn up.”
Dr. Krom ambled up in his stiff, old man’s gait and proffered a bottle. Joe sniffed and wrinkled his nose at the reminder of frosh chemistry and hydrogen sulfide. “Out of the water in this crater?” he asked.
Krom nodded. “Nearly a cubic centimeter in only forty-eight hours.”
At least Joe now knew why there hadn’t been any seagulls. He caught Raquel’s arm as she hurried by and asked her to put some girls to mending the Alice’s tattered sails.
To Ma Trimble life was basically a freeload. Raquel had taken over the girls and even gotten the mountain-fleshed madam to do a little work on occasion. Joe found himself depending more and more on her and noted that she stank less often. Come to think of it, since the blondes had come aboard she had been positively radiant. What gave?
That night they brought a half-dozen goats aboard and tore down the fence around the spring. With any luck the fresh meat would last to Gibraltar. Joe climbed the volcano’s peak and studied the sky. Wind blew briskly outside the harbor. He debated getting underway this evening, then remembered the girls would still be sewing on the mains! Abruptly, he remembered Schwartz’s godshouting friend. What was with McGrath?
The sun had set an hour ago but he could still see the island clearly save for a tiny stretch just outside one of the horseshoe wings which enclosed the harbor. He wondered what McGrath was doing alone. Tired of all the fornication aboard the Alice? Joe felt a fleeting sympathy and wondered why he too desisted. The girls were attractive and eager. So far no one had reported sick. To whom was he being faithful?
He took a final look around. There was no sign of life on the island. Schwartz and Gorson were waiting worriedly when he reached the Alice. “Isn’t he back yet?” Joe asked.
McGrath was still lost. Should have talked to him, Joe thought. The boy had had that odd, half awakened look since Ma Trimble’s naked legion had piled aboard. Maybe they’d whacked him too hard and some of the Outer Darkness was seeping in through a crack in his skull.
“It’s been over twenty-four hours,” Schwartz said. “Maybe he drowned or fell into one of those caves.”
Joe sighed. He wondered if he’d been too anxious to Study the past. Could he have gotten them out of here a day or two earlier?
“—a search,” Gorson was suggesting.
“Right. Make up some torches. I’ll see if there’s a glimmer left in the flashlight.” It was dark. The galley would have seemed deserted had it not been for the snickers, giggles and rustlings which came from all comers. Something seemed to be wrong with the latch on Joe’s cubicle. He twisted again and the knob suddenly opened.
The flashlight wasn’t in the shallow drawer under the chart table. Must be in his bunk. He fumbled and felt legs in darkness. “Now who the hell?” After an eternity he found the light switch. He blinked several times before recognizing Howie McGrath. Then he noticed what the little god shouter held in his hand. Joe looked straight into the muzzle of his own pistol.
VIII
HOWARD MCGRATH had been born illegitimate—Sadie’s Sin, as his guilt-holy mother had kept calling him.
Don’t look at girls or you’ll bum in hell, she had said. Don’t touch whiskey; it’s the Devil’s Drink.
Don’t say naughty words or God won’t love you.
Mother won’t love you.
Don’t touch.
Don’t drink.
Don’t say.
Don’t think.
DON’T!
That confused business of the woman, the snake and the apple: somehow it all led to little Howie, born evil, who must fight constantly lest the evil within him break out and carry him to everlasting hellfire.
His mother had not cried when he left home. The navy was the heaven of Satan’s darlings and Howie was predestined.
The first few weeks in boot camp had been undiluted horror but Howie knew a greater horror was yet to come: evil companions would lead him into sin and degredation. They would force him to drink whiskey!
He had been surprised and vaguely disappointed when no one invited him to debauchery. All told, his first liberty turned out to be as dull as the rest of Howie’s short, hyper-sheltered life.
Came sea duty, the Alice. Red Schwartz was not on the side of the angels. Red was going to fry in hellfire forever but he didn’t seem to care. Whiskey-drinking, fornicating, hell-raising Red had survived five and a half years in the navy. Chances were he would last twenty-four and a half more. Schwartz taught him all the things he hadn’t learned in bootcamp and privately vowed he would someday squire this shivering young wretch through a brothel. But the time was still not ripe.
McGrath remained as virgin as a national forest. Some day he was going to see Red Schwartz washed in the Blood of the Lamb. But not just yet. If Schwartz were saved, Howie would be deprived of his only sinful pleasure-shuddering over Schwartz’s embellished accounts of San Diego’s Babylonian quarter.
While he remained aboard the Alice and the women remained in San Diego it had been easy to avoid sin. But with warm lithe women, all aquiver with sinful bulges, bumping into him in narrow passageways, sleeping practically within reach—
Satan had buried him under an avalanche of naked women!
Yet as he listened to Ma Trimble’s long, rambling story it gradually occurred to Howie that these girls were from the Holy Land. That language must be the language Jesus spoke! Maybe they had seen Him. No, the time was a few years before Christ’s birth. No point in going to Israel . . . but perhaps something greater offered itself. If he were to go to Rome, now . . . how much trouble would it be to locate young Pontius Pilate? Once he found him, and with Mr. Rate’s pistol . . .
It was going to require cooperation from these girls. They seemed to have no English among them. Howie’s opportunity came when all hands were lugging water down from the spring. She was small and dark, unlike the others. Though long past her apprenticeship, some accident of nature had given her a line of lip and jaw which suggested that the world was a very large and somewhat too complicated place for her. Had Howie stopped to analyze it, he would have realized she resembled nothing so much as a darker and less godbound version of his mother. They stumbled down the trail together, each bearing an amphora of water. Pointing to himself, he said, “Me Howard.”
She stared.
“Howard—my name’s Howard.”
It came out “yugger” when she said it. Pointing at her, he made a questioning mumble. Had he possessed a more detailed knowledge of Semitic vowel shifts Howie might have felt a premonitory shudder at her name. To him it sounded like Leilat’.
Lillith put down her water jar and squatted to rest. These nautae had been more insatiable than a mob of Roman dogfaces just in from desert patrol.
And after putting in a full night’s work this water detail was giving her aches in places she scarcely remembered. She had been about to tell this nauta to go bugger Pluto, but . . . Oh well, these young skinny ones hadn’t the staying power of a starving rabbit. She lugged her amphora around behind a tree where it wouldn’t be seen from the trail. Howie followed.
It was hot and she’d been running around this island naked for the last three weeks. Today she wore one of Raquel’s high collared, long sleeved dresses—just the thing for an Iceland winter. She untied the waist cord and turned round so Howie could unbutton her. After a moment she turned again to see what was keeping him.
The idiot had some kind of miniature parchment book in one hand and a stylus in the other. Lillith was annoyed. Slowly it dawned on her that he hadn’t turned her down; he hadn’t even understood her offer. What did he want?
She undid the top two buttons at the back of her neck and fanned a little air into the bodice. The she turned to Howie. “Anachnu Yuggert?”
“Yes,” Howie said, “I’m Howard. Anaknoo Leilat’?”
Soon he knew the words for eye, nose, mouth, arm, hand. Lillith fanned her bodice again and taught him the word for button. She ballooned out the heavy wool and blew into it. This damned tent was suffocating her! She fanned the skirt up and down.
He learned words for toe, foot, and ankle. Breathing rapidly, he progressed to knee. Howie had not realized learning a language could be so interesting. It was getting ungodly hot in this little hole between the oak’s roots. He began to sympathize with Leilat in that heavy woolen thing. She taught him the word for dress. Pointing at his belt, she said the word for buckle.
Howie was sure he’d never remember the words but she gave him no time to stop and review. Leilat caught his hand and drew him toward her. She had another lesson in mind for him—and since it was Howie’s first, it went very quickly.
In spite of Ma Trimble’s change in plans, Lillith had no interest at all in visiting some outlandish country no one had ever heard of. She wanted to go to Rome. Obviously so did this timid young soul. Therefore . . .
The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream Page 10