Pirates of the Timestream

by Steve White

  “Nor does he think of himself as a pirate. In fact he hates being called one, and I earnestly advise everyone not to do so in his hearing. As far as he’s concerned, he’s a patriotic soldier of the king. No, really,” Grenfell insisted, seeing the looks on his listeners’ faces. “He’s a sincere royalist. He just sees no incompatibility between that and gaining what he most wants—riches and respect—by grabbing anything that’s loose at one end. The Morgans are an old Welsh military family of the so-called uchelwyr class. He was only seven when the first English Civil War began in 1642, and it split the family. He had two favorite uncles, one of whom, Thomas, joined the Parliamentary side while the other, Edward, remained loyal to Charles I. It’s pretty clear which side young Henry came down on. He was sixteen when the Civil Wars ended and Cromwell’s Commonwealth was established, and what he was up to for the next four years is a mystery I hope we can solve. But, one way or another, he ended up signing on with the expedition Penn and Venables led to Jamaica—the exact circumstances are something else I’d like to clear up.

  “Again, there’s a gap of a few years. But in 1559 he was with Christopher Mings, the Port Royal buccaneers’ first great leader, on an expedition that pillaged one Spanish town after another on the mainland of Venezuela. By 1661, at the age of twenty-six, he was a captain of one of Mings’s ships when they took Santiago de Cuba, which was supposed to be impregnable, and Campeche in Yucatan.

  “Afterwards, Mings went respectable—he was knighted and became an admiral in the Royal Navy, and was killed fighting the Dutch. In the meantime, Morgan came into his own. He led a small fleet that, from 1663 to 1665, ravaged Yucatan and Central America. It was an adventure no novelist would dare make up; they traveled over thirty-seven hundred miles in the space of eighteen months before returning to Port Royal laden with plunder. By that time, his old uncle Edward—the royalist—had been appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica under Modyford. He had brought his daughters over with him, and Morgan proceeded to marry the eldest, Mary Elizabeth.”

  “Uh . . .” Da Cunha’s brow furrowed with thought. “Wouldn’t that have made her his—”

  “—First cousin,” Grenfell nodded. “That sort of thing is considered acceptable in this era. And even though she never gave him the heir he wanted, it seems to have been a happy marriage. Morgan’s worst enemies never accused him of cheating on her . . . at least not as cheating on your wife is defined in this era.”

  “What does that mean?” Da Cunha wanted to know.

  “Well, it doesn’t include raping female enemy captives—”

  “—And it definitely doesn’t include sex with one’s own female slaves,” Boyer finished for Grenfell. “That’s just making legitimate use of one’s property.”

  “Yes,” Grenfell confirmed. “Quite a few Jamaicans in our era claim descent from him. In the meantime, he was appointed head of Port Royal’s militia—he supervised the building of Fort Charles—and also elected their admiral by the Brethren of the Coast. Then, early this year after a not very lucrative raid on El Puerto del Principe, Cuba, the French contingent of the Brethren deserted him and followed one of their own: Francois L’Ollonais, one of the most bloodthirsty psychopaths in the history of piracy, which is saying a great deal. Far from being discouraged, Morgan talked his remaining men into following him against an unknown target—quite a deviation from buccaneer custom—which turned out to be Portobello on the Isthmus of Panama, whose defenses had defeated Sir Francis Drake. Morgan took it. It was his most brilliant—and profitable—stroke to date.” Grenfell hesitated. “It also established his reputation as a ruthless bastard. There’s no reasonable doubt that he used some, ah, controversial methods there.”

  “Such as . . . ?” Mondrago sounded intrigued.

  “Such as using monks and nuns as human shields, driving them in front of his men so that the Spaniards, good Catholics all, would hesitate just long enough before opening fire. But some of the lurid stories of grotesque tortures used to extract ransom from the townspeople are almost certainly exaggerated. They derive from a bestselling book entitled The Buccaneers of America, which a former Dutch or French buccaneer named John Esquemeling will write in 1678.” Grenfell chuckled. “Morgan will sue the publishers for libel, and win an out-of-court settlement. But some of the mud will stick. Perhaps we’ll be in a position find out how much of what Esquemeling said about Morgan was deserved.”

  “Are you sure you want to be in that position?” inquired Da Cunha. Grenfell’s expression changed abruptly. Evidently he hadn’t thought through the implications.

  “Anyway,” Jason prompted him, “what about Morgan’s current plans? What are we getting ourselves into?”

  “Oh, yes. Remember what he said about the Oxford? She’s a thirty-four gun frigate which the English government recently sent to Governor Modyford with tongue-in-cheek instructions that she was to be used to suppress piracy. Naturally, she’s ended up as Morgan’s flagship. He’s going to assemble his fleet off Cow Island, just southwest of Hispaniola, and talk the captains into taking advantage of the Oxford’s firepower to attack Cartagena, in what was later to become Colombia, the greatest port in the Spanish empire. But then a somewhat mysterious event will occur.” Grenfell frowned. “As they’re drinking toasts—lots of toasts—to the success of their venture, the Oxford will blow up with a loss of about two hundred men. There’ll be only ten survivors, including Morgan.”

  “It doesn’t sound so mysterious to me,” Mondrago opined. “A bunch of armed drunks running around on a ship made out of flammable materials and loaded with black powder . . .”

  “It does seem that way, doesn’t it? But nobody will be sure afterwards. There will be a lot of theories—including sabotage by malcontents, which doesn’t seem too plausible, since they would have gone down with the ship. Maybe that’s something else we can clear up.”

  “But let’s try to not be aboard the Oxford when she’s due to go up,” Mondrago cautioned anxiously.

  Grenfell looked sheepish. “Yes, intellectual curiosity does have its limits. At any rate, after that Morgan will—”

  “That’s fine for now, Roderick,” Jason cut in. “I think you’ve given us an idea of what’s coming next. Now let’s talk about that woman, Zenobia.”

  Boyer looked troubled. “You’ve told us she’s a Transhumanist, Commander. But how can you be sure? Yes, I know, you said she has bionics of some kind. But couldn’t she be one of our own, from further in the future than ourselves?”

  “I can’t believe that. The Authority will know, from its own records, of our presence here. Even if they violate their own rules by sending someone else back to the same time and place, she wouldn’t be trying to avoid us. No, she’s got to be a Transhumanist—with other Transhumanists chasing her.”

  Da Cunha looked grim. “Are those the only possibilities? What if, at some point in our future, there’s a third group practicing time travel?”

  For an instant, silence held them. Nesbit had awakened to bleary, head-splitting consciousness, but he was as silent as the rest of them in the face of Da Cunha’s highly unwelcome thought.

  “For the present,” said Jason firmly, “I refuse to speculate about that. We’ve got enough problems already. Let’s try to deduce as much as we can from what little we know of her. I heard Morgan say something about her having a crew of ‘Maroons.’” He turned to Grenfell and Boyer. “Does anyone know what those would be?”

  “My field,” said Boyer. “When the English conquered this island in 1655, the black slaves of the Spaniards, having no wish to be re-enslaved, fought an unsuccessful guerilla campaign against them and then fled into the mountainous interior of the island, where they amalgamated with the few remaining native Taino people to form the population known as the Jamaican Maroons. They were subsequently reinforced by escaped slaves of the English, mostly of the Akan people of Ghana, who would eventually become the predominant cultural element, a process which I imagine has begun even now. Much later,
they will maintain their independence through a series of wars in the eighteenth century, despite mass deportations to Sierra Leone and—of all places—Nova Scotia.”

  “Br-r-r-r!” said Mondrago with a mock shiver.

  “Finally, they will sign treaties with the British—confirmed later by the national government of Jamaica—granting them self-government in certain locales. But of course all that lies far in the future. At the present time they are surviving by subsistence farming and raiding plantations.”

  “Both of which occupations seem to have worn thin for some of them,” Grenfell pointed out. “At least one crew has taken to piracy.”

  “Under the command of a woman,” Da Cunha added.

  “Well,” Boyer smiled, “there’s a precedent for that—or will be a precedent. . . .” He trailed to a perplexed halt.

  “Tenses are a problem for all of us in the time travel business,” Jason assured him.

  “Thank you. One of the greatest Maroon leaders in the early eighteenth-century wars against the British will be a certain Queen Nanny, a renowned guerilla fighter. She’ll be remembered as one of Jamaica’s national heroes . . . the only female one.”

  “The pieces are beginning to fit together,” Jason mused. “Remember, the cult Sam Asamoa’s expedition learned of in 1791 Haiti was supposed to have dated back to the 1660s and been somehow linked with Jamaica.”

  “One piece that still doesn’t fit,” said Mondrago dourly, “is that crashed spacecraft Asamoa found in Haiti.”

  “We’ll have to leave that for later. We don’t have enough data to even speculate. All we know for certain is that there are Transhumanists operating here and now—which was fairly certain anyway, given the spacecraft wreck. The only real lead we have is this Zenobia.”

  “Who doesn’t exactly seem well-disposed toward us,” observed Grenfell.

  “No, she doesn’t. Which is where you come in, Henri.” Jason turned to Boyer. “Whenever an opportunity presents itself, I want you to try to approach her and see what you can learn.”

  Boyer looked slightly alarmed. “But I’m not a trained police investigator.”

  “Of course you’re not. But a couple of times, I’ve gotten the impression that she’s a little more open to you than to the rest of us. I think you’d have a better chance of establishing some kind of relationship with her and obtaining information.”

  “Tell me one thing, Commander: we know she’s from the future, but does she know that we are?”

  “I can’t be certain, but I doubt it. Granted, if she has a sensor like mine, she knows about my brain implant. But my guess is that she doesn’t have one. Why should she? There aren’t supposed to be any bionics in the sixteenth century for her to detect. You’re just going to have to stick to our cover story, not reveal what we know about her, and play it by ear. I know it’s not supposed to be your job. But can you do it?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “I’m sure you will. And while you’re at it . . . try to find out what Morgan meant when he mentioned ‘silly stories’ about her.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Morgan wanted, at least for the present, to restrict access to the ship that was his pride and joy. So HMS Oxford rode at anchor out in Port Royal harbor.

  Grenfell had been fascinated by the seventy-two-foot frigate. The system of classifying warships into six “rates” would not assume its definitive form, based on the number of guns they carried, until 1746. Currently, the English navy used the much less satisfactory basis of number of crew, introduced during Cromwell’s Commonwealth in 1653. But Oxford was what would later be called a “fifth rate”—a frigate too light to stand in the line of battle but ideal for commerce raiding or hunting down the other side’s commerce raiders. In the epic fleet actions of the European wars, she would have been a marginal player. Here, “beyond the line,” she was a game-changer. Never before had the famously parsimonious English crown committed so formidable a warship to the defense of its colony of Jamaica.

  Morgan had mentioned she was twelve years old, and according to Grenfell this meant she had come in after the revolution in design philosophy that would establish the basic look of warships until the advent of steam propulsion in the nineteenth century. That revolution had begun in Tudor times, when the English had abandoned the old high forecastles that had looked impressive and provided a “high ground” for boarding actions but had ruined the sailing qualities of the ships, causing their bows to be blown down to leeward. The high poops had also gone, resulting in the “race-built” ship intended primarily as a gun platform. Oxford was typical in still having a quarterdeck and forecastle, but an open rail was used for these higher parts, allowing a sweep of sheer line, albeit not quite as straight a sheer line as it would become in the next century. These ships had also acquired finer configurations, being almost three times as long as their beam. And most recently they had gone to three masts rather than four, eliminating the bonaventure mizzen, while adding a topsail on the bowsprit and “top gallant” sails above the topsails. All of which had made them faster—twelve knots maximum, although five or six usually—and easier to handle.

  Grenfell had enthusiastically explained all this to them. It wasn’t Henri Boyer’s field. But now, walking along the dockside and looking out at Oxford, he first began to feel something of the enduring appeal of sailing ships, the romance that the passage of centuries had been powerless to entirely dispel.

  The ships tied up to the dock as he walked past were more typical pirate craft: former merchantmen, most of them small. Some, indeed, were little more than large open boats with a single mast and some shelter for provisions and men. None but the largest had any more armament than a few light cannon, often mounted fore and aft as “chasers,” and swivel guns to repel boarders. From Grenfell’s description, Boyer decided he could recognize some of the modifications the pirates typically made to their captured vessels, like stepping the mainmast aft for increased speed in the wind. It made him feel quite the old salt.

  Up ahead he saw the vessel he was looking for. Across her stern was painted the name Rolling-Calf. He assumed a casual air as he walked past under the eyes of its crew, who looked over the railing with expressions ranging from indifference to suspicion. They were mostly black, but included a few with the Native American features and coloring of Jamaica’s native Taino people, a branch of the Arawaks who had been in the process of being pushed out of the Antilles by the cannibalistic Caribs from South America at the time Columbus had arrived. In short, it was a typical assemblage of Jamaican Maroons of this period. The process of amalgamation between the escaped slaves and the Tainos hadn’t been going on long enough to have produced any mixed offspring who would have reached adulthood. Boyer nodded to them without receiving any response, and sauntered on. He had almost passed by when that which he had hoped for happened.

  Zenobia emerged from below decks and looked around, enabling him to catch her eye. He gave her what he hoped was an appropriately jaunty wave.

  “Ahoy!” he called out. “I already know your name. I’m Henri.” Slaves didn’t have last names, for they could not contract legal marriages.

  “So it’s you.” Her voice did not overflow with friendliness, but she didn’t turn disdainfully away. In fact she leaned on the rail and looked him over. His mind automatically processed her speech into Standard International English. In fact, it was an odd-sounding form of this century’s English, not quite like what had been neutrally imprinted on his brain. It held a very vague suggestion of a French accent, although with a lilt in which he thought to detect the distant ancestry of the Jamaican patois of later centuries. “I’d hoped to have seen the last of that crew you’re with.”

  Not, specifically, “The last of you,” Boyer noted optimistically. He decided that a little truculence of his own might be the best approach. “What are you complaining about? I’m the one who ought to be angry. You sent me sprawling, wench! My mates still haven’t let me live that down.”

/>   “Nor should they,” she said with a smile of catlike complacency.

  “And besides, what were you being so disagreeable for? We were just trying to save you from those swabs who were chasing you.”

  “I didn’t ask for your help!” she flared. “I take care of myself—and of my men.”

  “Well, anyway, we’re going to be seeing some of each other starting a few days from now when the fleet rendezvous at Île-à-Vache.” He was careful to call Cow Island by its French name. She seemed to notice.

  “I knew you weren’t from Jamaica—something about the way you look and sound. You must be from Saint Domingue. Runaway?”

  “Yes.” Boyer put bitterness into his voice. “I’d seen enough of our men being whipped—and enough of our women being raped.”

  “Then you’ve seen nothing! Do you know what they do to a disobedient slave on Barbados—and have started doing here on Jamaica? They chain him down, flat on his belly, and burn him to death little by little, starting at the soles of his feet. Sometimes they can make it last so long that a good part of him is ashes by the time he finally dies. Or sometimes they’ll starve him to death with a loaf of bread hanging just outside his reach. That really takes a long time.” Her voice remained level, but her eyes burned. She gestured at her crewmen. “Is it any wonder that they run away when they think they see a chance? Or that the penalties for piracy hold no particular terrors for them?”

  “Yes, I’ve spent enough time here in Jamaica to know about these things. And I certainly know about that last part.”

  “I suppose you do,” she admitted, softening a trifle. “You turned bucaneer yourself after running away.”

  “But what about you? You’re no runaway. And,” Boyer ventured, “from some of the stories I’ve heard about you, I can understand your ship’s name. After all, the Rolling-Calf has no fixed abode but wanders where he will, moving like lightning . . . and is put on Earth to cause trouble.” He could see her surprise at his knowledge of the Jamaican legend. It encouraged him to push a little harder. “It makes me wonder if there might be some truth to those stories. Where do you come from?”