by Edward Aubry
"That should be long enough for us to get out of a jam," said Alec.
"One would hope," said Harrison.
As they were speaking, Jake arrived. "Cap'm? Can you come to the bridge?"
Harrison was surprised to see Jake up so early. For the first few days of their voyage, the boy had been a late riser, and Harrison had been debating the merits of requiring a schedule for the crew. He had not decided if it mattered, but it was nice to see Jake up and about first thing in the morning. Maybe the boy was trying to take more responsibility. "What's up?" he asked.
"We're not sure. There may be trouble."
* * *
"Let's see it."
Glimmer pointed at the horizon. She was in quasi-nautical dress today: a yellow gingham garden dress and matching wide brimmed hat. The dress had a white sailor collar with red and white piping, and the hat was adorned with a white satin band. Wrapped the whole way around her skirt were printed scenes from Curious George, in which the mischievous chimpanzee played with a beach ball. Her left arm was curled around a plush toy ape, which looked absolutely nothing like the chimp portrayed on her dress. No shoes.
Before he even had a chance to look in the direction she was pointing, Harrison caught sight of the fact that she was using her middle finger. He was managing his guilt over her sacrifice much better lately, but it still hit him in the gut sometimes.
Just at the horizon, Harrison was able to make out an object on the surface of the ocean. He held out his hand, and Jake passed him a pair of binoculars. The object didn't look like much more under magnification.
"How soon before we intercept it?" he asked.
"Just under two hours," said Jake. "Assuming that neither of us changes course."
"Can we outrun it?" asked Alec.
"No, sir," said Jake. "It's already got our top speed beat by ten knots."
"Best we could hope for would be a delay," said Harrison. Jake and Alec both nodded. "Damn. Well, we better start preparing for a worst-case. Jake, please find the rest of the crew and bring them up here."
"Aye, Cap'm."
As soon as he was gone, Harrison said, "Glimmer, would you mind doing a little recon for me?"
She hesitated. "Recon?"
"A quick flyby," he said. "Just tell me if it's a ship. What does it look like? How big is it? You don't have to get too close. I just need a preliminary idea of what that is."
She hesitated some more. A lot more.
"Glimmer?" asked Harrison. His tone was worried now.
"I can't," she said.
Now Harrison hesitated. "You can't?"
"Fly."
This was patently absurd, and he was about to say so when he finally took notice of her wings. They had faded almost to transparency. They were still a very, very faint purple, but now they looked more like wisps of vapor than objects. Their edges were even starting to lose definition.
"Oh my God," he said. "What's happening? Are you all right?"
"I don't know, and I don't know," she said calmly. "In that order."
It suddenly made sense to him why Jake had been sent for him, rather than the much swifter pixie. He had not been imagining it the other day: her wings were getting paler. He wondered how long she had known it and had said nothing. As bad as he felt for her, he now had an even more serious problem. Glimmer was their standing emergency plan. Without her, they likely would all have been killed the last time they were attacked. With her crippled, they were in very deep trouble.
"All right," he said. "We won't know who they are until we can see them from here. That's not my first choice, but we'll have to roll with it. Are you still able to do magic?"
Glimmer nodded. "As far as I know."
So at least we've got that, he thought. "Then you're still our secret asset," he said. "Why don't we get you out of sight. I'd like to keep you hidden as long as possible. Especially if you're vulnerable."
"No argument there," she said.
Harrison looked at Alec. "Wait for me here. We're going to go find her a decent hiding place."
"Aye, Captain," said Alec.
Harrison picked Glimmer up gently. "Are you in any pain?" he asked.
"No," she said.
"Good."
He carried her down the stairs to the crew's quarters. For an instant, he entertained the notion of hiding her in the captain's cabin, but he realized that anyone searching the ship would be likely to start there and would most likely stumble across her by accident. "I'm going to have to take you somewhere that's not easy to find," he said, "but where you won't be trapped if I can't come back for you right away. Suggestions?"
"Let me cut a mouse hole," she said. "I'll hide in the walls."
"Are you a good climber?"
"I'm good at everything."
He thought about this. "That's true," he conceded. "The walls are probably the safest place for you right now. You'll still have mobility, and you'll be impossible to find if no one knows where to look for you. That was a really good idea."
"I get those," she said.
He set her down on the floor near a wall in the gangway. "We should do this where it will be least likely to be spotted," he said. He started looking at the wall, trying to find an inconspicuous section. As Glimmer ran into one of the cabins, he observed that even without flight, she moved pretty fast. He followed her, and found her inspecting the walls.
"Help me move this chest," she said. She was pointing to one very much like the one in his cabin. The ship was littered with these chests. Like so many other things, they added to its charm. He dragged the chest away from the wall.
"Once I'm inside," she said, "push it back to cover the hole."
"How will you get out?" he asked, hating the thought of her being trapped in the walls for all eternity, just because no one was able to pull the heavy chest away.
"Simple. I'll cut another hole." As soon as he heard it, he realized that she was never in that specific danger. Her tone certainly helped him remember. "Duh," she added.
At the base of the wall behind the chest, Glimmer laid one hand against the wood. It glowed orange, and white smoke drifted up. She dragged her hand in a tiny arc, and a chunk of the wall fell back into itself. The hole she left was heart-shaped.
She removed her hat and tossed it into the hole. Presumably, she felt it would hamper her mobility. She was still carrying the stuffed ape. Before stepping in, she held it over her head. "Will you hold my monkey?" she asked.
Harrison almost hesitated, remembering the last time she had handed him a part of her costume. She had vanished, and he had thought she had gone off to die then. He disliked the parallel. Ultimately, though, he could not refuse her anything. He took the toy.
"Yeah. I got your monkey right here."
She flashed him an admiring grin, and her eye literally twinkled. Her wings pulsed once, a slightly deeper purple. "Maybe you are a pixie after all," she said. "Be careful." He had been thinking of saying the same thing to her, but she beat him to the punch. As she stepped into her hidey-hole, Harrison shoved the little chimp into his pocket, then pushed the chest back against the wall.
On his way back to the bridge, he ran one more errand.
One deck below the crew's quarters was a cargo hold. In that hold rested a construction that Hadley and Glimmer had been working on. It had an irregular shape, roughly three feet wide, and was built mostly from sticks held together by an assortment of wires, metal brackets, and hinges, and parts of it were equipped with strings and pulleys. Nestled inside was a variety of rare items. A polished stone here, a feather there. A desiccated red and white mushroom, wilted and forlorn, had been affixed to one section.
Harrison stood looking at this construction, seeing it complete for the first time. If one ignored the obviously meticulous assembly, it looked like a pile of trash from a day's yard work. A casual observer would have no way of knowing just how big a role in the fate of humanity (and more) this thing was about to play. The power to forever change
a world rested in this bundle of twigs. Or to forever leave it unchanged. He reached out to touch it, to connect with it somehow, but stopped himself. He couldn't fathom its might. Touching it wouldn't help.
He thought again of something he had overheard Glimmer and Hadley discussing when they had found this thing's counterpart back in the basement of a hut, in the cratered remains of the largest city in the nation. They had said that that a static mayhem bomb was difficult to build. Difficult to set off. They had also said that under normal circumstances, it could never operate on the scale it did. Harrison knew they were going to have to find a way to make this one work, that they had not yet found one. He was trusting that the method would present itself. If not, he believed, Titania wouldn't have told them it was possible. Still, it made him nervous.
This wasn't the time, though. They had bigger problems. Much more immediate ones, anyway. And he didn't come down here just to analyze the bomb.
He had come down here to seal it off.
He covered the construction with a tarpaulin. This would deter no one, of course, but he at least had to try to hide it. Then he walked out the door and closed it behind him. The lock was an ordinary keyed deadbolt. He planned to drop the key into the ocean. If he came back, he wouldn't need it. If he didn't come back, he wouldn't need it, either.
He pressed his hand to the door and closed his eyes. He thought back to the last time he had tried to use his power in reverse. It had worked like a charm then. He heard a metal crunch.
He opened his eyes. It worked like a charm again. The door was locked. The keyhole was warped shut. It almost looked welded, but on close examination he could see that nothing had melted. It had simply crushed itself closed. That effect had been his intent, but seeing it actually happen nevertheless surprised him.
He made one more stop before rejoining the crew. The Ptolemy had an armory, which Alec had discovered their first day aboard. It held a selection of swords, plus several empty racks that, Alec explained, would have held pistols and muskets. Given the level of technology on the ship, he doubted that they would have been flintlocks. Regardless, they were long gone. Alec had given Harrison and Jake some basic fencing lessons, but neither of them had proved especially apt, and no one else had taken any interest.
When he returned to the bridge, he found the crew assembled, looking to starboard, watching the approaching object. He could see now that it was a ship, apparently a yacht. His crew wordlessly waited for his next move. He handed each of them a cutlass.
"Oh, shit," said Claudia.
"Relax," said Harrison. "I don't expect anyone to start fighting." He looked at Alec. Almost anyone, he amended silently. "These are for show. If those are Ru'opihm's people out there, these won't make any difference at all. But they may not be trouble at all. Or they may just be ordinary pirates."
"And ordinary pirates would be okay?" asked Jeannette. She looked extremely skeptical, but Harrison observed that she was strapping the sword around her waist.
"Ordinary pirates would suck," he said, "But if there are more of us than them, they might think it's too much trouble. Especially if they think we're ready for them."
Jeannette nodded. The others buckled on their swords. When Harrison handed one to Alec, he said quietly, "I already have one, thank you."
"But they won't know that," said Harrison. Both men resisted the urge to glance at the invisible Bess. They were practicing.
"Ah, yes," Alec replied. "I take your point." He accepted the sword and removed it from its scabbard, then swished it back and forth a few times, feeling its heft. Sighing, he strapped it to his belt on his left side. Harrison knew that Alec's sword would now be even more of a bluff than the others' were. Alec was a southpaw, and his instinct, come trouble, would be to draw with his left hand. Harrison placed his hope in Alec's control over his reflexes.
A voice called from the direction of the oncoming ship. It spoke in Spanish in the tinny timbre of a bullhorn.
Harrison looked at Apryl. "What are they saying?"
"They say we're violating territorial waters," she said. "They're not saying whose territory, and I can't place the accent."
"So who does that rule out?" asked Harrison.
"Puerto Rico," she said. "And probably Mexico." Harrison knew that Apryl's family was from Puerto Rico. Reflecting on this fact gave him a sudden pang of regret that he would never meet them. She would never meet his family, either. He thought about how his sister Lisa had hounded him for years to get out of the house and find himself a woman. Lisa would have loved Apryl, and Harrison would have basked in Lisa's pride of him. He rubbed his mouth to ward off the woolgathering. Grief hit him at unexpected moments. He hoped he would find time to share Lisa stories with Apryl, and that she would return the favor.
Apryl was still thinking. "They could," she said, "be from almost any Central or South American Country. I suppose they could even be from Spain." She shrugged. "Sorry."
Harrison shook his head. "No. That's helpful," he said. He wasn't really sure if it was, but saying it seemed to make everyone feel better. He looked at the interactive wall chart. "What are we near?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question, as their position was clearly marked by a schooner-shaped cursor.
"Brazil," said Jake. "If two hundred miles counts as near."
"They speak Portuguese in Brazil," said Claudia. Her parents had both been born there, though she had never seen the nation.
Harrison nodded. "Either they don't know where they are, or they think we don't know where we are."
"Or," said Jeannette, "they don't speak Portuguese in Brazil anymore."
Harrison scratched his chin. The crisp texture of three days' beard stimulated his fingertips and helped him focus. "Or they're fucking with us," he said. "Which I think is most likely." Then he caught himself. Swearing was a habit he thought he had kicked. "Pardon my French," he said to Apryl and Jeannette.
"Mais oui, mon Capitaine," Apryl replied.
More Spanish wafted across the waves. "Apryl?" he said.
"They're telling us to stop," she said. "They want to board us."
"All right," said Harrison. "Let's see how serious they are. Claudia, do you speak Spanish?"
"No."
"Okay, then here's what we're going to do. Apryl, I need you to translate what I'm about to say, and repeat it in Spanish, slowly, to Claudia. Claudia, I need you to repeat what Apryl says, sound for sound. You two think you can do that?"
They both said yes, and all three went back out on deck. Claudia stood by the rail, facing the yacht. "We are currently traveling in international waters," Harrison began, and Apryl echoed his words in Spanish. "Please identify your nation of origin." He waited for Apryl to finish her translation and for Claudia to finish relaying it. Then he made a cutting gesture with his finger across his throat, so they would not continue translating his every word.
"Now what?" Claudia asked.
"Now we wait for them to respond," he said. "Hopefully, right now, they're wondering what kind of technology we have that would amplify your voice so clearly. With any luck, they'll be so intimid-"
"SHHH!" Apryl was waving her hand.
The other ship was giving them instructions again, and Harrison had been talking over them. Apparently they weren't as impressed as he had hoped.
"What'd they say?" he asked.
"More of the same," she said. "I missed the beginning, but I don't think they even acknowledged your message."
"That's not good," said Jake.
"Don't get worked up," said Harrison. "This could still be nothing."
"Should we stop?" the boy asked.
Harrison didn't know. His first choice would be not to get boarded. He knew that they were only delaying, though. If they made too big a show of fleeing, these people might get twitchy. He definitely didn't want an escalation of whatever was about to happen.
"Damn," he whispered. "Okay, people, one more time. Ready?" Claudia and Apryl nodded. "Unidentified ship," he sai
d more loudly, "your pursuit is in violation of international law. Heave to and identify yourself immediately." He waited for the translation, then cut with his finger again.
Apryl looked nervous. "I'm not sure about my translation of 'heave to.' I may have screwed that up."
"It makes no difference," said Harrison. "Thank you both. All stop, Jake."
"Aye, Cap'm," the boy said. He bolted back to the bridge.
"Now we're in charge," said Harrison. "For whatever that's worth. Alec, I need a moment." He nodded and began walking.
Alec followed. "That was the right call," he said when they were out of the others' earshot.
"Thank God," Harrison said. "Listen, I just want to be clear that you are de facto first mate on this ship. We haven't discussed this before now."
"Of course."
"If this gets ugly, I'm going to need you to take the initiative," said Harrison. "Your conflict reflexes and judgments are better than mine. I just want to be absolutely certain that we don't screw up over some chain of command bullshit."
"I understand completely," said Alec. He put his hand on Harrison's shoulder. "Trust me to know my job. And to do it. That's your strength, Cody. You know your people. It's why they follow you."
"They're scared," he said.
"They should be. Are you?"
Harrison thought about this. Hard. This conversation was moving toward a pep talk on courage, but he did not think he needed that right now. Fear or no fear, he had to get his crew through this, and all the way across the globe.
"It doesn't matter whether I am or not," he said at length. "Does it?"
"Not a whit," said Alec.
Harrison heard the wind slapping against the sails and looked up to see the canvas retracting. It would take some time for the ship to come to a complete stop, but he could already feel their velocity bleeding out. At the rate the other ship was now gaining on them, they wouldn't need to come to a stop before they could be boarded.
He gathered the crew together on the main deck. They watched the yacht pull up alongside them. They could see several men wearing dark blue uniforms standing on its deck. One of the men had dark gray skin, and Harrison concentrated on that one, trying to identify him. As the ships made contact with a dull but loud thump, they started vaulting the rail onto the Ptolemy. The third man to leap over was Scott.