The Fata Morgana

by Leo A. Frankowski

  This business of hiring retirees wasn't accidental. We wanted steady, calm, and experienced men, not fire breathers. We wanted to keep the peace, not win a war.

  Our police force was fit and well armed. Although we hadn't seen the need for any heavy weaponry, or explosives, we were strong on detection equipment, bugging devices, and surveillance cameras. Since our enemies on the island were not likely to know of the existence of such things, we resolved to use them discreet(c)ly, and to mention them not at all.

  Our new CD library was well stocked in most areas, but not in spy movies and police melodramas. Oh, the islanders would be able to pick up just about anything off the satellite hookup, but having them learn later rather than sooner was all for the better.

  Except for the captain and the colonel, we had kept our mission destination a secret from our newly hired people, just saying that it was a remote but healthy place with friendly people. Once at sea, we gathered them together, and Adam, having lost the toss, swore them to secrecy and then told them the whole, true story.

  I don't think one person in ten completely believed us, but via the internet, they'd seen that their pay was being deposited into their bank accounts in San Diego, and that's enough for most people.

  * * *

  We had Captain Johnson check out our calculations, guesses really, as to the position of the Western Islands. We showed him Adam's antique sextant, which he found to be quaint, but accurate, and told him how we checked out my watch, a week or so after the sighting. The captain had us shoot a noon fix, and he couldn't fault our equipment, our technique, or our calculations.

  It wasn't until we showed him the map we'd gotten on the island that he really perked up. He asked all sorts of questions about it, and even about the "paper" it was drawn on. Eventually, I got the feeling that the good captain was starting to believe that we were telling the truth about the islands.

  Maybe we should have showed everybody the crates of agricultural products we'd brought back, instead of keeping everything as secret as possible. Some of the stuff, like Super-Hemp, was as impressive as all hell. The simple fact was that I had never had trouble making people believe me before, and neither had Adam. We had thought that our problem would be to keep the place secret, to keep the profits up, and to keep our promises to the duke. That everybody would think we were liars had simply never occurred to us. If we hadn't had enough money to convince people to come along even if we were crazy, the whole project would have ended in that smashed-up Mexican hotel bar.

  We had some island clothing with us, saved for our grand entrance there, and one day I showed a group of security people my gorgeously embroidered jacket. When they looked unimpressed, I challenged them to rip it up, and once they saw I was serious, five big men gave it their best shot. Not so much as a wrinkle! One of them had a fighting knife at his belt, and I told him to go ahead and cut it up. He tried, without doing anything but dulling his knife.

  "So," I said at last. "Have I made believers out of you?"

  A huge ex-SEAL said, "I don't know, sir, but that's the prettiest piece of Kevlar I ever saw!"

  I picked up my jacket and walked away, my head hung low. Somehow, I'd make them believe.

  * * *

  We started giving a series of talks and seminars about the Western Islands, explaining their history, their technology, and their customs. We even tried to teach our new employees a bit of the language, simple stuff like "Hello," "Thank You," and "Take Me To My Leader, Since I'm Lost." Attendance was dismal, even when we told people that attending was part of their job.

  We got more excuses than warm bodies. Part of the reason for the seminars was to convince people that the islands really existed, but we still hadn't made believers out of them.

  It took us just over a week to arrive at our estimated position for the island. We were on deck, along with most of our people, but there was nothing to look at but an empty ocean. The island wasn't there, but we weren't worried. Even though it was statistically the most likely place for the Western Isles to be, we had calculated that there was only about a one in twenty chance that we could see them from where we were. The islands moved, after all, with the winds and the currents.

  We started in on a standard search pattern, spiraling outward from our point of origin. Besides having at least two men on lookout at all times, we had both radar and sonar going continuously as well. We'd find it.

  Adam and I continued working, checking on the progress of our submarine milling robot, encouraging the negotiations on the island's products, and generally keeping busy. The truth was that we both had first-rate cases of nerves. We each found excuses at least six times a day to go up on deck, have a look around, and see nothing but the empty sea.

  Adam came to me one morning, looking excited.

  "Treet! You heard the news?"

  "We found the island?"

  "No. That lab got back to Shirley about what Super-Hemp is made out of."

  "The chemical formula? So?" I said.

  "It's polyethylene. Super-high molecular weight polyethylene."

  "Bullshit. Polyethylene is the cheapest plastic around, and it was almost the first one invented. If it could be made that strong, somebody would have done it years ago."

  "I'm serious! Ordinary, commercial polyethylene is weak because the molecules are short, they slide against each other, and slip apart. Super-Hemp has molecules three feet long! To break it, you have to break a covalent bond, and that's not an easy thing to do."

  I said, "It still doesn't make sense. The molecules would have to be thousands of times longer than the cells of the plant they were formed in. How could that be?"

  "So maybe they stick out a hole in the cell wall. Did I say I was a botanical cytologist? All I know is that we are dealing with a high-molecular-weight plastic."

  "Interesting, but I don't see where it changes anything. No news on the island, huh?"

  "No."

  The ship's crew and our police, who were standing deck watch, were doing their duty in a calm, professional manner, but I had the feeling that they didn't really expect to find anything, much less a fabulous floating island. Several times, we heard laughing from the crew's quarters, and we were pretty sure that they were making jokes about us.

  Four days later, Adam and I were still less confident. In fact, it was getting downright nervewracking. What if everybody else was right and we were wrong? People have gone crazy before. Good, sane men have had hallucinations. I had been hit on the head on three separate occasions. Could I have imagined Roxanna? Was it all just a fantasy trip indulged in by two horny, middle-aged men? These were not pleasant thoughts to dwell on.

  "We're now circling our starting point at a radius of four hundred and thirty miles," Adam said.

  "We've been gone from the islands for over a hundred days," I said. "At one mile an hour, which is slow for an ocean current, that gives them time to go two thousand four hundred miles."

  "I know. And if we go on circling and searching for another hundred days, our radius will be only twenty-two hundred miles, while they could easily have gone a total of forty-eight hundred miles by then. What it adds up to is that if they want to run and hide in some other area of the ocean, we can't catch them by searching, even though we're twenty times faster than they are," Adam said.

  "So we have to go on the assumption that they aren't deliberately running from us. Let's continue using the present search pattern two more days, and see what turns up."

  "Okay. For now, I'm going to see if I remember how to do a Drunkard's Walk analysis."

  "You do that," I said. "I'm going down to the mess to do some empirical tests on the same problem."

  "You're going to get drunk and then try to walk."

  "Right."

  Being drunk does not make your problems go away, but it does make enduring them seem to take less time. When the two days had gone by without incident, we went to the captain and asked him to return to our original position and to try the sea
rch pattern again, only running it clockwise this time. After all, a standard search pattern can be guaranteed to work only if the target stays in one place, and ours was obviously not doing that.

  Captain Johnson agreed to follow our instructions, mentioning that we had fuel and supplies aboard for another two months. Adam prayed that it wouldn't take that long, and I almost wished that I could do that with him.

  At three the next morning, I was beating on Adam's cabin door.

  "Adam, wake up. Tell me, how would the Western Islands show up looking from a geosynchronous weather satellite?"

  "We checked that out once," he said groggily. "An area the size of the islands is just on the edge of detectability from a weather satellite. It would appear to be about the size of a single pixel. A spy satellite can read the headlines on a newspaper, but they have to be pointed at what you want to see, like the telescopes they are, and nobody much cares about this part of the ocean."

  "Right. So what we need is the raw data from several months of weather satellite observations. We look for anomalies, glitches and noise right on the edge of detectability that are close to other glitches that showed up on the previous day's photo. When we have a string of glitches in a row, we know the position of the islands!"

  By this time, Adam was fully awake.

  "It's easier than that," he said. "We know the starting position, the date and place of our first sighting on the Concrete Canoe. We need some computer programmers, and there's an outfit I know of in New Dehli that works cheap. Also, they'll be awake right now."

  "But, we can't tell them about the islands!"

  "Right, but not because they'd believe us. Nobody believes us about the islands! We need a story that they will believe. How about we lost a huge drift net that got tangled up with a lot of flotsam at a certain time and place, and the ship that left it there had to run from a storm. Now we need to find it to stop it from causing further ecological damage."

  "Sounds good to me, except that it wasn't us who were using the thing, but some bad guys we heard about," I said.

  "Good point. That way they'll know that we were using it and want to get it back before we're caught."

  I said, "Then you are letting them think that we committed a crime!"

  "True. That way they'll keep it quiet, since if we get arrested and our accounts are frozen by the courts, the programmers won't get paid."

  "Adam, you have a devious mind."

  "Don't it make you feel proud?" Adam almost slipped back into his Hamtramck accent, caught himself, and continued on in English. "Come on, let's put in a call to New Dehli!"

  * * *

  Captain Johnson continued our search pattern for five more gut-wrenching days before the Indian programmers finally got back to us. They had a definite fix on the islands, and a chart showing where they had been almost every day for the last four months.

  As it turned out, we had been within a hundred miles of the islands on three separate occasions since the search began, but had just missed them each time. I razzed Adam about his "God's on my side" statements, and he didn't even get decently mad at me.

  We "wired" the programmers a check for their services, along with a nice bonus, with the understanding that they were to destroy their files on the job and tell no one about the work they'd done for us.

  This they promised to do, thanking us for the prompt payment and the gratuity. We were confident that they would keep it all quiet, since they thought that they had participated in an international crime, using a drift net on the open ocean.

  We changed course for the island's present position, and our captain said that we would be there by the next afternoon.

  The captain soon had the crew cleaning and polishing the ship, and our police promptly joined in. The next morning was spent cleaning ourselves, since a mostly male group can get pretty rank at sea.

  Men who openly scoffed at our search were suddenly transformed into true believers. Adam and I were mobbed by crewmen and guards who were suddenly eager to learn everything they could about the Western Islands. Those few people who had attended our seminars regularly were also in demand. Our men were vastly interested to see if the island women were as warm and as loving as we had promised.

  A crate of old signal flags had been among the extra equipment we'd inherited when we bought the ship, and I told the captain that I wanted them flying when we reached the island. When he asked what I wanted them to say, I said that the ones in front should read, "Roxanna, I'm back!"

  Our ship had every flag on board flying and we were all in our best, as first the radar, then sonar and finally the watch on the bridge sighted the impossible floating islands.

  Adam and I were in our fanciest, festive island clothing, brought along and saved for the occasion, when we finally saw our home again with our own eyes.

  A huge crowd of islanders was waiting for us at the entrance to the island's central lagoon, the Llyr. They all seemed to be happy to see us, and nowhere was there the angry face of someone who wished us ill.

  The duke was in the forefront, smiling and waving, and beside him stood the warlock. Adam searched the crowd carefully with binoculars, and said that the archbishop was conspicuously absent.

  We spotted the Pelitier sisters, and standing next to them, laughing and cheering us in, was my own true love, Roxanna.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Sitting in front of the full Grand Council, the duke leaned heavily on the arms of his massive chair.

  "So. It's them? There can be no mistake?"

  "No, Your Grace. I could read the signal flags they are flying. Treet calls Roxanna by name, and tells her that he's returned," the warlock said.

  "Then there is little more to say. If we oppose them further, we shall lose everything. The only sane thing to do is to admit defeat, and offer our services as administrators to our conquerors. That way, we can at least protect our people and maintain our crown."

  "That would be a dastardly thing, a cowardly thing to do!" shouted the archbishop. "Your forefathers were made of better stuff! Has your line become nothing but the trail of slime-covered slugs? Fight them! Your people would follow you to the death, if you but asked them!"

  "Yes, they would, because they love me and trust me, just as I love and trust them. How then could I lead them into certain destruction? No. We are beaten, but we can still put a good face on things. We will all give them a cheerful welcome into the harbor, we will invite them to a feast, and we will do everything that they ask, to prove to them that we will be good and faithful servants to them. They, being as intelligent as we are, will know that we will be able to serve them well only if the people see us still as their leaders. In name at least, I will still be duke, and you will still be my noblemen, my churchmen, and my wizards.

  "Then, one day, who knows? We of the Western Islands are accustomed to thinking in the long term, working in generations and centuries when lesser breeds think in days and years. These two men will not live forever, and one day we may well be masters of our own souls again.

  "But for now, our path is clear. We must be united in welcoming our new masters to power."

  The archbishop stood, shaking with defiance. "And I swear to all of you that I will never do such a foul thing!"

  The duke looked at him for a full minute, while all in the room sat silent, half afraid to breathe. Finally, he said, "Very well, you need not join us. Indeed, it is only fitting, since it was due to your advice, and your covert actions, that we find ourselves in this sorry condition. Uncle Felix, take the good Archbishop out and kill him. Make it look like an accident."

  At the top of an open-centered spiral staircase that seemed to go down into infinity, Earl Felix and the archbishop were approached by a tall young man in a monk's cassock.

  "Bartholomew!" the Archbishop cried. "Thank God it's you! Help me! Save me from this man, who means to kill me!"

  The monk stepped closer, but Earl Felix raised one hand and said, "Stop! This man has offended the Duke
, who has ordered his death."

  The monk stopped, saying, "I am relieved, my lord, for the Duke's word takes precedence over even a Vow of Absolute Obedience. You may proceed with my blessings, for this man has dirtied my very soul. With your permission, my lord, may I watch?"

  The earl nodded.

  "Thank you, my lord. Then again, may I do the job for you?"

  * * *

  * * *

  The water by the stone wharf proved to be deep enough so that we could tie the ship up without difficulty. The ancient dockage at the mouth of the Llyr could not have been built for ships as large as ours, and most harbors in the world are gradually silting up, getting shallower unless they are regularly dredged out. However, since the Western Isles were sinking, its harbor was actually getting deeper. We'd have to watch the situation carefully, once we got to scraping the bottom of the island, to make sure that we didn't beach our ship.

  Adam was the first one ashore, and I was inches behind him going down the gangplank, eager to give Roxanna a proper hug and a kiss.

  After allowing us a few minutes with our ladies, the duke himself came up to greet us. He made a short speech, first in Westronese and then in English, welcoming us back, and granting all the men on the ship visas to stay on the islands for as long as they wished. He even threw in a line to the young ladies of his realm, asking that they give his new guests a warm welcome. He acted as though we had left and had returned with his understanding and permission, rather than having been beat up, burned out, and then forced to sneak away in the early dawn with only a third of the water we'd need to survive the trip.

  Adam glanced at me, I nodded, and wordlessly we decided that if the duke wanted to put the best face possible on the situation, we would let him do it. We had the power, now, and we could afford to be generous. When the colonel stationed armed guards around our ship, most of them standing on the sovereign territory of the Western Islands, the duke said not a word about it.