by John Brunner
Ordinarily when a steamer was hove to, the sound of the doctor busily topping up the boilers was as loud a noise as could be heard in her engineroom. The sudden cessation of its thump-and-pump felt uncanny. There was a noticeable tremor in Corkran’s voice when he said, “Here’s Brian, and I guess Eb will be back in a moment… Brian, all shut down?”
“Tight as she’ll go,” Roy answered, and took station where he could watch the gauges.
Then Williams returned, followed by a coal-dusted man brandishing a fire rake. “Pete, I said to keep the fires up until you shouted, right?”
“Right,” Corkran acknowledged, and took the rake. At full stretch he drew the pea along its bar. “Shooting for one-eighty,” he muttered.
The needles reached and trembled at 175. “More!” Gordon commanded. Corkran obeyed, and they vibrated past 180.
“Any sign of strain?” Gordon rapped. Williams and Steeples disappeared into dark recesses, tracing the pipes with the aid of kerosene lamps but relying chiefly on the keenness of their ears.
The tension became intolerable. Matthew felt he had held his breath clear through until the glimmering lamps reappeared.
“All tight!” was the unison report.
“Then she’ll take two hundred,” Gordon said, and turned to Corkran. “Move the pea again.”
“It’ll do you no good in practice, sir,” said the chief engineer. “Since the act of ‘52 the inspectors seal your valves before every trip. There were too many tales in the early days about levers being weighted down with flatirons.”
“The inspectors aren’t here yet. Won’t be until tomorrow. And in case of need seals can be broken. Give me the rake.”
Corkran hefted it. He said, “You want to risk blowing up us-all and your investment? I guess you have us thoroughly insured! Who’s to inherit?”
Gordon chuckled throatily. “Who’s to die?”
And instead of using the rake to slide the pea farther out, he hooked its teeth over the bar and leaned on it.
The gauges moved upward less rapidly than the heartbeats of those about him: 185—190—193—195—197… Matthew bit his lip and clenched his fists, and was relieved to realize the older men were doing the same.
197—199—200!
There was a banshee cry of escaping steam and Matthew jumped in terror. But it was no burst. Gordon had let go the rake and the valve had blown off as intended. He had proved his point, and no one was disposed to argue with him now.
When the noise died away, he said to Corkran, “Inform the pilots we can get under way again. If anybody wants me, I shall be on deck.”
Only then did those present realize that someone else had joined them. For a voice demanded, “Did she truly stand two hundred to the inch?”
With improbable confidence Parbury advanced into the only clear space among them, relying on his cane and his memory of having come this way before… more in imagination than reality. He halted almost square in front of Gordon.
“Well?” he insisted. “Was it two hundred?”
“Aye.”
“Then don’t tell the newspapers. Some day it may be useful to have power in reserve. Will the trials continue now?”
“I just said they could,” Gordon grunted.
“But what did Mr. Woodley say?”
“I…” Gordon blinked, while the engineers exchanged glances. “I assumed he was in the pilothouse.”
“Not when I left it.”
“In that case—” Gordon had begun when the subject of their exchange arrived as promptly as a pantomime demon.
“She seems to have taken no harm from being run aground, which is a mercy! Burge and I have checked her fore and aft. But with respect, Mr. Gordon!”—this with a glare—“you might have let me know what you were planning. And why didn’t you restart the doctor yet?” he added, rounding on Corkran.
“Mr. Roy was just about to,” the chief engineer muttered. “I’ll signify when we can back off.”
While the Nonpareil was making her easy way back to the wharf, Parbury reentered the pilothouse. Trumbull, who had the wheel, exchanged glances with Hogan and, on receiving a nod, stepped back with a flourish.
“Care to judge the feel of her, Captain?” he invited.
“Would I not!” Parbury answered, and marched across the floor, letting fall his cane. He was within an inch by dead reckoning when he had to start groping. Finding the smooth wood under his fingers, he gave a deep sigh.
“She feels just like I always dreamt,” he said.
Hereabouts the river was broad enough and traffic light enough for the pilots to leave him safely in charge for more than ten minutes before Hogan was obliged to resume control: the next bend was a tricky one, and a White Collar Line steamer—recognizable from far off by the white bands on her chimneys—was making across it to take advantage of slack water.
With visible regret Parbury relinquished the wheel, about to say something… but at the same moment the pilot of the oncoming vessel sounded the two blasts which indicated that he wanted to pass larboard to larboard.
Not waiting for permission, Parbury located the whistle lever and gave it the tugs called for to show agreement.
With a guilty smile, like a boy caught stealing cookies, he murmured, “I like the sound of that there whistle!”
“So do we,” Trumbull said heartily. “It announces the approach of a boat as good as any on the river.”
“I waited a long time to hear that,” Parbury muttered. “And it falls sweeter on my ears than even the fine note of her whistle. I thank you, gentlemen. From the bottom of my heart I thank you for making an old worn-out man feel alive again. You salvaged the engines out of my sunken hull and I’m afloat the way I used to be.”
Uneasily glancing at Trumbull, Hogan said, “You should say such things to Mr. Gordon and Mr. Woodley. We two are just hired hands.”
“Oh, they paid for her,” said Parbury with contempt. “I guess you have to say they made her possible.
“But it takes a pilot—don’t it?—to make her run!”
The trials of the Nonpareil came as a godsend to river correspondents short of copy.
Before she reached the upstream end of her initial run, the most daring—or foolhardy—of them had retreated to the shelter of the telegraph office. The operator grew tolerably bored with the constant reappearance of such phrases as “mystery financier” and “outdoing the Eclipse.”
Those few who took their task seriously resolved to hold back in the hope of securing an interview with Gordon, or Woodley, or best of all Parbury, whose reputation among river people was secure.
But it was not a time that favored authenticity. The legacy of all the news falsified during the war militated against factual journalism. Sensational was the watchword—get there first was the slogan.
Therefore the descriptions of the Nonpareil’s performance that went out by cable were weird and sometimes wonderful, and all but a handful stated she was certain to take the horns of every other boat in service. Stories voicing reservation about her were predictably demoted to an inside page.
However, as soon as news broke of her acceptance by the owners, one incontrovertible fact did emerge. At last there was a steamboat on the river which a man might sanely back to beat the Atchafalaya.
FIRE TONIGHT, ASH TOMORROW
8TH MARCH 1870
“It was in New Orleans that the famous gamblers who flourished before the American Civil War learned the tricks of their trade, and it was New Orleans that started the gambling fever that swept like wildfire throughout the United States after the war… Wholesale bribery and blackmail of politicians and police kept the saloons open, and by the end of 1850 there were over 500 ‘sawdust joints.’… Most of these waterfront shacks (they could hardly be called casinos) were completely corrupt, and honest games of craps could be found only in private homes.”
—Alan Wykes,
Gambling
The world had gone insane! Or else the Nonparei
l had been transformed from a mere steamer into some fantastic vessel from the factory of Monsieur Verne! At any rate, the place she had today brought Matthew to bore scant resemblance to the New Orleans he remembered.
He had been impressed with the sobriety and gravity of the persons he had met here in Gordon’s company, who included the bankers Marocain, the steamboat agent Mr. Knight, and even some of the entourage of Governor Warmoth, though a hoped-for appointment with the governor himself had fallen through.
Now, unpremeditatedly, the Nonpareil’s maiden voyage—successful enough in terms of cargo, for she had carried a vast consignment of Northern made goods, from axe blades to cream separators, but with not nearly enough passengers—had terminated on the Fat Tuesday preceding forty days of Lenten abstinence.
Which, of course, was why so few passengers had booked. Those who would have been glad to do so a week earlier had already left. Nobody in his right mind, so it was claimed, would miss Mardi Gras in New Orleans. In the old days it had been little more than a riotous orgy. Since the establishment in 1857 of the Mistick Krewe of Comus, and in imitation of it the Twelfth Night Revellers, the Krewe of Rex, and the Knights of Momus, it had been formalized into a city-wide party offering parades, masquerades, balls, singers, dancers, clowns…
And in the midst of this gaiety Matthew was feeling sick with terror, while at the same time tormented by a crazy urge to laugh, for Hamish Gordon was showing the world that he had knobbly knees.
A huge steamer trunk had accompanied him from Europe which generally remained, tightly roped, in the strongroom of whatever hotel he and Matthew were patronizing. For this special occasion, however, it had been opened and disgorged a suit of Highland formal dress redolent of camphor: a kilt of blue, red, green and white tartan, densely pleated; a sporran made of badger fur which supplied its lack of pockets but hung at such a level as to make its wearer, when reaching for money, grope about in a manner Matthew regarded as indecent; a green velvet jacket with silver buttons; a white lace jabot; stockings with garters that matched the kilt; shoes with silver buckles; and an ivory-handled knife worn in a sheath inside the right stocking. This last was no toy. Gordon had displayed its razor-keen edge while they were dressing at the St. Charles. Determined to spare no expense in making his amanuensis’ birthday memorable, he had ordered him full evening dress and a set of pearl studs, to make up the first part of his gift.
The second was to be dinner at the Limousin. That would be tolerable—just. It was the third part that was filling the boy with dread.
Last night he had lain long awake, tormented by the horns of the worst moral dilemma life had so far inflicted on him. Revelry was going on all about him then, too; the Nonpareil was making excellent time and even the normally abstemious Parbury had been persuaded to join the celebration Gordon called for. Seizing his chance to slip away, Matthew retreated to his stateroom and tried to sort out his feelings.
On the one hand, he admired his employer, albeit reluctantly, and Gordon made no secret of his interludes with prostitutes; since he recruited Matthew there had been eight, and one had entailed visits to a doctor.
By the same token, Matthew had known since arriving at his uncle’s hotel that men and women had relations outside marriage and that what they did together was pleasurable. Last summer a boy staying there had further enlightened him with the aid of French postcards filched from his father. As a result, part of Matthew’s mind was aglow with excitement to think he was at last to be admitted to the world of full-grown men.
On the other hand he had been brought up to believe that the delights of the flesh were sinful, and that rules and customs governing bodily functions were God’s hallmark setting the rational creation apart from the beasts. On a less-than-conscious level he could not credit the act his parents must have engaged in to generate himself.
Nor, inevitably, could he do as he desperately wanted: pray for a successful outcome to his first encounter with a woman. To pray for help in sinning seemed like the grandest style of blasphemy.
When at last fitful sleep overtook him, however, he had a vivid dream which made him laugh so much he almost woke himself. He saw Adam and Eve disporting themselves in the Garden of Eden and realized that until Satan called it so sex had not been wicked.
One final surge of that sense of well-being returned when Gordon, resplendent in his Scottish garb, emerged to inspect his protégé.
“Enough to turn any girl’s head, aren’t you—just?” he said with a broad grin, deliberately tagging on the Americanism. “You keep that up, and not only that…!”
With a jab of his elbow into Matthew’s ribs.
Then, in the disarming fashion typical of him, one moment before the boy could take offense he went on: “Should be his father who does this office for a young man! I trust I’ll prove an acceptable surrogate. At least let me say: were your parents still among us, they would surely be proud to see you now.”
But even as the carriage Gordon had hired rolled through the delirious streets, Matthew’s faint optimism leaked away.
He felt as though he were about to sit an examination in a subject for which, though all his life he had been warned about it, he had never yet managed to find an honest textbook.
Let alone a less than lying teacher.
Just before the carriage halted in front of the Limousin, Matthew saw a white man crawling on hands and knees, drooling and moaning like an animal. His shirt was foul with the red wine he was still intermittently vomiting. Passers-by, spattered to their boot tops with mud—for the street was as usual a quagmire—hooted with laughter at the spectacle.
“One who can’t take it!” was Gordon’s blunt comment.
Seconds later the entrance hall closed on them like the jaws of a marble shark with people for teeth. Signs outside announced that a band had been specially engaged for tonight, under the direction of M. Gaston d’Aurade of the Grand Philharmonic Hall, and there it was, playing as though trying to drown the chatter of the seething crowd. In retaliation all voices were raised near screaming pitch. Matthew thought of Belshazzar’s feast, and trembled.
Waiters relieved them of coats and hats and ushered them to where Woodley was sitting with some of the others to whom Gordon had extended invitations. For most, the notice had been too short. The Marocains were committed already as were the Moyne family, who were members of the Krewe of Comus and attending its Mardi Gras ball along with Arthur Gattry escorting Louisette; Hugo and Stella Spring were at another similar ball, while Parbury had bluntly retorted that, even had he not been engaged for dinner with colleagues from Pilots’ Guild, he would not have patronized an associate of that traitor Drew.
But Hogan and Trumbull, and Ian McNab and Sam Iliff, had been glad to accept. Matthew was less than happy to find the clerks joining in his—“his”—birthday celebration; both, as he learned during the trip from Cincinnati, were married men, and the older, McNab, had a son Matthew’s age.
And yet… and yet…! At the back of his mind hovered the possibility that, pearl studs and nine-course meals and his first woman notwithstanding, his true birthday gift was apt to be a set of guidelines, which would enable him to steer between the shoals of public and private morality. In the world of childhood anything so much as a guilty rub of the genital organ was sinful and punishable. In the world of adults fornication was admired, even applauded. So was adultery, provided it was not with a friend’s wife. Or… No, that could not be exactly right, because—
Well, anyhow, maybe they were only here to indulge some other weakness, like gluttony.
His muddled thoughts were cut short. All of a sudden Gordon was introducing him to—
“Mr. Barber! My amanuensis and protégé Matthew Rust whose anniversary I plead guilty to having overlooked in the excitement of commissioning the Nonpareil!”
“Many happy returns, young fellow!” Barber said, offering a hand. But it was clear he was primarily interested in Gordon, for a second later he was saying, “Since t
his morning Mr. Woodley has been regaling me with tales of your new steamer’s unparalleled velocity!”
“I’ll warrant telegraph messages beat him to it,” Gordon riposted smugly.
“Yes, of course, and just as well, for you were barely in time to reserve my last table tonight.”
“Still, we made it,” Gordon said, affably patting him on the arm. “And you made one extra reservation, didn’t you?”
Barber sketched a bow. “I surely did. And Elvira is an admirable choice. She will be awaiting Mr. Rust at the end of dinner.”
Under his ruffled shirt front, under his gold-embroidered vest, Gaston felt his heart ought to be swelling with pride. It kept declining to oblige.
Why? After so many trials and tribulations he was back at the hotel his cousin had founded, on a one-night contract admittedly, but in the presence of a glittering company. Surely they could not all be deaf to his skill! Surely someone was bound to notice how brilliant a sound he was conjuring from this scratch bunch of musicians, half white, several mulatto, one discreetly shadowed at the rear of the dais who was excessively African… but all to some extent schooled and capable of reading.
An ironical meeting had taken place earlier in the day. The mustachioed leader of the band parading in support of a strike on the waterfront last fall had heard about work at the Limousin and arrived with a bagful of battered instruments, certain of being hired. But, as Gaston had suspected, he proved unable to read even the simplest arrangement. He had found work here in the end, but not what he was expecting. In a borrowed jacket much too tight for him he passed and repassed the bandstand, carrying loaded trays like any water boy, and each time favored Gaston with a murderous glare. That too should have lifted the conductor’s spirits. It was amusing, n’est-ce pas?