by John Brunner
When St. Mary’s Market appeared on the starboard, the firing of the customary gun momentarily broke the rhythm of Manuel’s band, which would as usual continue to play until the Nonpareil reached open country, then adjourn to the cabin for its series of regular recitals. Those who laid claim to the most reliable watches were in agreement: already the Nonpareil was proving faster, for even on her horns-taking run the Atchafalaya had not done so well up this stretch.
And already she looked, if not beaten, then beatable, for she lacked the crisp first-season newness of the challenger. She had been repainted when the fitments removed for her record run were restored, but that had lost her most of her gold leaf, which was not worth replacing on a boat with at most two years’ life ahead, more likely one if this was a profitable season. Drew had never thought in terms of frippery like silk banners or special cutwaters or unique whistles. He was concerned with performance, not appearance.
But there was one factor working on his side.
The captain, crew and owners of the Nonpareil could look forward to the profits that thus far had eluded them if their steamer won. But if the Atchafalaya beat her, what Drew would gain, for the first time in his life, was freedom.
“Glasses, boy!” Gordon snapped at Matthew, who with due leisure unslung the binoculars on their leather strap and passed them over. They were at the after rail of the Nonpareil’s hurricane deck, the best place to view the pursuer, where in consequence almost all the cabin passengers had congregated. Below, the deck passengers were doing likewise, and in their permitted areas so were the hands currently off duty.
But they had come here less for the sightseeing than to avoid Parbury. He was so afraid for the safety of his precious steamer, he was half-convinced by Auberon’s yarn about a plot to wreck her, which the other officers had summed up as a drunken fantasy, and as a result of his persistence a garbled version was reaching the passengers—a potential disaster…
Having heard the “evidence” and satisfied himself it was worthless, Gordon had stalked away from the argument.
“What a pack of nonsense!” he growled for the latest of many times.
“Sir, why are you so sure?” Matthew ventured. “Surely there’s some real risk that people who have bet too much—”
“It’s a trick! Someone wants us to tie up and search the boat!”
“But how can you know?” Matthew persisted.
“Now is it reasonable to believe that Cherouen would tell his chief nurse to get lost, on his way to the biggest coup any American doctor could wish for?” Gordon breathed heavily, loosening his collar with one finger; it remained very warm and out on the water it was also humid. “Besides, who brought her on board? A journalist—and Auberon Moyne!” The last name was delivered in a tone of finality. For him it was the clincher, though it meant nothing to Matthew. After a pause he added, “I see Barber over there—and don’t he half look sick! Here, take a keek.”
Adjusting the focus, Matthew persisted, “But what does Mr. Moyne have to do with it?”
Gordon glanced at him sidelong. “Hmph! If you don’t know how much young Moyne has staked on Drew, it’s small use my telling you!”
He meant it as another of his regular half-insults. It seemed that that was the only technique he knew for maintaining his ascendancy over others, and occasionally it deteriorated into sneering. It occurred to Matthew to wonder why, if Auberon had backed Drew, he should have chosen to ride the Nonpareil, even if he planned to delay her; what gambler would wish to be aboard the losing boat? But with Gordon in his present mood, it was pointless to go on talking to him.
He concentrated on what the glasses showed. And felt a tremor run down his spine, part awe, part gladness—at the majesty of the spectacle, and at the good sense he had displayed in deciding not to quit his job until after this trip. His vague fear that Parbury might be more right than Gordon concerning Auberon’s story faded like mist at sunrise.
Here at last was just the kind of event he had been dreaming of. Every throb of the engines seemed to strike an answering chord in his body. The wake spread out astern like a trailed coat, defying challengers to trample on it, and there was the challenger, not so fine as the Nonpareil and nonetheless a splendid sight.
Moreover his ears rang with a marvellous medley of noise, and the smell—the unique, unparalleled smell of a riverboat at maximum power—assailed his nostrils and aroused some primeval instinctual response. He thought of running from a forest fire, and then of learning to tame that terror at the cost of burned fingers. Some people were saying nowadays that human beings were descended from monkeys. If so, they had surely come a long way.
And, even as he mused, the buildings on the right bank grew fewer; the towers and churches and domes of New Orleans proper dwindled and gave way to the lower structures, mostly private homes, of Jefferson and the recently incorporated Carrollton. Plantations of tobacco and humble truck gardens supplying the city’s needs met his eyes, and even now patches of near-wilderness, the latter perhaps marking where some struggling landowner had lost the battle against sickness, or falling prices, and abandoned his holdings. Many such, he knew, would be black—freed slaves who had secured the reversion of property formerly belonging to supporters of the rebel cause and who found such hostility against their produce that sometimes they were literally unable to give it away.
Down here he had met many friendly, courteous, educated people. But there was still a stench of hatred that might take generations to die out. He looked forward to going home.
“See Barber, do you?” Gordon demanded at last. “Hah! I wonder what he’s thinking! It won’t be pretty, that’s for certain!”
“I’m afraid,” Matthew said, relinquishing the glasses, “he is a little too far away for me to make out details of his expression.”
Lately it had dawned on him that his employer was far from a subtle man. It was possible to make quite barbed remarks directly to him without his realizing their true import.
Matthew proposed to go on doing so at every opportunity, secure in the knowledge that he had stumbled on a secret Gordon wanted kept at any cost.
“Not satisfied with delaying me, you’re making me look a complete fool!” Cherouen raged. “You took Larzenac to St. Louis fast enough! And here you are trailing the Nonpareil! One could almost believe you’d bet on her!”
That was too much for Drew and Barber both. Barber barked, “You’ll withdraw that, sir! I don’t take lightly to the impugning of my honor!”
“And you damn’ well know there’s a good reason for me not to dawdle!” Drew rasped.
“Then why didn’t you leave when I wanted you to?” Cherouen countered. “If you had, I wouldn’t have found myself without the person I depend on most!”
“You drove your nurse to quit the boat,” Drew said frostily. “You said she was going crazy because she’d been taking poison. You want a crazy woman beside you at St. Louis? Heaven help the child you’re called to attend!”
Cherouen became ever redder in the face, and after a fuming pause exclaimed, “Well, you’d better get me there in good time, that’s all. Otherwise I’ll make sure the Grammonts never pay you a cent.”
“You’re amazingly certain of your own fee,” Barber said curtly, and turned to go.
At the same moment, a faint cry was heard from below, just audible against the clamor of the engines. While Barber was still wondering whether it had been illusion, David Grant called from the clerks’ office.
“Captain! Mr. Tyburn—speaking tube!”
Drew hurried toward him.
“Yes?”
“Cap’n, the doctor engine blew a packing gland. Walt’s been hurt. They signaled me to cut engines, but I figured I should check with you first.”
“They shut the doctor down?” Drew demanded, his graying brows drawn instantly to a frown. He knew better than anybody how short a time the Atchafalaya could run at this punishing speed without her boiler level being topped up.
“Had to, right away—!”
“Cap’n!”
Drew glanced round. Dutch Fonck was in the door of the office, his expression grim. Drew’s heart sank further.
“Yes?”
“We got this guy Cherouen on board, we better make use of him. Ketch told you what happened?”
“Yes! How’s Walt?”
“Got scalded pretty bad. Right shoulder. Missed his face, thanks be. Needs dressing, though.”
“Show me!” Drew snapped, and thrust the other man ahead of him.
In the cavern of the engineroom Walt lay pale and gasping. Ealing and O’Dowd were already stripping the faulty gland, using wrenches as long as their forearms.
“Not so bad as it looked!” O’Dowd announced as Drew appeared.
Walt groaned. Drew glanced at him.
“Did he say something?”
“Before he so much as swore,” Ealing said, “he called out to cut engines. And we would have, but that Mr. Tyburn said no! Now he wants to know whether it was safe, and so do I!”
“We can run twenty minutes at full power without the doctor,” Drew said flatly. “I never had to do it, but I made the calculations when she was being built. Get that pump fixed and don’t cut engines until I give the order!”
The engineers broke into identical broad grins.
“That’s the way to win a race!” approved Fonck, and they all set about their work with redoubled efforts.
Drew bent to Walt’s side. In the gloom it was difficult to make out what his injuries amounted to, but his shirt-sleeve had been torn away and it was plain that a huge blister was forming.
“I’ll try and get Dr. Cherouen to tend you,” Drew muttered. “But I guess it won’t be to his taste to come in here.”
“You best—not take—me on deck,” Walt forced out in successive gasps. “Could start—a panic!”
It was delivered as a joke. It was also bitterly accurate. To have it known that this serious a setback had occurred in the first half hour would cast doubt on the boat’s capacity to complete her run. That would lead to people insisting on being put ashore at way stops Drew did not intend to make and above all to Cherouen slandering him again and threatening to do the same on arrival—if they did arrive…
Even as he was hesitating, Walt furnished the answer.
“Leave me right here until they start her up again! I don’t reckon I’ll die beforehand!”
“Good man,” Drew said softly, straightening.
The faulty gland was apart now; the pipe ends dribbled a little steaming water that ran down shreds of greased hempen rope. Irregularly packed at its last overhaul, the union of threaded brass sleeve and nut had deformed the pipe. The crack through which steam had burst was no more than a thumb-joint long, but it had bulged outward much like the blister now gathering on Walt’s shoulder. Strictly it should be cut clean out and a new section welded on, or at the very least a piece of larger pipe should be sweated over it and brazed in place. But that would involve changing the union for an oversize one, and cutting a matching piece of pipe for the engine side of the joint, and…
O’Dowd’s suggestion of binding it with wire and wrapping more packing around the repair was an old steamboater’s dodge.
But it was scarcely what you would expect aboard a record-breaking giant.
Drew strode to the bell board, where the speaking tubes were also located. Seizing the tube for the pilothouse, he roared against the racket of the engines.
“Ketch!”
“How’s it going?”
“The rate the water’s dropping, we can maintain pressure for about fifteen minutes. That may be long enough to fix the doctor. But if you want full ahead again more than ten minutes from now, I doubt we’ll get it back without risking another burst. What’s it like up there?”
Tyburn uttered a colorful curse. “We just came in sight of a goddamn’ coal tow taking up half the river and steering like a drunken cow! I swear she’s on hire to a railroad!”
“Trying to get between us and the Nonpareil?” Drew was instantly suspicious.
“No, she’s ahead of us both and I guess we’ll both slide past her somehow. But you don’t generally reckon on a chute in this wide a reach, and she’s going to make us one. Most other traffic is behaving sort of polite to us.”
His voice suddenly became more serious. “Hosea, how is it down there?”
“More exciting than I care for,” Drew answered dryly, and hooked the tube back in place with one hand while fishing out his watch with the other.
All but two of the precious minutes remaining had leaked away when Fonck wiped his eyes and stood back, letting his wrench fall to his side.
“Let her see some steam,” he said harshly, and O’Dowd cautiously opened the feed valve. The pump began to move, gently at first, then rapidly. A parody of hush had descended; now it broke apart in shouts as it grew plain the mend would hold.
“Well done,” Drew said curtly, and made for the speaking tubes again. The first crisis was past. How many more there could be in a journey as long as this, he knew from long and sometimes cruel experience. But he had confidence in his boat, and his men.
“You may keep running at full speed,” he formally instructed the pilot.
“Not right now!”—and in the same second came the half-speed bell. “We caught up with that coal tow, and she surely is more like a floating towhead than— Thank you!”
He had sounded two whistles before Drew called him; at long last two answering whistles could be heard, indicating the towboat’s consent to being passed. The full-speed bell followed prompt, even before the engineers had had a chance to react to the earlier order.
It was going to be that kind of trip. But they had, of course, known that all along.
Drew waited just a little longer, watching the water in the gauges rise to a safe height and listening to the chant of the firemen forty feet forward, keeping time to the pounding of the engines:
“This ol’ shovel [crash!]
—kill’ mah daddy! [crash!]
Gwine kill me, boy [crash!]
—gwine kill me! [crash!]”
But they sounded amazingly cheerful at the prospect.
Then it was time to persuade Cherouen to soil his hands for an injured engineer.
Having the two women who meant most in his life aboard a steamer he was piloting was turning into a nightmare for Fernand. It brought back the agonized sensation he had experienced as a cub, keeping the midnight-to-four watch in a tricky reach with only the moon to guide him.
Dorcas’s arrival had elated him, like any lover. He was still capable of being transfixed by her beauty, and the memory of their stolen night together shone like a beacon on his life’s course.
Moreover, to have his mother aboard for a race would in principle have been the ideal way of convincing her he had been right to quit the family firm.
But to have both at once…! It was the unkindest cut fate had dealt him in years. The two had never met; when they did, his mother was bound to dislike Dorcas, being without a marriage portion and moreover having lived in servitude; and heaven alone could guess what Dorcas would say and do, for she had always been utterly unpredictable. Sometimes she was brazen, as when she turned her cloak to scarlet and kissed him open-mouthed on the street, yet moments later she might recall that she had a post to keep and start casting glances to every side for fear some acquaintance of Parbury’s might recognize her.
Yet all these shifts of mood had served to make her seem deep and mysterious, and in her he sensed an analog of the river to which he had committed his life, scarcely knowing what he was about.
His mother, by contrast, he believed he understood. And whatever had driven her to practices which, if they were not absurd, must be unspeakably dangerous, had been done when he himself was still too young to intervene.
Therefore it was with a tolerably clear conscience that he approached the stateroom assigned to Dorcas before seeking out Eulalie, travers
ing a cabin empty save for one black tender at the bar. The sky as yet being light, almost everybody was on deck, gazing at the trail of smoke the Nonpareil was leaving up ahead.
But he had been around the deck first, and there was no sign of either of them. Therefore…
“Dorcas, honey, it’s Fernand!”
“Oh!” She unbolted the stateroom door at once. It had to open outward, for lack of space within. Eight feet square, this was generous accommodation, containing a bed, a closet, a mirror, a laver, a stool, and a shelf that did duty as a vanity, with a piece of rough toweling spread on it to prevent scent bottles and suchlike from sliding about in rough weather.
And, after glancing over his shoulder to make sure they were effectively alone, she allowed her mouth to melt on his.
For moments only. Then she thrust him away and began to cry.
“My darling, my darling!” Fernand burst out. She shook her head, standing back, and smiled although tears were still coursing down.
“I’m sorry. It’s just so horribly different from the way I wanted it to be!”
Clasping her hands, Fernand said excitedly, “But that’s what I was coming to say to you! Let’s not mind! Let’s just be glad we have each other, and after this race we can forget all about Parbury and his miserable old stick of a wife, and of course if we win… But that’s the most important thing. You know we got away to a bad start, so I’m going to have to work very closely with Mr. Tyburn, and I shan’t always be able to pay you the attention you deserve, you lovely lovely lady!”
He tried to kiss her again, but this time she pushed him aside with all her strength, and her huge eyes grew very wide and her mouth trembled as though to renew her weeping, and…
And with a leaden sensation Fernand turned to discover who, through the door he had only pulled to and not latched and which had swung wide in answer to the steamer’s rolling, was gazing at them from the doorway of a stateroom opposite.
A flash of out-of-body awareness overtook Eulalie as she emerged into the splendid cabin—vastly more impressive at the moment for being empty—as though she were in some supernal shrine of Damballah and gazing down on herself at a crux of her existence.