by John Brunner
“En plaçage,” Joel said. And added, “In my own family there have been such connections, and many of them most respectable.”
“I had such dreams,” Parbury mused. “After the Nonpareil’s victory, I was going to set her up in a house and comfort my old age with the sound of children’s laughter. I kept thinking of the story of King David and the Shulamite.”
Joel was beginning to feel immensely flattered. He was prepared to bet that never in his life had Parbury spoken so openly about such personal matters. It sounded, curiously, as though he was surprised at the words emerging from his lips.
He remembered how Drew had also been unexpectedly forthcoming, and for the first time considered the possibility that he might grow reconciled to working as a newspaperman, seeing that he had the key to opening men’s hearts. But one day in the far future there must also be poems, and stories, and novels. He could not print what Parbury was telling him. Yet it must not be forgotten. It must some day, somehow, be shared.
“All of which,” said Parbury as though no time had passed, “explains why I was so… disappointed.” Briskening: “Do I delay you? Do you not wish to send a dispatch ashore at Helena? I feel the boat slowing; I reckon we’re about up to Island 61 and meeting the current through the Old Town cutoff.”
Joel stared in frank disbelief. With all the power of two keen young eyes, he could not have been so positive about the speed and position of the steamer.
Parbury had meant to conclude their conversation, though. He would have felt churlish to try and continue; there did, however, remain one more thing to be said.
“Sir,” he stated, fumbling, “I’m privileged. Today I have looked on a hero’s wounds again, if of another kind. They are nothing to be ashamed of. I wish the Nonpareil all possible success, and you with her.”
He spun on his heel and hurried away. He was afraid that if he stayed any longer he might burst into tears.
Meanwhile…
With enormous effort Woodley maintained a polite façade in the presence of the passengers. Inwardly, though, he was seething. As though one unscheduled stop (and damn the Gattry woman and her baby!) had not been bad enough: now his pilots (and damn Parbury for being in cahoots with them!) had visited another on him!
And yet he could not raise professional objections, for since Napoleon she had indeed been faster through the bends…
But even that was not sufficient! He wanted to blame somebody—find a scapegoat for the obvious fact that again and already she was light enough to escape her pilot’s control now and then. “Running off” was the polite term. Of a horse one would have said “bolting.”
Time after time his spirits rose, as racing straight ahead the challenger gained. Time after time they sank as, halfway through a curve, he heard the engineroom bells announce the pilot’s order for half-speed.
Those pilots! Damn them too! Both already near exhaustion, both too proud to consider the engagement of specialized reliefs for the tricky upper river.
What would happen if the cables he had sent canceling their engagement had failed to get through, and Barfoot, or Smith, or Tacy, or all three, turned up as originally arranged? Would Hogan carry out his threat to ground the Nonpareil? How could he, without being drummed out of the Pilots’ Guild?
But by the same token, how could he, Woodley, prove that he had actually sent the cables? At the very least he would wind up in a shouting match.
It was not a prospect he looked forward to. He would far rather that they overtook, and made it soon. This afternoon’s run was an ideal location for a challenge. The river was very broad, and often the channel was ill-defined, so it was impossible to repeat either Drew’s trick, or Fernand’s. Besides, tomorrow being Sunday, a good few boats in the shorter trades were now laying up until Monday morning, their owners regarding Sabbath work as sinful.
Ahead could be discerned the high ground rising to the west of Helena, indicative of the change that would follow in the river’s upper reaches. Woodley tensed. North from Island 64 the river was straighter, over a longer distance, than at any point in the previous six hundred and sixty miles.
Were his pilots going to take advantage?
Suddenly the wind against his face grew noticeably stronger, and he gave a sigh of relief. The note of the engines had quickened and the wheels were hurling great waves on either side. He resolved to visit the engineroom and urge the men to even greater efforts.
This decision was not entirely unconnected with the sight of Matthew approaching with the expression that presaged a message from his master. If Gordon wanted to see him, he could damn well come himself!
It was no special pleasure for the captain when he discovered that Gordon was in the engineroom ahead of him, arguing with Corkran about ways to increase pressure without breaking the inspectors’ seals on the safety valves, and wanted Woodley’s authority to back him up.
Right now, though, nothing risky seemed warranted. In this blessedly long straight stretch, the Nonpareil was gaining so fast, it was like watching a clock’s hands closing on noon. When the Atchafalaya was at Island 64, her rival was at 66. But when she reached 61, the pursuer was at 62. When she entered Horse Shoe Cutoff and struck up toward Friar’s Point and the Yazoo Pass, the Nonpareil was making a final tremendous burst before Helena, and by the seven-hundred-mile mark one might have fired a gunshot from her bow and had it land on the Atchafalaya’s deck. Her band played exultantly; her passengers’ cheers outdid those from the shore, where as usual it seemed the entire population of the vicinity was assembled, down to babes-in-arms.
“Five minutes!” Woodley breathed. “I swear we’ve cut it to five minutes, not a second more! And if you make allowance for what we lost at Baton Rouge—”
He was back in the pilothouse. Against the imminent refueling both pilots were with him. So was Gordon, on sufferance. But Parbury had chosen to remain on the foredeck and called Matthew to him; he was receiving a move-by-move description of what happened, suspicious of error ever since learning that fuel had been dropped overboard.
Glancing around with a sour expression, Trumbull said, “If we don’t lose time in the actual coaling, we’re okay.”
“Why should we?” Gordon demanded. “Underwood and Whitworth have their men ready, don’t they?”
“Drew’s snatched the outer pair of flats,” Hogan cut in. “So we have to make do with the pair nearer the bank, which takes us into shallower water.”
“Even so—” Gordon began, but Trumbull hissed him quiet, reaching for bell ropes.
The Atchafalaya picked up her flats without stopping and men swarmed over her sides like bees. They stripped the coal, though, more like locusts, and a bare four minutes elapsed before they cast off the flats. The Nonpareil’s hands tried to match them but failed. They took six minutes.
And then exactly what had so nearly occurred before did happen. Poorly controlled by the men with sweeps who were supposed to guide them back to the wharf, the Atchafalaya’s flats were borne by the current directly across the Nonpareil’s best course…
“I’ll cancel all bets!” Woodley raged as Trumbull had to back on both and force the flats clear with the wash from his wheels. “There are rules to be observed before a race can be called fair and square, and Drew’s making a God’s plenty of ‘em! All bets are off!”
“Don’t say that!” Gordon exclaimed. “Don’t we need our winnings? I swear I do! And all’s not lost. I have—” He hesitated. “I have another resource.”
“Like the ones you were suggesting in the engineroom?” Woodley countered.
“More likely he wants to bribe the witch and get the evil charm taken off us!” Trumbull snapped, with a sidelong glance at Hogan, who bridled.
“Aren’t there too many strokes of bad luck—just too many?”
“Nothing like that!” Gordon insisted. “But you’re right, Mr. Hogan. Aren’t we all agreed that beginning with Mrs. Gattry’s trouble we’ve had setbacks that made the race unequal?”
“Anybody who saw us this afternoon would have to admit it!” Woodley declared.
“Very well!” And Gordon broached an excuse for Whitworth’s departure which had come to him while reading a newspaper sent aboard at Napoleon. “Can you manage without your second mate between Memphis and Cairo? That is, if we haven’t already overtaken?”
Woodley and the others exchanged puzzled looks. “What for?” the captain said at length.
Smoothly Gordon explained. “According to the newspapers, some of Drew’s passengers who booked for Ohio ports want to be transshipped at Cairo. Drew has cabled for a steamer called the Luke S. Thrale to be standing by.”
“So what?” Hogan grumbled. “I know the Thrale. So does Colin. She’s a regular in the Cairo–Louisville trade. What of it?”
“We’ve had delays. Why shouldn’t Drew put up with one for a change? Suppose this boat that’s scheduled to take off his Ohio passengers doesn’t show because she’s met with a convenient breakdown? It could be worth the time we need!”
Woodley was smiling already. The pilots were not so sure. It could be read in their faces that they would have preferred to win entirely on their merits and those of the Nonpareil.
But the chance of that was receding, and it was better to win than lose.
At length Trumbull said heavily, “Silas Crowne is master of the Thrale, and he likes the feel of money. Won’t bother him to be late at Louisville, whether it’s us who pay him, or Drew.”
“I guessed you’d feel that way,” Gordon said. “And I figured out—don’t tell him I said so, of course!—we could manage most easily without Whitworth upstream from Memphis. I’ll go find him right away and settle matters.”
Flinging open the door, hastening down the stairs, he was amazed how easy it had been.
“I’m going to stand a full watch out of here,” Drew announced suddenly as the Atchafalaya headed away from Helena. Luckily this was too small a community for there to be as many light craft as at previous ports of call, so they had made excellent time again. The one steamer in this stretch at the moment, a hundred-and-fifty-footer in the Paducah–Vicksburg trade, was tied up at the wharf and had duly exchanged whistled salutes. Her apart, there was scarcely anything on the water, bar an old black man jug-fishing from a rowboat.
“Suits me,” Tyburn said after a pause. “I’d rather stand off the Nonpareil when she’s running light. Want me to take the next one?”
“Fernand can follow me,” Drew said without looking round. “Call on you about Memphis, okay?”
“You think there might be fog tonight?”
Fog?
Fernand kept his thoughts to himself, but his mind was busy. The idea of being forced to tie up for fear of going aground, which not the most experienced pilot on the river could totally avoid when visibility was reduced to less than the distance between the pilothouse and the verge staff… Surely not on this of all trips! Heaven forfend!
But he had seen no threat of it. Yesterday there had been mist in treetops alongside the river; today had been clear and much too hot. Also there was a good breeze.
“Do I think there might be fog tonight?” Drew said, in a tone suggestive of asking the air rather than his human listeners. “I surely hope not! I didn’t see any sign so far, and I guess we regularly meet it, if we do, a sight further north.”
So much a mere passenger might have said, having made enough trips up and down the Mississippi.
“But,” he continued, reaching into his pocket for a plug of tobacco, “I do recall that north of Memphis we have to negotiate Paddy’s Hen and Chickens and the Devil’s Race Ground.”
There was a brief but electric pause. Eventually Fernand said with a gusty exhalation, “Ketch, he’s right. You’ll handle her better up there than I can.”
Not until he finished did he realize he had for the first time called Tyburn by his privileged nickname.
The fat man stood dead still for a second. Then he gave a shrug.
“Well, if that’s all that’s eating on you… Fine by me!”
The door closed behind him.
It had been in Fernand’s mind to mention, here where the next stage of the run was rigidly prescribed by the deep channel—there were no chutes past Prairie Island, or 59, or Battle Island, or at least none that any sane pilot would risk except at extreme flood levels—the possibility of Drew being best man at his wedding. He had discovered the capacity to ache with longing. Dorcas was still the most beautiful woman he had ever set eyes on. Her voice still sent quivers down his spine. Now that he knew she was carrying his child, he wanted to enfold her in his arms in a dark and private place and somehow imbue her with the confidence needed to bring it to birth. He was unable to escape recollection of that red stain on her petticoat…
But he couldn’t until the race was over. And in the meantime he knew his mother was cultivating her acquaintance, and the constant reminder of her views, which consisted in the crucifix weighing down his pocket, troubled him.
In the last analysis he was afraid that one day his wife too might yield herself to a one-eyed conjurer.
How could he speak of such fears to anybody? Since cutting himself off from those he had known in childhood—and most of them were no loss—his whole circle of friends had been among river people. Tell them about magic, or the worship of Damballah, and they would not merely scoff; they would review their acquaintanceship with him and decide they could manage without!
He must therefore get married to Dorcas as soon as possible, and never mind what rites the ceremony was performed under. Then he would have a husband’s right to separate his wife from his mother and—
All that, though, was for later. What could he do until the race was over?
Except contribute his utmost to winning it!
Therefore he cleared his throat and said, “Captain, I don’t mind your saying that to Ketch. You’re right. It is a hell of a difficult stretch, especially at night.”
“You could run it as well as I could, damn’ near,” Drew answered gruffly.
“Then why—?”
“Because it isn’t the only thing that’s eating on me!”
With impeccable precision Drew laid the Atchafalaya into her marks past Island 59, making toward Dunn’s Landing, where he would have to swing hard to starboard for Peyton and then back again, almost on a reverse course, into Walnut Bend.
He cast a glance sternward. There in clear sight, having lost a little, but only a little, during coaling, came the Nonpareil with both chimneys sparking.
“Next time they try and take us will likely be… Oh, hell! You tell me!”
“Grand Cutoff, above 54,” Fernand responded promptly.
“Where else?” There was a trace of bitterness in Drew’s voice. “Know something, boy—? I guess I must cure myself of calling you boy now you’re to be married. I apologize.”
This was so unlike the usual Drew, Fernand was at a loss. He compromised. “Know what, Cap’n?”
“What…? Oh, I remember what I was going to say. This takes all the pleasure out of piloting.”
The only thing Fernand could think of to say was, “All?”
“Ah, you’re young yet. You’re not old and cynical like me. But you were with me on our last run to St. Louis. Was I the same then?”
“Well…” Fernand licked his lips. “You didn’t stand to lose half the boat if—”
“That’s nothing to do with it! Except… Oh, hell. I guess it is. I never liked the idea of racing in principle, and now it’s happening to me I like it even less. And on top of that…”
“What?” Fernand advanced to where he could lean on the sill of the larboard window, keeping his back to the declining sun.
“It’s gone too damned well so far!” Drew barked.
“How?” Fernand was confused. “Merely because we’ve trimmed a few minutes off our last run? Didn’t we expect to?”
“Oh, it’s not that.” Drew sounded suddenly very weary. �
�I don’t even know whether I can make clear what’s on my mind. But Ketch spotted it.”
“He’s known you much longer than I have—”
“But not so closely. Strictly a business arrangement. Whereas you…” Drew’s words trailed away. When he resumed he spoke more briskly.
“You mentioned my bet with Barber. It does have a lot to do with my troubles. I have this sensation as though—as though by betting on my own abilities I were tempting fate. As though,” he finished in a lower tone, “something of my half-brother had entered into me.”
“Oh, surely not! You’re nothing like him!”
“How the devil do you know? You never met him! I spent half my life modeling myself on him!”
“My uncle Edouard told me—” Fernand began in a placatory tone.
“Oh, yes! Your uncle! But it was no substitute for meeting him! Did Edouard tell you how charming he was—how he could flatter the hide off a buffalo and save ammunition?”
“My uncle was no slouch at that himself. Was he?”
Fernand had struck the note. Drew gave a sour grin.
“Right on the nose,” he said after a pause. “And you take more after him than your other kinfolk, don’t you? But this feeling that I’m tempting fate—can you wonder that it’s so strong, when I know I may not see my dear Susannah again in this life?”
“Is it truly so bad, her sickness?”
“It could well be. I’ve been expecting a cable at every stop, telling me that I’ve traded her life against winning the race.”
“No!” Fernand straightened with a jerk. “That’s ridiculous!”
“Is it? Aren’t there some things which modern thinking can’t explain, for all its marvels of steam engines and telegraphs and transatlantic cables? Where in there do you find room for such a reality as love?”
This time the pause was longer than ever and full of embarrassment. Drew ended it with a curt gesture.