by John Brunner
Then one of his bad teeth started to give off twinges, and he went in search of water to rinse his mouth, and before he had the chance to think more deeply about Mam’zelle Josephine, fatigue overcame him and he tumbled on a handy pile of sacks and fell asleep, aware up to the very last moment of wakefulness how soon he would be routed out to help manhandle the reversing gear at Memphis.
There were some, though, who had no stomach for any kind of food or drink tonight, and among them was Cato Woodley. What profit or pleasure was there in being captain of the finest new boat on the Mississippi if an older boat held the horns for every trade you could mention?
Damn Parbury! How could he have been so stupid as to imagine that a blind man could design a functional steamboat? Damn Gordon too! What had possessed him to put his trust in a foreigner with a sweet tongue and a ready line of credit? When the Marocain bank foreclosed on its loans at the end of this voyage, good-bye Nonpareil!
And good-bye to his proud title of captain! There wasn’t the faintest hope the new owners would retain him in that office!
Not that the Nonpareil was running badly. Through dusk and into dark she was once more racing fleet-foot up the water, her engines regular as a healthy heartbeat. It was just that so far she had never been in a position to let her pilots show off what she could really do. Drew, Tyburn and Lamenthe had made sure of that!
Or was it entirely due to them? Was it not just as much that through their stupid pride the pilots of the Nonpareil had let themselves become overtired, so that they failed to see what traps were being set for them? Hadn’t Hogan admitted that he’d forgotten about the risk of drift breaking away from the chute at the head of Grand Cutoff and tried to blame his shortcomings on the woman Var?
Why the hell shouldn’t a racing boat call on the finest pilots, the greatest specialists? It would be fairer than most of what Drew had done, to start with!
Short of putting Hogan and Trumbull under arrest, though, how could he stop them carrying out their threat to run deliberately aground if their authority was challenged?
So all that was left was Gordon’s notion of sending Whitworth ahead by rail to Cairo (and why Whitworth?) to catch Captain Crowne and ensure that when the Atchafalaya reached there, she would be delayed in transshipping her passengers for Ohio ports.
How could it possibly work? Unless the gap were once again to be reduced to a few hundred yards, Drew would simply call on any and all other means to rid himself of this unwanted burden, and if none came to hand, he would carry right on up the Mississippi and let the passengers complain till they were hoarse. Short of a court of law, there would be no redress.
So musing, Woodley glanced along the deck, and there by heaven were exactly the people he was thinking about: Gordon and Whitworth, speaking in whispers. He made for them.
“Someone’s coming!”
The deck throbbed; birds complained at being disturbed on their way to nest; the light level was at the indeterminate point where neither day vision nor night vision could claim mastery. From the cabin came the strains of Manuel’s attempt at cheerful music, which nobody applauded. A whole menagerie of intractable animals beset the Nonpareil’s course toward Norfolk and Grayson and ultimately Memphis: Buck Island, Cat Island, Cow Island…
“It’s the captain,” Whitworth said after a long enough pause to make out details. With the onset of night he was once more in his element. The prospect of what he had pledged himself to do had terrified him; later, exalted him. Now it felt like a sheer necessity.
A deckhand passed, checking to make sure no lamp was in a position to reflect light into the pilothouse; at the same time shades were being drawn across the cabin clerestory. They waited until the man had gone by. Then Gordon said bluffly, “Not so promising, eh?”
“You know damned well,” Woodley answered with a scowl. “You, Whitworth! Do you honestly think this harebrained scheme to bribe the master of the Thrale will work?”
There was a dead pause.
“If it doesn’t,” Gordon rumbled at last, “we do have another resource.”
Whitworth caught his arm, but Gordon shook him off.
“Hell, if nobody else agrees with us, he must! Cato, how do you like the idea of the Atchafalaya bursting one of her boilers?”
Woodley stared at the other’s face, seeking for hidden meaning, but darkness and the mass of beard combined to hide it. He said, “What’s going to bring that about—a charm from Miss Var?”
“Not exactly,” Gordon said, and continued, smoothly lying. “There’s an old railwayman’s trick, which I learned when I was a boy. I taught Harry here the way of it. That’s the real reason I want him to go to Cairo ahead of us. I don’t think the Thrale being delayed will force Drew to slow down or wait over, any more than you do. But now we have a second string to our bow.”
“What is it?” Woodley demanded. “If it involves him getting on board, how’s he going to manage that?”
“I’ll go out with the coal flats,” Whitworth said.
“And get into the engineroom without being challenged? And what happens to you when the boiler blows? I think you’re spinning a yarn!”
Gordon and the mate exchanged glances.
“We’re going to have to tell him,” the former said heavily. “Cato, how much do you stand to lose if we don’t beat the Atchafalaya? It’s no secret that the Marocains will foreclose on my loan and take my share of the boat; I imagine they’ll dismiss you and appoint another captain, right?”
“It’s about the best I can look forward to,” Woodley muttered, and produced a cigar from which he savagely bit off the end.
“That leaves us no alternative, then. If the Atchafalaya is still leading when we hit Cairo, there will be something in the fuel she takes aboard guaranteed to blow one of her boilers.”
Gordon concluded sweetly, “Like I told you—an old railwayman’s trick!”
Woodley’s lips were suddenly dry. He licked them nervously. “Sink her?” he suggested.
“Not unless she’s built like a raft of eggshells. Crack the iron, blow the fire door open if it’s shut, flood the boiler room with scalding water, generally create chaos. Enough to delay her but not sink her.”
Whitworth started to say something, then thought better of it and gave a shrug. He had one of his own panatelas between his teeth; he struck a light, offering it first to the captain.
Drawing the first smoke, the latter said, “Traceable?”
“Nope!” Whitworth declared. “Besides, did you never hear of something being left in the coal by mistake—a blasting charge that didn’t go off?”
“That’s what it’s going to look like?”
“Pretty well.”
“How the hell do you hide it inside a lump of coal?”
Once more Gordon and Whitworth glanced at one another; some of Woodley’s questions were too acute for comfort.
“Not coal. A pine log,” Whitworth explained.
“Hollowed out and filled with powder, hm? No, don’t tell me. I prefer not to know.” Woodley drew hard on his cigar at the risk of making himself cough. He was staring into the dark, where sky and land now merged so closely, only an expert eye could tell them apart.
“So we send you ashore at Memphis,” he resumed. “Just one trouble with that idea. The reporter told me he wants to be landed there too.”
Gordon said at once, “Then we ought to persuade Mr. Siskin that it will be to his advantage to stay with us. I’ll get to work on him as soon as he finishes at table. He’s with his cousin and the colored woman—I saw them just now.”
“What’s the connection between them? I mean Moyne and Miss Var?” Woodley demanded.
“She’s one of his father’s by-blows,” Gordon replied. “I’m surprised to hear you ask.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me when he brought her aboard with all that folderol about our being in danger?”
“Keep your temper! I found out so easily, I thought it must be public knowle
dge!”
“Maybe she wasn’t entirely wrong,” Whitworth said, and sucked his cigar into a brilliant red eye against the night. “She just got her boats mixed up.”
Gordon gave a harsh laugh, but Woodley was in no mood to be amused. He said, “Look, if Siskin does wind up on the same train—”
“I got sick relatives at Cairo,” Whitworth interrupted. “Besides, Mr. Gordon just said we don’t have to worry.”
“I did hope so much,” Woodley said slowly, “that we’d win this race fair and square and aboveboard.”
“After what Drew’s been doing,” Whitworth snapped, “playing fair means losing, don’t it?”
Woodley straightened and snapped his fingers.
“Got it! This is why you’re going ashore at Memphis! I wasn’t able to cancel my engagement of Zeke Barfoot, who was supposed to join us there!”
“But if you sent a cable—” Gordon began.
“I don’t know it got through, do I? Your orders are to find him on the wharf and tell him the deal’s off, but he’ll get something for his trouble anyhow to keep that damned Guild of theirs sweet! Except you won’t find him—will you?”
A slow grin spread over Whitworth’s face. “I get it! Because I’m delayed, I miss rejoining the boat and have to overtake her at Cairo!”
“It’s thin,” Gordon worried.
“But the wharf will be crowded, and it’ll be easy to think I spotted Barfoot only it wasn’t him after all!” Whitworth crowed. “Cap’n, you have your wits about you, that’s for sure!”
“And we won’t send a yawl out for Siskin,” Woodley amplified. “Tell him if he wants to go ashore, he has to run across the coal flats, same as you! And we won’t give him a nigger to carry his baggage, either!”
“What will that do to our reputation as a fast and courteous boat?” Gordon objected.
“Talking like a riverman now, aren’t you?” Woodley said with barely veiled contempt. “Sounds like you’ve been reading the cards we put in the papers! So one reporter gets smudged with coal dust! What’s that against the certainty that the Atchafalaya will burst a boiler trying to beat us, and we’ll be in St. Louis not just hours ahead of Drew, but days?”
“If he makes it at all,” Whitworth said, and added hastily, “On this trip, I mean. She’s by far the older boat, remember; they may think it worth scrapping her for the sake of the insurance and the engines.”
“I hope that’s all you mean,” Woodley said, and turned to Gordon.
“Go find Siskin and get him good and drunk and change his mind!”
Norfolk and Grayson, President’s Island and Fort Pickering—they receded one by one behind the Nonpareil. But at every mile’s mark, the Atchafalaya had been there first.
Drew’s eyes were sore and his belly was grumbling and his mouth was full of the foul taste due to chewing too much tobacco. He knew he must eat at least a snack, though he had no appetite, and then seek his bed, though he expected to get little rest, because he would be needed at Memphis.
Wearily, therefore, he ordered a sandwich to be brought to the clerks’ office beside the cabin, where Gaston had been persuaded to sit down at the piano and tinkle out a succession of dance tunes. Indefatigable, Barber had led out Dorcas and was guiding her steps through an unfamiliar measure, while Cherouen looked on glowering from the bar, and Eulalie sat smiling—almost smirking—as though at private memories. Below, in the engineroom, everything was proceeding as it should. Walt Presslie, whose scalded shoulder was giving cause for concern despite his insistence that it scarcely hurt any more, was on duty with Ealing during this easy stretch; Fonck and O’Dowd would take over when Memphis neared. Diamond had inspected the hog chains and the strained rudder post and pronounced them sound enough to last till dawn without attention, while Gross had reported all in order among the off-duty hands.
Altogether this was far too like a Saturday night on any regular run for Drew’s contentment. He was still haunted by the same feeling that had driven him to make that embarrassing appeal to Fernand—which, by a mercy, the latter had disposed of tactfully. Nonetheless, Hubris, as he had learned from reading poetry, was always followed by Nemesis. Or, putting it in plain English, “Pride goes before a fall”—vide the Book of Proverbs.
But where the hell was the flaw that would cause the fall?
There ahead were—at last—the lights of Memphis. Fernand could not remember when he had suffered through so miserable a watch. The contrast with the exhilaration he had felt at dawn was indescribable. It seemed to him that about the only mistake he hadn’t made was the archetypal one of the legendary cub left alone at the wheel by night for the first time, who sounded the backing bell with six fathoms under the hull. But he was convinced he had swung absurdly wide, because it was dark, through bends that by day he could have shaved closer than a barber’s razor. And this was not simply because, earlier in the trip, he had felt a snag rap at the hull, demanding to be let in; no harm had come of that minute error.
No, it was because every now and again he had found his attention wandering, and always to the same subject.
Dorcas.
From below drifted the strains of the piano and intermittent laughter. Was one of the people laughing his fiancée? Occasionally his ears, keen to single out noise in the darkness, identified the hoarse bullfrog boom of Cherouen or the baritone-turning-into-titter of Barber. But, as he realized with dismay, he had not heard Dorcas’s laugh often enough to recognize it.
When a hush fell, though, what his perception instantly flew to was the overriding sound of the Nonpareil, and every time she appeared louder.
Who was at her helm now—was it Hogan, was it Trumbull? He had lost count. On a regular run one could tell, for the pilot of another boat would match his opposite number, watch for watch. This trip was different. Now he was reduced to listening for clues in the wind, hunting for tricks of style that might not be conclusive, for after so long working in double harness, one might have copied from the other.
Fernand strove to guess and always failed.
The sole conviction which obsessed him was that during these early hours of night the other pilot was gaining on him because he was not worrying about marriage and fatherhood.
Therefore it was with astonishment that Fernand heard his captain say, as he opened the pilothouse door and in the same instant snapped shut the case of his watch with a crisp little click, “You held the lead very tidily, boy! Now go see to your womenfolk, because I got her!”
Fernand swallowed hard, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks as usual, glad of the dark.
“Are you all right, sir?” he contrived to say in a fair approximation of his normal tone.
“I’m fine,” Drew answered. “Caught myself a nap, and I’ll be back in bed when we clear Memphis and Ketch takes over. Go find Dorcas—she’s in the cabin, where they’re holding a whale of a shindig! None of ‘em want to turn in before we finish coaling!”
As Fernand turned to go, he added quickly, “One more thing!”—producing a sheet of paper from his jacket.
“Yes, sir?”
“There ought to be a cable waiting for me. If not, have this one sent. Here’s the money.”
Taking the message, Fernand said, “It would be about your sister-in-law.”
“Yes. What else?”
“I’ll give it to Tom Chalker,” Fernand promised. “It’ll be his gang that mans the shoreward side.”
Chalker was mustering his men on the main deck. Fernand gave him the message, the money, and his instructions; if a cable did come for Drew, it would be brought by someone leaping nimbly over the coal flats; and if it didn’t, then…
So at last he was free to seek out Dorcas before going to bed. He needed his rest; he was so tense, his very bones were aching.
He must fight fatigue a little longer, though. Must!
Entering the cabin was like walking into another world. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke; the tables were laden with bottles and glas
ses; earlier, card and dice games had been in progress, but they were abandoned now, and everybody was concentrating on the dancing… such as it was.
At the piano Gaston was pounding out tunes that, with weariness, came progressively closer and closer to the simple heavy beat and four-square harmonies of the black streetbands he so despised.
Fernand, on the edge of collapse, was overwhelmed by the paradox of what he saw and heard.
He had taken, say, a hundred paces since leaving the pilothouse. What was that on dry land? The boat’s own length! Yet here he was in a passable imitation of the grand ballroom at the Limousin. The same musician who had directed the band on that fateful Mardi Gras night was providing the musical accompaniment. The same man who had permitted his all-night rendezvous with Dorcas—thereby standing, in a way Drew could not, godfather to the eventual child—was turning to him, bowing, ceding his partner, demanding that her betrothed take over.
How could Fernand resist? Here she was, eyes wide and sparkling, panting a little from her exertions—and they had never danced before!
Nor had he even imagined that she knew how.
But her tutors tonight must have been apt, for she was even able to punctuate their circuit of the floor with a kiss: at least a brushing of his cheek with her lips as she rose on tiptoe.
There was applause. Cherouen did not join in, leaning on the bar, one hand busy with a cigar and the other with his glass. But the hell with him!
Then, just as Fernand was about to relax into what was happening—just as he was about to start enjoying the accident, which seemed in a fair way to curing his earlier dispute with Dorcas, avoiding words—there came an all-too-familiar noise.
The Nonpareil had sounded her unique and famous whistle, and it might have been right here in the cabin.