by John Brunner
Blind, like monsters from the nethermost gulfs of ocean; sluggish, like cold-blooded creatures not yet rendered active by the enabling sun, but immensely powerful; the steamers reenacted a duel of dinosaurs in the low and lonely hours between midnight and dawn.
Yet there was a difference between them and those primordial beasts.
True, in proportion to the colossal size of their carcasses, what drove, governed and controlled them was minute.
Nonetheless, it was a brain.
A human brain.
Fierce exultation filled the mind of Miles Parbury as he negotiated the first shoal, the first bend, the next, the next… The Nonpareil was moving with painful slowness, as he had done when first he rose from his sickbed after being blinded, and if she made a mile per hour between now and the lifting of the fog it would be a miracle. But it would be enough!
Not merely because it meant the Atchafalaya would be far behind—and with the worst of the fog still to cope with, for what trace of breeze there was was carrying it south—but, more importantly, because it had given him back to himself.
How often he had sought in memory to reconstruct that precious moment, during his darling’s trials, when Hogan and Trumbull had invited him to take her wheel! Then he had felt her latent power, sensed her skittishness, like a young mare barely broken to the saddle, tried not to suspect how any other pilot but himself might react to her excessive lightness—oh, yes, even then, though he had kept it to himself, he had been aware he might have gone too far in slendering her lines…
But it was not something to be talked about. It was to be registered in nerve and muscle, in the guts, in the sinews and the wordless secret chambers of the heart.
The tension was terrific. Sweat poured down his face. Unthinking, he pulled the bandage from his eyes and used it to wipe his forehead, then thrust it in his pocket. Moments later, he remembered there were those present who might be alarmed by the sight of his scars, and the reporter who had spoken of them with such tact had quit the boat, not saying good-bye, as though ashamed to admit he believed the Atchafalaya might win.
And then he realized the pilothouse must be in total darkness, not for his sake but the sake of those around him, straining for the slightest visual clue: the shadow of a tree, the glimpse of a star indicative of clear air.
He chuckled throatily. He had no need of that kind of help! He was reacting to such signals as the rest could not. Oh, like him they could hear the plashing of the wheels, the dip-and-lift of the yawl’s oars beyond the bow and the call warning of shoal water, and the ting of the engineroom bells and the hiss of steam being measured into one or other cylinder; he was progressing with such stately slowness, the paddles rarely made more than a single revolution.
But what the others could not know was the pressure of the river and the land surrounding it. Parbury felt it in his head, making a map like the landscape of a dream, impossible to convert into words. (The notion crossed his mind: “If I never speak another word, I shall not care!” For he was back in the days when he stammered, and speech seemed less and less relevant; he was riding a bicycle at his first attempt, he was responding to the twitch of a rudder cable so fast his mentor was complimenting him, he was opening a trade in the spring while others waited for his report before venturing into the new channel, beset with ice floes.) Now and then he sounded the whistle, not by way of warning, but because he could judge by the echoes where there was open water, or bare rock, or tree-clad ground.
And ever and again there was a whisper, which he had strictly forbidden, but could not be repressed, and always the burden of it was along the lines: “Fantastic! Incredible! Nobody in the world could have foreseen it!”
From Gordon, or even Woodley, it was negligible. But from one of the pilots it was manna.
Images from his past came bobbing by, like drift on a spring rise: Adèle, James (though he tried not to recall the sight of the boy in his coffin), his parents, their farm (though, likewise, he wanted to disremember the sight of the flood that drowned it), and finally Dorcas…
Even of her he could now think with regret rather than anger. Better she marry a skilled pilot than a wastrel, let him be black, brown or white!
Vast satisfaction was washing through his being now. All hatred and resentment dissolved. He had time to care about nothing except the advance of the Nonpareil, driving through fog no other pilot would have defied, with such patience as one might not have dared to ask from saints.
But because this was the boat he had created, he was devoted to her… more than to his wife, more than to Dorcas, more (should he even think this?) than to his son.
Well, why not? This, and the other two Nonpareils, had occupied far more of his existence, and beyond them there were the boats he had trained on, the Celia G., the Corinth, the Pelican, the Jackson Lawrence…
No: this was his life and the achievement of his life. To the river he had been a sworn adorer. Now he was proving that what mere men could do to him was as nothing compared to what he had learned in the Mississippi’s service. Here the channel swerved so close to a towhead, there were cries of terror from the foredeck and those around him in the pilothouse gasped, hearing the rap-rap of branches on the side of the hull. He continued serenely on his course, knowing, in a way that surpassed language, that beyond lay deep safe water.
He felt fulfilled. He was content.
And then, at the very edge of audibility, he detected a sound that made the hairs rise on the nape of his neck. Sensing his reaction, Barfoot demanded, “Is something wrong?”
Hogan was keener-eared; he caught Barfoot by the sleeve and hissed for utter silence.
There it was: that noise of all which they would have wished never to hear again this trip.
Slow, but implacable, the Atchafalaya was on the move.
Damnation! If he can do it, so can I!
Shorn of all poetic frills, that slogan beat and beat at Hosea Drew. Trapped between two shoals, the Atchafalaya had made it back into the channel by good luck rather than skill, and he knew he wasn’t going to get a second helping of that.
Luck was for gamblers. Luck was for the suckers Langston Barber parted from their money. Luck was for fools like Jacob.
Skill was for those like himself, and even more for Fernand and his people, who would need it to make their way in the world, particularly since so many of them—like Dorcas, in Drew’s opinion, though he would have died rather than say so to Fernand—were being driven ever so slightly crazy. Well, who could be surprised, given her family had thrown her out? Morality be damned! Religion be damned! All through history they had created more suffering than they had saved, and he was one of the victims! But for the prohibitions against marrying the wife of your deceased half-brother, he would have enjoyed Susannah, nursed and helped and comforted her in those last dark hours, done something to wean away her eldest son from his glib theological jargon, maybe taken her youngest out of the hands of the doctors who confined him to those dark steamy bedrooms and shown him fresh air and wholesome food and an active life, though he must be signed on as a mud clerk!
All the crises and disasters of his life rushed back to awareness as he tracked through the valley of the shadow.
For a while he imitated the sound-patterns of the Nonpareil as best he could, with a time index ticking away in his head like a parish clock. Then, just as he thought he had the hang of it, he felt the grind as the Atchafalaya went aground once more. Plainly mere copying was not enough.
Striving not to curse, he reached for the backing bell—and was forestalled, because Fonck and O’Dowd, equally wise in the ways of the river, needed no command. Already, despite the fatigue that must be burning their muscles, they were shifting the reversing bars.
A thought struck him. He blew down the speaking tube and waited, holding it in one hand, turning the helm with the other, until finally an explosive voice said, “Yes?”
It was Ealing, furious, using a tone he normally would not have da
red to.
“Jim, don’t let Walt work on the reversing gear in his condition!”
A short pause. Then: “Beat you to it, Cap’n. But thanks anyhow. He’s pretty sick.”
As he returned the tube to its hook, Drew felt a hand laid on his shoulder. It was Tyburn’s. It said more than words.
Now there was a sand reef close to here, and some rocks. And the safe channel must be—
For a panicky instant he couldn’t remember. Then it came clear, and at the cost of a scraping noise he put the bow over to larboard, disregarding the polemen with their dim gray-haloed lantern and their hoarsening voices.
“That’s the Barbarossa,” Fernand said, unthinking. “Went down in ‘59. Pretty well broken up by now, but some of the upperworks are less than rotten.”
“You’re quoting me,” Drew grunted. “And if you can do it so word-perfect, maybe you should have the wheel!”
“Sorry, I’ll hold my tongue,” Fernand replied, abashed.
“No, I meant it. But this is between him and me, you know.”
“We do. I’m sorry; I’ll be quiet.”
Inside Drew’s head there was now a roaring torrent of mingled words and memories: flashes of poetry, of course, combined with casual recollections of arguments he had had as long ago as his teens, and his confrontations with Barber on the day the old Atchafalaya was condemned, and his encounters with Edouard Marocain, and his first meeting with Fernand, and the interviews he had accorded Joel, and his love for Susannah, and the pride he had felt on taking the horns that now swung between his boat’s chimneys or ornamented this pilothouse…
He looked for the latter from the corner of his eye but darkness hid them, so he had no way of telling that they had not been removed.
Slowly, and with total determination, he quieted the riot. At one point he thought he might do better to close his eyes, imitating Parbury to the last degree; however, running blind was unbearable, even if his sight revealed no more than featureless vapor beyond the windows. There was always the chance of some gap in the mist, and a clue to their whereabouts might make the difference between catching up and running aground again.
But he made his other memories give way to recollections of one single kind: patterns too subtle for speech to describe, relationships, angles, distances… Where the men in the yawl reported a rock just after he had turned the helm five degrees larboard, he knew that location, saw it in his mind as clear as sunlight; when they warned of shoal water, he recalled having just made a turn the other way and placed the bend they must be in.
All the time, up ahead, there was the sound of the Nonpareil. She was still whistling, as was the Atchafalaya, but not at the prescribed minutely intervals—irregularly.
After a while Drew realized why. Once he had met a man blind from birth who, entering a strange room, would clap his hands with his head cocked to one side; after that he could walk around its furniture, or find an empty chair. Next time he himself blew his whistle, Drew did his best to detect the returning sound, but it was no good. His hearing had not been sharpened by years of sightlessness.
The possibility of defeat loomed at the border of awareness. He fought valiantly against it, but with the passage first of minutes, then of hours, in this terrible labyrinth of fog, it grew stronger, fiercer.
He comforted himself with the fact that had the Atchafalaya remained tied up the race would certainly have been lost. As things stood, a chance of victory remained.
From the western shore he heard shouts and gunshots. That must be Cape Girardeau. Not daring to consult his own watch—the least hint of light might dazzle him for minutes—he asked the time, and Fernand sounded his repeater.
They were making less than one mile an hour.
At first those aboard the Nonpareil were afraid to believe what was happening; then, as time and distance crept by, they relaxed.
Almost. There was something weighing on three minds.
Woodley whispered suddenly, “Too many people in here! Even breathing could distract him!”
And led the way, walking Agag-fashion, leaving the pilothouse to pilots.
They foregathered again on the boiler deck: he and Gordon—with Matthew yawning in the background—where Whitworth joined them. Woodley said, “Hamish, why don’t you let your boy turn in?”
“Hell, he only needed to ask if he felt tired!” Gordon retorted; then he caught the captain’s drift, and rounded on Matthew.
“Yes, you’ve been yawning wide enough to swallow a cow, ha’n’t you? Aff tae yir beid!”
Matthew muttered a word of thanks and vanished.
Now the three of them could come to the quick of the ulcer, and Woodley did so immediately.
“Who the hell is going to believe in a burst boiler if the Atchafalaya blows up on a dead slow bell?”
The words seemed to hang in the clammy air like menacing phantoms. Eventually Whitworth said bluffly, “I made sure I put it well to the front of the coal flat, where it would be loaded first and used for firing last!”
“But now we stand a fair chance of winning,” Gordon snapped. “Suppose it stays there until she’s in port at St. Louis?”
“So much the better,” Whitworth countered.
“How’s that?” Woodley demanded. “If she explodes at the wharf it’s even less believable than while she’s moving!”
“Well, maybe it’ll find its way to the furnace on her next trip! Then nobody will connect it with us!”
“If you can’t warrant it’ll get to the furnace before the trip’s over,” Gordon hissed, “what the hell was the point of suggesting it in the first place?”
It was as though the enormity of what they had committed themselves to had only now dawned, when their boat had finally gained the lead.
After a long pause Whitworth said, “I did exactly what was agreed! And I expect to be paid whether or not the Atchafalaya blows up!”
“Paid?” Woodley repeated. “I never promised to pay you anything.”
“Gordon did. Out of his winnings.”
“Is that true?” Woodley rounded on the Scotsman.
“If she doesn’t explode, I don’t see any reason to keep my promise!” was the curt reply.
“You keep talking about exploding—”
“So do you!”
“Yeah, I guess I do.” Suddenly Woodley’s tone was very cold and distant. “Whitworth, my understanding was that one stick of your explosive would be enough to crack a boiler, at worst, and just put the Atchafalaya out of the race for a while.”
“That’s right!” Whitworth produced one of his panatelas and set it in the gap between his front teeth, cocking it at a defiant angle. “Anyhow, I don’t know what you’re worried about. It’s been known for a charge of blasting powder to misfire and wind up among a pile of coal!”
“Blasting powder can do a sight more than crack a boiler,” Gordon said.
“Sure, sure! But this stuff is much less powerful, much less dangerous.”
“Less dangerous I’ll accept,” Woodley said. “Less powerful is another matter. Hamish, what became of that paper Crossall found?”
“I guess he put it back where it came from,” Gordon said with a shrug.
“What paper?” Whitworth sounded alarmed.
“The one in the case where you keep your stock of the stuff,” Woodley answered.
“What the hell was Crossall doing meddling with my things?”
“Oh, he said something about putting your laundry away! But the devil!” Woodley shook his head. “Let’s go find it!”
“No, you don’t!” Whitworth stepped back, reaching inside his coat. “I’m not putting up with this any longer! You both knew what I was going to do—you both agreed to my doing it—Gordon promised me fair pay for the job! I’m going to have it! Or I’ll blow the gaff on you both!”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Gordon said. But his tone was uncertain.
“Why not? I’ve never had my name in the papers, like you—never had
my portrait taken for the press! I can cut loose, change my name, vanish into the crowd. I’ve been planning to quit the river because I’m sick of it. I could take a job with a railroad and be a thousand miles away before they find out I told the truth, and three people called Woodley and Gordon and Whitworth conspired to blow up a steamer with everybody aboard! You know what I mean, don’t you, Gordon?”
The financier’s face turned pasty-pale, and he flinched as though to avoid a blow: a far more violent reaction than Whitworth had expected.
Encouraged, he turned back the skirt of his coat to reveal what his hand had flown to moments before: his little pistol. Then, like closing the curtain on a stage performance, he let the coat fall back into its normal position.
“I reckon,” he concluded sanctimoniously, “I could do with some shut-eye. Never thought I’d be able to sleep aboard a steamer being piloted by a blind man, but I do feel confidence in Mr. Parbury. Wish I could say the same about you two!”
When he had gone, Gordon exhaled loudly. He said, “I was a fule!”—his Scottish accent briefly conspicuous. “What is’t they say o’ fire? A guid sarvant an’ a puir master? Was’t a pistol I saw in yon belt, or a toy?”
“Far as I could judge,” Woodley said, swallowing noisily, “halfway between. A two-shot derringer. But to be threatened on my own boat by one of my own officers—!”
“I wad hae slit his weasand wi’ ma sgian dubh!” Gordon boasted, and from somewhere produced his keen-edged knife, last on display at Mardi Gras.
“I keep my pistol in my stateroom,” Woodley said after a while. “It’s been a point of honor with me not to carry it. A captain who can’t earn respect without resort to arms is a bad commander. I’ve heard of some who’d shoot a sassy deckhand and laugh as his body was sent to feed the gators. But that was long ago.”
“Yon Whitworth…” Gordon said, and let the words float on the air.