by John Brunner
And waited for the answer. And it came, as he expected.
“Stop him!” Stella cried. She had read in Arthur’s look what he intended.
Too late.
What trivia to occupy this crucial chunk of time. Auberon found it amusing to think so.
For Arthur, purpling, had leveled the gun and his knuckle whitened on the trigger. It made a pretty color scheme.
The blood that burst out on his own shirt front, if anything, enhanced it. There was no pain. Just a deafening dullness in his ears, and awareness that the explosion must have outdone the rest of the fierce noise filling the air, for heads were turning on every side.
Of course, being shot to death by a drink-sodden fool was hardly his idea of a perfect end, but…
There was a wash of red, then black. Then nothing.
“You son of a bitch!” Hugo roared, snatching back the gun. “That was murder! And at St. Louis I’ll make sure you stand your trial!”
“But—!” Arthur was almost whimpering.
“You heard me! Or I’ll execute you here and now! Which do you want?”
The answer, if there was one, was drowned out. For at that moment the fire took a fresh grip on the wood below, and a cough of flame spurted up, along with such stifling fumes that speech was impossible. Gasping and groping in a maze of smoke, they fled, not knowing whither.
“Well never make it!” Fernand exclaimed, staring through field glasses at the smoke pouring from the Nonpareil.
“Not if you just stand there!” Drew snarled, all his tiredness apparently forgotten. “Why don’t you go rustle up some help from shore—or hurry up the boat astern?”
“What?” Confused, Fernand glanced around. “I didn’t see any—”
“The Lothair,” Tyburn said curtly, swinging the helm into another of what felt like far more bends than there had been on the way up. “Saw the green collars on her chimneys.”
For the latest of uncountably many times Fernand realized just how much longer he had to serve before he could truly call himself a pilot. He had known very well that they must be due to meet the Lothair about now, given the schedule she was keeping between Alton and Cairo. But the knowledge had been driven from his mind by the excitement.
Perhaps one should offer this definition of a finished pilot: a man who would not allow that to happen…
Carrying his binoculars, he fled down the steps, looking for Gross and the mates and whatever guns and flags they might employ to make the Lothair hurry.
When he met Dorcas and his mother on the foredeck, he spared them scarcely a glance.
Now the fire had taken a fatal grip on the Nonpareil. There would be a fair chance of retrieving her engines, boilers and piping—never again to work at such high pressure, naturally. But she was as surely doomed as a deer whose entrails had been torn out by a mountain lion.
Such thoughts, proper to clerks and mates, went through the heads of those who retained a degree of calm as Trumbull used the current to ground her in the shallows. Katzmann and Bates and their staff were having trouble with people who wanted to go back for prized possessions, who to regain a jewel would have dared the horizontal chimney of the cabin.
For that was what it had become: a vast flue laid on its side, fed not only by the woodwork of the hull and the fuel stored in the boiler room, but also by paint with a base of linseed oil, that lifted and blistered and uttered flammable vapor, and the prized carpets, and the oilcloth on the gaming tables, and eventually the liquor at the bar and the improvised catafalque.
The sound of the flames was as loud as the band’s music, or the screams now swelling up on every side.
And once the clerestory shattered and let in a fresh supply of air…
But above, on the texas, a man scarcely more than a boy was disobeying orders and wondering whether his elders were fit to be trusted, if they could have forgotten what he remembered.
For those like Anthony Crossall they said dismissively “mud clerk,” in memory of the apprentices sent down by night at swampy landings to check goods loaded or put ashore. Let them come back with their boots full of water, while their seniors joked on the safe dry deck and stood ready to deliver a cuff about the head if there were the least error in a manifest made out with a scratchy pen by the light of a windstruck lantern.
Chance, though, had brought Anthony in touch with great events, when he discovered those brown sticks under Whitworth’s bed…
Ever since, he had been quaking inwardly. Now he was outright trembling. Captain Woodley had claimed to know all about that explosive; if that were so, why had he not sent somebody to dump it safely overboard? What about Mr. Gordon—though rumour was already rife that his name was something else—who had been equally dismissive?
And what about Mr. Whitworth, come to that? Was he on his way through the veils of smoke to collect his dangerous treasure and pitch it in the river?
But it was useless trying to talk to his superiors. He was brushed aside.
Therefore there was only one thing he could do.
Fetch it himself.
It had been open to Whitworth to dive overboard. He was a capable swimmer and knew he could make it to the bank regardless of the current hereabouts. He had no attachment to the boat or the people who owned her; seeing Gordon’s investment going up in smoke informed him that his trip by rail from Memphis to Cairo would go unrewarded, for there would now be no winnings for him to take his percentage of.
But if he quit the river, what else could he earn his living by?
The string he had intended to keep to his bow was in danger of being burnt up. Fire was now greedily snatching toward the officers’ quarters.
Best to reclaim the stuff, he decided. Even though the Atchafalaya was still intact. By rights she should have exploded long ago. Which implied that what had been sold to him as mica powder must be nothing more than a confidence trick.
Well, that wasn’t so surprising when the nationally respected enterprise, Sears Roebuck & Co., could blatantly state in their catalog anent their “Trainmen’s Special” that “this is a cheap trading watch, made to look like the most expensive 23-jeweled adjusted railway watch made,” and boast to their customers, “If you want a very showy watch for trading purposes, there is nothing that will match this…”
He might as well take advantage of the example set him, reclaim what he had laid out good money for, sell it piecemeal to ignorant farmers west of St. Louis and rake together a grubstake to see him right again, taking care to move out of the area before anyone actually tried to use the fake explosive.
But he’d have to hurry. If it were even to get charred, someone with sharp eyes might realize his one remaining asset was as worthless as its failure to destroy the Atchafalaya had proved.
Smoke by now was curling up to the texas and all around the officers’ staterooms, and from below the sound of crackling was as loud as the engines at full blast. Anthony’s mouth was cotton dry and his guts were tied in a tight knot. But now he was committed he must go on.
Eyes watering, throat smarting, he thrust open the door of Whitworth’s room. There was the case with its deadly contents. He seized it with a sense of exhilaration. It wasn’t heavy. He could easily pitch it overside.
And a harsh voice said, “What the hell are you doing in my room?”
Anthony gasped and almost dropped the case; a moment later it was snatched from his grasp. Tears blurring his vision, he found himself staring into the muzzle of a tiny gun.
“Thought you could safely steal while the fire distracted the rest of us, did you?” the second mate rasped.
“No, I swear it!” Anthony cried. “I only wanted to make sure that didn’t explode!” He pointed at the case with a trembling finger.
“Ah, yes! You went rummaging around my room before, didn’t you? And finding this stuff scared the daylights out of your lily-livered carcass, didn’t it?” Whitworth’s tone was savagely caressing. “Well, get the hell away from me before I p
lug you for a dirty little thief!”
Anthony fled and shortly could be heard coughing his guts up, having inhaled a lungful of the now dense smoke.
Whitworth, holstering his derringer, followed more slowly, judging his best course of action. He was dismayed to find that the route he had counted on following back to the lower decks was blocked; Anthony had just made it before the fumes became intolerable.
He had planned on leaving the boat by her landward side, where there was already a mass of seething bodies up to waist or chest in water, but where a dozen strides through mud led you to a firm footing and safety. The coolest of the crew, directed by Underwood and the pilots—there was no sign of Woodley right now—were helping the panic-stricken survivors, some rushing down the stages, some jumping from the main or even the boiler deck. Whitworth viewed the scene calmly. He had been present more than once before when steamers caught fire, and this was no great shakes. A burst boiler could have done infinitely more harm and very much more quickly. If worse came to worst, he could still go over the riverward side and swim ashore. It would, though, be a shame to lose what was now bound to be his mainstay for the foreseeable future.
If only it had been the Atchafalaya that exploded, as he’d planned—!
But there was no time to curse the man who had sweet-talked him.
He tugged a bandanna from his pocket and wrapped it around his head, bandit-fashion; it helped a little. Then he rushed along the hurricane deck, down the stairs to the boiler deck—where he heard glass shatter as the fire finally broke the clerestory windows from their frames—and was brought to a dead stop at the head of the stairs to the main deck. They themselves were not yet alight, but at their foot the white-painted planking had turned brown.
Beginning to be frightened, Whitworth glanced over his shoulder. There was no retreat to the forward stairs; so thick was the smoke, he could not have seen his way, let alone run full tilt without drawing breath in order to reach them. No, he must descend as far as possible, then jump across the burning area. Near the side there was still a zone of what looked like sound boards, and from there he could simply drop into the water.
But he must be quick. Fumes were winding up from under the guards.
He took six of the steps, two at a time, hesitated fractionally, then vaulted the stair-rail, swinging the case to lend extra momentum. And made it, clearing the patch of charred planking.
But he landed awkwardly. The case burst open. Brown tubes rolled in all directions. Many tumbled off the edge of the deck.
Uttering an oath, Whitworth scrambled to his feet, determined to salvage what he could. The heat was unbearable; gouts of flame were erupting from the cabin windows, whose glass now lay around in jagged shards.
One spike met his groping hand and made him jerk with pain, knocking the stick of mica powder he was reaching for. It rolled like its brethren, but the other way, toward the fire.
Sucking his cut finger, Whitworth—half-blind with smoke—took a step toward it.
The deck was already splitting with the heat; his weight was too much. It gaped. The explosive fell through as he struggled to regain his balance.
Next moment all the claims that Messrs. Mowbray made for their product were proved true.
Those who were watching from the pilothouse of the Atchafalaya, or from elsewhere with telescopes and field glasses—they saw him lifted like a sawdust-stuffed dummy high in the air among a cascade of splintered wood, hurled clear of the Nonpareil, dropped with a great splash into the dull brown water.
But it was already long in the past, by the space of half a dozen heartbeats, before the noise arrived.
Under his breath Joel said, “Surely that can’t have been…”
It was too late for wondering. Now there was crisis.
The explosion ripped away huge sections of the Nonpareil’s after planking, tore the side of her hull, cracked wide its bottom. Greedy and implacable, the Mississippi flooded in. As she settled, there was a hissing noise, for everything within her that was hot combined to generate a vast cloud of dirty steam among the smoke of her great burning. The last of the pressure in her boilers vanished with a spurt and a sigh, and she blurred into a shabby wreck stuck in the mud like any rotten hulk mishandled by an ill-taught cub.
Only in the cabin did the flames roar on, enfolding in a shroud of orange glory the cadaver of Miles Parbury, who had fought against such odds as heroes dream of.
Then the superstructure folded down, and the pilothouse collapsed into the cabin, and her boastful silken banner crisped and flared, and the Nonpareil was dead as her designer.
Until absolutely the latest possible moment, driven by his suspicion that these gringos did not believe anyone who spoke Spanish—let alone persons of color like his musicians—could act bravely, Manuel had kept the band playing at its loudest, partly by threat, partly by example.
But with the roar of the explosion he broke off in mid-bar and yelled, “¡Vamos!”
They tumbled headlong into the water, and he followed.
For a second, as he floundered with his nose below the surface, he imagined he and they were done for. Then he found a slippery footing, and was able to stand up and wade ashore. Still over knees in the river, he crossed himself and muttered a prayer of thanks, then turned and looked at the wreck. It burned so fiercely, he had to shield his face against the heat.
Awe overcame him, who had known of so many lost at sea. The grandeur of death by storm paled beside this, the doom of fire. And what was one fishing boat compared with a great steamer like the Nonpareil?
Then, magically, the banks and the water teemed with help. From nowhere appeared ragged men and women with ropes and poles, while from both up- and downstream came rowboats with men leaning frantically on their oars, sailboats with their skippers cursing that there wasn’t better wind, and—above all—the Atchafalaya at full speed in the deep channel. Those who had damned her yesterday now cheered as she swung broadside and drew close, casting out barrels and crates and anything that might float long enough to save a life. In the distance, too, the Lothair loomed.
Awed, Gaston watched from the foredeck. Never in his life had he been present at such a drama! He ached to be of practical assistance, but everything seemed so amazingly organized and controlled, even though there were people screaming in agony. Those more fortunate were coming to the victims’ aid as though they had been rehearsed, guiding them step by step toward dry land.
And— Why, that was surely Gordon he could see, knee-deep in mud, half his beard burned away! And wasn’t that Captain Woodley, waving like a madman, shouting something that nobody was paying the least attention to? And…
A sudden gleam caught his eye. As the Atchafalaya rounded to, he spotted an arm upholding something shiny and metallic.
A saxhorn. He would have recognized it anywhere, even though he felt as though he were a million miles from everything he had known in his superficial world of hotels and theaters and dance halls; he might as well have been on a different planet.
Before he could check himself, he was running. They were lowering a swinging stage from the Atchafalaya’s bow; he was the first to rush down it, elbowing aside those who would have preceded him, and—forgetful of his clothes and boots and life itself in the heat of the moment—plunged into the filthy water. Discarding his coat as he struggled on toward the gleaming instrument, he felt himself caught by the arm and would have shaken off the grip but that he recognized Manuel, bent on the same errand.
For a long second they stood frozen; then Manuel grinned and clapped him on the shoulder, and they set out together to retrieve what they could of the Nonpareil’s band. Thanks to Manuel’s promptness, they were all alive, though some were sick from swallowing river water and some half-choked by smoke and some deprived of their instruments; the fiddles and banjoes were ruined.
Nonetheless the brass survived: trumpets, trombone, baritone horn, tuba… And there was at least one clarinet that would be playable ag
ain.
Assembling the frightened, cursing, miserable musicians on dry land, Gaston felt a surge of triumph.
But when he glanced back, he saw that others had not been so lucky.
Grave, slow-moving, crewmen and anonymous strangers were laying out on the bank corpse, after corpse, after corpse…
And who could tell, as yet, how many had been trapped and burned—perhaps alive?
Overwhelmed, Gaston grew aware that beside him Manuel was mechanically moving his hands. At first he thought he might be pantomiming the patterns of an instrument, but then he realized he was holding a nonexistent broad-brimmed hat, turning it around and around.
How often had he seen men stand that way at funerals? And it had been a funeral he was rushing to St. Louis to attend…
Inspiration dawned. He spoke in soft but urgent tones. It was a while before his French-English and the Mexican’s Spanish-English coincided; when they did, Manuel’s eyes lit up, and together they turned back to the musicians.
An hour or so later, they were able to scramble aboard the Atchafalaya.
For Denis Cherouen it all became too much in the moment when he saw Walt Presslie with his shoulder swathed in pus-soaked bandages, halfway to delirium through septicemia, nonetheless struggling out on deck at news of the disaster to see if he could help.
But visions of an endless stream of burned and blighted patients, like a renewal of the war, were already obsessing the Electric Doctor. Why did it have to be this way? Why could not some magic touch from on high make everybody whole and handsome? Why could not his miraculous cures be worked on all mankind, ridding the world of ulcers and cancers and infected wounds and lungs rotten with TB and genitals foul with gonorrhea and eyelids crusted shut with matter and decaying gums and aching teeth and all the rest? And what malevolent deity had doomed the Nonpareil, which he could so easily have been aboard?