In the deadly heat of late August, mainland visitors were rare. It was the slow season for commerce, especially trade involving perishable goods, human or otherwise. But an elaborate spectacle such as this could not have originated in any place other than the mainland.
From his strategic office perch, hunched over a drawing board, Big Tom probably was first to see the strange skimmer angling for Thomas Harbor. He had just honked down two knife-loads of the powder, and the delicious numbness webbing through his throat made him doubt his perceptions a little.
Hoo. The ship was some kind of harlequin nightmare. It was a two-master, normal enough, but there were no sails to the wind, not so much as a handkerchief. Top mast, there was no flag, but a couple dozen posts around her rails waved bright and flapping streamers in blue, red, and yellow. They seemed to be a taunting send-up of Big Tom's own banners, the system by which he identified his skimmers from afar.
The merchant grunted, pushed back from his drafting table, and tilted his telescope toward the odd craft. On 150 feet of deck there was not a crewman to be seen, yet the gaudy skimmer was angling accurately for the mouth of the harbor. Big Tom considered that perhaps it was under engine power—some special leniency decreed by the Monitor—but that would not explain the absence of crew. There was something strange, too, about the skimmer's deck: the shape, perhaps, or the arrangement of its boards. Even in the telescope, he could not make it out.
Down in the shipyard, the faint skeleton of the Lucia II was taking shape. But Big Tom watched the thundering building process falter, and then clatter to a halt, as the ant farm of wood whits turned their attention to the sea spectre slicing through the harbor. Already eager for the start of noon break, fifteen minutes away, the workers were surrendering to the temptation to drop their tools and gather, gawking, on the wharf. Big Tom made a mental note to rail at today's crew chief—and perhaps he would dock the payroll for the quarter hour.
Big Tom sharpened the focus of his telescope. The pilotless skimmer had now berthed itself comfortably and accurately. Anchor chains fore and aft released themselves on cue, then winched back a bit to steady the yacht. Anchoring at dock, that was odd. But piling ties were now unnecessary, which was fortunate, because there was no crew to throw them.
Big Tom felt a flicker of fear in his chest. He cursed his luck that this otherworldly intrusion would come just as he had slipped comfortably into a powder-induced euphoria. It was a fragile state at best, and there was nothing worse than being high and aggravated at the same time.
Then he snorted a self-deprecating laugh. Hoo. By that standard, he admitted to himself, there was no good time lately for a set-to. He wiped at his nostrils, sighed, and turned for the door.
At the docks, Big Tom could not see over the dozens of heads. Like a common dockside muscler, he elbowed through to the front where a railed gangplank bridged the way from the dock to the foreign skimmer. No one had dared mount it.
The crew chief was there, somewhat embarrassed to find his boss at his side when the work shift was still on clock.
"Who set the gangplank?" Big Tom asked him, deciding to save the other matter for later.
The crew chief shrugged, and flecks of sawdust dropped from his shoulders. "It juss fell," he said, perplexed, "like it was on balance or something and teetered over." He held his browned forearm up in the air to demonstrate, and let it waver, then fall.
The day suddenly seemed impossibly bright to Big Tom, the steamy air motionless. His vision shimmered with glints of pure white light. Even a skimmer set to full sail would have a hard time of it in today's dead air, he thought.
He stared at the gangplank—not your average throw-boards. The rails were intricately carved mahogany, a pattern that reminded him of the back of an ancient rocking chair he had bought for Moori on the mainland. The tread of the walkway seemed to be fresh, black rubber—excellent as a foot grip, but another exhorbitant detail fashioned from rare material. This was not a mere workaday vessel.
He placed a cautious foot onto the rubber matting, and it felt firm and oddly welcoming. He had experienced many emotions about sea skimmers, but never such an overt friendliness. It was a feeling he instinctively wanted to resist, for his intellect—some haggard corner of his mind—was still squirming in fear.
As he topped the gangplank, the murmur of docksmen and wood whits died to a whisper. Big Tom held up the palms of his hands, motioning for the others to stay on the dock.
The skimmer's deck was polished mahagony as well, and at the sight of it his mouth fell open. In many ways it resembled any other finely kept skimmer top: precise coils of hemp, handsome masts, and thick piles of neatly folded canvas tied in place. But the striking feature was the shape of the deck itself. It was not flat. The gleaming boards swept upward from the center, dovetailing into the rails on each side. It was as if the deck had been crafted from half of a monstrous barrel.
Big Tom stepped onto the deck, expecting to slide on the slick embankment. To his surprise, he found himself standing at an angle, perpendicular to the deck as if the skimmer had its own demented law of gravity. His large stomach soured and his breathing began to come hard, as if all the weight of his belly were drawing against his lungs. He scratched under his beard.
The merchant tried a test. He tip-toed down to the center of the empty deck and found himself upright like the masts. Then he paced slowly up the far curve of the deck, toward the backboard rail. Once the rail was at his feet, he looked back and saw the mast directly overhead—he was standing at right angles to it. Big Tom peered past the skimmer's rail, afraid that he would see precisely what he saw: the calm harbor stretching straight down from his toes in a wall of aquamarine.
Could he be dreaming? Big Tom thought about it. Hmph. Too real. In a dream, had he ever smelled the salt stench of the docks? Had the sun ever scorched his eyes? In a dream, had he ever felt the vile bubble of vomit pushing at his throat that he felt right now? No.
Big Tom turned around and stepped again toward center deck, his testy stomach settling as he came upright again. Standing at the bottom of the wooden bowl, he wondered if he should call to the others on the dock. Would they see what he saw? Or had the powder and bourbon finally burst some mental gasket, as the late Dr. Scaramouch had always warned him?
As he started for the gangplank, a latch rattled and the door of the aft hatch—presumably leading to the captain's quarters—fell open. Big Tom stopped and stared at the black rectangle fifty feet away, feeling fear suddenly pressing at him like an awesome weight. He wished he had borrowed a snub gun from one of the toughs on the dock.
A slender, dark-skinned figure stepped out. He wore black leather boots up to the knees, billowy trousers and a dark blouse shot through with random red and gold threads. His head was rimmed with a peach-colored turban folded so that a tail of material fanned protectively over his neck. His chin bore a closely trimmed beard, and a narrow, knotty moustache arced across his upper lip. He was adjusting the turban as he came through the hatch, as if he had just finished dressing, and upon seeing the distraught merchant at center deck, the stranger gasped in shock.
"Hoa-ye! Who are you?"
The words resounded up the curved planking, surrounding Big Tom with ghostly acoustics.
"I, uh, I might ask that of you," he replied. "You've docked in my harbor without permission."
The dark man's eyes widened. "We've docked? Landed? You mean we've made Thomas Island already?" His words were low and ringing, the way congas would sound if they could speak.
"Ya, and I am Big Tom of Thomas Exports, and owner of the island."
"Ho, then," said the thin man, growing more comfortable, pushing the turban to an angle. "Ahem. Ah, somebody here call for a doctor? He's arrived."
Big Tom's eyelids sank closed. The edge had now worn off his dose of powder and the cockeyed mania seemed to be subsiding. So that was it—the doctor. Hoo. Finally, some help for Little Tom, still strapped hand and foot in the clinic.
Big Tom opened his eyes, now a little irritated at the showy arrival. "Son, would you go below then and get him. I have an immediate task for the doctor."
The stranger blinked. He looked back at the open hatch, frowning. For a second, Big Tom thought he saw a flash of deep red in the dark man's pupils, but he dismissed it as another illusion fomented by the stark sun and the powder.
"Go get him?" the stranger asked. "But 'him' is me. I am the doctor sent by the Government."
Big Tom coughed and felt the sweat gathering in his underdrawers. "Oh, ha. Sorry. But we get rather afield of mainland ways out here. On the islands, these parts, a man such as you would be thought a Rafer."
"That would be quite natural," the stranger said. He removed his turban, and a torrent of minuscule black braids fell to his shoulders. Five of the braids were tipped in gold. "Because I am a Rafer. Name's Rutherford Cross Jr. You may call me Pec-Pec."
"I have heard of you," Big Tom said. "Some kind of Rafer ruler." He took a step backward, even though Pec-Pec had not moved far from the hatch.
The dark-skinned man giggled. "Hmm. A contradiction in terms. Rafer. Ruler. I might help out a government, but I'd nay be one."
Big Tom's panic took over. He scrambled for the gangplank on his hands and knees, mindful of the nausea that walking upright would bring him. But the gangplank was no longer in place. It had folded itself in half and clamped into storage position, becoming part of the starboard rail. Big Tom peered over the rail and saw nothing but sea. All around. Starboard, backboard, forward, aft. Thomas Island was not to be found.
The merchant's chest was heaving, sweat dripping from the tip of his beard as he clung to the rail. "You'll not kill me without taking a bang or two yourself."
Pec-Pec waved him down. "I'll not kill you at all," he said. "I'm a Healer, as was my father."
Big Tom groaned, but began to edge himself back toward center deck, sliding on his wide rear until he could stand without vomiting.
"This is an odd crate ya have here. Stands ya on a tilt and docks and sets sail again on her own."
Pec-Pec threw his hands open, saying, "You're known far as a shipbuilder, so I guess you unnerstand what it's like when a skimmer seems to take on a life of her own."
"You built this thing?"
"Oh, no. Thass part of the problem. Won her in a chess game from a Brazilian undertaker. If I could make a skimmer from my own mind, mayhap she'd be more cooperative, no? But you see I haven't hammered out all the nickers on this one yet. Sometimes, she juss does what she thinks best."
"Brazilia?"
"Ho, Brazil. Thass a place many miles south and many years ago—where I got her." Pec-Pec tapped his foot on the deck. "Bad chess players in Brazil. Back then."
Big Tom stood weakly. "Well, I can see what ya done to your crew—made 'em sick is what. Nobody could work long on this deck."
"To a man with the right skills, this is the perfect deck," said Pec-Pec, looking hurt. He crouched and spread out on all fours, touching his chin to the wood. "Look, to a discroller the curvature of the deck works quite well." The Rafer began to spin his body against the deck like a jar lid, and abruptly he cartwheeled up the starboard side.
Big Tom gaped. In a blink, Pec-Pec had appeared sitting cross-legged on the starboard rail. This spinning business reminded him of what his house boy, Gregory, had been practicing. So it was a technique the half-wit had learned from the Rafers.
"See?" said Pec-Pec. "From one side of the deck to the other in a fraction of a second. Now, here's a more important maneuver." The Rafer dived off of the rail onto the sloping wood. He spun down the deck, up the backboard side, and catapulted himself into the sky.
Big Tom lost sight of him, then spotted him dangling from the high rigging of the main mast. The dark man released his hold and fell to the deck. He diverted the force of his fall by somersaulting onto the wood bank and sliding on his back to the spot where he had originally stood center deck.
Pec-Pec was grinning. "Guess what would have happened to me on a flat deck?"
"That fall," Big Tom asked wearily, "another Rafer technique?"
"No. The hit-and-roll. Paratroopers."
"Para. . ."
"Ancient sky warriors. When people could fly."
"Oh, yes. Fly. Why not? My grandpa spoke of it, crazy poker." Big Tom looked to the sky and found not a cloud. The skimmer gave no sense of motion either, and he felt tempted to climb to the rail again to see if they might be returning.
Pec-Pec seemed to read his mind. He sat on the deck and motioned for Big Tom to do the same.
"First we talk," the Rafer said, pausing until the merchant had eased his sweaty bulk to the deck. "Forgive my toying with you—now I will tell you what I am about. It is true that I am sent by the Government and it is true that I am a Healer, and I will tend to the sick on your island. For a short time anyway.
"But the healing is coincidental to my real purpose here. The Monitor is dead, and the new leaders implement new policy—try to do it quietly, to prevent panic."
Big Tom stared at his knotty knuckles. He was nearly broke, and he could see that his little empire would never have a chance to revive itself. "Ya should have just sent word with Captain Bull," he said. "No more barge trips—no more contract on the red-leggers. Right?"
"Ya. But we did send an emissary, our own emissary, directly to you. To ask you to stop the trade, first. And second, to give you a choice: to become an undesireable, a fugitive from the new Government, or to help it with a new mission. But when the trade did not stop—well some of the less patient revolutionaries, they decide to stop the red-legger trade themselves. Start from the mainland first, then work their way out here. Hangings and hackings. Not very discrete, but I'd say your market has dried up."
"But I never saw this emissary."
"Or you killed him."
Big Tom stood quickly, even though his knee joints screamed pain. "No!"
"A blond man. Young. Named Gregory."
"Greggie!" Big Tom hesitated, but decided the truth might for once serve him well. "He showed up on the island with a head wound, talking foolishness. Nay a body could unnerstand him. I swear on it, by the bellies of my wives."
Pec-Pec frowned and waved his hand. "Sit. A man such as you could blow wind all day—such excuses. All of that is irrelevant, because the new Government wants you alive."
"For a mission, uh?"
"They want a ship, large and strong such as only you could build. For crossing the Big Ocean, months or even years. They have decided to find out what has happened to the other lands."
"Useless, wouldn't ya 'spect? Radiated?"
"It can't be all gone—look at our own mainland."
Big Tom's head began to hurt. "What proof do you have," he asked slowly, "that the Monitor is dead?"
The Rafer held up his index finger. "If you like, Mr. Flesh Merchant, you may wait on Thomas Island for the next arrival of the tug boat. Aboard it will be a dozen irascible revolutionaries who will not be as patient with you as I. And trailing from the stern will be the body of your Captain Bull as trolling bait. Other than that, I have one thing I can show you."
Pec-Pec sprang to his feet and disappeared into the hatch. He returned dragging a rubbery satchel shaped like an oriole's nest. Grinning, Pec-Pec pulled the grab-handles apart and reached in. He pulled out a handful of blond hair sopping from a briney liquid. Hanging from the hair was the pickled head of a bull-faced man.
"He was wearing sunglasses," Pec-Pec said, "but I lost 'em."
Finally, Big Tom threw up.