Pirates of the Timestream (15 page)

“Yes. Commander Jason Thanou, at your service.”

“Thanou!” A smile almost twitched into life. “We’ve heard of you. In fact, you have quite a reputation in the underground. The word is, you’d kill Transhumanists as soon as look at them.”

“Maybe not all Transhumanists.”

“Then possibly we can work something out. I think we both have someone to avenge.”

“I think we just might.”

They watched the burning, broken
Oxford
founder and go down in a cloud of steam, taking the last light with it.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was still dark when they finally washed ashore on the strip of sand, too narrow to be called a beach, just east of what would one day be called Baie D’Aquin, although Jason doubted it was called anything now.

In a way, Jason decided, it was worse to have ground under his feet. It left his mind freer to contemplate the fact that, for the third time, a civilian member of a party he led had been killed.
After Sidney Nagel
, he thought dismally,
I told myself that surely it must only feel this way the first time. After Bryan Landry, I wasn’t so sure that’s true. Now I know it isn’t.

He busied himself with helping Nesbit get the still unsteady Grenfell onto the sand and doing what little examination was possible by the light of a half moon that intermittently appeared between drifting clouds. The historian insisted he was all right, but Jason ripped off a strip from the hem of his shirt, and Nesbit, who actually seemed to want to be useful, bound his head with it. Then Jason took stock.

They had nothing but the drenched clothes on their backs, save that his pistol with its hidden sensor was still tied to his rope-belt. Naturally, he had no powder and shot for it. All their other possessions, including, of course, their muskets, now lay on the sea-bottom with
Oxford.
Zenobia had a dagger, and Jason decided it was just as well that she and they now seemed to be allies.

He activated his map display and called up the locations of the team’s TRDs. Besides Nesbit’s and Grenfell’s, bunched together with his, two others that must denote Mondrago and Da Cunha were on the shore a short distance west. Although, he glumly reminded himself, that didn’t necessarily mean they were alive, any more than was Boyer, whose nearly indestructible TRD showed, mockingly, at the location of the sunken
Oxford
. By retrieval time, after a few months at the bottom of the sea, he doubted that there would be much left in the way of remains. He hoped the sea-creatures would leave nothing at all, for if anything did appear on the displacer stage, it probably wouldn’t be very edifying.

Presently the other two Service members’ TRDs began to move on the display, almost causing Jason to go weak with relief. By sheer good fortune, they were moving eastward. He decided against calling out to them, not knowing who or what was in the thick jungle that fringed the shore. So he simply waited, and soon they appeared, splashing along in the shallows that lapped a strand almost too narrow to be walked on. Jason introduced them to Zenobia, whose presence they seemed to take in stride.

“What now, sir?” asked Da Cunha.

“With Henri gone, Zenobia has more knowledge of Hispaniola than any of the rest of us.” Jason turned to the renegade Transhumanist. “How about it? Is there anyone we should try and seek out on this island once it’s daylight? What about the cult you were supposed to found before you deserted? Are there any of its members you think you can still trust?”

“No. Absolutely not. They’re hopelessly corrupted, and under the control of the Transhumanists and . . . Yes. We’ve got to avoid them at all costs.”

Jason noted, without comment, that she used
Transhumanists
in the third person. Presumably any lingering loyalties she might have felt had gone down with the
Oxford.
He also noted the way she had cut herself off, without elaboration, after mentioning them.

“Them and those ‘demons’ you warn your Maroon followers about?” Jason asked in a carefully offhand tone.

Her head jerked up in the moonlight. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh . . . Henri mentioned something about it. He said you described them physically.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Jason dropped the subject. Zenobia clearly didn’t want to be drawn out on the subject of the Teloi, and his alliance with her was still too young and fragile for any pushing or prodding. “Well, then, what about your Maroons? Will they come ashore looking for you?”

“I doubt it. When I don’t turn up among the captains who survived the explosion, they’ll assume I’m dead. They’ll elect a new captain and either go home to Jamaica or continue to follow Morgan.”

Grenfell spoke up. “Speaking of Morgan . . . remember how it was agreed that the fleet was going to do some raiding along the south coast of Hispaniola to augment the meat supplies before heading for South America? Well, history says Morgan did precisely that, starting about a week after the
Oxford
disaster, before holding a second rendezvous a month later at Saona Island, which is off the southeastern end of Hispaniola. That means he’s going to be working his way eastward along this shore.”

“So,” Jason said thoughtfully, “we need to get moving ourselves, so we can be at one of the places he’s going to raid at the time he raids it, and get picked up.”

“But, Commander,” said Nesbit, “are we sure we
want
to be picked up by Morgan? Whatever he plans to do now, I somehow doubt if it’s going to be either pleasant or safe. Why not stay here in Hispaniola and lay low, as people say?”

“Because of the Observer Effect, Irving,” Jason explained. “Morgan’s career is historically documented. As long as we’re with him, the Transhumanists are limited in the action they can take against us. If they tried to swoop down and wipe out his fleet,
something
would prevent it. Otherwise, it would already be part of recorded history, like the
Oxford
explosion. They know this; they were aboard
Oxford
simply to make sure Zenobia was in a position to get killed. They had no idea they were going to
cause
the explosion.”
With a little help from me,
he thought with a pang of guilt. “On the other hand, practically anything can happen in the historyless wilds of Hispaniola. Here, they don’t have to be careful.”

“And besides,” said Mondrago, “if we sit here on our dead asses for the next four and a half months, even if we survive, we won’t be accomplishing our mission.” He gave Zenobia a quick sideways glance, then met Jason’s eyes. Expressions were hard to make out in the moonlight, but they understood each other. The Corsican was silently reminding him that they still had learned nothing about the origin of the spacecraft wreck, and that what little they knew about the Teloi involvement in this time and place simply raised new questions. He was doing it silently because he knew that it was too soon to be mentioning these matters aloud in Zenobia’s hearing.

Jason only hoped that Nesbit and Grenfell wouldn’t blurt anything out. They didn’t.
Maybe sheer exhaustion is catching up with them
, he thought.
It certainly is with me.

“All right, then,” he said. “We’ll follow the coast east when it’s light. My map display will help. For now, let’s try and get as much rest as we can. It’s not long before daybreak.”

* * *

Dawn revealed the Massif de la Selle (where Sam Asamoa would find the century-and-a-quarter-old wreckage of a twenty-fourth-century spacecraft lying in the 1790s) to the northeast, and the Massif de la Hotte to the northwest, both rising beyond a jungle that came almost to the water. In fact, there was a kind of very low tree whose branches touched the water. It bore a kind of fruit that they all gazed at hungrily. Nesbit reached out to pluck one.

“Don’t!” Zenobia snapped. “This is the
mançanilla
, or dwarf-apple tree. The apples are poisonous; eat them and you’ll go mad with thirst and die. In fact, you’re going to get a rash on your hand if it brushed the leaves.”

“Thank God we’ve got you with us,” said Jason. “You can tell us what is and isn’t safe to eat. Now, Roderick, what can you tell me about Morgan’s schedule? You said he’s going to start out after about a week.”

“So says Esquemeling’s account. I’ll try to remember the details. Morgan takes a few days to get to the southernmost point of Hispaniola, where he has a lot of trouble rounding the cape—in fact, he beats against contrary winds for three weeks. Once he gets past that, it’s not far to Ocoa, which he raids.”

“So it sounds like he’s going to be at Ocoa roughly five weeks from now.” Jason summoned up his map display. His heart sank at the trek that lay before them. The straight-line distance to Ocoa was just over a hundred and fifty miles, but trying to follow the direct route would take them over mountains. No, they would have to follow the coast, which he guesstimated would add another fifty to seventy miles. And if this stretch of coast was a fair sample . . .

He had fairly little doubt that he himself, Mondrago and Da Cunha could do it. He had even less doubt in Zenobia’s case. He was reasonably confident that Grenfell was up to it. And he allowed himself to hope that Nesbit’s official qualifications were genuine.

“All right, people,” he said as briskly as he could manage, “let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

* * *

It was even worse than Jason had anticipated. The jungle vegetation frequently made the shoreline impassible, forcing them to either wade through the shallows or work their way around it by going inland. This often meant splashing through marshes and entering forests full of what Zenobia said were called prickle-palms, a name they all came to agree was only too apt.

Numerous streams provided drinking water, and thanks to Zenobia’s knowledge of the vegetation they didn’t starve. In fact, edible fruit was fairly abundant. But fruit is not very filling, and they were often hungry despite the occasional land tortoises they were able to catch and cook over fires Jason started with his flintlock. Lack of adequate food conspired with their constant exertions to render them chronically weary.

And always there were the tormenting insects: large blood-sucking flies as well as tiny stinging and biting gnats. Having no animal grease to smear on themselves (they sometimes sighted the wild pigs and cattle with which Hispaniola abounded, but rather few, and they had no practicable means of catching them), they took to carrying palm-branches to use as whisks. And at night, the din of a billion crickets made sleep difficult despite their fatigue.

The saving grace was that, as Zenobia assured them (confirmed by Esquemeling, according to Grenfell), none of the local scorpions or serpents were poisonous. Nor did their route bring them to the major rivers favored by the crocodiles, which were renowned for their monstrous size and omnivoracious appetites. The relative paucity of wild pigs and cattle in this part of Hispaniola was also fortuitous, according to Zenobia, because that was why they never encountered the wild dogs that preyed on those animals.

Something else they never encountered was people. Zenobia agreed with Grenfell that the French colony of Saint Domingue was centered to the northeast, and had not yet expanded into these southern wilds. Jason recalled the Spanish policy of concentrating their populations around the defensible towns, which had left the coasts to bands of
boucan
hunters. He had half expected to run into some of the latter. But Grenfell assured him that by this date most of them had gone into piracy. Occasionally they spotted Indians in the distance, but only fleetingly as they melted into the forest, having learned that pirates were best avoided.

As the weeks passed, their pace actually picked up somewhat, as they adjusted to the conditions of their trek. Nesbit in particular proved to be surprisingly little of a burden. Except in the earliest stages of the journey, there was hardly any of the whining Jason had dreaded. It was as though hardship brought something out in him . . . or, perhaps, burned something away. To an even greater extent than the other men, he grew almost unrecognizable under his sun-blackened skin and shaggy hair and beard.

After a time the shoreline turned southeastward. They passed what would, in later centuries, be the borderline between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which Jason celebrated as a benchmark of progress. They continued on down to Hispaniola’s southernmost point of land, with the island of Isla Beata visible beyond a channel.

“Is there any chance we’ll sight Morgan’s ships here?” Nesbit asked Grenfell hopefully.

“I doubt it. They’re probably too far out to sea, trying to round the cape. And even if we did, what good would it do us?”

“Er . . . perhaps we could build a signal fire.”

“Morgan would hardly be likely to respond to it; he has no reason to suppose any of his people are ashore on Hispaniola. And in the contrary winds he’s fighting, he wouldn’t be able to put boats ashore on this point of land even if he wanted to.”

It proved to be academic in any case; they sighted no sails. So they wearily turned northeastward, passing between the coast and Laguna de Oviedo on their left. This was flat country, but it also had some significant streams. There were fords . . . but that was where the crocodiles liked to congregate. They had to be very careful. Beyond that, the mountains of the eastern end of the Massif de la Selle came down almost to the water, and the going got very rugged indeed. Sometimes they had to detour inland to avoid a rocky headland.

One day they had to take an unusually long such detour. They were in a glade, with the top of the coastal jungle below and the late-morning sun gleaming on the blue Carribean beyond to the east, when Jason thought he heard a sound that had no place here and now.

No,
he thought, shaking his head.
Just my imagination. Too much tropical sun.

But then Mondrago met his eyes, and he knew the Corsican had heard the same thing. And then the humming sound grew too loud to deny. And a certain tiny blue light began to flash for attention at the edge of his field of vision—the light of his brain implant’s feature (little used in past eras, but helpful to the Hesperian Colonial Rangers) which detected nearby use of the grav repulsion technology whose characteristic hum he had heard.

A few yards over the glade, an area of sky—a shockingly large area, thought Jason—began to shimmer and waver, as was characteristic when a refraction field or “invisibility field” was powering down, ceasing to disrupt visible frequencies of light and causing them to bend—or, more properly, “slip”—a hundred and eighty degrees around the object the field enclosed.