Kage Baker - The Wreck of the Gladstone

VIP免费

2024-11-18 3 0 43.4KB 11 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt

======================

The Wreck of the Gladstone

by Kage Baker

======================

First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Oct/Nov 1998

Fictionwise Contemporary

Science Fiction

The Company

---------------------------------

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the purchaser. If you did not

purchase this ebook directly from Fictionwise.com then you are in violation of copyright law and

are subject to severe fines. Please visit www.fictionwise.com to purchase a legal copy.

Fictionwise.com offers a reward for information leading to the conviction of copyright violators

of Fictionwise ebooks.

---------------------------------

On the fourteenth of November 1893, the schooner yacht _Gladstone_ encountered a storm in

the Catalina channel off the harbor at Los Angeles, California. A northeastern gale capsized her

and she sank within sight of the lights of San Pedro. It is a matter of recorded fact that all

hands were lost, including the captain.

Nevertheless, the following August he returned to the scene of his death and peered down

through the green water, and it seemed to him he could just discern her outline, green and waving,

rippling and fading, the lost _Gladstone_.

Standing at the rail he wondered, miserably, if any of the mortals he had known were still

down there with her, the owner with his long moustache, the sea-cook with his canvas apron.

I could tell he was so miserably wondering because of the set of his mouth and wide stare.

I've known Kalugin since the summer of 1699 and have learned, in that time, to read his least

thought in his countenance. It is indeed a dear countenance, but terribly at odds with itself; the

eyes ought to be steel but are vague and frightened. The nose is arrogant as an eagle's beak, the

mouth shaped cruel for its hereditary work of ordering serfs to the pillory: yet the sharp

features are blunted in the wide pink face. He doesn't really look like one of us at all.

"Come inside, dear." I touched his arm with my gloved hand. "We can't do anything until the

morning."

"I shall have bad dreams," he replied. He turned to go with me, and his gaze fell hopefully

upon the island off to the west. "Do you suppose any of the crew managed to swim ashore?"

"Certainly they might have." I gave his arm a squeeze. "But they'd have had to have been

extraordinary swimmers. And history does record that all hands were lost, after all."

"Including me, my dear," he pointed out, and I was obliged to shrug in concession of his

point. It is one of the laws of the time manipulation business that history cannot be changed. It

is one of its hazards, and conveniences, that this law can only be observed to apply to _recorded_

history. We arrange matters to our advantage in perfect obedience to the known facts. Kalugin had

gone down with his ship, and so conformed to the historical record. The fact that he had risen on

the seafoam three days later, like Venus or Christ, was beside the point and out of the history

books altogether. That fact that he had failed in his mission on that occasion was of greater

consequence, and the reason for our present excursion.

I led him into the saloon of the _Chronos_, where dinner had just been served. Victor was

standing at his place waiting for us, eyeing the repast with approval.

Victor is one of those white men with nearly transparent skin. His hair and beard are a

startling red, his eyes pale green, and his features are small and precise as a kitten's. If he

were mortal he might decay in time to a certain spare leonine dignity, but as it is he has

perpetually the sharp edge of the adolescent cat. Victor was our Facilitator on this mission. He

it was who had arranged for our yacht and its crew, and who had produced such papers as we might

need to justify our actions to any mortals we might encounter. Other than the servants, of course.

We were fortunate to have his assistance, for the customary glacial slowness of the Company in

requisitioning such necessaries might have produced a delay of years before we attended to our

present mission.

"Madame D'Arraignee." He ushered me to my chair. "Captain Kalugin. It appears we're having

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kag...%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt (1 of 11) [1/5/2005 11:13:40 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt

'Bounty of the Sea' tonight. Turtle soup, oysters, lobster salad and Tunny a'la Marechale. Just on

the chance you don't get enough of the briny deep on the morrow, Kalugin."

Kalugin sighed and held out his glass for champagne. "It's all very well for you to laugh.

Three days against the ceiling of that cabin! Do you know, when the storm had subsided enough for

my rescue transport, I had _J.W. Coffin and Sons, Boston, Massachusetts_ printed on my cheek? In

mirror image, of course. From an inscription on the brasswork."

Victor laughed heartily. I thought what it must have been like, lying in darkness with

drowned men, waiting for the storm to subside. I reached for Kalugin's hand under the table and

squeezed it. He gave me a grateful look.

"So here's a health to the Infant Hercules!" Victor raised his glass. "Let's hope the

little devil is in reasonably good health too, after his sojourn in the bosom of Aphrodite. Have

you inspected the Laboratory yet, Nan? Everything to your satisfaction?"

"Yes, thank you." I leaned to the side as a mortal servant bent to ladle the soup into my

plate. "They certainly gave me enough sponges. I didn't find the antifungal, however."

"It's down there. An entire drum of that and the other chemical you needed, the solvent,

what's it's name?"

"Diorox."

"Diorox, to be sure. I saw it loaded. Everything you need to restore the Son of Zeus to his

original splendor should be present and accounted for."

"I'm sure that will prove to be the case."

"I really did seal it up quite tightly," said Kalugin. "There may be a little damage from

the tacks. I did my best to remove them, but you've no idea -- the rolling of the ship, and the

shouting, and then the light had gone, you know, and the claw end of the hammer wasn't the right

size."

"You should have used pliers," Victor admonished him briskly. "Though of course the really

important thing, Kalugin, was the air-seal. We can only pray it withstood the impact when you

dropped it."

"Oh, it must have." He twisted one corner of his napkin. "That's all covered in my report,

you see, the cylinder landed in mud. The seal must have held. There shouldn't have been any

errors."

"No, I daresay; the _equipment_ scarcely ever malfunctions." Victor tasted his soup with a

delicate grimace. Kalugin looked wretched. He turned to me.

"I'm afraid I might have torn one corner of the painting a little," he said

apologetically. "I did mention that in my report as well."

"I'm sure it's of no consequence." I smiled at him. "Canvas repair is the simplest of

processes. You forget, my dear, the Renaissance work I've done. You ought to see what the Italians

do to their paintings! Floods and mud and bird droppings -- "

"_If _you please!" Victor's spoon halted in its rise to his moustache.

"Pray excuse me." I had a sip of champagne.

"Have you spoken to Masaki?" Victor inquired of Kalugin.

"The diver? Yes, and she seems a knowledgeable sort. Appears to have done a lot of this

sort of thing."

"She has. She's the best in her field."

"Might almost be able to handle the recovery operation herself, I imagine, if my nerve were

to desert me," said Kalugin casually.

"Though, of course, it shan't." Victor gave him a hard smile across the table.

We talked about the mission until half-past eleven, and Kalugin drank too much champagne. I

lay in the bunk across from him and watched as he slept it off. His eyes raced behind pale lids,

his breath caught continually, and his soft hands pushed and pushed at something that would not

leave him. It is a terrible thing to be immortal and have bad dreams.

At dawn I opened my eyes and the cabin was full of the sublimest clear pink light, the same

tender shade one sees only in the winter season. Its delicate beauty was in harsh contrast to the

hoarse profanities that resounded on the morning air.

Kalugin sat up and we stared at one another. We heard one of the Technicians approaching

Victor's stateroom and saying, quite unnecessarily, "Vessel off our starboard bow, sir. Crew of

two mortals. They're hailing us."

Hailing damnation on us, in fact, and worse things too. The voice echoing across the water

was nearly incoherent with rage, backed up by the rattling throb of a steam engine, and growing

closer with each moment. We heard Victor's door open and heard his rapid footsteps as he went on

deck. We dressed hastily and followed him.

They were just coming abreast of us as we emerged. Victor, dignified in his dressing-gown,

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kag...%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt (2 of 11) [1/5/2005 11:13:40 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt

Turkish slippers and fez was confronting a wiry little man in stained canvas trousers and an old

jersey. The mortal was bounding up and down in his fury in the manner of a chimpanzee, which

resemblance was furthered by the fact that his arms were muscular and enormous.

The other mortal stood at the tiller, a bedraggled girl in a faded cotton print dress. She

was heavily with child, and appeared to be on the verge of tears. Their old fishing boat was in a

bad way, even to my untrained eyes: her ironwork had risen like biscuit with flaked rust, and her

old wood was pearl-gray. Some attempt had recently been made to make her seaworthy, but her days

on the water were numbered, clearly. _ELSIE_ was painted in trailing letters on her bow.

To render what her captain was saying into prose were to produce a stream of invective not

grammatical but profound.

"For shame, sir!" cried Victor. "There are ladies present."

The general sense of the mortal's response was that Victor might take himself and his

female companions to any other place in the seven seas save this one. Victor's mouth tightened and

the points of his moustache stabbed the air.

"I will not, sir. I will conduct salvage operations here, having every legal right to do

so," he stated. He might have continued, but Kalugin gave a sudden groan and clutched the rail.

"O God, it's Mackie Hayes!" he said. He didn't say it loudly, but all heads turned to stare

at him. The gimlet eye of the vulgar sailor widened. He uttered a word I will not stain paper with

and followed it with the cry of "Captain Pomeroy!"

Then, in an act of physical bravado I would not have thought a mortal man capable of

performing, he vaulted the span of sea between his craft and ours and landed on the deck beside

Kalugin. The girl at the tiller gave a weak scream. Kalugin found his lapels seized in an iron

grip and the sailor's stubbled face a bare inch from his own.

"Where were ya?" shouted the sailor. "When the _Gladstone _was foundering and there was

good men going to the bottom, I ask ya? Where were ya when the spars was snapping and the mast

broke off clean? Hiding in yer bunk, ya no-good son of a w----!"

Kalugin had gone very white. He moistened his lips with his tongue and said, "You mistake

me, sir. Captain Pomeroy was my father."

The sailor drew his head back to stare at him. He saw no grey in Kalugin's hair, he saw no

lines about his eyes, he saw no scar upon his chin. Nor should he, for these things had been

cosmetically applied to make Kalugin look like a mortal man and had been removed when no longer

needed. The ferocity of his regard diminished somewhat and he released Kalugin's lapels.

"Well, d -- n me if ya ain't the spit and image of Captain Pomeroy. But he was still a lily-

livered coward, ya hear me? He was hiding below when the storm done its worst. Even Mister

Vandycook the owner, _he_ come up on deck to see what he could do, but not yer old man. So I d --

n ya for the son of a lubber and no true seaman." He swung about to glare at Victor. "And the rest

of ya for a pack of thieves. I lay claim to this salvage operation by rights of having survived

the wreck of the _Gladstone_!"

There was a poignant silence on deck. We had encountered what we operatives of the Company

most dread: an error in the historical record. Such loopholes can have fatal consequences for a

mission. Victor considered the sailor.

"The _Gladstone_ was reported lost with all hands, sir."

"Lost she were, but _I _didn't go down with her. Two days I hung on a barrel, kicking off

the sharks, afore I washed up on that island yonder. Most of a year I been marooned there amongst

landsmen. Took me better than three months to get that scow there seaworthy, and _I'm_ salvaging

the _Gladstone,_ and be d -- ned to you!"

"You are mistaken, sir." Victor smiled. "My firm purchased salvage rights on the wreck from

its insurers."

There was a little cry of disappointment from the girl at this announcement. The sailor

glanced once in her direction; then he turned back to squint at Victor. "Is that so? Well, they're

there and I'm here. I can't make ya clear off, but ya can't make me leave neither, and we'll see

who gets down to the _Gladstone_ first!"

With that he hoisted himself up on our rail and sprang nimbly back to his own boat, which

received his weight with a hollow crash that did not bode well for the integrity of her timbers.

Victor stared after him, twisting one end of his moustache until it threatened to part company

with his lip. Then he turned on his heel and stalked within, motioning us to follow.

"Lost with all hands!" he snapped as soon as we were gathered in the saloon.

"It's not my fault." Kalugin sagged into a chair. "I was below when the _Gladstone_ went

down. You know that. My orders were to rescue the priceless painting a New York millionaire

stupidly kept in the cabin of his yacht. It was not my responsibility to see to it that the crew

drowned. When the rescue transport picked me up after the storm they made a clean sweep of the

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kag...%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt (3 of 11) [1/5/2005 11:13:40 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt

area. They found no survivors. The historical record _says_ there were no survivors."

"Well, now we know otherwise, don't we?" Victor went to the galley door and flung it open.

"Coffee!" he shouted, and slammed it again and turned to pace up and down before us. "Who is this

miserable little tattooed goat, may I ask?"

"Only one of the hands before the mast."

"Biographical data?"

Kalugin accessed. "Mackie Hayes, able-bodied seaman, age thirty-two, no residence given,"

he replied. "He was an excellent hand, unless he got liquor. He was a fighting drunk. I recall he

nearly killed a man in Honolulu. Trouble with the ladies, too. I should guess his nationality to

have been Yankee, despite his oddities of speech, which I believe were due to an old injury

resulting in partial paralysis of the facial muscles on the right side."

"You may as well update your entry to present tense," said Victor bitterly. "We know very

well he's alive and kicking."

"And salvaging," I added.

There was a knock on the door. Victor opened it to receive the coffee tray, borne not by a

mortal servant but by one of our Technicians.

"Sir, it appears the mortals are preparing to dive," he warned Victor. I leaned back to

look out a porthole and saw the sailor running about on deck, setting up the air pump. His young

lady came struggling up on deck bearing an unwieldy mass that proved to be an old diving suit. He

snatched it from her and said some angry thing. She hurried back below and re-emerged a moment

later with a great brass diving helmet in her arms. He was already shrugging into the suit.

"Even as we speak," I confirmed, accepting a cup and saucer from Victor.

"And, sir, we're reading a storm moving in from the southwest," said the Technician. "We

expect heavy seas by twenty-three-hundred hours. Shall we put in to the island? The charts show a

good harbor with anchorage on the windward side."

"There's a thought." Victor dropped a lump of sugar into his coffee and stirred it. "And

perhaps the storm will sink that filthy rust-bucket and save us the trouble."

There followed another poignant silence. The Technician cleared his throat. "Is that one of

our options, sir?"

Kalugin rose to his feet.

"Possibly," said Victor at length. "You'll get your orders when we've made a decision. For

now, go tell the cook we want breakfast. And I particularly want some cinnamon toast!" he called

after the departing Technician.

Now it was Kalugin who paced back and forth, while Victor stood sipping his coffee. We

heard a splash and the whirring as a drum of cable unwound.

"What do you think he's after, Kalugin?" inquired Victor.

"Not the painting, he couldn't be," said Kalugin. "Even if he'd known what it was worth, he

wouldn't have any reason to expect there to be anything left of it by now."

"What, then?"

"VanderCook's strongbox, I'm sure. Possibly some of the other _objets d'art_. There were

some ormolu things, I remember, and a statuette. He might think they'd fetch a pretty price."

"And if he sees a shiny silver canister down there?" Victor drained his cup.

Kalugin bit his lip. "He'll probably bring it up."

The door opened. Victor turned, perhaps in expectation of his cinnamon toast, but our

Underwater Recovery Specialist entered the room.

"Mme. Masaki." Kalugin bowed.

"Good morning. Victor, are you aware that a monkey in a diving suit just went over the side

in the general direction of the _Gladstone_?"

"Quite aware. Did you manage to sleep through our little pre-dawn confrontation somehow?"

Victor poured a cup of coffee and presented it to her.

"I wear earplugs. Are we aborting our mission, then?"

"Certainly not. Cream? Sugar?"

She shook her head. "We can't conduct a dive while that creature's down there."

"We might try," Kalugin said. She widened her eyes at him.

"Are you mad? That would be contrary to specific Company policy. Can we persuade him to

leave, Victor?"

"Not easily." Victor steepled his fingers. "He's determined and rather combative. We may be

obliged to hope for an accident."

Mme. Masaki put down her cup and simply looked at him. There was yet a third poignant

silence.

"Good God, the woman is with child!" cried Kalugin.

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kag...%20-%20The%20Wreck%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt (4 of 11) [1/5/2005 11:13:40 PM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Kage%20Baker%20-%20The%20Wreck\%20of%20the%20Gladstone.txt...

展开>> 收起<<

Kage Baker - The Wreck of the Gladstone.pdf

共11页,预览4页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Kage Baker - The Wreck of the Gladstone

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: