The Sea Without a Shore (ARC)

CHAPTER 30


Brotherhood on Corcyra

Woetjans called, “Hup!” She and the four riggers carrying the extension started down the Kiesche’s boarding ramp before it had clanged home on the outrigger. Brother Graves and a squad of troops in naval utilities waited on the quay, but Sissies didn’t need an audience to show off their skills.

Daniel stood at the edge of the hatchway with his hands crossed behind his back as though he were on a reviewing stand. He felt a quiet pride. To Adele he said, “The hatch doesn’t stick any more, did you notice? It just needed to be run-in properly. We’ll be returning the Kiesche in better condition than when I bought her.”

“My other employer will probably leave the additional electronics in place,” Adele said, looking toward the quay. Daniel wasn’t sure that she was actually seeing anything in the present, however. “I’ll clear my personal software. Not that it seems likely that the normal crew of a ship like this would be able to use it.”

“No, I don’t suppose they would,” Daniel said mildly. I doubt the signals section of a battleship would be able to do what you do with it, Adele, he thought, but he didn’t say that aloud.


The riggers had clamped the boarding bridge to the end of the ramp and were unrolling it toward the quay. As soon as the far end made contact with the concrete, Hale and Connolly trotted down the bridge to lock it into place. Woetjans turned and bellowed, “All clear, Six!”

“All right, Dasi,” Daniel said. “Release the passengers.”

The bosun’s mate removed the padlock from the cargo cage which held the former crew of the Madison Merchant. Barnes, his partner, swung the chain-link partition wide open.

“All right, you filthy scuts!” Dasi said. “Get out and get out fast. If you’re still inside when we turn on the steam hoses to clear the muck, that’s your lookout!”

Evans, wearing thermal gloves, was indeed holding a charged steam hose. His size and strength made him obvious choice to handle the hose, but Daniel hoped that Evans knew wasn’t really supposed to open the nozzle until everybody was out of the hold. Worst case, well, there’d be too many burn cases for the Kiesche’s Medicomp to handle, but Brotherhood served a mining region and ought to have good medical facilities.

Most of the Kiesche’s crew waited on the bridge or in the forward part of the hold. Except for the anchor watch, they would be going ashore shortly in a port with numerous amusements tailored to spacers and hard-rock miners. The groups had similar tastes.

They were all Able Spacers, and their liberty suits ranged from colorful to works of art. The suits were ordinary RCN utilities, but decorated with ribbons along the seams and embroidered patches commemorating ships the spacers had served aboard and landfalls they had made.

The Kiesches were a happy crew. They had money in their pockets and their captain’s blessing to spend it on anything that didn’t leave them dead or jugged for something he couldn’t bail them out of.

“By heaven!” Daniel muttered. “I’m the luckiest captain in the RCN to have a crew like this!”

“Yes,” said Adele. “Just as I’m lucky to hit what I shoot at ten times out of ten. Practice has nothing to do with it.”

Daniel looked at her and grinned. “Well,” he said, “let’s just say that we make a good team, the crew and ourselves.”

The Madisons shuffled out of the cage, giving Evans as wide a berth as the tight space permitted. Vapor leaked from his hose nozzle, just in case anybody thought the threat was a joke.

The passengers—or prisoners, if you preferred to think of them in that fashion—carried the gear they had brought from the Madison Merchant: duffle bags and a variety of makeshift containers. Daniel had allowed anything—except weapons—which they could carry aboard in one trip. The hold had plenty of space. If it was short on other amenities, that was a problem which the Madisons could have avoided by not kidnapping Cleveland.

“Master Cleveland?” Daniel called. Cleveland was in the hold but squeezed into a corner of the forward bulkhead. “Come and join Lady Mundy and myself, please.”

The spacers standing in front of Cleveland pushed their neighbors aside to make room. Cleveland passed through with a muttered apology to the spacers and a grateful smile for Daniel.

Spacers took for granted a degree of physical closeness which a well-born youth must find uncomfortable. As for the Transformationists—they might believe in the Community of Mankind, but from what Daniel had seen in Pearl Valley they also believed in a reasonable amount of personal space for each individual despite the barracks-style housing.

“I see Brother Graves waiting for us on the quay,” Daniel said, nodding toward the hatchway. “As soon as Cory has released the liberty party, we’ll go meet him.”

Cleveland nodded. “I’m amazed at all that’s happened,” he said. “I mean everything—yes, you releasing me so quickly, but being abducted itself. And everything—the war being over and Corcyra being at peace again.”

The last Madisons leaving the cage. Sorley had hung back. When he followed Schmidt at the end of the line, he held a case on his right shoulder to conceal his face from Daniel and Adele. Daniel smiled but said nothing.

“If I may ask, Captain?” Cleveland said diffidently. “What will happen to Captain Sorley and his crew?”

“They’ll find berths on the ships that begin landing here as soon as word of the peace gets out,” Daniel said. “Somebody’s always going to need spacers, even spacers like Sorley’s lot.”

“They will be drafted into the Pantellarian Navy,” Adele said crisply. She was still looking toward the quay, where the troops were collecting the Madisons as they stepped off the boarding bridge. “Commissioner Arnaud’s squadron of the Pantellarian Navy, at least.”

“Drafted?” said Daniel in surprise. The Madisons weren’t from Pantellaria, and some of them—Sorley himself—were Cinnabar citizens.

“Sold, if you prefer,” Adele said. “They committed the crime of kidnapping on Corcyra. They were tried in their absence by the Interim Council and sentenced to hard labor—which was commuted to banishment from Corcyra in the custody of a competent authority.”

“Tried?” said Cleveland. He was clearly puzzled.

“Justice is quick here,” Adele said with her usual composure. “I had a word with Colonel Bourbon and Commissioner Arnaud before we left, and I provided them with an update from orbit while we were waiting for landing permission.”

“I see,” said Daniel. He did, and he began to smile broadly.

Sorley reached the end of the boarding bridge and realized what was happening to his crew. He turned and shouted, “You dirty bastard, Leary! You’re going to have us shot, aren’t you!”

Woetjans was standing on the quay; she had gone across to check the way Hale and Watkins had trussed the bridge to the bitts. She grabbed Sorley by the shoulder and turned him to face her, then punched him in the stomach.

Sorley doubled up. Woetjans held Sorley’s head out over the edge of the bridge so that his mixture of bile and undigested food spewed into the harbor. When Woetjans decided there was no more to come, she tossed the captain to Schmidt’s feet and said, “Get him out of here.”

As an afterthought, Woetjans kicked Sorley’s case into the water also. Dusting her hands together with a grin, she walked back toward the Kiesche.

“All Kiesche personnel on liberty are released,” Cory announced over the PA system. “Report back in twenty-four hours local time for further orders. Command out.”

“Hallelujah!” Lorano called, but for the most part the crew filing off the ship was muted though cheerful. The hop to and from Cleveland’s World had been short, and it hadn’t involved the space battle that most had expected. Some had even been looking forward to a battle.

“I bloody well wasn’t!” Daniel said. He added to his companions, “Wasn’t looking forward to fighting the Merchant in space, I mean. Say, Master Cleveland? You may not know that we named the planet after you. When we get back to Xenos I’ll register HH1509270 at Navy House as Cleveland’s World.”

“Really?” said Cleveland. “You can do that?”

“I don’t think there’ll be a protest,” Daniel said. He thought of adding, “It’s not really much of an honor.” He let the initial statement stand instead.

“Really,” Cleveland repeated, this time without the rising inflection. “I…well, thank you. My mother will be pleased, I think. For a long time she didn’t get much news of me that pleased her.”

The officials waiting on the dock had come up the boarding bridge when the liberty party was past. Brother Graves was following a man and a woman in gray uniforms of different cut.

The man’s tunic had a plastic badge on the left breast reading Customs Service; it didn’t quite cover the unfaded strip of fabric where an embroidered patch had been recently removed. The band on the woman’s cap said Harbormaster.

“We’re here to collect customs duties,” the man said.

“And docking fees,” the woman added. “The procedures were instituted, ah, recently.”

From the way you put it, they were instituted this morning, Daniel thought. At any rate, it couldn’t have been longer than four days ago, because they weren’t in place when we lifted off.

Aloud he said, “I believe Lieutenant Cory can deal with docking fees, madam. And we carried only passengers on this arrival, but you’re welcome to search the hold. You’ll be more comfortable if you wait until the hold has been sterilized, but it’s your choice.”

He turned and called, “Lieutenant Cory, will you come aft, please?”

“Brother Cleveland, I’m very pleased to see you safe,” Graves said, edging to the side so that he could speak to his fellow. “I’m afraid I’ve got bad news for you on the below-surface scans you asked me to look at, though. If we can go to my office, I can show you there. When the Captain is free, that is.”

Cory entered from the bridge. He’d volunteered to be duty officer so that Vesey and Cazelet could take the initial liberty.

Hale is on anchor watch, come to think, Daniel realized. Not that he was concerned about a problem until the former classmates were off duty in turn; and then it was none of his business.


“We can use my equipment,” Adele said. “Unless Cory needs the console?”

“Cory, you’re relieved on the bridge until further notice,” Daniel said. “Come this way please, Master Graves, and I’ll show you the hospitality of the ship.”

Graves looked doubtful. “Ah—I’ve scanned Pearl Valley, with much more sophisticated apparatus than what was used on the scans Brother Cleveland found on file. The results take a great deal of specialized capacity.”

“I think you’ll find that my hardware…,” Adele said. Daniel noticed that she said “my” rather than “our.” “Will be sufficient to the task. If not, we can adjourn to your office, Brother Cleveland.”

Where we will wait for the sun to rise in the west, thought Daniel. Because that’s about as likely as the chance of Graves’ software overpowering Adele’s equipment.

He closed the bridge hatch behind them, leaving Cory to deal with the local officials in the hold.

***

Adele took the data chip from the case which Graves handed her. Setting it in the console’s holder, she said, “It will project in the center of the compartment as well as on the two displays, but you’ll probably want to manipulate it, Brother Graves. Take the command seat and I’ll sit at the back. As I usually do.”

Instead of seating himself immediately, Graves frowned and said, “I realize this is a very powerful unit, Lady Mundy, but the programming necessary to read this format—”

A holographic index of files appeared in the air where Cleveland and Daniel could read it. So could Hogg and Tovera, for that matter, though Adele doubted they had any desire to. She said nothing.

“I apologize,” Graves said politely. He sat down and brought up a file with the stylus he had drawn from his pocket. Adele said nothing, but she appreciated the simplicity of Graves’ apology.

The image meant nothing to Adele. It might have been a close-up of luncheon spread: an inverted arch of basically pinkish color, with overlayers and inclusions of contrasting colors, generally shades of pastel green. Near the bottom of the U was a black speck; below was a layer of sullen crimson.

“This is a cross-section of Pearl Valley,” Graves said. “The pink is mudstone laid down thirty thousand years ago. The underlayer is granite, and there are blocks of harder rock which were engulfed as the mudstone formed when the valley was part of a lake bed.”

Cleveland nodded. Daniel didn’t react, but Adele assumed he understood as clearly as even she did.

“The item Brother Cleveland noticed is here,” Graves said, circling the black dot and then expanding it to fill the image area. “I suspect the original surveyors ignored it because it was too small to be of significance. They were looking for copper ore, after all.”

“That isn’t a natural occurrence,” Daniel said. “It has shape. No crystal could look like that.”

“It has shape…,” Graves said. Adele heard an unexpectedly grim tone in his voice. “And it’s hollow, which we can see because one end is open and there are holes in some of the facets.”

He switched to another image, this one a schematic of pale blue lines. The image rotated slowly. The shape was irregular, something like a drinking tumbler which had been squeezed in the middle and whose sides were pleated. Besides the open top, holes shaped like twisted teardrops pierced the sides in several places. The bottom, though concave, was solid.

“It isn’t a container of jewels,” Cleveland said, “but it’s something. And somebody, Captain Pearl or somebody, buried it there.”

“Pearl Valley’s mudstone would be very easy to bore through or trench,” Graves said, returning to the image of the object in its matrix. He reduced the scale slightly. “It couldn’t be disturbed without leaving evidence of the disturbance, however; not when I’ve examined the site with equipment as sensitive as what I’ve been using.”

He grinned and turned toward Daniel. Adele watched his face, now in profile, as an inset on her display.

“You may be too polite to ask whether I could have made a mistake, Captain,” Graves said. “Yes, of course I could, though these images don’t require very subtle analysis. I asked two other engineers to look over the scans. They aren’t members of our community, but I trust them personally and professionally. They came to the same conclusions that I did.”

Graves shrugged. “The mudstone appears to have formed over the object,” he said. “If it’s an artifact, it isn’t a human artifact; and it certainly isn’t something that Captain Pearl buried.”

Adele had a great deal of experience in sharpening fuzzy images, but these had not been manipulated. She was looking at raw data as it came from the surveying equipment, and they were razor sharp even at the highest magnification.

“Brother Graves?” she said. “What is the object made of? It would appear to be very dense.”

“Yes, Lady Mundy,” Graves said, turning toward her with a troubled expression. Adele had inset real-time images of the three other principals on his display, but Graves seemed to be trying to look through the holographic screen to see her directly. “It’s almost impossibly dense. Granted that our scans have a degree of error and that gravity plotting is suggestive rather than solid proof—”

He shrugged again. “My colleagues and I believe that the artifact is made from a stable transuranic element,” Graves said. “Element 126, presumably, though the element’s existence is merely a prediction and it has no name. Well, Unbihexium, but that’s a placeholder unless and until the element itself is discovered. Which we apparently have just done.”

“Then it’s valuable after all,” Cleveland said. He too looked worried. “Even though it isn’t a case of jewels.”

“I suppose you could say that the artifact is of incalculable value,” Graves agreed. “There isn’t a market for such a thing because it would be unique in human experience, but it’s certainly valuable.”

“I don’t see any sign of an antenna, a wire or a spike on the end,” Daniel said. “I thought it might be a sort of cavity resonator, trapping signals and reemitting them on a different wave length.”

“What sort of signals, ah, Captain?” Adele said. “I didn’t make a detailed search of Pearl Valley, but I think my equipment would have noticed anything that didn’t fit standard parameters.”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. He grinned engagingly. “Nothing electronic, then, not if you didn’t pick it up.”

He looked from Graves to Cleveland, then said as if idly, “You believe Pearl Valley is a good place to live, Master Cleveland. For that matter, I liked the atmosphere myself, though I’m probably not a good example. I generally like places.”

“Yes, that’s so,” Cleveland said, obviously puzzled at the change of subject. “About the valley, certainly. And I’m glad to hear that you’re a happy man, sir.”

“Pretty generally, yes,” Daniel said, still grinning. “What do you suppose feelings look like? And how would you transmit them?”

“There’s no evidence…,” Graves said. He let his words trail off, perhaps because he had thought further and had realized that there was no objective evidence on any part of the matter. The healthful, welcoming nature of the Transformationist community was wholly subjective.

“Since we don’t appear to need weapons any more, thank goodness…,” Cleveland said. “Then we don’t need the money we were going to buy weapons with, do we, Brother Graves?”

“I don’t accept the connection between the artifact and our faith,” Graves said. “I’m confident that if we drill down and bring the object to the surface, which we could do very easily, it will have no adverse effect on Pearl Valley or the Transformationist Community.

He shook his head slowly and continued, “But no, I don’t see that the community has a serious need for money. Many of those who join us do so after successful careers in the wider world, and the members who guide our investments are quite skilled.”

“Then I suggest—” Cleveland began.

His face changed and he straightened on his seat. “Captain Leary,” he said in a formal tone. “Forgive me for forgetting that you and my mother are each due a third of any treasure which the expedition finds. And it appears that we have found a treasure.”

“If my sister were here,” Daniel said, “she might have an opinion on the matter. But she isn’t here, and I’m not in the business of money.”

He shrugged and said, “No treasure has been recovered. You owe me absolutely nothing, and I’m confident that Mistress Sand would say the same. Not that it matters, because she isn’t here any more than Deirdre is.”

Daniel looked at Adele and raised an eyebrow. “Do you have anything to add, Lady Mundy?” he asked. “You had some business of your own to transact on Corcyra, I believe?”

“I’ve accomplished everything I came to do,” Adele said. In a neater fashion than either Deirdre Leary or Mistress Sand can have imagined that I would. Neater than I imagined myself.


“Then I think we’re done with necessary business,” Daniel said nodding. “However—”

He looked around the compartment. His grin was just short of splitting his face. “Although it doesn’t matter to anybody and therefore nobody can be disappointed, I do have an idea as to where Captain Pearl hid whatever it was he brought from Bay. Anybody else interested in seeing if I’m right?”

He’s really a little boy, Adele thought. Then, May he never change!

Cleveland stood up, grinning back at Daniel. “I may have found peace and enlightenment,” he said, “but I haven’t lost my sense of curiosity. I certainly would like to learn!”

“And I,” said Graves, rising also.

“Hogg?” said Daniel, getting to his feet. “You usually carry fishing lures, don’t you?”

“Aye,” said Hogg. “And I’ve got a shotgun if you’d like to try the local game besides.”

“Just the lure,” said Daniel. “We’re going fishing for treasure.”