Emperor of Gondwanaland (3 page)

The account seemed credible to me. Merino struck me as an indecisive and artificial captain, who could easily lose his crew through incompetent orders.

“This is your first command, I take it,” said I.

Bristling, he turned to impale me with his dark eyes. “Why do you say so? Am I so obviously and contemptibly inept?”

I recalled the stern pride of the Aristarchs, which had caused them to consider themselves superior to those others on their long-ago home-world, and which no doubt operated to this day. I tried to placate the unstable man.

“No, no, it is just that you are young. In the Union, a man is often close to my age before he attains his first command.”

Merino relaxed somewhat. “Perhaps I am too young. I had sailed much before this voyage, but only for pleasure, up and down our coast. My uncle, a high Aristarch, chose me for this mission. It is a government voyage I was on.”

Merino seemed like the weather, shifting and unpredictable, a man of many extravagant moods. Now he grew the most excited I had yet seen him.

“If you could help me complete my mission, the Aristarchy will reward you generously. You will have my undying gratitude as well.”

I was about to ask the central question that I had been withholding all this time: How did the Fanzoii figure in this bizarre affair? But I wished to ask it out of earshot of Merino’s pet Fanzoy, which tagged along still, sharp-eared and alert.

Merino must have intercepted my intent study of his familiar. His quick elation subsided to dourness. He said, “You may say whatever you wish in front of Tess. I call her by the closest approximation I can make to her true name. She understands our speech, but cannot reproduce it, and so nothing will be repeated.”

I observed then the queerest look pass between the man and the alien. It was a gaze compounded equally of desire, hatred, repugnance, and fatal attraction. I hope never to see its like again.

“All right,” I said. “I will be blunt. Why do the Fanzoii roam the ship, armed and dangerous? Why are they aboard at all? Was it some mad attempt by the Aristarchy to turn them into sailors? I have heard they are intractable.”

“You speak to the point,” Merino said, squeezing his chin, “and I can do no less. The Fanzoii were my cargo. Now they are my crew. I asked you before to help me complete my original mission. I doubt that such a thing could be done now.”

Perplexed and not a little frustrated, I said, “How were they your cargo?”

Merino sighed. “You do not have the Fanzoii to contend with on Ordesto, and can perhaps afford to be moralistic about what I shall tell you. Please restrain yourself. We of the Aristarchy are not so lucky, due to the twist of fate that inclined us to settle on Carambriole, and our plight could easily be yours. In any case, the Fanzoii occupy much choice land that our growing country needs. They are reluctant to be assimilated. Coexistence is proving impossible, as we expand. I was taking the first load of Fanzoii to the Nameless Continent, to plant a colony there.”

Paean has but three continents. The Nameless Continent stretches from the South Pole north for some forty degrees. Only its extreme northern edge is livable.

“But could they survive there?” I said. “Is it what they are used to?”

Shrugging, Merino replied, “Such questions were not thought to be germane. Our plan was simply to remove all the Fanzoii there and forget about them, so Carambriole could be free. However, with my crew lost, I was forced by practical considerations to free the Fanzoii from belowdecks, for their aid. Tess here has been a remarkable go-between, almost my second-in-command. The rest of the Fanzoii have proved themselves”—he shuddered briefly— “eminently capable at whatever they turn their hands to.”

The man’s mission seemed both mad and bad, not something that I wished to aid him with. “It is impossible for you to cling to this hulk any longer. Come aboard the
Melville
with me, you and the Sanctus. We will find room for the Fanzoii somewhere in the hold. With good winds, southern Carambriole is only three weeks away. Your troubles will be over as soon as you land. Let others try the voyage again, if they will.”

Merino parted his sensualist’s lips, and for a moment I was convinced he wanted—longed—to accept. Then the indigo eyes of the Fanzoy—Tess—seemed almost to spark, its upper lip fluting in that obscene fashion. A visible twinge went through Merino, whose back was to the native.

“No, I am afraid that is impossible. You must do whatever you can to refit my ship, so I may continue. Spare sails, cells, bots—whatever you can lend.”

I balked. “It seems like helping to send you to your doom. The Fanzoii are not experienced. You yourself are debilitated by your woes.”

Merino assumed a sudden absurd gaiety, clapping a hand on my shoulder. “We are prattling out here under the blazing sun like savages. This is not the treatment I should be extending to a guest—nay, a rescuer. Let’s adjourn to my cabin for a meal—it’s past noon—and discuss things further.”

I considered. It seemed allowable. I might learn more if Merino felt more relaxed.

“Done. Provided we can send my man Belgrano something at his watch.”

“Certainly,” said Merino. “Come with me.”

We reversed our course. As we were passing a large plastic water butt, full of a stagnant algae soup, I chanced to see the crouching figure of Purslen Monteagle behind it. Merino did not notice him, his eyes focused rather on some private landscape.

The Sanctus, knowing he had my attention, worked his wrinkled lips silently, over and over again, mouthing a single word which I at last interpreted as a name.

“Sadler.”

IV. A Meal, and Its Consequences

Back in front of the aft deckhouse we encountered the twelve seated Fanzoii. Their demeanor was obscure and unfathomable. Still in the positions we had left them in—ophidian limbs neatly coiled, truncheons laid across the valleys of their robes—they emanated a curious sensation of mental communion with each other, for all that their ianthine eyes followed our movements precisely.

Merino ignored—or truly failed—to see them.

The Fanzoy named Tess exchanged, I thought, a brief glance with her kin.

The captain of the
Cockerel
laid his bejeweled fingers on the door handle to his cabin. I noticed the smashed security keypad above the handle, and wondered how the storm had done that damage.

“You must,” said Merino, “excuse the condition of my cabin. At home, I was overused to servants, I fear, and have consequently never gotten accustomed to tidying up after myself. And with the trouble and all …”

I dismissed his concerns—as always, seeking to make myself agreeable to him, and so bring down the barrier I felt he was maintaining between us. “I am not overnice,” I said. “Life at sea is not for the fastidious. A moderate cleanliness suffices.”

“Not for the fastidious,” he mused somberly. “How true.”

He swung the invalid door open and we entered.

Besmudged windows excluded much light. My eyes were some time in adjusting. Merino failed to turn on any luminescents, and only then did the ship’s complete lack of power hit home. Suddenly, I had a vivid image of Merino sitting in this stuffy cave on a black night, his ship drifting helplessly, the insidious Tess his only companion. I experienced a deep sympathy for the man, tinged with revulsion.

My eyes could see at last. If I had thought the deck full of detritus, it had only just prepared me for Merino’s quarters.

More logbook pages lay like a snowy blanket. Organic rubbish bred unhealthy odors. Two large wooden chairs flanked an intricately carved table, whose top was heaped with miscellaneous objects: a broken clock, a ceremonial dagger, glasses, a bottle of yellow wine, redolent cigar stubs. A bunk bore dirty, sweat-reeking sheets in a tangle. A door led inward to what I surmised was a private galley or head.

“Take a seat,” said Merino debonairly, as if hosting me in a lavish palace.

Incredulously, I swept debris from a chair and sat. As I did, I noticed two other objects in the room. One was a wall-mounted glass-fronted case, with a useless lock, bearing on racks a score or more of laser pistols. The other was a tall, sheet-draped figure in a corner. From its shrouded lines, I had sworn it were a man, had it not been so stiff and immobile. Perhaps it was some religious effigy, and I thought it best not to mention it.

Not so with the weapons, however, the presence of which made me skittish.

“Why do you carry so many arms?” I asked, nodding toward the case.

Merino, seating himself, said, “It was felt that we should have them against the Fanzoii, should they escape. But you can see how needless such precautions were.”

Tess remained standing, seemingly awaiting orders. Merino at last deigned to acknowledge her, speaking directly to her for the first time in my hearing. I listened closely for what his tone of voice might reveal.

“Tess,” he said equably, “please serve us a meal.”

Nothing. Master to slave, equal to equal, captor to captive—any or all of these might have been inferred.

Tess departed through the second door, and soon the noise of clanking pots and pans filtered out.

“Now,” said Merino, “out of that brutal sun, with a glass of good wine to hand, we may truly talk.” He lifted the broad-based flask full of amber wine and poured us each a glass. “You must praise such an excellent vintage. It’s from my estate back home. I bless the day I thought to ship several cases of it. Truth be told, I believe sometimes it’s all that has seen me through this crisis.”

I sipped my wine after Merino sipped his. “Very palatable,” I said. “But you should not give the wine overmuch credit. Surely the inner qualities of a man count for far more. Fortitude, endurance, courage, wit.”

Merino’s false ebullience disappeared. “Perhaps you are right. Yet when those fail a man, the consolations of wine are not to be spurned.”

Merino drained his glass and poured another. Aromas of cooking wafted out the open galley door.

“This bouquet reminds me of my home,” Merino said dreamily. “The dark woods, the bright, cloud-swept lawns, the lavish rooms of Truro …” His bronze-olive face grew animated. He stroked his oily mustache. Without preamble, as we sat in the gloom, he launched into a rambling discourse on his distant home.

I had only to listen and nod, and used the interval to study the enigmatic captain. He struck me as whimsical and capricious, by turns mordant and blithe, a poorly balanced fellow, who knew not his own mind. I felt then that his trouble was that he had no code to live by, was rudderless in the ethical sea, despite the imposed strictures of the Aristarchy. I, who have always prided myself on living by a certain code (whose tenets need not be described here), thought this to be the ultimate moral abyss.

What I did not consider at the time was the possibility that Merino had had a code—but that it had broken down of its inherent inconsistencies or limitations, leaving him despairing and deracinated.

The man chattered on, his black eyes liquidly refulgent, seeming to trap all the small light there was. What I gathered from his talk was that his old life had been one of leisure and only ceremonial duties, carefree and pleasure-centered.

Not the best preparation for the mission he had been sent on.

At last Tess entered with our meal: canned beef, heated, with boiled potatoes in which I later found a dead worm.

Her entrance completely transformed Merino. His pathetic panache vanished, and he fell mostly silent, drinking even more heavily.

As I ate, I studied the Fanzoy.

She—I had accepted Merino’s assertion of her sex—sat on the bunk while we picked at our meal. Her supple arms hung lightly, with her hands folded in her lap. Her soft skin, with its nap the color of certain pale-orange roses, was pleasant to look upon. Her unreadable face bore down on Merino continuously. I noticed he could not meet her eyes.

I asked to send half my meal to Belgrano. Tess passed the plate out the door to another Fanzoy, waiting instantly there.

Eventually the wine began to tell on Merino. He had drunk an enormous quantity, opening another bottle brought from under the bunk. I was barely on my second glass.

I thought that now was perhaps the best time to mention the name that had seemed so important to Sanctus Monteagle. Perhaps Merino’s unimprisoned lips would let slip something.

“Did you have,” I inquired offhandedly, “a crewman by the name of Sadler?”

Merino shot to his feet, his face livid. “Goddamn you for a sneaking spy! How came you by the name of Sadler?”

I had expected nothing so fierce. Luckily, I had had the foresight to prepare a story to shield the Sanctus.

“I glimpsed it on a strewn page from your own miskept log. Why take it so meanly?”

Merino sat again, passing a trembling hand across his sweaty brow. Tess had never stirred. “Forgive me. It is only that—I thought—No matter. Yes, there was one Sadler aboard. Sadler Merino, my cousin and first mate, whom I mentioned before. A bold and worthy man, better by far than I. But he is no more. Would he had gone overboard with the rest, instead of dying as he did!”

Merino refilled his glass, which had tipped when he jumped up, adding its yellow river to the mess. I thought he had to forcibly stop his eyes from going to the veiled statue in the corner. Maybe some old touch of religious feeling he sought to deny was upon him.