Son of Fortune (17 page)

“I suppose I thought there would be machines,” Christopher said quietly. “Not just…this.” It was the first time Aiden had ever seen him rattled.

“Yes,” Aiden said blankly, unable to tear his eyes away from the awful scene. “But how would they get machines out here? Or the coal to run them. And the dust would be hard on machines.…” He trailed off. Talk of machines was just to fill up the air. What level of hell was this? A track ran from the center of the dig site straight to the cliff edge above the loading wharf, but the carts that ran on this track were pulled by men, not mules. A cart that size, Aiden knew from coal mining, could carry one ton. But mules needed more food and water than men did, and they probably could not work long in this blistering heat. So it was men—hundreds of men.

“What do we do?” Aiden whispered, his voice choked more by horror than by the toxic dust.

“What do you mean?” Christopher grabbed his arm, his fingers digging into the flesh, and turned him away from the scene. “Business,” he said. “We do business.”

As he followed Christopher toward the office, Aiden thought about the strange, haunted captain so eager to wager away his ship, so ready to burn her if he could not. What kind of business was this going to be?

The office compound was a collection of shabby little buildings that would have been considered poor anywhere else in the world, but here, where every plank of wood had to be hauled in from the distant mainland, were probably considered quite grand. There was one main building with three separate doors opening onto a narrow veranda, barely wide enough for two men to walk side by side. There was a separate little kitchen building, essentially just a thatch roof for shade with some woven mats for walls, and two sturdier sheds to store supplies, with locking doors and no windows. There were two large water barrels, also with locks, set under the shade of a lean-to.

A large, dark Negro sat in a cane chair at one end of the veranda, where he had a view of both the compound and the digging below. His clothes were worn, but his short hair was meticulously cut, smooth and even as the perfect hedges outside the Worthingtons' front door. Propped against the wall behind him was a wooden club the size of a baseball bat, though thinner, meant to be swung with one hand. It had leather lacing wrapped around the handle, stained darker in the middle from a sweaty grip. Coiled neatly beside the Negro's chair was a braided bullwhip. He said nothing as they stepped onto the narrow porch, just looked them quickly up and down, then nodded toward the middle door.

Mr. Koster, the manager of the island, sat at his desk. He was a small man with heavy bones, not fat exactly, but soft and unworked. He, like the Negro, was clean-shaven and had his hair cut so short it was impossible to tell the color. His skin was ghostly pale and puffed the way it got to be for men too fond of brown liquor and tinned meats. Aiden had assumed he would be Peruvian, but now he couldn't guess what his heritage was.

“Good morning, Mr. Koster. We are so pleased to meet you.” Christopher took his hat off and made a formal bow. “I am Christopher Worthington; this is my partner, Aiden Madison, of the
Raven.
We arrived yesterday from San Francisco.”

Koster's desk looked like a schoolteacher's castoff, and there was a crack down the front from top to bottom, as if an angry student had kicked it in a temper. The top of the desk was almost entirely covered in little decorative knickknacks: carved wooden birds, embroidered pincushions, small blobby glass animals, china angels crowded together on painted tin trays. There was barely enough space for a ledger in the center. The office was covered in calendar pictures. Covered wall to wall, ceiling to floor. Some, dated as far back as 1857, were just faded bluish shapes with curled, crispy edges by now, the Alps indistinguishable from Tahiti.

“The
Raven
?” Koster looked puzzled. “I know that ship.” His accent was impossible to place, but there were suggestions of German.

“She has sailed here before,” Christopher said. “Under Captain Newgate. We are the new owners. We have the guano license as well.” He produced the paper, with its official signatures and stamps. “We are looking forward to conducting our business here. We haven't had much chance to look around, but it seems like a splendid operation!”

Aiden was startled to detect Mr. Worthington in Christopher's voice, cadence and even posture. How easily he had slipped into business mode, like a lady whipping out her painted fan. Koster leaned back in his chair, an ornate construction of carved mahogany—a bishop's chair, though spidery with cracks and pocked with tiny wormholes. He examined the papers.

“They appear to be in order,” he said. Christopher and Aiden waited awkwardly, neither sure what to say next. Koster controlled the fate of every ship in the anchorage, determining who would load and depart in a few weeks and who might languish for months. The Worthington name had clout in the United States, but the biggest shippers in the guano trade were from England or Germany and had been dealing here for a decade. Koster would have to be courted carefully.

“This will do.” Koster tapped the papers together and handed them back.

“We would be honored if you would dine aboard our ship,” Christopher offered. “Our cooking is undoubtedly less fine than you are accustomed to, but we do have a fattened live goose and some excellent wines that have been carefully kept.”

“Very nice.” Koster creaked forward in his chair, sliced his nail beneath the ledger page and turned it with a heavy sigh. “I could come Tuesday, a week from now, though it must be early—say, six? I have another engagement at nine.” He closed the book and looked at Christopher with a smug little smile. “Will your wine keep that long? I would hate to see fine wine spoil on my account.”

“Yes.” Christopher fumbled for the first time Aiden had ever seen. “As it suits you, sir,” he recovered. “We will await your company.”

Aiden could tell Christopher was annoyed by the man and was working as hard as he could to hide it. “Is there anything else?” Koster asked.

“No. Good day, sir.”

“Is it possible to explore a bit?” Aiden asked impetuously.

“Explore?”

“To walk around on the island.”

“Whatever for?”

“I have some interest in the natural elements,” he said, grasping for the best excuse. “Birds and such.”

Koster looked at Aiden as if he had asked to be dropped into a pit of spiders.

“Fine, if you stay away from the digging,” Koster said. “It's dangerous. Nature is filthy, but I know there are those who must have a look at it, so fine if you must. You know there is no water anywhere?”

“I do, sir.”

“And where the guano is fresh, you can fall through. We will not rescue you.”

“I will be careful and expect no rescue.”

“There is something of a path beyond the compound here.” Koster waved vaguely. “Those so inclined do occasionally walk there to observe nature. There is a surveying team working up there that may have advice about birds and whatnot.”

“Thank you, Mr. Koster,” Aiden said.

“What are you on about?” Christopher said the moment they left the office. “Since when do you go observing nature?”

“I want to see more of the place.”

“God—why?”

“We have to know what we've become part of.”

“No, we don't,” Christopher said. He stood at the top of the stairs with his back to the digging, his arms folded resolutely. “I know you. I know what you're thinking. We've seen something harsh—”

“Harsh?”

“—and you have a dangerously tender heart,” Christopher went on. “But what is going to change? Whatever you discover?”

“I don't know, but—”

“Then I'll tell you. Nothing!” Christopher spat, trying in vain to get the acrid guano dust out of his mouth. “We're here now. We've invested every penny and sailed four thousand miles. It looks a bit rough—”

“A bit?”

“—but we have a contract for guano. We have loans to pay off and a crew to pay. You are a businessman now, not a laborer, not an indentured servant, not a farm boy or a rock digger or—whatever rotten life you once had!”

“These men are slaves.”

“They are not.”

“What do you need overseers with whips for if not for slaves?”

“There is no slavery in Peru. They abolished it before we did! I'm not going to argue out here all day in the sun.” Christopher sighed, pulling out his handkerchief to wipe the dusty sweat from the corners of his eyes. “This is reality. We cannot change it. And this is our fortune. We must take it! Have your walk. I'll send the launch back for you at noon.”

“No,” Aiden said. His head was spinning. “We can't ask the men to row out in the noon sun.”

“For God's sake, Aiden, we own the ship! We can tell the men to do anything we want!”

“There must be other boats coming and going. I'll try and catch a ride with someone—otherwise, four o'clock.”

“Fine. As you wish.” Christopher hurried down the path. Aiden turned around and started walking up the guano mountain. He had no idea what he really expected to learn. And regardless, Christopher was right—what could they do about it? Haul up the anchor and sail home empty?

The path wound along the back side of the island, so after only about a hundred yards, Aiden could no longer see into the open pit. Once he was away from the digging, where the guano was undisturbed, it really did not smell bad at all. It was like a sourish kind of ordinary dirt. The taint of ammonia was definitely still there, but it did not burn. The fresh breeze blowing in from the ocean also helped. The path was little more than a slight trail of packed footsteps. The guano on either side of it, fresh and not yet trodden on, was surprisingly light and spongy, though also sticky, a bit like fresh soap. It was honeycombed all over with little holes, and sometimes, even on the path, his foot plunged through up to his knee. Lizards popped in and out of the holes, skittered across the surface and stopped to twist a curious eye at him. There were also immense flocks of a type of blue-gray bird, like a pigeon. It had a bright red beak and jaunty little yellow feathers on each side of its head. The birds sat so thick in places that Aiden couldn't see the ground beneath them. Then he noticed that they had actually made burrows in the guano. Little heads popped in and out like nosy cottage wives peeping out on a village. They did not seem to be bothered by his presence, or even to notice him, but sometimes a group of them would rise all at once and wheel about in a swoosh of wings so strong it was like a wind against his face.

Millions of seabirds filled the sky like a blizzard. Some he had learned on the voyage—cormorants and terns and boobies, pelicans, frigate birds with their great black wings thin and sharp on the sky—but others were completely new. Their cries were wild and ghostly. He had never seen so many live things crowded into any one place. The rocks down below along the shoreline looked like they were made of brown velvet from all the sea lions lying there, and there were easily just as many splashing in the surf. Aiden wondered if they shared the rocks in shifts, for there could not possibly be room for all at once.

He walked for about twenty minutes, covering no great distance, partly because there wasn't much distance to cover on such a small island, but mostly because the soft guano made for slow walking. Concentrating as he was on his steps, and with his hat pulled low to protect from the sun (and anything dropping from above), Aiden came upon the surveyors almost without warning.

The trio looked as out of place as hummingbirds on a glacier. One man stood bent over a theodolite, while the other two played cards on a colorful woven blanket beneath a small canopy. The cardplayers were in their mid-twenties, Aiden guessed. One sat on a small canvas camp stool and held his cards in a tight fan. He had a gentleman's smooth hands and thick chestnut hair curling over his shoulders. It was clearly too hot to have such a loose blanket of hair, Aiden thought, which marked it as a vanity. The other man reclined on his side, propped up on one elbow. He was very fair, with short reddish-blond hair. His shirtsleeves were extra-long to cover his pale hands, and a broad-brimmed straw hat lay at the ready beside him. The two men looked up, startled, as Aiden approached.

Then the man at the instrument turned, and Aiden was surprised to see that it was not a man. She wore trousers and a waistcoat like a man, and rough boots dusted white with the dust of the place, but she was clearly a woman. Her face was framed with a straw hat but still browner than any proper woman would allow.

“I'm sorry to disturb you,” Aiden said. “I was just exploring. I wanted to see the birds and nature.” Aiden snatched off his hat, the thing to do upon meeting a lady, and felt the sun immediately burn his scalp. “I'm sorry. I interrupted you.”

“Not at all.” Her glance darted quickly to the men on the blanket, like a child caught playing in a forbidden parlor. “We just aren't used to visitors up here.”

“I'm Aiden Madison, of the
Raven
from San Francisco.”

“I am Alice Brock,” she said. “This is Mr. Nicholas Brock.” The chestnut-haired man got up and ducked out from under the little canopy. He shook Aiden's hand.

“And this is my assistant, Gilbert Windemare,” Nicholas said. The fair-haired man gave a little wave from the blanket. “We're surveying the island.” Nicholas had to speak loudly to be heard over the birds and barking seals.

“We're pleased to meet you.” Alice took off her hat, and a brown braid dropped out and swung over her shoulder. She wiped her sweaty forehead on her sleeve. Aiden noticed that her nails were chipped and her hands were rougher than her husband's.

“Nicholas lets me play about with his surveying instruments,” Alice quickly explained, as if reading his mind. “There is so little else to do here that I grow bored.”