Home Fires Page 11

  Skip nodded. “This isn’t the time for courtesy.”

  “Exactly. You had a first-class stateroom, and from what you say, you’re a wealthy man. You’ll be ransomed, and you’ll ransom your contracta and her mother. Why are you willing to fight?”

  “Not to save your life or the lives of your crew. It’s hard to admit this even to myself.”

  “As long as you’re ready to help me get the ship back, you don’t have to answer,” the captain said.

  “I will anyway, because I want to get it out in the open. First, because the hijackers will kill me if they catch me. I’ve shot—I don’t know … I was going to say eight or ten, but it could be more. Some will have lived, and they’ll be able to identify me.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Skip shrugged. “Second—this is the hard part.”

  “Go on.”

  “Second because I need to prove myself to Chelle. To myself, too. Perhaps to myself most of all. Chelle went to some godforsaken planet and fought like a lioness. I stayed here, kept the home fires burning, and won a few cases. Have I told you about our hands?”

  The captain shook his head.

  “Her mother and I were already on board, already captured when Chelle got there. The offenders had a life preserver with pants. You got into them and held on, and they pulled you up.”

  “A breeches buoy.”

  “Thank you. I put my hands behind me as if I were in handcuffs, and I got Chelle’s mother to do it, too. I wanted Chelle to know what was going on.”

  “I understand.”

  “She did. She had her gun out in an instant and shot the man who had this machine gun I’ve been carrying around. She’s a very good shot.”

  “But she was doing the fighting, and not you? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Correct. More offenders were coming—I suppose they’d heard the shot. I got this gun, pointed it like you’d point a garden hose, and held the trigger back. Chelle fired, too. You know the rest.”

  “Perhaps we’d better go.”

  Skip nodded. “Will you give me that handgun?”

  “I’ll give you two, and couple of spare magazines. Can Virginia shoot?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it, but Chelle bought her a gun.”

  “We’ll have to find people who can, and are willing to fight. I’m taking two myself. One of us may not make it home.”

  “Neither of us,” Skip said.

  “If I don’t and you do, I want you to tell my wife I fought bravely.”

  “I will. You’ve got my word on it.”

  “Even if I didn’t.”

  Later, outside the bridge, Skip said, “Why are you fighting, Captain? The cruise line would ransom you.”

  “You told that girl on the phone,” the captain said. “It’s my ship.”

  REFLECTION 7: Guns

  The little man with the big mustache had killed his wife. I remember the pain in his eyes and the hands that twisted each other’s fingers. “You have all these things,” the little man had said. “People and things you think will help you…”

  He had said that over and over and every time he said it I nodded.

  “Our family doctor. We’d gone to him for years. We thought he was our friend. It was psychiatric he said, and he didn’t do that. He wouldn’t treat psychiatric cases. So we went to the government. Everybody’s supposed to get medical care. Everybody, and it’s free.” He had battered his wife into submission and strangled her with a lamp cord.

  “Supposed to.” I think that’s what I said.

  The little man seemed not to have heard me. “They assigned us a psychiatrist. We never even spoke to him. He had all these patients, his girl said, hundreds and hundreds of patients. He’d get to Janice when he could, but it would probably be five years.”

  I felt embarrassed then, as though it were my fault, and in a way I suppose it was.

  “Our minister wouldn’t talk to her. She had to come to him—that was what he said. She had to come to the rectory willingly, asking his help. She wouldn’t go out of the house, Mr. Grison, and she said nothing was wrong with her. Every time we talked, it ended the same way. She’d say I thought she was crazy, but she wasn’t. She’d say I told everybody she was crazy, but it was a lie. I’d told her mother she was crazy, and her mother had called her up and told her all about it, but she wasn’t crazy, no, she wasn’t crazy, I was crazy, and I’d better stop lying about her or I’d be sorry. Her mother was dead.”

  I nodded and said, “I see,” trying to make it sound as if it did some good, as if I’d helped him in some fashion.

  “Our children wouldn’t help me. Jewel tried, but she brought her back after two days. The others wouldn’t even try. They’ve got their own families to take care of. I understand that. I know how it is, but they could have done something. I’d worked hard so they could eat well, so they could have nice clothes for school. That—it should have counted for something.”

  To which I had agreed.

  “She had friends. Three of the women got together and came over. They played some card game with her, and they all laughed a lot, and whispered among themselves, and told about their children. It lasted about four hours, and when it was over they came to me in a group, all three of them came, and they said there wasn’t anything the matter with Janice, she was perfectly fine and maybe she had been upset or something. As soon as they left, it was just like it had been before. Nothing had changed.”

  The little man had leaned forward, suddenly intense. “She could turn it on and turn it off. She was only crazy when she wanted to be. Try to understand!”

  And I had told him, “They can be very deceptive, I know.”

  The little man had slumped as if exhausted. “She tried to set fire to the house three times, Mr. Grison. She’d wait until I was asleep, then get up and try to set fire to the house, and there was nobody but me to take care of her. I was in there with her, there in the house alone with her. I was all alone.”

  It’s what we do when we’re all alone. We kill.

  Here are the guns the captain gave me, right here in my belt. Guns are for that time. The police will protect us—but not when we need their protection. Our government will protect us, until we need its protection. The UN will protect us, so long as it doesn’t violate the UN’s great unwritten rule: In disputes between the third world and the NAU, always side with the third world.

  How much help is the third world giving the human race against the Os? The Europeans are fighting, even though we spy on them and they on us. The Greater Eastasians are fighting, too, while spying on the NAU and the EU—perhaps because the NAU and the EU spy on them. The SAU’s fighting itself, and so is bound to win, and lose.

  As for the rest … We think of their people as poor and hungry, and so they are. The governments that have robbed them of everything are waiting now to despoil us. Those governments are poor and hungry, too. As poor, and as hungry, as so many vultures.

  The captain and I, alone and frightened here on this ship, are humanity in the same way that the word represents the thing. Or if not humanity, then Western civilization. Here, I am the law and the ideal of justice, the ideal our masters have forgotten—the ideal they would spit upon if they recalled it. I am justice, law, and civilization; and I am going to fight like a rat in a corner.

  A cornered rat with two pistols and a submachine gun.

  8. GOING DOWN

  “You come down!”

  The shouter was on the Main Deck, clearly visible in the moonlight. “Come down quick or we shoot!” One of his companions clarified that statement by shooting, his rifle pointed almost vertically up.

  The shot was answered by what sounded like a string of obscenities from the topgallant yard of Number 5 Mast.

  “Missed ’em,” the captain whispered. “Nobody fell.”

  Skip nodded. They were watching from the dubious shelter of a veranda overlooking the stern.

  “Four of them are bunched up th
ere. Do you think you can get them with that machine gun?”

  Before Skip could shake his head, there was a shot from the fantail, aft of Number 6 Mast. The flash, a pinprick of yellow flame smaller than a spark, was gone in an instant; the report, half lost in the immensity of the silent sea, small and weak.

  Yet the hijacker with the rifle lurched forward, his steps awkward and uneven. He bent, crumpled, and fell on his face. The remaining three opened fire, joined by three others some distance away.

  Skip vaulted the railing without a moment’s thought.

  He landed, perhaps fortunately, on a seventh who had been running onto the open deck. Afterward, he could not recall how he had gotten to his feet or how his submachine gun had gotten from his back to his bruised hands, only stumbling toward the men he felt certain must be shooting at Chelle, hearing the captain’s shots behind him, and dropping to one knee before firing a short burst—the submachine gun leaping and shaking in his grip, although it seemed then that he heard no shots, neither his own nor the shot fired by the lone man at the base of the mast, who turned and fired before he fell.

  He stood, no longer shooting; and the captain shouted up to the men on the topgallant yard: “Get down here! See those weapons? They’re yours. Come down and claim them.”

  After that, he was in Chelle’s arms, and she in his, although he did not relax his grip on his submachine gun.

  “They’ll come,” he said. “They must have heard us.”

  “Out of that door there.” She pointed. “One at time, with the light behind them. Want to bet I can’t go five for five?”

  * * *

  They held their meeting in the first-class tearoom, a place of polished wood, old framed prints, and fine china. All four of them were tired and more than a little baffled.

  “If they scuttle,” Chelle said, “they’ll drown first. I don’t think they’ll do it.”

  “They will or they won’t,” Vanessa told her. “Nothing in this world is less predictable than a frightened man.”

  The captain chuckled.

  “It’s the truth! Women are criers, screamers, or fighters. If I know the woman, I can tell you exactly what she’ll do. Men … Well, it depends on thousand things.”

  Chelle said, “Skip wasn’t frightened. He jumped that rail like a tiger. I saw him and you didn’t.”

  “If he wasn’t frightened, he doesn’t count. Were you, Skip? I was hiding behind a ventilator and so was Chelle.”

  “Afterward,” Skip told her. “Only afterward. They were trying to kill Chelle, half a dozen of them.”

  Chelle made a rude noise. “I was firing from cover, not hiding, and those dumbfucks couldn’t hit a bull in the ass with a bass fiddle.”

  The captain said, “We can argue about that later. The hijackers in the hold are our present problem. What can we do about them?”

  “Rush ’em,” Chelle said. “Keep them waiting for two or three days, then rush ’em.”

  Mildly, Skip said, “What if they scuttle?”

  “We escape in the boats and they drown.”

  Vanessa asked, “Would we have time to launch the lifeboats, Richard?”

  “Yes, but we’d lose the ship, and we might die in the boats. Or some of us might.”

  Skip said, “We’re not as strong as they think we are. I tried to fool them at the parley, and I succeeded. Don’t question that, please—it will just waste time. I fooled them, but they may not stay fooled. If they don’t, they may rush us.”

  Chelle said, “Cool! Let ’em try it.”

  “They may.” Skip leaned forward.

  The captain laid a notebook on the table. “Let’s list our options. We can rush them, or we can wait for them to rush us. Anything else?”

  Vanessa said, “How well can you steer without the rudders? Well enough to get us back to the NAU?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what Mr. Reuben is trying to find out, steering with the sails. If you mean mainland North America, I think you can forget it. It’s too far, and we’d be tacking. How do you tack without a rudder?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Neither do I, and I doubt that it could be done. A fore-and-aft rig might manage something, but we’re square-rigged.”

  Chelle said, “Aren’t there a lot of islands?”

  “Yes, and we were going to visit a few of them. But they’re well east of our position, and the prevailing winds have been driving us southwest. We can counter that to some extent. Maybe we could even counter it enough to slip between Grenada and Tobago and round the shoulder of South America. That would buy us time, and we might be rescued.”

  Skip asked, “What if we can’t? You said we might be able to do that. Suppose we don’t make it?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “Then we hit Tobago, I suppose. Richard?”

  “Or Trinidad. Most likely of all, we ground somewhere on the north coast of the South American Union. I’m not going to write that down, because it’s almost the worst thing that could happen, in my opinion. Not quite as bad as sinking, but close. It’s what will happen if nothing we try works.”

  Chelle’s hand found Skip’s. “What if we rush them and win? Could you repair the rudders?”

  “The steering gear. They haven’t done anything to the rudders themselves. The steering gear’s electric, and all they had to do was pull a couple of wires, or cut them. It should be easy to fix.”

  “Then that’s what we do, damn it!”

  Vanessa’s voice was almost a whisper. “With you out in front, darling?”

  “Damn fucking right, Mother!”

  “In that case, I vote against it, Richard.”

  Skip said, “So do I.”

  The captain laid down his pencil. “We’re not voting yet.”

  Vanessa edged her chair nearer his. “You’ve got an idea, and I’ll vote for it. Whatever it is.”

  Skip nodded. “What is it, Captain?”

  “Let me lay a little groundwork first. For years now, northern South America has been a disaster. Revolution and banditry, crime and corruption, every kind of hell. We’ve steered clear of it, and so have the other cruise lines. The Caribbean islands have been relatively safe up until now. If that weren’t true, we wouldn’t have put in at La Glaise.”

  Skip said, “Where you were blindsided. I understand.”

  “Grenada has been another regular stop. It’s EU, not SAU.”

  “EU?” Chelle said. “Over here?”

  “That’s right. There are a few EU islands. Jamaica’s the biggest. Grenada’s the nicest, in our opinion. We’ve never had trouble there, and it’s in their interest to have as many cruise ships stop off there as possible. Tourism’s the main industry. I want to try it.”

  Chelle said, “If we can get there, sure. Maybe they can front us a little tear gas.”

  Skip nodded. “I agree, Captain, but I have a question.”

  “So do I,” Vanessa said, “and I think it’s the same one. You’re the captain, Richard, so why ask us? Why don’t you just do it?”

  The captain drew a deep breath. “Because I need your cooperation—all three of you. Lieutenant Brice is in the infirmary, and some of the best people I had are dead. I don’t want another fight with the hijackers before we make port there. It would be a fight we might lose.”

  He paused, then spoke to Chelle. “You’re headstrong, Ms. Blue. I don’t want you to organize an attack on your own, and after what I’ve seen you do, I’m afraid you might do it. You’re a soldier? That’s what Mr. Grison told me.”

  Chelle made him a mock salute. “Mastergunner Blue at your service, sir.”

  “I certainly hope so. We’ve quite a few vets among the passengers, and Mr. Gorman tells me that they—and you—were our best fighters. Would they follow you if you tried to surprise the hijackers?”

  “Absolutely. Every one of them.”

  “I want you to give me your word you won’t do it, at least until we reach Grenada—or fail to reach it. Will you?”

>   “You’ve got it, Captain,” Chelle said.

  “Thank you. I’m deeply indebted to you.” He turned to Vanessa. “You’re Ms. Blue’s mother, Virginia? That’s what Mr. Grison told me, although you seem much too young.”

  Vanessa’s smile would have charmed a man far less susceptible. “I was a mere infant of twenty-three when Chelle was born.”

  “But if Ms. Blue here fought…?”

  Chelle said, “You’re right. I was gone over twenty years, Earth-time. My mother’d be pushing seventy now if she hadn’t been up in space herself. She won’t talk about it, damn her. Not to me and probably not to you.”

  Vanessa smiled again. “My lips are sealed.”

  “I understand,” the captain told her. “You were a civilian employee of the government. We’ll leave it at that.”

  “As I said, Richard, my lips are sealed.”

  “Not where your daughter is concerned, I hope. You’re bound to have a good deal of influence with her. I’d like you to exert it to prevent a premature attack. That’s why you’re here.”

  “I’d do it even if you hadn’t asked, Richard. I’d rather die myself than see Chelle killed.”

  No one spoke until Skip said, “What about me, Captain? Why was I invited?”

  The captain seemed to hesitate. “You’re an attorney, Mr. Grison? I believe you told me so.”

  Skip nodded. “Burton, Grison, and Ibarra. Chet Burton’s our senior partner, but he’s retired.”

  “You do the senior partner’s work without the senior partner’s pay.”

  “If you want to put it that way. I’m doing all right financially.”

  “I imagine you are.” The captain cleared his throat. “You and Ms. Blue are an extraordinary couple. We’re very lucky to have you two on board.”

  Chelle said, “Thanks.”

  “I feel blessed in all three of you.” The captain studied their faces before he spoke again. “Something was said earlier about Mr. Grison’s jumping the railing. Like a tiger was the way you put it, Mastergunner Blue. I was nearer than you were, and I confirm it. He realized—he’s told me this since—that they were shooting at you.”