Poul Anderson - The Boat of a Million Years

A native ship was inbound, beating across the wind, a bravery of sails. She must have lain out, waiting for the tide to turn. Now she would ride the flow upstream, doubtless to Xenoknossos. Probably she would have to take shelter in one of the bays .the Ithagene had dug along the banks, while the bore went rumbling by. It would be especially dangerous today; the moon was both full and close.

Northward, some five kilometers off the mainland, water churned and jumped white, black forms reared up—the Forbidden Ground, a nasty patch of rocks and shoals. A current from the south swept strongly around it. Hanno trimmed his sails. He wanted to be well clear before the incoming tide reinforced that rush.

Tacking, he made for the nearest of three islands that lay dim in the eastern distance. He would scarcely get that far before midafteraoon, when prudence dictated he turn back, but it was something to steer by.

A goal, he thought. A harbor I won’t make. Odysseus, setting forth from ashy Troy for Ithaca, lured by the Lotus Eaters, bereaved by the Cyclops, at strife with winds and wild men, seduced by an enchantress who took away humanity, descending to the dead, raiding the fields of the sun, passing through the gate of destruction, made captive by her who loved him, cast ashore at Phaeacia—but Odysseus came home at last.

How many ports had he, Hanno, foiled to make in his millennia? All?

Tritos climbed to a breach hi the overcast. Light flamed. He sailed on the Amethyst Sea, and it was strewn with diamond dust and the manes of the waves blew white. It was as lovely and wild as a woman.

Tanithel, her black hair garlanded with anemones, who whispered her wish that she had not had to sacrifice her virginity in the temple before she came to him; Adoniah, who read the stars from her tower above Tyre—twice he cast anchor, the lights of home glimmered through dusk, and then ebb tide bore that country off and he lay again on empty waters. Afterward—Merab, Althea, Nirouphar, Cordelia, Brangwyn, Thorgerd, Maria, Jehanne, Margaret, Natalia, O Ashtoreth, the dear ghosts were beyond counting or remembering, but had they ever been much more than ghosts, belonging as they did to death? To men he felt closer, they could not bear the same thing off with them— Baalram, Thuti, Umlele, Pytheas, Ezra, rough old Rufus, yes, that hurt, somewhere inside himself Hanno had forever mourned Rufus. Stop sniveling!

The wind skirled louder. Ariadne heeled sharply. The sun disappeared behind gray, beneath which wrack began to fly. CLoud masses bulked mountainous, drawing closer. Lightning sprang about in their blue-black caverns. The islands were lost in scud-haze, the mainland aft lay low and vague. “What time is it?” Hanno asked. He whistled when the computer told him. His body had sailed for him while his mind drifted awash hi the past, longer than he knew.

He’d grown hungry too without noticing, but would be rash to trust the helm to the machinery even to duck below and fix a sandwich. “Give me Hestia,” he ordered the communicator. “Summoning.”

“Hello, hello, is anybody there? Hanno calling.”

Wind tore Yukiko’s voice from the speaker, seas trampled its tatters underfoot. He barely heard: “—frightened for you ... satellite report ... weather moving faster and faster ... please—”

“Yes, certainly, I’ll return. Don’t worry. This boat can take a knockdown and right herself. I’ll be back for supper.” If I catch the tide right. Got to keep well offshore till I can run straight down the slot- Well, the motor has plenty of kilowatts. Better that to claw off with than men rowing till their hearts burst.

He didn’t want to use it unless and until he must. He needed a fight, wits and nerve as well as sinews against the wolf-gods. Coming around was a long and tough maneuver. Once a wave smashed clear across the deck. Ariadne shuddered, but still her mast swayed on high, an uplifted lance. Gallant girl. Like Svoboda—like all of them, Yukiko, Cor-inne, Aliyat, all of them Survivors in ways their men had never had to be.

He did let the servos keep the tiller while he shortened sail. A sheet escaped his grasp and slashed his wrist before he captured and cleated it. Spume washed the blood off. The world had gone dark, driving gray, save for the lightning flashes southward. Water swung to and fro in the cockpit till the pump flung it overside. He remembered bailing Pytheas’ ship during a Baltic storm. As he took the helm back, a song abruptly lilted through his head. “Oh, hand me down my walking cane—“ Where had it come from? English language, old, old, nineteenth or early twentieth century, impudent, a pulsing, railroad kind of tune.

“—Oh, Mama, come go my bail, Get me out of this God damn jail. All my sins are taken away.”

Railroad, the West, a world that had seemed boundless but lost its horizons and itself in a blink of centuries and was one with Troy. Then some looked starward and dreamed of New America. The upshot ... machines, eight human beings, immensities as impassable and unanswering as death.

“Oh, hett is deep and hell is wide, Oh, hell is deep and hell is wide, Oh, hell is deep and hell is wide, Ain’t got no bottom, ain’t got no side. All my sins are taken away.”

Hanno showed the wind his teeth. Odysseus went there and won back. If the stars held no New America, they offered what was infinitely more.

The noise rammed him. It was a monstrous rush and boom, pierced by a risen screech. To port the cloud wall had vanished behind a whiteness that overran waves and kilometers.

“Strike sail!” he bawled. That was not merely a gale, that was a line squall come from behind sight and bound for him. Weather on Xenogaia heeded no law of Grecian Aeolus. Wind speeds were commonly low, but when they did go high, they bore twice the weight of violent air. His left hand took the switch that lowered the outboard. Point bows into seas and hold them fast!

Trie fist smote. Rain flayed and blinded. Waves topped the rails. Ariadne climbed, swayed amidst cataracting foam, plunged into troughs. Hanno clung.

Something snatched him.

He was down in roaring black. He whirled and tumbled. At the middle of it rested a cold steadiness, his mind. I’m overboard, he knew. Inflate the jacket. Don’t breathe water or you’re done.

He broke surface, gasped air full of rain and salt foam, threshed limbs against heaviness that tore. The hood swelled into a pillowlike collar, upbearing his head as the rest of the garment floated his body. He squinted about. Where was the boat? No sign of her. He didn’t think she’d gone under, not that staunch little lady, but wind and waves must have borne her from him, maybe not very far as yet— far enough, though, when he could see only the billows savaging him.

What had happened? His brain cleared, shook off shock, became a computer programmed to calculate survival. Wind might have caught the unfurled loose mainsail, swung the hull around, shoved it so low that a broaching sea swept him out. Well, if he kept alert, he’d drift free till rescue came.

That should be soon after this flaw of weather had passed. Yukiko was probably trying right now to call him. An aircraft— Those carried aboard Pytheas were designed for Phaeacia. They flew on Xenogaia, but it was rather precarious; given conditions at all unusual, you needed a human pilot as well as the machine. Maybe the Hestia folk should have ordered modifications, but the job was big, they had so much else on hand, they could stay aground when in doubt.

Pilots. Wanderer’s the best, I think that’s generally agreed. He’s out of touch today. Otherwise Svoboda; and she’s got her kid to think about. The colony is tiny, a beachhead on a shore not made for our kind. She has no right to risk herself needlessly. Of course, she will take off the moment it looks practical, which should be when this gust is over. High winds aren’t an unacceptable hazard in themselves, if they’re reasonably steady.