Jack Chalker - Cerberus - A Wolf in the Fold

“And you know—nothing much happened. We sighted a bork, yes, but another boat took it and chased it out of view. The whole thing was pretty dull, really—but to me it was everything. It made me alive again, Qwin. I determined to get out of the motherhood, and I worked and schemed and plotted and took my opportunities just like you—and it worked. If it hadn’t been for that joyride, though, I’d still be up there at the House, still having babies and gazing out at the sea, as Sanda is now. Wasting—just like she is. Do you understand now?”

I turned over and hugged her and held her close. “Yes, Dylan, I understand.” I sighed. “So when are you going to take her?”

“Day after tomorrow. I wouldn’t want it on my conscience that I killed a baby, too.”

“All right. If your mind’s made up. But please consider the matter again before you do. You’re risking that sea, you know.”

“Yeah, I know. Call me dumb or a softie or whatever. But I risked it for you, too. Maybe the luck’ll hold one more time. The chances of getting caught are a lot slimmer this time. I’ve got a good crew. They won’t talk, because it’d mark them as disloyals and they’d never get another berth.”

“Your mind’s made up, then?”

She nodded. “Absolutely.”

“Then I’m coming along, too.”

She sat up. “You? After I’ve been trying to get you out for weeks now?”

“Well, maybe if the president’s along the responsibility will be spread a bit.”

“No,” she said firmly. “Come on if you want—hell, I’d love to see you. But there’s only one person in charge of a boat, and that’s the captain. One person in charge absolutely, and one person who’s responsible for all aboard and their actions. That’s the law and that’s the way it has to be. Understand?”

“Okay, Captain,” I responded, and kissed her.

It was a foul morning with intermittent rain and mist, so that you were hardly aware it was past dawn. The sea looked choppy and the boats all rode up and down uneasily on the water. That worried me, but Dylan was actually in better spirits because of it.

“We’ll all be in rain gear, so if anybody happens to be spying from Akeba House they’ll get no clues, not with these slickers, and with her hair tucked up under the rain hat”

She had briefed her crew the day before in the privacy of the open sea. Nobody had objected. They knew her almost as well as I did, if not better, and she had their absolute respect.

The boat had a name— Thunder Dancer— but it was usually used only officially. Informally, it was always “Dylan’s boat” or just “the boat”

We stayed inside the aft cabin where we had schemed and plotted not that long before, and a crewman fitted us with life jackets and briefed us. Dylan, at the wheel, was busy and we respected that.

“You can both swim, can’t you?” the crewman asked, half joking.

“Yeah, although I’m not sure how far and how fast” I responded. “It’s a shame we have to go out on such a rotten day.”

He laughed. “Oh, this is a good day. You ought to be here when we get in really rough weather. Waves over the bow, and even we crewmen puking as we hold it together. Don’t worry about this, though. The front’s only three or four kilometers out, and we’re going a lot farther than that today. We should have warm and sunny weather by midmoming.” And, somewhat to my surprise, we did.

It was an education to watch the fleet move out, the trawlers chugging along slowly with two hunter-killers as escorts while we, as one of the two point boats, cleared the harbor and its buoys and flashing lights. We suddenly rose on two skilike rails, thus tilting the whole boat back as it poured on the speed, suddenly freed of having the bulk of its mass push against the water.

“I have to be at station,” the crewman told us. “You can go up to the bridge now if you want, but hold on to the handrails at all time.”

I looked aft at the rapidly receding shoreline, half hidden in fog and mist, and at the wide wake we were leaving. The shoreline itself appeared ghostly, the great mass of trees rising from the water in and out of fog, punctured only by some distant lights.

“Oh, God! Isn’t this great!” Sanda enthused, rushing from one window to another. She was like a little kid again, squealing, oohing, aahing, and just having a grand old time.

And there I was, the grand old veteran space pilot, feeling funny in my stomach. But that old me had been in a different body. Still, Dylan had come out on occasion in this body and seemingly had had no trouble, so that wasn’t the whole explanation.

“Let’s go up to the bridge,” I suggested as we broke through the squall line and were suddenly hit by sunlight.

“Great! Lead on!”

We walked through the interior, past the electronic detection gear and biomonitors that would locate the masses of skrit on or near the surface and would also warn of borks, through the small galley and up a small set of steps to the bridge itself. There Dylan was sitting, relaxed, in the broad, comfortable captain’s chair with an idle hand on the wheel, looking out. She turned as we entered and smiled. “Well! How do you like it so far?”

“Tremendous!” Sanda enthused. “Oh, Dylan, I can never repay you for thisl”

Dylan took her hand from the wheel, got up, and hugged Sanda. The look on our captain’s face said that the attitude alone was more than payment enough.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Who’s driving?”

Dylan laughed. “The autopilot, of course. I’ve programmed in the course and set it for automatic after we lifted. No more attention required until we get to our zone for the day.”

I felt a bit foolish and even a little ashamed. The same guy who bearded lions in their dens and was confident of taking on Wagant Laroo, who’d piloted starships through trackless voids, was damned scared out here in an alien ocean with no land closer than two kilometers-straight down.

“You look a little green,” she joked, looking in my direction. “If I were the mean sort I’d find some really rough water and give you a workout—but don’t worry, I love you and I won’t.”

The rest of the morning we sat around talking, occasionally bringing Dylan a cup of coffee or light snack from the mini-galley or doing the same for the crew.

And she’d been right. After a while it got to be damned boring. Not for Sanda, who climbed all over the boat, getting explanations from the gun crews, and lessons from the electronics experts, and asking a million questions. For me, though, and basically for the crew as well, there was nothing exciting about skimming along the ocean at thirty-six knots with nothing anywhere in sight.

Still, they all had within them some extra sense, some deep love for the sea, the boat, and their lives here. They were happy, content, at peace out here in a way I could not understand, perhaps could never really figure out.

The ocean itself, though, had a certain academic fascination. It was different colors in different places, and there were obvious currents you could literally feel, as if the temperature rose and fell in a moment depending on what invisible part of the water you were in. In the distance you could actually see the storm front now moving “inland”, and out a little farther to the northeast you could fully see a thunderstorm, dense rain, high, bomb-like clouds, and lightning all included, while you yourself were basking in the sunlight of a cloudless sky.

The pattern was generally the same for the boats. We had gone to a sector southeast of Medlam allocated by the Cerberan Coast Guard so that each company had its own area for the day, then had started a wide, circular sweep of the zone, going round and round in ever-smaller circles as the instruments looked for skrit.