Gene Wolfe - Home Fires

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.

“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 there. 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.”