Ким Робинсон - Pacific Edge

Pravi waved him away. “You saw the end coming and you ran. Like the British from India.”

“You needn’t be angry at us for saving you the necessity of violent revolution,” Tom said, almost amused. “It might have been dramatic, but it wouldn’t have been fun. I knew revolutionaries, and their lives were warped, they were driven people. It’s not something to get romantic about.”

Insulted, Pravi walked away, down the deck. The class muttered, and Nadezhda gave them a long list of reading assignments, then called it off for the night.

Later, standing up near the bowsprit, looking at stars reflected on the water, Tom sighed. The air was humid, the tropical night cloaked them like a blanket. “I wonder when we will lose the stigma,” he said to Nadezhda softly.

“I don’t know. We’ll never see it.”

“No.” He shook his head, upset. “We did the best we could, didn’t we?”

“Yes. When they shoulder the responsibility themselves, they’ll understand.”

“Maybe.”

Another night he was called down to the communications room to receive a call from Nylphonia. She looked pleased, and said “I think you have Heartech and the AAMT in violation of Fazio-Matsui. Look here.”

The AAMT had put Heartech’s black account into a Hong Kong bank, but the funds were “washed but not dried,” as Nylphonia put it. Still traceable. Some information had been stolen from the bank, and it corresponded perfectly with electronic money orders that had been recorded in passage through the phone system, going from Heartech to the AAMT. It would not be enough to convict them in court, but it would convince most people that the connection existed—that the accusation had not been concocted out of thin air. So it was sufficient for their purposes.

Tom nodded. “Good. Send a copy of this along to me, will you? And thanks, Nylphonia.”

Well, he thought. Very interesting. Next time Kevin and Doris went into the council meeting, they could use this like a bomb. Make the accusation, present the evidence, show that the proposed development on Rattlesnake Hill had illegal funds behind it. End of that.

He thought of the little grove on the top of the hill, and grinned.

The next dawn he slipped out of their berth, dressed and went on deck. They were tacking close-hauled to a strong east wind, and rode over the swells at an angle, corkscrewing with the pitch and yaw. The bow was getting soaked with spray, so Tom went to the midships rail, on the windward side. He wrapped an arm through the bottom of the mainmast halyards to steady himself. The cables were vibrating. Time after time Ganesh ran down the back of one swell and thumped its port bow into the steep side of the next, and white spray flew up from the bow, then was caught by the wind and blown over the bowsprit in a big, glittering fan. The sky was a pale limpid blue, and the sun caught the fans of bow spray in such a way that for a second or two each of them was transformed into a broad, intense rainbow. Giddy slide down a swell, dark blue sea, the jolt as they ran into the next swell, blast of spray out, up, caught in the wind and dashed to droplets, and then a still moment, the ship led by a pouring arch of vibrant color, red orange yellow green blue purple.

Captain Bahaguna was on the other side of the deck, helping a couple of crew members secure metal boxes over the rigging reels. It was tricky crossing the deck in such a swell. “What’s up, Captain?”

“Storm coming.” He looked disgruntled. “I’ve been trying to get around to the north of it for two days now, but it’s swerving like a drunk.”

Tom toed the box. “We’ll need these?”

“Never can tell. I do it if we have the time. Ever been in a big storm?”

“That one off Baja.”

Bahanguna looked up at Tom, smiled.

Below decks Sonam Singh was showing a group of sailors how to secure bulkheads. “Tom, go check out the bridge, you’re in the way.” The young sailors laughed as they worked, excited. Immersion in the world’s violence, Tom thought, the primal thrill of being out in the wind. In the tempest of the world’s great spin through space.

In the comm room Pravi was studying a satellite photo of the mid-Pacific. Pressure isobars overlaid on it contoured the mishmash of cloud patterns, drew attention to a small classic whirlpool shape. “Is it a hurricane?” Tom asked.

“Only a tropical storm,” Pravi said. “It might get upgraded, though.”

“Where are we?”

She jabbed at the map. Not far away from the storm.

“And which direction is it moving?”

“Depends on when you ask. It’s coming our way now.”

“Uh oh.”

She laughed. “I love these storms.”

“How many have you seen?”

“Two so far. But it’s going to be three in a couple of hours.”

Another thrill seeker. Revolution of the elements.

Tom returned to the deck, holding on to every rail. Things had changed in his brief stay below; the sea was running larger, and the horizon seemed to have extended away, as if they were now on a larger planet. Ganesh seemed smaller. It sledded down the long backs of the swells like a toboggan, shouldering deep into the trough and then rising like a cork to crash through the crest and hang in space. Then a free fall, until the bow crashed down onto the water, and they began another exuberant run on the back of the next swell. Except for this moment of skating, it felt like the ship’s whole motion was up and down.

The wind still drove spray to the side in fanned white torrents, but the rainbows were gone, the sun too high and obscured by a high white film, which dulled the color of the sea. Off to the south the horizon was a black bar.

A bit dizzy, and fearful of seasickness, Tom found he felt best when he was facing the wind, and looking at the horizon. Seeing was important. He went to the mizzenmast halyards, wrapped his arms around a thick cable, and watched the sea get torn to tatters.

The wind picked up. Spray struck his face like needle pricks. It was loud. The swells had crest-to-trough whitecaps, which hissed and roared. The wind keened in the rigging at a score of pitches, across several octaves, from the bass thrum of the mast stays to the screaming of the bunting. Behind these noises was a kind of background rumble, which seemed to be the sound of the storm itself, disconnected from any source in wind or water: a dull low roar, like an immense submarine locomotive. Perhaps it was the wind in his ears, but it sounded more like the entire atmosphere, trying to leave the vicinity all at once.

Nadezhda appeared at his side, holding an orange rain jacket. “Put this on. Aren’t you going below?”

“It made me dizzy!” They were shouting.

“We had one of these on the way over from Tokyo,” Nadezhda said, looking at the long hog-backed hills of water surging by. “Lasted three days! You’ll have to get used to being below.”

“Not yet.” He pointed to the black line on the southern horizon. “I’ll have to when that arrives.”

Nadezhda nodded. “Big squall.”

“Pravi said it was almost a hurricane.”

“I believe it.” She laughed, licked salt off her upper lip. Face flushed and wet, eyes bright and watering. Fingers digging into his upper arm. “So wild, the sea! The place we can never ever tame.”

Above them narrow rectangles of sail got even narrower. Most of the ship’s sails were furled, and the ones out were down to their last reef. Still the ship was pushing well onto its side. They hung from the halyards as the ship plunged up and down. “Can you imagine having to go aloft!” Tom cried.