G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

Joe sighed and headed for his cabin. He found the white bearded imam squatting on his bunk, peering with much interest into the pages of Bowditch’s Navigation. “Can you read it?” Joe asked.

“No,” the imam replied to Joe’s surprise. The old man had given no indication of understanding Tenth Century Spanish. “But the diagrams and numbers make me suspect its subject matter.”

Joe collapsed into the chair. Throughout the afternoon he had alternated between hope and despair. Now he knew the imam was going to accuse him of sorcery.

The storm, the responsibility of command, the nights of interrupted sleep, all had led him past exhaustion. Was that why he had given up so easily? He wondered if he could have made a better fight of it and tortured himself with thoughts of all the things he might have done. He had saved their lives—most of them, anyhow. If McGrath and Raquel were alive it was only a matter of time before they’d be caught. And when they were, Clean Turban might be less inclined to trust him.

The imam was still looking at him with peculiar intentness in his rheumy eyes.

“There is no joy in losing,” the old man said.

“How would you know?” Joe muttered.

The imam laughed a short hard cackle. “Do you think I was born a holy man?” he asked.

Joe stared.

“You claim to be a stranger,” the old man continued.

“I don’t read your language but your maps are detailed and, I suspect, somewhat better than our own.”

He laughed dryly. “Are you Moslem?”

“There are very few Moslem in our country,” Joe hedged.

“Christian?”

“I doubt it,” the young man sighed. “Three equals one always looked like unsound mathematics to me; I’ve never made much sense out of the Trinity.”

The imam smiled. “Then you believe in one god who does not go about splitting himself into disconnected particles?”

Joe thought a moment. “There was a Jew in our land whose name was—” In search for words he unthinkingly translated a proper name into its roots. “One Stone spent a lifetime studying the nature of God. Before he died he left us the Unified Field Theory. It proved that everything was controlled by the same law and that there can be no exception to the Law. I believed this man.”

“I think,” the imam said slowly, “that you are a Moslem.”

“Suppose I were,” Joe sighed, “what would it gain me?”

“I was born on an island which your map calls Corfu.”

“You must’ve been Christian!” Joe exclaimed.

“Slave or free, we go on living,” the old man continued. “I truly believed in the divinity of Christ and in the Holy Trinity.”

“What changed your mind?”

“I was fourteen when they took me from my father’s sardine boat. I spent two years as a camel boy in Alexandria.

“No, I wasn’t mistreated. My master was a simple, devout man who prayed daily for my guidance and conversion. When he died I was willed to the mosque and there a muadhdhin taught me to read.

“Conversion—” He waved a scrawny hand and spat.

“I learned Arabic years before I could read my native Greek—which, incidentally, you pronounce very poorly. As a Christian I might still be drawing water and hewing wood. As it is, I’ve passed a pleasant and scholarly existence. God may judge me in the next life.

Let Him do it in the knowledge that I made the best of this one.”

“You think I should turn Moslem?”

“What can you lose?”

“My men and my ship.”

“Already gone. But if you’ll be circumcised and profess Islam I may be able to keep you together. As long as you’re together, who knows?”

“Why do you tell me this?”

The imam stroked his scant white beard and shrugged.

“Two reasons. I had four wives and twenty-one sons, no counting how many daughters. It’s hard to remember their faces. Age makes fools of us all. But with each year I remember one face more clearly.”

Joe looked a question at him.

“I remember an old woman who died in Corfu, never knowing what became of her son. I was an only child, you know.”

Joe was silent for a long moment. Suddenly and irrelevantly, he remembered Ariadne Battlement. The last he had heard she was knitting socks and turning collars for another Bright Young Man.

“Sidi Ferroush is a fool,” the imam said, “but he is a kind fool.”

Joe boggled for a moment, then realized the imam referred to Clean Turban. “What was the second reason? he finally asked.

“I have seen perhaps a hundred books in my lifetime, but never any like yours. I would hear more of your land. Oh, yes,” he added parenthetically, “do not use that thing you keep trying to hide in your belt.

Things will turn out better than you expect.”

Howie came to in cramped darkness and immediately wished he could faint again. The engine was digging cruelly into his back but it bothered him not so much as the softer protuberances which rubbed against his front. He was facing the she-devil—that much he could tell even in darkness. And she also faced him. But why, oh merciful God, did they have to be jammed in here end to end?

He felt cautiously about, trying to move a fraction of an inch away and cringed when his hand touched forbidden fruit. But if the she-devil intended to seduce him her tactics were highly unorthodox. A knee came in violent contact with his nose. Minutes passed while he breathed through his mouth, waiting for the fountain to clot. He wanted to snuffle or blow but Satan’s emissaries were talking right over his head.

All dead now, Howie thought, remembering his shipmates. They weren’t true Christians but they were friends. Then abruptly he recognized Joe’s voice speaking in an unknown tongue. He was alive! The young skipper was not a true Christian either but his quiet competence always made Howie think wistfully of the father he had never known. He felt better already. Mr.

Rate had coped with everything so far—he would cope with this. But how soon?

The she-devil squirmed and Howie was reminded of their desperate position. He discovered that her dress had crawled higher than it had any business crawling.

He tried to move away and again his hand contacted forbidden fruit, round and firm like half a melon. Again her knees jabbed at his clotted nose.

Howie fought his arms down past the she-devil’s body until he could encircle her flailing legs. There was no room to retreat, so he advanced, squeezing with all his strength. Still she struggled. Knees pummeled his cheeks like calking mallets. The she-devil would not stop kneeing him! It was almost as if she didn’t want him to touch her. There was only one move left: Howie bit.

His incisors met in a particularly tender place just above the kneecap and the flailing immediately stopped. She lay stiff, trembling slightly like a newly saddled filly. Howie moved a cautious hand. Maybe he could find that confounded skirt and pull it down.

But the farther his hand moved the more softly interesting things became. I won’t pull it down just yet.

Howie decided. If he was to fight the Devil it would be well to familiarize himself with the Devil’s weapons.

The she-devil squirmed again, shifting position with a thoroughly delightful wriggle. Tingling fire passed through Howie’s virgin loins. I’ll move my hand just a little farther, he decided. At that instant sheet lightning flashed through his closed eyes. Sparks and pinwheels banked billiard-like round the inner corners of his skull and he gave a yelp of outraged surprise. It wasn’t only his nose she’d smashed; it felt like the treacherous she-devil had bitten off the tip of his big toe! He froze, waiting for someone to tear up the floorboard and discover them, but after several minutes it appeared that no one had heard. There was a long, thoughtful, silence while Howie dwelt on many things.