G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

WHAM!

She awoke alone, afloat on an endless blue sea. Lake Michigan’s sky could not possibly be this blue. Besides, Ma suspected Lake Michigan was not salty.

Four days passed before a trader from Britain took her off the sagging houseboat. Despairing of ever realizing a plugged denarius from this fat old savage, he deposited her bedraggled and friendless on Tyre’s waterfront.

Ma Trimble was the type who would land on her feet anywhere, and that included ancient Tyre. Even so, there were several terrible months while she learned the language, the angles, and the local law’s blind spots. It was nearly a year before she acquired a tiny crib and stocked it with a sloe-eyed, shopworn Syrian bint of some fourteen winters. She taught the girl a couple of Midwest tricks which hadn’t as yet caught on in the Middle East, and the establishment flourished, adding four more girls in the course of time.

One of her most frequent customers was one Publius Suilius Libellus, the Roman Colonel of this gook garrison town. He was, in fact, such a good customer that when Ma Trimble pointed out the many advantages he could gain by taking Ma and her girls to the Big City—as opposed to the disadvantages of Ma’s confiding all she knew to Publius’ wife, the daughter of his commanding officer—Publius then and there decided he’d always wanted to get back to Rome.

The Astarte was still in sight of Tyre’s chalk cliffs when it began blowing, and there wasn’t much the crew could do about their course, which was now in the general direction of Athens. By the fourth day out, though, a cone-shaped island thrust itself inexorably out of the sea before them. A wreck was obviously unavoidable, so Publius, a Roman soldier to the end, had himself and his wife lowered in a boat along with the crew, abandoning Ma and her girls along with the doomed Astarte as he made for shore.

It was a small boat which went under, however, swamped by a huge wave. Four of Ma’s girls continued pumping water from the Astarte’s bilges with the ship’s bucket and chain apparatus, while one of them promised a white rooster to Hecate. Without pressure on her helm the ship wallowed straight for vertical cliffs. The girl upped her offer to two roosters. When the cliffs were a hundred paces away she made her final firm bid of five roosters.

The ship slipped easily into a small, horsehoe-shaped harbor.

They got some wine ashore and removed their supplies up to the spring. Next day they’d return to the half-sunk hulk and dive for their clothes. That night the storm front collapsed and sea level raised two inches.

The hulk floated gently away.

Joe stretched and looked around the Alice’s crowded galley. McGrath had returned to the galley doorway and permitted his eyes to rest for longer intervals on the naked blondes, an odd, almost calculating expression on his face.

Now that he had his ship back, Joe wondered what he was going to do with the women. “We’ll, maybe we can give you a lift someplace where you can catch a boat for Rome,” he said hopefully.

Ma Trimble gave a short, hard laugh. “Not on your tintype, sonny. It would’ve been rough enough with protection. You won’t catch me going there without old Publius.”

“But what can I do?”

“You’re navy, sonny. You can take a distressed American citizen home where she belongs.”

“But what about these—” He groped for a word to describe the girls.

“It’ll look awful funny if you leave ‘em behind,” Ma Trimble said. “Mr. Hoover’d call ‘em refugees.”

Joe looked helplessly around the Alice. Freedy and Rose focused their attention on the ceiling. McGrath studied Joe with an odd, eager look. Guilbeau and Villegas were silently communicating with a couple of girls. So was Schwartz. Dr. Krom and his civilian assistant studied the cabin sole. Cook glanced at Joe and shrugged. Gorson added his own shrug. “I think we’re stuck, sir,” he said.

The imam and his boys understood nothing so Joe ignored them. Raquel had picked up some English; he wasn’t sure how much. Remembering all the dresses she’d taken from the Viking women, he said, “How about getting these girls covered up?”

Raquel nodded and visibly thawed toward him.

“All right,” Joe said. “Gorson, take a couple of men and get that bow line untangled.” The moon was high, so they had little trouble warping the Alice back ashore.

Joe posted watches and went to bed.

Dawn brought a strange boat to the harbor mouth.

Joe studied it through binoculars. Nobody aboard. The caique was typically Greek, with high bow and a fiddle pegged stern post like a gondola. Joe wondered how far the eighteen footer had drifted from its fishing village. And why couldn’t it have turned up last night when he’d needed a skiff?

He turned the Alice inside out and found no chlorine tablets. The spring water was sweet but the rocks were lined with moss. In three weeks time the Alice would draw green streamers from her faucets. There was neither time nor dry wood to boil it all.

McGrath edged up, still wearing that odd, eager look.

“Mr. Rate,” he asked, “why can’t we stay here?”

“Too close to Roman shipping lanes,” Joe answered.

“The coast guard’s liable to drop in on us any day.”

The little god shouter nodded and walked silently away.

Joe put the girls and all hands to relaying water downhill in such buckets and amphorae as were available.

“How about wine?” Ma Trimble asked.

Joe was not entranced with its vinegary, turpentined taste but it might keep the water from turning. Mixed with water it would also be less likely to make the crew turn. “Pour it in the tanks,” he said, and inspected Ma Trimble’s cheese. It was white and hard, could be crumbled only with a mallet. Joe hoped it didn’t carry dysentery. The wheat flour she’d saved would help relieve their diet.

Rose produced a hammer and saw. He and Gorson began rigging bunks in every corner.

Goats overran the island, but one bullet was worth more than one goat. Joe wondered if they had an archer aboard and learned the Moors were all swordsmen.

Slinging, he learned after a few wild throws, was hopeless—and the goats were too smart to walk into a pitfall.

He was unenthusiastically considering a catapult zeroed in on the trail when Dr. Krom edged up apologetically. “They drink water, don’t they?” the old man asked.

Joe cursed himself and began fencing the spring.

Three days later they had no difficulty running down goats. Cookie and Lapham rigged drying racks and organized Ma Trimble’s girls to keep seagulls from stealing the meat. None appeared. Joe was mildy surprised.

Birds were abnormally sensitive to air pollution. He wondered if the extinct volcano was still giving off a trace of gas which scared them away. The water was chilly and the weather noticeably rawer on the open side of the island. He asked Dr. Krom about it and the old man thoughtfully inverted test tubes in the water around the Alice.

Next day the water in the tubes had been partially displaced by something. The old man sniffed one and spent several hours fussing over the others with his small cabinet of reagents.

A week passed and they had flour, rye, and dried meat. The midharbor pinnacle’s rope-worn grooves left Joe scant hope that they could remain long unvisited here. Shortly after supper Red Schwartz edged up to him. “Mr. Rate,” he asked, “you seen Howie today?”

“Why no, wasn’t he off with the woodcutters?”

“He didn’t come ashore this morning. I thought you’d kept him aboard on some other detail.”

“Hell turn up.”

Dr. Krom ambled up in his stiff, old man’s gait and proffered a bottle. Joe sniffed and wrinkled his nose at the reminder of frosh chemistry and hydrogen sulfide.