G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

“Out of the water in this crater?” he asked.

Krom nodded. “Nearly a cubic centimeter in only forty-eight hours.”

At least Joe now knew why there hadn’t been any seagulls. He caught Raquel’s arm as she hurried by and asked her to put some girls to mending the Alice’s tattered sails.

To Ma Trimble life was basically a freeload. Raquel had taken over the girls and even gotten the mountain-fleshed madam to do a little work on occasion. Joe found himself depending more and more on her and noted that she stank less often. Come to think of it, since the blondes had come aboard she had been positively radiant. What gave?

That night they brought a half-dozen goats aboard and tore down the fence around the spring. With any luck the fresh meat would last to Gibraltar. Joe climbed the volcano’s peak and studied the sky. Wind blew briskly outside the harbor. He debated getting underway this evening, then remembered the girls would still be sewing on the mains’l. Abruptly, he remembered Schwartz’s god shouting friend. What was with McGrath?

The sun had set an hour ago but he could still see the island clearly save for a tiny stretch just outside one of the horseshoe wings which enclosed the harbor.

He wondered what McGrath was doing alone. Tired of all the fornication aboard the Alice? Joe felt a fleeting sympathy and wondered why he too desisted. The girls were attractive and eager. So far no one had reported sick. To whom was he being faithful?

He took a final look around. There was no sign of life on the island. Schwartz and Gorson were waiting worriedly when he reached the Alice. “Isn’t he back yet?” Joe asked.

McGrath was still lost. Should have talked to him, Joe thought. The boy had had that odd, half awakened look since Ma Trimble’s naked legion had piled aboard.

Maybe they’d whacked him too hard and some of the Outer Darkness was seeping in through a crack in his skull.

“It’s been over twenty-four hours,” Schwartz said.

“Maybe he drowned or fell into one of those caves.”

Joe sighed. He wondered if he’d been too anxious to study the past. Could he have gotten them out of here a day or two earlier?

“—a search,” Gorson was suggesting.

“Right. Make up some torches. I’ll see if there’s a glimmer left in the flashlight.” It was dark. The galley would have seemed deserted had it not been for the snickers, giggles and rustlings which came from all corners. Something seemed to be wrong with the latch on Joe’s cubicle. He twisted again and the knob .suddenly opened.

The flashlight wasn’t in the shallow drawer under the chart table. Must be in his bunk. He fumbled and felt legs in darkness. “Now who the hell?” After an eternity he found the light switch. He blinked several times before recognizing Howie McGrath. Then he noticed what the little god shouter held in his hand. Joe looked straight into the muzzle of his own pistol.

Howard McGrath had been born illegitimate—Sadie’s Sin, as his guilt-holy mother had kept calling him.

Don’t look at girls or you’ll burn in hell, she had said.

Don’t touch whiskey; it’s the Devil’s Drink.

Don’t say naughty words or God won’t love you, Mother won’t love you.

Don’t touch.

Don’t drink.

Don’t say.

Don’t think.

DON’T!

That confused business of the woman, the snake and the apple: somehow it all led to little Howie, born evil, who must fight constantly lest the evil within him break out and carry him to everlasting hellfire.

His mother had not cried when he left home. The navy was the heaven of Satan’s darlings and Howie was predestined.

The first few weeks in boot camp had been undiluted horror but Howie knew a greater horror was yet to come: evil companions would lead him into sin and degradation. They would force him to drink whiskey!

He had been surprised and vaguely disappointed when no one invited him to debauchery. All told, his first liberty turned out to be as dull as the rest of Howie’s short, hyper-sheltered life.

Came sea duty, the Alice. Red Schwartz was not on the side of the angels. Red was going to fry in hellfire forever but he didn’t seem to care. Whiskey-drinking, fornicating, hell-raising Red had survived five and a half years in the navy. Chances were he would last twenty-four and a half more. Schwartz taught him all the things he hadn’t learned in bootcamp and privately vowed he would someday squire this shivering young wretch through a brothel. But the time was still not ripe.

McGrath remained as virgin as a national forest. Some day he was going to see Red Schwartz washed in the Blood of the Lamb. But not just yet. If Schwartz were saved, Howie would be deprived of his only sinful pleasure—shuddering over Schwartz’s embellished accounts of San Diego’s Babylonian quarter.

While he remained aboard the Alice and the women remained in San Diego it had been easy to avoid sin.

But with warm lithe women, all aquiver with sinful bulges, bumping into him in narrow passageways, sleeping practically within reach—

Satan had buried him under an avalanche of naked women!

Yet as he listened to Ma Trimble’s long, rambling story it gradually occurred to Howie that these girls were from the Holy Land. That language must be the language Jesus spoke! Maybe they had seen Him. No, the time was a few years before Christ’s birth. No point in going to Israel … but perhaps something greater offered itself. If he were to go to Rome, now … how much trouble would it be to locate young Pontius Pilate?

Once he found him, and with Mr. Rate’s pistol…

It was going to require cooperation from these girls.

They seemed to have no English among them. Howie’s opportunity came when all hands were lugging water down from the spring. She was small and dark, unlike the others. Though long past her apprenticeship, some accident of nature had given her a line of lip and jaw which suggested that the world was a very large and somewhat too complicated place for her. Had Howie stopped to analyze it, he would have realized she resembled nothing so much as a darker and less god-bound version of his mother. They stumbled down the trail together, each bearing an amphora of water. Pointing to himself, he said, “Me Howard.”

She stared.

“Howard—my name’s Howard.”

It came out “yugger” when she said it. Pointing at her, he made a questioning mumble. Had he possessed a more detailed knowledge of Semitic vowel shifts Howie might have felt a premonitory shudder at her name. To him it sounded like Leilat’.

Lillith put down her water jar and squatted to rest.

These nautae had been more insatiable than a mob of Roman dogfaces just in from desert patrol. And after putting in a full night’s work this water detail was giving her aches in places she scarcely remembered. She had been about to tell this nauta to go bugger Pluto, but …

Oh well, these young skinny ones hadn’t the staying power of a starving rabbit. She lugged her amphora around behind a tree where it wouldn’t be seen from the trail. Howie followed.

It was hot and she’d been running around this island naked for the last three weeks. Today she wore one of Raquel’s high collared, long sleeved dresses—just the thing for an Iceland winter. She untied the waist cord and turned round so Howie could unbutton her. After a moment she turned again to see what was keeping him.

The idiot had some kind of miniature parchment book in one hand and a stylus in the other. Lillith was annoyed. Slowly it dawned on her that he hadn’t turned her down; he hadn’t even understood her offer. What did he want?

She undid the top two buttons at the back of her neck and fanned a little air into the bodice. Then she turned to Howie. “Anachnu Yuggerti?”