G. Edmondson - The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream

The trumpet blatted and the drum began thumping again. Rise, push forward, fall back again—this time very slowly. There was a slight jerk and he guessed the hawser between the quinquereme and the Alice had gone taut. The drum thrumped more rapidly.

They towed the Alice out of the horseshoe harbor and around the island. Joe burst into torrents of sweating. Once around the island, the full force of the wind hit them. They headed northwest, dead into it.

Even amid his distractions Joe found an instant to marvel over the change. It was at least fifteen degrees cooler outside the harbor. He was still sweating but the wind kept his clothes dry. What, he wondered, would happen if they suddenly stopped rowing? Probably pneumonia. But the galley showed no signs of stopping so he continued his rise, push forward, fall back on rubbery legs, wondering if the other oarsmen-Slaves was the word; he was a slave. Were the others as tired as he or would he harden to this Me and become an unthinking rising, pushing, falling animal—another piston in the galley’s enormous inefficient engine?

Though he had not noticed it, the drum had been slowing down. The galley alone was a rough go into the wind, and the Alice’s external ballast and deep draft did not make for easy towing. They were still in sight of the island when, after four hours of suggesting and hinting, the quartermaster finally got this bit of information into the landlocked skull of his captain.

Came a final despairing blat and oarsmen abruptly collapsed, leaving unshipped oars to dangle. Before Joe had time to worry about pneumonia he was unconscious.

Some one had him by the hair. He opened bleary eyes and recognized the man with the whip. Must remember that face. Someone was standing on the catwalk above them. It was the man who’d questioned him from behind a deskful of papers.

“Can you make that ship go?” the Roman asked.

Joe stared, still half asleep.

“Don’t waste my time,” the Roman snapped. “You had that ship moving without sails in the harbor. Can you do it again?”

Joe stared, trying to focus on the Roman. Why did the showoff have to wear polished armor at sea, aboard his own ship?

“Useless!” the Roman snapped to his quartermaster.

“Back to the island and beach it. Burn it and we can at least get something for the iron.”

Joe snapped out of his lethargy. They were going to destroy his only link with the past. Or was it the future?

“No!” he shouted. “No, I can sail it It’s too valuable to burn. I can make you rich!”

The Roman gave him a contemptuous glance and strode off down the catwalk. Joe collapsed across the oar again.

Without the Alice’s vacuum pump and still there was no hope of seeing the Twentieth Century again. Nor would his historian fraction ever see more of the ancient world than the inside of some prison where slaves were quartered during the winter months when navigation was dangerous. He was slipping off into dreamless, hopeless sleep when someone shook him again.

To hell with it! They’ll wear me out and throw me overboard. Let them beat me to death right now. But the shaking wouldn’t stop. There were clanks and hammerings. He opened his eyes in time to see a chiseled rivet head pop off the single manacle.

“Come on,” the armorer was saying in atrocious Greek, “don’t keep the kybernetes waiting.”

Walking down the catwalk, Joe suddenly realized what Christians meant when they spoke of being born again. He tried to attract ‘Gorson’s attention but the chief lay crumpled over his oar.

The Roman captain still sat in his folding chair.

“We are not magicians,” Joe began, “but our arts require years of training. I’ll need some of my men.”

“How many kinds of fool do you take me for?” the Roman snapped. “You’ll teach Roman sailors or go back to your oar.”

Joe’s confidence evaporated. He glanced astern at the Alice and the island. They had drifted back toward it and were less than four miles away now. “I don’t know how much damage you’ve done,” he said. “It may take time to get things working right. Can you set sail and tow us away before we ground?”

The captain shot a questioning glance at his oarmaster, who sputtered a rapid sentence in Greek. The captain nodded. “We’ll go back into the harbor again.

Will that suit you?”

“Well enough,” Joe agreed.

“And while you’re being towed back you can give my men their first lesson in your devious barbarian arts. I’m going aboard too and see what your bucket looks like.”

Another beautiful plan shot to hell. Oh well, it was better than being chained to an oar. He thought guiltily about the others, the imam and old Dr. Krom … and Raquel?

Nautae hauled on the hawser and jumped aboard.

Joe sprang after them and a moment later the captain, still in polished armor, came down a rope ladder. A striped sail bellied aboard the galley and nautae paid out the hawser slowly.

Joe went below, followed by the captain and six nautae. One look at the Alices interior made him want to cast his manly inhibitions aside and weep. The Romans had gone through her like army ants, taking everything not nailed down and several things that were.

There was not a single bunk with a mattress in it.

Every book, chart, binoculars, dividers, pencil, was gone from Joe’s cubicle. Tools and spare parts were missing from Rose’s engine lockers.

Cups, plates, pots, spoons, knives, and forks had disappeared from the galley, along with the stove lids.

Not a can of food remained in stores. The lazarette had been emptied of the last grain of rye. Gorson and Cookie’s empty foot lockers were gone. Even the porthole curtains had departed.

“I can’t run the ship this way,” Joe said.

“You’ll run it this way or go back to your oar!”

“Then let’s go,” Joe said, and turned to leave the ship.

The Roman captain lost his air of certainty. “You want to be chained to that oar again?” he asked.

“Why promise what I cannot do? You’ve stolen too many pieces.”

The Roman bit his lip and pondered. “Can you run it alone if I bring things back?”

“I don’t know. Get every last scrap back aboard and I’ll try.”

The Roman thought a moment. He suspected that if he could just understand some of this gadgetry it could be very useful. Burning her for iron, on the other hand, would scarcely pay his docking fees in Piraeus. “Which things do you need?” he asked.

Joe shrugged. “Each man in my crew has his own skill. I cast a horoscope and tell them which star to follow. They work the ship.”

The Roman’s face was settling back into the planes and angles of Roman intolerance. “And you alone cannot make this ship go?”

“I didn’t say that,” Joe said hastily. “But it will take longer. What do I need? How the hell should I know?

I need everything. Do I get it or not?”

The other surveyed him a moment in frosty indecision. “All right,” he finally grunted. “But none of your own men and no tricks.” He rattled orders in a Greek too fast for Joe and nautae began overhanding the hawser. Joe glanced at the electric winch and shrugged.

Why run down batteries? After much heaving and grunting the Alice nuzzled up under the galley’s stern.

The Roman captain climbed up the ladder.

Joe glanced at the sun. Another couple of hours daylight, he guessed. Since losing the sextant he’d had no way to set his watch. He glanced at it.

Why, the dirty thieving sons of bitches!

It wasn’t much of a watch but to Joe’s father it had represented considerable sacrifice on the day his son graduated. In memory of this Joe had kept it long past the day when he could have afforded something better.