Eric McCormack - Cloud

“So I’ve just radioed the coast and arranged a plane to come for you,” he said. “It would be too dangerous for you in a truck, on your own. The plane should be here around noon and will take you directly to Racca. After that, I’m afraid you’ll be left to your own devices. With any luck, you should be able to get on a ship to some place that’s safe. I’m so sorry now for bringing you into this mess in the first place.”

I came here of my own free will, I assured him. And the fact that I was healthy again was thanks to him. Anyway, he had enough problems without dragging me around. I was much more concerned about his own fate, and Clara’s. Would they be all right?

“We’ll be fine,” he said. “This is just another of the hazards of working in these places.”

I looked at little Sadie, the cat, lying as usual at the foot of my bed. I stroked her fur and she purred. Dupont read my mind.

“Don’t worry, I’ll be giving all the cats a shot of morphine just before we go,” he said. “It’s better than leaving them to starve. Or worse.”

AROUND NOON, a four-seater plane appeared overhead and settled down on the landing strip. The pilot waited for me on board with the engine running. All morning I’d been helping Dupont and Clara prepare for the general evacuation, and we hadn’t had much of a chance to talk. They took a few minutes to come and see me off at the plane.

Dupont shook my hand and wished me well.

“I’m so sorry about this,” he said. “I hope we’ll run into each other again.”

Clara gave me a peck on the cheek and looked at me with her huge eyes.

“Remember,” she said. “You can’t run away from love. It’s the baggage we carry with us on all our travels.”

Dupont laughed.

“Advice, right till the last minute,” he said.

He helped me climb up onto the wing and I took my place in the little cabin behind the pilot, who shut the door. He began to rev the engine, making the plane shudder so much I feared it might fall to pieces. After just a few seconds, it leaped forward and raced along the strip for a hundred yards or so before soaring upwards abruptly. As it banked westwards towards the coast, I looked down. The hospital was already so far below that Dupont and Clara were only the tiniest dots.

I’d never been in a plane before, but after the terror subsided, I felt pure exhilaration at hurtling through the air. That sensation was quickly erased by the realization that I had just left behind the only people who cared about me on this huge continent, or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. I knew I’d never see them again and suddenly felt empty and lonelier than I had at any time since my parents died.

BARELY AN HOUR LATER, I was in Racca again. The pilot, a gaunt German national who’d barely spoken to me in the plane and whom I’d had difficulty hearing anyway because of the noise, hadn’t much more to say when we landed. He directed me to an airport truck that took me to the Seamen’s Union Hostel at the docks.

I stayed there for just two nights then found a berth as a deckhand on an outgoing freighter. Being hired was easier than I’d expected, thanks to my “previous experience” at sea, but even more because ships were recruiting crew quickly so that they could get clear of the region in case of general civil war.

“You were lucky,” said the bosun of my new ship, the SS Charybdis , bound for South America. “We were about to sail short-handed, never mind maritime law.”

That was how he greeted me after I’d climbed the rope ladder onto the ship’s swaying deck. The ride out on a small boat through huge breakers with attendant sharks had seemed even more dangerous than when I’d first came ashore with Dupont.

“Yes, the Fates are on your side,” said the bosun.

I was beginning to doubt that some great power was watching over every human move, including the last-minute appearance of a deckhand to satisfy official requirements. But Fates or no Fates, here I was on a sea-going vessel, the most junior member of the crew once more. I didn’t at all mind when the bosun informed me that the ship wouldn’t be sailing directly to South America but would be zigzagging along the way, taking on and depositing cargo at various remote spots in the Atlantic. The more zigzagging the better, as far as I was concerned: no one was desperately awaiting me and I wasn’t desperate to arrive anywhere.

Much later that day, when the anchor of the Charybdis was securely nestled in its bed in the hawse pipe, I realized that ever since Dupont had awakened me that morning I’d barely given a thought to Miriam Galt, the cause of my broken heart.

Early in this voyage I felt sick again, but it seemed to be only plain old seasickness and I got over it quickly. Even though my job kept me busy on deck most of the day painting, scraping rust, and swabbing salt from exposed surfaces, I spent a lot of my free time up there, too, enjoying the ocean’s various moods. When strong winds and whitecaps meant a storm was coming, I was no longer overanxious — I now had more faith in ships and their ability to stay afloat.

Socially, too, things were better for me this voyage. The crew now regarded me as something more than a complete novice. After nightfall, I was often invited as a matter of course to join the other deckhands at poker in their quarters in the fo’c’sle.

Mainly, though, when I was off-duty I read constantly, for the SS Charybdis had its very own library under the rear deck. It consisted of two large cabins, whose well-filled bookcases were a feast to my eyes. Most of the books had suffered some degree of water damage but were still quite readable. A sticker on their inside covers indicated they’d been donated by the Mariners’ Guild for the purpose of providing seamen, over the course of a life at sea, with a basic education.

The top shelves contained a set of encyclopedias and dictionaries as well as a variety of general fiction and poetry. Some of these were “great books” I hadn’t got round to at university, such as War and Peace, Dead Souls, The Magic Mountain, The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Charterhouse of Parma, Religio Medici, Remembrance of Things Past, Samson Agonistes, Leviathan , and The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity .

The books in the middle shelves had no Mariners’ Guild stickers and were the most water-damaged. Surprisingly, considering the crew of the ship consisted of masculine types of men, these books were mainly paperback novels of the popular romance genre. They had dramatic covers and such memorable titles as Sweet Passion of the Prairies, Brides of Belladonna, The Gallant Gambler and the Lively Lass, A Man for the Kissing, The Star-Spangled Mistress, Her Temptress Tongue, Cherished Foe, Blue Moon Blonde Lady, Amazon Amy, Lovelorn My Love, Apache Woman, True Love and the Parson from Moose Jaw, Wife for Rent, The Neurosurgeon and the Nymph, Savage Embraces, Whisper Love in My Earnest Ear, Cupid’s Tangled Heart, Island of Love’s Flame, Lure That Lady , and Affaire Immemoriale .

The bottom shelves contained a number of obscure books of fiction that looked as though they’d never been read. Early in the voyage I skimmed through the pages of some of them and must have stumbled on the worst — even their titles still haunt me: Inspecting the Faults, The Paladine Hotel, The Wysterium, Last Blast of the Cornet , and A Dutch Life . Each of them was as incoherent as dreams.

THE DAY I DISCOVERED the library, no one else seemed to be around, so I took my time looking over what was available. In the midst of my browsing, a woman’s voice startled me: “Would you like to check anything out?”