hafoc | Hilltown, Chapter 12

Chapter 12

The ship rolled as a wave, larger than usual, took her in the starboard quarter. Maggie shifted with the roll, then grinned quietly to herself. How easily she moved aboard ship, without even thinking about it! Admiral Blood would have been proud of her, maybe, if he could have seen how well his descendant had adapted to shipboard life.

When she went back to Hilltown, when she climbed the stairs to that apartment she loved so much, would she stumble the way she had when she first tried to walk aboard a schooner pitching in high seas? She'd seen men and women who had lived aboard ships so long that they seemed to have lost the ability to walk on dry land.

But no. She hadn't been aboard Dawn Treader that long. And now, of course, they went ashore almost every day. She wouldn't lose her land legs this way.

Surprising, and a delightful surprise at that, how right the sea felt to her. Even now, at the tiller holding Dawn Treader's course in a quartering sea, she was perfectly at ease. Not that long ago the thought of being alone at the helm of a schooner in the open sea would have scared her senseless!

Dawn Treader made it easy, of course. She just had to be the finest little schooner ever built.

The volcano stood broad on the port bow, only a mile or two away. It was enormous, a landmark that must be visible more than a hundred miles out to sea. They'd sailed nearly two days to reach it.

It stood with its feet in the sea, its rounded, snow-capped peak above the scattered clouds. The red and orange foliage of the redwoods clothed it almost up to the ice. Redwoods must tolerate cold better than Earth plants did.

Steam trailed from the peak. That made Maggie nervous. Captain Hardy had checked the historical database and pronounced, based on the size and shape of the volcano, that it produced a runny kind of lava, not a sticky kind. Therefore it wasn't going to explode. Maggie wasn't sure. She might not know her geology, but exploding was what volcanoes did, wasn't it?

The volcano scared her. Or something did. Frowning, she looked around. Everything looked all right, but as Dawn Treader rolled she allowed herself to stumble and hit the Loud Button by mistake.

The alarm bell sounded. All hands on deck! Something thumped belowdecks. Running footsteps came to the companionway. Captain Hardy scrambled up the steps and to her side, wearing most of her oatmeal. She did not look happy. "Report!" she snapped.

Maggie wanted to say it was just an accident. She could get away with that; Captain Hardy still thought of her as a landlubber. Or did she? But it would be a lie to say she'd sounded the alarm by accident. Something was wrong. She just didn't know what.

Then she saw it. The magnetic compass, a ball floating in fluid and mounted in the main cabin's bulkhead, was beginning to turn. Slowly at first, but it was gaining speed. She pointed to it, silently.

Hardy's face blanched beneath her tan. Maggie couldn't hear what the captain had said beneath her breath when she saw the compass, but she had a feeling that, whatever it was, it was classic in its obscenity. Now Hardy grabbed the best binoculars and scanned the horizon. "There. Northwest. The horizon's gone white, and it's closing in fast. Helm's alee! Steer for shore."

Maggie threw the tiller across and ducked to let the mainsail boom swing across above her head. "But the soundings! The reefs, the rocks." The boom slammed across fast enough to decapitate the unwary; fortunately, everyone aboard knew to watch out for it. Dawn Treader shook as if she had, in fact, hit a rock as the main and foresail booms slammed to the limit of their sheets. The masts groaned, but held.

The crew scrambled to tighten the sheets and flatten the sails. Dawn Treader heeled, then settled down in the water. Maggie steered a bit more toward the north, to bring the wind in from a little ahead of the port beam. This made the path to shore a bit longer, but they'd more than make up for it with greater speed. Dawn Treader took to the crosswind like a living thing. She was canted to starboard, but she held her course with as much seeming determination as a cannonball. She was fast, too. It felt like she was ripping a hole through the water. It was as if she knew how desperate the situation was-- and Maggie was superstitious enough to think that maybe the beautiful schooner really did know.

"Well done, Maggie."

She nearly blushed. "Thank you, Captain. Will we make it?"

"The Old Gods alone know. Perhaps whether we live, die, or worse depends on how good our grip on our so-called reality may be. Because that is moving faster than we are. It's going to be close, but I think the vortex will engulf us before we reach shore."

"What then?" Maggie had heard enough legends to terrify her, but she didn't have time for that just now.

"Should be OK if we're close to shore."

"Unless vortices can come on shore on this continent."

Captain Hardy looked frightened for a moment. "Why would they?"

Maggie didn't know. Vortices never came ashore on the Continent. But nobody knew why. Or rather, many experts knew why, but no two agreed. Why did vortices stay at sea in the northern latitudes? Why would they act any differently here? Why wouldn't they? Why did they do anything they did? Nobody, not even Dean Lansen, understood them.

Well, maybe Dean did. It was hard to be sure just what he did and didn't know.

Hardy scanned aft with the binoculars and muttered another curse. She then turned to scan the shore ahead. "Another point to port, Maggie. There's a little offshore island we might be able to shelter behind. Fisher! On the fathometer. Call out readings when you get any. Hill! To me. Keep an eye aft. Call out the distance to the vortex wall as it approaches!"

Maggie had never seen anyone as scared as Hill was, as he took his position beside her. The sole survivor of the Eagle disaster, he looked at the approaching edge of the vortex as if it contained every nightmare he could imagine. Perhaps it did.

She thought he was going to break. But even as she watched, she saw him grab his fear by the throat, throw it down and trample on it. She felt overwhelmed with admiration for this sailor at that moment. He stood taller. His face was grim, but strong.

"Coming in fast. Maybe a mile, maybe a thousand yards. It's hard to say."

"Do your best. Maggie, that's right. Hold this course."

"I think I see the channel off the north end of that island, Captain. I'm steering for it." The water was darker there. Hopefully that meant deeper, and not that there were dark rocks near the surface. They'd know soon enough!

"Good. Hill?"

"Still coming in fast. Eight hundred yards."

"We're not going to reach shore before it hits," Maggie said.

"Told you we probably wouldn't. Hold your course."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Four hundred yards."

They were moving fast. The shore was under a mile off now.

"Fisher!"

"No reading, Captain! No, wait. We got a ping. Two-forty!"

"Good. Hill?"

"Three hundred. Closing."

"Hold course as long as you can, Maggie. Maury!"

"Yes, Captain?"

"Take Redland, Pierce, and Lightoller below. Libation, incense, chants."

"Yes, Ma'am. You heard her, you three. With me!"

Maggie sneaked a glance at Captain Hardy. "Do you really believe in that stuff?"

"Can't hurt. But I don't trust those three to face the vortex. The chants will keep their minds focused so they don't go mad too quickly, and if they break, Maury's there to keep them under control. Half of command is a con game, Maggie. You need to understand that, if you're going to skipper your own ship some day. Hill?"

"One hundred yards. Ninety."

"All right. Maggie, Fisher, Hill, I kept you on deck because I trust your steadiness. Don't disappoint me."

"It's closing. Here it comes!"

"Steady yourselves, people. Be ready for anything, real or illusionary."

Everything went white for a moment. Then something gray surrounded them. It looked like fog, but it didn't feel like anything at all.

Her skin had turned gray. But everything had. There were no colors in this stuff. It made everything look dead. It was a little reassuring that everything had lost its color, not just herself.

Nobody had told her vortices removed colors from your sight. Were the others seeing this effect too, or was it just in her mind?

The spinning of the compass gave her vertigo, so she carefully avoided looking at it. The sea had gone smooth too, in a slick, sick, greasy-looking way. Everything was silent, as if the vortex absorbed sound the same way as it leached away colors. But she could still feel the wind on her cheek and see its effect on the sails. She could steer by that. They were only a mile off shore, probably much less now! Only a little farther to go.

"Maybe this isn't so bad after all."

Hill grinned. There was nothing comforting in it. "Wait."

"Fathometer's offline." Fisher tapped it with his knuckle.

Captain Hardy sighed. "It figures. It's electronic, after all. Grab the lead line and--"

Maggie screamed and threw the tiller hard over. Dawn Treader heeled and spun on a rusty dime, bless this beautiful ship! She came around "in irons," bow pointed directly upwind, and a huge gray steel wall passed through the space she would have occupied if she hadn't turned. It was a monster steamship, a weird and ugly thing. Its bridge, well forward, was on stilts. From the bridge a pudgy man in a bowler hat and baggy once-white sleeveless shirt and shorts screamed curses and shook his cane at them. His face was like a skull. Then the bridge was out of sight. The steel wall, topped by a forest of struts, gantries, booms, whatever they were, thundered past. The engine house came and went. Two thin smokestacks, oddly enough mounted one port, one starboard, belched black smoke into the sky.

Maggie threw the tiller to the other side, trying to steer into the wake she knew was coming. But they'd lost speed. The sails flapped. Dawn Treader started to drift backward. They'd catch the wind again in a moment, but the big ship's wake was going to hit them first.

And it did, throwing her bow around so she was broadside to the wind again. Maggie had time to put her hands out to fend off the boom before it hit her, but the cockpit side caught her across the back of her legs. The rail hit her in the small of the back. It hurt, and half-knocked the wind out of her. She grabbed for the rail and missed. She was going over the side. Hardy would never let her live this down!

The water felt like nothing. Not warm, not cold, nothing at all. It was dark, and she went down forever. She was going to drown. She didn't know where the surface was.

And then she broke surface. The water felt sticky. She choked, kicked to lift herself higher to catch a breath-- and now, after all that, her life preserver chose to inflate. Dawn Treader was nowhere in sight. Neither was the huge steamship that had nearly run them down. Worse, it seemed to be getting dark. That was impossible. It was still early morning! But it was definitely darker than it should have been.

Terror clutched at her. She had to calm herself. Dawn Treader was out there somewhere, and Joan Hardy would be looking for her. But where were they? They'd hardly been moving when she went overboard. And no matter how long it felt, she couldn't have been under water for more than half a minute.

She listened. Nothing. She relaxed and let the water hold her up. "Help! Help!"

Was that a faint reply? She rolled into a powerful crawl stroke, as well as she could with the life preserver holding her. Yes, there was somebody else in the water. It was Hill. Blood streamed down his face. "Can't.. swim," he gasped.

"What the hell happened to your life preserver?"

"Was below deck, asleep. Not the time to talk about it."

In spite of herself, she laughed. "You're right." She swam behind him, grabbed his collar and leaned sideways in the sea to lift him higher in the water. She started side-stroking toward where shore should be, according to the wind. If the wind had changed, they were dead, but this was the best she could do.

"Your lungs--"

"I'm fine. No pain." Her chest should be screaming at her, with a lung shot out on that horrible night so long ago, but it really didn't bother her now. She didn't have time to question that particular blessing just now, just use it and pay the price later! "We'll get you to shore, build a fire somehow. Dawn Treader will find us."

"But where is shore?"

"The way I'm towing you. Shut up. Lie back in the water and let me rescue you, dammit."

"OK," Hill groaned. Until she'd heard him, she hadn't known it was possible to put such a world of doubt in those two syllables.

Now she heard the swash of waves on shore, coming from dead ahead. She was good, very good! Or dumb luck was on her side, more likely. She grinned. She could afford to grin, now. Thank goodness the sea wasn't raging. They should be able to just walk ashore.

Soon she put a foot down, and found solid ground beneath it. Her chest still didn't hurt.

"Get to your feet, Hill."

He did, and looked at her, astonished. She supported him as they wobbled up out of the water and collapsed on a patch of pebbles and coarse black sand.

"Now what?"

"Well for the most part, we wait."

She looked at the grayness all around. The coming darkness seemed to make forms in it. Great things, half-formed, alien and horrible, moving in the magnetic currents of the vortex. The Redwoods stood in the mist that wasn't mist. They made the mist eddy, and that made it worse. It was best not to look at them, best not to see too clearly the things that moved in that grayness.

"We wait until dawn, at least. Try to stay awake, Arthur. We don't want you drifting off to sleep if you've had a concussion."

"I think it's just a cut. Bleeds like a sumbitch, though. It's getting dark. It can't be getting dark already!"

"I was thinking the same thing myself. It is getting darker, though."

Hill looked at the mist, and then snapped his eyes downward to study the sand and pebbles. He pulled a soggy bandana out of his hip pocket and pressed it to his cut.

"Dawn's got to come some time. Not even the vortex can change that." Or so she wanted to believe! "I'm going to get some firewood together. Don't fall asleep while I'm gone."

"You're gathering wood?" Hill waved at the redwoods and the horrible things swirling with the mist. "In that?"

"Yeah. You have that fancy pocket knife of yours?"

Hill rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the little red-handled folding knife. He pressed the shield-shaped button on its side to make sure the built-in flashlight still worked. It did. "I do hope you know what you're doing."

"Trust me."

"If you say so."

She walked toward the redwoods, keeping her eyes down. "I know what I'm doing," she whispered to herself. "Old Gods, have mercy on me now."