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there is a next ship -- you'll be back with a better argument." He swiveled on the stool to look more
closely at me. "I suggest you find yourself a less ambitious vessel."
Shatro walked heavily from the shed, across the stone paving. I followed, and behind, the chandler
began to crow with laughter.
"You must have misunderstood Ser Randall," Shatro said. "He's master of the _Vigilant,_ but the
captain chooses the crew. We've been in Calcutta six months waiting for funding from Athenai and trying
to put together a scientific team. How can you help us?"
I crab-gated, almost skipped beside him, yet spoke firmly -- to appear at once youthfully
obsequious and competent, assured. Shatro, I judged, lacked the basic elements of self-confidence.
Somehow or other, I posed a threat to him. "I know physics and the principles of meteorology. I know
the basics of ships and the sea. And I'm a quick learner."
Shatro stopped, held up his hands with palms toward me, and said, "Let me add to the chandler's
poor description of our itinerary."
"Ser Randall explained -- "
"I doubt he gave you the whole itinerary. It's going to be a difficult voyage, to say the least. We'll go
east along the Sumner Coast, then swing south-southeast around Mount Pascal, drop in to Jakarta to
pick up some more real researchers, then south to Wallace Station for another load of researchers.
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Along the way, we might study the pins in the Chefla Lava Waste, then sail out to Martha's Island. A
journey of eight thousand nautical miles, fourteen thousand eight hundred kilometers to you. After
Martha's Island, we'll head south to Cape Magellan, make landfall there and study zone six, then round
the cape and run west with the Kangxi current, _if_ it exists, around the unknown side of Lamarckia, We
hope to reach Basilica and Nihon, if _they_ exist, and touch Hsia from the eastern side. Then we slip
through the Cook Straits. An additional twelve thousand nautical miles. And still we won't be home. We'll
cross the Darwin Sea at the lowest longitudes to La Perouse Land. Only then will we turn north for
Athenai, if our ship lasts so long. So, would-be-sailor, how many days do we have left before we miss
the spring northers and the southeasters from the Walking Sticks?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Right," he said, suspicions confirmed. He turned and boarded the ship. "Ser Randall will be here
any moment. It's really up to the captain, and to him."
I took a deep breath and spent the next twenty minutes sitting on a bench at the head of the pier
where _Vigilant_ was moored, watching men and women come and go. A small electric tractor pulled a
wagon of foodstuffs in casks and boxes to the side of the ship. There it was left, to be loaded aboard
later.
Randall came down to the docks with several other men. He saw me sitting on the bench, gave me a
curt nod, and continued about his business, walking along the pier, examining _Vigilant,_ exchanging
remarks with his companions, pointing, nodding heads. I had seen men everywhere do this -- a ritual of
checking and measuring and reassuring, liberally punctuated with outstretched arms and fingers.
When the men departed, still talking and pointing, Randall stood by the _Vigilant_'s gangplank and
waved for me to join him.
"Still no luggage, eh, Ser Olmy?" he asked as I approached. "Thomas will think you're a man without
roots."
"I am," I said.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. Have you been here long?"
"Not long," I said. "I had a talk with Ser Shatro."
"Oh?"
"I don't think he approves of me."
Randall grinned. "The captain makes the choices," he said.
"That's what Ser Shatro told me."
"Shall we get on with it?" Randall asked. We crossed the gangplank and went aboard the ship.
A small, knobby man with darting eyes, quick stringy fingers and a high forehead topped by thick
red hair, Captain Keyser-Bach gave me a look of pinched concern. The mate and Shatro bustled in and
out of his cabin, bringing forms on paper for signing, a printed newspaper (I had never seen one before),
a box of manuals and texts, also on paper, and in the midst of this, his right hand wielding a pen and his
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left pushing signed forms into a folder held open by one aide, the captain said, "I assume the respectable
master has given you some idea what we're facing."
"Yes, Ser."
'"Captain,"' Randall said.
"Captain." I examined the cabin, walls of white-painted cathedral tree with lizboo trim, xyla floor
with brass cleats, ceramic gutters beneath a small lab table, a wall covered by rolled charts and a case
filled with large, thick books. A single slate hung in a sleeve from the bulkhead beside the captain's
narrow bed. The air smelled of ethanol and other chemicals, arrayed on a table beside an optical
microscope. The microscope occupied the focus of the room, like an icon; I did not doubt such [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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