Текст книги "Conspirator"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

They ran by the first rock, with no sign of the youngsters, and on the way to the second, Bren took a cup of tea, as much for the warmth of the cup as the contents. They reached the second half-submerged reef, with still no sign of the kids—the third rock there was no likelihood the kids could reach with the tide running, and he opted to put about back to the shore, to take up that search again, and to run by a fourth rock dangerously close in.

Banichi meanwhile was on the radio, talking to Jago. “Nandi,” Banichi said, “nand’ Toby is on his way. His lady is coming with him.”

“Good,” he said. It wasgood. Barb was many things, but she was an experienced hand with the boat, she had common sense in a crisis she understood, and she knew the sea. “Advise them of our status. Then one regrets to say we must concern the aiji and discreetly advise him of the situation. I would do so personally, and shall, if you will hand me the microphone.”

“Yes,” Banichi said. It wasn’t a call he wanted to make, and there was a certain hazard in announcing to the world in any recognizable way that the aiji’s son and heir was out in a sailboat on a given stretch of water. Bren listened as Banichi made the short call to Jago, speaking in a personal code that, apart from the code the Guild used, was something she and Tano and Algini understood.

Then Banichi used ship-to-shore to call the Bujavid operator, and the aiji’s guard—the best route, Bren thought, gazing out over a vast tract of eye-tricking water and rough coastline, and still not a sign of a boat or the youngsters. Banichi used code there, too, and evidently was able to convey what had to be conveyed, because Banichi didn’t hand him the microphone, just talked in short, coded bursts to whoever received the call. At last Banichi closed off the contact, and said:

“The aiji has been informed, nandi. The aiji-dowager is airborne from Shejidan and intends to come in at Dalaigi. It seemed more discreet for me to make the call.”

“The dowager was back in Shejidan?”

“One apprehends that she had stayed there the night, Bren-ji, after the last incident, had resumed her flight to Malguri today and is now turning the plane around a second time, and coming here. They did not give an estimated time, doubtless a security concern.”

“One is by no means sorry to have her assistance,” Bren said. He could only imagine the dowager’s state of mind after twoaborted flights. And he could only imagine Tabini’s state of mind dealing with the dowager and his son’s second disappearance, this time into real danger. But Tabini’s guard were all new men, since the failed coup, the dowager’s were not, and they had worked with Banichi and Jago extensively. Bren was himself very glad to know Ilisidi was bringing in her resourcesc upset as he was to be the cause of the problem. He only hoped they could find the young rascals before she got here and end the day with a phone call to Tabini and the dowager presiding over a family dinner party up at the house.

The light, meanwhile, hurt the eyes, glancing off the water. The sun was headed down the sky, now, into afternoon, and the far distance was obscured in white haze.

Banichi surrendered the radio to Tano, and went out with Algini to watch the shorelinec but by now certain other boats showed on the northern expanse of water. None of them were the sailboat. They were fishermen from the village and the neighboring district, all spreading themselves out in the bay and sweeping the area they had already crossed, a precaution for which Bren was very grateful.

Tano listened to something on the radio, then said, “Nand’ Baiji is launching his boats and Lord Geigi’s personal yacht, nandi. They are going out to meet the coastal current. Nand’ Baiji is going out personally.”

“Good,” Bren said. That was the most important thing, to get boats into position to catch the youngsters if they had been swept out into that southerly flow—a current strong enough in some seasons that even larger boats had to take notice of it. It was very, very easy to assume one was making progress northerly, unless one had a shoreline for reference.

More than one fishing boat had been lost when that treacherous current met a contrary wind and the waves turned chaotic. And that was not a situation he wanted to contemplate.

The peninsula that divided Najidami Bay from Kajidami Bay, where Kajiminda sat in much the same position as Najida, had a hellish set of rocks at low tide.

“What does the weather report predict?” he asked Tano, and Tano checked and reported.

“A front will arrive by morning, nandi, with southerly winds and overcast, rain in the afternoon.”

Not as bad as could be: winds blowing with the current, not cross-grained, but it would speed the little boat along. And rain and rising wind could swamp a little sailboat, not even mentioning hypothermia.

He wished that the tender had been equipped with a locator. Or a radio. Or—he had to admit it—the detested wireless phone. Any sort of communication. If the youngsters had the presence of mind to use the sun, and a shiny object. Anything.

But there was so much light out there, and his eyes burned with the effort. No sunglasses, no protection, nothing of the like turned up in the bin by the wheel. Damn it all. He wasn’t sure he wanted to come back if he couldn’t find the kidsc didn’t want to face Tabini and Damiri, or the Taibeni kids’ parents. Or the dowager. God knew he’d tried to keep up with the kids. He’d gotten distracted. He’d failed for one miserable hour to post a guard on the kids, even his aishid had been distracted for that hour, under his orders, and they’d just—been kids. The eight-year-old steered the group, the other two didn’t have the fortitude to tell Cajeiri no, or didn’t think they had the authority to fling themselves on him bodily and stop him. Adults had fallen into the same trap with the boy. A long string of adults.

“Nothing,” he said to Tano, beside him. “Has Toby’s boat left yet, nadi-ji?”

“They are away and coming up the opposite side of the bay, nandi, in case they went straight across.”

“One fears they have been swept out to sea.” He didn’t trust himself to find the current. They were out far enough now to avoid the rocks. He throttled way back as they nosed into the offshore current and let the current take the boat, just reading that and the shifting wind as best he could. If the wind had kept up as it had been off the point, the youngsters would have been swept northerly. But after a brief lull as they had been outbound, it was shifting to carry them southerly, increasingly so. The change in wind direction meant smoother water for the little craft—but a far, far faster passage, and it was continuing to shift. Tacking against the wind—that wasn’t something they likely knew how to manage; and that rocky coast was not their friend. “Get up atop and look out as best you can, Tano-ji. Trade with Banichi and Algini when the cold gets too much.”

“Yes,” Tano said, and went out, admitting a gust of cold air. His footfalls resounded on the ladder as he went up with the various antennae and the dish—he wouldn’t improve reception, but it was the best vantage they had, and that, at the moment, was everything.

The current had them now, and Bren throttled up just a little, hoping desperately that a boat moving under power would not just run past the kids.

Hoping for a sight of a very, very small object, in all the sheet of white light that was the Mospheiran Strait.

The sun was warm, at least, though the wind was biting cold, and they had wrung out Jegari’s pants and coat, as hard as they could, even putting the oar handle into the loop of cloth and twisting with all their strength to wring out the last drops of moisture: that was Antaro’s idea, which Cajeiri thought was outstandingly clever. They had found two floatation vests, and putting one of those on Jegari offered him some protection from the wind. Cajeiri thought Antaro should wear the other, since she could not swim at all, but both of them insisted he put it on, so he did that, and made them happier, uncomfortable though it was: he and Jegari agreed they would keep Antaro afloat should they have an accident.

The situation they were in, however, was worse and worse, and the water that splashed aboard was cold as ice. They tried again to row in toward shore, and worked at it, but got nowhere: they let the sail down and just tried not to go too far. Then Cajeiri remembered he had read about swimming that if you were caught in a current you should swim hard with it and get speed enough to swim across it.

So they put the sail up again and tried to do that. They rowed with their single oar in the bow—Antaro doing much of the rowing, since she was the only one not encumbered by a vest; but that was no good, and then Cajeiri tried to turn the boat in toward the rocks, but that was a worse mistake: the tiller went over, but when Jegari put in the oar hard, straight down, and tried to pull on it, it twisted in his hands and then broke right in two. The end went floating right away from them.

Jegari was terribly embarrassed at that, but not half as embarrassed as Cajeiri felt for the whole situation.

Still, mani had taught him not to make excuses when it was really bad, and it was. It was very, very bad. He was so sorry his gut hurt. But that meant his companions were really, truly owed an apology for his bad leadership. And it hurt his conscience that Jegari was doing all the apologizing.

“One accepts all blame for this unfortunate situation,” he said to his two companions, “and you should forget the oars.”

“We are equally to blame, nandi,” Antaro cried.

“We are older,” Jegari said. “We saw danger in it. We should not have agreed.”

“You are not to say no to me!” Cajeiri snapped. He was determined on that. “Or we willdisagree.” But his associates on the ship, Gene and Artur, had argued with him. They had also agreed with more than these two would ever agree to. “This time perhaps would have been a good time to say no and argue,” he acknowledged unhappily, as the waves tossed their little boat in a little space of calm, and the wide, sunlit ocean sparkled fiercely around them. “We have no water to drink. Sea water would kill us. I know that. And we have no food.”

“Nand’ Bren will come after us once he misses us,” Antaro said.

“He will,” Jegari said. “And his big boat can go faster than this, surely.”

“His boat and nand’ Toby’s certainly can. They can cross the whole ocean in a day, almost. Well, from the Island to the north coast. And you are right. They will be looking for us. We must surely be easy to see. The big boats have a much better view.” He sat and thought, and thought, and the wind puffed at their sail, and the sail filled, and took them further south.

He thought it was south, at least.

And he had learned one thing about boats, or, to tell the truth, remembered something that nand’ Toby had once told him, which was that the tiller could not turn the boat if the boat was not going faster than the water was, and they had had ample proof of that fact. So he turned the boat as much toward where he thought land was, as much as he could get without losing the wind, and with his two companions gazing hopefully at him, he tried to remember everything else he had learned from nand’ Bren and from nand’ Toby and from Barb-daja about boats. He thought he at least lookedconfident, with the boat moving again, and his hand on the tiller.

He did not feel that confident at all, and he was trying to remember his maps, which he had studied, whether they had already passed Kajidami Bay, too, and whether Kajiminda Peninsula jutted out far enough they could run into it. There was Dalaigi Township, beyond that, but Kajiminda Peninsula was a huge hooked jut of land with yet another deep bay that he thought inset into the continent, so they could completely miss it, and end up in the Southern Ocean where the seas got really rough.

It was just a mess, was all. A very unfortunate mess.

Antaro had had the best idea, hoping for Bren to turn up. So did he. Bren would surely be looking for him about the time he failed to appear for lunch. Bren would search the whole house, and know right where to look—and somebody would surely miss the sailboat. The only foreseeable problem was that the sailboat they had taken was the boat that would help nand’ Bren get out to the big boat to come after themc but Bren would find a way. He believed that.

Bren would be out looking, by now. They would have to search the shore first, and now that he thought about it, he was sure he would have been a lot smarter to use the wind to carry them straight across Najidami Bay to land on the northern shore.

But he had not been that smart. So it would take nand’ Bren time to search where he should have been, and only after searching the shores would nand’ Bren figure they had gotten out of sight of land, and start looking for them out in open water.

Nand’ Bren would search where the wind blew. Nand’ Bren would waste no time in the other direction—and if the wind had only changed beforethey had gotten out of the bay, they could have gotten back to Najiminda and had no problems at all.

Wishes are no substitute for planning, mani had told him once, severely.

He had hoped, for instance, that nand’ Bren had not called his father to send airplanes, which would just make a terrible fuss.

But as the sun went lower and lower in the sky he began earnestly to wish he would see an airplanec

Because the white glare of the water faded to a colder, less fortunate shade, and the sun began to go down not below the horizon, but behind a bank of clouds in the west.

He had learned something about weather from nand’ Toby. Weather came out of the west and blew to the east, and clouds in the west always meant rain on its way.

He had thought their situation could not get worse. But the clouds were getting taller as the sun sank lower, and their wind was sinking as it became a reddish sky with purple clouds.

Sunset dyed the water orange where it was not gray. The sky looked thoroughly ill-omened.

They were not moving much, now: the sail flapped. And when he began to wish for a wind, he could only think how storms did come in, swept in on a lot of wind.

With that cloud building to the west, there would be a storm wind coming down on them, pushing them toward land, for certain. But rain was coming, almost certainly, and more water inside the boat meant less difference between the water outside and the water inside.

Which could mean, besides them being very wet and cold and exposed to lightning, that their boat could just fill up and sink. They could throw water out: they had a little metal cup that rolled around under the tiller seat, but if the waves got rough, their boat was very low to the water.

That was a scary thought.

It was very scary.

Chapter 8

« ^ »

The Brighter Daysrode off to starboard of Jeishan, at the limit of vision, while the sun came down into rising clouds. The Najiminda headland showed as a dark rim on the lee side—a situation which afforded a little hope: that if the wind got up, the lee shore might receive a drifting boat.

Calls to the estate had turned up the information that, yes, the sailboat had oars aboard, as well as the two life preservers: the major domo was very sure of that. But whether the youngsters could row with any skill, or enough strength, was a question.

Fisherfolk had come out past the end of the bay, a fair-sized little fleet, and used their knowledge of the currents to scour the coastline and likely rocks. The wind, which had backed around once, had been fickle, but that cloud on the horizon would bring a driving wind as well as strong waves—two other forces that might push the little boat, this time shoreward and across the current. But waves could easily swamp the boat, in a moment if the youngsters let the boat go broadside to the waves. The boat could survive in the hands of an expert: but one mistake, one miscalculation, and they would just roll under and come ashore like those mysterious splinters of driftwood– from some boat, a long, long time ago.

They had to find them, was all—before the gust front got here.

The dowager’s plane should be landing soon—and now they had one search plane aloft, scanning the shore. The young lord of Dur had gotten a call from Najida, and that young man, a pilot himself, discreetly contacted a few southern fliers he knew as trustworthy, so they were coming, but that took time, and involved the airport down at Dalaigi. Right now, only that one plane was aloft, quartering the sky, running out to sea and back, and thus far turning up nothing.

Lord Baiji was out from Kajiminda in Geigi’s yacht, searching that outer coast, and all their people who had boats, no few, made a net as tight across Kajidami Bay as they had people to make. Therewas their greatest hope, because the main current ran as it ran, generally southward, and it swept inward right there, give or take what the storm did to the waves. Lord Baiji and the Edi folk were a vast catch-net, to prevent the strayed boat from getting out of their search area.

And if the young gentleman and his companions turned out, after all this, to be asleep under some hedgerow along the estate road—having lost the boat on launch—

Or if the tide had taken the boat, and the youngsters were out on some lark—

He would be outstandingly reasonable if that proved ultimately the case. If it was all a mistake, a missed communication– he would be so everlastingly grateful.

But as evening came on, as time elapsed with no word from the estate, the more likely their almost-worst fears became, that the youngsters were out here in the path of the storm– their worst fears being that the small boat had already capsized out here in rougher water and the youngsters were at the bottom of the bay.

But, he told himself, it was a wooden boat. It wouldn’t just sink. It would float along capsized, if the youngsters had sense enough to stay with it and cling to it and its balloon of trapped air—an overturned boat was a far, far easier thing to spot than one boy in all that water. The Taibeni youngsters would insist that Cajeiri should wear that bright yellow life vest. Cajeiri would, of course, insist otherwise.

This time Bren prayed the Taibeni overruled the young gentleman.

“The dowager has landed, nandi,” the estate called to report.

“Do as she asks in all particulars,” he said, knowing there wasn’t much his estate could do more than they had done. They had both boats out, every fisherman was out, Lord Geigi’s people were out, and there was nothing Ilisidi could do, except deploy her young men out along the roads where village folk were already searching, and look with whatever high-tech gear her bodyguard had brought with them—that was one hope she brought with her—that, and the fact that the aiji now knew, and would be deploying his own people, a presence that did not announce itself.

But now the light was fading fast, and lightning flickered in the clouds to the west, which loomed up taller and taller. The wind had not changed—yet. But that front was rolling in fast. Radar, they had, but the sailboat had no reflector, and radar thus far picked up nothing—because the boat was so low and so small—

That, or because the boat was not there to be found. But he refusedto think that.

Out on deck, Banichi and Tano and Algini relied on their night vision, having requested the running lights be cut off. Theycould see in the murk, and Bren cut even the chart light most of the time, relying on the slight glow that lit the compass. He was using the locator; he had told Banichi and the other two that if they saw three rocks ahead or looked to be getting closer to the shore, that they should run and warn him. He had laid a course to miss the Sisters; but they were a hazard, one the sailboat could run right over, but the Jeishancouldn’t. Even with the locator, it wasn’t an area to try to search in the gathering dark.

Ilisidi had not called: that was for security reasons, but he talked to the house, off and on, reporting indirectly about the “lost child.” If the aiji’s enemies could not put two and two together, with the aiji-dowager having landed at the local airport, they were asleep tonight. But things were as they were.

More lightning, this time with the rumble of thunder, and Bren cast a routine glance at the fuel gauge, thinking that the same wind blew both bad and good—both saved them fuel and made the location of the little boat an even chancier guess.

Big bolt, that split the sky end to end of the windshield, and threw the bow railing of the boat and his bodyguard into stark contrast to the darkening water.

Then a beep from the radio alerted him to a call, and he fumbled the headset up, keeping one hand on the wheel. “This is the paidhi-aiji. Go ahead.”

“This is Baiji out of Kajiminda, nand’ paidhi. Radar has picked up one brief anomaly.”

“Bearing?” he asked, white-knuckled on the wheel, and he absorbed it to memory and signed off abruptly, having no hand to spare to write it down in grease pencil on the chart until he had dropped the headset. He steered blind for a moment, trying to figure that location on the chart relative to Jeishan.

Baiji could only be approximate in location: it might have been a piece of flotsam. If he left the search pattern, it left a gap in their net, maybe a critical one.

But it was the first hope they had had.

He snatched up the headset again. Called Toby’s boat. Jago answered.

“We shall be moving on the report of a blip in Baiji’s search, nadi-ji, as fast as we can. It may be nothing. But we are going there. Keep your pattern.”

“Yes,” was Jago’s terse answer, and he wished Jago’s night-sight was out there in the darkc but Jago needed to be at Brighter Days’radio. Probably Barb was out on deck, at that post.

He didn’t want to worry about that. He simply throttled up and veered onto the new heading.

Lightning split the sky, far out from the cloud, and it had gotten darker and darker.

Cloud was much, much taller than it had been. It covered three quarters of the sky and it was still coming.

“Sleep,” Cajeiri said to Antaro and Jegari. “Sleep if you can. It will be hard to do once the storm comes. I am pulling us as close to the land as I can without losing the wind. All we can do is what we are doing. When that storm hits, the wind may carry us ashore.”

Before it sinks us, he thought, but he did not say it.

They tried to sleep. He sat and thought, and thought, and it seemed to him somewhere in the books he had read there was something about a sea anchor one used in storms on wooden ships.

Well, theirs was a wooden ship. And they had a bit of rope, not much of it, just what one might use for tying up. But he thought about it, and he thought if the wind started pushing them and the waves dashed them around, having something large and soppy trailing them on a string would possibly keep them from rocking so much and maybe keep them aimed better. Truth, he had no clear memory what it was really supposed to do for a ship. But they had their rope, and they had three coats, and if they sacrificed one and just heaved it out, it might help.

They just had to stay upright and not have a wave go over them. Then, maybe since storms went to shore, the wind could drive them there.

His mind raced, trying to think of things they could do.

He thought about ripping up the benches and seeing if they could use those for oars. But they were very solid. He was not sure they could get them free. And it might weaken the boat.

The cloud flashed with lightning, and thunder boomed right over them, rousing his companions.

Cajeiri grabbed up Jegari’s coat, which they never had been able to get dry.

“Get the tie rope,” he said. It was all the free rope they had. The wind, like a rowdy child, might roll them right over if they kept wallowing about like this. The waves when they hit the boat tended to slosh right into it. And that was getting scary.

They got the rope. He tied Jegari’s once very good coat into a bundle and threw it overboard, and tied the other end to the boat.

Lightning showed two worried faces.

“We shall come through,” he said to them, and the thunder boomed, and about then a gust of wind hit the boat. He made a desperate try with the tiller, but so far their sea anchor did nothing, and water slapped the boat and rocked it in a moment of following lull.

But slowly, slowly they did slew about a bit—the tiller still not working, but the sail starting to fill. He dared not lose that little boom rope. He took a double and triple tie on its end to be sure that the boom stayed within limits.

“Sit in the bottom together!” he cried. “Link arms and keep out of the way of the boom. It will be rough!” It might be a stupid idea, but it was better than no idea, and the waves were ruffling up and the wind was like a hammer, making the ropes start to sing as the sail strained and the dragging sea anchor lagged behind them. He had no reference point to tell where they were going. But the wind was coming more or less at their backs, and spray came up, mingled with rain as, all of a sudden and with a rush of wind and a crash of lightning, the heavens opened up and let loose on them. Water sloshed in. He kept one hand on the little rope, one on the tiller, and now with that one wave, the bottom of the boat was awash.

“The little bucket!” he shouted out. “Use the bucket!”

Antaro leaned back to get it from behind his feet, and got back again, and they did, one of them and then the other; and meanwhile the rigging screamed, and the rope burned his hand when the boom jerked outward. He hauled as hard as he could, thinking—if the little rope broke, if that little twist of rope let go or something came untied, or he even made a mistake and lost his grip and let the force of the wind hit that knot he had made, they were all going to die.

They bailed and bailed. Jegari was trying to do something in the interval. Lightning flashes showed him trying to link his belt to Antaro’sc Antaro the one of them with no life preserver.

Antaro suddenly paused bailing, pointed out into the dark ahead and a little to the right. “I see a light!” she cried.

He could not see it. He thought it wishful thinking.

And then he did see it, a faint, faint glow. They had no light to signal back. Water hit him in the face, salt water, that stung. He could no longer feel the tiller under his arm, his face was numb.

But the light reappeared as he blinked clear, a faint glimmer. “The light isthere!” he cried. It went out again, lost in the murk, and then reappeared. It might be a house on the shore, he thought, and hugged the tiller and feathered the rope as the boat tipped and rocked alarmingly in the gusts. “ ’Gari-ji, if we fall in, keep hold of Antaro, hear me? Do notboth of you try to reach me! I shall float and reach you. That is an order! Hold to each other!”

“We shall come back there, perhaps! I have linked belts with Antaro! She will be all right! We should stay close!”

“You shall not! You will tip the boat over! Stay where you are and hold on to each other! I order you! We have a light! We are going there!”

His voice cracked when he shouted. He hoped they heard. More, he hoped they would do what he told them to do. He had had experience of humans, who did notgroup to their leader as desperately. He understood in his own body—it was hard for them all not to rush together. It was terribly hard; but he had to be here and they had to be there in the middle and balanced to keep the boat afloat in this heaving water, and he was sure of his instruction.

Water hit him in the back. Worse, it crashed past him into the boat, a whole bathtub full.

And when he blinked the stinging flood from his eyes and swiped them with a sodden sleeve, he saw a brilliant light, a blazing white light.

So did his associates, who pointed at it and shouted, and dangerously tried to get up to wave.

“Stay down!” Cajeiri cried, and waved his own hand, hoping to be seen. The light swept away from them, and swept back again, casting the waves into relief against the dark, showing the shapes of his companions ahead of him. “Yell!” he shouted across the wind.“ Help!”

The light left them, swept back again, glared down on them like a single wide eye, unblinking and turning the water to green glass. “Hold still!” he cried as Jegari started again to try to stand. “Sit down, ’Gari-ji!”

Jegari plumped back down, and that light eclipsed behind a wash of water and then came back again, flaring above them and then on them and then below as the sea heaved. Cajeiri clung fast to the tiller and tried to steer, such as the boat would, toward that light. It was no good. There was no steering.

But the distance between them and that light grew less. Cajeiri heard a steady thumping, that at first sounded like a deep, powerful heartbeat, and then he knew it was an engine, and it was surely nand’ Bren or nand’ Toby come after them. It was up to them simply not to sink until they could meet up with that boat.

He could see a hull now, a white hull with a blue line, the only color in the world beside the glass-green of the heaving water, The glaring light proved to be a spotlight on a swivel, and some dark-uniformed man worked the light, which the boat kept continually centered on them as it came close.

The boat came right by their bow, towering over them with a loud racket of the engine, and fought to stay there. Their boat bumped into that pristine white hull and turned and grated against it.

Two men then. One flung out a rope with a weight on the end of it, and shouted, “Make that fast!”

Jegari and Antaro scrambled to do that, wrapping it about the middle seat, that being what they could reach. Another weighted line came down to them, and Cajeiri let go the tiller and grabbed it.

Smack! They ran into the side of the big boat. He fell off his seat, and held to the rope, and scrambled in freezing water to tie the rope somewhere, anywhere, which turned out to be the bar across the tiller opening.