Bosun: Radavindraban, J.J.
Offladen –
Black Lotus, 2 doz chests (consigned, in bond)
Indigo, 80 kilos approx.
Peppers (dried), 1 tonne
Conqueror root (in bale), 2 tonnes
Coffee Bean (Grand Inca), 4 tonnes
Skins – Merhorse, 2 gross (consigned)
Plank flamewood, 38 tonnes
Auk down, 20 bales (comp.)
Proof Cane Spirits, 50 hg. (consigned)
Nighteye, 1.5 tonnes
Now loading for return Tortuga, Huy Brazeal and ports West
Capacity: spoken for, deck cargo only at shipper’s risk
I was still staring at it open-mouthed when Dave came over.
‘What’s this, then? Still working –’ He stared at the monitor. ‘Well, bugger me! Where’d you get that from? It’s brill!’ He straightened up as somebody came in the door. ‘Hey, Barry! Clare! Come look at this!’
Barry’s beak cut out the light as he leaned over above us. He stared for a moment, then began to chuckle. ‘Very good, Dave, very good! I say, wouldn’t it be marvellous if there was some way we could actually slip that into the database?’
Dave flapped his hands. ‘Hey, I didn’t have anything to do with that! Steve got it –’
Barry stared. Evidently he didn’t think me capable of inventing it. ‘You mean it actually was in the database? My God, nowhere’s safe from those hackers these days. Next thing it’ll be a virus program, mark my words –’
Clare bit gently on a knuckle and giggled. I wasn’t fooled; she was generally thinking hard when she did that. ‘It has to be a fake – hasn’t it? I mean, five hundred tons – what kind of displacement’s that for a merchant ship! And what’s Conqueror Root? And a-a merhorse?’
‘Might be a mistranslation,’ I ventured, having had some time to think about it. ‘For hippopotamus – or walrus – you know what happens when somebody sits down with a dictionary.’
‘Might be,’ agreed a baffled Barry. ‘How come you called this up, Steve, anyhow?’
I shrugged. ‘Just overheard the name of the ship then other day – you know, pub gossip …’
I caught a very odd look from Clare, as if she’d sensed a wrong note somewhere. ‘Well, there’s one way to find out,’ she said practically, going to my shelves and taking down one of the disc binders. ‘Why don’t we see if this Iskander’s in Lloyd’s Register?’ She put a hand on my shoulder as she leaned over me to slip the iridescent disc into the CD-Rom unit, and let it rest there. I typed in my query as soon as the menu came up on screen, and the unit purred for only a fraction of a second before the answer came.
‘Not a bleeding sausage,’ Dave said regretfully.
I pondered, carefully ignoring that light touch. ‘Yes – but this is just the annual Register; it doesn’t include back issues, old entries, historical ones … I’m going to try their main database.’
It took quite a lot longer to get through, and five full minutes to access my query. We were about to give up, when suddenly the answer popped up on the screen. We stared; it wasn’t at all in their usual detailed form.
Iskander, 500 tons – merchant sailing vessel, 3 mtr.
Reg. Huy Brazeal.
Ref. Register of Shipping vol. 1868
Barry cackled wildly. ‘1868? And what’s this Huy Brazeal registry? A misprint for somewhere in Brazil, I suppose. Honestly, I wonder if they haven’t started trading in certain substances down there! Or it really is hackers. There’s nothing else?’
‘I could go down and look up the actual 1868 lists,’ suggested Clare thoughtfully.
Barry snorted. ‘Well, not on the firm’s time you don’t! As of now I for one give up! We don’t chase wild geese, we ship ’em livestock – eh, Steve? I just dropped in to say everything’s in hand, you should push off now and get some rest. See you tomorrow!’ He took one last look at the screen, then shook his head and grunted derisively. ‘Hackers!’
But I wasn’t so sure. As I drove home that night through a thin weeping drizzle I glanced uneasily at the turn-off for Danube Street. But there was no sunset banner to tempt me seaward; the sky was overcast, a featureless dome of gloomy grey cloud, and the louring buildings were wrapped in shadow, sullen and forbidding. It looked both sinister and depressingly ordinary, and thoroughly damped any desire I had to turn that way and test the truth of my strange experiences. To find they were just some kind of lunatic dream, or an overlay on ordinary things – or to find they were real and still there … I didn’t know which alternative scared me more. Inwardly I kicked myself for ever looking up all that nonsense from the files; now Clare and Dave and Barry must be wondering if I was some kind of nut. Come to that, I was wondering myself. I’d do better to go home and get some sleep.
It was as well I did, because I was shot out of God knows what dream at about four-thirty in the morning by the shrill braying of the phone. With a head like a carpentry shop – eyes full of glue, mouth of sawdust and the sawblade screeching across my brain – I struggled to make out what Barry was squawking about.
‘Broken into, dammit! And smashed about! Badly, they say – the cops, yes! No, not yet, I’m on my way down there this minute – I want you and Rouse and Bailey and Gemma too – get hold of ’em, will you? And don’t take no for an answer – this could be really fucking serious, lad!’
But it wasn’t, though no wonder the cops thought so. So did I, the moment I walked in the door, and Gemma – our brass-bound and case-hardened head of Transshipment – actually burst into tears. Somebody had gone through both inner and outer back doors, shattering their central panels of wood and wired glass without opening them, and so bypassed our rather basic alarm system. There was an ominous stink in the air, a real pig-farm stench. Every office door in the place was open, and through them spilled filing cabinets and bookcases like so many prostrate corpses, strewn around with the ripped and mangled remains of the papers and books they had held. Even the beautiful Victorian bookcase in Barry’s office had been thrown down, shattering a coffee-table, and its collection of antique atlases and traveller’s tales ripped to shreds.
‘Lovely books they were, too!’ said the CID sergeant sadly, when the department heads gathered there a few hours later. ‘Worth a bob, too, any idiot could see that. And yet you’re sure none of them were nicked?’
‘None!’ said Barry between his teeth. ‘Just bloody ruined like this!’ And he hurled the shreds of a heavy old binding at the wall.
The sergeant clicked his tongue sympathetically. ‘But nothing else gone – just like all the other offices. Didn’t even touch your whisky bottles. Yet they wiped out every bit of paperwork in the place!’ You could practically see the wheels working behind his eyes. ‘Shipping business, eh? Import-export … a high-pressure field is it? Kind of cutthroat competition? Lot of competitors?’