And he realized he could never tell Sandy the whole truth, that he had not only run away into the alley and hidden behind those trash cans. He had waited. He could have run down the street and found a phone, but he ran and hid and waited until he heard the muggers leave. It had taken another three or four minutes for them to finish stomping Berko. If he hadn’t wanted to hide so fast, if he hadn’t been afraid they’d follow him, if he had run down the street, Berko might have lived.
Neal was crying now. He was a coward and a worthless human being.
He went into the kitchen and rummaged in a bottom cabinet until he found the vodka, which he practically never drank. Carrying the bottle by the neck, he went into the bathroom and found aspirin. Then he returned to the computer and sat in his swivel chair and took a long drink from the bottle. He started to choke, but he kept calm. After a couple of minutes, he chewed two of the aspirin, then decided to wash them down with more vodka. He waited several minutes to make sure he wasn’t going to choke again. Then he repeated the process.
In the flash of a fading brain, Neal realized, anagrams! The thing was playing with him. Coma hooy = yahoo.com. Earl think = earth-link. L. Amoco = aol.com. But it all didn’t matter.
SANDY had reached her home troubled. Neal had been devastated, whatever was happening. When she had left, his eyes were wide and his cheeks looked hollow. He was having some sort of stress-induced hallucinations.
She gave herself a couple of minutes, to see whether her nerves would quiet down. Maybe she was overreacting.
But half an hour later, she was only more worried.
All right. She picked up the phone. He hadn’t said not to call, after all.
But there was no answer. She let it ring a dozen times. Well, no answer didn’t necessarily mean he was in trouble. He quite often didn’t answer the phone if he was entering orders for work. And he sometimes turned off the phone if he was going to bed. He’d had a stressful evening, that was for sure. Maybe he figured a good night’s sleep would straighten him out.
AT Neal’s apartment, he heard the phone very distantly. He made no attempt to answer it. In fact, he couldn’t quite remember where he had left it, and it sounded funny, echoey and hollow. He drank some more vodka, took another two aspirin, and put his head down on the desk.
SANDY knew she wasn’t going to relax until she was certain Neal was all right. She picked up her keys to drive back to his place, then hesitated. Maybe that was going too far too fast. He could be working, and he might be annoyed if she just burst in. What she’d do first is e-mail him. If he was working, he’d get a ding that there was an incoming message. He’d be alert for one, if he was awake, because he was waiting for the phantom e-mailer. If he didn’t answer her e-mail in, say, half an hour, she’d drive over.
She went to her desk and opened her e-mail.
Hmm, there was a message for her. She’d just take a minute to check it.
She opened the e-mail. The message said,
Hi, Mommy.
In Memory of the Sibylline by Lou Kemp
The many men so beautiful
And they all dead did lie!
And a million million slimy things
Liv’d on-and so did I.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner-Coleridge
Like a shower of fairy dust on fire, the embers from Townsend’s pipe blew across the railing and into the night, lost long before they fell into the waves.
He cupped his pipe to protect the remaining embers and to keep his hands warm. It seemed like only hours ago when the Christianna had sailed out of Cascais under a warm Portuguese sun.
A pregnant moon hung low over the sea. The waves reflected moonlight on iridescent crests that rolled by the Christianna as frothy and lacy as underskirts. Townsend gazed upward. The conflagration of stars seemed endless. Somewhere beyond them lay places the sailors of the future would travel. He’d be content to reach Alexandria and with a wee bit of luck it would be more temperate than his last visit in 1812. He nearly froze before he reached Cairo.
Although he did not hear footsteps, Townsend became aware of another presence at the rail. Townsend looked closer and saw that it was an older academic he’d met as he boarded the ship. A deep and pervading sadness seemed to weigh upon the man’s shoulders.
“Good evening, Mr. Perideaux,” Townsend said.
“A beautiful night, no?” Perideaux’s cigarette flickered in the darkness, revealing a faint sheen of perspiration decorating his brow.
Although his words seemed calm enough, it appeared that Perideaux needed to be reassured in some manner, perhaps only to hear another voice in the vastness of the night. Townsend could sympathize with that thought. The undercurrent of fear existed most tangibly when a lone ship rode the waves in the dead of night. It was long after eleven bells, and the crewmen in the rigging above were only a suggestion of movement. Or life.
“Yes, a beautiful night,” Townsend agreed.
Perideaux made no response. The man’s attention seemed transfixed some distance off the port bow as his gaze swept the sea from side to side, as if searching for something.
Under their feet, the Christianna creaked and groaned as she climbed a wave. Townsend relit his pipe. The damned thing could never stay lit for more than a few minutes. He wondered if Perideaux expected to see another ship cross their wake.
If Townsend hadn’t been watching his companion closely, he wouldn’t have seen the delicate shudder that traveled down the man. Perideaux said, “Felicity, oh, Felicity,” and he grabbed hold of the railing.
At first Townsend could perceive nothing except the inky night and the roiling waves. Then he saw the outline of a ship. Within seconds, the vessel seemed to glow and solidify. Three masts pointed to the sky, and brass rails glimmered underneath canvases that billowed, tickled by the wind. Shadows walked the deck. She floated nearly a league in the distance, without lights, without substance.
A gurgling sound came from Perideaux’s throat, and he whispered, “The Dutchman.”
Townsend heard him, but couldn’t stop watching the phantom ship that appeared to fade away until the moonlight pierced through her, and then she became distinct once again.
FROM a porthole I watched as Madagascar slipped away into the distance. Already, a hot sun reflected off the sea, obscuring the city with so much brightness that the smoke-shrouded shacks and fishing boats blended to gray, leaving just a suggestion of civilization behind the foam-capped waves.
My cabin was on the leeward deck, only a few paces from the captain’s quarters and those of the passengers. Through the portholes blew a fragrant breeze, bringing the suggestion of frying sausages and the calls of the sailors as they worked high above in the rigging and swung from spar to spar. The LeHanna was a barkentine and considered to be of good size.
I’d determined that my cabin door would not open. Presumably because it was locked. However, I had no trouble hearing footsteps on the wooden deck approach and stop just outside.
Through the porthole, I could see most of my guard in profile. The newcomer confronting him was a tall man, nearly my height, scholarly and pale.
“We’re pleased to have you aboard, Dr. Perideaux,” said the guard.
The trick to observing someone without staring and causing them to turn and stare back is to look a bit off to the side. In this instance, I watched the sky just beyond Dr. Perideaux’s large ears. There was no mistaking the steel in his voice.
“Are you? Is that why you feel it necessary to brandish a musket around my family?”
The guard replied, “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir. But I have my orders.”