“Rabbit, you make problems on this ship and they’ll make you walk the plank,” Edmund growled. “In concrete shoes.”
“Them and what army?” the rabbit challenged, hopping off of Herzer’s shoulder and landing on the deck with a solid thump. The switchblade waved back and forth menacingly.
“There’s a hundred and twenty-five crew and a dozen marines,” Edmund said. “If worse comes to worst, they’ll roll you up in a spare sail and toss you over the side weighted with ballast. How long can you hold your breath?”
“A long time,” the rabbit said, staring him in the eye. After a moment he quit to nibble at his shoulder as if he could care less for the threats. “I’ll behave. But you’d better find me some booze. I get all ticky when I don’t have booze.”
“There’re settlements around,” Edmund said. “We’ll see what we can do.”
“General,” Commander Mbeki said. “I hate to break up this spectacle but the wyverns are saddled and ready to go. We’ve got the spare stores and between the wind and the current we should be able to loft all of it, if you leave soon.”
“We’re ready,” Edmund replied. “Someone had better tell Joanna that she has a spare passenger and while you’re loading I need to go talk to the skipper.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“What… is that thing?” Chang asked.
“I’d say a spirit of elemental chaos,” Edmund replied with a frown. “But that would be superstitious. It, he, is an AI cyborg, not any sort of real rabbit at all. He was created a long time ago. And I’m being forced to leave him on your ship.”
“Thank you so very much, General,” the skipper said with a bemused expression. “What happens if he goes berserk?”
“Well…” Edmund said with a frown. “His programming is almost unbelievably chaotic. But one tendency is to never harm his own side in a truly irrevocable way. He plays tricks, sometimes quite painful ones. And generally is a bully until he gets his way. He’ll also betray you, for cash, goods or services, on half a chance. But never in a way that will cause true, irrevocable, harm.”
“That’s…”
“Weird,” Edmund sighed. “I do believe that the twenty-second century was the most… complex and baroque century in human history. That’s one of the results.”
“Why would anyone create something like that?” the captain said. “It would almost immediately betray its creators, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Edmund said. “And he was reported to have done so. Something about a large bomb. He was apparently based upon a comic from the twenty-first century.”
“A comic?”
“You’ll see. He’s pretty funny if you’re into black comedy. Anyway, he had three or four primary programming requirements. In sort of reverse order they’re: Have a fun and comfortable life, beat up a designated ‘nerd-boy,’ track down the cast of a show called Baywatch and be affectionate with the women…”
“Affectionate?”
“His term,” Edmund grinned. “Spend lots of time around large-breasted blondes and kill telemarketers. The last one is his primary programming.”
“What’s a telemarketer?” the captain asked.
“A form of human gadfly.” Edmund sighed, thinking how much of human history had been lost to disinterest. “Like a spammer but they used telephones which were…”
“Oh, I’ve heard of them,” Shar said, suddenly. “Weren’t they all wiped out in the… oh.”
“Right,” Edmund replied. “And you’re looking at their doom.”
“And you’re leaving him on my ship?”
“Have fun. Keeping him drunk sometimes works.”
The dragons were heavily laden but between the wind and the catapult they were able to get into the air and the party started out to the east, following the course that Edmund and Joanna between them set.
The seascape that they flew over was a patchwork of reefs, wide, white flats and small uninhabited islands. There were occasional patches of green in the water, which Herzer was informed were patches of sea grass. From time to time they saw a fishing boat but that was the only sign of humanity. There were fish aplenty in the waters, small schools turning in the sun and flashing up at them. When they had started off it had been nearly high tide and as they flew more and more of the flats became exposed.
The sunlight on the white flats was nearly blinding and after a while Herzer quit trying to look at them, looking out in the distance instead. Within an hour or so he could see the waters ahead were turning the green of the shallows with blue beyond and he knew they were passing over the flats and approaching the deeps beyond.
When they reached the edge of the flats, Joanna turned north tracing the edge of the land that was one small island after another. More flats were to their north, beyond the thin necklace of islands, but to the south the water quickly shaded from green to the dark blue of pelagic seas. Herzer had looked at the charts and the water over there was over a thousand feet deep. Admittedly, it was as easy to drown in five meters of water as a thousand, but there was a special feeling to seeing that immense body of horrendously deep water.
Finally they saw, at the tip of one of the islands, a two story concrete building that was their landmark. It appeared to be an ancient, but until the Fall well maintained, lighthouse. There were no signs of current habitation around it; the bushes were well grown up and the walkways near it were covered in weeds.
“Mer!” Koo called, pointing down and to the right. Sure enough, in the midst of a pod of dolphins the distinct silhouettes of mer-folk were visible. As the shadows of the dragons passed over the pod the mer came to the surface for a look, then dove into the water headed southeast.
“Do we land and swim out?” Joanna yelled.
“Land,” Edmund replied. “Then we’ll see about getting the dragons fed.”
They swept in for a landing by the old lighthouse and as they dismounted saw a line of heads popping up out of the water.
“Herzer,” was all Edmund said, starting to strip off his riding gear.
The wind was still from the north, blowing up a fine grit of sand and quite cold. Herzer was shivering by the time he’d stripped down himself and he pulled the mask on, looking forward to what he assumed would be warm water.
It wasn’t. The water was bitterly cold when he entered it, striding up to his waist, then putting on his fins. Edmund was already in, heading out to the mer-folk, flapping and splashing like a walrus.
Herzer quickly ducked under and started out himself, staying below the light chop. The bottom was mostly sand at the shore but bits of broken reef started to appear by the time they were halfway to the line of mer.
The mer-men started towards them as they swam, hesitantly at first and then more quickly, a line armed with bone-tipped spears at the front while the rest, who were burdened with mostly empty mesh bags, followed behind. When they got to within a dozen yards or so, Edmund stopped and hung in the water, feet down, and raised a hand.
“We’re here from the United Free States; we’re looking for Bruce Blackbeard.”
Herzer stared at the line of mer that approached. He had seen them before the Fall but never in a group and never in their natural environment. They were, he decided, no less graceful than dolphins, darting in patterns around each other. But they were far more colorful, their tail ends flashing blue, green, red and every other color of the rainbow. Their hair was all the colors of the rainbow as well and each of them had hair that more or less matched their tails. Besides all the other differences from humans, they had huge ribcages which, as he watched, opened and closed. Clearly they were gills. Their bodies were also far bulkier than those of most humans, but very smooth-skinned and not rippled with muscle. They appeared, as much as anything, fat.