‘She is certainly impressive. I suppose it would be stupid of me to ask if you’ll be able to handle her?’
‘Ship that big,’ said Ron, ‘you’ve just got to know how quickly you can stop it or turn it. And never forget how little it is, compared to the ocean, and how fragile compared to some rocks in that ocean.’
Janer nodded. Yes, the ship was huge and wonderfully complete, with its long blue and black hull, hundreds of square chainglass windows, its tiered decks and many other structures up there, and the forest of masts and spars above them. Things seemed quite complicated in the rigging, and he wondered how the sails would cope. Having asked, he now knew that they would not be hanging upside down, batlike, as was their custom. Nor would they be using plain muscle power to change the angle of the other fabric sails, for even they were not that strong. They would turn themselves to the wind as instructed by the helmsman, Forlam apparently, but this movement would be transferred via sensors to the relevant mast and spar motors, and cable winders. Much of their other work up there—reefing fabric sails and rigging changes—they would control through consoles mounted on the masts. There was still much for them to learn. Perhaps foremost was working with their fellows, as never before had there been more than one living sail to a ship.
‘Ah, at last,’ muttered Isis Wade, ‘the outflow of verbal effluent comes to an end.’
‘… so now, without any more ado, I name this ship,’ Bloc announced, ‘the Sable Keech!’
He pulled down a lever on the framework. An arm, which until then had been concealed, arced up with the bottle attached to the end, and smashed it against the hull. Immediately the grumbling of motors set up a vibration in the air, and the Sable Keech began to move down to the water. Peering through the crowd, Janer observed the treaded pallets running smoothly under its huge weight. As its bows touched the sea, the Hoopers all cheered, then the reifications followed suit, but that seemed to be just noise with no feeling in it. The cheers died away as the ship continued its slow progress into the waves. Soon it revealed behind it the alloy ramp, dented with the marks of pallet treads. It trailed cables being wound out from motorized reels on the deck to shore anchors. Each of the reels was manned by a skeletal Golem. Once it was fully in the water, one of these reels began winding in, pulling taut the cable to Janer’s left, drawing the bows round to a predetermined position, whereupon another Golem aboard dropped an anchor. The ship turned, the stern swinging out until the vessel drew parallel to the coast. More anchors slid down. Now, the motorized pallets returned from the sea, and to Janer’s surprise the ramp began to rise. It drew level, creating a jetty protruding a hundred metres out over the waves, supported underneath by rams. The end of this was only a few tens of metres from the ship itself.
‘Neat,’ he said.
‘Golem know how to build,’ said Wade.
‘They had good teachers,’ Janer shot back.
‘You mean the AIs?’
Janer grimaced at that and made no further comment.
The Golem were now manipulating both anchor chains and shore cables to draw the ship closer to the jetty. An upper section of hull hinged out, and down, drawing a wide collapsible stair out from under the main deck and down to the jetty. It moved with the roll of the sea for a moment, until clamps folded up from underneath the jetty and crunched it into place. What struck Janer here was the strange combination of the anachronistic and new: a sailing ship but all this technology as well. He wondered what other Polity technologies, besides that submersible, might be aboard, then he watched as the army of Golem began to disembark.
‘Here’s the new toy we’ve built for you,’ he said.
‘Quite,’ said Wade.
Janer turned to Ron, as Bloc began speaking again. ‘I guess we should go get our stuff.’
‘Why not,’ said Captain Ron, looking at Wade thoughtfully.
Wormish tangles of packetworm coral rose in the sea like three Hindu temples, beaches of grey sand accumulated around them. Ambel scanned their destination through his binoculars, and grimaced as he noted the mounded shape of a leech washed up on the shore. It was unmoving so was probably dead. Leeches, which sat at the top of the food chain here, were surprisingly more mortal than everything below them in that chain. The sprine they used in their digestive system tended to percolate through their bodies, negating the growth of the viral fibres.
‘Must be fairly recent.’ Boris nodded towards the huge corpse. He was holding the helm with one hand and contemplatively flexing the fingers of his other hand. Ambel lowered his binoculars and eyed the man. Stitching the fingers back on had not been such a problem, but reattaching the tendons that had snapped back up into his arm had been messy and painful.
‘We’re not going to have any problems are we?’ Ambel asked.
Boris shrugged. ‘It was an accident.’
‘Then take us in.’
Boris turned the helm to bring the Treader round, then he shouted, ‘You awake up there?’
Galegrabber hurriedly turned himself, and the sails he controlled, to catch the best of the wind to bring the ship in towards the grey beach. Ambel glanced down to the deck to make sure someone was ready to drop the anchor, then returned the binoculars to his eyes.
It was a recent death. The leech’s rider prill were milling about just beyond it, not yet aware that their ride was dead and so might now have made the transformation into dinner, and no other creatures had yet arrived to join in the potential feast.
‘Might be a bit risky,’ said Boris.
‘But there’s something to gain.’ Ambel lowered his binoculars. ‘You get that deck cannon loaded.’
They changed position and Boris kicked open the ammunition box situated below the swivel-mounted cannon. He took out a paper-wrapped charge and shoved it down the barrel, ram-rodded it down, followed by wadding then a pack of stones. Then he pierced through the ignition hole and primed the flash pan.
‘Anne, up here!’ Ambel called. In a moment she came up from the deck, where she had been readying the rakes and riddles used to harvest amberclams. ‘Take the helm,’ Ambel told her, ‘I need to ready my ‘buss.’ As she took the helm he scrambled down the ladder to the deck, unhooked his enormous blunderbuss from the forecabin wall, and prepared it in much the same way Boris had prepared the deck cannon. Both weapons were equally effective, but only Ambel was strong enough to hold the blunderbuss and aim it properly.
‘Juniors below!’ he ordered as at the last moment the Treader came about, the sail reefing both fabric sails and itself, and climbing high up the mast, out of reach. The ship drew up sideways against a bank of sand, next to which the water was still deep. Sild dropped anchor then hurried off to find his musket. Peck swiftly freed his shotgun from its wrapping of oily cloth, fed some shells into it, then pumped one into the chamber. Already the prill had spotted the ship and were running across the sand in their curious revolving manner, leaving spiral trails behind them.
‘I said juniors below,’ said Ambel.
Sprout hung his head and, trailing his machete behind him, slowly followed the other junior crew. Ambel hoped Sprout would soon understand juniors do not heal as quickly as older Hoopers, and this was the only reason Ambel sent him below on such occasions.