"Baker, Kage - The Wreck of the Gladstone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)
The Wreck of the Gladstone
by Kage Baker
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Copyright (c)1998 Kage Baker
First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Oct/Nov 1998
On the fourteenth of November 1893, the schooner yacht _Gladstone_ encountered a storm in the Catalina channel off the harbor at Los Angeles, California. A northeastern gale capsized her and she sank within sight of the lights of San Pedro. It is a matter of recorded fact that all hands were lost, including the captain.
Nevertheless, the following August he returned to the scene of his death and peered down through the green water, and it seemed to him he could just discern her outline, green and waving, rippling and fading, the lost _Gladstone_.
Standing at the rail he wondered, miserably, if any of the mortals he had known were still down there with her, the owner with his long moustache, the sea-cook with his canvas apron.
I could tell he was so miserably wondering because of the set of his mouth and wide stare. I've known Kalugin since the summer of 1699 and have learned, in that time, to read his least thought in his countenance. It is indeed a dear countenance, but terribly at odds with itself; the eyes ought to be steel but are vague and frightened. The nose is arrogant as an eagle's beak, the mouth shaped cruel for its hereditary work of ordering serfs to the pillory: yet the sharp features are blunted in the wide pink face. He doesn't really look like one of us at all.
"Come inside, dear." I touched his arm with my gloved hand. "We can't do anything until the morning."
"I shall have bad dreams," he replied. He turned to go with me, and his gaze fell hopefully upon the island off to the west. "Do you suppose any of the crew managed to swim ashore?"
"Certainly they might have." I gave his arm a squeeze. "But they'd have had to have been extraordinary swimmers. And history does record that all hands were lost, after all."
"Including me, my dear," he pointed out, and I was obliged to shrug in concession of his point. It is one of the laws of the time manipulation business that history cannot be changed. It is one of its hazards, and conveniences, that this law can only be observed to apply to _recorded_ history. We arrange matters to our advantage in perfect obedience to the known facts. Kalugin had gone down with his ship, and so conformed to the historical record. The fact that he had risen on the seafoam three days later, like Venus or Christ, was beside the point and out of the history books altogether. That fact that he had failed in his mission on that occasion was of greater consequence, and the reason for our present excursion.
I led him into the saloon of the _Chronos_, where dinner had just been served. Victor was standing at his place waiting for us, eyeing the repast with approval.
Victor is one of those white men with nearly transparent skin. His hair and beard are a startling red, his eyes pale green, and his features are small and precise as a kitten's. If he were mortal he might decay in time to a certain spare leonine dignity, but as it is he has perpetually the sharp edge of the adolescent cat. Victor was our Facilitator on this mission. He it was who had arranged for our yacht and its crew, and who had produced such papers as we might need to justify our actions to any mortals we might encounter. Other than the servants, of course. We were fortunate to have his assistance, for the customary glacial slowness of the Company in requisitioning such necessaries might have produced a delay of years before we attended to our present mission.
"Madame D'Arraignee." He ushered me to my chair. "Captain Kalugin. It appears we're having 'Bounty of the Sea' tonight. Turtle soup, oysters, lobster salad and Tunny a'la Marechale. Just on the chance you don't get enough of the briny deep on the morrow, Kalugin."
Kalugin sighed and held out his glass for champagne. "It's all very well for you to laugh. Three days against the ceiling of that cabin! Do you know, when the storm had subsided enough for my rescue transport, I had _J.W. Coffin and Sons, Boston, Massachusetts_ printed on my cheek? In mirror image, of course. From an inscription on the brasswork."
Victor laughed heartily. I thought what it must have been like, lying in darkness with drowned men, waiting for the storm to subside. I reached for Kalugin's hand under the table and squeezed it. He gave me a grateful look.
"So here's a health to the Infant Hercules!" Victor raised his glass. "Let's hope the little devil is in reasonably good health too, after his sojourn in the bosom of Aphrodite. Have you inspected the Laboratory yet, Nan? Everything to your satisfaction?"
"It's down there. An entire drum of that and the other chemical you needed, the solvent, what's it's name?"
"Diorox."
"Diorox, to be sure. I saw it loaded. Everything you need to restore the Son of Zeus to his original splendor should be present and accounted for."
"I'm sure that will prove to be the case."
"I really did seal it up quite tightly," said Kalugin. "There may be a little damage from the tacks. I did my best to remove them, but you've no idea -- the rolling of the ship, and the shouting, and then the light had gone, you know, and the claw end of the hammer wasn't the right size."
"You should have used pliers," Victor admonished him briskly. "Though of course the really important thing, Kalugin, was the air-seal. We can only pray it withstood the impact when you dropped it."
"Oh, it must have." He twisted one corner of his napkin. "That's all covered in my report, you see, the cylinder landed in mud. The seal must have held. There shouldn't have been any errors."
"No, I daresay; the _equipment_ scarcely ever malfunctions." Victor tasted his soup with a delicate grimace. Kalugin looked wretched. He turned to me.
"I'm afraid I might have torn one corner of the painting a little," he said apologetically. "I did mention that in my report as well."
"I'm sure it's of no consequence." I smiled at him. "Canvas repair is the simplest of processes. You forget, my dear, the Renaissance work I've done. You ought to see what the Italians do to their paintings! Floods and mud and bird droppings -- "
"_If _you please!" Victor's spoon halted in its rise to his moustache.
"Pray excuse me." I had a sip of champagne.
"Have you spoken to Masaki?" Victor inquired of Kalugin.
"The diver? Yes, and she seems a knowledgeable sort. Appears to have done a lot of this sort of thing."
"She has. She's the best in her field."
"Might almost be able to handle the recovery operation herself, I imagine, if my nerve were to desert me," said Kalugin casually.
"Though, of course, it shan't." Victor gave him a hard smile across the table.
We talked about the mission until half-past eleven, and Kalugin drank too much champagne. I lay in the bunk across from him and watched as he slept it off. His eyes raced behind pale lids, his breath caught continually, and his soft hands pushed and pushed at something that would not leave him. It is a terrible thing to be immortal and have bad dreams.
At dawn I opened my eyes and the cabin was full of the sublimest clear pink light, the same tender shade one sees only in the winter season. Its delicate beauty was in harsh contrast to the hoarse profanities that resounded on the morning air.
Kalugin sat up and we stared at one another. We heard one of the Technicians approaching Victor's stateroom and saying, quite unnecessarily, "Vessel off our starboard bow, sir. Crew of two mortals. They're hailing us."
Hailing damnation on us, in fact, and worse things too. The voice echoing across the water was nearly incoherent with rage, backed up by the rattling throb of a steam engine, and growing closer with each moment. We heard Victor's door open and heard his rapid footsteps as he went on deck. We dressed hastily and followed him.
They were just coming abreast of us as we emerged. Victor, dignified in his dressing-gown, Turkish slippers and fez was confronting a wiry little man in stained canvas trousers and an old jersey. The mortal was bounding up and down in his fury in the manner of a chimpanzee, which resemblance was furthered by the fact that his arms were muscular and enormous.
The other mortal stood at the tiller, a bedraggled girl in a faded cotton print dress. She was heavily with child, and appeared to be on the verge of tears. Their old fishing boat was in a bad way, even to my untrained eyes: her ironwork had risen like biscuit with flaked rust, and her old wood was pearl-gray. Some attempt had recently been made to make her seaworthy, but her days on the water were numbered, clearly. _ELSIE_ was painted in trailing letters on her bow.
To render what her captain was saying into prose were to produce a stream of invective not grammatical but profound.
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