All the Colors of Time (13 page)

It was fairly quiet outbound and I’d hoped to be around for
her approach to Bombay where I had read there would be a thirteen gun salute
and an honor guard waiting to see her in. Here, there would be people lining
the docks, watching—but they would be concerned merchants, wives, children,
urchins longing to be on the outbound tide.

I sighed.

“So ye like the sights hereabouts, do ye?” The voice shocked
me out of my daydream about half a second before a strong pair of hands grasped
the tail of my coat and the seat of my britches and hauled me down off the peat
pile.

I tumbled all the way to the bottom and came out upside down
against a plowshare, staring cross-eyed into the black silhouette of Mr.
Piggott.

He let out a wheeze of laughter. “Ain’t ye just a wee bit
auld for these shenanigans, son?”

oOo

Captain Charles Dunbar eyed me with what I took as
suspicion. I stood trembling in his cabin waiting for the worst case scenario
to be played out: I am killed and thrown overboard or let off politely
quay-side while my Temporal Grid sails blithely to Bombay without me.

Of course, it would never make Bombay. After two months sans
time traveler, its recall mechanism would do one last all-out search for my
vitals and, not finding them, Shift back to its original coordinates in
London-future where QuestLabs and Oslovsky U. would decide if I was worth
rescuing. I would be either dead or stranded in 1805 regardless.

Right now, it was all I could do to keep my head up and my
eyes level with the Captain’s, praying the name “Black Charley” was a comment
on his startling coloring and not his personality.

He strode right up to me—not quite towering above me, but
seeming to—and put his nose nearly against mine. “
Est-ce que vous êtes Francais, monsieur?
”

“Oh, no, sir,” I replied immediately. “I’m Am- uh, English.”

“Ah!
Mais vous
comprenez le langue, non?
”

“
Vous comprenez
Francais, aussi, monsieur. Etes vous Francais?
”

I had him there. He could hardly accuse me—in French, no
less—of being a French spy on the grounds that I spoke the language. He
scratched the corner of his mouth. It was threatening to curl into a smile. I
felt a tingle of hope.

“Are you sure you’re not a French spy, boy?”

“No, sir. I don’t think so, sir. I was born in York.” (Okay,
so I was born in
New
York—close.)

“York?”

“Yes sir.”

He glanced aside at his First Mate, Reardon by name, who
stood silently aside, watching.

“Not Paris?” (“Pah-ree”, he said, quite properly.)

“Not Paris.” I stressed the “s” at the end of the word.

“Have you been to Paris?”

“No sir, I have not.”

“Yet you speak the language.”

“Preparing for the worst, sir,” I said before I could stop
myself. I cringed.

He stared. He sent his mate a wide-eyed look. Then he threw
back his head and roared. “Not a spy at all. A
jokester
.”

I nodded, relaxing.

“Then what the bloody blazes are you doing aboard my ship,
scurrying beneath-decks like a damned bilge rat?”

I had never heard anyone seriously use the term “bilge rat”
before and it completely up-ended me. I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized to
his scowl. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never that. I’m a—a student,
sir. And my family have an eye to a career in medicine. But I . . .”
I paused and gazed around, my eyes going to the windows of the transom. “I’ve
always loved the Sea.”

Well, I couldn’t have said better. The Cap’s frosty gray
eyes lit up and went into pinwheels like a McCaffrey dragon’s, though other
than that, his expression remained unchanged.

“Know your way around a vessel, do you?” he asked.

“I think so, sir.”

He nodded, then put his fist in front of my nose and
beckoned me to follow him. He led me from his cabin and up on deck, the silent
First Mate bringing up the rear. In the open hatchway, he pointed forward. “What’s
that, then?”

I followed his finger. “The mainmast, sir. Any fool knows
that.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “Name me the sails on her.
Bottom-most up.”

I grinned. Among her suite of sixty-three sails, the
Essex
carried several not found on other
ships. Black Charley evidently expected me not to know that.

“Yes sir!” I said and recited, “Mainsail, lower topsail,
upper topsail, topgallant, royal, skysail . . .” I paused just
long enough to see a slow smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “Cloudscraper,
moonraker, stargazer,” I finished in a rush and was gratified to see a glint of
surprise in the Master’s eyes.

“You know the
Essex
,
then?”

“I do indeed, sir,” I said with only half-feigned eagerness.
“She’s the finest ship afloat.”

“You’re small, soft, and too glib for your own good,” Black
Charley informed me. “Can you think of any reason I shouldn’t throw you
overboard or send you home on a channel barge?”

Actually, I couldn’t.

The First Mate cleared his throat. The sound so close behind
me nearly induced heart failure. “The young man did say he’d studied medicine,
Cap’n.”

“So he did.” Charley’s grappling hook eyes caught me by the
throat. “Do you know aught of medicine, boy?”

“Well, I—I’ve only had two years, but—”

“We’ve no doctor on this voyage. Old one died at sea and the
new man’s been held up, it seems. Little matter of a wedding, I hear. Your two
years bests any man aboard . . . Doctor . . .” He
wrinkled a black brow—just one, like Mr. Spock. “I don’t believe we’ve been
properly introduced. What’s your name, young man?”

For a split second, I courted the idea of saying “Dr. McCoy,”
but no one would get the joke for almost two hundred years. In another second I
was wondering what he’d do if I told him the truth—that I was just as much a
Dunbar as he was. No, I thought, he’s superstitious—might take it as a bad omen
and chuck me over-sides. I took a page from the book of another time traveler. “Foreman,”
said I. “Arthur Foreman.”

I’d hesitated too long and his eye noted it with a
head-to-toe sweep. “You’ve no need to prevaricate with me, boy. I’ll not squawk
to your family.”

“No, sir. Of course not, sir,” I murmured.

“Ah, well, keep your secret, then.” He turned his attention
to Mr. Reardon. “Set him up in the Doctor’s quarters if you would, Jimmy. We’ll
be under sail in another hour.” He turned and strode off, then, leaving me in
the First Mate’s able hands.

I was shown a cabin and told that if I had any belongings in
the hold, I’d best get them up before the crew found them. I brought up only
items that a nineteenth century stowaway might be expected to carry—a pocket
watch, a diary, some clothing, a few books. One had a flat-screen monitor in
the back cover that went with the touch-sensitive ultra-thin keyboard worked
into the front cover. Without coded voice activation (the magic words:
open sesame
), it would stolidly remain a
book through all prodding and prying.

As I was ferrying my goods topsides, I recalled the
disclite, which I’d pocketed just before I was discovered. I certainly didn’t
want to be caught with that. I reached into my pants pocket and felt empty air.
The light was gone.

Adrenaline pumping, I stowed my gear, then returned to the
hold to make a careful search of the area around where I’d fallen into the arms
of the inestimable Mr. Piggott. Nothing turned up.

Exasperated, I tried to think where else I might have
dropped the thing. Really, it was stupid of me to have taken it outside the
Crate. Unless I found it, it was quite literally history.

A scraping sound sent me a foot straight up into the hold’s
dim, turgid air. I spun just in time to see a tall, narrow shadow melt into the
general gloom to the port side of the ladder. If that was a rat, I was in
trouble. If it wasn’t a rat, I was in trouble. I made my way quickly to the
main deck.

We were nearing the mouth of the Thames and the air changed
noticeably, taking on a fresh, tangy perfume that the city’s pollution had
muted to a stale, briny smack. The crew began to scramble now, like rats in the
rigging, preparing to unfurl the sails. I gazed up at the neatly collected
stargazer and wondered if it had ever seen duty. On deck, the Captain ordered
men to the capstan.

The activity was at its height and our tug cast off when the
Mate called down from the helm. “Lighter approaching, sir! Off the port beam.”

Captain Dunbar turned, frowned at his First Officer, then
ordered his crew to stand down from the capstan. He took the view from the port
rail, then waved down at the approaching boat before ordering a ladder thrown
over-side.

On his way to the poop deck, he glanced my way. “Well,
Arthur Foreman, I think you’d best clear your quarters and think of a reason I
oughtn’t send you home on that lighter. We’ve got us a real doctor now.”

A real doctor was not all we had. We had a real doctor’s
wife.

Mary MacCormac was stunning as a starry night. Hair the
color of a sailor’s delight sunset (a yard of it, at least), creamy, white-cap
skin, sea green eyes.
Here,
I could
hear every man aboard thinking,
is a
proper woman for a mariner.
She had a sweet, graceful manner as well—shy,
warm smile that could turn quickly saucy; fey glint in the eyes. She was
mesmerizing.

Her husband, on the other hand, seemed hardly worthy of her.
Ian MacCormac was a dark, curly-haired, faun-like man. A colorless
man—unremittingly gray and black. Odd, I thought, how a man so like Black
Charley in coloring could seem so drab in comparison—so insignificant. But then
he
would
look colorless next to Mary,
and because of Mary we did not like him.

I had already begun to think of myself as a member of
Essex’
s crew, but I was not that, and
her master quickly reminded me of the fact.

“Well, Mr. Foreman,” he said when the MacCormacs had been
ushered below. “Have you thought well about what will induce me not to send you
back to town in that lighter?”

I hadn’t thought of it at all, actually. I had been thinking
of Mary MacCormac. I could only comfort myself that he was probably toying with
me. If he really wanted to throw me off the ship, we wouldn’t be standing here
discussing it.

“I don’t know, sir,” I murmured.

“Well, have you any special talents? Do you sing or dance or
play the pipes or fiddle?”

I am, as Providence would have it, a most untalented
individual. I could think of nothing except—“I am possessed of a certain . . .
clairvoyance, sir.”

Charley laughed. “A fortuneteller?”

I shrugged. “I see things.”

“Do you now? And what do you see about me, eh? What’s in the
future of Charley Dunbar?”

I looked thoughtful for a moment. “A record-breaking voyage.
The ownership of three of your own vessels. Retirement as a wealthy man to a
large estate in . . .” I rubbed my temples. “Hampshire.”

He blinked. “I’ve always fancied Hampshire. But you no doubt
could’ve guessed that or taken it from Reardon. Tell me something else or . . .”
His eyes wandered to the rail where the pilot of the lighter was hobnobbing
with the Bosun and Cargo Master.

I could see the situation called for more imagination on my
part. What could I tell him without breaking some unwritten Law of Time Travel?

“Well?”

“Today is the twentieth of June,” I said. “Tomorrow the East
Indiaman
Warren Hastings
will be
taken by a French vessel. A . . . a frigate . . .
The
Piémontaise
.”

Charley goggled at me. “The
Hastings
ships forty-four cannon and possesses one of the finest
crews in the Fleet—you ask me to believe she can be taken by a single frigate?”

I nodded. “And towed to port in record time.”

His eyes narrowed and he waggled a finger at me. “Clever
boy. You’ve told me a tale I’ll not be able to verify ’til we make our first
port o’ call.”

I smiled affably.

“Very well, then, Arthur Foreman. I’ll let you ship on the
Essex
 . . . maybe . . .
if you tell me one more thing—your real name.”

I ran down the list of possibilities and came up with only
one I was willing to live with. “Dunbar, sir,” I told him. “Arthur Dunbar.”

His pale eyes widened. “And will you now claim to be my
illegitimate get, or some such?”

“No, sir. I know both my parents quite well. My father is
Curtis Dunbar—a doctor out of York.” (Queens, actually. And he was a particle
physicist. Close enough, though. He’d doctored a lot of quantum theories in his
day.)

“I’ve people in York. You figure we’re related?”

“I really couldn’t say, sir.” I really couldn’t. That would
be breaking a Law.

He eyed me up one side and down the other, then made an
explosive sound between his lips. “Ah, you’ve tweaked my curious bone, boy. But
if you’re to have passage on this vessel, you either pay or earn your way. I
suppose you’ve no coin?”

“I do, sir, but I don’t want to be a passenger. I want to
serve on the Essex.”

“How well do you think you can handle the lines?” He nodded
at
Essex’
s towering masts.

“I’ve sailed small boats, sir. Nothing bigger than a large
fishing yawl.”

“I’ll teach you then. Piggott’ll teach you. For now, you
start at bottom. Consider yourself my cabin boy. Get your things into that wee
cabin next to mine.”

I nodded vigorously and thanked him, but he was already off,
calling the hands to stations, yelling at the lighter to cast off. As I went
below, the fore capstan had begun to turn and
Essex’
s fore course to blossom.

oOo

Our first two weeks at sea were remarkably uneventful.
There was no sign of the French and the Captain teased me daily about my
prophetic utterance, at the same time prodding me for further predictions. I
demurred, saying with affected grief that I couldn’t make prognostications in
the face of such skepticism.