The Gradual (22 page)

‘Gained.’ He waved the stave in front of my face. ‘You have travelled without score. Maybe that is how you choose? Detriment is risky.’

I said nothing, feeling a renewed sense of confusion, alarm and anxiety about being able to board my ship in time.

He held the stave in his left hand, then reached down and behind him and pulled up the knife that dangled from his waistband. He flipped off a leather cover that was protecting the blade and the sun briefly glinted from bright metal. He raised it and brought the blade to the side of the stave, squinting intently at what he was doing. Now that the knife was close to me I could see that it was not really a knife at all, but a bladed tool like a chisel, but with a vee-shaped pointed edge. The man turned the stave in his hand, and etched a tiny line in a short spiral close to the tip.

‘Now – this is Ristor. One of my friends saw you there. You showed no interest. But on Ristor – this is what you should have. OK – that is about, I don’t know, maybe twenty minutes.’

‘Twenty minutes of what?’ I said.

‘Time corrected. Not much gradual tide between wherever on the mainland, and Ristor. Now – my friend Renettia. You saw her.’

I glanced behind him, thinking that the woman would still be there, but she had moved away.

‘She was trying to sell me a stave.’

‘You walked past her on Callock. No sale there. New gradual.’

Again he scraped lightly with the sharpened tip. This was a longer, looser spiral, further away from the end of the stave.

‘So that corrects how much of the detriment?’ I said, starting to glimpse what he might be doing.

‘This is increment. Callock is south but to west of Ristor, so time lost, not gained as detriment. Very complicated. Now you are still behind, but not for so long.’ He showed me how the spiral he had etched went in the opposite direction from the short one for Ristor. ‘OK, so after Callock it was Gannten. Beautiful painters, I think. Dryd Bathurst, you know, famous artist? You are artistic man too. You did not stay, but passed through. It was night, you did not look. You were thinking of getting to your cabin, I am certain. You passed me as always, but I understand, I understand.’

‘Gannten is to the east?’

‘To the east. A great deal, but not far by ship.’

He etched another line along the stave’s wooden blade. This was not a spiral but was straight, with intermittent gaps.

So it went, each of the islands I had visited or transited on my journey to Muriseay was marked with an etched line on the stave. He carved the marks with intricate care, checking his work by eye and with his fingertips, brushing away the tiny splinters of the wood carved out by the knife. Muriseay itself received a deeply gouged line. He wiped down the stave with a rag, which he pulled from his pocket.

‘OK, now detriment is shown.’

I glanced past him towards where the ship was still against the quay. There was some activity around it and I noticed that the plume of smoke issuing from the funnel was much thicker. ‘May I go now?’

‘First you must record the detriment.’

This involved a thankfully brief return visit to the Shelterate counter. One of the officials took my stave, pressed it into the scanner, waited for the green light to shine and then handed it back to me. As I walked back outside I glanced at the wooden blade. The etched lines were still in place – I had half expected that the scan would remove them somehow.

The man was waiting for me outside.

‘Now we remove the detriment,’ he said.

‘Haven’t we already done that?’ One of the gangplanks had been rolled back from the side of the ship, although I could see two crew members in white uniforms standing by the ship’s hatch of the other one – passengers were still climbing slowly aboard.

‘We have displayed the detriment, it has been recorded. Now we remove it.’

‘I have to board,’ I said. ‘They will be closing in a few moments. I don’t want to miss my ship.’

‘You have already missed it, I tell you. Not as you think. As I think. It is not safe for you to travel with detriment.’

‘I thought we had dealt with that.’

‘No – we must remove it. Your ship will wait for you. No worry. Give me fifty thaler.’

I stared at him in amazement. ‘You want money?’

‘Of course. That is charge for removing the detriment.’

‘Then I’ll live with it.’

‘So – you want to repeat what happened before? When you returned home with an unremoved detriment? One year eleven months?’

‘You know about that?’

‘It is on your stave. Fifty thaler.’

It was a large sum of money, almost as much as I was carrying in the Muriseayan currency. It was most of what was left after I had paid the travel agent.

‘You say it will put everything right?’

‘Not everything. What’s done is done. But from the day when you arrived on Ristor – no more detriment.’

‘Would you do it for thirty?’

‘No discount. Fifty thaler is the price.’

He stood blandly before me, his eyes moist in the heat and sunlight. Why was he not wearing dark glasses, like some of the others there with him? Preparing for the voyage I had changed most of my cash into simoleons, as the travel agent had advised, but I had kept a small wad of thalers. In case of emergencies.

‘Will you take simoleons?’

‘Thaler.’

I handed the money over. I counted out the banknotes into his hand then he elaborately checked them, licking his thumb and forefinger. He folded and slipped the notes into the pocket of his filthy shirt. As if a signal had been sent by the closing of this transaction, the ship emitted two short blasts on its siren. I gripped the handle of my luggage trolley.

‘Follow me. Leave the trolley. Carry all bags yourself, or risk losing them. And keep this in one of your hands all the time.’

He thrust the stave at me.

The man turned away from me and set off across the quay, away from the ship. He walked with his head down and his shoulders hunched. His gait was stiff. The etching tool swung at his side. I removed my luggage from the trolley, hefted my violin case across my back, then piled the holdall on my shoulders on top of it. It was uncomfortable, but it left both my hands free. I held one of the cases in one hand and used the other hand to carry the stave, clutched with the lighter of the two cases. By the time I had everything the man had reached the far side of the quay and was about to move out of sight around the corner of a building. I hurried after him with ungainly steps, the two cases banging against my knees. The sun’s radiant glare was deadly on the unshaded parts of the concrete apron. Warm air drifted listlessly under the cranes and winches that littered the place. It smelled of hot oil, rusty metal, rotted food, the salty sea.

I followed him from the commercial section of the harbour and soon we came to a rundown area littered with grounded old boats long beyond seaworthiness, a tangled mess of torn fishing nets, many large pieces of rusty and unidentifiable equipment and a huge number of lobster pots shrouded in the remains of ancient seaweed. Here a small boat with an outboard motor was waiting at the bottom of some uneven stone steps leading down from the quay. The man had barely waited for me. As I was clambering awkwardly and unsafely down the disintegrating steps he was already pulling on the starter cord. I had to lean out from the lowest steps, swinging my stuff on to the boards. Trying not to lose my grip on the stave made everything twice as difficult. The boat was actually moving as I leapt aboard. I sat down heavily on one of the thwarts.

He speeded up and we steered out into the main area of the port: for the first time I gained some idea of the immensity of the facility. I could see ships, masts, cranes, chimneys, flyovers, warehouses stretching away from us into the distance. We headed past the harbour arm, the small jetty that enclosed the area we had been in. I was glad to be sitting down and not trying to manage my heavy bags but as soon as we were beyond the protection of the jetty the estuary was packed with ships, large and small, many of them under way. The water was rough here and the little boat threw spray high around us. The man steered the boat skilfully, eventually turning dramatically in front of the churning bow wave of a huge trawler. Now we were heading across the wide river mouth towards the further shore.

The water was just as choppy but I was glad of the cooling effect of the spray.

We closed with the opposite shore, which was undeveloped scrubland. The man turned off the outboard motor before we beached and the boat started drifting with the current. He stood up and stepped past me to stand in the prow, looking from side to side, shading his eyes against the sun. He appeared to be searching for somewhere on the shore, but when I asked him he snapped at me to be quiet. We drifted along, roughly parallel to the shore. This went on for several minutes. I had become resigned to the fact that I had missed my ship, so I sat quietly, waiting for something else to occur.

Finally, the man stepped back across the thwart where I was sitting and restarted the engine. He drove the boat ashore.

I managed to get my heavy luggage off without his help. He was already walking away from me. I knew then that I had had enough of this treatment. Annoyed, I dropped my bags on the ground and dashed after him.

‘What’s going on?’ I shouted at him, tugging at his arm and swinging him around. ‘Why are you doing this?’

He looked at me mildly. I saw there were traces of salt spray on his face and hair. His eyes were narrowed.

‘Be quiet, Msr Sussken.’

‘Why?’

‘I am removing the detriment you have created.’

‘Is this what I paid you for?’

‘Fifty thaler.’

‘This is hell. I can barely walk with all my baggage. I’m hot, tired, you’ve made me miss my sailing. Why are we out here?’

‘The luggage you are carrying is yours. Maybe you travel lighter now? The gradual is being compensated. We have tides to cross, tides to cancel. Your ship will wait. You should have used the adepts before.’

‘No one told me what to do.’

‘Not my fault.’

‘I don’t see how this helps.’

‘OK.’

‘You said you could fix the problem.’

‘Fix is what we do.’ He glanced back towards where the boat had beached. My bags and violin case were in a heap on the ground next to where the prow had rammed into the sandy bank. I still held the stave in my hand. ‘You are about to lose your stuff,’ he continued. ‘Your choice. Leave it if you never wish to see it again. Now I have to walk back to the bags with you. It is against the gradual we crossed. I charge extra for reversals. Normally.’

We went back towards the boat, the man a step or two ahead of me. He led me by an indirect route, crossing a sandy spur where prickly bushes snagged at my legs. I loaded myself up again, with bad grace. The cooling effect of the river air and the spray had already worn off and grit had penetrated my thin shoes. When I was holding everything the man set off once more.

I called after him, ‘Won’t you even tell me your name?’

‘Why you need to know?’

‘I don’t know what to call you. How to address you.’

‘I am adept. Keep up with me.’

Adept. I followed the adept up the long and sloping bank, having trouble getting a grip on the sandy soil. A long walk across untamed scrubland ensued, with the weight and unwieldiness of my luggage a constant and worsening problem. Low, tough plants spread stiff tendrils across the ground, making every step difficult. My whole body was aching and sweat was running down and across my face. It plastered my long robe against my back and legs. I tried several times to redistribute the load but all that I achieved was to transfer the heavier weight from one side to the other. The adept was always ahead of me but whenever I had to shift my load he did at least stand and wait. He never offered to assist.

Finally, after what felt like an hour of painful scrambling across the uneven ground we reached a darkly metalled road where traffic was moving by at speed. To my relief the adept waved down a car and after a long discussion in island patois the driver agreed to take us back into the harbour in Muriseay City, on the far side of the estuary. I saw a couple of banknotes passed across to him. They came from the adept’s shirt pocket, the money I had paid him.

With my bags loaded in the trunk of the car I sat holding my stave as we rushed along. The fierce draught from the car’s open windows was welcome, but the air was hot.

The car took us by an indirect route to the harbour – the adept dictated every turn and, once, a reversal. The driver finally took the car beneath the huge legs of the mobile cranes towards a wharf where a ship was berthed. She was painted cleanly in pale blue and white. She was the
Serquian
, still at the same berth. A long thin stream of pale smoke was issuing from her single funnel and drifting away across the harbour.

The adept and the driver climbed out, but I remained seated in the back. I was still clutching my stave. I was feeling despairing and exhausted. I watched as the two men spoke to each other outside the car but then without warning the adept walked away. I saw him take out the rest of the money I had given him – he fingered it, then transferred it to a pocket in the seat of his pants. After a few moments he had passed beyond the line of cranes and I could no longer see him.

The car driver opened the seat beside me, jerking his thumb to indicate I should leave. As I did so the
Serquian
’s siren blew a single long blast. I gathered up my stuff as quickly as possible, then went to thank the driver. He had been waiting only for me to take my property out of the car. He drove away without acknowledging me.

The trolley I was using before was still more or less where I had left it, so I loaded it up. The young people I now knew to be the other adepts were sitting casually on their bench beneath the canopy, watching me incuriously. The adept, my adept, was not there with them.

I was concerned only with getting on the ship before she sailed – I could see that other passengers were still boarding ahead of me.

I hurried into the Shelterate building but the long counters where baggage was opened and searched were not staffed. I made a noise with my bags, clunking them down on the counter. I had to continue waiting, anxiously glancing through the window towards the ship, but eventually an official appeared. It was the same woman I had spoken to before. She walked in casually, unsurprised to see me.