“Of course I am.”
“I found a book-length biography of myself while I was on loan to the library in Port Purity. It was detailed and quite accurate, and made interesting reading. There were a few trivial errors, but nothing major.”
“You were sending in reports from the island?”
“Screening them, yes. Reports and pictures. The last report—the book gave the whole thing, word for word—said my raft was breaking up in a rough sea. No hurricane, just six-foot waves.” She shrugged. “I was never heard from again.”
I considered that. “They must have had tissue samples, or blood or something. They recloned you, after all.”
Audrey shook her head. “Only my DNA on file. That’s all they need. Let’s talk about something else, Ern.”
I agreed, but we did not. I was a little embarrassed and felt sure I’d put my foot in it. Maybe she was, too. However that was, we just stood together at the railing watching the waves and enjoying each other’s company—or anyhow I enjoyed hers and I like to think she enjoyed mine.
“This is a lot smoother than the one that broke up my raft,” Audrey said after we had stood there staring out to sea for five or ten minutes.
I nodded. It was calmer now, almost like glass.
“Can you see that?” She pointed. “Down there.”
I stared. “The big black thing? It’s longer than this boat.”
“Yes. That’s its back.”
“Is it a whale?”
“I hope not. They attack boats like this—boats smaller than they are—sometimes.”
That hit so hard that I could barely keep my voice from trembling. “Why would they do that?”
Audrey shrugged. “Whales were hunted for centuries. First with harpoons that seamen threw from small boats, then with harpoons shot from a deck gun. We don’t hunt them anymore, as far as I know.” She was silent for a moment; then she added, “We’ve stopped hunting them, but they haven’t forgotten.”
We were silent for quite a while after that, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts.
When the wind picked up and a fair-sized vessel with sails came into view, Audrey told me what boats with its rig were called and how they were operated.
After we had watched it for ten minutes or so, I went down to the bridge; touching the screen there brought up the sim. She looked as jaunty as ever, with her white cap tilted a bit to one side and a crisp, clean uniform. I told her I wanted to borrow binoculars or a telescope. Anything like that.
“There’s a lugger at one o’clock, sir. Is that what you want to see?”
I didn’t know what a lugger was, but I nodded.
“I can show you better than binoculars could.” She faded as she spoke. Here came a sea view, bringing an explanation of what I was seeing. The sailing vessel I had spotted got bigger and bigger as I watched. It looked twice as big as our boat, with a wooden hull that had been patched in places and two masts, the foremast raked forward and the aft raked back. Both masts carried brown lug sails, and both lug sails were reefed. I would have said it was going to go down any minute, but the crew moving around on deck did not look panicky.
I asked the screen if it could identify the boat, and got the sim again. “No, sir. Name unknown to me and none painted on the hull.”
“Is that the boat that took Dr. Barry Fevre away when he sailed with you?”
There was a brief delay before the sim said, “Looks like it, sir, but I can’t be certain.”
I wanted to tell her to go closer to the lugger, but it seemed obvious that I couldn’t board it in this weather. I wouldn’t be able to learn much by shouting questions at the skipper either, and a vessel as primitive as the lugger wouldn’t have anything remotely like a screen.
Thinking about all that I said, “Follow that boat!” It wasn’t until I had gotten it out that I realized it was the old, old, “Follow that groundcar!” with a little alteration to make it fit.
Smiling, the sim touched her cap. “Aye aye, sir!”
I hadn’t been sure she’d do what I said, but in a moment I could feel our boat going around. That brought up a question I’d been wanting to ask. I knew it was kind of foolish, but I was pretty sure the boat was not going to laugh at me for asking it. “Will I ever get to see the other two sisters?”
The sim never turned a hair. “Perhaps, sir. When they’re in port.” She paused to let me comment, then added, “They are the Mermaid and the Lady Luck, sir.”
I wanted to know more, but I couldn’t think of a good way to phrase my question. Maybe if I had just blurted it out my conditioning would have fixed it. (It does that for me just about always. I have to talk the way the first Ern A. Smithe wrote exposition; I’m pretty sure I’ve told you about that already.)
Audrey pointed when I got up on the top deck again. “Have you seen that sailboat, Ern?”
I said I had. “I went down to ask our boat about it, and she showed me a close-up in her screen. It might be the boat that took Dr. Fevre off. My guess is that it is.”
“I hadn’t noticed it until we turned toward it. That was your doing, wasn’t it? Giving orders down there on the bridge?”
I nodded.
The wind was blowing too hard for me to hear Chandra’s boots on the steps; I didn’t realize that she had climbed up to join us until she said, “Are we going to catch it, Mr. Smithe?”
I looked around and asked how her mother was.
“She’s gotten all quiet again. Only the first time, she tore into me so bad I ran outside in my PJ’s. She probably thought I went out on deck like that, but I didn’t.”
“Good!” That was Audrey.
“I ducked into that little cabin back over the engine.” Chandra grinned. “It sounds pretty bad back there, but maybe I could get used to it. After I’d been in there awhile it didn’t bother me much.”
“People must sleep in there sometimes, when they have a lot of fishermen on board.”
“Yeah. You know what I did?”
Audrey smiled. “I can’t imagine. What was it?”
“There’s no furniture in there to hide behind or anything, so I climbed into a top bunk and reached out to push the button. It shut right up with me inside.”
I said, “You could have suffocated.”
“Nah. Push against it, and it opens up a little. After a while I did that until I could reach out and push the button again. Then it opened right up. That’s when I went back to our cabin to get my clothes. Mother was awake, only just lying in her bunk staring up at the one on top of hers. You know how she does.”
I nodded.
“So I didn’t say anything. I put these on fast and came out on deck. Then I saw you guys up here.”
Audrey said, “I’m glad you did. We wouldn’t want you to get washed over the rail.”
“It’s not that rough.”
“Not now, but it wouldn’t have to get much rougher. It could happen, and it would happen fast.”
Chandra stared at her, then nodded.
“I’ve sailed a lot. I crossed the Atlantic, alone, in a little yawl; and once I set out to circumnavigate the globe in a sloop. I put a world of water behind me before I was captured by pirates in the Indian Ocean.”