Already Among Us Read online

  Probably he wasn't essential, though. He was simply part of the pattern which the Hokas followed so loyally. In the same way, all that talk about gruesome punishment must be just talk—the Navy felt it was expected of them. Which was, however, small consolation, since the same blind devotion would keep the ship out here for as long as the orders said. Without this eternally cursed beard, Alex could easily take command and get back to shore; but he couldn't get rid of the beard until he was ashore. He had a sense of futility.

  As he walked along the deck, his eyes lit on a completely incongruous figure leaning on one of the deck guns. This was a Hoka in shirt and trousers of coarse cloth, leather leggings, a chain-mail coat, a shaggy cape, a conical helmet with huge upcurving horns and an interminable sword. A pair of very large and obviously fake yellow mustaches drooped from underneath his nose. He looked mournful.

  Alex drew up to the anachronism, realizing he must be from the viking-culture area in the north and wondering how he had gotten here. “Hello,” he said. “My names Jo—” He stopped; it was useless to assert his identify until he got that triply damned spinach off his face—”Greenbeard.”

  “Pleased to meet yü,” said the viking in a high-pitched singsong. “Ay ban Olaf Button-nose from Sveden. Have yü ever been to Constantinople?”

  “Well—no,” said Alex, taken somewhat aback.

  “Ay vas afraid yü hadn't,” said Olaf, with two large tears running down into his mustache. “Nobody has. Aye come sout' and signed on here, hoping ve vould touch at Constantinople, and ve never do.”

  “Why did you want to—” began Alex, fascinated.

  “To yoin the Varangian Guard, of course,” said Olaf. “Riches, loot, beautiful vimmen, lusty battles, ha, Odin.” He shed two more tears.

  “But--” Alex felt a twinge of compassion. “I'm afraid, Olaf, that there isn't any Constantinople on this planet.”

  “How do yü know, if yü never been there?”

  “Why, because—” Alex found the conversation showing the usual Hoka tendency to get out of hand. He gritted his teeth.

  “Now, look, Olaf, if I had been there, I'd be able to tell you where it was, wouldn't I?”

  “Ay hope yü vould,” said Olaf, pessimistically.

  “But since I haven't been there, I can't tell you where it is, can I?”

  “Exactly,” said Olaf. “Yü don't know. That's yust what Ay was telling yü.”

  “No, no no!” yelled Alex. “You don't get the point—”

  At this moment, the door to the captain's cabin banged open and Yardly himself came popping out on deck.

  “Avast and lay forrad!” he bellowed. “All hands to the yards! Aloft and stand by to come about. We're standing in to round the Horn.”

  There was a stampeding rush, a roar, and Alex found himself alone. Everyone else had gone into the rigging, including the helmsman and captain. Alex turned hesitantly to one of the masts, changed his mind and ran to the bows. But there was no land in sight.

  He scratched his head and returned amidships. Presently everyone came down again, the crew growling among themselves. Captain Yardly slunk by Alex, avoiding his eyes and muttered something about “slight error—happen to anyone—” and disappearing back into his cabin.

  Olaf returned, accompanied by Billy Bosun. “Wrong again,” said the viking gloomily.

  “Rot me for a corposant's ghost, if the crew'll take much more o' this,” added Billy.

  “Take more of what?” inquired Alex.

  “The captain trying to round the Horn, sir,” said Billy. “Terrible hard it is, sir.”

  “Are they afraid of the weather?” asked Alex.

  “Weather, sir?” replied Billy. “Why, the weather's supposed to be uncommon good around the Horn.”

  Alex goggled at him. “Then what's so hard about rounding it?”

  “Why, nothing's hard about rounding it,” said Billy. “It's finding it that's so hard, sir. Few ships can boast they've rounded the Horn without losing at least part of their crew from old age first.”

  “But doesn't everybody know where it is?”

  “Why, bless you, sir, of course everybody knows it doesn't move around. But we do. And where are we?”

  “Where are we?” echoed Alex, thunderstruck.

  “Are, sir, that's the question. In the old days, if we were here we'd be about one day's sail out of Plymouth on the southwest current.”

  “But that's where we are.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” said Billy. “We're in the Antarctic Ocean. That's why the captain thought he was close to the Horn. That is, unless he's moved us since.”

  Alex gave a wordless cry, turned, and fled to the captain's cabin. Inside it, Yardly sat at a desk mounded high with sheets of calculations. There was a tortured look on his furry face. On the bulkhead behind him was an enormous map of Toka crisscrossed with jagged pencil lines.

  “Ah, Mr. Greenbeard,” he said in a quavering voice as he looked up. “Congratulate me. I've just moved us three thousand miles. A little matter of figuring declination in degrees east instead of degrees west.” He glanced anxiously at Alex. “That sounds right, doesn't it?”

  “Ulp!” said Alex.

  In the following four days, the human gradually came to understand. In earlier times, native ships had found their way around the planet's oceans by a familiarity with the currents and prevailing winds, but with the technology of 1800 had come the science of navigation and since then no Hoka would be caught dead using the old-fashioned methods. With the new, some were successful and some were not. Lord Nelson, it was said, was an excellent navigator. So was Commodore Hornblower. Others had their difficulties. Captain Yardly's was that, while he never failed to take a proper sight with his sextant, he invariably mistrusted the reading he got and was inclined to shift his figures around until they looked more like what he thought they should be. Also, he had a passion for even numbers, and was always rounding off his quantities to more agreeable amounts.

  Under this handicap, the physical ship sailed serenely to her destination, guided by a non-navigating crew who automatically did the proper thing in the old fashion at the proper time. But the hypothetical ship of Captain Yardly's mathematical labors traversed a wild and wonderful path on the map, at one time so far at sea that there was not enough fresh water for them to make land alive, at another time perched high and dry on the western plains of Toka's largest continent. It was not strange that the captain had a haunted look.

  All of which was very unsettling to the crew who, however willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, were finding it somewhat of a strain even on their elastic imaginations to be told they were in the tropics one moment and skirting the south polar ice cap the next. Their nerves were on edge. Moreover, Alex discovered, the consensus among them was that the captain was becoming too obsessed with his navigation to pay proper attention to the running of the ship. No one had been hanged for several weeks, and there hadn't been a keelhauling for over a month. Many a Hoka standing on the sun-blistered deck cast longing glances at the cool water overside and wished he would be keelhauled (which was merely fun on a planet without barnacles). There was much fo'c'sle talk about what act would be considered dastardly enough to rate the punishment.

  “If you want to swim, why don't you just fall overboard?” asked Alex of Billy Bonsun on the fourth day.

  The Hoka's beady eyes lit up, and then saddened again. “No, sir,” he said wistfully. “It's contrary to the articles of war, sir. Everybody knows British sailors can't swim a stroke.”

  “Oh, well,” said Alex, helpfully. “If you've got scruples—” He picked up the boatswain and tossed him over the rail. Billy splashed into the sea with a howl of delight.

  “Shiver my timbers!” he roared gleefully, threshing around alongside and blowing spouts of water into the air. “I'm murdered! Help! Man overboard!”

  The crew came boiling up on deck. Small furry bodies began to go sailing into the sea, yelling something about rescue.
The second mate started to lower a boat, decided to pitch the nearest sailor into the ocean instead, and followed him.

  “Heave to!” yelled Alex, panic-stricken. “Man-er-men overboard! Bring her about!”

  The helmsman spun the wheel and the ship pivoted into the wind's eye with a rattle of canvas. Whooping, he overbalanced and fell. His joyously lamenting voice joined the chorus already resounding below.

  The door to the captain's cabin flew open. Yardly rushed out. “Avast!” he cried. “Belay! What's about, here?” he headed for the rail and stared downward.

  “We're drowning!” the crew informed him, playing tag.

  “Belay that!” shouted the captain. “Avast drowning, immediately. Call yourselves British seamen, do you? Mutinous dogs, I call you. Treacherous, mutinous dogs! Quarrelsome, treacherous, mutinous dogs! Careless, quarrel—”

  He looked so hot and unhappy in his blue coat and cocked hat that Alex impulsively picked him up and threw him over the side.

  He hit the water and came up spouting and shaking his fist. “Mister Greenbeard!” he thundered. “You'll hang for this. This is mutiny!”

  “But we don't have to hang him, do we?” protested Alex.

  “Blast my bones, Cap'n Greenbeard,” said Billy, “but Yardly was a-going to hang you.”

  “Ay don't see how yü can avoid it.” said Olaf, emptying sea water out of his scabbard. “Ve ban pirates now.”

  “Pirates!” yelped Alex.

  “What else is left for us, Cap'n?” asked Billy. “We've mutinied, ain't we? The British Navy'll never rest till we're hunted down.”

  “Oh well,” said Alex, wearily. If hanging the ex-captain was considered part of the pattern, he might as well play along. He turned to the two seamen holding Yardly. “String him up.”

  They put a noose around Yardly's neck and politely stepped back. He took a pace forward and surveyed the crew, then scowled blackly and folded his arms.

  “Treacherous, ungrateful swine!” he said. “don't suppose that you will escape punishment for this foul crime. As there is a divine as well as a Hoka justice—”

  Alex found a bollard and seated himself on it with a sigh. Yardly gave every indication of being good for an hour of dying speech. The human relaxed and let the words flow in one ear and out the others. A sailor scribbled busily, taking it all down for later publication in a broadside.

  “—this causeless mutiny—plotted in secret—ringleaders did not escape my eye—some loyal hearts and true poisoned by men of evil—forgive you personally, but cannot—sully the British flag—cannot meet my eye—in the words of that great man--”

  “Oh, no!” said Alex involuntarily, but Billy was already giving the captain the pitch on his boatswain's whistle.

  “Oh, my name it is Sam Hall, it is Sam Hall.

  Yes, my name it is Sam Hall, it is Sam Hall....”

  Like most Hokas, the captain had a rather pleasant tenor, Alex reflected, but why did they all have to sing “Sam Hall” before being hanged?

  “Now up the rope I go, up I go....”

  Alexed winced. The song came to an end. Yardly wandered off on a sentimental side issue, informed the crew that he had had a good home and loving parents, who little suspected he would come to this, spoke a few touching words concerning his little golden-furred daughter ashore, wound up by damning them all for a pack of black-hearted scoundrels, and in a firm voice ordered the men on the end of the rope to do their duty.

  The Hokas struck up a short-haul chanty, and to the tune of “Haul Away, Joe” Yardly mounted to the yard-arm. The crew paled and fainted enthusiastically for about five minutes as he put on a spirited performance of realistic twitches, groans, and death rattles—effective enough to make Alex turn somewhat the same shade as his beard. He was never sure whether or not something at this stage had gone wrong and the Hoka on the rope was actually being strangled. Finally, however, Yardly hung limp. Billy Bosun cut him down and brought him to the captain's cabin, where Alex signed him up under the name of Black Tom Yardly and sent him forward of the mast.

  Thus left in charge of a ship which he had only the foggiest notion of how to run, and a crew gleefully looking forward to a piratical existence, Alex put his head in his hands and tried to sort out matters.

  He was regretting the mutiny already. Whatever had possessed him to throw the captain of a British frigate overboard? He might have known such a proceeding would lead to trouble. There was no doubt Yardly had been praying for an excuse to get out of his navigational duties. But what could Alex have done once his misguided impulse had sent Yardly into the ocean? If he had meekly surrendered, Yardly would probably have hanged him... and Alex did not have a Hoka's neck muscles. He gulped at the thought. He could imagine the puzzlement of the crew once they had cut him down and he didn't get up and walk away. But what good is a puzzled Hoka to a dead plenipotentiary? None whatsoever.

  Moreover, not only was he in this pickle, but five days had gone by. Tanni would be frantically flying around the world looking for him, but the chance of her passing over this speck in the ocean was infinitesimal. It would take at least another five days to get back to Plymouth, and hell might pop in Bermuda meanwhile. Or he might be seized in the harbor if someone blabbed and strung up as a mutineer before he could get this green horror off his chin.

  On the other hand--

  Slowly, Alex got up and went over to the map on the bulkhead. The Hokas had been quick to adopt Terrestrial place names, but there had, of course, been nothing they could do about the geographical dissimilarity of Toka and Earth. The West Indies here were only some 500 nautical miles from Great Britain, HMS Incompatible was almost upon them now, and the pirate headquarters at Tortuga could hardly be more than a day's sail away. It shouldn't be too hard to find and the buccaneer fleet would welcome a new recruit. Maybe he could find some ammonia there. Otherwise he could try to forestall the raid, or sabotage it, or something.

  He stood there for several minutes considering this. It was dangerous, to be sure. Cannon, pistols, and cutlasses, mixed with Hoka physical energy and mental impulsiveness, were nothing a man wanted close to him. But every other possibility looked even more hopeless.

  He went to the door and called Olaf. “Tell me,” he said, “do you think you can steer this ship in the old-fashioned way?”

  “To be sure Ay can,” said the viking, “Ay'm old-fashioned myself.”

  “True,” agreed Alex. “Well, then, I'm going to appoint you first mate.”

  “Aye don't know about that, now,” interrupted Olaf, doubtfully. “Ay don't know if it ban right.”

  “Of course,” said Alex, hastily, “you won't be a regular first mate. You'll be a Varangian first mate.”

  “Of course Ay will!” exclaimed Olaf, brightening, “Ay hadn't t'ought of that. Ay'll steer for Constantinople.”

  “Well—er—remember we don't know where Constantinople is,” said Alex. “I think we'd better put in at Tortuga first for information.”

  Olaf's face fell. “Oh,” he said sadly.

  “Later on we can look for Constantinople.”

  “Aye suppose so.”

  Seldom had Alex felt so much like a heel.

  They came slipping into the bay of Tortuga about the sunset of the following day, flying the skull-and-crossbones which was kept in the flag chest of every ship just in case. The island, fronded with tropical trees, rose steeply over an anchorage cluttered with a score of armed vessels; beyond, the beach was littered with thatch huts, roaring bonfires, and swaggering pirates. As their anchor rattled down, someone whooped from the crow's nest of the nearest vessel: “Ahoy, mates! Ye're just in time. We sail for Bermuda tomorry.”

  Alex shivered, the green beard and the thickening dusk concealing his unbuccaneerish reaction. To the eagerly swarming crew, he said: “You'll stay aboard til further orders.”

  “What?” cried Black Tom Yardly, outraged. “We're not to broach a cask with our brethren of the coast? We're not to fight bloody du
els, if you'll pardon the language, and wallow in pieces of eight and--”

  “Later,” said Alex. “Secret mission, you know. You can break out our own grog, bosun.” That satisfied them, and they lowered the captain's gig for him and Olaf to go ashore in. As he was rowed away from the Incompatible, Alex heard someone start a song about a life on the ocean waves, in competition with someone else who, for lack of further knowledge, was endlessly repeating. “Yo-ho-ho—and a bottle of rum—” They're happy, thought Alex.

  “What yü ban going to do now?” inquired Olaf.

  “I wish I knew,” said Alex, forlornly. The little viking, with his skepticism about the whole pirate pattern, was the only one he could trust at all, and even to Olaf he dared not confide his real hopes. Such as they were.

  Landing, they walked through a roaring, drunken crowd of Hokas trying to look as villainous as possible with the help of pistols, knives, cutlasses, daggers, sashes, earring, and nose-rings. The Jolly Roger flew over a long hut within which the Captains of the Coast must be meeting; outside squatted a sentry who was trying to drink rum but not succeeding very well because he would not let go of the dagger in his teeth.

  “Avast and belay there!” shrilled this freebooter, lurching erect and drawing his cutlass as Alex's bejungled face came out of the gloom. “Halt and be run through!”

  Alex hesitated. His sea-stained tunic and trousers didn't look very piratical, he was forced to admit, and the cutlass and floppy boots he had added simply kept tripping him up. “I'm a captain too,” he said. 'I want to confer with my... er... confreres.”

  The sentry staggered toward him, waving a menacing blade. Alex, who had not the faintest idea of how to use a sword, backed up. “So!” sneered the Hoka. “So ye'll not stand up like a man, eh? I was tol' t' run anybody through what came near, and damme, I will!”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Olaf wearily. His own sword snaked out, knocking the pirate's loose. That worthy tried to close in with his dagger, but Olaf pushed him over and sat on him. “Ay'll hold him here, skipper,” said the viking. Hopefully, to his squirming victim: “Do yü know the vay to Constantinople?”