The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 103

Two days out of the Falklands, the sea was pocked with ships in distress. There were many signs of a deliberate and ominous exodus. We had sighted lone craft more seaward. The ships in the sea-lane were closed up, ran in concert, as if with purpose. I made sure everyone of authority on board had as good a look as possible in the dirty weather. I wanted the fear to take hold in their hearts, and I wanted that fear tangible. I recognized the fleet of the damned. I was no longer reluctant to call it that. We were one with it.

A sudden blow that night cleared away the smaller craft, covered the nearby sea with wreckage. The next morning, we came about, having turned into the wind to ride the blow, and marked several large freighters well away to starboard as especially puzzling, neither flags nor radio traffic from them. The fleet continued that day to appear and fade in the fogbanks without a pattern, the wind tossing it up then pulling it apart. I no more understood the final reason for the fleet than I had six years before—where it had come from, where it was going—but I did know to keep my wits and not to permit the outrage to confound me. The fleet was an event that made war in one’s mind, and the prudent captain denied the resultant despair, kept on regardless. I had Germanicus signal Malody to close up for slow running as night closed on us, had Germanicus turn out ordnance and gun crews. I let them believe that I anticipated all. I did not figure on Candlemas Packet breaking formation before dawn, so that she was well away to our stern and running sluggishly in contrary winds at daybreak—no match for a slim cutter breaking through the fog from the southwest. We were half a day out of Port Stanley. I knew that cutter was a pirate, feasting on the best-trimmed ships. Germanicus’s seamanship saved Malody, getting King James up wind and in line to cut off the pirate’s retreat, so that it made north for other game. I had Germanicus break radio silence (that close in it had seemed best to appear helpless) to inquire why Malody had fallen behind. I put my glass on Candlemas Packet’s deck, had the answer and a verdict before Germanicus confirmed the worst. Sean Malody had chanced upon refugees adrift in an open boat during the night, had accidentally rammed them, and rather than keep on as ordered had paused at their cries to rescue. The fleet of the damned had breached his good sense.

I did not hesitate, saying, “Signal Malody to put them over.”

Germanicus did hesitate. I explained; he conceded. But we were not obeyed, or if so, it was too late. By the time we spied East Falkland’s shore at dusk—a dark horizon of a hundred hundred hundred campfires—the signal from Malody included a report of a child sick with fever. There were medicines. There was no defense.

Our council that night was vitriolic. I put my court to the test, making sure the women spoke their minds at length, because I had seen on South Georgia how vital they were to morale and common sense. Germanicus spoke for me, another technique I had learned from Grandfather and the Hospidar, to have one’s senior subordinate hold forth until the factions can present a consensus. It was also a notion I had from the ancient Norse, those protracted arguments in the halls of Asgard: Thor of Thunder versus Loki the Sly-One versus Frigg the Queen, terrible Odin standing silent and acute. Our wrestling was appropriately tumultuous. Germanicus asserted that Candlemas Packet was finished unless a quarantine was organized on board and the sick were put over in a boat; he also told them that Sean Malody had made a mistake, there was nothing we could do to repair it. Lazarus and Jane challenged Germanicus. I took note that Lazarus’s power was lessened while we were at sea; his wordy learning could not overwhelm Germanicus’s quiet militance. Jane said I was rash. Lazarus used the word monstrous, but he did not join in Jane’s demand that I prove the fever. Our chief medical attendant, Annabel Donne, and Magda Zulema said they would never agree to a similar quarantine on King James. Toro Zulema wavered, an important detail, since most on board Candlemas Packet were from his camp. The council closed without agreement. I did not speak. Next morning, Malody reported another case of fever, despite a quarantine.

Baffling winds and a heavy fog closed on us. I had Germanicus pass very careful instructions by radio to Malody, also a sailing course well seaward of Adventure Sound that would permit us a rendezvous with him along a fifty-mile track. Then King James stood in for Mead’s Kiss on a choppy sea, another blow coming. Several times we came upon freighters twice the size of King James, making on a course south. Germanicus had no explanation for the obvious increase in activity south of the Falklands, saying that on his raid two years before he had seen many beastie boats, all small, scattered. Now there seemed a pack, and a purpose, and urgency. There also was incessant gunfire, or thunder, or deep foghorns. We lived on alert. Our immediate enemies were hysteria and superstition. Sailing into such a murky vista did not shake me. The fear on board King James might have. I fought it with Norse magic, demanding from myself what I was not sure I could do, to show myself, as the Norse would say, girded by elves.

This introduces an important development for me on King James; I found myself turning more and more to my sense of how my Norse ancestors might have faced such peril. My choice of imagery changed accordingly. It shifted from the poetry of Longfaeroe’s Psalter to the poetry of Norse myth. Bluntly, Beowulf replaced the Bible, not completely, just