The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 43
What few moments we did have, between fighting the sea and sleeping poorly in that sickening pitch and roll, we used to debate the meaning of what we had seen. We agreed that all of northern Europe seemed to fear the disruptions of the Baltic refugees as much as had Stockholm. We supposed that some precautions were required, given the panic. We had seen enough overladen trawlers, ancient frigates with decks covered by tents, and ship wreckage to be able to surmise the deadly confusion of populations in pellmell flight.
What was not obvious to us was the extent of the exclusion. It was no simple or local policy, much more virulent. We could not see it, not the way Grandfather meant. We had been permitted to pass unharmed. We supposed our fate was common. It was luck. I can have no certain knowledge now as to how many ships went down by misadventure, how many were deliberately scuttled by hired crews, how many were sunk by those cutters. I can guess at a pan-European shame.
What fooled us, what we permitted to deceive us, was that there was nothing overwhelmingly out-of-the-ordinary on the radio, either ship-to-ship or international, to indicate there was an organized plot. At a council, we listened to Lazarus’s explanation that the larger the conspiracy the more heinous its implications and the more likely it was to be silent, indirect, bureaucratic, mundane. “Saying no doesn’t seem a threat,” said Lazarus, “but when everyone says no, it can be a death sentence.”
Cleopatra bridled at this. I was surprised, since I had thought Lazarus did no more than express her opinions. She said, “This is the late twentieth century, Lazarus, there are no villains.”
Grandfather was hunched in the galley; he spoke across to me as soon as Gizur translated what Cleopatra had said. “The darkness, Grim. Satan smiles.”
We passed into the main lanes south of Lizard Point, still struggling with heavy seas as we made for the Bay of Biscay. We intended to make our Atlantic crossing with the northeast trade winds from the Cape Verde Islands. We sighted numerous gleaming freighters earning on as usual. Another blow off Ushant made us run seaward, away from a battered-looking frigate that, at a distance, appeared dismasted. We were days beating off that storm, and I think the better for it, since those wild Atlantic gales improved our seamanship, forced us to learn to work together, prepared us for the ordeal ahead. It was not until the end of November that we chanced upon our first unambiguous evidence of outrage.
We were east of Cape Finisterre at dawn. I recall it vividly because Earle had urged me up the mainmast to watch a school of phosphorescent fish pass beneath us. Wild Drumrul was already above me, near the top. There, he spied a small vessel adrift up wind to the west. She was also on fire, for within minutes a thickening spume marked her for all on deck to see. Grandfather ordered us about, and we made toward her slowly. We were shocked to see, after half an hour, a small motorcraft shoot away from the derelict and toward the coast just as an explosion ripped the hulk’s bow. Someone had managed to launch a jolly, which did not make for us, just wallowed. There were ten bodies in the jolly, eight dead of smoke and burns, one child dead from unknown causes, and a tenth, a small man, dying of a mangled torso. The sea about us was strewn with corpses. Tall Troll, who had a worrisome talent for clear thinking in the midst of murder, estimated one hundred bodies, mostly children. We worried about infection. That officer had said “Cholera.” Without agreement, we pulled that survivor on board. He replied to three questions before he died.
“Who did this to you?” asked Lazarus.
“They wanted gold! We have no gold! We have children! We need water! They killed us for gold!”
“Where did you come from?” asked Lazarus.
“The fleet of the damned!” he said.
Israel heard Lazarus’s translation, turned away, looked at me, dark-faced, as if he had been shot, and said, “It’s not possible. It isn’t. Not now.”
“Where were you bound?” asked Lazarus.
“Water! They would not give us water! They wanted gold! Get the children to America! I have cousins!”
Grandfather held him tenderly, prayed over him loudly enough to protect us from hearing his cries. The final question the man answered dead. He was not from the Baltic or northern Europe. He was not Spanish, Moroccan, African Negro. He was a Moslem, Lazarus said, probably a descendant of people originally from what was then the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. He spoke Portuguese. Lazarus guessed he was a refugee from the People’s Republic of Angola.
“The fleet of the damned,” we said to each other. Lazarus said this was a crude translation and could also be “ships of the accursed” or “boats of demons.” Wild Drumrul said it would have been the same in Turkish. Orlando the Black added it was the same