The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 55

have hallucinated anything. But Father Saint Stephen had chosen to overlook that those were human beings not theological ideas whom he watched die in the ship’s hold, whom he watched die madly or wrongly, what matter? And an able brother of those people was present to rise up to destroy Father Saint Stephen’s clever talk with certain violence] I mean Lazarus Furore, a fair representative of those late-twentieth-century critics who had reached to establish a kingdom in the wilderness without need of God-talk or God. Lazarus flung himself—exactly like a bird of prey—across the room and against Father Saint Stephen. The two crashed through the table and rolled back against the bulkhead. I did not see Lazarus’s knife. Israel screamed, “Not that way!” Lazarus just screamed, unintelligibly, and then ripped. It was a crime of precision. Is the how worth recording? There is a soft spot at the base of the throat. Lazarus found it. He recoiled from the corpse as suddenly as he had attacked. He staggered backward, met no one’s eyes, wiped his blade on his clothes, found the cabin door by reaching behind him, and was gone.

I crouched defensively, Israel backed away. Grandfather advanced toward the corpse, said, “Lord God forgive them.”

The missionaries reacted sluggishly. Father Hospital looked at me with what could have been either condemnation or compassion. The others lifted the corpse onto the table. They began a prayer in many tongues, at least some of them speaking Latin. I observe now that the effect was babble. Within moments, they conducted themselves as if we were not present.

Grandfather would not permit me to speak. He ordered Israel to get me out. Israel obeyed instantly. We got topside in a rush. Guy met us, demanding information, saying that Lazarus was huddled bloody and delirious in Black Crane. Israel outlined the murder. We three sagged on the quarterdeck, then fell into the work crew loading Black Crane. I made several trips into the hold for crates, and I admit that I have no memory of what I saw. I refused to see what was down there. It was an hour, or hours—time fails in that sort of shock—before Grandfather appeared on deck. He looked past Israel to Otter Ransom and Orlando the Black, declaring, “I shall have that mast down straightaway.”

The End of the Earth

AFTER that defeat, Grandfather gained effective control of his passengers as well as absolute command of his Angel of Death. He again bargained with me: he would get my family to Mexico if I would come away with him afterward. I did not agree, I did not refuse, a passive pledge of obedience that I understood as a final act of disloyalty to Israel. I would not speak against Grandfather in our councils that, to our discredit, became an opportunity for dreary exchanges between the factions on board united only in their fear of Grandfather: Earle baiting Thord; Israel shouting down Guy; Peregrine and Charity obtusely silent. Lazarus regained his composure but distanced himself from all including Cleopatra; he became dogmatic, saying the “revolution” had come and we were caught in a worldwide struggle. It may not have been Grandfather’s intention, yet he came to rule us in the same way he had once subdued the North, by division, subjugation, dismissal.

Grandfather declared our course was southwest for the Strait of Magellan. He said he would not go back through “the flames of perdition” at the equator, nor would he risk “the legions of Satan” in the Caribbean. It was not bad strategy, even if it was based upon grandiose metaphor. I stood with Grandfather; the Turks stood with me; the Furores with no one; my family dissolved in doubts. Grandfather’s will prevailed. We ran the horse latitudes, rode the Brazil Current for weeks; our progress was cautious and erratic, standing well seaward of the coastline and, after we were fired upon by a convoy of freighters, of the sea-lanes as well. We suffered squalls, ghastly heat, innumerable sightings of wreckage and corpses on rafts; we witnessed at least one large sea battle off Rio de Janeiro, gun flashes and deep thunder two nights running; we were chased soon after by two small vessels booming out of the edge of twilight. We no longer hesitated about derelicts or ships in distress. We monitored the radio waves to find more of the same silence we had experienced off Europe. We did see a plume of fire off the mouth of the River Plate; perhaps there are records of catastrophe at Montevideo. We assumed there was only disaster on that coastline.

Grandfather reconsidered his intention not to stop again. He weighed a new notion to make a landfall somewhere on the Falkland Islands, a rugged archipelago several days’ hard sail east of Tierra del Fuego and the Strait of Magellan. He worried about the jerry-rigged foremast and the damage to the bow. Worse, a blow off Cape Tres Puntas sent us careening into the South Atlantic, and beating back west ripped our best sails. I encouraged Grandfather’s reassessment because of my worry for our health: we were all heartsick; at least one of us, Gizur, was mind-sick (I was not unaware of Lazarus’s black mood, just insensitive); and we had infections, malnutrition, Earle’s back pain, Molly’s listlessness. Grandfather and I conferred over the charts and made a decision. Grandfather did not inform Israel, Guy, or Thord of our new course. I was too ashamed of my collusion with Grandfather to do more than mention that we were bound for a stop-off before making for the Pacific. Grandfather gave his sailing orders. He was obeyed.

We wore around one of the two large islands, East Falkland, keeping well clear in a freakish late summer storm of very dirty rain and heavy seas. By nightfall, we drew opposite where I put the capital of the archipelago, Port Stanley. We stood in close enough for Wild Drumrul to report large concentrations of campfires on the hillsides. At