“Why can’t I?”
But Fabrini didn’t have a good answer for that. He figured Cook might have, but not him. It just wasn’t in him, all the right answers to the right questions. “Because you fucking can’t, that’s why.”
They were sitting on the deck of the fishing boat, an old side trawler out of Florida according to the paperwork in the wheelhouse, trying to figure out what it all meant. What it was all about now that Cook was gone and they were under Saks’s hand again. Something nobody particularly cared for. Saks was down in the captain’s cabin sleeping and Crycek was next door, not sleeping, but lost in one of his blue funks. When he got like that, he was pretty much unreachable. When he spoke, it was all doom and gloom and devils in the fog, prophecies.
“I don’t trust Saks,” Menhaus said. “We had a chance with Cook, I think we really had a chance… but now we’re screwed. Saks doesn’t give a shit about anyone but himself.”
Some great revelation, that. “No, and he never did. That’s the kind of prick he is. But I say we just play it out, see what it’s worth. Saks wants to be Mr. Big Man? Okay, let him. Give him the ball and let him run with it.”
Menhaus nodded glumly, barely visible in the darkness. “But I think we had a chance with Cook. I think we really did have a chance.”
Fabrini didn’t like thinking about Cook. He’d come to trust Cook, to like Cook, and his death had not been an easy one and living with the memory of it was harder yet. “Saks has a plan,” Fabrini said.
“Does he?”
“Sure. He’s got an angle. A guy like Saks has always got an angle.” Fabrini sketched out for him what Saks had said. “So, we do like he said: we wait for the fog to lighten, for day or whatever it is to come back. That’s what we have to do. When that happens, we start exploring. Start seeing if there’s any people out there. Maybe find us a decent boat, look for some land and maybe some answers to this mess.”
“There’s no answers.”
“Sure, there is. You just have to be patient. One day at a time. Trust me, Menhaus, and just play along with him. I hate that guy more than anybody.” He touched his bandaged ear in the dark. “But one thing I do know is that guys like Saks are survivors. They have a way of staying alive and if we throw in with him, we’re probably going to stay alive, too.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right. Believe me, if there’s a way out of this rathole, Saks is just the sort of guy who can find it. So we hang tight, we follow his plan and maybe… who knows… maybe we’ll find some others out there. Somebody who’ll know the way out or have a good guess about it.”
“I still don’t like him,” Menhaus said.
Fabrini chuckled. “Nobody likes that asshole. But if we wanna stay alive…”
“Then we play the game.”
“You got it.”
But Menhaus didn’t look exactly pleased at the idea of playing any game where a guy like Saks was making up the rules. It was a good way to die.
“I don’t like that shit on his arm,” Menhaus admitted. “I don’t know what it is, but it looks catchy.”
“So don’t dance with him,” Fabrini said.
Menhaus uttered a tiny laugh. “It’s so easy for you, Fabrini, it’s so damn easy for you.”
“No,” Fabrini said. “It’s not.”
11
The way Cushing had it figured, time was probably horribly distorted in the Dead Sea. When you passed through the vortex, you weren’t necessarily coming out on the other side in the time period you’d left. Time here was not in any direct linear alignment with the world you knew. This is how he explained it to George. Maybe you got swallowed by the fog in 1950, but you came out on the other side in 2010. It was pretty wild fringe science but it made as much sense as anything else. At least it could explain Elizabeth Castle who was certain that she had sailed in 1907 and hadn’t been here more than four or five years at most.
“I mean, she says she came through in 1907 when she was twenty-three,” Cushing said. “Look at her, she’s no more than twenty-six or twenty-seven. Her time frame works, doesn’t it?”
George had to admit that it did. “Unless… unless there is no time here as we understand it.”
“There has to be. It’s a universal constant. Tine and space are interlinked, they do not exist without one another. They are the nail, George, upon which everything is hung. Time may slow down as Einstein said or even speed up, but it never ceases to exist. The days come and the nights come. Time passes. If it wasn’t passing at all, if we were trapped in some sort of time loop, then those ships out there would never begin to rot in the first place. And we… would look exactly as we did when we’d come through. And we don’t.” He laughed, scratched at the growth of beard on his face. “I shaved that morning before we ran into the fog. Now I’m growing a beard… which means what?”
“You lost me.”
“It means that my body’s processes aren’t in suspension. Everything’s chugging along like normal. And if I’m here for another month or two, I’ll have a real beard. And if I’m here for fifty more years, I’ll have a long white beard.”
Okay, that worked for George. Time had to be passing. Maybe Cushing’s theory was viable. It would explain things. Like how some of the modern-day freighters out there looked like they’d been languishing in the weed for centuries and some of the old brigs looked comparatively recent. Full of weeds and fungus, but nowhere near the state you’d expect.
“Which means that, next week or next month, an ancient Arab sailing galley drifts in or a Roman triremes comes oaring in, don’t be too surprised,” Cushing said.
Which gave George some disconcerting ideas on the whole. What if they did find a way out and were vomited back into the Atlantic in the 2 ^nd century A.D. or in 1931 for that matter? What then? What then? But thinking like that was pointless. Really pointless. Time would have to take care of itself.
Bottom line, things were distorted in this place.
And it wasn’t just time either. Because the next morning… still pitch black, but seemed like it might be morning… Cushing and George got to meet Elizabeth Castle’s Aunt Else. And that was quite an experience. She was just this little thing that might have been put together out of sticks and twine, her hair frosted white, her face lined and sallow. She walked with a cane and looked very confused when she was introduced to Cushing and George like she had been woken suddenly from a dream.
“My Auntie is ill sometimes,” Elizabeth said, helping her sit on one of the sofas.
“Bosh!” said Aunt Else. “I’m perfectly fine. Never felt better.”
Her eyes were glazed by time and she had a habit of losing concentration and staring off into space for extended periods of time.
When Elizabeth was off making coffee, Aunt Else said, “Well, I had long suspected that you would return, Captain Dorrigan.” She said this to George. “I can’t say that I’m overwhelmed to see you. Time has not erased your misdeeds. You, sir, are guilty of gross misconduct.”
George waited for the punchline, but none came. “Misconduct?”
“You should consider your position, Captain, and be quite careful of what you say,” Aunt Else warned him. “Your transgressions are unforgivable and I can assure you that my husband will arrange for a Naval board of inquiry to look into your negligence. A man like you has no business piloting a ship.”
George got it now. “Um… I think you have me confused with someone else.”
“Nonsense! Don’t try that tact with me, sir. You’ll find me most unforgiving when it comes to subverting the facts. You are guilty of negligence. A negligence that has cost the lives of your crew. Perhaps you and your attorney -” she was looking at Cushing now – “have cooked up some scheme to keep yourselves out of the hands of justice, but you are guilty in the eyes of God.”
“I… ah… I was under the weather that day, Madam.”
“Drunk is more like it.”
Man, this was sweet, George was thinking. The old lady thought he was the captain of her ship and she was
