“Have you a better suggestion?” Sandra asked. Rajendra just shook his head.
“We have about a month and a half, usin’ just enough to keep body and soul together,” Silva said. Lelaa nodded agreement. She’d estimated as much.
Sandra sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Lawrence,” she said at last, “your people have no knowledge of the Philippines, correct?”
“None, except I.”
“I imagine those… proas are a lot faster than this boat, with as little sail as it can carry.”
“True,” Lawrence agreed.
“Twice as fast?”
Lawrence didn’t know. The only one he’d ever sailed, he’d built himself, and it was very small.
Lelaa had been looking at the lines of the boats in question. “At least that,” she said, “which would shorten the trip, but those boats do not look as well suited to heavy weather.”
“And ours is? How much food and water do they have?”
Lawrence asked, and discovered that the refugees had less than they did, for all intents and purposes.
“Saan-Kakja may kill me,” Sandra muttered, “but ask them if they want to go someplace way bigger than they’ve ever seen; where no wave can ever wash their lives away.” She looked at Lelaa. “I don’t think Saan-Kakja even has a colony on Samar, does she?”
CHAPTER 26
Talaud Island
“ J eez, Mr. Laumer,” said Shipfitter Danny Porter nervously, watching the distant mountain through binoculars, “I don’t think I can take this much longer! I’m starting to think poor Sid got off easy.”
Laumer stood beside him on S-19’s conn tower, beneath the brown-gray sky. He turned and gave Porter a blistering stare. “Stow that crap right now, sailor! Sid didn’t give up, and neither will you.” Laumer paused, taking in the hellish scene of desolation surrounding the boat. The island was a dusty, skeletal corpse, and the strange winds and twisting thermal eddies kicked up random vortices that danced among the wooden bones. The air was full of an ash so fine that it resembled a smoky haze, and everyone who came up from below wore bandannas. They didn’t help much. The whole crew had hacking coughs, and some were coughing blood. The dust was everywhere, and even below, red, puffy eyes streamed constantly.
“Look,” Irvin continued, less harshly, “I know you’re scared. Everybody is. This is the screwiest situation imaginable. But think about it like this: you were at Baalkpan, under Chapelle, right?” Danny nodded. “I wasn’t even there,” Irvin said with a touch of bitterness. “I was at Sembaakpan with the ‘women and kids.’ Tell me this-which was scarier, this or a couple hundred thousand Grik coming to eat you?”
“Well… that was,” Danny confessed, “but there was fighting, see? We were doing something! There wasn’t all this time… just sitting and waiting.”
Irvin nodded. “Yeah, we’ve been waiting a few days, but we’ve been busy too. We’ve been working on the boat and waiting for the lagoon to clear enough for us to get out of here. That was a chance Captain Reddy, you, and all the ’Cats never had at Baalkpan-a chance to get away from what was coming. By all accounts, you didn’t lose it then, and you’re not going to now. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The steel beneath their feet reverberated with a gasping, metallic groan, and black soot mixed with rusty red dust exploded from the port exhaust, aft. For almost a full minute, they listened to the labored, clattering rumble of the port diesel, before it belched and died.
“Looks like Sandy might finally have a handle on that thing,” Irvin observed. “Seems the biggest problem with it was that a leaky exhaust vent let water in, rainwater mostly, thank God, and it rusted everything up in the cylinders and seeped into the crankcase.” He raised his own binoculars and scanned the lagoon. There was still a lot of debris, and the water around the anchored submarine was dark and gray with mud. But most of the detritus had washed ashore by now, or gathered into tangled islands close to the beach. “Which is good,” Irvin continued, “because we’re through waiting. As soon as the tide clears as much of that junk out of the mouth of the lagoon as it’s going to today, we’re getting the hell out of here!”
“Torpedo room reports that the submerged anchor’s secure,” Tex Sheider announced over the rumble of the starboard diesel and the distant, fitful cracks booming from the mountain.
Irvin nodded, glaring at the volcano. “Bitch acts like she doesn’t want us to leave,” he murmured. “Very well,” he said louder. “Lookouts to the bow, and as far aft as they dare. Stand by to fend off debris. Make all preparations for getting underway.”
Midshipman Hardee tooted a call on a bosun’s pipe-the kid had a real talent for the thing-and Lemurians scurried from below, positioning themselves for the prearranged detail, closing the hatches behind them. Just moving around on the boat was a real chore now. With her strakes burnt away, her furry crew had to climb over and under the exposed deck supports and they looked like kids charging through a set of playground monkey bars armed with long poles and lashed-together broom handles.
“The maneuvering watch is set,” Tex said, repeating a call from below. “Such as it is.” He changed his tone to that of an ominous lecture. “All hands are informed that the submarine service expects every man aboard, from the captain on down, to know his boat from the topmast to the keel,” he quoted, then shrugged. “All stations manned and ready.”
“Very well,” said Irvin again. He took a breath. He’d been in command of the operation from the start, but now, at last, he was about to command S-19 while underway. It was different. “Port motor, ahead slow. Steer zero, six zero, but stand by for prompt course corrections.”
“Port ahead slow, zero six zero, and stand by for corrections, aye.”
Slowly, almost unnoticeably at first, S-19 began to move under her own power once again. The merest wake ruffled back from her straight up and down bow, parting the mud-thickened sea. Almost immediately, the port screw bit something under the water. They felt it in the fibers of the sub and Laumer’s carefully neutral expression ticked just a bit. There was no change in the bass tone created by the turning port shaft, however, so whatever it was, it must have been insubstantial. It might have been the submerged carcass of an animal. The boat crept onward. Several times, the lookouts called out and pointed at something floating in the water and Irvin ordered slight course corrections to avoid the obstacles. Once, the forward starboard lookouts had to heave at something with their poles as they passed. After nearly an hour, S-19 finally eased out of the mouth of the lagoon and into the bigger waves beyond.
They literally weren’t out of the woods yet, though. Debris and shattered trees might extend for miles beyond the island, but as the boat began to pitch, Irvin called the majority of the lookouts away from their posts. A few would have to stay, but now, in clearer seas, they should spot any hazards soon enough to avoid them. Tex called some of his electricians to the bridge to resume work on the antennae aerial they’d begun rigging to the bent but now permanently extended number two periscope. Slowly, the dust that had hung around them like a shroud began to clear as a gentle northeasterly breeze carried it away, and a few ’Cats even removed their bandannas experimentally. On impulse, Irvin suddenly turned and looked back at the island, looming there, still dominating the horizon like a malignant blotch.
“Where to now, Mr. Laumer?” Tex asked.
“Hmm? Oh. Well, we’ll maintain this course for the time being, maybe add some speed after a while if the lookouts don’t see too much junk. Right now, I want to get as far away from that island as we can.” He snorted. “And I don’t want to get between it and Mindanao! We’ll steer northeast for the rest of the day and tonight, maybe tomorrow too, depending on how things look, then we’ll turn north across the Philippine Sea. We might try the San Bernardino Strait, but as long as we have the fuel and nothing breaks, we’ll go all the way around Luzon to Manila if we have to. We got this old gal off, Tex!” he said adamantly. “I’m damned if I’ll let that island snatch her back from us!”
“You think Danny’s right? You think Talaud’s gonna blow its top?”
