Flying Dutch

were a poppy on the day after Armistice Sunday, “I must ask you to be more careful. There could have been an accident, you know.”

Harvey expressed himself rather more vigorously, and placed the barrel of his gun in Danny’s ear. Gradually, everyone resumed their place, and the cat went back to sleep.

“Perhaps,” said the Professor, “I had better explain.”

ELEVEN

Not now, Sebastian,” said Vanderdecker, and instinctively ducked. The sound of an invulnerable Dutchman hitting oak planks suggested that Sebastian hadn’t heard him in time.

It’s quite a distinctive sound, and to tell the truth Vanderdecker was heartily sick of it. Day in, day out, the same monotonous clunking. Had he thought about it earlier, Vanderdecker reflected, he could have turned it to some useful purpose. For example, he could have trained Sebastian to make his futile leaps every hour on the hour, and then it wouldn’t matter quite so much when he forgot to wind his watch.

Too late now, however, to make a bad lifetime’s work good. With the sort of deftness that only comes with long practice, he put the irritating thought out of his mind and wondered how Jane was getting on. Had she succeeded in tracking the alchemist down yet? She had thought it would be quite easy, and perhaps it would be; after all, the name Montalban seemed to be familiar to other people beside himself these days. There was the lunatic the crew had fished out of the sea and shown the alchemical plant to, for example; apparently, he’d come up with the same name all of his own accord. Certainly Jane had heard of him. So maybe all she’d have to do would be to look him up in the telephone book. Why didn’t I ever think of that?

So let’s suppose she’s actually managed to deliver the message. What if Montalban wasn’t interested? What if he didn’t come? Come to that, what if he hadn’t actually discovered an antidote to the Smell? That didn’t bear thinking about; nor was it logical. If he was able to pass freely in normal human society, it stood to reason that he’d come up with something that dealt with the problem, even if it was only exceptionally pungent pipe tobacco. Except that they had all tried that, and it was a washout like everything else; and since Matthias had got to like the horrible stuff, there was something else they had all had to learn to put up with.

Now if there’s one other thing we have all had to learn, Vanderdecker said to himself as he leaned on the rail and watched the seagulls veering away in shocked disgust, it’s tolerance. With the exceptions of needled beer and country and western music, we’ve learned to tolerate pretty well everything on the surface of the earth. We don’t mind being spat at, shot at, hosed down with water-cannon, exorcised and thrown out of Berni Inns. We can handle Sebastian’s suicide attempts, Cornelius’s snoring, Johannes’s toenail-clipping, Pieter Pretorius’s whistling, Antonius’s conversation and chess playing, pretty well everything about the cook, with nothing more than a resigned shrug and a little therapeutic muttering. In a world which still hasn’t grown out of killing people for adhering to the wrong religion, political party or football team, this is no small achievement. A bit like Buddhism, Vanderdecker considered, without all that sitting about and humming.

And after all this time, what else would we do? Vanderdecker blew his nose thoughtfully, for this was something he had managed to keep from reflecting on for several centuries. What would it be like not being on this ship, or for that matter not being at all? The second part of that enquiry he could dismiss at once; it’s impossible to imagine not being at all, and probably just as well. But suppose we can somehow get shot of the smell, what would we do?

The Flying Dutchman smiled. It’s typical, of course, he said to himself, that I saw “we” after so many years of all being in the same boat, we poor fools share a collective consciousness that you don’t get anywhere else in the animal kingdom. True, we all dislike each other intensely, or tell ourselves that we do: but the arm probably hates the hand, and no doubt the toes say cutting things about the ankle behind its back. We are the creations, as well as the victims, of our common experience. I can’t see us ever splitting up, or admitting anyone else to our society. Particularly not the latter; by the time we’d all grown used to the newcomer’s own particular habits, he or she would long since have died of old age.

But that’s what I’ve tried to do, Vanderdecker contradicted himself, by enlisting Jane as an ally. Well, someone had to do the job; we can’t and she was prepared to, so don’t knock it. On the other hand, it was no end of a pleasant change to say more than three words together to someone I hadn’t been through the War of the Spanish Succession with. But what about when the novelty wore off? It’s different talking to Antonius; in our various conversations over the years, we must have used every conceivable combination of the few thousand words that make up his simian vocabulary. I can predict exactly what Antonius will say in any given situation, and I have got through the phase of wanting to push him in the sea every time he opens his mouth. Nothing he can say can do more than mildly bewilder me. That’s a rather comforting thought, in a way, and to a greater or lesser extent it goes for everyone else on the ship. Why throw all that away and jeopardise a unique relationship, just for the chance of a chat or two with someone who’ll be dead and gone in another seventy-odd years? Seventy years, after all, is no time at all; it took Antonius longer than that to do his last jigsaw puzzle.

“Captain.” Talk of the Devil. “I’ve been thinking.”

“Good for you, Antonius. How do you like it?”

Antonius looked at him. “Like what, captain?”

“Thinking.”

The great brows furrowed, the massive boom of the beam-engine slowly began to move. “How do you mean, captain?”

“Nothing, Antonius,” Vanderdecker said. “Forget I spoke. What were you going to say?”

“Well,” said the first mate diffidently, “me and the lads were asking ourselves, what’s going to happen? If that Montalban actually has invented something. I mean, what do we all do then?”

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, muttered the Eying Dutchman to himself, not to mention idiots. “That’s a very good question, Antonius,” he replied, “a very good question indeed.”

“Is it?” Antonius looked pleased. “Well, what is going to happen, then?”

“Has it occurred to you,” Vanderdecker said, “that I don’t know?”

“No,” Antonius replied, and Vanderdecker believed him. He discovered a lump in his throat that hadn’t been there before. “I mean,” said Antonius, “it isn’t going to change things, is it?”

“Certain things, yes,” Vanderdecker said.

“Oh.” Antonius’s face crumbled. “How do you mean?”

“For a start,” Vanderdecker said, “more shore leave. Less getting thrown out of pubs. That sort of thing.”

Antonius’s eyes lit up. “I’d like that,” he said.

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Antonius leaned forward on the rail, and Vanderdecker could hear him imagining what it would be like not to be thrown out of pubs. “Antonius,” he said.

“Yes, captain?”

“Do you like…Well, all this?”

“All what, captain?”

Vanderdecker made a vague, half-hearted attempt at a gesture. “All this being stuck on a ship in the middle of the sea and everything.”

“I suppose so,” Antonius replied, “I mean, it helps pass the time, doesn’t it?”

“Yes,” Vanderdecker said, “I suppose it does. Do you know, I’d never looked at it like that before.”

“Like what, captain?”

“Like you just said.”

Antonius turned his head, surprised. “Hadn’t you?” he asked.

“No,” Vanderdecker replied. “Not exactly like that. Well, thanks a lot, Antonius, you’ve been a great help.” Spurred on by a sudden instinct, Vanderdecker put his hand in the pocket of his reefer jacket. “Have an apple?”

“Thanks, captain.” Antonius took the apple and studied it carefully, as if weighing up whether to eat it now or