The Voyage of the Minotaur Read online

  Once she had arrived in the enclosed chamber, Iolanthe smoothed out her white pin-striped dress and offered her hand to Lieutenant Staff, who took it, and bending at the waist, pressed it to his lips.

  “Good day, Miss Dechantagne.”

  “Good day, Lieutenant. Thank you for inviting me.”

  “I thought there was a sight here that you might enjoy.” He directed Iolanthe to the starboard side of the ship and pointed in the distance. Dozens of huge shapes pushed their way through the ocean waves on a course parallel to that of the ship. Every once in a while, a great white fluke or a tremendous black tale would break the surface. Here and there, spouts of spray shot up into the air.

  “What are they?” wondered Iolanthe.

  “Whales. They call them great whales. They’re much bigger than those found in the seas of home.”

  “I can see that. How large do you suppose they are? The biggest whale I’ve ever heard of was sixteen feet long. And such unusual colors. I thought all whales were white.”

  “Yes,” replied Staff. “The common Brech whale seldom surpasses a ton, and they’re white but as smooth as an inner tube. These whales aren’t like that. They’re skin looks rough. They’re mostly dark, though they have white underbellies and flukes. I understand that a ship from the Royal Geographic Society took one for study, and that it measured fifty-one feet long and weighed just over forty tons.”

  “Amazing,” said Iolanthe. “They seem to have no fear of the ship.”

  “They have nothing to fear. Ships from Sumir are still relatively rare in these waters and the people of Enclep actually worship, them along with other animals. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hunt them anyway.”

  One of the great whales shot out of the water, leaving no part submerged except its tail. It twisted in midair as if the monstrous beast was going to leap up into the sky and fly away, but as it turned, it slowly fell back to the ocean in a huge splash.

  “I understand that this is their time of migration. They will be moving to the far north to spend the summer in colder waters. Then they will return in the winter. Of course once we sail past Enclep, the large whales give way to other ocean beasts that are as impressive, if not more so. You’ll have to come back up, Miss Dechantagne, and have a look at them as well.”

  “I hope their tricks are as impressive,” said Iolanthe.

  “Officer of the watch,” said a sailor on the port side. “Unidentified vessel two thousand yards off the port stern.”

  Lieutenant Staff moved to stand behind the sailor. He retrieved a pair of binoculars from somewhere and looked out at the horizon through them. Iolanthe followed the young officer and after a moment, he handed her the binoculars to look through. At first she couldn’t find anything at which to look, but then she realized that she was scanning the surface of the waves, and the other vessel was far above them. Raising her sightline up, she saw a great, streamlined airship cruising along below the clouds. Its rigid structure was ribbed down its length, and it was almost as long as the Minotaur. Four great fins framed the back and a large steam-powered propeller, slung beneath, pushed it through the air, while the gondola in the lower front portion of the vessel appeared quite tiny.

  “Do you see its colors?” asked Staff.

  “Yes,” said Iolanthe “Black and yellow.”

  “Freedonia,” said the officer. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s the L.Z. Essenbad. She’s been cruising around this area recently.”

  “Is she following us?”

  “Maybe, but I doubt it. Their colony Bamport is just north of Enclep. However, if they get a good look at us, they’ll realize were not a normal battleship. We have civilians crawling all over our stern.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Iolanthe. “Subterfuge was only one of the reasons for requisitioning the Minotaur, and that time is now past. We wanted to keep Freedonia and Mirsanna from being able to mount an expedition of their own before we were able to sail. We’re well on our way now. As far as I’m concerned, let them come.”

  As Captain Gurrman had promised, the H.M.S. Minotaur sailed into port in Enclep three days later. The island of Enclep was more than 1200 miles long and 350 miles wide at its thickest point. It was almost as large as the entirety of Greater Brechalon, but it was a very different place. The northern reaches, which were the only portions of the island visited by ships from Sumir, were lined with white sandy beaches everywhere except the rocky outcropping of the deep-water port that the Royal Brechalon Navy had leased from the natives for its use. The interior of the island held vast rain forests of tropical plants and tall sweeping palm trees and was filled with all manner of natural treasures. The brown-skinned natives in the north lived simple lives of hunting, gathering, and trading with the visiting ships, while the south was dominated by a number of feudal kingdoms.

  The great ship spent most of the morning maneuvering through the relatively close confines of the port and into position for mooring at the cement dock. The port facility was large and modern and impressive—as fine as anything found in Greater Brechalon. It contained large cranes and loading ramps surrounded by warehouses with modern roads running between them. And beyond the port lay the small city of Nutooka, with a native population of perhaps twenty thousand living in homes made of bamboo and palm fronds. Its only roads, winding pathways of dirt filled with rickshaws, carts pulled along by oxen, and in a few cases by large pigs, and native women carrying bundles upon their shoulders.

  Iolanthe watched all this from an unobtrusive point along the ship’s forward deck. For once, she wasn’t as concerned with being seen as she was with seeing. This was a new world for her, but she knew that it was only the first of many that she would be experiencing over the coming months and years. Even her clothing said that she was here to observe and not to be observed. Though her dress had the cut and form necessary to accommodate the very feminine shape of a Prudence Plus fairy bust form corset and a large bustle, it was made of the same heavy khaki material from which uniforms of soldiers and jungle explorers were crafted. After all, she was now an explorer herself, or she soon would be. She wore a pith helmet and the netting that surrounded it and draped down to her shoulders was even now serving its function to keep the pesky, biting insects at bay.

  As she stood watching the sailors tying the final knots in the great ropes, as thick as a strong man’s arm, which would keep the battleship fastened to the dock, she felt a body standing on her right side. She knew who it was without even looking, but she turned to face her brother Terrence just the same. His outfit matched hers, with a khaki shirt tucked into khaki pants, which in turn, were tucked into high leather boots. He wore a wide-brimmed hat and had on a dual gun shoulder holster rig, with a large nickel-plated .45 caliber revolver under each arm.

  “Expecting trouble, are we?” asked Iolanthe.

  “I always do. And I’m usually right.”

  “Yes, you are,” she admitted. “What are your plans now?”

  “I have some people to talk to in town. And you?”

  “I’m going to purchase provisions,” said Iolanthe.

  “Good luck,” her brother said, setting off toward the gangplank, which was being erected at that moment between the ship and the dock.

  A few moments later, Lieutenant Staff appeared at Iolanthe’s side. After exchanging pleasantries, the two debarked from the ship and made their way to the port authority building and then to the office of the port quartermaster therein. The quartermaster was an older heavyset man wearing a sweat-stained uniform of the Royal Brechalon Navy. He turned out to be surprisingly efficient and took the order for provisions that would stock the battleship for the remainder of its journey and which with any luck, would also help sustain the colony once established. He indicated that it would take more than four days to complete the order, which included 30,000 pounds of beef, 5,000 pounds of lamb, 12,000 pounds of pork, 4,000 pounds of sausage, 24,000 pounds of fowl, 15,000 pounds of fish, 1,500 pounds of crab and shr
imp, 30,000 pounds of fresh vegetables, 25,000 pounds of potatoes, 20,000 pounds of fresh fruit, 40,000 pounds of wheat, 1,000 gallons of milk, 10,000 eggs, 3,000 pounds of sugar, 3,000 pounds of rice, 2,000 pounds of coffee, 4,000 pounds of tea, 1,000 bottles of red wine, 500 bottles of spirits, and 10,000 bottles of beer.

  “There was another ship here three days ago,” said the quartermaster. “Although it wasn’t Brech and it wasn’t scheduled for supply, we felt we had to give them some provisions for the sake of compassion.”

  “That was the S.S. Acorn?” asked Iolanthe.

  “Yes, that’s right,” answered the surprised official.

  The two men looked at the woman, but she gave no indication that she was willing to tell them what she knew of the strange ship or how she knew it.

  As they left the port authority office, Lieutenant Staff slowed his military gate, and offered his arm to Iolanthe. She took it and they turned down a cobblestone path beneath a bamboo cover and through a small garden. Red roses surrounded a small patch of grass. In the center of this lawn was a small fountain: an abstract shape spraying water into the air and then down into a pool about three feet across. Arranged around the little pool were carefully set rows of tiny yellow flowers of a type that Iolanthe had never seen before.

  “What are those?” she wondered.

  “I believe that they are called ‘bird feet’,” said Staff. “I don’t know why. They don’t look like bird’s feet to me.”

  “If anything, they look like little faces,” said Iolanthe. “They’re quite pretty, don’t you think?”

  “You know that garden represents the last bit of civilization that we’re likely to see for some time,” he said. “I know you are a strong woman, but you are a woman. I thought you should see something pretty before we get where we are going. There’s going to be very little to see there that’s pretty.”

  “I think you may turn out to be wrong there,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  Iolanthe took off her pith helmet, holding it in her right hand and primping the bun in which her auburn hair had been arranged, with her left hand. She looked into Lieutenant Staff’s eyes and felt a pressure in her chest that she had never felt before. It spread downward into her loins and out into her arms and legs. Her voice caught for just a moment.

  “I like pretty things as much as any other woman,” she said finally. “But pretty things are just that—pretty things. Flowers in a vase will wilt in a few days. Those flowers by the fountain will be gone in a few weeks or months. The important things are the things that last. We’ll always be able to find a few pretties to place on a shelf or to plant by our door—but the shelf and the door, and the house and the city, and Kafiradom and Greater Brechalon—those are the important things we have to make sure we have.”

  She watched his face to see what, if any, impact her words had on him. Then, when his eyes met hers again, she reached out with her right hand to grasp him by his shirt collar. Then pulling his face to hers, she kissed him firmly on the lips.

  Chapter Eight: Terrence’s Jungle Adventure

  The market in the center of Nutooka was filled with native people buying local fruits, nuts, fish, vegetables, fowl, pig’s feet, eggs of all sizes, and rice from dozens of vendor stalls. Some of the sellers had occupied their sites for many years, and were situated under large shelters made of wood and bamboo. Others were more temporary, yet even they had canvas awnings to protect from the noonday sun. Terrence Dechantagne walked past the area where raw foods were available and through the portion of the market where the smells of roasting chickens and stir-fried pork assailed his nostrils. Beyond that, merchants sold hand-made rugs and bolts of unusual cloth. And beyond them were tents where native prostitutes plied their trade, offering whatever sexual services a man would pay for, usually at prices that wouldn’t have bought a decent drink in the great city of Brech. And beyond that was the vendor for whom Terrence had been looking.

  A large grey and black striped tent stood near the edge of the market, and in front of it was a table covered with animal furs, piled more than a foot thick. One would have thought the old, withered, native man, with the long, thin grey beard, big round bald head, and gap-toothed smile was a seller of furs, and he probably did sell a few now and then. But animal furs were not his stock and trade.

  “Dechantagne.” said the old man. “You look good. Not like the last time I see you, eh? Then, you look like Guma eat your heart.”

  “Oyunbileg, I’m surprised to see you,” said Terrence. “I thought you’d be dead by now.”

  “I’ll be here long after you,” said the old man, smiling again to expose all four of his yellow teeth. “So, you want to see, or what?”

  “Yes. I want to see.”

  “Two hundred marks,” said Oyunbileg.

  “Fifty marks, gold,” said Terrence.

  “Dechantagne, you’re a good friend, so I give it to you for one hundred. You know I have to bring it all the way from Kutambata.”

  Terrence fished a small, black, cloth bag from his shirt pocket and tossed it to the old man, who opened it and poured the contents into his palm. There were exactly ten gold decimarks. Terrence had brought no other money with him from the ship. Maybe this one time, he would be able to stop after just one. Oyunbileg reached below the table covered with animal furs and pulled out a tiny cylindrical bottle, made of dark indigo glass. It was only about an inch long and a half-inch in diameter. He handed the bottle to Terrence, who held it up to the light.

  “It’s full!” said the old man.

  “Yes.”

  “You go inside. In back. Nobody will bother you.”

  “If somebody does bother me, I start shooting.”

  “Yes, yes, I remember.”

  The little old man pulled open the tent flap behind him, and Terrence Dechantagne stepped around the stall table and through the opening, which was then closed behind him. Inside, a young native woman, Oyunbileg’s daughter, was washing herself with a sponge and water from a wooden bowl. She was naked from the waist up. She stared at him for a moment and then went back to what she was doing. He stepped past the young woman and walked to the back of the large tent and sat down cross-legged on a hand-woven rug. He looked at the tiny vial in his hands, his eyes already starting to water, and pulled the stopper from its mouth. Placing a finger on the tiny opening, he overturned the bottle to moisten his finger with the milky white liquid inside. Then he reached up and rubbed the liquid directly onto his left eyeball, and then his right. He had just enough awareness left to recap the bottle before he began to see it.

  He was sitting cross-legged, though he was no longer sitting in a tent, or in Nutooka, or in Enclep. He was in the middle of a great field of purple flowers that stretched ahead and to the left and right as far as the eye could see. Each flower was a foot tall, with a blossom as big around as his hand, with five purple petals, each almost the same color of indigo as the little bottle he had purchased from the old man. And in the middle of each flower, where normally one would find the pistil, was a very human looking eyeball. Terrence stood up and turned around. Twenty yards away was a small yellow cottage, with a green roof and door and two windows with green shutters. And to the left and the right of the house, and beyond the house, the field of purple flowers stretched away to the horizon.

  As Terrence walked toward the house, the flowers leaned away from him as if to get out of the way, though he still stepped on many. He walked up to the green door of the cottage, and knocked on it. He was just about to knock on the door again, when it opened. And there she was.

  * * * *

  It was mid-afternoon when Terrence stepped back out of the tent and back into the marketplace of Nutooka. He paid no attention to words of goodbye from Oyunbileg. As it always did afterwards, the color seemed to have drained out of the world and it now looked as monochrome as a picture from a photographic plate. And just as they always did afterwards, sounds seemed far more intense than usual, and he felt as th
ough he could pick out individual voices from among the crowd of native merchants and their customers. He pulled off his slouch hat to mop the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve, and then started as two women brushed past him. They were two women from the Minotaur, and seemed too engrossed in their conversation to notice him.

  He recognized both of them. One was Professor Calliere’s red-haired assistant. The other was a dark-haired woman, about two inches taller and thirty pounds heavier, who was a female medical doctor. Her name was something that started with a ‘k’ sound—Cleves or Keeves or something. Terrence stood and admired both women as they walked near the edge of the stall selling bolts of cloth in many colors. Both were women of class: dynamic, intelligent, determined. They were both the kind of women that he could have seen himself courting, in another life.

  He was still watching the two women when the sounds of a great kafuffle somewhere on the other side of the market reached his ears. No sooner had this registered than seven or eight mounted men rode into the market near the two women from the Minotaur. These riders were dressed in various clothing of tan, brown, and white, but each had a red sash wrapped around his waist, and each wore a red hood completely covering his face, with only two holes cut out through which to see. The most remarkable thing about these mounted men though, wasn’t the men themselves, but their mounts. Terrence knew that horses were unavailable on Enclep, but it was still a shock to see riders upon huge, ferocious-looking birds. The birds were as tall as a horse, though unlike that noble steed, they ran on only two massive legs, and had tiny useless wings. Their clawed feet were almost two feet across and the massive beaks upon their mammoth heads looked as though it could easily clip off a man’s arm, or disembowel him in a moment. They were mostly covered with brown feathers, though there were black and white details on some of them. The men had them saddled, and though they squawked incessantly, they seemed to be under firm control.