Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors Original (pdf) (novels to read in english .TXT) 📖

wine beaker rocked just a little as she set it down.

‘I’ve thought about it,’ she said. ‘Too much was wrong on the

beach. Gline was in command still but he was a sick man. I tended

to him as best I could and rounded up food and shelter. I fancy that

some of these shipmates never reached the beach at all, they did in

fact drown in the wreck and were falsely reported alive. Who could

be sure in that place, full of mist and the phantoms of disease?

Then again, perhaps they struck inland . . . ’

‘Were there boats?’ I asked. ‘Could any have taken a boat?’

The hawk swooped. Captain Swift’s big hand clasped down with

a savage grip . . . not on my wrist, she was more crafty than that.

She gripped the slender neck of my guitar as if she would snap it

like a twig.

‘W’ho might have done that?’ she asked softly, ‘which one of these

missing persons might have stolen a boat?’

‘None that I know of, Captain,’ I brought out, ‘but there was an

interview . . . ’

‘Where? W hat did it say?’

‘At City Hall. Two of the missing, Kettle and Adma, were last

seen beside a boat.’

‘Ah, those two,’ she said. ‘The smaller boats were not seaworthy.

Perhaps they made off, poor gals, and came down to delfmhome, as

the saying goes. They drowned. Don’t quote me, child. I’ve no true

notion of how they died.’

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Cherry Wilder

Another thing,’ I went on quickly. ‘The plan to refloat the

Seahawk . . . ?’

‘You’re well up in this history, little one,’ she said, smiling at last.

‘A real newsferret Ju p Star has made of you. Yes, there was some

talk of refloating the Seahawk. She hung on the rocky tip of the

point, only two, three hundred metres from our wretched beach.

Might have been a world away, in those waters and in our weakened

state. / knew at any rate, that it was death to approach her. So my

plan was to patch up the cutter.’

H er plan had worked; she had the air of one whose plans worked.

But it had been too late to save their Captain, Hal Gline. I was as

certain as I could be that Hilo Hill had taken a boat after some falling out with Vera Swift on that dreadful beach, long ago. I made my escape from the ‘Pot o’ Gold’ without probing any further. I

understood a part of his lifelong fear.

A spell of cold and rainy weather kept us indoors at the Songfabrik

with the hatches battened down. I was sent for one night to go to

Moon Lane. Hilo Hill was dying. A pneumonia had taken hold

and the doctor Ruby had called could do no more for the old man.

He lay at last in a big bed in an upstairs room, his face sharp and

brown against the pillows. Dag Raam was there, sitting patiently at

a corner of the bed when I stole in with my guitar and someone I

took for a nurse but who was a female intern . . . Ruby had spared

no expense.

Now she was tired, poor lady, from watching, and Rayner led her

off to get some sleep. Hilo drew breath painfully but his head

seemed as clear as it had ever been. He m urm ured in two languages. I played a soft refrain and his eyes found me and knew me.

When the intern came to stop my music, Hilo turned to Dag

Raam.

‘This time?’he wheezed softly. ‘This time at last, Dag-boy?’

The Captain would not lie to him or pretend to misunderstand

the question.

‘It seems so, Hilo,’ he replied.

Hilo fixed his gaze on the hovering intern.

‘Step out a moment, gal,’ he said. ‘I have something to say to these

folk.’

She went off when we promised not to tire him. He fell back into

silence when the intern had gone and we waited. Then, fighting for

I hr ballad o f H ilo H ilt

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his breath, he began to speak.

'On the beach,’ he said, 'the fifteenth day after the wreck. 1 saw

Vera Swift, second mate, kill our Captain, Hal Gline. He lay apart

in a rough shelter of canvas; 1 had extra food hidden . . . 1

brought him a little. He