Chapter 22.1
Sailing less than a mile off the beach, Time Bandits felt like she was finally back in her element -- slipping along silently under full sail in the gentlest conditions, making easy headway in a close reach. But her crew was, literally and figuratively, sailing in the dark.
With no moon up the shoreline was a blackish-green strip hard to differentiate from the sea, and every village and town they passed was darker than dark. A few homes had candles going, but those were the exception, not the rule, and no cars were out on the roads yet...making the passing landscape appear almost medieval.
And all the large commercial ships normally steaming through the English Channel 24 hours a day were at a standstill, no lights visible and all apparently resting at anchor. No aircraft had been visible since the massive CME hit earlier that day, though Anton mentioned that any aircraft out over the open ocean would have -- probably -- been lost unless they were within gliding range of a nearby airport.
Theirs was a world driven by the internet and guided by GPS, that now -- suddenly, dauntingly -- had grown coldly silent. Stock exchanges? Gone. Ordering food or goods online? Unavailable. Having chest pain at midnight? Good luck with that. Your car won't start. Your kitchen appliances either don't work or barely get the job done. Taggart wondered how long the niceties of civilization would last under these conditions? How long would it take for local governments to reassert control after two centuries of centralized federalism? Local farmers' markets, anyone?
Or would the CME abate and the poles revert?
How would the climate respond? Would a new ice age begin, or would warming accelerate?
And every question Henry asked himself led his gaze to Rolf. How would the boy handle all these changes without him?
Then the real question came into sharper relief. 'How would I handle them?' Because, Henry knew, if he couldn't, then how could he expect a teenager to make his way through the coming maze. He looked at Mike and the boy hunched over their charts, advancing the plot -- laboriously. They were marking objects onshore and timing passages on an ancient windup Omega wristwatch, then deriving first their speed then their distance traveled, then marking ship's progress on the chart -- and Rolf was soaking up the knowledge like a sponge -- focused and interested, because he could see and understand that knowledge meant survival.
And so Henry quite naturally thought of his father and their own pressing rituals. How knowledge and understanding were passed from one generation to the next, whether at sea or on the football field or even hunched over desks trying to wrap minds around quadratic equations. Patiently, quietly, developing a real understanding as well as a responsibility to the future, because if his father's life had any meaning at all it revolved around one simple precept: there is no such thing as freedom without responsibility.
Then he looked at Dina and seemed a little surprised by what he saw. She was sitting almost rigidly at attention looking out to sea, as if with nothing else to do she had slipped into some kind of hibernation mode...yet she had been like this since her brief disappearance the day before.
"Can you take the wheel for a minute?" he asked her, and she blinked out of her trance and slipped behind the wheel while he went aft to the swim platform to take a leak in the bucket they kept there. He couldn't pee in the ocean anymore -- he would look at the orcas and feel guilty -- like he was taking a leak on their living room carpet. 'Man, I gotta get a grip on this...' he thought as he looked up at the pulsing waves of pink and green that were still rippling through the night sky. 'Because like it or not, I'm running out of daylight...and there is no freedom without...'
"Henry?" Rolf asked, a question hidden in his voice.
"Yo."
"We are approaching Boulogne-sur-Mer," he said, pointing to a darkened city ahead to port. "Shall we continue to follow the coast or try to sail direct to LeHavre?"
"Let's stay just off the beach...all the way. Without a reliable compass..."
"Yes, that is what Mike thinks too."
"Unless the wind changes we'll be okay, but if the wind shifts to northwesterly we'll need to tack offshore." He looked at Dina as he climbed back into the cockpit and scowled at her rigid countenance. "You baking bread tomorrow?"
"Hmm? -- what? Oh yes, I think so."
He nodded, convinced now that something was really wrong with her...
Then the music pushed it's way back into mind...the same maddening melody as before...only now the music was growing in complexity and clarity -- almost like...
'No, it couldn't be.'
'It's like the closer we get to Paris the richer the music becomes...'
'Every voyage is a teacher,' he thought again, then 'There is no freedom without responsibility.'
'Why, of all the things my father taught me, am I thinking of those two things now?'
They would, he knew, be in LeHavre tomorrow, and there, for all intents and purposes, this voyage would be over. They'd spend a few days getting the mast down and make arrangements for repairs when such facilities reopened, but all that would remain was the trip to Paris.
'Yet that won't happen without engine power, will it?'
He looked down, shaking his head at the thought of such an end to this last journey.
+++++
The water was warm here, Eva thought -- until she remembered she was breathing this water. Or...was she?
She held her hands up in front of her face and could just make out the contours in the deep gloom, then she opened her mouth -- expecting fluid to rush in. But nothing happened. Thick, moisture-laden air filled her lungs, then she leaned back until she felt the back of her head supported by water -- or something like it. She reached out and almost immediately felt that the large female orca was still by her side, still almost motionless, then, as her eyes grew adjusted to the light, she looked up -- and gasped at the sight.
There were hundreds of stars overhead, but many were so close she could easily make out planets in orbit around them...until she realized she was on a moon or some sort of satellite...perhaps a small moon orbiting -- a huge ringed planet. The side of the planet facing her moon was in 'night' just now, but by the size of the rings, she'd just seen the planet must have been very large indeed, with a third of her view of the sky dominated by an obsidian hole that simply had to be the planet. Yet beyond this planet and the nearby stars were vibrant fields of ionizing gases -- nebulas of an astonishing variety of color and transparency, with pinks, yellows, and pale greens predominating.
Then something else struck her: she wasn't tired -- neither was she expending any effort treading water. She was simply floating, yet the water wasn't briny at all -- it was simply very, very viscous, but otherwise very neutral -- and despite not being a chemist that didn't seem to add up.
Then a sliver of sunlight appeared on the limb of the planet overhead, and in this unexpectedly blueish light, she saw land not at all far away. In fact, she saw a white structure of some kind, and then she felt Henry reaching out to her.
+++++
'Where are you?'
She sent images of her surroundings to his mind, and even impressions of the 'ocean' she was in.
'Where is Britt?' he replied.
'I haven't seen her since I arrived.'
'Were Dina and Rolf with you recently?'
'No. Aren't they with you?'
'They are now, but they were gone for a while yesterday. Dina has no recall of anything like that.'
'They weren't here.'
'Are you alone?'
'No.'
'Okay. You should make for land, see what your options are for food and water.'
Henry felt something odd and shook himself out of what felt almost like a trance-like state; he opened his eyes and looked up to find Anton standing by the wheel, but he was pointing at something ashore.
"Genry! Look! See lights?"
