"Two hundred and twelve feet long, beam thirty-six feet, depth deck-to-keel twenty-one feet," Alston said, caressing the words. "Forty-six feet of raised quarterdeck. White oak, black oak, beech-wood, white pine. Nine hundred twenty-seven net tons."
He could barely hear the murmured terms of endearment under the racket. Well, everyone has their own Grail. His had always been to know. Before he met Doreen or held his son, it had been the strongest thing in his life, and it wasn't the weakest even now, not by many a mile.
Scaffolding covered the sides of the great ship, swarming with workers. Outside, the boathouse was flanked by new timber sheds almost as large. From them came the sound of blacksmiths working, tink-whang-tink, the screeching moan of a drill press, the dentist-chair sound of metal-cutting lathes. Over it all was the whining roar of the band saws; Leaton had rigged up enormous equivalents of the little machines used to cut keys, ones that would take a small model and rip an equivalent shape out of balks of seasoned oak. Steam puffed from boilers and from the big pressure-cooker retorts where timber softened so it could be bent into shape.
The fall day was brisk, but the heat of forges and hearths and the steam engines that drove the pneumatic tools kept it comfortable in the shed. The air was full of the smell of hot metal, the vanilla odor of oak, sharp pine, and tar bubbling in vats. Sunlight fogged through floating sawdust.
"Take a look," Swindapa said. "It's like being inside some great beast, a whale."
The Arnsteins scrambled up a long board stair built into the side of the scaffolding, splintery wood rough under their hands. It led into the ship through a section not yet planked, and they stood precariously on a piece of temporary decking.
"It is like being inside a whale," Doreen said into Ian's ear. "And it looks a lot bigger than you'd expect."
Ian nodded. This was a cockleshell compared to an aircraft carrier or an oil tanker back up in the twentieth, but close up it felt big. His eyes followed the long, graceful cure of the keelson and the sharp bow, and the way the ribs flowed up from them. She was right about it being like the inside of a whale, too-there was an organic feel to the ship, as if it were something that had grown naturally.
"What surprises me," he said to Alston, as she stood with legs braced and a roll of plans tapping on her palm, "is that this one is taking so much less time. Lincoln took more than a year-eighteen months."
Swindapa said something in her own language, then translated, "We have danced the play of numbers into wood."
Ian blinked. Well, every once in a while you remember she's not an American, he thought. Then she went on:
"I think you would say… learning curve?"
Alston nodded. "Everyone knows what to do. Besides that, we've got the jigs and such-we're buildin' these like cars with identical parts."
"That does give us an advantage," Ian said a little smugly. "Twentieth-century concept."
"Not really," Alston said, half turning, her eyes sardonic. "The Venetian Republic's navy did it with their war-galleys in Renaissance times."
"That's taken you down a peg, mate," Doreen whispered in his ear. "Clapped a stopper over your capers-brought you by the lee."
"You've been reading those damned historical novels she likes again, haven't you?" Ian said, grinning. Actually they're not bad. And they'd helped him understand Alston better.
One of the overhead trolleys that had once shifted sailboats lowered a great oak beam through the open space over their head and into the interior. An ironic cheer went up when it was found to fit exactly into the slot prepared, and a man with an adze stepped ostentatiously back. Figures in overalls and hard hats moved forward and there was a rhythmic slamming as the big deck beam was fastened home, spanning the whole width of the ship where her main deck would be.
"Heavy scantlings so she can bear a gun deck, but she's not really a specialist warship," Alston noted. "Good deep hold under there… had to modify the design a little, of course, because the Sark was a composite ship. We could do that, but maintenance far abroad would be too difficult, and besides, we've got more good timber than metal. Altered the sail plan, too; all those stuns'ls and studding sails took a lot of crew to work them, and we don't have the sort of competition they had, no need to squeeze out every half knot. And clippers have too little reserve buoyancy for my taste, so we-"
"Commodore," Ian interrupted-this was a semiformal occasion, in public- "as long as it gets us where we're going, I should care?"
"Councilor, you're a philistine," she said, with a tilt of eyebrow and a quirk of full lips.
"Hebrew, actually."
"Is either of them around yet?"
"Not the Philistines; they were probably mostly Greeks, with odds and sods from everywhere, part of the Sea Peoples-due to invade Egypt and get thrown back in the next couple of generations. Hebrews…" He shrugged and flung up his hands. "If Exodus records any real events, the Pharaoh that Moses dealt with could be either Ramses II, who's ruling Egypt now, or somebody a century either way. I doubt that real Judaism-Yahwehistic monotheism-exists right now."
" Yahweh probably still has that embarrassing female consort they discovered in those early inscriptions," Doreen said. "Good for her."
"Another month," Alston said, looking around the ship again. "Finish up, launch her, step her masts and rigging, get her guns aboard- and the Lincoln's, too-then we load up Lincoln and Chamberlain, plus Eagle, of course, and at least one of the schooners, and we're on our way."
"You're going to be commanding personally?" Ian said, relieved.
"As far as the Gulf. I talked Jared into it. I need cadre who're used to these ships, we'll have four at least by the time we run the Straits, and a good long voyage is the way to train them."
Marian looked up at the ship and began to speak softly, under her breath. Ian recognized the words; he wasn't surprised anymore, either- there was more to Marian than she let on. In Alba he'd heard her recite from the same poet on a field where dead men lay in windrows. This time it was happier words as her eyes caressed the hull. He caught the surge and hiss of the sea in it, and the longing for places new and strange that he'd always suspected lurked under Alston's iron pragmatism:
A ship, an isle, a sickle moon-
With few but with how splendid stars
The mirrors of the sea are strewn
Between their silver bars!
An isle beside an isle she lay,
The pale ship anchored in the bay,
While in the young moon's port of gold
A star-ship-as the mirrors told-
Put forth its great and lonely light
To the unreflecting Ocean, Night.
And still, a ship upon her seas,
The isle and island cypresses
Went sailing on without the gale:
And still there moved the moon so pale,
A crescent ship without a sail!
CHAPTER SIX
November, Year 8 A.E.
(November, Year 6 A.E.)
(June, Year 7 A.E.)
December, Year 8 A.E.
(June, Year 7 A.E.)
"Lordy, but I hate giving speeches," Alston muttered under her breath as she stepped down from the podium on the steps of the Pacific National Bank at the head of Main Street.
"Tell me about it," Jared said.
"Maybe that's why you always give the same one, Marian," Ian said out of the side of his mouth, grinning as he applauded with the crowd. "Thank you for your support. We'll get the job done. Good-bye."