Princess Swift Current
Raoul held onto the forestay and watched the sun burn off the coastal mist. He was a big boy for his age, and he had a grace and economy of movement — unusual in True Humans — which caused some people to regard him oddly, and to speculate behind his parents’ backs. And he was a dreamer, given to long solitary rambles in the foothills.
The Cadalla rumbled across the plain. She was a heavy car holding some forty passengers, heading north for Rangua, sails full of the morning breeze. The crewmen adjusted the lines in accordance with the cupped commands issuing from below, but there was little real work to do in this steady wind. In the distance Raoul could see a car approaching on the southbound track.
He indulged in one of his frequent daydreams, picturing himself in charge of the Cadalla in his father’s place, barking orders. He saw the leaves in a grove of trees brighten suddenly, as a gust of wind took them.
“ Ease the sheets,” he whispered.
And the voice snapped from the pipe nearby, «Ease the sheets!» as his father, the alert Captain Tonio, anticipated the gust from his vantage-point in the car’s nose.
Raoul smiled to himself. He’d given the right order and saved the car from harm. The gust hit the car. There was a slight lurch and the lee wheels screamed against the guiderails, but the sails had been let out a fraction and the strain on the masts was eased. Nodding to the crew, Raoul descended the ladder to the main cabin. The passengers sat in two rows down each side of the tubular, planked hull. Some dozed, some stared out of the ports, others glanced at him. They all rocked to the rhythm of the car.
“ All is well,” said Raoul to himself. “ We hope to be in Rangua by noon, given a fair wind.» He ducked under the beam which supported the mainmast and entered the forecabin.
Captain Tonio sat there, eyes flickering over the scene through the open nose port. The wind blew in, swallowed by the Cadalla’s speed, ruffling his hair. A tall, austere man, he sat with knees bent to his chest, crouching forward, eyes slitted with concentration. He sensed rather than saw Raoul. «Everything in order on deck?»
«Fine, father.» Leaning against the bulkhead, swaying to the motion of the car, Raoul indulged in one of his favourite fantasies: The Rescue of Princess Swift Current.
The stories and legends of the sailways are many, dealing with every conceivable type of disaster. Simple songs were often woven around such incidents which would later be incorporated into the Song of Earth: that great History of Mankind which came into gradual being through the songs of the minstrels during the Dying Years. The story of Princess Swift Current would begin thus:
«The Cavaquinho flew away beyond her crew’s reclaim.
Her sails were stitched with cinders and her hull was forged of flame.»
The Cavaquinho was a small craft, but fast. Built a quarter of a century before Raoul was born, she was an elite Company-owned car specializing in swift transport of wealthy and important people. She had an unusual privilege: the signalmen flashed a special signal to other traffic when Cavaquinho was on the track, warning them to pull off into the next siding to allow the faster car to get by. Signalmen also flashed codes to each other, up and down the line, warning that Cavaquinho was in the vicinity.
As an added luxury the craft carried guards; huge decorated Specialists of uncertain genetic origin chosen from a remote mountain tribe, who swaggered about the deck with ironwood swords to deter any bandit grupo.
The minstrels sing of Cavaquinho’s last voyage, when she sailed south to Cassino Canton carrying the Lord of Green Forests, ruler of Portina Canton, and his daughter the Princess Swift Current, who was to be married to Lord Avalancha of Cassino.
The legend also mentions that the Princess Swift Current was already in love with a humble minstrel from Jai’a, although this detail is omitted from the later Song of Earth.
The car approached the Rio Pele estuary, passing through a heavily-wooded region. Without being told, the crew sheeted in the sails. This was standard practice in order to maintain speed in the more sheltered airs of the forest. Far above the car, the treetops danced in a fierce gale.
A heavy bough, falling end over end from a lofty tree, struck the Cavaquinho on the foredeck.
Two guards were swept over the side. One was hit by the guidewheel arm and died instantly, the other fell five meters into the mud of the estuary and, stunned, died more slowly as the crocodiles moved in. The branch then slid along the deck, tipped, and one end jammed between the guidewheel and the rail. The other end whipped around. One crewman was flung from the deck and crushed by the guidewheel, the other fell into the river and was never seen again.
The full force of the wind hit the Cavaquinho as she ran onto the bridge. Normally the crew would have eased the sails out — but there was nobody on deck. Neither was the main brake manned. Unable to spill wind, out of control, the Cavaquinho gathered speed as the gale came roaring up the estuary.
The bridge was about a kilometer long and rickety, because the water had attacked the pilings. Worse, there was a sharp bend about three-quarters of the way across where the track turned to follow the shore to Pele North Stage. The felines saw the sails of Cavaquinho racing across the estuary. Afterwards, they said she sped ‘swifter than a stooping eagle.’
Captain Cuiva applied the brakes from his cabin, but without avail; indeed, the small emergency forward brake caught fire within seconds and flames spread into the forecabin.
The Cavaquinho hit the curve. The guiderail split and collapsed. The sailcar left the track and leaped out across the water. The jagged end of the rail tore away the lath and fabric nose of the forecabin. Captain Cuiva was pitched into the river, suffering a broken leg and a broken back. He was picked up by the felinos but died within the week.
The main cabin of the Cavaquinho together with the deck, mast and sails, by now a streaming comet of flames, skipped some distance across the water before settling. The sail remained full and the craft, aided by the incoming tide, drifted rapidly upstream until it disappeared into the mangroves, where a pillar of smoke marked its presence for some moments.
The search for survivors was delayed. The felinos refused to enter the mangroves due to a local superstition concerning a bruja. That evening the wreckage drifted past the Stage on a falling tide and was pulled ashore. There was no sign of bodies, but later the same evening The Lord of the Green Forest’s body came ashore, mutilated by cai‑mans. The remains of Princess Swift Current were never found.…
In Raoul’s imagination she had escaped, and lived on as his wife, a delicate creature with porcelain skin who sat quietly in the beautiful house he’d built for her. Like a lovely painting she was, never speaking of her ordeal, in fact never speaking at all. Having saved her, Raoul’s mission in life was to look after her.
How did Raoul save the Princess Swift Current?
He swung from a tree and snatched her out of a porthole, like an ape kidnapping a baby. He dropped to the deck, beat off the guards, knocked out Captain Cuiva and led her to where he had two white horses waiting. He’d hidden himself under the car, clinging to the running wheel struts, and at the right moment he appeared in the cabin and.… He emerged dripping from the river, fighting off crocodiles as he.…