"It worked like a charm," he told me in Evdashian. "They think I'm really something." Then, in Provengal, he called: "Thank you, Angel Deneen! Thank you for answering my request! You have saved us from the Saracen!"
"That's all right, brother mine." I said it in Evdashian, in case he'd switched on his speaker-which it turned out he had. "Do you need anything more just now?"
"No," he said, in Evdashian himself again, "I'll let you know if anything more happens."
I didn't tell him about our new passenger. I didn't have enough information yet to make it worthwhile, and didn't want to worry him. I just put the spotlight on the midships deck for a moment, centering on Larn- one last sign from the heavens. Then I switched it off and parked there, invisible from below. In Evdashian I told Tarel to take our passenger into the head, sluice him off in the shower, and do whatever seemed necessary for his wounds, so far as he could. I also told Bubba to stay with them in case the guy turned out to be dangerous after all. (Not that I needed to; Bubba would know, and he'd do whatever was needed.) Then Tarel could put our-guest? prisoner?-in one of the suits of navy fatigues we had on board, and feed him, and we'd see what we could learn about him.
Meanwhile, I made sure my stunner was set on medium-low. If I had to use it, I didn't want to endanger Tarel or Bubba. But for some reason, I had the distinct feeling that I wouldn't have to use it-that we had a new friend and ally on board, not an enemy.
FIFTEEN
The rest of the trip took four days. Four days that started out miserably for everyone else aboard ship, because they all came down with diarrhea that night- every one of them-and had it for two or three days. The ship didn't have any latrines of course, only buckets and the sea, and at times there was no time to wait for a bucket. I offered my thanks from a distance to the inventor of the immunoserum.
Lice and fleas, on the other hand, had no respect at all for immunoserum, or even for people who could call down angels and lightning from the sky, and foreigners seemed to taste as good as native Fanglithans to them. On Fanglith, though, people hardly thought of them as an affliction; in fact, they hardly thought of them at all. Everyone I'd seen seemed to have them, and apparently all the time. Lice and fleas were like breathing and eating-a part of life.
Maybe Fanglithans would even miss their lice if they lost them; I'm not sure. I wouldn't. Itch! True, I was starting to get used to them, but life on Fanglith would have been a lot nicer without them.
Anyway, not getting diarrhea fitted my image as someone special-someone protected by an angel. Where before some of the people on board had disliked me as a dumbbell full of foolish questions, now everyone was at least polite, including the captain. Some of them were in absolute awe of me, and at meals I even got larger portions than the others. But no one tried to hang around with me.
The day after the pirate incident, Deneen told me about the guy they'd rescued. He'd been a galley slave, forced to help row the pirate ship, and was about the same age as she and Tarel were. His name was Moise ben Israel, and like Isaac ben Abraham, Moise was a Jew, a member of a different religion and culture from Christians. His family had been moving from a city called Genoa to one called Amalfi, where Jews were not so badly treated. When the Saracens attacked the ship, his whole family had drowned or been killed.
Moise could read and write, spoke several languages, and knew a lot about how things were done on Fanglith. He seemed to be adjusting well to Deneen and Tarel and the cutter.
And Bubba approved of him-said he was a good guy. One thing Bubba didn't miss on was what people were like.
The next to last day was stormy-the wind behind us, the sky and sea two tones of gray. Big waves would loom above our stern, some of them fifteen feet high or higher. They'd raise us up as they caught us, then we'd seem to slide down their backside as they passed. And there the next one would be, heaving itself above us from behind. To me it was exhilarating.
The captain had two men on the steering oar. As he explained it to me, it was important that we stay headed downwind. If we broached-came about sideways to the waves-we could easily turn over. He didn't seem worried, though, so I figured the danger wasn't great.
Some of the people prayed quite a bit though, including several of the crew, and they looked at me a lot, as if they hoped I'd pull off another miracle. The only miracle I could think of was to have Deneen pick me up if we foundered, and when the storm got a bit worse, I called her. They were keeping an eye on us, she told me, and if we foundered, Bubba could easily identify me among the people in the water.
While I was murmuring to her, of course, people were watching hopefully, soon after that, the wind started easing up. The waves stayed pretty big for a while, but it felt as if the danger had passed. Judging from the sideways glances people gave me, I was getting the credit for it, which was fine with me. It was just the kind of notoriety I wanted.
The last day dawned to seas that were a lot smaller, and they got smaller yet through the day. In mid-afternoon we saw land ahead. It looked like a continuous shoreline at first, but as we got closer I could see an opening that the captain told me was the Strait of Messina.
About then I noticed that some of the crew were starting to look a little nervous, and I asked one of them if something was wrong.
"Charybdis," he said.
"What is-Charybdis?"
He used a word that didn't mean anything to me, but his explanation, complete with hand motions (the Provencals are great for using their hands to help them talk), made it clear: Charybdis is a whirlpool. In the Strait of Messina. And it could, he told me, swallow a ship.
I asked the captain about that, and he nodded. "It could. But many ships go through there every year, and only now and then does the whirlpool take one of them. Perhaps when there is a storm out of the north, or the ship has a careless master." He shrugged. "Or maybe with someone on board whom God has decided to strike down-perhaps a heretic. Some say there is a monster in it that takes a ship when she is hungry. But there are more monsters told about than exist, and I do not believe there is one in the whirlpool."
He crossed himself though, after he said it.
When we passed through the strait, I kept watching for the whirlpool, but didn't see it. What I did see on both sides was rough, mountainous country without much forest, and to the southwest, on the Sicilian side, an incredible mountain in the distance. It was broad, climbing gradually up and up, with miles and miles of snow. The captain told me its name was Aetna.
It was starting to get dark when we landed in Reggio di Calabria, a town ruled by Normans. I was almost out of money, and the captain agreed to let me sleep on the ship that night. It brought the ship luck to have me aboard, he said; it would bring it still more to grant a boon to a holy man.
It took me a minute to realize that by holy man he meant me. And from what I understood of the concepts of holy, I felt a little embarrassed. I'd tricked him, and everyone else on board, and didn't feel good about it.
I had the ship almost to myself. The other passengers had left. The mate and another sailor sat on guard by the gangplank while two others, their relief, slept nearby on wool bales dragged up on deck. A lopsided moon shone down.
They'd dragged up more than enough bales for themselves, and as I lay down across a couple of extras, scratching and waiting for sleep, I thought about what I'd done. So I'd used trickery. It had been necessary; they'd never accept me for what I was. They wouldn't believe. Or if they did, they wouldn't understand. And if the word got around, I might get executed as a demon; that had almost happened at the Monastery of St. Stephen of Isere, my first time on Fanglith.
What I'd done on this ship had helped the people on it-saved them from being killed or enslaved by the pirates-while what I hoped to do would keep them from being enslaved by the Empire.