The Crossing
Eighty miles east of the city of Lehman.
The road had a widespread reputation for taking a full three days on foot, yet aside from soldiers I doubted many people had ever actually walked it. A high-ranking officer come from the Federation took a carriage if he could help it, and a person of the Empire had no business going to the port city in the first place. Even the figure of three days assumed a well-kept road. There had been a properly maintained highway from the port to Lehman. The other direction was another matter. So I think I may fairly claim to have discovered for myself that the walk from Lehman to the port city of Rosco takes four and a half days.
"There it is."
How many brush-choked hills had I crossed? At last, the lights of civilization. Forgetting the sting of skin scraped raw all over, I stood on the summit and looked down for a long time upon the whole spread of Rosco.
Mana-lamps lay strewn in every direction, brilliant to the point of splendor. Scarlet artificial light drove the dark back and bathed the entire harbor in a muted glow, and as if refusing to be outdone, far out along the piers a tower banded red and white flung beams in every direction.
They called it a lighthouse. To someone who had taken his comfort in the warmth of a candle trembling inside a cramped little room, it was a thoroughly alien piece of construction. Ships only came in and went out again. Was an apparatus that vast truly necessary?
And yet even that was no more than a supporting player on this waterfront.
"…."
I was inland-born. The only ships I had ever known were ones I had seen floating on a river. Only later, paging through encyclopedias published in the Federation and the like, did I first lay eyes on the things called sailing ships, built for crossing the sea. Reading that it took absurdly huge sails and dozens of crew to overcome the waves of the ocean, I seem to remember thinking something along the lines of before nature, a human being really is a small thing.
"I may have to revise that opinion…."
Three steamships lay moored in the harbor. The most impressive of them was the vessel on the far right: a massive funnel, and a deck so broad it looked as though it could carry three hundred souls with room to spare. The flag of the Federation rippled in the wind.
MV James Eddington
The Eddington.
That proud mass of steel floated on the sea, wearing an ambition that seemed ready to cleave every wave apart. She was due to sail at eleven the next morning.
The other two were small, and heavily guarded besides. There were few places to hide, and the chance of being caught climbed exponentially, so getting across on either of them was next to impossible. Nor was the coming and going of a great ship on the order of the Eddington an everyday affair. Miss her now, and I might spend months waiting with nothing to show for it. Whatever happened, I had to get aboard that ship. It was already a settled fact that I would not be doing it in the ordinary way—buying a ticket, receiving the crew's welcome, and being shown to a cabin.
The sky is blue.
Beneath banks of pure-white cumulus, a cool wind is blowing.
There could be no weather better suited to putting out to sea.
A solid mass of people had gathered before the Eddington. It was not the weather alone. The Eddington, which made the round trip between the Empire and the Federation once every two months, had always been the ship people most liked to use. Of course, eight in ten of those people were soldiers.
"Finally get to set foot on home ground."
"That's exactly it. Signing on because they said they'd raise the pay was a mistake. You have no idea how many times I've regretted it."
"You knew when you came that there was nothing but ruins and barbarians."
"I just never thought those would really be the only two things."
Their joshing was louder than one would have expected, so not only the people around them but the young crewman standing watch up on the Eddington's deck heard every word of it. He was one of the many youths who had dreamed of joining a crew out of reverence for Sir Eddington.
Who was James Eddington?
In a war that had been nothing but cruelty, he was the only man called by the name of hero. Now the Federation, victor in both name and fact, worked the Empire like its own servant, but in the early days of the war the Federation had been hard-pressed merely to withstand the attack. Outdated or not, the offensive of the Imperial Navy that had once commanded the world boasted tremendous power.
Three landing operations in all. Hundreds of thousands of infantry appearing without warning along the coast were more than anyone could meet, and the Federal forces did nothing but repeat, endlessly, the orders to evacuate and withdraw.
There was a region where even that could not be done.
The Orlan Archipelago. Sixty sentries and four hundred sixty ordinary citizens, cut off on those islands, were left with nowhere to go. The Federal Navy had no transport to spare to carry them, and even after every fishing boat belonging to the people who lived by the catch had been scraped together, they succeeded in getting out a mere eighty. The rest were left with no choice but to become hostages of the Imperial Army.
James Eddington, a man in the passenger-ship business, stepped forward.
Fourteen knots. Not a single gun. No armor whatsoever. Bringing by his own hand a vessel built strictly as a passenger ship, he appeared at the Orlan Archipelago and took aboard all four hundred and forty people stranded there. The load was more than twice what the specifications allowed, and not a soul blamed him for it.
That withdrawal would later be called the Miracle of the Orlan Archipelago, and was judged to have played a major part in the Federal forces seizing the initiative. The moment some four hundred people were taken hostage, the war would all but certainly have sunk into stalemate. After the fighting ended, in the course of honoring every kind of distinguished service, the Federal government granted a title to James Eddington as well. And so the businessman James Eddington became Sir James Eddington.
The young crewman admired him. As a result he had been able to become a crewman aboard none other than the Eddington—the Eddington Company's newly built passenger liner—and yet.
"What are you doing first, once you're back?"
"What else…."
"Drink."
"Women."
"Am I wrong?"
The two soldiers burst out laughing.
The young crewman found the sight sour. He had not become a crewman in order to wait on men like that, smoothing things over with a forced, ingratiating smile. A senior crewman saw at a glance that his junior was harboring thoughts above his station. He dropped his voice.
"Junior. They're soldiers, even so. The people who kept us alive."
"The ones who actually fought got their medals and a post apiece, or they left the service because of the trauma. Everyone can see those soldiers are nothing but latecomers, can't they?"
"Who doesn't know that."
Even so. The senior went on.
"If it hadn't been for them, we'd have been the ones called barbarians."
"…."
"No. Federation folk run to red hair and blond, so they might have called us monkeys."
The young crewman was silent. He truly did not want that.
"That dream of being a crewman must have been quite a noble thing, for you."
"…Yes. It was."
"You've only just achieved the dream. What are you going to do if you don't do the work?"
At the same moment the senior let out a sigh, a disturbance broke out in the middle of the boarding line. Shouts, and fists. The murmur of a crowd. And then, decisively, the click of metal being worked, one report after another. The press of bodies hid whatever was happening, but the sound carried clear.
"Let go! I said let go of this!"
"Be still. Illegal passenger."
"Ah— no! I am Federation man!"
A desperate cry. But the mood, far from turning grave, became a sea of laughter instead. The noblewoman crossing the gangway onto the ship, the soldiers waiting their turn, even the onlookers craning to see what was the matter—every one of them joined in, until the whole place roared.
His Frauvian was halting. Far too halting. Mixed in among the laughter was a low sneer that seemed to belong to one of the crew.
"If you're going to play at being a citizen of the Federation, practice talking first. Barbarian."
Soon there came the sound of a man being dragged away. At last the young crewman saw the owner of the voice: a gray-haired man of middle years, with a pinched, shabby look about him. The one hauling him off wore a crew uniform. He had caught an illegal passenger trying to board without a ticket. It was one of a crewman's chief duties.
"Welcoming those who are passengers, and driving off those who aren't. That's our work."
A pistol loaded with live rounds hung at the senior's waist. In his crew training, the young man had learned that its trigger had been pulled more than a few times. The reason was simple. An illegal passenger will kill a crewman, if that is what it takes, to get aboard. Self-defense.
"…I'll work hard."
The young crewman pulled his cap down low.
There was someone who had heard that entire conversation from only a few paces away.
Me.
Quite apart from the exchange between the young crewman and his senior, I was in a considerable predicament. The original plan had been this: infiltration under cover of darkness. Even deep in the night the deck was bright, and the sentries were hardly few. But there was a place they did not watch—the underside of the ship. Only natural. There was no need to watch it. I, however, could use one of the most serviceable spells I possessed, Levitation, and reach the underside of the hull in a single breath.
The plan had succeeded. The night before, I moved beneath the ship, set down on a suitable ledge, and waited for a chance to slip aboard; then, in the early morning, while the sentries withdrew for roll call, I slid inside.
The interior was well kept. That, however, held only for the sections meant for passengers. The quarters where the crew stayed, and the engine room, which needed only occasional maintenance, were filthy beyond description, and few people passed through them. Suitable places to hide. After searching and searching again for the right spot, I realized, to my surprise, that the space directly beneath the deck and the supply storeroom were safe. I hid there at once.
"Success…."
No one had found me. I was glad to have cleared one of the three obstacles with ease.
Back to the present.
I was not particularly glad.
"…."
"…What are you looking at."
"Ah— um. Shall we introduce ourselves?"
For by the time I realized that the supply storeroom, which at a glance had seemed to hold no one at all, already contained two passengers who had gotten there before me, so many people had come aboard that I could no longer open the door without thinking twice.