Marauder

15

Every so often, Steve glanced over his shoulder to make sure they were heading in the right direction. Finally, after a long time, he realized that they didn’t have to keep rowing to reach the shore. He let out a deep breath of relief and shipped his oar.

“We can take a break.”

“What? We can?” Gratefully, Jane shipped hers, “too. “Are we there?” She turned around to look.

“Not yet,” said Steve. “But the current and the tide have taken us. We couldn’t row our way back out now if we wanted to. So we might as well take it easy.”

“I know people must have seen us go overboard, but I guess nobody saw us rowaway.”

“No one who cared, anyway,” said Steve. He looked back at the big ships. The first two pirate ships were still grappled to their prey. However, the Old Laughing Lady had pushed off again and was under sail, leaving the other ships behind. On its present course, it would pass them some distance away on its trip back to Port Royal.

He turned around on the bench, to face forward toward Jamaica.

“What’s our next plan of action?” She turned on the bench also, bumping him with one shoulder.

“It looks like we’ll have quite a hike back into Port Royal, so that’s going to take up the rest of the day, I think.” Steve looked down the coastline as far as he could.

“Are we going to land near the spot where we first c appeared, do you think? Along the Cagway?”

“I’m afraid we’ll have a much longer walk than that. We’re going to land outside the Cagway, which means we’ll have to walk the entire length of the peninsula. Or maybe we can get a ride on a farmer’s cart or something.” He looked up at the sun in the west.

“What’s wrong?”

“I doubt we have enough daylight left to reach Port Royal.”

“We might have to camp out on the way.”

Jane glanced at him. “Camp out? Just…out in the woods?”

“I don’t know if we’ll have any choice.”

She was silent for a moment. “Well, it’ll be warm enough. But I guess we should contact Hunter with the transmitters at some point. Since his receiver is internal, it won’t matter if buccaneers are with him; they can’t hear it.”

“Yeah!” Steve grinned. “I forgot about those in all the excitement. But let’s wait until we land, so he can home in on a fixed location.”

“He won’t have a way to reach us here, unless he steals a boat or swims.”

“He won’t have to,” said Steve. “We’ll arrange to meet him on the docks.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They relaxed a little and let the water carry them in toward the shore. Steve finally felt a release of tension. They were about to land safely.

“You know,” Steve said. “I feel pretty good, really. I actually survived a sword fight with a real pirate, even if I did have to jump overboard to get away.” He laughed. “Not exactly a success, but I’m still here.”

“I’d say it was a success,” said Jane, smiling at him. “Thank you for stepping up and facing him. I… never went through anything like that before.”

“You’re very welcome. And thank you for dropping this boat down to rescue me.”

“And you’re welcome in return.”

Steve grinned at her. He wanted to put his arm around her, but he didn’t know if that was a good idea or not. After surviving the attack on shipboard, he felt closer to her than ever. Still, he wasn’t sure how she would take such an action, and they had to work together for a long time yet. Instead, he just looked ahead to the shore, which was growing closer all the time.

Finally the dinghy ran aground in shallow water. Steve and Jane jumped out into the surf, throwing spray on themselves, and pulled on the bowline. Steve’s feet sank into soft sand and he struggled for traction. The dinghy, freed of their weight, came farther forward. Their clothes, which had finally dried out in the sunlight, became drenched all over again. Then the dinghy got stuck once more.

They waded out of the water, up onto an empty beach. For a moment, neither of them spoke while they caught their breath. By then the sun was low over the water in the west. The breeze was cooler than before.

Steve reached for his communicator. He didn’t feel it. Worried, he looked down where it should have been.

“What’s wrong?” Jane asked.

“My communicator’s gone. It must have come off when I hit the water.”

“Uh-oh.” Jane checked for hers quickly, then looked up at him. “Mine’s gone, too.”

“That must be it, then,” said Steve. “It’s a long jump from the deck of that ship. We hit the water hard.”

“Hunter won’t have any idea where we are,” said Jane.

“He may have seen us in the boat,” said Steve. “Otherwise, all we can do is get back to Port Royal and head for the docks. He’ll probably get there first.”

“Yeah.” Jane nodded. “Shall we go? We have a long walk ahead.”

Hunter lay motionless on the deck of the Sidonia. Around him, the fighting had finally stopped as the Spanish crew surrendered. Then the combined crews of all three ships examined their new booty. As night fell, they lit torches and celebrated again. Hunter, concerned that any further action he might take would violate the Laws of Robotics in ways he did not comprehend, did not move, though all of his senses were still operating.

Around him, the buccaneers drank more rum, whooped and fired pistols into the air, and staggered around the deck singing.

“Hey, mate,” said a drunken buccaneer. He leaned over Hunter, his head and shoulders a dark shadow against the stars in the clear sky above them. “You hurt bad, are ya?”

“No,” said Hunter.

“Well, here.”

Hunter felt the buccaneer and a couple of his companions lift him under his arms and pull him up into a sitting position against a rolled sail. Then, hoisting tankards of rum, they wandered away. Hunter remained where he was, gazing across the deck to the dark, open sea beyond it.

The three ships were ungrappled again and under sail for Port Royal. The night weather was so good that little work was required. Hunter could see the torches burning on the decks of the other ships in the distance. All three buccaneer crews were celebrating their excellent fortune; even the man at the helm of the Sidonia had a tankard in one hand.

Even in his uncertainty, Hunter was still alert for MC 2 or Rita on board the ship. As usual in the dark, he was using voiceprint, heartbeat, footsteps, and even breathing patterns to identify the humans within in his hearing. These supplemented his infrared vision, which was only useful for detecting people in his line of sight.

Hunter was burdened by a new contradiction, but this time it was self-induced. He felt certain that he had to have made some sort of error that had caused Jane to hit him. It had to be an error of a magnitude he estimated to be very unlikely in a positronic robot, especially a robot of his new and highly specialized design. Until he solved that puzzle, he was afraid to take any action for fear of compounding the error.

He was certain that the error had resulted from the stress he had already felt concerning his efficiency in obeying the First Law. Such stress had always been known to affect robots adversely; it was a side effect of the ultimate priority of the First Law. Figuring out what his error had been was now a prerequisite to normal action; without his identifying and correcting it, the First Law would not let him risk harm to humans by taking any chance of repeating it.

On the other hand, the fact that he had made an important error at all told him that his thinking was faulty. So he really did not know if he was capable of figuring out what his error was. That contradiction kept him sitting right where the buccaneers had left him.

Other buccaneers staggered past from time to time, taking a look at him. Since he was not visibly injured, they left him alone. Hunter heard one of them comment that he was obviously drunk, and deservedly so.

As Hunter remained almost in a stunned state on the deck, he was also uncertain as to what he should do next even if he could summon the will to do anything. He wanted to get his group in one place again; at the very least, the First Law would be easier to obey if all the humans on his team were with him. However, he was not sure if he was worthy of continuing his mission. The First Law might require that he simply return with the team, leaving MC 2 behind, and advise the Oversight Committee to find a replacement for Hunter.

Hunter recounted his various failures to himself. The first had been allowing Dr. Nystrom to escape his custody during the first mission. Wayne had eluded them in the Late Cretaceous Period and also at the Bohung Institute afterward. Then he had hired Rita, whose priorities were clearly not directed toward fulfilling her duties on this mission. Then, of course, he had failed to save Steve and Jane in their fight on deck. All along the way, any number of small historical changes had taken place. Some of them might lead to significant changes that would alter the future, as chaos theory suggested.

At last the buccaneers wanted to sleep, and anchored their ships for the night. Most of the buccaneers found places to sleep on deck. Hunter could hear the distant creaking of the other two ships as they, too, sailed down the east coast of Jamaica and rounded the southern corner of the island toward Port Royal.

The Old Laughing Lady had an early start on the other ships as it sailed for home. At first, Captain Tomann had insisted on interrogating Rita right away about the individual Wayne wanted to take hostage. He and Wayne took her down to a chamber that had been inhabited by a ship’s officer before the buccaneers had taken the ship. As Captain Tomann shouted, blustered, and waved his cutlass around the confined space, she had winced but never spoken.

Finally Wayne drew the captain aside. “I think she’s too scared to speak,” he said quietly.

“She’d better be scared!” Captain Tomann bellowed, starting after her.

Wayne moved to stay in front of him. “Let me have a moment alone with her.”

“Alone! So you can learn what you need and hold out on me? Is that it?”

“No! No, I still need you.”

“Eh?”

“I will need your ship and your, uh, friendship to hold her here.” Wayne lowered his voice. “She is afraid of your reputation as a pirate captain and the English scourge of the Spanish Main. Too frightened to speak.”

“Is she, now?” Captain Tomann glared at her over Wayne’s shoulder.

“Give me just a moment with her.”

“Do as you will, then,” muttered Captain Tomann. “Do not keep me waiting long.” He stomped out and slammed the door.

Wayne turned to Rita, letting out a deep breath of relief. “You know who I am, I think,” he said bluntly.

“What do you want?” Rita spoke carefully, not exactly answering his question.

“You know that, too. I want MC 2.”

“Who?”

“Stop it,” he ordered impatiently. “You’re wasting your time. I know you came here with Hunter. If you want to leave this ship, you’ll have to help me.”

“All right,” she said calmly, looking back at him. She did not look scared, despite what he had told Captain Tomann, but she was certainly wary.

“I don’t care about you,” Wayne said. “I don’t want to hurt you or interfere with your trip home, either. But I’ve had to join up with Captain Tomann, and he’s a little…well, he’s a pirate. As you can see for yourself.”

Her face tensed slightly. “What do you expect me to do?”

“You have a rapport with MC 2,” said Wayne. “That means you can get close to him and then, under the Second Law, you can order him to obey me.”

“Why are you so anxious to get MC 2 yourself?” She folded her arms.

“That’s my business.”

“If we all worked together, we could probably get him much faster. Then everyone could work together back home. What would be wrong with that?”

“Ha! I’ll never get a fair shake from the Oversight Committee. Working with you and Hunter will ruin me.” His eyes narrowed. “Besides, I don’t see you exactly working with Hunter. What were you doing off by yourself like that?” He grinned, knowing that she was still unaware that he had hired Roland to distract her or she would have mentioned it by now.

Rita ignored his question. “What about all the changes we may be causing here, in this time? Hunter believes in the chaos theory as applied to time, which means that any small changes can set big changes in motion.”

“I don’t agree with him. Any changes we cause are minor and will be absorbed by the larger forces of history.”

She suppressed a smile. “I agree with you.”

“MC 2 was with you. Did he join the fighting on the Sidonia?”

Rita hesitated. “It won’t matter. Everyone is sailing back to Port Royal, anyway.”

“I guess that’s true. But I still want to know which ship he was on when you saw him last.”

“Yes, he joined the fight on the Sidonia. I suppose the First Law took over.”

“That’s what I figured.” Wayne studied her quietly for a moment.

“Well?”

He shrugged, then nodded toward the bed. “All right. You might as well get some sleep tonight.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“For now, Captain Tomann will keep you here. When we reach Port Royal, I’ll go look for Hunter; I know he’s looking for me, too. Maybe we’ll make a deal.”

“A deal?”

“I’ll trade you for MC 2 and Hunter’s promise not to interfere with me.” Wayne moved to the door and then turned with a smile. “I believe that the First Law will force Hunter to place your welfare ahead of MC 2’s. Now, after I leave, I’ll have to bolt the door from the outside. You bolt it from the inside, too. You wouldn’t want a drunken Captain Tomann coming for a visit.”

Steve watched the sun go down in the west over the island as he and Jane walked through the thick Jamaican forest. The sweet aroma of flowers filled the air. They found themselves hiking by moonlight through the trees toward Port Royal. Then they came across a dirt road with wagon ruts and followed it. The moon shone down on the road, but only shadows were visible on each side.

“I hope this goes to Port Royal,” said Steve. “Following the sun to go west was easy, but we can’t see the stars too well, with all the trees overhead.”

“I suppose it does,” said Jane. “Where else would it go, this close to town?”

“Nowhere else I know of,” said Steve. He rubbed his arms. “My clothes are still wet. Are you cold?”

“Yes. But I’m drying out slowly. I’ll be okay.”

“I’m still not used to this humidity. In the desert, we would have dried out almost right away.”

“What’s that light over there?” Jane pointed to their left, up ahead.

Steve looked. A small light flickered through the trees; some distance away. “It must be someone’s campfire.”

“Aye, that it is,” said a man’s voice.

As Steve stopped in surprise, the dark silhouettes of people stepped out of the shadows, merely shadows themselves in the darkness. Their movements rustled the tree branches and underbrush as they came forward. They had obviously been prepared for intruders. Some blocked the road in front of Steve and Jane, but others came out of the trees on each side of the road. When Steve glanced over his shoulder, he realized that some were behind them, too. He could hardly see them.