nodded. “Then let us find the base of this island. With luck there should be driftwood.” At the edge of the escarpment they found steps carved in the rock that led down to a tiny strip of beach and a concrete pier. Besides bird shit, driftwood seemed to be the second hottest commodity on the island. Ryan cut kindling with his panga and, with pages torn from a notebook Doc carried, they got a fire going. The old man fed in ropes of dry seaweed, and soon a significant plume of black smoke was billowing up into the sky.
Then there was nothing to do but wait.
Ryan spit on his whetstone and began putting a fresh edge on his panga. The blade was painted black against rust and glare, but the edge gleamed like quicksilver. Ryan watched as a rare smile crossed Doc’s face. The man from another age walked over to a large rock, and he exchanged glances with a fat black-and-white bird with a rainbow beak. “Bless my heart, a puffin! We are definitely in the Atlantic!”
Ryan considered his blasters, but both his rifle and pistol would blast the meat right off the bird’s bones. He quietly palmed an egg-size rock. “Don’t scare it off. We might have to eat it.”
“A most handsome fellow!” Doc took out his notebook and a stub of pencil. “I believe I shall sketch him.”
Ryan dropped the rock and went back to honing. Doc calm and happy was such a rare occurrence that Ryan was willing to let his stomach rumble for a little while. A few strokes of the stone brought the panga back to shaving sharp. A few strokes of Doc’s pencil created a remarkable likeness of the bird.
Ryan shot to his feet. “Boat.”
Doc took a small pair of binoculars from his satchel. Ryan took his spyglass from his pack and snapped it open. It was a sailboat and heading in a straight line from the main island to their rock. Doc took in the steeply raked mast and the triangular sail. “A felucca, by the look of her.” He nodded to himself. “By the lines and piled pots on the bow, I suspect they are fishing for octopus.”
Ryan was more interested in the occupants than the catch of the day. He counted seven men. They were short and stocky in build and wore black, waxed canvas slickers, and wide-brimmed felt hats shaded their faces. Several wore round, dark-smoked glasses and gloves. Ryan didn’t see any blasters on the boat but all the men carried knives on their belts, and gaffs and fishing spears stood in racks along the gunwales.
“Hmm.” Doc lowered his binoculars and frowned.
“What?” Ryan asked.
“They seem a tad pale for fishermen. Men who work the sea tend to be well weathered. Those men look more like mortuary attendants.”
They looked a lot like Jak to Ryan, except they had dark hair. He snapped his spyglass shut and loosened his handblaster in its holster. It didn’t matter. They had to get off the rock, get fed, see if they could get back and work on the mat-trans. “What islands we in again?”
“The Canaries, the Azores and the Madeiras are just about the only island chains of note in the North Atlantic.”
“They speak English?”
“Portuguese would be the lingua franca in the Azores and the Madeiras, Spanish in the Canaries. However, the presence of our puffin friend leads me to believe we are too far north for the Spanish possessions.”
“You speak Portuguese?”
“My tutors insisted on Greek, French and Latin. However, Portuguese is a Latin-based language. It may suffice to convey basic concepts.”
“Convey to them we want to get off this rock, but not much else.”
“I believe I understand.”
“Leave a note for our people. Put it on the body.”
Doc scrawled a quick note on the back of his sketch and went back up the stairs. He returned just as the felucca thumped against the concrete pier. The pale, black-clad fishermen approached in a phalanx. Doc was half right. The men were chill-white, but up close their pale faces were seamed by lives led doing hard labor, and at least the ones not wearing gloves had thick calluses and whorls of scars both ancient and new from years of working knives, lines and nets. Their demeanor was neither hostile nor friendly. Doc doffed his hat and displayed what had to be the most gleaming white teeth in the Deathlands. He had a magnificent speaking voice when he was in control of himself, and he spoke in his most mellifluous tones in a type of English Ryan had never heard before.
The effect on the fishermen was galvanizing.
Ryan knew enough words in Mex or Spanish, as Doc called it, to do a deal or to insult someone south of the Grandee. What the fishermen were speaking sounded something like Mex by way of Mars. “What’s going on?”
Doc smiled. “They think I am a baron. I assured them I am not.”
Ryan resisted rolling his eye up to the stormy sky for strength. “Doc? The next time people we don’t know think you’re a baron, you let them think that until it’s time not to let them think that.”
Doc reddened and coughed into his fist. “Yes…I believe I take your point. These people do indeed speak Portuguese. The big island has a ville. I believe the baron there is a man named Xavier Barat.” Doc gestured at a pale, powerfully built man wearing dark glasses, gloves and wide black hat. “This man is Roque. He is the fishing captain of the ville’s fleet.”
“Captain Roque.” Ryan flexed his rusty Mex. “Hola.”
Captain Roque regarded Ryan obliquely from behind the smoked lenses of his glasses. “Olá.”
“They will take us to the big island,” Doc continued. “I have revealed nothing about our companions.”
“Good.” Ryan’s Steyr was slung, but his hand was never far from the blaster on his hip. “Let’s go.”
Captain Roque gestured toward the boat and they boarded the felucca. The crew poled off, and the sail filled with the coming storm winds. The vessel began to cut swiftly through the sea. Roque reached into a pot and drew forth an octopus about the size of his hand. Its arms flailed, but he swiftly brought it up to his mouth and bit it between the eyes. The cephalopod shuddered and the captain swiftly cut off its eight arms. He dropped them into a clay pot, and when he pulled them back out they were sheened with oil and the red flecks of hot chilies. Roque offered one of the still vaguely squirming appendages to Ryan.
Short of his fellow human beings there was hardly anything that walked, flapped, flopped or crawled across the Deathlands that Ryan hadn’t eaten. He nodded his thanks and shoved the tentacle into his mouth. It was on the chewy side, but the meat wasn’t bad and the lime, hot pepper and olive oil made it genuinely tasty. The pepper oil blossomed down Ryan’s throat and the heat was welcome. Ryan shoved another into his mouth and again nodded his thanks. Roque smiled and either his gums had receded or he had very long teeth. He turned and offered some to Doc.
The old man chewed his tentacle meditatively. “Piri Piri sauce, definitely Portuguese. The lime is an interesting addition.”
A crewman wearing dark glasses approached and held up a leather wine bag. Ryan took it and poured a long squeeze of rough red wine down his burning throat.
He snapped his head aside as another crewman in shades behind him swung a belaying pin at his skull.
