Lost Republic Page 2

  “Nosy,” she said, frowning. “Watch your valuables, Mum.”

  Being mistaken for a thief pleased him. Emile dropped back a step and tried not to look innocent.

  Check-in for the Carleton was funneled through four gates. Agents of the shipping company and officers of the Securite Maritime stopped each passenger and scanned them for ID and properly paid fares. Emile followed Eleanor and her mother through gate 2. The girl glanced back at him, still frowning.

  “Madame Margrete Quarrel? Your passage is paid. Eleanor Quarrel? Paid.” The agent dabbed the backs of the hands with an invisible dye. Mrs. Quarrel moved on to the security check. Eleanor lingered behind her.

  “Monsieur Emile-Bertrand Baptiste Bequerel?” Emile nodded, looking right into Eleanor’s eyes. “Your passage is paid. Pass on, if you please.”

  Emile sauntered past Eleanor. Though tans were long out of fashion, he decided hers looked good on her, scowling or not.

  At the security station, Mrs. Quarrel was nearly in tears. Eleanor hurried to her side.

  “My passport has expired!” her mother said. “They will not let me board the ship!”

  “How can that be?” asked Eleanor.

  “There must have been confusion between Cape Town and here.” She took Eleanor’s hand. “Check yours, Nellie.”

  Eleanor ignored the childish nickname and held her left hand under the scanner. The chip under her skin read out perfectly. Her virtual passport appeared on the monitor. The security agent shrugged.

  “Mademoiselle is in order. But you, madame, cannot board,” he said.

  Mrs. Quarrel began to cry. “After all our planning and saving!” Eleanor bit her lip and tried to console her mother. The nosy Euro kid who followed them into the station stepped up.

  “May I offer a suggestion?” Emile said.

  “No,” Eleanor said.

  “Be nice, Nellie! Yes, please,” her mother countered.

  He concentrated on making his English perfect. “The Carleton is not so fast a ship. It may be possible to correct your document and join the ship at sea.” He turned to the security officer. “There are helicopters for hire around here?”

  “True—but expensive” was the reply.

  Emile passed the security check easily. He took a small plastic card from his wallet and gave it to Mrs. Quarrel.

  “When your passport is fixed, use this to hire a helicopter. They will fly you out to the ship.”

  Mrs. Quarrel blinked away her tears. “Sir—monsieur—I cannot accept.”

  Emile withdrew his hand, leaving the iridescent card on her open palm. “It’s nothing, madame.” He eased past and started down the quay to the ship.

  “Hey!” Eleanor called after. “Where’s your luggage?”

  He spread his hands wide. “Somewhere in Ghent!”

  Mrs. Quarrel looked at the credit card in amazement. “What a strange, wonderful boy!”

  “It’s probably phony!” Eleanor muttered. She grabbed the card and held it out to the security man.

  “Can you scan this? Is it any good?”

  The Securite Maritime officer laid the little square of plastic on the station’s PDD. A long series of numbers scrolled across the screen.

  “Mon dieu!”

  “Stolen?” Eleanor leaned in to him, trying to see what he saw.

  The officer quickly removed the card and pressed it into Mrs. Quarrel’s hand, closing her fingers firmly around it.

  “Not stolen, mademoiselle. With the limit on this card, you could buy the Carleton outright, much less hire a helicopter to chase it!”

  Chapter 2

  The first passenger on board the old steamer was already below deck when the rest of the voyagers started up the canvas-walled gangplank. Hans Bachmann managed to get aboard early because his parents, owners of the antiques firm Bygone Age, had been hired to outfit the ship’s dining room with dishes and cutlery for the passengers. The old Carleton was not a cruise ship, with accommodations for hundreds or thousands. Conejos SpA, operators of the ship, had her freshly painted and her limited cabin space spruced up for the final voyage. The Bachmanns brought on board place settings for 200 (there were, according to Your/World News, 133 actual passengers). The plates and cutlery came from the old Queen Mary 2, last of the great ocean liners.

  Gottfried Bachmann left his son on board with their property. “Every broken cup or plate comes out of your allowance,” he joked.

  “I’ll wash and put them away myself every night,” Hans vowed with a straight face.

  His mother and father were extremely proud of their collection of nautical relics, of which the QM2 china was only a small part. Hans was, too. Though he joked about it, Gottfried and Elke knew their son would keep an eye on the collection during the voyage.

  “Where will you go first in America?” his mother asked.

  “To see the Constitution,” Hans said.

  She looked puzzled. “In Boston? I thought they kept it in Washington?”

  Hans smiled. “Not the document, the ship! The wooden frigate in Boston harbor.”

  “More old ships!” Elke said. “You and your father—if it’s old and damp, you love it!”

  Gottfried put an arm around her waist. “Is that why I love you?”

  She laughed and whispered to her husband in English, which she still thought Hans did not understand. Six years studying English, and his mother still thought he was eleven and innocent.

  Back to business. His father reminded Hans for the fifth time not to miss his flight back to Europe.

  “Delag Flight 5737,” Gottfried said, emphasizing each number.

  “Yes, sir.” With his eyes, Hans appealed to his mother, but in this case, she was as obsessive as her husband. She repeated the date and time and made him recite it back to her.

  “Very good.” Gottfried shook his son’s hand. Elke put a hand behind Hans’s neck and kissed him hard on the cheek.

  “Text us!” she said. Hans held up his PDD and smiled.

  The first passengers were filing on board when the Bachmanns left. Looking down from the boat deck, Hans waved to his parents. In their sober, turn-of-the-twenty-first-century clothes, the Bachmanns were soon lost in an inflowing tide of vivid greens, yellows, and reds. The passengers were greeted at the top of the gangplank by Captain Viega and Purser Brock, decked out in their best white uniforms. Farther down the deck a winch whined, hauling up passengers’ luggage. The cargo net was designed to handle whole pallets of goods, so it looked nearly empty bringing up several dozen suitcases and backpacks.

  Out of the stream of brightly dressed travelers, Hans spotted a lone shadow. A boy came aboard alone, wearing a stark black suit over a bone-white shirt. His hair was almost as dark as his clothes. At the top of the ramp, Captain Viega not only shook the boy’s hand but he bowed to him.

  VIP, Hans thought. At that moment, the boy in black looked up at him. The captain and the purser were going on about nothing important. The boy stared up at him awhile and then moved on, leaving the Carleton’s master talking to his back.

  There were a few other noteworthy characters Hans saw: a tall girl in running clothes who broke out into a sprint once she cleared the captain and the purser. There was an old lady, unable to walk, in a lifter chair. Hans had seen these on Your/World, but he’d never seen one in real life. It glided along, held off the ground by powerful magnets. He saw four men in American naval uniforms, a group of Chinese tourists with holographic hats (one had a short and flickered), and an entire Irish football club in striped jerseys and shorts.

  There was a break in the line, and Hans thought the boarding was over. He started to leave the rail when he noticed Captain Viega wasn’t leaving. He could see down the covered ramp, so there must be someone else coming.

  A lone girl appeared out of the canvas tunnel. She was tall and thin
, with black hair bobbed at her ears. Clasped in her hands was a simple carpetbag. Her jade-colored skirt came down to her ankles. Pausing at the top of the ramp, she exchanged courtesies with the purser and captain before moving on.

  She was the last. Captain Viega held up a hand and called out, “Vamos!” The purser held a finger to the PDD in his ear and issued rapid orders. It was time. The Carleton’s last voyage had begun.

  The boarding ramp was cleared. Lines, hoses, and data cables dropped free and were reeled onto the quay. The steamer’s turbines, idling since daybreak, surged, sending vibrations throughout the steel hull to every deck. A ship the size of the Carleton did not simply pull away from a dock like a speedboat. Two electric tugs, unimaginatively labeled 109 and 73, approached the Carleton’s free side. The massive magnets on their bows, encased in peeling rubber bumpers, pulled hard on the old ship and with a deck-shaking thunk-thunk locked onto the steamer.

  Many passengers flocked to the port side to watch the action. Seawater boiled at the tugs’ sterns as they reversed engines.

  François Martin was at the Carleton’s bow, as close to the water as he could get. Tug 73 was below him, straining against the bulk of the old freighter. He could smell ozone from the tug’s electric motors. No one was visible on the tug’s deck. In the lofty pilothouse, 73’s master sat in a high chair wearing an enormous pair of dark glasses, guiding the tug with a simple joystick.

  Stale green water swirled around the Carleton’s hull. Up close, the ship was not nearly so fine as it looked from the streets of Cherbourg. François bumped the toe of his shoe against a line of rivets thickly crusted with new paint. The owners had decided to send the old ship off with a fresh coat, like sending a dying man to the hospital in a new suit.

  A droning overhead and a broad shadow drew François’s attention skyward. A Eurochannel blimp drifted over at low altitude. Clusters of cameras raked up and down the Carleton, sending images live through Your/World. The American girl must have been watching the feed on her glasses. She punched her brother on the arm and yelled something about being on TV. She wasn’t the only one watching the ship’s departure through Eurochannel’s eyes. All around the deck people stared into their PDDs instead of looking around for themselves.

  Captain Viega must have rung for more RPMs from the engines. The deck trembled. Carleton’s bow turned left (Port, Leigh Morrison reminded himself. On a ship you say port.) Tug 73 churned backward, sending foaming green water over the tug’s stern.

  Leigh was at the rail amidships. Julie was behind him, watching the TV feed of their departure. In addition to the Eurochannel blimp, there were drones overhead bearing logos from China Star TV, Al-Tayr Networks, NHK, and Your/World News. The drones hovered and darted like giant dragonflies. A silver-sided one with a Russian logo swept over the deck so low, everyone ducked.

  Tug 73 detached and drew away. Carleton moved ahead, slowly. Cherbourg’s inner harbor was full of small craft. Securite Maritime boats herded them away. Hundreds of personal cameras soaked up the steamer’s image. When Leigh mentioned that, Julie went to the rail and began waving to them.

  “Bon voyage! Bon voyage!” she shouted.

  “That’s what they should say to you.”

  A kid dressed in an ugly black suit stood by Julie’s elbow. He was not waving.

  “What?”

  “We are the ones leaving. It is for them—” he pointed at the swarm of small boats—”to wish us a good trip, a bon voyage.”

  “Oh.” All the fun had gone out of waving. Julie backed away from the rail and the weird boy.

  Hearing the exchange, François said to Emile in French, “Don’t tease the Americans.”

  “Was I teasing? I thought I was helping her understand,” Emile replied.

  The boy’s accent was different. He was not French, François decided.

  “Are you Swiss?”

  “Belgian.”

  François introduced himself. Emile gave his first name only, then pointedly turned away to watch the pageant around them.

  As the ship crossed the inner harbor, the tugs kept pace on either side, like guard dogs. Ahead lay the two jetties that enclosed the Little Roadstead. The right hand one was the Jetee des Flamands. Beyond it, the new solar-powered vessel Sunflyer was waiting. Already the abstract upperworks could be seen, looking more like an artsy new office building than a seagoing ship. According to news reports, Sunflyer’s departure was to be synchronized with the Carleton’s. Invited guests, VIPs, and celebrities had been boarding the sunship since last night. A big party was thrown on the vast, open paraplane deck—all broadcast live on Your/World, of course.

  The white wave curling back from Carleton’s bow got bigger as the ship passed between the jetties into the Grand Roadstead. Off to the right (starboard, Leigh reminded himself), the Sunflyer crouched on the water. Fully visible, the solar craft resembled a vast glittering insect. It was a catamaran—it had two long, slim silver-green hulls—joined by many wide decks. Sunflyer was about as wide as it was long and built entirely of carbon and glass fiber. High above the highest deck were many thin, airfoil-shaped towers. Solar panels sprouted from them like iridescent wings. Though Sunflyer was three times longer and six times wider than the Carleton, it contained far less steel and no petrochemicals at all.

  “Looks like a bug.” The American teenager with the noisy sister had joined François at the bow. He agreed. “It doesn’t look sturdy enough to cross the Atlantic.”

  “Think about the explorers who crossed in little wooden ships,” François said. “Sunflyer is the strongest and fastest commercial vessel ever built.”

  Leigh shaded his eyes with his hand. “How fast is it?”

  “With a half-million horsepower, in hydrofoil mode it can reach fifty knots.”

  Tugs and Securite Maritime craft were clearing the hodgepodge of small craft out of Sunflyer’s way. As Captain Viega put Carleton’s wheel over to port, tugboats 73 and 109 left her. A fresh breeze whirled down the steamer’s cluttered deck. Then Sunflyer spoke. A weird, high-pitched siren blasted from it. François thought he could see the calm waters of the Grand Roadstead ripple from the roar.

  Julie caught her brother’s arm. “Come inside, the Sunflyer’s going!”

  “What do you mean?” Leigh pointed at the gossamer giant. “It’s right there!”

  “Your/World has coverage. They’re showing it on the big screen in the ship’s lounge,” Julie said, tugging at Leigh.

  He looked at the French guy, still leaning on the steamer’s rail. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Why go inside? You can see everything right here,” Leigh complained.

  Julie groaned. “It’s big-screen HD! Come on, it’s better than outside. We’ll see everything at once!”

  Leigh let himself be dragged away. François was almost alone on deck. Most of the passengers rushed in to see Sunflyer’s departure in high definition. His only companions were the running girl (on her fourth lap), the old lady in the lifter chair, the Chinese tourist in the blinky hat, and the Belgian boy in black.

  François took out his PDD and shot some quick video of the chaos around the sunship. The Eurochannel blimp and drones had forsaken the Carleton for the solar wonder. Naval and security helicopters hovered near Sunflyer. The authorities struggled to get the sightseers out of the way. Boxy ferries and elegant yachts, pleasure boats and hired cruisers, churned the green waters, trying to make way for the stirring giant. Two charter boats collided, prompting police boats to charge in with lights flashing and sirens wailing. Compared with the monster blast of Sunflyer’s horn, the police were guppies before a whale.

  The Carleton drew away, picking up speed as she passed the length of the Jetee du Homet. Other cargo vessels had been cleared out, sent to sea last night or held at the docks until the passage of the two historic ships was done. When the steamer was halfway down the roads
tead, Sunflyer’s horn sounded again. François, Emile, the lifter lady, and Mr. Blinky Hat trailed down the ship’s side, keeping the sunship in view.

  Sunflyer seemed to rise up out of the water. The old woman asked in English, “Is it going to fly?”

  “No, madame,” said François. “It rides on hydrofoils, which lift it out of the water to increase speed and lower drag.” Blinky Hat said something in Mandarin. Emile answered him.

  A cloud enveloped the Sunflyer’s hulls. Over the flat waters of the Grand Roadstead came a rushing sound, more like a waterfall than a seagoing ship. The fleet of small craft around the sunship parted. Every horn, siren, and klaxon in Cherbourg began to bleat. François looked back at the Carleton’s bridge. The tinted glass concealed Captain Viega and the bridge crew, but alone of all the craft in the harbor, the Carleton’s horn did not sound. Why should it, François thought. Carleton was going to its demise. Why scream about it? The old ship had its dignity.

  The strange, insectlike shape of the Sunflyer grew larger. Spray and water vapor trailed behind it. François knew the sunship had another system to reduce drag and make it faster and more efficient. The lower hulls were electrically charged to repel seawater. Between this and the hydrofoils, Sunflyer’s imprint on the water was about the same as a medium-sized yacht.

  “Here it comes!”

  For the first time, the Belgian boy sounded excited. He and the Chinese fellow grabbed hold of the old lady’s chair. François gripped the rail, bracing himself.

  In a flash Sunflyer was past them. It was so overwhelming, it took longer to remember what it looked and felt like than the actual event. The sunship towered over the Carleton many stories, the shining green and blue solar panels tracking the sun even as the vessel moved at high speed. The hulls, half-hidden by spray, looked like knives thrust into a powerful jet of water. In between the hulls and solar panels, the multideck center of the ship was out of place, like a luxury hotel on a pair of giant jet skis. In the days that followed, François often tried to call up any trace of human faces at the portholes, but they were as blank as a row of silver coins. To the people on Sunflyer, the Carleton was an unremarkable object it passed on its way to North America.