TW05 The Nautilus Sanction NEW (19 page)

“LAFITTE!”

The man shouting from below was not Gambi. He was a large, muscular seaman, dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt and loose white trousers. He was bald and bearded and he looked quite formidable as he stood in the glare of the torchlight, shaking his fist at those sitting up on the veranda.

Lafitte calmly lit his pipe.

“Jean Lafitte! You hear me?”

Lafitte did not respond.

“Listen to me, Jean Lafitte,” the seaman shouted, taking out a pistol and brandishing it in the air. A chorus of shouts backed him up. Gambi stood to the side, his arms folded on his chest, watching the performance with approval. “We do not take orders from the likes of you, eh? Captain Gambi’s crew only takes orders from Captain Gambi! Here is what I think of your orders ... “ The seaman spat up at the veranda. Lafitte seemed to move lazily, but that was deceptive. He reached inside his jacket, pulled out a pistol, leveled it almost casually and fired. The shot startled them all. With an expression of surprise upon his face, the seaman pitched forward onto the sand, shot through the heart.

Lafitte stood slowly, the smoking gun still held in his hand, and leaned on the railing of the veranda, looking down at the assembled men. He said nothing. His eyes met Gambi’s. With a scowl, Gambi turned away and walked off into the darkness. The remainder of the mob broke up.

“Now then,” said Lafitte, turning around and putting the pistol back into the holster hanging inside his jacket. “What do you say to a game of poker?”

Fires burned on the beach. Men drank and sang, caroused with women, danced, fired guns off into the air and pummeled each other drunkenly. Many of Drakov’s crewmen went into New Orleans with seamen from the other ships of Lafitte’s fleet. Drakov went downstairs with Lafitte and Verne, to play cards with some of the other captains. Lucas, Finn and Andre had declined. Drakov didn’t seem to care.

Apparently, it made no difference to him whatsoever what they did. Land rejoined them shortly after the others had gone down to play cards. With some awkwardness, he pointedly explained that all he and Marie had done was talk. To do any more, he said, would have been taking advantage.

“I learned a bit that may be of interest,” he said, as he filled his wine glass. “Drakov does not come here just so his crew can enjoy themselves. He buys slaves from Lafitte.” Lucas frowned. “
Slaves?
You’re sure?”

“Marie told me,” Land said. “She said that Negroes are being put aboard the
Valkyrie
even as we speak.”

“How many?” Finn said.

“This time, he bought a hundred,” Land said. “Last time, twice as many. She saw his men taking them from the warehouse. Grigori and Martingale, from what she said. She hasn’t any idea where he takes them.”

“Martingale,” Andre said. “What’s he doing, playing both ends against the middle?”

“I don’t like him,” Land said. “You said you would tell me of this Underground he claims to belong to.”

“It’s not easy to explain, Ned, but I’ll try,” said Lucas. “You remember when I tried telling you before about how people in the future travel back through time so they can fight their wars in the past?” Land nodded, grimly. “I didn’t want to hear. I thought you were making fun of me. After what I’ve seen,
mon aini,
I would no longer doubt a thing you tell me.”

“Well, that’ll make things easier,” said Lucas, wryly. “The Underground is made up mostly of soldiers from the armies of the future. These soldiers have become deserters. Sometimes soldiers from the future become . . . well, lost, for lack of a better way of putting it. They become separated from their units.

Sometimes they’re found again. Sometimes not. Some of them become trapped in the past through no fault of their own, others become deserters. Many of them make contact with the Underground. Either they find the Underground or the Underground finds them. If they wish to return to their own time, the Underground helps them. But if they wish to desert, the Underground takes them in. It’s a complex, loosely knit organization. They have methods of keeping in touch with one another, but they’re spread out through all of time. Some of them, by choice, remain in one specific time period. Others travel a great deal, to any time they choose. We met one of them once. His name was Hunter. He was responsible for taking Andre from the time where she was born, 12th century England, to 17th century Paris, where our paths crossed again. Andre became one of us. Hunter, unfortunately, was killed by a member of the same group Drakov once belonged to.”

“The Timekeepers,” Land said.

Lucas nodded. “Hunter lived in 12th century England most of the time, but he could visit any other time, any other place, anytime he wanted to. The Underground is an illegal organization. Technically, they’re criminals, but no one tries very hard to catch them.” Land frowned, concentrating. “Why?”

“Because, for one thing, it’s very hard to do,” said Lucas. “For another, they may be deserters, but they also serve a purpose. It’s just as important to them that history not be interfered with as it is to us.

They represent a certain danger, since they are people living in times where they do not belong, but they are very aware of the dangers and they take great care not to interfere. If any of them are ever caught, they are tried as criminals, but there are more important things to do than spend time actively looking for them.”

Land shook his head. “I’m not sure I’m understanding you.”

“What don’t you understand?”

“Why should they care about preserving history? If they’re criminals, deserters—”

“There are many reasons why people join the Underground,” said Finn. “Some of them just couldn’t take being soldiers anymore. Others became soldiers because they thought they’d find adventure, but what they found wasn’t exactly what they had expected, so they deserted to find what they were looking for. Still others prefer living in the past, or in
a
past, to living in their own time. Just because they’re in the Underground, that doesn’t mean they’re evil or criminals in the sense you mean. I liked Hunter a great deal. And he helped us that one time. He saved our lives.”

“There’s still more to it,” Lucas said. “Suppose, Ned, you got on board a ship heading out of Boston on a whaling expedition. You don’t really expect Boston to change very much in the time you’ll be away.

You come back and it’s still the same old Boston, same old streets and houses, same people, nothing’s really changed. But imagine you’re in Boston right now and you decide to take a trip to Boston the way it will be three hundred years in the future. If you’re in the Underground, that wouldn’t be very different from going on your whaling expedition and then coming back. Boston three hundred years from now would still be familiar to you because you know its history. You’ve probably been there before. Only what would happen if someone like Drakov succeeded in altering the course of history somehow? Then the Boston you arrive in might not be the same place you expected you would find. It may no longer even be there. Some interference with the past may have caused a chain of events to take place which would result in a completely different future, a completely different world. In order for the people in the Underground to be able to exist, they need to protect the world they exist in. Do you understand?” Land exhaled heavily. “I think so. If I’d not seen what I’ve seen, I’d say all this was mad.”

“It
is
mad,” Finn said. “But we’ve got to live with it.”

“If I take your meaning,” said Land, “these people in the Underground are like the gypsy-folks, except that they travel not only from place to place, but from one century to another?”

“That’s it, exactly,” Lucas said. “That’s a very good way of putting it.” Land sighed. “Lord, what a life it must be! How many of them do you figure there be?”

“Nobody knows,” said Finn. “Thousands.”

“And there’s no way to tell who they are?”

“Could you tell who
we
were, Ned?” said Lucas. “We’re just people. Who’d suspect the truth?

Who’d believe it? Even after all you’d seen, you didn’t
want
to believe it. It sounds crazy.” Land stood up and leaned on the railing of the veranda, staring out to the sea, glinting in the moonlight. “Part of me keeps waiting to wake up and find all this is a dream,” he said. “This beats any tall tale I ever heard. If I ever told anyone about this, I’d be put in a madhouse for sure. From now on, I don’t think I will be so quick to not believe things. If someone tells me he saw a sea monster breathing fire, until I know better, I will think that there just may
be
a sea monster that breathes fire!” He looked down, then quickly leaned out over the railing and glanced from side to side. “Look here! There are no guards! Quick, now’s our chance!”

He vaulted the railing.

“Ned!” shouted Lucas.

“Hell,” said Finn, jumping to his feet. “We’d better catch him before he gets in trouble.” They jumped down to the ground, rolled, came up running and caught Land after a hard sprint of about seventy-five yards. Finn grabbed the harpooner and spun him around.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he said.

Land looked at him as if he had lost his senses. “What do you mean? This is our chance to get away!”

“And go
where?”
said Andre.

Land looked blank for a moment, then he snapped his fingers. “There are some of Drakov’s crew about,” he said. “A lot of them will be drunk. We can take them and steal those things they use for traveling through time! We’ll find one, knock him senseless, then—”

“Ned, your heart’s in the right place, but you haven’t thought it through,” said Lucas. “Besides, you really don’t understand how it all works.”

“But you said—”

“It wouldn’t be much trouble to knock a couple of Drakov’s crew out and take their warp discs,” Lucas said. “You’re right as far as that goes. But we can’t get back aboard the submarine without knowing where it is. Even if we could, Drakov still has a crew aboard it and they looked pretty capable to me.”

“Couldn’t you go back to your own time and return with more of your people?” Land said. “You could take Drakov and his entire crew—”

“Again, not a bad idea,” said Lucas, “but nothing short of an armed assault would take Drakov here on Barataria. Lafitte and his people would side with Drakov and fight the invasion. We can’t touch Lafitte. The British will be moving on New Orleans before too long and without Lafitte and his men, General Jackson will lose the battle and history will be changed. Drakov’s already interfered with history to a dangerous, perhaps even irreversible extent. You see, we’re the ones concerned with preserving history. Drakov doesn’t care. He has the advantage because of that and he knows it. There’s no way to attack him here and at the same time guarantee that no one on Lafitte’s side will be killed.”

“But if you were to bring back ships,” said Land, “like Drakov’s ships travel through time, so could yours! You could—”

“We could, but it wouldn’t do much good,” said Finn. “Those ships would still have to find the
Nautilus.
The submarine is well-armed and difficult to detect. At first sign of pursuit, it could escape to another time. Remember that the
Nautilus,
the
Valkyrie,
Drakov and all his men can travel through time independently. They can all escape to his secret base and without knowing where it is or in which time period, there’s no way we could follow.”

“Is there nothing we can do?” said Land. “If we can’t act and if we have no weapons, then we’re helpless!”

“Maybe not, Ned,” Lucas said. “But we need to know more before we can act. When we began this, we thought it was just a matter of destroying the submarine, which is difficult enough. We need to know the full extent of Drakov’s power. We need to know his plans. He knows we can’t afford to try anything until we know where his base is. And when he takes us there, his guard will be up. But he may be overconfident. The thing to do now is find Martingale and make him tell us what is going on.”

“How do you know you can trust him?” Land said.

“I don’t,” said Lucas. “I’m still worried about that graft patch he gave me. If it was a listening device, we’ll know soon enough. I’ve got a lot of questions for Mr. Barry Martingale. If this is all part of a ruse by Drakov, I want to know
before
we reach his base.” They continued down the path, through the village, toward the boats. In the distance, they could still hear the sounds of revelry on the beach by Lafitte’s house, but now the chirping of the crickets by the sides of the path was louder. As they neared the boats, still louder sounds reached them. Gunshots and men shouting. The sounds not of festivity, but of fighting.

“Come on!” said Lucas, breaking into a run.

The docks were the scene of a pitched battle. Terrified blacks ran past them, others cowered in the boats, still others lay dead among white bodies on the dock. Out on the water, several boats rowing out to the
Valkyrie
were being attacked by about ten pirogues, and the sounds of the blacks screaming and the shots fired back and forth carried across the bay. On the dock, Martingale was in the thick of it. He had emptied both his pistols and was flailing away with his sword, keeping a small group of men at bay.

He was holding one in front of him, as a shield, his arm clamped tightly around the man’s throat. The man he held was dead, shot several times by his own compatriots in an effort to shoot Martingale, who kept swinging the body around, trying to interpose it between himself and his attackers, able to do so only because he was on a narrow section of dock that would not allow him to be surrounded. Even so, he had been shot. They could see him bleeding from a crease in his scalp and there was blood on his exposed shoulder. It would be all over for him in another moment.

One of his attackers had gone into the water and swam out to the end of the dock, climbing up on it so he could get behind Martingale. Andre pulled out her knife and let fly. The blade whizzed past Martingale’s left ear, missing him by inches, and embedded itself to the hilt in the swimmer’s chest. He cried out and fell back into the water. Ned and Finn drew their swords and ran forward to help Martingale. As Andre charged the men who were attempting to shoot him down, Lucas threw his own dagger, wounding one of them in the shoulder. Then Andre was on them and Lucas followed on her heels, turning the tide of the fight.