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passed through, and a kind of retroactive dread coursed through me.
Shipmaster Gastarian came among us, returned to his quiet self now,
and with tears in his eyes thanked each one of us in turn. Loi descended
and embraced me, her kisses smothering my face. When she finally
pulled away her tunic was imprinted with my blood.
The Golden Swan drew alongside the harbour wall, and we carried
Gastarian ashore on our shoulders. I found my land-legs with difficulty.
The quayside was crowded with islanders, a reception committee of
local dignitaries and a clan of Blackmen beside them. The Mayor
approached Gastarian and escorted him across the cobbles, Blackman
at his side. Gastarian was called upon to say a few words. I feared that
soon I too would be forced to add my views. I whispered to Loi that
I needed a few minutes to myself, then slipped from the crowd and up
the hillside towards the township.
I asked directions to the Race Museum and found it on a high
greensward overlooking the strait, a single-storey weatherboard
building painted white. I climbed the steps and pushed open the door.
There was no one else inside, and I was thankful for the privacy.
The single room was long and low, with a polished timber floor
and a plate-glass window looking out to sea. The room had the hushed
air and stillness of all museums, as if the events of the past which it
exhibited were sacrosanct. On one side of the room were scale models
of every ship that had won the race for the last fifty years. On the wall
above each ship was a roll-call of their crews, and above them portraits
of their victorious shipmasters. Below the lists of the triumphant crews
were, in smaller print, the names of all the many sailors who had
perished.
I walked slowly along the length of the room, counting off the
years.
When I came to the model of the ship that had won the race six
years ago, I read the names of the sailors who had succumbed to the
many dangers of the river Laurent. I was aware of a constriction in my
throat. I expected at any second to come across the name of my father
- but, to my surprise, it was not among the two hundred names of the
dead of that year. Very well... I moved on to the next year, and began
the laborious process again, reading off the names of the dead. The
more names I read without arriving at my father's, the more I
considered the possibility that he might have survived.
If I located his name, and he was indeed dead, then all would be
explained. But if he had survived - then what had become of him?
Had he eluded me yet again, a cruel second time?
His name was not among those sailors who had died three and four
years ago, so I tried the list from two years ago... to no avail.
Was it possible, then, that his ship had won?
I was moving back to the list from four years ago, when I happened
to glance up... and what I saw stopped me in my tracks.
Staring down at me from the wall was a portrait of my father, the
Shipmaster of the Flying Prince, the championship boat of the year
1105.
Beneath the portrait was a long caption outlining his achievement.
My heart hammering in my ears, hardly able to believe what I was
seeing, I read.
I came to the end of the caption, stunned, and looked up into the
eyes of my father - not the jubilant eyes of a winning master, but eyes
dark and haunted by past events.
For perhaps the fifth time I read the final paragraph of the caption.
"Gregor Singer was a criminal captain, who faced the death penalty
for deserting a private army if he refused a Shipmaster's commission.
He accepted, won the race in true style and, as is the custom, applied
to join the Guild of Blackmen. He was accepted, and taken..."
I read no more. I backed away from the photograph of my father
and stood in the centre of the room as if paralysed.
He was accepted by the Guild of Blackmen...
Only slowly, by degrees, did awareness overcome me.
I sprinted from the museum and down the hill. The crowd was still
gathered on the quayside, arranged to view some spectacle. Only as I
joined them and pushed my way through the press, did I see the focus
of their interest. A dozen Blackmen in coloured leathers were already
rising into the air. To my despair I saw that among them was the
Blackman in jet leathers, my father.
I stood mute, watching him ascend. The other Blackmen formed a
circle around him as they climbed ever higher, towards the sun. I
fancied that my father could see me, was watching me, a small figure
in the crowd, standing mesmerised as he gained altitude.
The twelve Blackmen circled my father, moving faster, until they
became a Catherine wheel blur about the tiny figure of the central
Blackman. He raised his arms above his head in a gesture like a
benediction. A tension communicated itself through the crowd, and I could
hardly bring myself to watch.
Then he began to glow, at first orange, and
then red, and the crowdaround me murmured their appreciation of a sight so
aesthetic. I wanted to cry out, to halt the process, but at the same time knew
that this was his destiny.
His detonation, his explosion into a million golden
fragments, drew from the observers as many gasps as exclamations, and from me
only tears.
I slipped from the crowd. The concerns of the islanders, enjoying
their banal routines, filled me with anger. How simple were other peoples'
lives when compared to the complexity of one's own!
How youthful I was then...
I walked along the pebble beach and sat down before the sea. For perhaps
an hour I remained there, reliving my time with the Blackman, wishing that
somehow he could have overcome his programming and told me of his true
identity.
A small voice drew me from my reverie.
I turned and watched Loi pick her way towards me across the sharp pebbles,
her expression one of tortured determination. "So here you are! I wondered
where you'd gone."
She had her hands behind her back, as if concealing something from me.
"Sinclair, I tried to find you. Did you see Blackman's finale?"
I nodded that I had.
She smiled at me. "He gave me this, Sinclair - to give to you." From
behind her back she produced my persona-cube and handed it to me.
She must have sensed that I needed to be alone. "See you later," she
whispered. "I'll be in the quayside tavern. Gastarian and his crew are
celebrating our victory, and mourning the dead and gone."
I watched her leave the beach, then turned my attention to the
cube in my lap. With trembling fingers I turned it on. My father - the
Blackman - stared out at me. He was seated in his hotel room, his
dark presence dominating the scene.
"Father," I whispered.
"Sinclair," he said. "You must have many questions, and I have so
much to explain..."
As the sun set, and the fiery light of night filled the sky, I sat on the
beach and talked with my father. *
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