The Dream Vessel by Jeff Bredenberg Read Free Book Online

chance to cry out. Between splashes of water, she sucked in deep breaths, feeding her body extra oxygen for a long underwater swim. Any moment now….
    But Little Tom backed away, and Tym sighed—her first chance gone. The entire ship was groaning now with the stress of filling sails. Now would be the best time for the kill and escape, she told herself, with the crew above at its most distracted. Ach.
    Little Tom pulled the cabin doors closed, then produced a key from his trousers and threw the bolt to lock them. The captain hop-skipped boyishly by her—too quickly for the slash—and fell back onto his bunk, legs dangling over the side.
    Then came an abrupt movement that shocked Tym, even though she was nauseatingly aware of his intentions: Little Tom rolled his knees up to his chest and whisked off his pants in one fluttering motion. The stoned young shipmaster laid back lazily, staring into space, confidently waving her to him—he seemed to have done this before. His pale legs were parted, swinging easily along the side of the bunk. His penis was rising like a new mushroom.
    Tym wondered if these people were always so artless with their sex. She breathed deeply three times and went to him.

8
A Runner, A Writer
    Quince scrabbled through a jungle of bougainvillea, not daring to take the dirt-and-shell road that wound down the hillside from the medical buildings. He paused, kneeling in the blackness, listening for any human noises through the riot of creeking tree frogs. There were no signs of humanity, save for his own heavy breathing, sounding like rhythmic sobs.
    START JERE He peeled off his hospital gown, a smock so tattered that it really covered little of the body. He mopped his brow with it, then rolled it and tucked it under his arm. Dark skin made a better night cover. Scratches be damned—it was better to have a few thorns in the fanny than to risk recapture. Red-leggers fared badly enough as it was; red-leggers who dared to break out before sale to the mainland, it was said, would suffer a cruel torture at the hands of the pig-poker-in-chief, Big Tom. His walled garden at the mainhouse was renowned for that.
    When Quince hit the beach he rested again. The sand was still warm from the day’s sun-scorching, but the night sea breeze here in the open was a relief. His stomach was twisting—a wretched mixture of anxiety and the sourness of the blood he had swallowed to simulate sickness. He crouched in the shadows of the jungly shrubs at the beach’s edge and tried to decide his next move.
    I am just a scribe, Quince thought to himself resolutely. I make stories, I write history, I teach. This is work for a warrior, a hunter. Perhaps Dirk was right. I will die on this island. He pictured his friend in that cell over the ridge of Crown Mountain—dull-minded Dirk, the steady laborer, determined to ship quietly to a farm worker’s life on the mainland. Who was right?
    Just east up the beach, barely 300 yards away, were the shipyards and main docks. Tied up there, among Big Tom’s little skimmers, were the three barges and their tug lashed together, black against the glistening waves. Capture by Big Tom’s marauding beasts was a miserable enough experience. But it was said to be a pleasure cruise compared to the barge ride to the mainland. Those few red-leggers who escaped the mainland and returned to the Out Islands carried back nightmarish tales of this Captain Bull and his pig-poking enforcers with their billybangers and snub shotguns.
    To the west the beach buildings were more sparse, decrepit little ramshacks dotting the west side of the harbor for miles. The choice of directions came easily, if for no other reason than Quince’s instinctive repulsion for the slave barges. West. He would find supplies in one of the shanties, then steal a boat and skim away.
     
    Jersey Saple knew that someone was approaching his house from the beach path. It was as if an extra sense had awakened in him over his ten years of