Walt by Ian Stoba Read Free Book Online

might be an eccentric genius millionaire from the electronics industry who was larking on some sort of a thrill vacation.
    All of the crew felt that he was not to be trusted. The Captain stopped visiting him. Even the Second Mate grew distant and cold.
    Walt told himself that he did not mind. He tried to enjoy the solitude as he had in his own boat, but found that the pleasure was not forthcoming. He felt that he had been close to acceptance with these sailors; they had treated him better than anyone had ever treated him before. Now he felt a failure. Something that he had done, something he had done while he was asleep, had driven all of them away from him.
    He also realized that it is possible to be somehow less alone in a small boat with no one else aboard than it is to be among others, but ignored, in a larger boat. This was a tremendously urbane lesson for any Tristanian to appreciate. Many, many people only truly appreciate this aloneness when they have left the comfort of their family and friends for the unknown excitements of a large city. Walt, of course, had left the routine and friendless discomforts of his island home for an unknown future away from Tristan.
    But Walt was not entirely alone. Even when everyone else failed him, he still had the Easybeats in his head to keep him company.
    Incidentally, by this time the Easybeats had taken up residence in San Francisco. They moved into the boiler room in the basement of a building on Tehama Alley, which they were able to rent very cheaply due to an enormous population of rats reluctant to share their home. The apartment, if it can be called that, was less than three blocks from my own.
    They also got a job working as the night manager of the twenty-four hour pool hall underneath the Denny’s restaurant in Japantown. It might appear to an insightful observer that the Easybeats preferred to be underground.
    At this time, I had no idea that the band playing on my transmitter were my new neighbors. Of course, I had no idea of Walt’s existence, either.
    I spent my time much as I always had; thinking, walking around the city, playing the meager extent of my piano repertoire, drinking coffee, even writing occasionally. My roommate was off trekking somewhere in Asia, so I did not anticipate having company any time in the near future. I was soon to find out that I was wrong in that presumption.
    All that, of course, will be told when the proper time has come.
    Meanwhile, Walt and the others steamed steadily and highly efficiently towards San Francisco.
    The Captain of the San Geronimo had by now turned over most of the duties of running the ship to his First and Second Mates. The Captain himself remained locked in the ship’s chart room studying Walt’s course. From days of scrutiny, the Captain was able to determine that such a course could only have been laid with knowledge of long-term trends in the Earth’s hydrologic and gravitational cycles. The Captain was no dummy. He was also intrigued by the fact that the course took them on an arc of the Earth’s surface, a Great Circle, rather than a straight linear path. He knew that such trajectories only made sense if the navigator were able to see, or imagine, the territory from above.
    He was never able to deduce how Walt was able to figure this course, but, then, that had never in itself been his main intention. He was interested in reproducing Walt’s results. He knew that if he did, it would form the basis of a great revolution in navigation. He imagined, quite rightly, that such knowledge could make him an enormously wealthy man. The Captain, much like his Second Mate, felt that he genuinely wanted money and that having a great deal of it would make him very happy indeed.
    As it was, he never succeeded in uncovering all the secrets of the course that had been unveiled to him. However, the bonus that the shipping company paid him for the time and fuel saved on the voyage was enough for him to start a modest fleet of