Foy Ahoy! PotA 15!
It's getting progressively ropier for our heroine



Pirates of the Archipelago

Part Fifteen

There were ten of them. Ten enormous sea-monsters, five to port, four to starboard and one in front of us. Ten of humanity's greatest enemies on Glory. Our only enemy, when you think of it, apart from ourselves. I had never seen anything like it - not with my own eyes, of course, but neither in any of the videos we'd watched at school or at the Monitor's. Ten foys at once, gathered together; that was unusual. And so close to a land, that was even more unheard-of - at least, I'd not heard of it, not being exactly predisposed to study the lifecycle of the common foy.

I supposed that somewhere in the School on Horn there was a department dedicated to Glory's aboriginal creatures where white-coated researchers laboured behind ancient mullioned windows overlooking the gothic arches of the Joyeuse. I expected they gathered data from Board ship observations. No doubt they could tell you all about foy feeding, foy migration, foy society and, for all I know, foy sex; not that that bears too much thinking about. I didn't know and I cared less. I knew they killed people, and that was all I really needed to know; that and the fact that we were lucky they lived in the sea and left the lands to us.

But now I was in their domain. I was their guest, and an unwanted one at that. I still didn't understand what was going on. I'd thought that first foy would either kill Roy and me or leave us alone. I hadn't expected it to ask its friends round for a party. Were we the hors d'oeuvres, a tasty snack before the main course? Or were we expected to provide the tunes? Spin those decks, Annie. Play us a floor-filler. Get on down. I giggled hysterically. My head still felt very weird.

'Hoy, foys!' I shouted. 'What would you like to drink - beer, wine, cider or punch? A champagne cocktail? An Old Fashioned? Some nice crunchy girl to nibble with it?'

But the foys said nothing, except that the one who was ahead of us - the original one, if you see what I mean - swam over to starboard and lined up with its fellows, making a kind of guard of honour for Albatross, Roy and me. It stopped moving and the thrashing sea settled down again. Then out of the silence the locator spoke once more.

'I don't eat or drink alcohol,' it said, 'Thank you all the same. Now would you please steer east by northeast? Thirty degrees to starboard, if you wouldn't mind.'

'What?'

'East by northeast. Thirty degrees. Thank you.'

What else could I do?



Pulling nicely on the starboard tack, we sailed towards the Ring at a slanting angle to the coast. The foys accompanied us. The steadily increasing light from the west threw their shadows onto the water in front and kept the wall of the Ring in comparative darkness.

Lined up to either side of us, the foys kept to the surface, swimming slowly to keep to our pace and disturbing the water very little. From time to time one or another turned its head to look at us and its characteristic smell wafted over the sea; so that we sailed through a miasma of stale fish. Roy sat as motionless as before, except that he turned to face forward. He still made no response to my attempts to rouse him, either by shaking his shoulders or talking to him and after a while I gave up trying. He was in no more or less peril than me, after all, and his entrancement was no more strange that anything else that happened that strange morning.

The light was growing ever-stronger and the thought occurred to me that the tide must be nearing its highest point. We would miss the inward flush, then, and have to wait another whole day, or try our luck at the sea-lock. And what about Mum and Emmy? Before this we'd have been just about able to get back before we were missed - no chance of that now. They'd be panicking. It's be like it was the other time, with Dad.

But wasn't that the way it was anyway? Like Dad?



Our outlandish convoy continued eastward for perhaps an hour and then, with the clouds lighting up a vivid orange with the early rays of the Blessèd sun, the locator told me to steer due north. I pulled on the tiller and let the boom out until Albatross's bow pointed directly towards the Ring. The foy escort swung around with us. At this stage we were no more than a couple of hundred yards from the outer wall of the Ring and I wondered what lay behind the locator's instructions. Did it mean for us to beach on the rocks? What were the foys up to? Would they let us get that far?

Steadily the land loomed up in front of us. The Ring isn't regular; it has a serrated edge like a mashed-up cookie-cutter and this was one of its highest points. The summit ahead of us rose to a height of a thousand feet or more above high tide level and its top was in full sunlight. The foot of the mountain - that's what it was, really - was still in shadow. So it was with nothing more than blind faith and the knowledge that the locator had never let me down before that I sailed us right up to the rocky slopes of the Ring and into a steep inlet. The foys formed up in line astern. Then we turned hard right to starboard and - and I only saw it at the last moment - slipped under an arch in the seaweed-slimed rock and into a dim cavern. The echoes closed around my ears.

'Drop the sails,' said the locator. I did as it told me. 'Now hold me up.'

'You're clamped down.'

'Then un-clamp me, please.'

I opened the binnacle and released the locator from its brass mountings.

'Hold me up. No - the other way round.'

An intense beam of yellow light shot out from the locator's display. It was bright enough to reach the cavern walls, which were craggy and dripping. I swept it around my head like a torch. Behind me, the first of the foys waited. It had followed us into the cave. The light caught its eyes and it lowered its head, blinded by the glare, and snorted deafeningly.

'Don't do that,' said the locator. 'You'll upset it. Tie me to the mast and get out the paddle. We can't stay here - the tide is still rising and we'll be trapped.'

I lashed a piece of cord around the locator, attaching it to the mast, and followed its directions to a narrow gap in the walls. The top of the mast was a close fit, and I wondered if this was a manoeuvre on the part of the locator to get rid of the foys. Surely they wouldn't be able to follow us through such a narrow passageway?

I paddled Albatross down that clammy tunnel for ten minutes and then, just as it had when we had entered the first cave, I felt the air expand around us and the echoes of my splashing become distant and diffuse. We were in a huge underground space; so vast that the locator's beam, which had led the way through the passage, could do no more than create a tiny circle of light a hundred yards or more away.

'Well done, Annie,' said the locator. 'Now listen. I want you to paddle Albatross another few yards to starboard. We're going to ground her. Don't worry, it's sandy, but be sure to raise the centreboard first. Then untie me and get out onto the land. Bring me along with you.'

'What about Roy?'

'You'd better bring him too.'



Albatross ran gently up a sandy shelf, just as the locator had promised. I jumped over the bows onto the dry land and pegged the forward mooring line into the ground.

'Come on, Roy,' I said, but of course there was no reply. I had to climb back aboard and manhandle him over the side, getting both our feet wet. I walked him a few yards up the slope and sat him down. He slumped forward passively, so I moved him and placed him with his back against Albatross’s bows. Then I retrieved the locator.

‘Just a mo,’ it said. ‘Could you do me a quick favour?’

‘Sure. What would you like?’

‘Hold me under water for a few seconds?’

‘Won’t you short out? Like Roy’s phone?’

‘Wedgie trash! No, of course I won’t short out. Be a good girl and do as I ask.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a “good girl” but I walked down to the shoreline, immersed the device in the chilly water of the cave, and counted up to ten. A stream of bubbles came out of it.

‘Ah, that’s better,’ said the locator. ‘Now, put me down over there – behind that boulder, with my display facing upwards.’ I did as it asked.

‘Thank you. If you’d just rejoin the boy and look away for a moment? That’s it; right behind the boat.’

I sat next to Roy and linked my hand in his. It wasn’t cold, as I had feared and his pulse was steady. He was breathing gently. ‘Now close your eyes if you like.’

‘Why?’

‘Just do as I ask. You’ll see why.’

I put my head in my hands and with a dazzling flash the walls and roof of the cavern lit up so brightly I could see them red through my hands.

‘Whoa!’ said the locator. ‘That’s overdoing it!’ The light receded. ‘How’s that?’ I opened my eyes and looked around me. From behind the boulder a vivid lance of intense white shot up to the roof from where its reflection, like the Blessèd sun itself, illuminated the whole interior of the cave.

‘Is that you doing that, locator?’

‘No one else,’ it said, with a smug tinge to its voice. I thought for a moment.

‘You’ve got a fusor in you, haven’t you?’

‘Please don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.’

Hell’s teeth! Fusors were massive pieces of equipment, made of rare metals, wires and crystal. They powered whole towns. They weighed hundreds of tons. They had their own buildings and operators. But this little box, not much bigger than Roy’s phone, could not have generated so much energy any other way. And all from a few drops of water…

The light revealed the domed shape of the cave, which was very nearly circular. I could just make out the dark cleft in the rock by which we’d entered. It had shrunk further as the tide had risen and I sighed with relief. We weren’t safe, exactly, and we were still imprisoned a thousand of feet underground, but we were safe. We’d be able to wait here – getting hungry and thirsty no doubt, but secure – until the foys gave up and went home.

‘Thank you,’ I said to the locator. ‘Do we just sit tight now?’

‘You can sit or stand as you choose,’ the locator replied. ‘I would stand, however, if I were you. It’s only polite when you have important company to greet. See?’

And with a terrible sinking of the heart I saw the first of the foys emerge from the passageway. Stupid Annie! Just because the channel was narrow above the water it didn’t follow that it was narrow under water too. One by one the foys swam out of the cleft and lined up along the shore where we were beached. Ten foys, their necks reaching up to the roof, their tails swishing slowly from side to side to steady them, their heads facing us, their eyes watching us.

‘Very well,’ said the locator, in a voice that had suddenly grown much louder. ‘Who’s going first?’