Intellivore - Diane Duane [27]
Picard chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know; even the shouting has its uses. The release of tension—”
“Load cartridge!”
Cartridges of black powder were rammed down the open muzzles. “And we’re keeping a lost art alive,” Picard said. “If art is the word we’re looking for here.”
“Shot your guns—” Clif braced himself against the rail, but nothing happened except that gun-crew members came up with thirty-pound cannonballs and loaded them into the guns’ muzzles. “Run out your guns!”
The crews put their shoulders to the cannons’ carriages and pushed them out with a rush, so that all the muzzles protruded from the ship’s side at the same time. “Prime!” Other members of the crews leaned forward over their fellows, bracing the guns, to pour more black powder into the cannons’ touch holes. “Point your guns!”
“Now, then,” Picard said softly. At the rear of each gun, a crewman held a hissing, smoking slow match to the breech of the gun while the cannons’ angles were given one last adjustment. “Elevate—fire!”
The whole ship shook as the guns fired on the uproll; thick white smoke, briefly shot through with sparks, was everywhere. Coughing came out of the smoke, and someone said loudly, “Well, what was the time?”
A pause. “Thirty-three seconds.”
The gun crew cheered raggedly as the smoke started to clear. Picard stepped away from the rail, as much to get out of the smoke as anything else, and Clif came with him as he paused by the leader of the gun crew.
“I beg to report to the captain,” said the young dark-haired man, “that we’ve improved our time by fifteen percent.”
Picard nodded. “Nicely done, Mr. Moore,” he said. “I’m sure Trafalgar will be much improved by your work. Carry on.”
The two captains made their way back to the stern, where there were benches convenient to the wheel. No one manned it, in this near-flat calm; it was lashed to its capstan. Picard had a look at the lashings before he sat down.
“This great love that humans have for the old,” Clif said, leaning back against the rail. “I’ve seen it before; some of my own human crew seem to share it. I have to confess it’s a bit of a mystery to me.”
Picard sat listening to the chuckle of the water under the keel for a few seconds. “Probably it’s a mystery to some humans as well,” he said. “The past has its own cachet because of its inaccessibility.”
“And so we desire what we cannot have,” Clif said. “Except, of course”—and he glanced around him—”we can have it now.”
The look he gave Picard then was almost sly, like a teacher watching to see if a student will fall into a trap. Picard laughed out loud. “Oh, come on, now, Captain,” he said. “I don’t think our species’ definitions of reality are quite that different. And you would hardly be a captain in Starfleet if your personal definition was.”
Clif nodded, smiled slightly. “Point taken. And call me Clif, if you like.”
“I’m Jean-Luc, then.”
“Very well, and I thank you.” He brushed a fallen spark from one of his sleeves and said, bemused, “Your people really wore things like this in battle?”
“Some were a lot more ornate,” Picard said. “You should see the French ones; these are fairly sedate by comparison.”
“Fascinating.”
They both glanced up then as, slow and low, a broad-winged shadow planed overhead between them and the quarter-moon: an albatross. It glanced at them with one cool dark eye as it went over, clattered its big beak a couple of times, and took itself leisurely off northward.
A sharp metallic sound echoed down the length of the deck. Picard looked in that direction, then frowned. “Mister,” he called. “What is it? Brand? You uncock that crossbow this minute. Mr. Moore, put him on report.”
“Aye, sir.”
Clif looked with some amusement at Picard’s wry expression. “He wouldn’t really have shot it, would he?”
“In here,” Picard said, “it’s sometimes difficult to tell. A lot of the people who enjoy this scenario are very sensitive to archetype.”
Another crewman, a slender, handsome, sharp-faced woman with long black hair tightly braided, came up to the stern deck