"…" Zero looked up at the sails of the ship, tilting his head to one side.
Despite the anachronous nature of it, the ship was what Leviathan called a Clipper, and what Zero just called a sailing ship. This was no fishing ship… it had been built to transport people and goods rapidly up and down the west coast of Neo Arcadia. But it still depended primarily on wind power to move it from place to place, harking back to a much earlier era.
Of course, that wasn't entirely true. Zero glanced towards the aft end of the ship. The ship did have an engine, that could be used to propel it, powered by crystals. It was only for emergency use, however. Neo Arcadia was still suffering energy use restrictions, since the Rebellion had never given them the Ciel system… and wouldn't, until the mess with Wiel was completely settled. So sails were the most efficient way to get around.
Hearing some of the sailors' chatter made Zero very glad that Neo Arcadia had provided the crew. He had no idea what they were talking about. For example, what was a Jib? And what was in irons, and why was that bad? (Although it sounded bad… like something the Guardians would do to him if they ever got the chance.) But he had heard the sailors had been talking about the wind when they'd mentioned it, which made no sense at all, as far as he could see. And the rigging of the sails was a profound mystery to him.
Leviathan seemed right at home, though, assisting the captain of the ship. She hadn't taken over his position… that would have been foolish, even for a Guardian… but she was quickly becoming the equal of the First Mate. Zero only wished he could emulate her, but he knew his limits.
There was a horrible gagging sound, and Zero winced. Ciel had discovered that she had no stomach for sea travel. And so far, it had been a very pleasant trip. Zero wasn't sure what she would do if they hit bad weather. Well, besides throw up.
Fortunately for Ciel's ego, she wasn't alone in her distress. Zero smiled to himself as one of the Rebellion soldiers staggered to the rail to join her. Being a Reploid did not make a person immune to seasickness. In fact, sometimes it was worse. According to Leviathan, if a Reploid wasn't predisposed to adapt quickly, sometimes they never would. Humans generally learned to cope after a while.
Zero found a place on the deck he could comfortably sit, and watch the sailors at work. The whole trip was really very peaceful, and he found he liked it. Although it would have been better if he could stay conscious for all of it. His generator kept frizzing at the worst possible times. At first, he'd tried to learn about the sails, but had given up when he'd nearly fallen out of the crow's nest. Climbing ropes wasn't good for someone who might pass out at any moment.
The rest of the trip passed slowly and uneventfully. They only had to cope with one squall, which had caused several of the Rebellion soldiers to pray for death. Fortunately, the prayers hadn't been answered and the ship had pulled through intact.
"That was the easy half of the trip, you know," Leviathan had said conversationally to him at one point.
"Oh? How so?" Zero asked curiously, and Leviathan had shrugged.
"We're following the trade winds, and the currents favor us. Going back, we'll be fighting against them. That will be the harder part."
"Oh." Zero vaguely understood the concept. Ocean travel was not like land. Travelling with the currents meant that the ocean itself was moving with them, shaving many miles off their transit. But going against the ocean was like walking up a down escalator… you had to walk just to stand still, and run to make your way up. The trip back would indeed be longer and more difficult.
Finally, though…
"Land ho!" The Reploid in the crow's nest called down, and Zero had looked up alertly, then scanned the horizon for the land he had seen. It might be nothing but a small island. They'd already encountered several of them.
This was different, though. If it was an island, it was huge. And…
"Perfect! This is just the right spot," Leviathan was muttering, looking over her map. "The historical records said that the operations were moved from the island to the mainland, and this is the mainland, sort of… Philippine islands…" Zero ignored her in favor of examining the land. He already knew what she was talking about. They had all seen the map, and the land of Hope's Dream. The history records were very vague, but it had mentioned that Hope's Dream had started as an island, but eventually come to encompass a wide part of Asia, all the islands in this area, part of Australia and a few costal areas of Africa. It was an impressive organization, easily as large as Neo Arcadia.
Unfortunately, that ancient organization was probably defunct. None of them had any idea who X had been dealing with, and where, so they had aimed for the oldest part of Hope's Dream… the Philippines.
It soon became uncomfortably clear, though, that the land itself had changed. Specifically, it had broken apart.
"This wasn't supposed to be here." Leviathan looked at her maps uncertainly. There was a massive river, leading into the land… so massive a river that Zero wondered if it more qualified as a channel of the ocean.
"It looks almost like the main island has split into smaller pieces." Zero observed. Leviathan hissed in irritation and Ciel looked solemn.
"It probably has. Terrible weapons were used in the final war… even nuclear ones." Zero and Leviathan exchanged a glance at Ciel's calm statement. Nuclear fallout was harmful to Reploids, but they could usually survive it. But for humans…
"Ciel, do you have a Geiger counter with you?" Zero asked, and Ciel frowned.
"No, but I could rig one up."
"Please do." Leviathan requested, looking at the tropical vegetation distrustfully. "Harpuia will have my head if I poison the crew." Most of them were human. Ciel nodded, and went to take care of that.
The ship slowly followed the coastline, looking for any sign of habitation. It was nearly nightfall before they found a tiny village, on an outcropping near the beach. The little huts seemed designed to be impermanent, probably in reaction to tropical storms. There were canoes and small boats tied up to a rather sturdy looking pier.
The reaction of the inhabitants to their arrival was not exactly welcoming. Poor human fishermen and women, they took one look at the sleek little ship and tried to hide in their huts. It took all the persuasion Ciel had at hand, and Zero and Leviathan standing well back, before one old man finally ventured out of his hut to talk to them.
"What d'ye want?" He was a powerful old man, with deeply seamed, tannedskin and large finger joints. He eyed them with bright black eyes, then looked over the ship, expression hard as stone. "Be ye pirate scum?"
"Pirates?" Ciel blinked. That kind of crime was almost unknown in Neo Arcadia. "No, of course not! We mean you no harm." She tried to reassure the elder, but he met her statement with skepticism.
"Maybe ye mean none, but's sure as death ye could kill us all." He stated calmly.
"These people have no trust in Reploids…" Leviathan mumbled to herself, but the man heard her and eyed her sharply.
"'As nothing to do with ye bein' Reps." He looked them over again, then laughed, a harsh sound like a crow cawing. "Ye sound daft enough to be telling the truth. Where ye be from?"
"Across the ocean." Zero gestured vaguely towards the water, and the man frowned.
"'Cross the wide blue? Then ye've traveled far. We've fish an' food, if ye have money."
"What do you use for money here?" Leviathan asked, and the man looked faintly puzzled for a moment, then nodded.
"Right, ye wouldn't know. We use gold, silver, anything of value. 'Bout the only true money is tokens from New Hope." He pulled out a thin, green wafer. Zero stepped forward, fascinated, and saw it was manufactured out of silicon and had been worked with an intricate holographic design. "Most that travels, they use gold and silver chains. Ye break off a link, where ye wish to pay, and everyone has scales to weight it for ye. Some as is canny wear strings o' precious stones and sells 'em where they has value."
"Fascinating," Ciel said, sounding honestly interested. "Can you tell us where New Hope is?" She had the feeling that would be their ultimate destination. The strangely high tech currency seemed to support that hypothesis. But the man only shrugged.
"That, I dinnae ken. Never been any further than Hell's Mouth, but perhaps that is where ye should go. Ye can find anything in the Mouth, so they say, whether ye wish to or not." The elder looked up at the sky, then shrugged. "The sun be getting low in the sky, an' we have a pier. If ye be wishing, you may be staying the night on land today. We have not food to be giving away, but if ye share yer dry food, we'll make ye a meal to remember."
"We'd be glad to," Leviathan said with a smile. As the man had assumed, they had used mostly dried food to get this far, along with oranges and vitamins. A real meal, well prepared, would be delicious… and their own food could be used to help make it. "Thank you." The man waved that away.
"S'small enough thing, when ye could just be taking what ye need. Get that lot off the ship, and I'll go talk to me kin." Leviathan nodded, and started shouting order to the ship as he walked off.
Soon, all the sailors except a skeleton crew to watch the ship were on the ground, and the villagers were cautiously venturing out of their huts. Zero frowned as he saw the signs of poverty and sickness on them. The children, in particular, seemed to have many birth defects.
"Ciel, do you have that Geiger counter ready? These people are suffering from something." Zero was willing to bet it was either radiation, or possibly exposure to chemicals. Probably radiation… some of the fish and vegetables the natives were bringing out looked a bit peculiar to him. On the other hand, he was no expert in horticulture. Maybe those purple fruits grew here naturally.
"Mmm…" Ciel carefully checked the Geiger counter. "It's pretty faint, but yes… this place is radioactive. I imagine it was much worse a few generations ago, and that damage could persist. The food should be safe enough, for short term anyway."
"What about those purple things?" Zero pointed to the offending fruits. He'd never seen anything quite like them. Ciel looked at them for a long moment.
"…Figs." She finally said decisively. "Yes, those are definitely figs." Zero blinked.
"Figs? You mean those things you put in cookies?"
"Yes, but these are nice fresh ones. And I think they're going to be dessert, too." One woman was hard at work cutting figs into pieces, as several others built up the cooking fires and looked over the provisions the Neo Arcadians had brought out. A fish stew was already in the works. Ciel looked at Zero, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "Fresh figs don't travel well at all, and their grown down in the South-West corner of Neo Arcadia. That's why you've never seen them."
"Ah." That made Zero feel better. He liked being able to identify what he was eating.
Over the next few hours, the villagers gradually relaxed and turned chatty. After a bit of questioning, they found out why they had been so upset to see strangers… pirates didn't bother to take much from villages like theirs, since they had nothing, but pirates would have helped themselves to the food and the women, leaving the village in an even worse state than usual. Traders didn't bother with the costal villages, since they had nothing worth trading besides fish and figs. If the villages needed something, they made the trip to Hell's Mouth and hoped that someone was buying fish.
"But New Hope sends medics once a year," One of the woman said, scooping out a bowl of the dessert for Zero. Ciel had already tried it, and swore it was delicious… the figs had been mixed with sliced sugar cane and some home brewed alcohol, then stewed to tenderness. "Reploids, mostly, very nice people. They gave my daughter some pills that cleared up her cough." Zero nodded, taking the bowl with a small smile.
"That's very nice of them." Ciel said with a brilliant smile, and Zero could guess what she was thinking. The Rebellion didn't really have much to offer in trade goods, but if New Hope was willing to help these poor fishermen, surely they would help him as well.
"That it was." The woman agreed, smiling affectionately down at her daughter, who was playing in the dirt with a ragged little doll. "We so much appreciate them, even if they say it's their bounden duty."
"Would you like something to drink?" Zero almost jumped as someone whispered almost in his ear. He turned to see who had spoken, and blushed lightly… it was a very young girl, lovely in her youth. Her skin was dark, and her hair a long, jet black. She smiled wickedly at him, and Zero was certain she had noticed his blush. "We have some delicious drinks… fruit juice, liquor, water…" Her hand brushed his back, and Zero went from suspicious to certain that she was flirting with him.
"Ah… just water will be fine." Zero managed to control his blushes as she smiled, and slowly walked off, swinging her hips. Several of the Neo Arcadians and not a few of the Rebellion soldiers followed her with their eyes. Zero was relieved to notice that none of the villagers seemed to care.
The next day, they departed with instructions on how to find Hell's Mouth. They also left a tiny bit of their spices with the village, which was greeted with pleasure and gratitude. Several of the villagers came to wave as they left, and Zero noticed some strangely smug looks on a few of the Rebellion Soldiers.
It made him think wistfully of the young girl, and wonder what he might have missed.
"Gah," Leviathan pinched her nose, disgusted. "I can see why they call it Hell's Mouth."
"There's no sewage treatment at all," Ciel said, rather queasy. The harbor stank. It actually smelled surprisingly good, for no sewage treatment, but it was still appalling.
Hell's Mouth sat at the mouth of a massive river channel. This one was definitely a river, not simply part of the ocean… it was fresh water. And it was probably the main reason this city existed.
The community itself was a huge, brawling, lusty place. The docks were huge, and hundreds of ships were tied up at them. As Zero watched, he saw a bulky Reploid tossing huge wine casks down to another Reploid, each one being noted down by a human with a clipboard. Up and down the docks, ships were being loaded and unloaded industriously.
This city shrieked Cosmopolitan! in a way no Neo Arcadian city did. A beehive of activity, it made the largest city he had ever seen look torpid. But it was the people that truly made Hell's Mouth seem so diverse. In Neo Arcadia, the centuries of intermixing in a small area had resulted in a settling of the human appearance. The typical Neo Arcadian human citizen had light brown skin, brown or sandy-blond hair, and hazel eyes. That was by no means universal… darker skin was fairly common, and so was pale skin… but Zero had never seen such wild divergences before. From where he was standing, he could see people with the Oriental appearance, the deepest black of Africa, and even a man with flaming red hair and sunburned white skin. The commonest appearance was like the villagers they had met, but even so, there appeared to be no common phenotype for the humans here.
The robots were just as variegated. There were examples of Reploids who wouldn't have looked out of place in Neo Arcadia, to strange designs that would have gained more than a few looks. Full animal Reploids had fallen out of use a long time ago, in favor of humanoid forms, but they were obviously still going strong here. A nearby cat Reploid was scratching himself and fishing off the pier. Zero idly wondered how he would eat any fish out of the harbor. Hold his nose?
"Well, are we just going to stand here forever?" Leviathan said practically, and vaulted over the side of the boat, landing neatly on the pier. The wood was probably reinforced with metal, because it didn't even quiver. Zero shrugged, and followed her example.
"Hey, wait!" Ceil called as they crew extended the stairs people usually used to leave the ship. She quickly dashed off, joining them on the dock.
"So… where exactly do we go?" Zero finally asked, as Leviathan and Ciel both hesitated. The girls glanced at each other, and Leviathan finally spoke.
"I really have no idea."