Genie's Wish Ch. 04

"Gonna be on the boat long, Jack?" Bo asked me.

I explained, "My friend Matts and his girlfriend* are gonna meet me back in Burgess Town in two months unless something changes, so, I'll probably wrap things up here when we get to St. Rupe, if Eurybia sticks to the schedule Mark and Mr. Klenze told me about."

* See Genie's Wish Ch. 00

"Right on, dude. I've been here six months. Six months last year too."

"Yeah? Are Breenie and those other chicas always around?"

"Few weeks on, few weeks off. And I've never seen those two before. She's always got different bitches with her."

"How about Gord?"

Bo seemed less dismissive, and told me and KK, "He's on a sabbatical right now. Breenie really wants him to spend time with her lately."

KK looked around, before chiming in quietly. "They're trying to get pregnant. Those hags were chattering about Breenie's business like it was Game of Thrones or something." She frowned disapprovingly.

Bo's eyebrows climbed sharply. "Oh, no shit?" He exhaled, and jammed his empty Kalik bottle into the sand, neck down.

KK and I looked at each other, and we both looked at Bo.

The sixth-sense thing started happening to me. My retinas seemed to solarize everything around Bo like overexposed film-negatives, while the man remained crystal-clear, almost hyper-real in my vision. He was looking out over the water, and I saw what he was seeing in his mind's eye.

That was weird. This had never happened so vividly to me before. And this was the first time it ever had happened with a man.

Bo was picturing a shaving kit with Gord's monogram on it, unzipped, revealing several medicine bottles inside. Predictably, there were blue-diamond pills, but I could literally read off of Bo's memory other labels which looked like shit I had seen on the sales counter at truck stops. Vividly-colored labels with loud fonts screamed slogans and bullet-lists about various enhancements males could expect from them.

The feeling that I had to stop looking at Bo crawled over me. I wasn't sure whether my gaze would appear from the outside as intense as it felt to me at that moment, and I felt outside of time as well. I couldn't be sure I hadn't frozen on the sand in a tripping-balls stare.

I made the mental and physical effort to rotate my head away from Bo and try to focus on the low sun's crepuscular rays starting to percolate through the clouds near the horizon. Bo's mental picture and my reality were synced as if my neck and his own in his memory were connected by an engine belt or something. I swung my eyes from Bo and found the sea and sky. I saw Bo's point of view shift as he looked up from the shaving kit and saw Gord.

Then the vision snapped and I watched a frigatebird soar over the water. The enormous swallow-tailed seabird spotted a pelican and started shadowing it. The pelican plunged and came up, wing-pumping hard to clear the water's surface and ascend with its catch. The frigatebird was on him like a dogfighter and harassed him threateningly until the pelican lost his prey, which the frigatebird immediately dove for. I saw the fifteen-inch fish flip-flopping, corkscrewing itself madly in the air as it tried to make sense of what had happened to it. But air isn't water, and it couldn't propel itself and dart off in escape. It got snapped up for the second time. The agile frigatebird snatched it out of the air before it fell back into the water.

"Ooh hoo hoo, did you fuckin' see that?" KK marveled.

Bo chuckled on my other side, and I was now snapped out of it enough to go, "Whoa."

The energy of the environment abruptly changed. The syrupy siesta-hour feeling had evaporated. The cove, the beach and the trees seemed to come alive. The wind shifted, and there were more birds about. Fish disturbed the calm water's surface. The dozens of different blues which made up the sky-and-seascape around us became less electric and took on more of an evening-glow. The clouds began to kindle in the low sun, gold-edged now with hot pink to come soon and red before long.

The guests began murmuring among themselves as they stirred from their naps. I imagined that we had an hour before we'd begin hearing stomachs growl, anticipating dinner.

KK held on to my upper arm and scooted closer to me.

We three sat for a short while until the dusk began dragging across the sky from the east, behind the lagoon. Breenie was taking a stroll and found us on the other side of the fire stack. She smiled at the three of us, lips parting as she took note of KK's closeness to me. "Kelly, will you walk with me?"

KK let me go, and stood. She mock-seriously asked me and Bo, "Will you boys be all right to get this fire started on your own?"

"I think I remember something from Scouts," Bo answered good-naturedly.

I pecked my fingertips and blew over them. "I'm sure we'll find something hot enough to get it going."

Breenie played along. "Ooh la la, Jack!" She elbowed KK conspiratorially.

KK fell in beside her and the pair moseyed off down the beach together.

Bo and I stoked the fire and arranged rice and grilled vegetables in pans for re-heating. I got the sense Breenie's entourage had been ordered to back off for a little while. They kept themselves occupied, as did Martin and his wife, watching Bo and me as we seasoned our catch and enclosed them in an assortment of two-sided fish grilling baskets.

Bo was untouchable, deflecting their attention and chatter with ease. For my part, I played dumb. These women were around thirty, and I pretended I was the most naive twenty-year-old they had ever seen and had no idea they were trying to get a rise out of me, however they tried. As it got darker I just stared into the fire as if mesmerized by it, making that my excuse to just fail to notice them. I wasn't as elegant as Bo but it was effective.

Fish cooks quickly. Bo retreated to eat his own fish by his own self in his own hammock hanging from his own trees. I carried the lobster and the yellowjack to the picnic tables and portioned them out, shelling and halving the lobsters and separating the whole-cooked fish's meat from the skeleton.

I had slashed his sides into sections before grilling, so the dozen or so generous portions came away from the fish carcass easily without flaking apart into a mess. I had an audience as I performed this. The legislator and the banking VP complimented me and I got a twenty dollar tip from each as I served them their plates.

Martin's wife and his sister beamed ice-rays at Breenie's friends and, with their spouses, claimed seats at the table I served the seafood from. The witches resigned themselves to sitting at the other table. Deprived of any other targets, I overheard them murmuring unkindly to each other about Gord, though I couldn't hear the specifics.

Something told me to spare Breenie from walking in on that, so I made a big production of waving vigorously as I spotted her and KK returning from their walk. My motion got the attention of the Hags and they changed faces immediately, greeting Breenie with ass-kissing enthusiasm. KK picked up some un-served fish and a split lobster and carried them to Jorge and Ray.

All full, everyone but Bo pulled beach chairs into a circle around the fire. KK sat near me but we didn't touch. Breenie removed her sunglasses and I saw her light-brown eyes for the first time. I realized she had more depth than the playgirl I had taken her for.

As well-kept and youthful looking as she was, her face looked like a married woman's face. There's a gravitas one acquires, an attitude one loses, when one sheds one's single status for the first time. Breenie had it.

Hag 1, or maybe it was Hag 2, seemed uncomfortable with silence, and kept it at arm's length by opining out loud in her nasal hag voice about how nice this was and wasn't it such a special spot and how we all should do a bonfire every night and other inane chatter. Even the other Hag stopped listening to her and after a while silence did descend over the scene.

The fire did its primeval job, drawing the stares of all gathered, as if our very brains were moths in the night.

The incandescent plasma swirled. Within the trance it induced in me, I saw Gord again, as Bo had seen him in his recollection:

As Bo's gaze had swiveled from Gord's shaving kit up to regard his face, Gord had stared disgruntledly back at Bo, who put his hands up, saying, "None of my business, man."

He had picked up the shaving kit and passed it to Gord, who zipped it briskly and growled, "Damn right."

I realized that Bo had seen but not recognized the label on a pharmacy bottle which had been in there among the Viagra and horny goat weed and the rest, but I did. In my mind's eye I could photographically see again what Bo had seen, and knew Gord was taking some kind of hormone too.

I looked up at the sky. The fire's brightness ruled out being able to see the Milky Way, but I could still see a stunning array of stars in the mid-ocean night, far from populations and their light pollution. I looked past the fire. Breenie, about a third of the way around the circle, turned her wedding ring around her finger as she stared into the fire, over and over.

I knew what I had to do.

SQUALLS

The next day, unsettled weather was forecast. Likelihood of abrupt, lightning-producing storm cells forming was high. Mark called off any shore trips. This basically meant an unexpected day off for me.

Before breakfast, I wandered in to the dive hold and shot the breeze with Bo.

Diving was Gord's favorite activity, and he came in to try to convince Bo to take him to a reef which wasn't far from the yacht's present anchorage and was well protected from the prevailing swell. Bo heard Gord out, listening to him argue that squalls wouldn't affect the underwater conditions. He wasn't wrong, but Bo ruled it out, since the tender would still be exposed to the risks on the surface.

Gord grumbled and rested a foot on the bulwark. "I guess I'll go back to bed then. Gotta watch the Aussies later on. 'Course they don't get up until our dinner time."

A major global sports network employed Gord as an analyst. He was very good, and even on sabbatical he would keep abreast of his areas of expertise, which I learned was the professional football leagues of the west Pacific.

I expressed interest to keep the conversation going. Gord was a rich television personality, but of quite a different class and caste than the other guests on the yacht. He was approachable and personable, which had a lot to do with why he was good at his job, besides his talents in the research department. Bo, Gord and I chit-chatted about the Australian and Kiwi teams and the tournament standings, and I picked up Gord's plans for the day's games on satellite downlink.

I had the when. Now for the where.

The crew mess had a row of video screens. When not playing entertainment like movies, concert videos or whatever else the crew might care to cue up in their off-duty hours from the ample multimedia library in the yacht's onboard data center, the screens displayed the output from the navigation and various telemetric systems. I kept an eye on the real-time radar to anticipate precipitation and squalls.

Since we couldn't plan an expedition in the tender, Mark asked me to come up with some activity for the day aboard the yacht so the guests wouldn't feel they weren't getting their money's worth. Or, Mr. Memling's money's worth, more like. All these guests were here on his dime. But their class and status convinced them all they were just as entitled as if the yacht and budget were theirs, so, we never slacked on the duties.

There were aerial drones and underwater ROV's available in the area I called toy shop, more formally known as the rec deck. This was just inboard of the yacht's port quarter where the tender could come and tie up alongside when the gullwing door was swung up and out. Behind a bulkhead, it contained the dive hold as well as lockers and racks for various kinds of watersports boards and other gear. A large hatch-style watertight door, complete with locking wheel, separated it from the docking platform.

Mark helped me haul the ROV and associated gear out there from the dive hold. We deployed the drone and its buoy over the side and Mark piloted it to keep station standing about twenty yards off, then he handed the controller to me. He spent fifteen minutes training me. It wasn't that different from operating an aerial drone, other than diving down rather than lifting off ready to send it off exploring. The tether involved some additional best-practices, but to a certain extent the management of it was automated, with the control buoy paying it out and reeling it in as necessary.

I shook my head, marveling again over the James Bond funding behind this whole scene. The villains in those movies were always fuck-you rich but still wanted to control the whole world.

We brought the ROV and its buoy on board again to top off the charge, and we repeated the exercise with a custom made aerial drone. It was larger and heavier than any I had experience with. There were six lift rotors, and an external microphone. I couldn't understand why, since the motors and fans had to be loud as hell in flight, but Mark smirked conspiratorially.

"It works when the drone's set down somewhere," he informed me.

Ahh. I got the picture.

Talk about spycraft.

He looked a little self-conscious and I wondered whose idea it had been to convince the purser to pay for this. I supposed Mr. Memling could be some voyeur with all the best special toys for his kink, but it seemed equally plausible that Mark himself might have made a proposal to order the custom drone, and worked this feature in to the spec.

I said, "Yeah, I get it! Like if you wanted to watch and listen to, I dunno, fuckin' sea lions or some shit. Just put'er down on some rock."

Mark's self-consciousness evaporated, and he nodded vigorously. "Yeah, exactly. Sea lions or some shit!"

A brief test flight later, I was oriented on the unit and we were ready to enter the activity into the yacht's digital calendar for the guests to review. We caught the tail end of breakfast in the crew mess, and I went topside to make myself available.

The reception to the day's activity was hit and miss. I tried to pitch it as an opportunity to see wildlife, especially to Gord and Breenie. It turned out Breenie wasn't a huge diving fan herself, and Gord waved me off, saying he needed to rest and it wouldn't be the same as being there, anyway.

Breenie's girlfriends kept quiet, waiting to figure out which cues to follow.

The daughter and daughter-in-law of the banking VP pointed to their spouses and talked about how those two would be tickled to play with these techie toys. The son and son-in-law grinned. They had been pegged accurately.

The banking exec seemed mildly interested. "Let me know if you spot anything interesting."

The legislator said he could review the recordings later if we caught something noteworthy on the remote cameras.

The legislator's escort-for-the-month snipped at me, accusing me of only thinking about the "boys" when developing the day's activities.

Breenie's hags glommed on to that and started simpering sympathetically with the escort. They glared at me, smug in having something to lord over the help.

Breenie pulled the rug out from under them. "What do you think we'll see, Jack?"

I had already noted down a list of underwater and airborne species which might be of interest and likely encountered with our gear. I said I had seen an octopus under the reef earlier and we could look there. We might encounter turtles practically anywhere at any time along the reef, and we could investigate a few frigatebird nests I suspected would be present on a nearby uninhabited micro-cay.

Breenie's friends shut themselves up.

The events went well. With Mark's help, I was able to slave a video display under the bar's canopy on the lido deck to the ROV's feed, and we did find a friendly turtle who kept the rover company for a little while. The octopus was out, but changed color rapidly and retreated into a crevice beneath the reef as the rover approached. We watched her extend a couple of arm tips as if tasting the water outside. I wondered if she was feeling the rover's vibrations in the water.

Mark and I put the rover away. We set up the aerial drone for the same video display, and I launched it. Unfortunately, we hadn't been watching the weather closely. Halfway to the little desert-island where I thought the nests would be, the wind shifted, the sky darkened abruptly, and in minutes a stiff and cool breeze drove rain pelting across the deck.

The gentlemen present asked the steward who was bartender there for something stronger, and she poured rums. The ladies present got kind of shrieky and complained of being cold. The rain very quickly became too much and almost everyone stood to dash to real cover, inside somewhere.

I of course had to retrieve the still-airborne drone. The wind was still veering. The shift was steady but rapid, and the wind force was becoming strong enough that I might very quickly find myself fighting against it fully in order to make headway back to the yacht.

I managed to get the drone quite close to the yacht before the wind veered in the perfect wrong direction to get it back. I couldn't take my eyes off the display on the controller, so I used the drone itself to eyeball the sky. I didn't like what I saw.

The camera's resolution was outstanding, but the screen was too small to appreciate the available detail. However, the squall line was developing so rapidly that I could see another storm cell which had boiled up from the sea. It was already merging with the one which was on top of Eurybia now. The combining cells would deliver both wild turbulence and enhanced wind force, and very soon from the looks of it.

My polo was rippling and snapping in the stiff wind, and even with my back to it, rain was getting in my face and showering the screen in a constant spatter.

I made the decision to try to get the drone down onto the yacht as quickly as possible, and not bother trying to catch it out of the air. There wasn't time for that kind of finesse.

I flew around the lee side of the bridge deck. The display canted crazily as the obstruction disrupted the wind direction. I charged toward the exterior bulkhead, fighting the wind to seek its shelter. I shed altitude as quickly as I dared, and the drone came down hard against a ventilation scoop on the coachroof of the premium cabins below.

This was good and bad. There was a small bulwark around this coachroof, so I felt confident that the drone wouldn't be blown over the side. On the other hand, I didn't know how to access the area to retrieve the drone.

I took a chance and shut off the lift motors. The drone seemed no less stable without them, so I took my eyes off the controller's screen and released my tense breath. "Whew."

It took me half an hour to figure out how to approach that area. The professional deck hands didn't want to talk to me about it because both the premium quarters area and the bridge deck itself were off limits to me. I had to get Mark to get the purser to call someone, and finally a bosun or watch leader talked to me about it.

Mark did manage to insist that I, as a steward on his team, was responsible for the handling of the drone, so, the bosun assigned a deck hand to chaperone me through the restricted areas. We reached a door at the aft area of the bridge deck, which let us out onto the coachroof of the VIP saloon and quarters below.

It was rather cool being allowed to walk through the bridge deck, though I didn't set foot onto the actual bridge. I looked into there as we passed a doorway, and I found it hard to believe this was someone's yacht and not a commercial or military vessel. I retrieved the drone and got accompanied back to an elevator which took me down to the rec deck.