Read Online Evolution of Fear by Paul E. Hardisty - Free Book Online

sturdy, unworried in the rising wind, a streaming wake emerging from her stern and swirling out across the rippling surface. Low clouds scuttled in from the west, heavy with moisture, an Atlantic distillation, one part water, three parts pure energy, dew point and latent heat ready to collide in the dark boiling hammerheads massing on the horizon.
    â€˜Wait till the storm blows through,’ said Punk between clenched teeth, straining at the oars. ‘You’d be a nutter to go out in this, unfamiliar boat and all.’
    Clay looked past him, out towards the ketch and the headlands to the battlefield of the horizon. ‘If you had a chance to go back and do it over, would you?’
    Punk looked him in the eyes, slowed for a moment, then dug the oars in and pulled hard. ‘Not a day I don’t think about it,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Not a day.’
    Clay nodded, realising that he would never see this man again, never call him friend, never hear the stories of his life, the choices, the history, the losses and victories. Such isolation. We’re not islands, he thought. We’re fucking comets, hurtling through space, trailing the fiery plasma of our own destruction, at the mercy of our own fearful wanderings, ephemeral homeless visitors. And there, moving closer, was the vehicle of his peregrination. Saint Exupéry had itright, disappearing in his P38 over the Med, burning up in his own fiery chunk of the cosmos.
    â€˜She’s called Flame ,’ said Punk as they drew alongside. ‘Named her after Negley Farson’s boat. Heard of him?’
    Clay shook his head, no.
    â€˜ The Way of a Transgressor . Great book. You’d like it. There’s a copy on board, I think.’
    Clay grabbed the toe rail, pulled them close. Her hull was wood; the decking, cabin, cockpit, all made of gleaming, cared-for teak.
    â€˜She was built in Bombay in 1965,’ said Punk. ‘The hull is one-and-a-quarter-inch planking all around, two-by-three-inch frames every fourteen inches. All teak. You could run a Centurion tank over her, wouldn’t bother her in the slightest. Ever sailed a ketch?’
    Clay shook his head. His sailing experience had come as a boy, summers off Durban with his mother’s brother, a keen ocean racer. He’d crewed several races, learned a lot. On his last leave before jump school he had raced from Durban to Cape Town with his uncle. That was the last time he’d sailed.
    â€˜The mizzen is a treat, once you know how to use it, especially in rough weather. Experiment with it, you’ll figure it out.’
    Clay tied off the dinghy’s bow line and climbed aboard. The cockpit was small, functional. The decking gleamed in the flat light, the fittings looked as if they had been polished only hours ago. This boat was loved, adored.
    Punk hoisted himself aboard, swung his leg over the lifeline, whispering something to himself, or was it to this object of his affection? A lover’s greeting, an invocation. Punk unlocked the main hatch, slid open the gangway cover and ushered Clay below.
    It was like stepping inside a museum, a shrine to nautical tradition. Oiled teak, brass Clay could see himself in, his face warped and disfigured, copper. Heavy brass instruments adorned the bulkhead panelling, a ship’s chronometer running to time, a thermometer, an elegant barometer that read one thousand and one millibars. Bookslined both sides of the cabin behind teak rails. A fully equipped galley, navigation station with new electronics. It was all here.
    Clay stood for a moment and listened to the water rippling against the hull, surrounding him, amniotic. He felt like an intruder, being shown things he should not see, Gyges hiding in the shadows, watching Candaules’ queen undressing, the thin silk of her dress falling across her breasts and over her round hips, pillowing to the floor, Punk the proud, soon-to-be-murdered king. A shiver ran