Read Online Fire And Ice by Paul Garrison - Free Book Online Page A

Stone sheeted in the sail and altered course to cut it off.
    The loudspeaker boomed and crackled. The deck hands bent to their work, blinded by their own lights.
    "Help!"
    Stone yelled again and again, frantically waving his lights. The trawler passed close enough for him to hear the thunder of its engines. The wind whipped reeking diesel exhaust at him and suddenly backed the sail, flinging it across the canoe. Eyes locked on the fishing trawler, Michael Stone sensed the rush too late to duck. The wood boom struck him full in the temple.
    It knocked him to the floor of the canoe. A loud crunching sound resonated in his skull like breaking glass.
    He cried for help. He could only whisper. He tried to drag himself onto the outrigger deck, tried to stand, but he felt himself sliding down a slope of blood-red snow. The last thing he saw was the stern lights of the trawler, half a mile ahead and fading fast.

IN STONE'S DREAMS THE TRAWLER LIGHTS MINGLED WITH
    stars he saw from Veronica the nights he and Sarah made love on the cockpit cushions. As she leaned over him her dark body blotted out the stars until the sky was black and the sea empty again. He sat up—not knowing where he was—and saw the trawler lights converge with a blinking buoy.
    He sank back, on Veronica, under her, and when he rose again the buoy was gone, the trawler a distant speck against the rising sun. Sarah was under him now, giggling, teasing. A whisper of pleasure. Soft laughter. "I'll be right back. . . ." His face was burning, his head aching, lolling painfully with the lurch of the drifting canoe. He heard the sail slat, flap hard. He tried to shield his face, to move to secure the sheet. Nausea struck like a fist.
    A cool shadow crossed his face. He sensed the sail moving across the hot white sun. It passed and again he burned. He knew he should shield his face, find the old man's taro leaf shade, but he couldn't move.
    "I'm back. You fell asleep."
    "Did not."
    "I've ruined you." Laughing. "Is there no cure . . . ?" She descended dark over him and his heart swelled with love until he felt he would explode.
    Hull down on the horizon, beating to windward under clouds of white canvas, a giant, many-masted ship sailed a course straight at his canoe. An enormous slab-sided hull painted an unusual light sand color. As it closed rapidly, he recognized the Dallas Belle, rerigged as an enormous staysail schooner. She had a bone in her teeth and tore by, laying down a wake that nearly swamped him.
    Stone brought the canoe about and sailed after her.
    Sarah appeared on the stern, calling down to him, waving, smiling. Ronnie jumped up and down, laughing, beside her. She leaped onto a rope trailing into the water, slid down it, then froze, afraid to let go. "Let go!" Stone yelled. "Let go! I'll pick you up." Ronnie looked beseechingly up at the ship. "Mummy!" "Tell her to jump!" Stone yelled.
    "Tell her to let go. Both of you. Jump. Jump."
    Sarah climbed onto the bulwark and began removing her clothes, baring her breasts and her long, slim legs, waving to Stone. She poised to dive. A rush of figures appeared behind her, sailors who grabbed her legs, her body, and bore her down. Stone's canoe put on a burst of speed and he braced to jump and climb up the trailing rope. But the ship turned even closer to the wind and angled swiftly away. He awoke in the dark, worrying he was a terrible father. He teased and kidded Ronnie, trolling for laughs when he should give her more; it seemed he should talk to her more, and listen more, or he would end up the remote, dramatic figure his own father had been. He resolved to do better. But still he felt anxious. Veronica seemed to be bouncing unusually hard.
    His mouth was dry as sand, the pain in his head sharp—pulsing with each beat of his heart. Then, like a garbled radio signal suddenly clear, he recognized his first rational thought since the boom had hit him: he was dangerously dehydrated. According to his watch, he had