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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Horror Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Honorable Mention
eBook Description: In the aftermath of a hurricane, an ancient slave ship and its chained skeletal cargo lay marooned in St. Thomas's Charlotte Amalie harbor. Caught between visions of modern and traditional values, an aerospace engineer of mixed ethnicity joins the residents of the tiny island to restore the ship--and acknowledge the truth of their roots.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Whispers From the Cotton Tree Root: Caribbean Fabulist Fiction, ed. Nalo Hopkinson, 2000
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2002

527 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [25 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [31 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [10 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [54 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [11 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [62 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [82 KB] , hiebook (KML) [55 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [41 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [9 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [12 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [39 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [19 KB]
Words: 3203
Reading time: 9-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"In "Spurn Babylon," Tobias S. Buckell brings together the tragedy and hope of the present with the losses of the past and grants the protagonist a chance to bridge that gap. The unquestioning acceptance of the Charlotte Amalie residents embodies the strength and spirit of the people within Caribbean literature."--Lisa DuMond, SF Site Reviews

Easing back on the throttle of company's yellow Scarab powerboat, just clearing the rocky point of Hassel Island, I found myself stunned by the lack of yachts. Usually St. Thomas's Charlotte Amalie harbor was a forest of masts and a rainbow of hull colors. Now only two ships sat at anchor, looking lonely and out of place. The recent hurricane that had closed down the island's airport, forcing my company to send me here by boat rather than plane, had swept this anchorage clean.

Even more incredibly, a three-masted square-rigger lay lopsided on the waterfront's concrete shoreline.

"Where'd that come from," I wondered aloud.

I shook my head, wishing I had a camera.

It didn't seem like things were all that bad, I thought later, sipping a Red Stripe and relaxing underneath the flapping awning of the Greenhouse Restaurant. Even only two weeks after the worst hurricane in the Virgin Island's recorded history, things looked okay. Maybe even 'irie,' as my supervisor seemed to glory in saying, trying to imitate local dialect. I distantly understood that half the houses on the island were uninhabitable, and I could smell seaweed no matter where I walked. But these islands were well known for recovering quickly.

I let the condensation roll off the side of the brown bottle and down the back of my hand, a cold contrast to the heat shimmering off of the concrete all around me. In the distance a generator hummed, keeping even more beer cold. Life went on.

"Evening," someone said.

J. Ottley sat down into the seat across from me. The plastic hinges squeaked. He removed a well-worn straw hat and set it on the table. His long sleeved shirt was soaked under the armpits. He ran the St. Thomas cell of B.E. aerospace division, one of three sections.

"Evening to you." I replied, handing Ottley the keys to the Scarab. Sombrero Island held our main launch pad complex, weathering the storm with minimal damage. St. Croix supported additional docking and shipping facilities for our sea-launch sections and shipping for the launch complex. St. Thomas housed even more shipping facilities. I'd spent the last week running around St. Croix helping rebuild damage to the sterile clean-rooms that prepared satellites for launch. Cutting edge. Now it was time to check in and make sure our warehouses here in St. Thomas were okay. "Ottley, what is that?" I pointed at the ship across the street from us. Now I could see a thick patina of silt hung to its sides.

Two brown skinned men with dreadlocks and baggy grey trousers stood around, poking at the hull. A few uniformed students in red trousers and white shirts from the local public school had climbed aboard. They hung from the long wooden pole that stuck out of the front of the boat. The bowsprit, I think it would be called. The topsides seemed about seventy feet long. It looked just like my mental image of a traditional old wooden ship.

"An old ship," Ottley said. "Very old. From under the sea."

And that was all he would say. He gave me folders with pictures of the damage taken to our warehouses. Roofs ripped off, boosters inside damaged. There was water damage to a few satellites.

Yet my eye kept wandering from the pictures of fractured composites to the silhouette just on the edge of my vision.

A waterspout spawned by the recent hurricane must have sucked the ancient wooden ship up from the silted bottom of Charlotte Amalie harbor. And then set it next to the asphalt road in a pool of stagnant seawater and gray harbor mud. But even as I tried to envision that I struggled. There should be more damage. What strange force had preserved it from decay?