The Canary Clause

More about The Canary Clause

In dreams, pirates cannot use Uber.

This was not a matter of policy, customer ratings, or the difficulty of entering a ship’s name into the destination field. The prohibition was older than the app and had been written into the Maritime Transportation Act of 1847, subsection nine, paragraph C:

NO PERSON ENGAGED IN PIRACY, PRIVATEERING, OR RELATED DREAM ACTIVITY MAY SOLICIT A RIDE THROUGH A DIGITAL PLATFORM.

The penalty was three years in a lighthouse, or until the dreamer woke up, whichever came first.

The pirate queen of Mars knew this because she had once tried.

She had been standing outside a supermarket in a raincoat, holding a bag of oranges and a stolen compass. Her spacecraft was in the umbrella man’s garden, where it had become a flowerpot again. The imperial fleet had sent a second message through the toaster, this one less formal and more threatening.

She opened the Uber app.

The screen went black.

A small legal clerk appeared in it, wearing a powdered wig and carrying a stamp.

“Are you engaged in piracy?” he asked.

“Not currently.”

“Have you ever been engaged in piracy?”

She thought of seventy moons, three captured admirals, and the refrigerator she had mistaken for a fleet.

“Yes.”

The clerk stamped the screen.

“Then you are prohibited from using Uber in dreams.”

She woke in the umbrella man’s kitchen with the phone in her hand and the orange beside her.

The umbrella man was asleep in the next room. Rain tapped the window. The geranium leaned toward the gray morning as if listening for instructions.

She needed to reach the harbor.

The harbor was where the treasure waited.

She had learned this from a dream she could not remember having. It had left behind only three facts: the treasure was waiting, the harbor was very far away, and the correct transportation involved a gigantic canary.

She found the melody in the back of her throat.

It was not a song exactly. It was a sequence of notes used by Martian pirates when summoning birds large enough to carry a crew, a cannon, and occasionally a small moon. The melody had been forbidden on Mars after an incident involving the royal aviary and a wedding.

She hummed the first note.

The refrigerator trembled.

She hummed the second.

The geranium dropped a leaf.

She hummed the third.

Every umbrella in the shop opened at once.

The umbrella man came running in.

“What’s happening?”

“Transportation.”

“Should I call someone?”

“Not Uber.”

The roof lifted off the house.

A yellow eye appeared above it, followed by a beak the size of a lifeboat. The canary descended through the rain, enormous and bright, with feathers that smelled faintly of toast.

It landed in the garden.

The geranium applauded by losing another leaf.

The pirate queen climbed onto the canary’s back. She wore her raincoat, her turquoise headdress, and the expression of someone who had finally remembered where she had left something important.

The umbrella man stood below.

“Will you be back?” he asked.

“Probably.”

“Do you need anything?”

She looked at the orange in her hand.

“No.”

The canary rose.

They passed over the supermarket, the railway station, and a field where three cows looked up without surprise. The city became a collection of wet roofs. The sea opened beneath them, dark and shining.

At the harbor, a ship waited without a crew.

It was made of black wood and old dreams. Its sails were folded. Its flag showed a skull wearing a raincoat.

The canary landed on the mast.

The pirate queen climbed down.

On the deck stood a locked chest.

She opened it with the compass.

Inside was a map, a silver key, and a note written in the umbrella man’s handwriting.

COME HOME BEFORE THE TEA GETS COLD.

She read it twice.

Then she looked at the treasure.

It was not gold. It was a small blue planet, warm in her hands, with one green garden and a house beside a kitchen window.

The canary tilted its head.

The pirate queen put the planet in her coat pocket.

“Take me back,” she said.

The canary sang.

Far below, the harbor disappeared.

In dreams, pirates cannot use Uber.

But if they know the right melody, they can always find their way home.