Finally the fo’c’sle door opened and Otto came back, without the box. Where was it? Overboard?
It was after two o’clock in the morning, the time when imagination is most likely to run wild. Zlatovica had Soviet silos with nuclear weapons. Suzy’s precious Ned was concerned about the disposal of such weapons.
I knew what I was thinking was crazy, but I still thought it. No, Vicky. Nobody with any intelligence would travel with radioactive material unless it was properly protected from any kind of leakage, and Otto was certainly intelligent.
But what was in the box?
Several people on the Argosy had talked about the danger of disposing of nuclear waste in Antarctica. But what about the Antarctic Ocean?
All these thoughts darted through my mind in the time it took Otto to cross the lounge and go into his cabin. I heard him turn the lock on his door. I listened. Heard only the creaking of the ship moving through the waters. Then I heard a loud sound and finally understood that this time it was the ship’s hull hitting an ice floe, not Otto coming out of his cabin. Slowly and carefully I stood up. Then I moved as quickly and quietly as possible across the lounge and down to my cabin. Closed the door slowly and carefully so it wouldn’t make a noise.
I was sure I wouldn’t sleep, but I did.
In the morning we anchored off Half Moon Island and got into Zodiacs immediately after breakfast. Otto was in the Zodiac which followed mine, and he hurried over to walk with me, and suddenly there was Benjy on my other side.
Otto was talking about his need to finish his studies, probably back in England, but he wasn’t going to be able to until newly independent Zlatovica was more stable. I was only half listening, because all I could think of was the night before.
Benjy picked up on what Otto was saying. “And this trip? How is it that you have time for Antarctica?”
Otto laughed openly, merrily. “It seemed wise for me to leave Zlatovica for a few weeks. Some of my ideas for educational reform did not sit well with my conservative uncle, who is one of our chief ministers. And my father wanted me to look for options for energy, always a problem in a small, emerging country. But mostly it seemed the better part of valor to make myself scarce until tempers cooled.” He took my arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “This, too, is true.”
My green-booted foot slipped on a round stone and both Benjy and Otto steadied me. Others joined us as we came to a large group of penguins, but Benjy was talking to Otto about alternate sources of power. “The sun has all the power we need, and when the technology is worked out, it will be available to us without any drain on the sun itself.”
“Ideal,” Otto agreed. “The sun is a massive atomic furnace, and if we could simply pick up what it discards every day, we’d have enough energy for the entire planet.”
Benjy sounded suddenly severe. “No matter what happens to the earth’s energy sources, there’s no need to draw on Antarctica.”
“Quite,” Otto agreed. And then other people began to ask questions, about solar energy, about penguins, about what we were going to do after dinner.
When we got back to the ship, I’d hardly changed out of my boots when the ding-dong sounded and Todd’s excited voice told us that there were three humpback whales ahead of us to starboard. I rushed out to the fo’c’sle, and so did almost everybody else. It was awesome, watching those huge bodies swimming alongside the ship, coming all the way up to whoosh through their blowholes, going under, then rising slowly until they were grey shadows under the water, then rising to whoosh again. They were so enormous and so marvelous that they took my mind off all my questions. Most people had cameras out, including Jorge with his enormous Hasselblad, and Jack with a cardboard throwaway camera.
Benjy and Todd were working with an underwater recorder which played humpback-whale music, hoping these whales would hear it and sing for us, but they didn’t. I’ve heard recordings of whale song, and it’s strange and wonderful, and Siri told me of the work of the composer Alan Hovhaness, who was one of the first music writers to use actual whale song in an orchestral composition. That gave me an idea of something to get Mother for her birthday.
The whales stayed with us for over an hour, though it seemed much less. Todd once again asked people to get as many pictures as possible of their flukes, but the whales apparently did not feel like fluking, for every time we thought they were going to dive and show us their flukes they just went under, and Todd and Benjy groaned, and then cajoled, “Come on, whales, come on! Aw, come on! Be good whales! Come fluke for us!”
It really seemed as though these great creatures were teasing us, because there’d be shouts that they were about to fluke, and groans as they dropped down under the water again. Benjy and Todd looked both disappointed and frustrated, and finally, when we’d all about given up, Benjy yelled “Hey!” and suddenly, as a goodbye present, the whales fluked their great glorious tails for us. All kinds of cameras went off, taking as many shots as possible before the whales disappeared. And I felt the same surge of joy I had felt when Siri first played for the penguins.
In the early afternoon we took the Zodiacs to Hannah Point on Livingston Island. Siri and Sam were in the Zodiac with me, and Benjy was at the outboard. Otto was in the Zodiac ahead of us with Jorge and Jack, big Jack standing out as usual, with his cowboy hat making him a head higher than anybody else.
On Hannah Point we saw our first elephant seals—blubber slugs, Benjy called them. They were enormous creatures, lying together in a great, shapeless pile, with steam rising up from their massive bodies. They weren’t as big as the elephants they were named for, of course, or they couldn’t have moved their great bulks about on land. Even so, they were cumbersome and clumsy. Otto came over to me and pointed, and we watched one great wrinkled body heave itself up and struggle over several prone seals who just happened to be in its path, before flopping down again. And they did smell.
Otto put his arm about me.
Otto, Otto. What were you doing last night?
I said, lightly, “I don’t think the elephant seals are much of a threat, not unless we get in their path when they want to move somewhere.”
Were there other nights, too, when I was asleep and Otto slipped out of his cabin and threw cases overboard? Cases of what?
Sam joined us, saying, “Unlike some seals, leopard seals, for instance, elephant seals don’t eat penguins.” The beach was full of penguins waddling about, ignoring the seals.
“Chinstraps and gentoos,” Otto said. “Look. The chinstrap has a black line under its jaw, and pale pink feet.”
“Um.” Sam nodded. “And the gentoo has a red bill and red feet.”
If I thought about penguins, I forgot to worry. We climbed a steep, stony hill to see hundreds more, including one lonely macaroni penguin with a funny little topknot on its head. Benjy said that it was like the hairdo of dandies at the time of the American Revolution, and in “Yankee-Doodle Dandy” the “put a feather in your cap and call it macaroni” was a sort of slap at the colonial dandies. “The penguins aren’t particularly dandy,” he said. He looked at the funny little macaroni and said probably it didn’t lay its egg in time, and wouldn’t be able to complete raising its chick. There’s a lot of infant mortality.
I turned away from Otto, and Benjy was pointing out nesting petrels and gulls on a ledge above us. I felt irrationally sad. And uneasy.
Siri had left the group and gone back down to the beach with her harp. I said, “Siri’s getting her harp out of its case. I’m going down.”
“Okay,” Benjy said. “Take care.”
Otto said, “I can take care of Vicky.”
Sam hooked his arm into mine. “Vicky and Otto will take care of me.”
Together we went down the slippery mountainside. Sam slowed us. “Creaky knees. Thanks for your help.”
Siri was already singing when we reached the beach, an old ballad, “I wonder as I wander,” and several penguins were clustering about her. As far as I could tell, the se
als were paying no attention to the music, but maybe seals are less sensitive to music than penguins are. Elephant seals do look like enormous blobs of protoplasm.
Three of the penguins began to chitter, and maybe I was being anthropomorphic or something, but I was sure they were trying to sing along with Siri. I looked around for Benjy. He was still standing up on top of the cliff, slightly apart from the rest of the group, looking down on us.
Icebergs. Ice floes. Sleeping seals. Sunlight flashing off ice, touching and deepening the amazing blue of the bergs. I sat on the side of my bunk and wrote a sort of song:
I’ve made myself vulnerable,
I’ve let myself care.
I’ve opened my firmly closed heart.
My safety is gone,
It’s no longer there,
My protection is falling apart.
Nobody promised
Our hearts would be safe
Or our bodies protected from harm.
A moment can change
All we think that we have,
But still we must welcome the storm.
I wasn’t sure about welcoming the storm. Maybe it should be something like “strongly” or “staunchly we’ll weather the storm.” I’d have to brood on it, so I left it for a while. I’m getting braver about poetry. I wrote some more in my letter to Aunt Serena, then copied the poem for Siri, finally writing the last line as “Hope will endure through the storm,” and slid it under the door of her cabin. I was learning a lot from penguins.
I was nervous and restless. Part of me felt I was making much ado about nothing (Shakespeare again), and part of me felt I wasn’t taking all the accumulating warnings seriously enough.
I went to the lounge, but for once nobody was there, so I opened the door to the fo’c’sle. It, too, was empty. I wanted to be alone with the wind and water. I leaned on the rail and looked at the horizon. The sky was grey, the water even greyer, but sunlight still seemed to reach the white of icebergs, to touch their incredible blue. I heard the door from the lounge to the fo’c’sle open, and backed away from the rail until I could see who it was. In our winter clothing and bulky red parkas, we all looked pretty much alike, male and female. It was Leilia. Not Otto. I was glad it was Leilia; she exuded practicality and solidity and, yes, trustworthiness. We used to use that word when I went to Scout camp. You don’t hear it much anymore.
Leilia came and stood by me. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “It’s so beautiful I can’t even begin to describe it.”
“Interesting group on this trip,” Leilia said. “Not that I’m surprised, because Antarctica tends to draw interesting people. But we’re all rather old for you, even Otto, who bears the burden of being a prince fairly heavily despite his seeming lightheartedness.”
I watched a seal on an ice floe to starboard, so close I could see his whiskers. “I guess I think princes should take their jobs seriously.”
“Has he shown you the snapshot of his fairy-tale castle?”
I nodded. “Right out of the Brothers Grimm.”
Leilia laughed. “Sometimes the Brothers Grimm can be pretty grim.”
The door opened and Jack Nessinger came out. The wind almost took his cowboy hat, but he grabbed it before it blew overboard. “Hey, ladies. Looking for whales?”
“Haven’t seen any,” Leilia said. “I just like it out here.”
“Me, too. But it’s too cold for me today. My Texas blood is thin. See you gals later.”
Leilia and I stood looking at the majesty of the icebergs for a few minutes longer. Then she turned to go in. “See you at Wrap-Up.”
“Sure.”
As she opened the door to the lounge, a couple of other people came out. It was Benjy in his tan parka, and Siri in her regulation red one. They walked over to me and Siri said, “Thanks for the poem, Vicky.”
“I know it’s not terrific,” I said hastily.
“I’m not sure about it as poetry,” she said, “although I like it. I needed to hear what it said.” She smiled at me.
There was a silence as we looked at one especially magnificent iceberg, with turrets and towers and sworls and incredible coloring. Then Benjy said, “Vicky, I think you need to trust us enough to talk to us.” I looked at him. Nodded. He continued, “Cookie told me what happened, or nearly happened, at the pyramids in Vespugia. He showed me his peculiar postcard from your friend Adam, and told me about yours.”
“What about the warnings in my locker at school?”
“Incomprehensible,” Benjy said. “Is there anything else we ought to know?”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I told them about finding Esteban’s card on the floor.
“What else? There’s something more on your mind.”
I told them about Otto and the night before.
Benjy leaned his elbows on the rail, whistling softly between his teeth. “He didn’t see you?”
“No.”
“Got any theories?”
I said bluntly, in order to sound neither tentative nor hysterical, “I think it’s all about dismantling and disposing of nuclear warheads.”
Benjy said, “That’s a horrendous, universal problem. What’s it got to do with all this?”
I asked, “What was Otto dumping last night?”
“Hey, wait a minute,” Benjy protested. “You can’t believe Otto was carrying anything radioactive aboard the Argosy.”
“Why not? It could have been shielded in lead or whatever.”
“Vicky, sweetie, you’re crazy.”
I said, stubbornly, “Siri, you said Generalissimo Guedder has a case of missile envy.”
“Sure, but—”
“So he needs uranium.”
Benjy demanded, “Do you realize how heavily that stuff has to be shielded?”
“I think so.”
“After Chernobyl, some workers went in on what was a suicide mission, and they were dead in a few days. You can’t take uranium or plutonium and forget it’s lethally radioactive.”
“I know that. But bombs are being dismantled and …”
Benjy turned and flung up his hands. “Vicky. Yes. And no. I mean, it’s an unsolved problem, and Antarctica has been discussed as a possible place for disposal, and it’s being fought. The thought alone is intolerable. It could have disastrous consequences. But even if some country broke all the treaties and tried to get nuclear waste to Antarctica, it couldn’t be done on a small ship like the Argosy.”
“Okay, but—” Now I was formulating thoughts that had been below the surface. “If Vespugia wanted to make a nuclear warhead, and didn’t have any uranium, then, if they had a lot of money, they might try to buy it from another country …”
Benjy looked at me with his intense stare. “Are you planning on being a novelist?”
“There are worse things to be.” I glowered at him.
“Hey, relax. Sorry, Vicky. I’m a simple guy and I know a lot about penguins and not much about politics. I want to keep Antarctica an international zone free from greed and corruption and power games. I realize that makes me as naïve as—”
Siri said, “As me. I’m naïve, too, and it’s not a good thing to be in this wicked world. Something’s going on around us on this trip. Vicky blundered into it at the pyramids. Sam was with her when she nearly fell, and he takes it seriously.”
“Okay, okay,” Benjy said hastily, “so do I. Listen, it’s almost time for Wrap-Up and I’ve got to get in and confer with Quim about plans for tomorrow. Since our suspicions don’t add up to anything tangible, let’s keep them to ourselves, okay?”
“Sure.”
“See you both in a few minutes.”
“Sure,” I repeated.
Siri looked at me with a slight smile as the door closed behind Benjy. “Vicky, sweetie, handing over a nuclear device from one country to another, more than half a planet apart, is just about impossible.”
“Okay.” I pulled my parka hood more tightly around
my face. “I know I’m no scientist.”
“I am a scientist. I’m trying to look at all the elements of this puzzle, and I have to admit I can’t make any sense of any of it. What do you suppose Otto was doing last night?”
I shook my head.
Siri shook hers. “What bothers me is that it does seem you have been given warnings, and I can’t see you as any kind of threat to anybody.”
“Neither can I.”
“Since my marriage busted up, I’ve tended to keep my head buried in the sand, and refused to be involved with anybody or anything. Not good. Thanks again for your poem. It really hit me. I think you’re right about being vulnerable. If we can’t be hurt, we might as well be dead. It’s a good poem.”
“Thanks, Siri. Thanks a lot. We’ve talked about Aunt Serena—who gave me this trip—”
“Yes. She sounds marvelous.”
“She told me about penguins being communal creatures, but never intimate.”
“Yes. Benjy talks about that in one of his lectures.”
“But we’re human. We can’t be like that.”
“We can try.” Siri’s voice was low. “As part of a university community, I’ve been almost as communal as a penguin. But I forbade any more intimacy after getting my heart smashed.”
“Are you feeling vulnerable again?” I asked.
She nodded.
After I’d spoken to Benjy and Siri I realized that my suspicions were crazy, just as Benjy had said. There was no way Otto could have had nuclear warheads, mantled or dismantled, in his wooden boxes. But something was in them. Something he went out on deck with, and came back without.
Zlatovica had warheads it desperately wanted to get rid of. Zlatovica, via Prince Otto, would be glad to sell them. But who had the money? And how would they dispose of them?
After dinner there was going to be a movie about whales. While I was finishing my meal, Sam looked at me. “Do you want dessert, Vicky?”
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