by Sage Walker
“She gets so distracted, sometimes.”
And Janine loved her. With all of Janine’s searching for the perfect man she kept telling Signy she would find, someday, her absolute conviction that somewhere there existed a master of more than one kind of heavy machinery, and he was, of course, looking for a Janine to make him happy—Janine loved Pilar. And Pilar knew it and Janine didn’t know it and that’s just how things were, sometimes. And me, I confuse possession with love and Jared knows it and laughs, because that’s how he is.
“Pilar’s oblivious, Janine. Just go in and pick up your portables. They’ll never notice. Are you taking your toothbrush?”
Janine, sitting cross-legged, leaned forward, unzipped the carry-on, and looked inside. “Damn,” she said.
“You can get one in Lisbon, I’m sure.”
But Janine was already out the door and marching down the hall, chanting, “shampoo, razor, moisturizer, hairbrush,” like a distracted robot.
TWELVE
The white-noise irritant of the rotors seeped through his padded headphones, a pervasive hypnotic hum. Jared’s companions lapsed into silence. Anna slept. Campbell watched the bulkheads as if they were scribed with some arcane message.
Jared startled awake at a change in the rotor’s pitch and knew he’d been drowsing in Stage One sleep. If someone had asked him, Jared would have said he wasn’t sleeping at all.
A slight g-shift signaled descent. Anna woke on the instant, woke as a cat wakes, alert in one blink. The cabin tilted down and left. Jared saw a slice of horizon and a black outline of a ship, the Kasumi, a trawler. Outsized winches at her stern loomed above a slick curved ramp that led into a sheltered enclosure. The pilot lined up the helo to match the deck’s angle, diving for the deck at a speed that would have made Janine wince. Beyond the blocky silhouette of Trent’s shoulders, winches, rotating dish antennae, and ice-coated ladders rose and fell as if they were attached to a roller coaster.
“They don’t seem to be in a flap,” Trent said. “One sub is in her berth.”
“Where?” Jared asked.
“You can’t see her. She’s behind those aft doors.”
The ship lurched over a swell. On deck, a crewman signaled with flourescent orange paddles, and Uchida brought the helo down, mating its computer to the landing indicators on the deck, so that they matched the ship’s tilt and came down with a barest hiss of skids on the exact, precise center of the landing pad’s X.
“The computer scores again,” Trent said.
“Only when you know how to use it,” Uchida said.
Trent grinned as he climbed out. He pulled his lips closed over his teeth when he hit the outside air. Icy wind swirled into the open door and they hustled out of the helo, single-filing toward the crewman’s beckoning motions; this way, this way, toward a sealed hatch. Jared’s bare fingers went numb in an instant, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, deep against wadded gloves that were a reminder of carelessness. Anna, last in line, carried the crash cart. Both of her gloved hands were locked on its handle to support the weight. I should have carried it, Jared thought. But she was last out; taking it would have slowed us down. She can handle it.
The crewman closed the hatch behind Anna. Gusts of frigid air swirled inside the passageway and competed with eddies of warmth that struck Jared’s face and neck like blows. The passageway was narrow, with beige tile floors and scuffed tan paint on the bulkheads. Rows of fluorescent lights made the place look as bleak as a school hallway.
A ship’s officer waited well beyond the range of the cold air that came in with their arrival. Short, Japanese, in padded black coveralls with gold stripes on the cuffs, he seemed as still as a mannequin. Uchida bowed to him and he came to life and bowed in return. He and Uchida spat rapid bursts of Japanese at each other. A complex of smells floated in the warm moist air; brine, a trace of a floral disinfectant, wet wool. Jared’s nose began to run and he sniffed.
Anna put the crash kit down on the dull scoured tile. Her olive skin looked green in the fluorescent lighting; her face was expressionless. Jared backed away from the interchange of incomphrensible greetings. Anna shrugged her shoulders and rolled her head back on her neck, stretching out her muscles. Jared, on a guess, switched his skinthin controls to the same frequency the Siranui used. Maybe somebody could pick up the signals.
“What’s going on?” Jared asked Anna.
“The sub is not here.” Anna kept her eyes on the interchange and interspersed her comments sotto voce into the flow of Japanese. “The sub is fine. The Gojiro’s crew is wondering why the hell their support ship took off ten kilometers in the wrong direction. They will surface and wait for the Kasumi to return to them. They want their supper and it will be late.”
A not-so-missing sub, a rescue call that didn’t need to happen. This sort of glitch did not compute. What did compute was that Jared felt singled out, cut from the pack, isolated. Or maybe Campbell was the object of all this. Or Campbell had arranged this little side trip, so he could play with new toys. Or, more likely, Jared told himself, he was imagining trouble where there wasn’t any.
The officer stood on tiptoe to see past Trent’s and Campbell’s shoulders, the motion of a man trying to watch a parade. “Dr. Balchen?” he asked.
“Yes?”
Campbell and Trent moved aside for him, shifting positions in the narrow passageway. Trent’s beard had frosted on the journey across the deck, and he swiped beads of moisture away from his mustache with a practiced, seemingly automatic motion.
“I am Captain Ito. We have no emergency, it seems. We are very sorry.”
Now what, Jared wondered, do I say to that? That I am disappointed that there are no nice messy wounds for me to treat?
Signy? Paul? Anybody home? The listener telltale on his wrist was blank. “I’m glad no one is hurt,” Jared said.
“An unusual problem with the ship’s electronics.” Ito kept his eyes at the level of Jared’s collar. Black, black eyes that seemed to have no pupils, and that, Jared thought, is what we once called “inscrutable.” Captain Ito had a sprinkling of gray hairs above his ears. “We received the wrong coordinates for the sub’s location, and a clear distress signal. The sonar also.”
The sonar also what? And someone “inscrutable” wouldn’t tell a stranger this right off the bat. But I’m crew, Jared remembered. That’s why I’m here.
“We are investigating our systems. This will be settled very soon.”
“Glitches happen,” Jared said. Glitches happen and the last one had scared the hell out of Signy. That business with the hand had spooked her, and that, Paul had said, was something in the Siranui’s system. He wished that Signy were on-line right now. She wasn’t. Jared wanted company. He looked behind him, searching for Anna. She emerged from a door marked HEAD and took up her post by the crash kit.
“You may return to the Siranui, of course,” Captain Ito said. “But if you stayed with us, we could arrange routine exams for our crew in the morning. This would save a trip to the Siranui for them. If this is convenient for you.”
Ask the real boss, Jared figured. The real boss of any sick bay is always the corpsman. Medics come and go, corpsmen run the show. “Anna?” Jared asked.
“If we clear with Siranui, I don’t see a problem. Samuelson’s the corpsman here, when he isn’t fishing. He can walk you through sick bay; he’s good help. I’ll go back, of course.”
“Fine, then,” Jared said.
Ito bowed, a quick duck of his head. Jared copied the motion, aware that the rituals and courtesies of how far to bend were mysteries to him, and sources of amused tolerance or irritation to bystanders. Did he outrank this man or was he subordinate? Where did medics belong in this little ship’s hierarchy?
“This way, then,” Ito said. “We will call.” He led them forward and up a ladder to the bridge, a glassed-in bubble crowded with monitors and displays. Matte black cabinetry circled the space. It looked like an air-traffic control room, not a ship’s bridge.
A ship’s wheel was conspicuously absent. Joystick controls, maybe. An Asian woman, thick-waisted in her tight black coverall, sat in a swivel chair. She smiled as the group entered.
The sea outside was the color of watered grape juice. The woman’s white teeth looked purple in the deep twilight. A full moon, too big, and squashed from top to bottom like an imperfect melon, hung low on the horizon. It looked dusty and dry. Close by, a small island with a black line of beach seemed to float in the sea, a tethered iceberg of an island. Pale boulders littered the shoreline. One of them shifted and became the snaky-necked silhouette of a huge elephant seal.
Ito spoke to the woman and she nodded and chattered into a mike.
Depth gauges, a pinging sonar, graphics of the seafloor—Jared recognized some displays. An arc traced through afterimages on one screen, scribed out amoeboid shapes that Jared figured might be schools of fish. Behind his ear, welcome as rain, he heard the tiny beep of someone calling in.
“Where the fuck are you?” Paul asked.
“Hello, Paul,” Jared whispered, “I’m glad you’re awake,” while he triple-tapped his wrist to signal that he couldn’t talk here.
“The Siranui approves your stay,” Ito said. He looked at the pilot and Uchida straightened into a parade-rest stance, his hands behind his back.
Uchida smiled, bowed, and turned for the ladder, Trent and Anna close behind him.
“Mr. Campbell,” Captain Ito said, “we hear that you have interest in our subs. We are glad that you will not increase your knowledge of escape techniques today.”
“So am I,” Campbell said.
“I have no one free to act as your guide on this watch, many apologies. Until then, gentlemen, please observe what you like. If you will not be offended at the lack of an escort, of course.”
“Not at all,” Jared said. “Thank you.” And realized, as he spoke, that he was answering for Campbell as well. Campbell did not seem offended.
“When you are ready to see your quarters, please return to the bridge. Someone will escort you at that time.” Ito’s attention was on one of the monitor screens. The Asian woman tapped at a keyboard as she watched the screen’s display.
Jared smiled, said thanks, and ducked at speed down the ladder. He caught sight of Trent and Uchida on their way down the passageway, and Anna’s departing back, her solid strides closing the distance to the men. Uchida and Trent seemed in haste to return. Jared caught Anna’s arm and reached for the crash kit’s handle, its weight heavy against his palm. “Is this really okay with you?” he asked.
“Sure.” She smiled. Something in her smile, the lift of her head, was so like Susan. Susanna, who had hiked alone into Yellowknife in the rain, who had left her boyfriend on the trail after an argument about cooking. She never wanted to see him again. Susanna’s laugh had disarmed him, and her blunt honesty. She had been too young, but persistent. They had shared a quick affair of instant chemistry. Well, Mark would take good care of her.
Anna’s eyes stayed on the flecked tile of the passageway. “I’ll take sick call in the morning,” she said. “And if you’re needed, someone will come and get you.”
Trent and Uchida fiddled with parkas and gloves. Trent stopped near the hatch and looked back at Anna. She pulled up her parka hood and reached for the case.
“I’ll bring it out,” Jared said. And tomorrow when I get back, I’ll go through what’s in here and toss out half of it. This sucker is overloaded.
“No need,” Anna said. Trent spun the wheel to open the hatch, and Uchida ducked into the wall of impossibly cold air. Anna followed him, murmuring something toward Trent that made him laugh, a laugh that cut short as the hatch closed behind them. I could learn to miss Anna, Jared thought. When I get back, I’ll see if I’m reading her signals right. Signy won’t mind if we have a little friendly sex. Signy won’t mind at all.
Enclosed in metal, Jared stared at the hatch and suddenly missed windows, windows that opened. Someone had scratched “E. I.” in the gray enamel of the metal door. He found himself halfway down the corridor, seeking the warmth of the ship’s belly in unconscious tropism. Campbell came down the ladder from the bridge. He nodded toward Jared, but he looked at each landmark in the passageway: hatches, red-enameled fire extinguishers in their glass-fronted cases, the locations of handholds. As if he memorized the ship’s interior, its possible dangers and routes of escape. The two of them were alone in the passageway. Jared heard Paul’s voice, patched through the ship’s system to his ear speaker.
“Signy’s asleep,” Paul said. “Janine’s en route to Kobe. Can you talk yet?”
Jared tapped his wrist, and Campbell’s eyes noticed the gesture, a lift of eyebrows, no questions.
Jared felt a sudden awareness of the sensations he sent to Paul, as if he received input from someone else wearing a skin-thin and sending impulses to him—apprehension in his muscle tone, slight hunger, fatigue that he’d managed to suppress signaled in the grittiness behind his eyelids, his rapid blinks. And as Campbell came near, Jared felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and rise. If Campbell had an agenda, he wanted to know it. He planned to stay near Alan Campbell, to see what he wanted here. Paul is watching, Jared thought, and Signy sleeps. North America sleeps January sleep, winter solid, and I am alone a world away, on a restless ocean with my lover’s lover. In the company of strangers.
“Want to see a baby sub?” Campbell tilted his head toward a hatch.
“Sure,” Jared said.
Jared followed Campbell down a steel ladder, echoes of waves and the thrum of the ladder under their weight implying a cavern of large size. This feels like San Francisco, Jared thought. These struts look like the supports of some huge bridge; we are inside it. Around that bulkhead, I can imagine that there would be ships in the harbor far, far below us; we may fall.
The image vanished as they walked out on metal gridwork beneath a high flat expanse of corrugated steel that dripped condensation. The space was a square cavern. Giant doors opened toward the ship’s stern. The light was dim, subterranean. The ship’s engines rumbled, deep engine noise transmitted through water, an oddly reassuring sound. Campbell found a switch, and harsh floods lighted the space with mercury glare. Suspended like an egg in a spider’s web, a tiny sub hung above them, cheery yellow and the shape of a goldfish. It had a grin painted where its mouth would be.
“It’s so little,” Jared said. It looked like a toy.
“It’s a three-man sub,” Campbell said. “A titanium sphere with holes in it, ports for air and communications. The sphere won’t ever crush, but the ports could.”
Campbell walked around beneath the sub, his head tilted back and his hands locked behind him in a “don’t touch” position. A kid in a candy store. He found a ladder that led to a platform that collared the sub’s top hatch, and grinned.
“You’re going up there?” Jared asked.
“I’m going in,” Campbell said.
“He’s going to get your ass in trouble,” Paul hissed.
“They said take a tour,” Jared whispered. Campbell was already easing his feet into the hatch, accordion-folding his long legs down into the depths of the sub, and Jared stepped down behind him. Campbell guided his feet as Jared lowered himself into the cramped space, aware, as he sank into a couch that was hard against his back, aware of deep blackness, crushing pressures, death by suffocation. The inside of the sphere was ranked with instruments, dimly lighted with indicator pips, the inside of a Christmas ornament. The sub’s shell cut off all exterior sounds. Jared heard himself breathing.
“Close quarters,” Campbell muttered. They were knee to knee in the cramped space.
“Close.” Jared’s voice threatened to quaver if he tried to say more.
“If you ever got a leak in here, the water would jet through like a laser. Take off heads, legs, with better efficiency than a sword. You wouldn’t die of drowning, at least. Even if you didn’t get hit, your blood would boil from the pressure. Just like
that.” Campbell snapped his fingers.
Jared imagined the little space cut through with razor-sharp death, imagined the rise of salty blood-soaked water. He could not hear Paul. Paul’s access light on Jared’s wrist had gone dark; Jared’s sensations transmitted to no one through the sub’s thick metal. Jared hit the “record and save” button, for what Paul would make of the spherical array of instruments and the knee-to-knee intimacy was a fascinating thing to contemplate. So tiny. If Jared stood (and he very much wanted to stand), his head would be outside the baby sub and he would look like a chick in a broken egg; his breath would murk around him like a cloud and the cold fresh air would be so welcome on his face, this once.
Jesus, I’m claustrophobic, Jared realized.
“I’m getting up,” Jared said. “Watch your head.” He found the hatch rim with his fingers and stood up. Into a black, empty nothing. Someone had turned out the lights.
Working by touch alone, he lifted his body out of the sub, dim light from the sub outlining his waist as he cleared the hatch. His hands gripped the metal catwalk, cold sharp mesh under his fingers. He hauled himself to its security and lay there, panting, watching the circular patch of light that marked the sub’s open hatch. “Campbell?” Jared hadn’t meant to yell, but he heard echoes coming back to him from the dark hollows of the hold.
“Yo?” Muffled, from the depths of the sub.
“The lights are out up here.”
“Oh.”
“I can get back to the switch by the door. I think,” Jared said.
“Wait a minute. Let me look here. Let’s see, I don’t want to power up this little baby by mistake. Fan, depth gauge, a joystick for attitude and prop pitch…”
He’s talking for Ground Control, Jared realized. Campbell is telling them, or me, in this case, what he’s doing that they can’t see. Jared felt the ship list, riding a swell. He had one hand on the sub’s slick side and he clutched at the catwalk with the other, belly flat on the metal grid. The sub swayed gently in its harnesses.