by Sage Walker
Alan unfolded himself from the bunk and stretched. “It seems to me we should go find your man. Then we can ask him if your story fits the facts.”
Just like that. Alan seemed to heading somewhere. Signy stood up, wondering what he had in mind.
“Let’s go talk to the captain,” Alan said.
“What if he’s not any help?” Signy asked.
“Than we’ll know more than we do now.” Alan waited while Signy got her parka.
[Paul] Leave screen on.
Signy did.
The narrow, empty corridor looked familiar and functional, painted metal surfaces and mazes of pipes that Signy had seen through Jared’s eyes. But Jared’s view of the place hadn’t told Signy that she would feel she stood inside the arteries and organs of some huge beast. She felt like a Jonah.
“Oh, shit,” Signy said. “I don’t know my etiquette. Do we just march in? Do we request the captain’s permission to talk to him, or what? There are rules about all this, aren’t there?”
Alan shoved his hands in the front pockets of the bulky tan parka he wore. “We’ll ask the bridge for a small piece of the captain’s time. He’ll talk to us or he won’t. That’s all the etiquette there is, as long as you keep in mind that he’s God, more or less. The other thing is, if somebody’s doing something, don’t get in their way. If he doesn’t want to see us right now, well, Anna said to come back to sick bay. Maybe we’ll do that.”
Walking along in the cadence of Alan’s steps, her three to his two, and Signy could tell Alan was slowing down for her. She found she was watching her feet. Paul and Pilar watched in real time. Signy remembered she should be eyes for them, not just stare at the floor. Jared was the cameraman; he always managed to present a total setting, always found the interesting details to highlight. There just didn’t seem to be much interesting detail in the flat surfaces around here. “This is going to call for some doublespeak,” Signy said. “What’s the polite way to say ‘I think you’ve got a kidnapped man on your ship and I want to look for him’?”
“Is that what you think?” Alan asked.
“Yeah.”
“I guess it sounds better than saying, ‘I think you kidnapped my old man and you’ve got him tied up somewhere.’”
Alan seemed to be looking for something at the far end of the passageway. Signy caught his eye and smiled. “I’ll try to keep it civil. I guess.”
“It’s fine with me if you don’t,” Alan said. “His name’s Mineta, by the way. Jiro Mineta.”
Easy, lanky Alan. Signy felt, well championed, walking beside him. Granted, he was a little rawboned for a knight in shining armor, and Signy hated her archaic response to him—but she felt secure, with Alan at her side. In danger, seek a protector. The message was an old one, and danger cut through to the primitive, the biologic response. Signy felt like a threatened protohominid seeking out a dominant male.
Alan needed a haircut. His silky auburn hair was beginning to form curls behind his ears. It was not the sort of detail that would have interested Jared.
* * *
All sound had vanished. The world seemed very lonely. Shadows of the sheltering ribs above him moved across dirty white snow and shaded Jared’s face and then did not shade his face. He licked his lips and tasted salt. His tongue explored cracks and dry textures that felt as numb and distant as if he’d been injected with lidocaine. That meant frostbite, but superimposed on the whale’s ribs he remembered the intricacy of the rich red capillary networks of a human face and he knew his face would heal.
Sunburn on top of frostbite? Kihara liked to do backwoods plastic work, maybe Kihara would get a chance to play with this mess of a face.…
* * *
The watch had changed on the bridge. The crew’s faces were all strange; no one Signy had seen from her cameras in Taos worked at the screens. Alan asked to see Captain Mineta, and one of the officers nodded and spoke rapidly into a phone.
Outside the windows, bright sky arched over brighter water and the sun danced on tiny ripples. An island appeared to starboard. It seemed to float in the sea, a mass of ice and rock. Was Jared there? Signy clenched her fists inside her pockets.
“Miss Thomas? Mr. Campbell?” Signy turned to the ladder behind her. The Japanese man who stood there had a lot of gold on his black coverall. “You will follow me, please.” Captain Mineta was about forty, Signy figured. Politely stated, Mineta was portly. He was not smiling.
“Thank you, Captain,” Alan said.
The room they entered was paneled in teak and furnished in a style that Signy thought of as office anonymous, chairs upholstered in easily cleaned synthetic leather, a desk of dull finished metal. The captain motioned for them to sit.
“Welcome to the Siranui,” Captain Mineta said. He spoke with a growling, guttural accent. “How may we assist you?” His eyes flicked to Signy and then back to Alan. Signy accepted his assumption that Alan was in charge and held her tongue. Brusque words, no courtesies, his behavior was rudely abrupt for any Asian culture. The accent was Scandinavian, she realized suddenly, and she remembered that many fishing ships carried Norwegian officers. Maybe Mineta had learned his English that way.
“Miss Thomas has just received a transmission from Dr. Balchen,” Alan said. “He’s alive. We would like to ask your help in locating him.”
The captain’s face was a stone mask. He settled back in his chair and tented his fingers together across his ample lap. His mouth tightened somewhat. “Dr. Balchen fell into waters that are known to kill in minutes. I find this news difficult to believe.”
“There was a boat in the water,” Signy said. “Someone pulled him out. We sent the footage; surely you’ve seen it.”
The captain took his time before he answered.
“I have seen the film,” the captain said. “I saw dark water. Somewhat blurred, as I recall. I appreciate your grief, Miss Thomas, but I fear your loss has caused you to overinterpret shadows seen by a dying man. It is our opinion, mine and my officers, that there was nothing in those waters.”
Nothing? And the Oburu’s sinking hadn’t occurred, either.
“But he was on-line, transmitting, not five minutes ago!”
“This is truly astonishing. I am happy for you. What message did he give you?” the captain asked.
“He didn’t say anything. Just body motion—” Which would make no sense to anyone who didn’t know Jared, in fact. Muscular sensations, isolated in a black space; that was the only proof Signy had of Jared’s life. A mirage, a shared delusion, to an outsider.
And Captain Mineta must have monitored their conversations. Not an underling, the captain himself, or he could not have been so quick with his question about messages. Signy wondered if Paul had caught the inference. “Captain, Jared Balchen is alive and he is within a hundred miles of our current location.”
The man raised a quizzical eyebrow at Alan. He had not made eye contact with Signy and seemed determined to respond only to the male half of this duet.
“We are in the Southern Ocean. It is uninhabited,” the captain said. “I do not see how this could be.”
“Perhaps he’s here on the ship,” Alan said.
“No one but you and Miss Thomas has arrived on this ship since the unfortunate incident with Dr. Balchen.”
Wups, Signy thought, he just told us not to tell him what happens on his ship. Now what? Back off? There isn’t time to do that. “Then perhaps he’s on a nearby island,” Signy said. “But I tell you again, he is alive.”
Captain Mineta sat as still as a contemplative Buddha. Okay, challenge him, then.
“Edges is trying to fulfill a contract for Tanaka,” Signy said. “In the process of researching our work, we study all information that comes our way, however peripheral it may seem at the time. We are aware of the loss of the Oburu and we fear that Jared’s disappearance may be related in some way.”
Signy tried to interpret the expression on Mineta’s face, but she could see only a small tigh
tening of the muscles around his eyes.
“I can see no connection,” the captain said. “The Oburu sank. Investigations are under way in regards to that sinking. Nothing has been found. Nothing. No, no, there is no connection at all.” Mineta lifted his hands from his lap and fluttered his fingers as if he had picked up something hot. “You are being very—speculative, Miss Thomas.” He stood up, and Alan rose as well.
Mihalis Skylochori’s body rested in the freezer, unless someone had moved it by now. The dead sailor was not connected to this, either.
“We will discuss this at some other time,” the captain said.
Signy got up from her chair, defeated.
“Please continue with your work for Tanaka,” Mineta said. “Good afternoon, Miss Thomas. Mr. Campbell.”
He ushered them out the door and closed it behind them. Then he vanished up the ladder toward the bridge, dismissing them completely.
Paul and Pilar both spoke at once, creating a confusion of sound in the speaker behind Signy’s ear.
“Shit,” Signy said.
“Yeah.” Alan saw her fingers reach up to tap at the speaker behind her ear, and he stopped talking.
“Signy, get out of there,” Paul’s voice said. “Get off that ship. Come home.”
“You’ll never get anywhere with him,” Pilar said. “You’re just a nosy little tourist, is how I read him. Signy, unless you get some more status from somewhere, and in a hurry, Mineta’s not going to listen to anything you say.”
“I gathered that,” Signy said. Mineta knew something about the disappearances; Signy could feel that he did. He couldn’t be happy about the lost trawler, no matter how it had happened to sink. “Pilar, did Janine get the files on the Oburu?”
“You didn’t leave any,” Pilar said.
“Yikes!”
“So I told Janine what I knew. I told her,” Pilar said. “She’ll interrogate our Mr. Itano about it.”
Alan seemed to be headed for sick bay. Signy kept up with him. “Paul, I don’t care if Mineta wants me out of here. I can’t leave now,” Signy said. “Even if I wanted to. And I don’t.”
“You’re in danger.” Paul sounded scared.
“So is Jared. Now, don’t bother me for a little while, okay?”
“Right,” Pilar said. Paul didn’t say anything at all.
From the holds, Signy heard rumbling and mechanical growls, the Siranui chewing up more tons of fish. The passageways were deserted. People worked hard here; they had jobs and they did them. Signy Thomas was extraneous, in the way, a nosy intruder. The captain wasn’t going to be any help.
A man gone; so sorry, on with business. Mineta’s reaction was like Kazi Itano’s, like Kazi’s simple wonder that Edges didn’t just take the hazard pay for accidental death and go about their business. People died all the time, so sorry, but it’s time for the next shift now.
If you didn’t love someone deeply, that was the only attitude that made sense. If you did? You struggled to keep them well, fought for them when they couldn’t fight for themselves—
I love Jared, Signy thought. I’ll find him.
Signy followed Alan into sick bay and shut the door behind her with a sense of relief. The tiny waiting room felt like a refuge. Anna looked up from her desk console, and she seemed not at all surprised to see them.
“Anna, we’ve been in contact with Jared. He’s alive,” Signy said.
“Your friend Pilar told me. He is nearby, she said that, too.”
“Where?” Signy asked her. “Where might he be, Anna?”
“I don’t know,” Anna said. She shook her head from side to side, and she looked upset.
Signy slumped into one of the waiting room chairs. Alan folded himself into the chair beside her.
“I don’t think he’s on the ship,” Anna said. “I would like to help you find him, Signy, but there is nothing I can think of except to search the nearby islands. If the captain permits. The captain called.” Anna stopped, apparently distracted in mid-thought by something or other.
“Go on,” Signy said.
“He said to tell you that the XO is personally inspecting every closet and drawer in the ship.”
“Please give him my thanks,” Signy said.
“He also said Mr. Itano in Lisbon sends his regards.”
Itano had been on Mineta’s case already, it seemed. That might explain some of the reaction Signy had gotten. Anna seemed to want to say more. Her expression was a puzzle. Guilt? Hope? Signy waited; for something, something complicated, seemed to be on Anna’s mind.
“I know your plans for the treaty,” Anna said. “Pilar told me while you were with the captain. Do you really plan to ask the Treaty Commission to shut down the fishing?”
Pilar had brought Anna into the calculations, that quickly? On what thread of trust? On Jared’s response to her? No matter. “We seem to be coming to that,” Signy said.
“You must try,” Anna said. “You must. The pressures on life here are near the breaking point. I thought—we thought, many of the researchers who work here—that we were being ignored.”
“Ignored?” Signy asked.
“We find so many confusing things.… There seems to be a pressure toward neoteny in some of the bony fishes. There are unusual shifts in the percentages of zooplankton varieties. We do not know if they are part of a long-term cycle because we do not have information that goes back more than a century, and a century can be only a short time in an ocean’s system of balance. Some researchers think the populations are overstressed and on the brink of collapse. Others think the current harvests are tolerable. Those researchers seem to get more funding,” Anna said.
“What are you trying to say?”
“That the sea dies around us and perhaps she cannot be healed.”
Anna spoke with the conviction of grief and certain knowledge. For her, there was no uncertainty. The sea was dying. “I fear for Jared,” Anna said. “I fear for you. You will make people angry; you will take away their jobs, their food, if you chase away the boats. It might not help. But I hope you can do it.”
Jared and Anna had talked about the sea, now and again. Jared had envied Anna because Anna dived beneath the ice, and knew the strange world beneath it. “Did Jared know your fears about the harvesting?” Signy asked.
“I didn’t tell him. No. I wish I had. Now that I know what you want to do.”
“And Jared’s been kidnapped because we considered shutting down the fishing here? Anna, we were just thinking about that.” Thinking, speaking, together. Together, with no listeners except Jimmy’s mysterious—
“Evergreen,” Paul said. “Maybe you’re looking at her.”
Not Anna. Signy would have bet her life on it. There was such hope in Anna’s face.
“Something’s happening on the bridge,” Pilar said. “Signy, get to a screen. You’d better watch this.”
“Anna, I need the console, okay?” Signy started for it. Anna shifted out of her way as she came charging around the desk. Signy slid into the still-warm chair Anna had just vacated. The keys gave her access to the bridge speakers; a rattle of Japanese, the captain, she thought, and a woman’s staccato speech.
“Pardon me,” Signy muttered in Anna’s direction. Whiteline’s translation, scrolling past in its implacable block letters, brought both Anna and Alan to peer over her shoulder.
THE CAPTAIN SAYS HE HAS ORDERS TO SEND MISS THOMAS ON A HELO TOUR OF NEARBY ISLANDS.
Visuals from the bridge popped up behind the script. Captain Mineta paced back and forth, speaking to a man who stood at parade rest, his back to the bridge cameras.
CAPTAIN PISSED. WANTS ALL FOREIGNERS GONE.
Which was how Whiteline interpreted the burst of words.
“He is telling the XO that such a trip will waste fuel, but will get this gaijin witch out of his hair.” Anna paused for a moment, then continued. “He wishes Itano would not instruct him on how to deal with the foreign woman. Too much interference in the
harvester’s schedules—he is still unhappy about the breach of usual procedures regarding Skylochori—and what?—”
PROTOCOL ERRORS WITH? SKYLO? SOMETHING
“—he is unhappy with the stories Kobe has told the families of the men who died on the Oburu.”
SOMETHING ABOUT OBURU MARU
Captain Mineta left the bridge.
“I’m to be sent on a wild-goose chase, huh?” Signy asked.
“What?” Anna frowned. “Oh. Yes, it seems so. Signy, I must call Trent. I think he would wish to be our pilot.”
Our pilot, was it? Signy smiled and spoke to the screen. “Get out of our way, guys. Anna needs the board.”
“Damn, where’s Janine?” Pilar said. Pilar’s face appeared, and then the screen went blank again. Signy pushed back from the console and left the keyboard to Anna.
“I’ll go with you, if Kihara gets back in time,” Anna said. “Wups, there’s a message from the Old Man. The captain. I think we aren’t here for a few moments.… I want to talk to Trent before we answer the bridge.” Anna picked up a portable phone and spoke rapidly in Japanese to someone not onscreen.
Alan stood up and rubbed the small of his back with both hands. “I’m coming along on this tour of yours,” Alan said.
“What if the bridge objects?” Signy asked.
“Then I’ll be a stowaway,” Alan said. “I’ve always wanted to be a stowaway, come to think of it.”
“Hello, Trent. Could you meet us on the deck in about—fifteen minutes?” Anna waited. “Thanks.”
MESSAGE WAITING, a window on the screen insisted. Anna looked up at Signy. “What do we tell Captain Mineta?”
“Tell him fine, sure, whatever he suggests,” Signy said. Signy wondered if she could bribe Trent to take her where she wanted to go, once she knew where that was. She wondered what arrangements had been made for her. Would she “fall” overboard, or “fall” out of a helicopter, or would she simply end up with Jared, somewhere, somehow, both of them reported missing and a fiction developed from their records, a virtual that showed them alive and well in Paris, or some damned thing?