Long Voyage Back

by Luke Rhinehart

  Oscar and Frank sat on the aft seat, Neil and Tony next to each other on the port seat. In their gauntness, and with their beards and unkempt hair, the four reminded Neil of four derelicts gathering to share a small bottle of cheap wine. Only there was no wine. Sheila was at the helm.

  `Well, gentlemen,' said Neil gaily. 'This is quite the formal occasion. You apparently have something you want to discuss.'

  `That's right,' said Tony, looking Neil firmly in the eye. `This beating to windward is going to break Scorpio apart. We're pumping half the time. It's time to change course.'

  `We've already discussed this,' Neil replied quietly. 'Jim, 01ly and I all agree the present course is correct. I've been sending Frank, myself and Mac over to help with the pumping and you won't accept Jim.'

  `gut everyone on my ship except the old guy is in favour of sailing to Barbados,' said Oscar. 'And since Frank agrees we outvote you.'

  `Take Scorpio and go,' said Neil quietly.

  `No,' said Oscar. 'We don't want to split up if we can help it. We want to re-establish the normal order of things.' `Wouldn't that be nice?' said Neil.

  `Tell him, Frank,' said Tony. 'First about the captain thing.'

  Frank cleared his throat and slowly raised his eyes to Neil. Great grey halfmoons made deep hollows under both his eyes and the skin around his neck was loose. Sitting hunched over staring downwards had become his characteristic posture.

  `When you announced you were the captain of Vagabond in the Chesapeake,' Frank began slowly, 'I went along with it. I went along because back then there were twenty or so madmen aboard and your speech shaped them up.' He paused.

  `Nineteen madmen,' Tony interjected. 'Remember I was there then, too.'

  Frank blinked once, cleared his throat again and went on.

  `Now there aren't,' he said. 'Now me, Tony, Jim, Olly . . . even Sheila I guess ... anyone of us could be captain of Vagabond and run the ship. Maybe not as well as you, but competently . .

  Neil held his gaze steadily on Frank but didn't respond.

  Ìn becoming your First Mate I temporarily gave up my ownership of Vagabond,' Frank continued. 'In those times, with an untrained crew, it was probably a good way to do things. Now . . . I'm reasserting my rights as owner.'

  Ànd I'm asserting my rights as owner of Scorpio,' said Oscar. Òh?' said Neil, choosing to look at Oscar, whose long hair and bushy moustache were tangled and streaked with salt, making him look the least reputable of the derelicts. 'And what does that mean?'

  Ìt means I want Tony as captain and not the old man.' Ànd what's wrong with Captain 01ly?'

  `He never gives any orders except those you give him,' Oscar replied. 'Tony and I run the watches the way we want anyway.'

  Neil laughed. 'I'd say he sounds like a perfect captain,' he said. Ì want Tony,' Oscar returned sullenly.

  Ànd what does your reasserting ownership of Vagabond mean, Frank?' Neil asked. He saw that Frank's steady gaze did not mask an uncertainty, fear even, that Frank was feeling.

  Ìt means that the captain serves at my pleasure,' he replied slowly. 'It means that I set the course, the captain determines only how to get there.'

  Ànd the same on my boat,' said Oscar.

  Neil was surprised that he felt no anger or resentment, but rather a strange calm only slightly tinged with sadness. Very slowly he shook his head.

  `No, good friend,' he said to Frank.

  didn't take the ownership of Vagabond away

  from you. The war did.'

  `The war's over, Neil,' Frank replied. 'You don't seem to accept it, but it's over.'

  `No, it's not, Frank,' Neil returned calmly. 'At least not the war that cancelled your ownership. And cancelled yours, too, Oscar. No, I'm afraid none of us owns anything any more.'

  `That's convenient for you to say,' said Tony, 'since you don't own a boat.'

  `Frank doesn't own Vagabond,' Neil went on. 'And I don't own my captaincy or my other skills. You don't think I'm free to do what I want, do you? Your lives sometimes depend on my skills, so I'm not free to withdraw them, no matter what my likes or dislikes. Our lives depend on Vagabond and Scorpio.

  You two don't own or possess them any more than the man who happens to "own" all the water on a crowded desert island owns the water. By the nature of the situation all who need it own it.'

  `Bullshit!' Tony exploded. 'It's Frank's boat. All that intellectual crap doesn't change it!'

  `You're right, Tony,' Neil responded mildly. `My intellectual crap doesn't change it. The world changed it.'

  Frank was watching him, his uncertainty more evident. Oscar looked sullen, Tony angry and defiant. Neil rose from his seat, stretched his arms and yawned. Ìf you think you own your boats go ahead and think so,' he said and then turned to look directly down at Frank. `But if you try to act as owner, then the world, your friends, your family, will collapse. You can't reinstate the old ways by decree.' He watched Frank a moment - Frank was hunched over looking at the floor - and then turned to Oscar and Tony. Òlly is an excellent captain because he gives orders only to maintain order,' he went on.

  'Tony here is an excellent sailor, stronger and quicker than Olly, and Tony would make an absolutely shitty captain. Tony would give orders not to maintain order but to demonstrate he was captain, and that's a perfect formula for chaos.'

  `You conceited bastard!' said Tony.

  `The war's over, Neil,' Frank said in a husky voice, looking up. 'You're still running, I believe you will always run, but it's over.'

  It's not over,' Neil replied. 'And I intend to keep running.' `Dragging us with you,' Frank said.

  `No. If enough people want to take a different course then we'll split up,' said Neil. 'The cowards can come with me, and the brave ones return to the West Indies.'

  Ànd who determines which group takes which boat?' asked Frank.

  `Not me, Frank. Not you. Vagabond should go to those who have to sail to windward. Scorpio to those who can best use her.'

  Ànd who decides that?' asked Frank.

  `The goddamn owners decide, is who,' snapped Tony in reply.

  `There are no easy solutions,' Neil said softly to Frank. `Think about it, Frank. Would throwing me overboard really solve any of your problems?'

  `We're not going to throw you overboard,' Tony interjected. `Good as the idea may be.'

  `Think about it, Frank,' said Neil, still softly. 'Get away from these clowns and see the world as it is.'

  Tony's fist caught Neil just below his left ear and sent him stumbling across to the opposite seat where he fell awkwardly, half on his knees.

  `What the hell are you doing?' Frank shouted, standing and holding out an arm to keep Tony from Neil.

  Neil glanced up at Tony looming over him a few feet away and waited for his head to clear and the ringing to stop.

  `This bastard can't keep calling me names and expect me to take it,' Tony barked out in reply to Frank. 'If he thinks he's captain let him show it with his fists.'

  Neil's head was slowly clearing and he stood up. He noticed that at the helm Sheila was half-turned, watching.

  Ì'm sorry I called you names, Tony,' he said quietly. 'I

  don't blame you for being angry.'

  `You chickening out?'

  Ì made a mistake in insulting you,' Neil went on. 'I apologize.'

  `Jesus. What is this?'

  Ànd if you ever pull something like that again I'll smash

  the nose out the back of your head,' Neil concluded. He

  brushed past Tony and left, going down into the main cabin. At the wheel Sheila held Vagabond steadily on course.

  Over the next several days neither Oscar nor Frank renewed their request, and the ships seemed to return to a contented routine. They were proving lucky with the wind: it blew steadily much more northeast than usual and let them sail more southeast than they had hoped. Scorpio stopped leaking so rapidly. Other events encouraged Neil. Macklin had probed Philip's wound and removed the second bulle
t and his infection seemed to be subsiding. Jeanne's wound was healing perfectly. No one had fallen ill with the plague. A squall left them with a good supply of fresh water. The only continual source of anxiety was their food situation. Neil and Frank had rationed the two boats for a three-week voyage, rations that assumed they would be catching at least one fish a day. They weren't. Both ships were trolling all the time and hooking nothing. The seas appeared empty. Macklin had machinegunned a porpoise one dawn when he was alone on watch, but the mammal had sunk before he could manoeuvre to it. The bloodstained water had been somehow depressing to Neil and Frank who had rushed up at the sound of the gunshots.

  Because they were sailing more southeast than expected they were well away from the danger of pirates. Although Vagabond was about two knots faster than Scorpio in the trade wind, Neil carried reduced sail and spent a day aboard Scorpio helping Olly get every ounce of speed out of her. At night Vagabond would sometimes get a few miles ahead of Scorpio and then heave to in the early morning.

  It was good to see Jim and Lisa looking so happy and well. They were sleeping together now in the forepeak, Jim joking

  that he was determined, to share everything with Lisa, even the plague. Macklin now roomed with Frank. Tony had taken up with a young woman named Mirabai, apparently stealing her from Gregg, the young man with the broken arm. Janice, Oscar's girlfriend, was the only other woman aboard Scorpio, a third female crew member apparently having chosen to join the commune at Salt Point just before they left. They met no ships their first six days out of Anguilla. They passed more than sixty miles east of Barbados and, after a week, were seventy miles northeast of Devil's Island off the coast of Guiana. The fear of the plague was receding. Jeanne was not only regaining her strength but her spirits, standing watch with Frank most of the time, playing more happily than usual with Skippy, even enjoying her food more. 01ly too seemed to have regained his high spirits. Frank sometimes spent a day aboard Scorpio as captain and, back aboard Vagabond, 01ly entertained his friends with exaggerated praise for the 'oldness' of Scorpio, claiming nothing became beautiful until it was 'at least sixty'. 'She's as bald and toothless as me,' he said, referring to Scorpio, 'but she can still bite.'

  Olly was aboard Vagabond when they spotted their first vessel. Jim was alone at the helm in an overcast dawn little different from each of the last several days. Neil was curled up on a wheelhouse cushion behind him. In the galley Jeanne had just begun to parcel out the small bits of dried fish and dried fruit which would be their morning meal. Visibility was only about a mile, and Jim, sleepy at the end of an uneventful watch, with Vagabond ghosting along at only three or four knots in a light wind, glanced mainly at the compass. There was nothing to see out on the water except the same grey slate they'd been staring at for almost ten days.

  And then, after exchanging a few idle words with Jeanne and yawning, Jim glanced ahead and saw, so large and clear and close it was as if a god had that very instant set it down in the sea in front of them, a long grey submarine. Vagabond was sailing forward, barely rocking, and there, ahead and a little to port, lay a submarine. With a red star. A Soviet submarine.

  For several moments Jim stood staring in disbelief at this grey dawn's apparition. Then, almost unbelieving, he turned to Neil. 'Neil!' he hissed in a loud whisper, as if his voice might reveal the fifty-foot trimaran to the enemy.

  Neil sat up slowly rubbing his eyes.

  `Mmmhuh?' said Neil.

  À submarine. Dead ahead.'

  Groggy, Neil stood up and peered forward. 'Living God,' he murmured. Jeanne, aware of the suppressed sounds from above, came to the hatchway entrance and looked up.

  `What'll I do?' Jim asked in a low voice.

  `Hold your course.' Neil knocked on the wheelhouse floor to awaken 01ly who slept below.

  Àll hands!' he called in a sharp but low voice.

  `What's happening?' Jeanne asked from the hatchway, then climbed the three steps and looked: ahead and to the left, now only two hundred yards away was the submarine, fully surfaced, with a dozen men on the main deck and several in the conning tower. The boat was immense: almost two football fields long; it was like sailing past an island. Even as she watched, a gun - some sort of artillery piece - emerged from the forward deck. Several men clustered around it. She saw officers in the conning tower looking at them through binoculars.

  In his underwear 01ly emerged next into the wheelhouse, hair dishevelled, sleepy-eyed, the bones of his ribs showing prominently. He blinked at the grey monster; they were going to pass within a hundred feet of it. He could see two sailors pissing off the bow, but also see the eight-foot-long cannon being swivelled into position to fire on Vagabond.

  `Raise your arms!' Olly shouted at them. 'Raise your arms! It'll help their morale.'

  Neil lifted his arms in surrender as did Jeanne. Jim adjusted his position so that he could steer with his thighs and chest and then he too raised his arms.

  `Sheila, get on up here!' Olly shouted. 'And bring Skip. Mac!' He himself, arms raised, clad only in his underdrawers, walked into the cockpit closer to the enemy. When Sheila emerged she took in the scene in stunned silence and slowly raised her arms in surrender. As quiet and softly as a feather drifting in a pond, Vagabond was now gliding past the Russian submarine, less than ninety feet away. Along its deck stood almost twenty Soviet sailors staring in disbelief. In Vagabond's cockpit stood three men, two women and a child, all with their arms raised in surrender, facing the barrel of the cannon aimed directly at them. From the conning tower three Soviet officers were conferring with agitation. As Vagabond sailed gently by, the men at the cannon turned a wheel and kept the cannon trained amidships. One of them was looking to the conning tower for instructions. The submarine had quite probably discharged in the past two months up to twelve missiles and presumably killed hundreds of thousands, more likely millions, of people it had never seen. Now it had a puny cannon aimed at seven people it could see. An officer on the conning tower shouted something at Vagabond, seemed angry, and shouted again. Vagabond was now sailing serenely away from the submarine and was already a hundred and fifty feet off.

  `Shouldn't we heave to?' Macklin asked in a whisper.

  'Keep sailing!' Neil replied quietly, his arms still raised. Again the Russian shouted, this time to his own men, and there was a flurry of activity in the conning tower. A man raced down the ladder to the deck. Vagabond sailed on. The cannon swivelled to follow her. A single shot would blow Vagabond to bits.

  'We'd better heave to,' Sheila said urgently to Neil.

  But Neil and 01ly were both grinning. 'Keep sailing!' Olly shouted happily. They sailed on. Slowly, softly, as if tiptoeing past a sleeping giant, Vagabond bore away from the great metal whale which, commandeered by ants, threatened to destroy them. For a panicky moment Neil was convinced that the captain of the sub was going to wait until the distance presented a challenge to his gun crew and then blast them out of the water. Then that moment passed. The Russian gun crew, or most of it, disbanded, the men seeming to be working on a different problem. The strange other-worldly meeting of the great grey engine of destruction and the white sailing vessel was ended.

  Still Neil and the others stood with their arms raised.

  `Can't I put my arms down now?' Skippy complained.

  `Yes,' said Neil with strange seriousness. `You can lower your arms. We've beaten them.'

  As they all lowered their arms Jeanne stared at the distant smudge of grey on the horizon and then looked at Neil. `Beaten them?' she asked.

  `No, not beaten them,' he said, correcting himself and still looking thoughtful. Tut we won the only way we could have.'

  Olly slapped Macklin on the back and gave Sheila a hug and kiss.

  `We showed 'em, didn't we?' he said, grinning wildly. `They didn't dare fire a shot. Totally bluffed 'em.' Vagabond ghosted on ahead.

  All that day they celebrated their 'victory' over the Russian submarine, rafting themselves to Scorpio for over an hour t
o make sure 0lly could tell everyone the story. They broke out some of the last Mollycoddle rum and partied. They were less than seven hundred miles from the equator and began planning another celebration for that nautical event. They even caught a fifteen-pound fish, their first in four days. It was nine days since they'd left St Thomas and with the fear of the plague disappearing Jim and Lisa were even accepted as crew members back aboard Scorpio, Jim being a welcome fresh hand at the tedious task of pumping. And that evening Neil again made love to Jeanne.

  He went to her cabin openly, Macklin and Sheila being up on deck on duty. The lovemaking with Jeanne was more tender than the first time, a long, quiet coming together, that, strangely, left them both in tears.

  At eleven they returned topsides. Macklin had gone below to sleep and Sheila was steering. When Jeanne went below to check on Philip, Neil went aft to his cabin to radio Olly. There was something strange in Olly's voice when they made radio contact. After answering Neil's initial question about how badly Scorpio was leaking - it was taking fifteen minutes of manual pumping every hour to get it dry - Olly quietly lowered the boom: Lisa was sick. She had stomach cramps and a fever. She probably had 'that disease thing we been worrying about'.

  So, thought Neil, after he'd given Olly instructions for isolating both Lisa and Jim in the forepeak of Scorpio, this was how it all ended. You could run but you couldn't hide. You could do everything you could think of to flee south as fast as possible and still Death, in unhurried omnipotence, overtook

  you.

  Sitting in his aft cabin in the darkness after the radio transmission he didn't feel like moving. He'd have to tell Jeanne, Sheila, the others. He'd have to deal with the panic here, and probably worse, aboard Scorpio. He'd have to decide what to do. What to do? He wondered how many thousand people, no, million people, in the last two months had looked up into the grey sky watching radioactivity grow all around them and asked what to do, asked it, knowing with horror, dread, gloom, or anger, that there was nothing to do but die.