Pacific Edge

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “I believe it.” She laughed, licked salt off her upper lip. Face flushed and wet, eyes bright and watering. Fingers digging into his upper arm. “So wild, the sea! The place we can never ever tame.”

  Above them narrow rectangles of sail got even narrower. Most of the ship’s sails were furled, and the ones out were down to their last reef. Still the ship was pushing well onto its side. They hung from the halyards as the ship plunged up and down. “Can you imagine having to go aloft!” Tom cried.

  “No.”

  The ship shuddered through a thick crest. White water coursed down the lee rail of the deck. “We’d better get below,” Nadezhda said. And indeed Sonam Singh was in the hatchway gesturing fiercely at them. As the ship skated down a swell they dashed for the hatchway, were pulled roughly down it.

  “Keep inside,” Singh ordered. “Go to the bridge if you want to see, but stay out of the way.”

  Crew members rushed by, dripping wet and bright with exhilaration. “They’re going on deck?” Tom asked.

  “Setting the sea anchor,” Singh replied, and followed them out.

  The passageways seemed narrower. You had to use the wall for support, or be banged against it. Up broad steps to the bridge, which was split into two rooms, one above the other. The top room was the cockpit of action; Captain Bahaguna and the helmsman were standing before the window watching the ship and waves through crazy patterns of water dashed against the glass. The fourth mast stood before them like a white tree. The lee railing, to starboard, was running just above the water, and crests boiled right over it and coursed back to the stern. That gave Tom a shock—the ship, buoyant as it was, still shouldered through the water like a submarine coming to the surface. The sky was a very dark gray now, and the broken white sea glowed strangely under it.

  The captain watched the control terminal. It had a red light blinking among the greens. “We’ll probably lose that sail,” Bahaguna said, then saw Tom. “That block is stuck again. Here, get into the room below and get strapped into a seat. The real squall is about to hit.”

  The horizon had disappeared, replaced by a gray wall. They got to the room below holding onto rails with both hands, sat in empty chairs and fastened the seat belts.

  They were headed straight into the waves. The bowsprit spiked an onrushing white hill of boiling water, lifted up a big mess of it that rushed down the deck, sluicing off both sides, until a wave some four feet high smashed into their window and erased the view. The light had a greenish cast in these blinded intervals. The ship moved sluggishly under the weight. Then the wave fell to the sides, and they could see gray clouds flying by just over the mast. Irregular thickets of water flew by, rain or spray, it was impossible to tell.

  “The sea anchor’s out,” Nadezhda said. “That’s what got us head on.”

  Soon Sonam Singh and part of the sea anchor detail came through, utterly drenched, moving as if in an acrobat’s game. “We did it. Glad the storm lines are rigged on deck, I’ll tell you.”

  So they were moving backwards in the storm, pulling a sea anchor. It was a tube of thick fabric, shaped like a wind sock, with its larger end connected to a cable that ran back to the ship’s bow. As waves thrust the ship sternwards the sea anchor dragged before them, insuring that the bow faced into every wave, which was the only safe angle in seas like this. It was an ancient method, and still the most reliable.

  * * *

  The squall struck. The roar redoubled, the glass blurred completely. Nothing but patterns of gray on white. The sailors left the bridge like dancers on trampolines.

  Bursts of wind stripped the water from the glass like a squeegee, and Tom saw a world transformed, no longer a place of air over water, atmosphere over ocean. Now the two were mixed in a bubbling white mass, and whole swells of foamy salt water were torn off the ocean surface and dashed through the air. The wind was trying to tear the surface of the ocean flat.

  The bare masts themselves functioned as sails in a wind like this. All the rigging that extended forward was tauter than bowstrings, straight as theoretical lines of geometry; they gave off a thrumming that could be heard inside the bridge. On the other hand many of the lines supporting spars from the stern were slack, whipped back and forth so rapidly that they blurred in the middle. The masts and yards flexed in bows that were visible to the eye.

  Another wave buried the window and it was back to the aquarium view, the murky green-black light.

  * * *

  Up and down the ship rode. They felt more than saw the bow shouldering through hills of water. The noise was unbelievable, like several jets taking off at once. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Tom got used to the motion, he was no longer dizzy, even in the weightless sweeps downward. Time passed. He fell into a bit of a trance, induced by the weird submarine light, interspersed with sudden glimpses of night-in-day chaos, seen with a strange clarity broken by lightning lines of water streaming over the glass. He was not getting used to the storm so much as being overwhelmed by it—making a psychic retreat from the infinity of watery assaults. The mind had to retreat from such mindless intensity.

  * * *

  A long time passed that way, with only occasional snatches of a view, always the same: flying mix of wind and water, under a black sky. Tom’s hands and wrists were tired, weary from holding his chair arms. He needed to pee. Could he make it to the head?

  Suddenly the noise dropped, the light grew. The motion of the ship eased, and when the window next cleared he saw white clouds scudding overhead. “The eye,” Sonam Singh said, passing through on his way to the captain.

  “I’m going to go to our berth and lie down,” Nadezhda said. “I’m exhausted.”

  “Be careful getting there.”

  “I’ll be wrapped to the rail.”

  “I’ll come down later and see how you are.”

  “Fine.” Off she went, balancing skillfully.

  Up on the bridge they were discussing damage to the rigging. Tom stood carefully, staggered to the head. Peed with his shoulders banging wall to wall. The water in the bowl surged up and down. He felt battered, as if the little balancing mechanisms in his ears were still rattling about. Better to be seated, to have something to look at.

  He got back to his seat and clipped in gratefully. Captain Bahaguna was giving rapid orders. “When it hits again it’ll be from the southeast. We’ll come about now.” Crew members ran through. Pravi stopped to see how he was, said, “Don’t you think the water surface is higher, like we’re on a kind of hill? A kind of big, low waterspout under the low pressure, don’t you think?”

  Tom saw nothing of the sort. Green swells covered with white foam, white clouds stuffed with green rain. Off to the south was a black island: “Is that land!” Tom cried, frightened.

  “Other side of the storm,” she said. “We’ve got about twenty minutes.”

  The captain shouted at Singh about the sail that wouldn’t furl. “It’ll break the yard off and probably the pole too!”

  “Nothing we can do about it, sir.”

  Then the explosive roar of the wind hit again. The ship heeled far to starboard; Tom thought they were going to turn turtle. It seemed a bomb was going off continuously. The window cleared and he saw the waves grown huge again, iron flecked with ivory, tops torn off, but still thirty, forty, perhaps fifty feet tall! When they were in a trough the next crest dwarfed the ship, it struggled up the side of the wave like a toy boat. “My God,” Tom said, appalled. A wave engulfed them, and the glass showed only rushing darkness. The roar was muffled. They were underwater.

  The ship shouldered up, broke to the surface and the howling wind.

  Before them another wave as big as the one before, or bigger. Extending off to left and right as far as he could see. He was holding his breath, willing the ship to rise faster. The bowsprit seemed bent at a higher angle than before. The wave, a liquid hillside, a ridge collapsing on them, was dotted with a flurry of black dots.

  “What are those!” he sho
uted, but no one heard him. Then they were flying up like the bob on a fishing line yanked from the water, up the wave hillside to the avalanching crest, inundated as if the wave were a broken dam, and Tom felt it through the chair: whump.

  * * *

  The ship was struggling in a different way. Sluggishly. The bow slewed off to port. Shouts came from above. Long minutes passed. Sonam Singh staggered by on hands and knees. “We hit something!” he cried at Tom.

  “I saw it!” Tom said. “Wreckage—lumber, maybe.”

  He couldn’t tell if Singh had heard, he was shouting something about the sea anchor.

  Then the room rolled onto its side. Tom found himself hanging by his seatbelt. Only his hipbones saved him from being cut in half. Muffled roar, underwater again. In the gloom people shouted. Singh was over on one wall. The ship shuddered violently, turned, righted itself. Some noise and light returned. Tom glanced through the window as he freed himself from the seat. Another white mountain smoking toward them, in the mind-numbing howl. Mainmast and second mast were both bent, held in a tangle of alloy and rope rigging. The deck around the foremast was twisted, perhaps buckled. The ship listed to port.

  He got the seatbelt undone and hung from the chair back. Time passed. People behind him were shouting, but he couldn’t turn his head to see. Then Sonam Singh grabbed him. Captain Bahaguna was crawling down the ladder from the bridge, followed by Pravi and the helmsman.

  They had a shouted conference: “—lifeboats!” Singh said into the captain’s ear. Then mouth collided with ear, hard, and they both cried out, held their heads.

  “No lifeboat could survive in this!” Tom shouted loudly, suddenly afraid.

  Singh shook his head. “They’re submarine, remember? We go under. Then wait.”

  “The ship won’t sink,” Bahaguna said. He didn’t like the idea.

  “No, but we don’t know what compartments might flood. The bows are breached, and the other masts might go. More dangerous here than in the boats. While the launch bay is still clear perhaps we should be getting out. We can come back when the storm has passed.”

  Inundated again. The ship listed far to port. Slowly water washed away from the glass. White foam, a moving hill of water. Under again. There were red lights all over the panel. The glass cleared and was instantly covered with water again.

  A few more swells, sluggish response of the ship. Getting worse. A few more.

  Finally the captain nodded, looking grim. “Okay. Abandon ship.”

  They all crawled to the passageway leading aft. Suddenly they were in the muffled dark again, crawling on the wall. Sonam Singh was cursing. “Damned lumber ships, they lose their deck loads—” He saw a group of tumbling bodies ahead, raised his voice to a bellow: “Slow down up there! Slow down! Everyone to launch bays!” But the bodies rushed on. The lifeboats were near the stern, Tom had remembered all about them. They would be fired out like ejection seats in an old jet fighter. He and Nadezhda had been given a tour—oh my God, he thought. Nadezhda!

  Their cabin was just below and behind the second mast.

  He turned down the steps to the tweendecks, ran forward on the meeting of wall and floor. He had been a sprinter most of his life, and now it all came back to him. A real scramble. He had done something to his left wrist, the hand wouldn’t move well and the wrist hurt with a stabbing pain that went up his arm. He came to the passageway that led to their cabin. Several inches of water slopped over deck or wall, whichever was down. Thrown down, and on that hand again. He yanked open their door. The cabin was empty. Good. Water sloshed at knee height. The ship was permanently on its port side, but he needed to get starboard and aft, where the launch bays were. Storm muffled, ship underwater, he could hear his breath surging in and out of him in big gasps. Nadezhda must already be back there. This intersection of passageways didn’t look familiar. Shit, he thought. Not a time to get lost! He held a railing, tried to recover his breath. Up steps, water sloshing, the compartment had been breached, or not sealed off from breached compartments further forward. Around a corner, down another passageway, up steps. Water followed him. Shocking to have water inside the ship. He cracked his forehead, a nice hard spot that, no harm done. Needed to get starboard, water at thigh level and his left hand didn’t work. He was tired, arms and legs like blocks of wood, they didn’t want to move. Okay, a long passageway fore and aft, hustle down it aft, almost there. Sonam Singh would be mad at him, but he had had to check.

  The passageway turned and ended in a closed hatchway. Good enough, beyond that would be an unbreached compartment. But he had to get it open and get through. Warmish salt water foamed up around his waist as he worked the dogs of the hatch one-handed, left arm thrust under a railing to hold him. So many locks on these bulkhead doors! He was in danger of getting knocked over, drowned while inside the ship. Had to go under foam to get to the bottom dogs, and they were stiff as hell. Okay, last one. Flash of triumph as he put his weight on the handle and pushed out. The door was snatched from his good hand and the water behind him shoved him over the coping and right out the door—onto the open deck of the ship. Wrong hatch! He dug with his feet, trying to get a purchase and get back inside. Then water surged up around him and he was off and away, swept away helplessly. His leg hit something and he grasped for it. Caught it, had his grip torn away. Then he was tumbling underwater, thrashed in a soup as if body surfing. Instinctively he clawed upward, broke the surface with lungs bursting, took in a big gasp of air and foam, choked and was rolled under again.

  Free of the ship, he thought. Probably so. Fear took all the air out of his lungs. Desperately he swam, up and up and up. He got to the surface and trod the boiling surface furiously. Yes, free of the ship. Couldn’t see it anywhere. Overboard in a hurricane, “No!” he cried out, the word wrenched from him. Then under again and reeling, lungs burning as he held on. Drowned for sure, just a matter of time. He clawed madly to the surface, too frightened to let go. Another breath, another. He looked around for the ship, saw nothing. Too tired to move, and at the bottom of a trough with a wave forty feet high over his head. Hell.

  Under again and somersaulting. Punched in the stomach. No way to tell up from down. This had happened to him body surfing as a kid, he had almost drowned three or four times. Swim to shore. He forced his eyes open. Green white black. He had to breathe, he couldn’t breathe, he had to breathe and it was water he breathed; feeling it he choked in panic and thrashed upward and held his breath again, and then breathed in and out and in and out and in and out; and all of it water. Helpless to stop himself. He felt the water heavy inside him, lungs and stomach both, and marveled that he was still conscious, still thinking. You really do get a last moment, he thought. What do you know.

  And indeed he felt an enormous liquid clarity growing in him, like a flash of something or other. It was quiet and blue black white, a riot of bubbles flying in every direction around him, glowing. Blue capture plate, white quarks. Done for. Relax. Concentrate. He cast his mind deliberately back to his wife, her face, his baby held easily in his hands, and then the images tumbled, a forested cliff over ocean, a window filled with blue sky and clouds, swirling like bubbles of nothing in the rich blue field of the life he had lived, every day of it his and Pamela’s, and the crying out of his cells for oxygen felt like the pain of all that love given and lost, nothing of it saved, nothing but the implosion of drowning, the euphoria of release—and all the blue world and its blue beauty tumbled around him, flashed white and he snapped alert, wanting to speak, pregnant with a thought that would never be born.

  11

  Out.

  How I hugged that lawyer. He just looked tired. Lucky, he said. Procedural irregularity.

  He drove me to a restaurant. Looking out the car window, stunned. Everything looked different. Fragile. Even America is fragile. I didn’t know that before.

  At the restaurant we drank coffee.

  What will you do? the lawyer said.

  I didn’t have the faintest
idea. I don’t know, I said. Go to New York and meet my wife’s ship when it comes in. Get cross country to my kid, find some kind of work. Survive.

  There was a newspaper on the next table but I couldn’t look at it. Crisis to crisis, we’re too close to the edge, you can feel the slippage in the heat of the air.

  And suddenly I was telling him about it, the heat, the barbed wire, the nights in the dorm, the presence of the hospital, the fear, the courage of all those inside. It’s not fair, I said, my voice straining. They shouldn’t be able to do that to them! I seized the newsaper, shook it. They shouldn’t be able to do any of this!

  I know, the lawyer said, sipping his coffee and looking at me. But people are afraid. They’re afraid of what’s happening, and they’re afraid of the changes we would have to make to stop it from happening.

  But we’ve got to change! I cried.

  The lawyer nodded. Do you want to help?

  What do you mean?

  Do you want to help change things?

  Of course I do! Of course, but how? I mean I tried, when I lived in California I tried as hard as I could.…

  Look, Mr. Barnard, he said. Tom. It takes more than an individual effort. And more than the old institutions. We’ve started an organization here in Washington, DC, so far it’s sort of a multi-issue lobbying group, but essentially we’re trying to start a new political party, something like the Green parties in Europe.

  He described what they were doing, what their program was. Change the law of the land, the economic laws, the environmental laws, the relationship between local and global, the laws of property.

  Now there’re laws forbidding that kind of change, I said. That’s what they were trying to get me on.

  We know. There are people afraid of us, you see. It’s a sign we’re succeeding. But there’s a long way to go. It’s going to be a battle. And we can use all the help we can get. We know what you were doing in California. You could help us. You shouldn’t just go out there and survive, that would be a waste. You should stay here and help.