by Mark Teppo
She is wearing a heavy coat, a thick stocking cap, and her throat is hidden by the voluminous folds of a wool scarf. The tip of her nose and her cheeks are red. She stamps her feet and I know she's thinking about going inside, but she won't go in. Not while I'm in a sharing mood. The air is clean enough that I could go without my coat and hat, but that would only draw attention to me. It's the second week of July—mid-winter in the Southern Ocean. The air is always cleaner in winter climates.
“I've seen the videos from last year,” she says. “A lot of playing chicken and throwing—what is it?—that acid on deck.”
“Butyric. Stink gas, essentially. When they take a whale on and carve it up, the acid gets into the flesh and ruins it. They can't sell it.”
“So they just have to throw it away?”
“Yes, unless they can find another use for it. Some other buyer.”
She glances at me shrewdly. “Is there?”
“A buyer? I wouldn't know.”
Mere steps a little closer, letting my body act as a wind break. “Why are you here?” she asks.
“Why do you think we're here?” I throw the question back on her. “You're the one who took an extended vacation to come down and join the cruise. How many weeks have you been playing at sailor?”
“Two. And a half.”
“And what have you seen during that time?”
She shakes her head. “Lots of open water. Some birds; I think they were terns. I've been propositioned nearly a dozen times—only two of them have been poor sports about being turned down—and I've won around a hundred dollars in that endless poker game they run in the mess after dinner.” She lifts her shoulders and stares out at the sea. “Everyone is waiting for something to happen. Some of them are better at it than others. A few are… wound a little tight…” She trails off, and her words would have been lost in the bruising roar of the ocean against the hull of the boat if my hearing hadn't been so good.
“What are they waiting for?”
“Do you know what the whale market is like?” she asks, and when I don't immediately reply, she tells me. “Prime made an impact last year, but there's no sign any of their leadership actually bothered to notice. Japanese consumption of whale meat is down thirty percent from this time last year, and it's not from a lack of supply. Public perception has started to swing in an eco-friendly direction, and yet Kyodo Kujira sends out four boats for an extended whaling trip. In winter. They've been out for three weeks already, and I hear they're in no rush to return to port. Do you know how much it costs to keep these boats at sea for that long?”
“More than I make in a year,” I reply, a tiny smile touching the corners of my mouth.
“Really? How much does a private consultant like you make?”
“Less than you think. My tax rate is insane.”
“You should diversify your portfolio better.”
“I would if I knew what those words meant.”
She stands close to me, rising on her toes slightly to look closely at my eyes. I don't step back, though the smell of her breath and her blood is almost too much. “It's a matter of making good investments,” she breathes. “The wholesale price of whale meat is down forty percent. Over half the whalers never put out to sea this year, and yet Kyodo Kujira doesn't seem to be worrying about their burn rate. The Japanese are notorious for keeping up appearances, but this is ridiculous. Two years ago, they were looking for someone to buy their boats, and I heard they weren't having much luck finding a buyer. Now? This is either suicidal desperation—not a trait commonly found in your typical Japanese businessman—or…”
“Someone else is paying for it,” I say.
“Who?”
“Why do you think I know?”
“Why else would you be here?”
I smile at her. “Remember the bullet hole? Captain Morse, all bluster and bravery for the crew's sake aside, feels more secure with some… protection.”
That sounds convenient,” she says. “Is that the story he's supposed to tell?”
“You could ask him.”
“I have. He pretends to not know what I'm talking about.”
“It probably just slipped his mind.”
She takes one more step, and even through the thick layers of her coat, I can feel the heat of her skin. “Maybe,” she says. Her eyes are bright, and I can hear her lungs expanding and contracting. “But I suspect getting any real information out of him is a waste of time. Especially when I could ask someone else, someone who would actually know.”
My hand is on her arm when Nigel makes a noise behind us. “The captain has spotted the whalers. They're on the edge of the storm front. About sixty nautical miles to the west,” he says, ignoring the way we step back from one another, like teenagers caught by their parents, sitting too close to one another on the old couch in the basement.
THREE
We wait until the end of the day, even though there isn't much change in the available light in the sky. Winter near the Antarctic Circle is many days of near darkness, and for their own sanity, humans try to maintain a semblance of normalcy during these months. Sleep cycles and shift changes still occur in the last few hours of the nominal day, which makes this block of time optimal for our reconnaissance.
The whaling fleet is ten nautical miles south of us, holding position in a half-arc with the two harpoon boats positioned at either end. We take a single Zodiac and head west, our rubber boat rising and falling across the restless sea. We mean to approach them from the south. This route will take an extra half-hour—time we don't really have, but it is a calculated risk.
I'm not driving the boat, nor am I spotting, which means I get to bail. The rubber shield stretched across the front of the boat disperses the brunt of the spray from the ocean, but a lot of it still manages to get in the boat, and I spend most of my time hunched over in several inches of water, working the manual pump. The water is cold and tenacious, undeterred by the dry suits we are wearing; by the time we reach the research vessel, I've started to lose feeling in my toes. As Nigel cuts the engine of the Zodiac, and we glide the short distance remaining between us and the factory ship, I let myself think of the warm embrace of Mother for a moment. How good it would feel to be buried in her humus, surrounded by that warmth—that familiar security.
But then the Zodiac bumps against the ugly steel plates of the research boat, and I'm wrenched back to the present, to the cold semi-darkness of the short night on the Southern Ocean. The tight embrace of the dry suits and Gore-Tex balaclavas isn't the same thing. Nigel eschews the headgear entirely, wearing a black stocking cap instead, and I can't say I blame him. Being in the tight grip of synthetic fabrics can be too constricting. It makes you clumsy.
Phoebe goes first, the metal spikes in her gloves and boots giving her enough purchase to scale the side of the boat. The nylon line spools out in her wake, wiggling back and forth with the motion of her body as she climbs. With the sun below the horizon, we can keep our optic protection low; it is easy to follow her progress—a black glob of ink against the dull metal of the boat. She reaches the top, disappears, and then a few seconds later, the rope snaps tight.
All clear.
I go next, as Nigel secures the Zodiac to the hull with a pair of mag-clamps. He follows after and, just like that, we're on board the research ship.
We all have the same map memorized, and with Phoebe on point, we move quickly across the rain-slick deck. All our individual paranoia is set aside as soon as we climb aboard the boat. We've done this drill too many times over our lengthy lives. We know our jobs.
The meat-processing equipment is in place, and I give it a cursory glance at first, but then there is something that nags me about the general disarray and decrepitude of the hooks and blades. It hasn't been used. Even if they haven't been catching whales for the meat, they'd still need to process them for the research. And there are large barrels with hose-mounted assemblies bolted to the deck that look like recent additions. A cle
ansing system? It doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they just use sea water pumps?
“Silas—” Nigel and Phoebe are already inside the central stack. She gestures at me to stop dawdling, and I tear myself away from the scattered equipment on deck. I join them, and we slip down two levels and then through a cluster of tight hatches.
The boat creaks around us, and the sound of the engines are a dull throb, but there is no other sound. It's as if we are ghosts on a ghost ship. I fall behind the other two, growing more and more suspicious of the emptiness of the boat. With modern equipment, you could pilot a boat this size with a crew of six, but that sort of skeleton crew was normally reserved for massive shipping boats, not whalers who were ostensibly on a fishing expedition. If you caught a whale, you'd need at least twenty able bodies to run the processors; you could do it with less, but the risk to the crew was exponentially more dangerous than the savings in labor. And if this was supposed to be a research boat, wouldn't there be a scientific crew?
So where is everyone?
I pause at the next hatch. The lining is thicker than I'd expect it to be on a boat like this, even if it had been retrofitted into a high-tech floating bio-pharmaceutical laboratory. It's more like the sort found on a submarine: thick enough to hold back water and atmosphere. I hiss at Phoebe and wave her over.
“Something's wrong,” I say as she drifts back to my position. “Look at this seal.”
She touches the heavy hatch door we're standing next to, and it moves sluggishly under her finger. “Hydraulics,” she says.
The hatch can be opened and closed remotely. Remote control means remote viewing, and we both step back from the hatch, suddenly interested in the maze of conduits and cables running along the ceiling. Looking for security cameras, thermal scanners, motion triggers.
Someone could be watching us right now.
“Nigel.” Phoebe leans through the hatch and hisses at Nigel.
He is standing beside a hatch with a security panel, and his hand is poised over the keypad. His expression is both annoyed and startled.
“It's all wrong,” Phoebe whispers.
“Don't touch anything,” I add.
His eyes flicker toward his hand and the keypad.
Too late.
In the wall, there is a sudden hiss of escaping air, and the hydraulics controlling the hatch start to swing it closed. Phoebe grabs at the hatch, slowing its motion as I turn and race back to the previous hatch. The hydraulics are retrofits, exposed machinery welded to the inside of the hatch. From this side, I can break things. I go to work, and dark oil squirts over my hands as I tear apart critical pieces of the hydraulic system.
A mist starts to descend from the ceiling, a pale yellow mist, and it burns where it touches my exposed skin. I inhale reflexively and try to stop myself from filling my lungs with the aerosol. What gets in though feels like I've just inhaled fire. An old memory stirs. Naphtha—oh, how it used to burn the wood decks and hulls of the old triremes. I fight my flight impulse, and throw my weight against the hatch, fighting the sluggish hydraulics.
Nigel is screaming behind me, a sound no one should make, much less hear.
Phoebe slams into the hatch beside me, combining my weight with hers, and we force the hatch back until it is wide enough for her to slip through. She moves like a shadow, and the metal hatch groans as she levers it from the other side. As soon as it is wide enough for me, I go through and then take over for her.
Nigel staggers through. His face is a wreck. The poison has melted his skin down to the bone in several places and his eyes are gone, weeping holes in his face.
The remaining hatch isn't as hermetically sealed as the others, and I hear it crash open as Phoebe clears our path. As I try to help Nigel without actually touching him, I hear shouts from the deck, followed by the faint rattle of Phoebe's silenced pistols. Clearing a path for us.
Nigel can't see, and he bangs his skull against the frame before I can shove his head down enough for him to clear the last portal. My skin crawls at the touch, even though I'm wearing gloves. Tendrils of acrid smoke are spiraling off Nigel's melted skin.
Phoebe is waiting for us by the railing, covering our retreat. There are six bodies on the deck, and the reek of their blood makes my throat constrict. The hoses have been unrolled from the mounted tanks, and they lie on the deck like dead serpents. The nozzle of one is open, and it is spewing a frothing fluid on the deck. My skin crawls at the sight of the pale, bubbling liquid and my eyes water as we skirt the flood that is threatening to cover the deck.
Our rope is still in place. Nigel is coherent enough to know what to do when I shove the rope into his hands. I mean to go first, but he leaps off, nearly in free-fall in his frantic need to get off the boat. I go after him, the water-slick rope twisting in my hands as I slide down the side of the boat. The fabric of my gloves burns away as I squeeze the rope and slow myself down. Nigel hadn't even bothered trying to stop. He is lying in the briny bilge in the bottom of the boat, whimpering and moaning. Phoebe lands lightly, the rope cascading down beside her.
Phoebe shoves us away from the hull of the processing ship as I start the engine of the Zodiac. I don't worry about making a silent retreat; I open the throttle all the way, and we flee as fast as the tiny rotor will go.
Nigel lies in the bottom of the Zodiac the whole way back, half-covered in a netting of loosely coiled rope. He makes a whistling noise through the ruin of his mouth. Phoebe and I don't talk, not for a lack of things to say, but because we are both gripped by the same fear.
They were waiting for us.
FOUR
I know the cream is working, because my skin is twitching and the urge to scratch is unbearable. I sit on my hands to keep from tearing at my flesh. Phoebe must be feeling the same thing, though I can only tell by the way her eyes are moving—back and forth, like she is watching a tennis match. My lungs still hurt, and when I take a deep breath, the webbing of new tissue threatens to tear. My throat is raw, and I sound like a three-pack-a-day cigarette junkie when I speak.
When he is finished with Nigel, Talus strips off the rubber gloves, turning them inside out, and discards them in the nearby waste bin. His skin is shiny with sweat, and when he raises his hand to wipe his forehead, he pauses. Even though he has been wearing the heavy rubber gloves, he's still not sure he wants to touch his face with his hand. He realizes I'm watching him and he finishes the motion, though he uses his sleeve to wipe his forehead. I don't blame him; Phoebe and I both know the same apprehension. We've just had more time with it, more time to bury the fear deep in our hearts.
“They were waiting for us,” Phoebe says.
“Give me your report,” Talus says. He hunches forward slightly, turning his back to the bed where Nigel is lying. It forces us to cluster around him, as if we are sharing a secret, and I dislike the subtle inference in his motion, but I let it go, focusing instead on telling him what happened. Our intel had been bad. Whoever was funding Kyodo Kujira had wanted Arcadia to send a team. Would we be so curious that we'd leave solid ground, that we'd expose ourselves, just to find out what they were doing? Out on the open water, we couldn't hide as readily—we couldn't run away. “They're conducting tests, all right,” I say, “but it's got nothing to do with cetacean research. That boat hasn't processed a whale in over a year. They just wanted to test a new chemical agent, one that”—I wave a hand to indicate the three of us—“reacts strongly to our physiology.”
“Aerosol dispersal,” he mutters when I finish. He looks over his shoulder at Nigel's quivering form. “Idiot.”
Nigel hadn't been wearing Gore-Tex on his head. The stocking cap soaked up the poisonous mist, and the cotton fabric turned into a concentrated glob of corrosive acid. Whatever that mist was—whatever was pumping out of that hose on the deck—reacted strongly to flesh. Our flesh. It had no effect on the slick surface of our dry suits, or any other surface.
Phoebe and I had gotten a light dose, and our burns would heal in time
, but Nigel was much worse. Most of the flesh on his head was gone. His eyes were ruined, and his throat was badly burned. His lungs were in bad shape; each shallow breath caused his body to quake with pain. He had forgotten what it was like to die, and so he kept on breathing, kept on trying to heal. The process would take a long time and it would be filled with pain.
Sometimes it is only Mother who can stop the pain, but she is so far away. Solid ground is so very far away.
“He needs blood.” Talus says out loud what we've been thinking.
“It won't be enough,” Phoebe says.
Talus lifts his shoulders. “He's family.” As if that is all the justification we need.
Phoebe looks at me since Talus won't meet her gaze. “It won't be enough,” she repeats.
“I know,” I reply. “But if we can get him stabilized, he might manage to hold the thirst off until we can get back to land.”
My words are meaningless, and I can tell Phoebe is disappointed in my response. But to say anything else would be to contradict Talus, who has invoked the most primal justification.
Family.
We know what this means: everyone else dies, because that is the only way to ensure our survival.
* * *
“Silas.”
I should ignore her. I should pretend I didn't hear her over the omni-present growl of the boat and the ocean. I should just keep walking. But I don't. “Mere.”
The hallway is dim and the hood of my coat is up so she can't see my face, but she gets real close. Her hand falls on my arm. “What's going on?”
“Nothing,” I say, though the ragged sound of my voice reveals the word as the lie that it is.
“I saw you leave. You and your friends. You took a boat and went out there.”