by Tom Wright
One of the whales seemed particularly interested in us and swam very close by—no more than ten feet off starboard. I reached out to see if she would get close enough that I could touch her. We gazed in amazement as she rolled over on her side and looked right at us with her left eye. She held the pose and stared for a few seconds and then rolled the rest of the way over and disappeared under the boat. The rest of the pod followed her off to our port stern and disappeared.
We stood silently.
“What have we done?” Sonny said rhetorically, before he turned and went below decks.
Yes, I thought. What have we done, indeed?
17
DAY 51 AT SEA, MOUTH OF BARKLEY SOUND, VANCOUVER ISLAND, CANADA (DEAD RECKONED POSITION: 48.8°N, 125.3°W)
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
-Carl Sandburg
It was Jill’s turn to babysit me as I stood watch. The weather remained benign, so we chatted about mostly meaningless things to pass the time. I tried to impress her with things that always fascinated me. I told her about how the sun converts six million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, which is enough to power civilization for hundreds of thousands of years. I pointed out that since electrons orbit the nucleus of every atom at a great distance, solid objects are mostly empty space. She just stared ahead. Such things didn’t interest her, which I found interesting in and of itself.
Jeff came topside and silently stepped past us. He stared up at the mast.
“You know what interests me?” she finally asked.
“No. What?” I replied, excited to find out what it was and glad that she was, apparently, listening.
“Evolution.”
“Really?” I replied. “So you don’t believe in the Biblical account of creation?”
“Pfff!” she exclaimed. “No. The evidence in favor of evolution is overwhelming!”
I hesitated. She brought up the topic, and I wasn’t sure where it was going, but I found nearly everything interesting, so I waited.
“I mean some things you have to take as a matter of faith, but that doesn’t mean you suspend all critical thinking and ignore huge bodies of scientific evidence,” she said.
I nodded in agreement.
“Creation could just be an analogy for the moment when mankind became sentient,” she continued. “Couldn’t it be that God breathed consciousness into us rather than literal life?”
I thought for a second and decided that wasn’t too bad of an idea.
“So what interests you about evolution?” I asked, steering her back to the original topic.
“It’s amazing enough that all this diversity evolved from just a few, or maybe one organism,” she continued. “But when you think about the complexity of our systems, it’s just overwhelming. The brain, for example. Or the eye—it is thought that it evolved from a patch of light sensitive cells.”
“I’ve always thought that seemed absurd,” I said.
She looked at me quizzically. “Really?”
I knew that evolution made perfect sense. Natural selection can be seen in action today. But certain aspects of it were just unbelievable. I struggled for how to articulate what I thought about it. Suddenly, I thought of an analogy.
“Let’s say I wanted to start the process to grow another arm on our backs a million years from now,” I said. “Is there something I could consciously do to bring it about?”
She shook her head in acknowledgement of the obvious.
“So then how can an unconscious process like selection start with a patch of light sensitive cells, evolve that into a ball, connect it to the brain via cords, grow lenses in there, and make it see?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But it happened.”
“Just because we have eyes, doesn’t mean that’s how it happened,” I said. “I know that’s our best theory, but it’s just hard to swallow—for me, anyway. As they say, what good is half an eyeball?”
Jill smiled.
“I’m well aware that just because I can’t see how it could happen doesn’t mean it didn’t happen,” I continued. “But it’s beyond incredible if you ask me though.”
Jill seemed like a different person since the last philosophical conversation we’d had. I sensed that she was in a much better place mentally, much less fragile. So I asked her a question that I’d been curious about since the last time we went down this road: “Jill, as a doctor, isn’t religious faith a little incompatible with your scientific training? Scientifically, much of religion is absurd.”
“Like what?” she asked immediately.
“Jesus rising from the dead, for one. Scientifically speaking, people don’t rise from the dead. The flood—there isn’t enough water in our entire earth/atmosphere system to submerge all the land masses. Jonah spending three days in the belly of a whale. All the miracles.”
“Don’t you think a god who could create the universe could temporarily suspend the scientific laws he created in order to accomplish something?” she replied.
“Yes, I do,” I replied. “But then I would also have to allow for Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy too because, theoretically, God could create all those things.”
“That’s where faith comes in,” she said. “I believe God could and did suspend the laws to accomplish things that were needed in his plan.”
After a few moments of thought, I replied: “I don’t really understand faith.”
“I’ll bet you have faith in all sorts of things,” she responded.
I shot her a skeptical look. She mentioned that I used satellites in my work and believe that the pictures they send actually are from space, but I don’t really know. I get a burger from a restaurant and have faith that it’s beef and not dog meat. Really, any understanding or belief in history requires a modicum of faith, according to Jill.
“But I believe in those things because I have no reason to doubt them, which is because they are plausible,” I responded. “I am willing to believe things that I don’t know for certain about as long as they are plausible. A guy spending three days in the belly of a whale and coming out alive, just isn’t plausible. So I have absolutely no reason to believe that. There is no reason for the engineers to lie to me about weather satellites and it is plausible that we sent up those satellites and they’re sending down photos.”
Jill just nodded.
“Are you feeling better about your faith than last time we talked about this?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’m glad,” I said.
“Since you’re on the subject of interests, you know what interests me?” Jeff chimed in as he fiddled with the cables and cleats on the mast. We had forgotten that he was there. He didn’t wait for us to respond. “We all know that nothing can escape a black hole, even light. And nothing travels faster than light. So how does gravity act on objects outside the black hole if it cannot escape it?”
Neither Jill nor I responded. That was indeed amazing.
“They say that space is warped around big bodies, like a bowling ball on a trampoline,” Jeff continued. “It’s hard to imagine how space could be warped. What does that even mean?”
Jill, ignoring Jeff’s rhetorical question, settled back into her seat. A serious look came over her, as if deciding how best to say something weighty. I hoped it was more about evolution.
“What are you going to do if no one is home when you get there? Or worse, they’re all dead?” she asked.
Over time, my skin had thickened from the inside out, so that such lines of questioning stung less than at first. I studied her expression and it contained not a hint of remorse for having asked such a thing, but her face winced and eyes squinted in painful anticipation of what she expected to hear.
“Jump off a bridge, I guess,” I replied. “And I’m not sure that their not being th
ere would be worse than just finding them dead, other than it would give me hope of finding them again. But I’m deathly afraid of what their absence would mean for them.”
“What would it mean, necessarily?”
“Nothing necessarily. But it would suggest that they had been captured or at least that they were out there somewhere where they could be captured. I assume capture would be a fate worse than death.”
“Maybe not. Maybe they just took up with the neighbors or friends and went off somewhere safe.”
“I don’t know where that would be, and, anyway, I told Kate to hunker down there with her parents and ride it out.”
“Does she always do exactly what you tell her?”
“Rarely.”
“Then you don’t know. Why don’t you just assume the best until you find out otherwise?”
“Human nature.”
The last of Vancouver Island scrolled slowly by to port, barely visible. We stayed close to the shore the entire way down the coast, but decided to back off a little as we closed in on civilization.
The wind had remained uncharacteristically calm, and it took us three excruciatingly long days to travel the length of Vancouver Island.
Despite being summer, it was cold enough for snow every night, and then it warmed up enough to change the snow to rain during the day. The snow never accumulated on shore because of the salty air, but the landscape turned white not far above the beach. The gray sky never broke, even when the precipitation stopped.
Jeff continued to stare up at the new mast, its tan wood quickly darkening in the damp sea air.
“It seems to be holding up,” he said, turning to us. “We need to discuss our passage through the strait and sound and where our drop points are going to be.”
He went to the helm and produced a nautical chart of the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Puget Sound and spread it out before us. The wind lifted the edge he could not control, but Jill grabbed hold and restrained it.
“Obviously we’re going through the strait,” he said, pointing at the channel between the north Washington Coast and Vancouver Island labeled Strait of Juan de Fuca.
“The narrowest point is at the west entrance to the strait, and it is almost twelve miles,” Jeff said. “We should be able to stay out of trouble from the shore at that distance, and it’s pretty much uninhabited out there anyway. But that doesn’t address what kind of traffic we might run into on the water. There might be all kinds of people streaming out of there. We’ll just have to deal with whatever comes up.”
“I’ve been to Port Angeles,” I interjected. “You can see all the way to the Canadian side.”
“Still, six miles is a helluva distance to be able to see our little boat,” Jeff continued. “The first major constriction we come to is Admiralty Inlet, between Port Townsend and Whidbey. It is less than four miles across.”
“Luckily, it’s also not very inhabited,” I said.
“Once we get inside the sound, we’re going to need lots of luck. At best, we will never be more than three miles from land on one side or another. We’ll try to stay closer to the unpopulated side—whichever that is, west side, mostly, I guess—but we should all keep watch the whole time.”
Jeff paused, staring at the map. He rubbed his chin and then looked up.
“And we’re starting to run low on fuel,” he continued.
“Low on fuel?” questioned Jill.
“I just dumped in the last can this morning. We’ve been motoring a lot.”
“But that still leaves us with a hundred gallons, right?” I asked.
“Yes. We will be fine getting to where we are going, but if we want to go anywhere else, we need to conserve. We’ll get at best a hundred and fifty hours out of that which is about six days. You know as well as I do that it can be too calm to sail for days in the Puget Sound.”
“I’m sure we can find some gas somewhere,” Jill interjected.
“Maybe,” Jeff and I replied simultaneously.
I continued the thought: “There is probably a lot of fuel left out there. But if the power is off, and it seems that it is, we will have a hard time getting at it.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, and then Jeff continued: “When we round the south end of Whidbey, it gets really tight.”
“South end of Whidbey?” I questioned. “We can’t go up the east side. Mukilteo and Everett are right there on the mainland, and they are heavily populated areas. Or were.”
“But if we go around the north end, it will take an extra day,” Jeff continued. “Not to mention that Deception Pass is far narrower than the southern route. This is the best way to Langley.”
“We don’t need to go around either end. You can just drop me off at the old marina north of the Bush Point lighthouse. It’s pretty old and rickety, but it’s deep enough, and there will hardly be anyone over there.”
Jeff slid his finger around the map as he scanned for Bush Point. He found it on the western shore of the island.
“But it’s gotta be five, six miles to Langley from there.”
“Ten, actually, but I’ll hoof it. After coming all this way, I am not going to risk getting us killed before I ever set foot on the damned island!”
“There is one other question,” I continued. “How are we supposed to know if Seattle has been nuked?”
“Ah, I think we have that covered,” Sonny said as he emerged to join the conversation. He carried a small wooden box with a speaker dangling from the side by wires. He sat beside me with a satisfied look.
“We built this homemade Geiger counter when we were on Gilligan’s Island,” Jeff said.
“What? How?” I asked confusedly.
“You remember when my phone kept going dead?” Sonny asked.
I nodded.
“Well, it turns out I have one of the test phones for project Tattle-Tale.”
“What the hell is project Tattle-Tale?”
Sonny looked at Jeff. Jeff explained that it was a project started by the Department of Homeland Security to fit cell phones with tiny solid state radiation detectors. When the phone detected radiation, it would call the DHS to alert them and then they would track the phone. They were trying to head off a terrorist packing around a dirty bomb.
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said.
“Of course not. They had to keep it under wraps because terrorists wouldn’t want to carry around little government Geiger counters, now would they?”
“They were in the testing phase of Project Tattle-Tale,” Jeff continued. “And they put the devices in about one out of every hundred new phones. The call back to DHS went unnoticed during normal phone usage. The user could never detect the transmission unless they knew what to look for. But Sonny’s phone kept going dead way too soon after being charged, especially when it wasn’t being used. I never thought anything about it. But we got to talking with some of the engineers on Gilligan’s Island, and we put two and two together.
I lowered my head. “So that means we were in the radiation during the ash storm!”
“Yes,” interjected Jill. “But it must not have been much of a dose or we would surely know it by now. None of us has any symptoms of radiation poisoning.”
“So then you built this thing?” I asked. “What does it have to do with the phone?”
“Well, we couldn’t use Sonny’s phone as a detector because until it made the connection with the DHS, it wouldn’t reset. So we’d never know if it was detecting new radiation or still trying to call on the first detection. The engineers on the island knew what to look for so we took apart the phone, figured out which parts were which, and made our own crude Geiger counter. He motioned to the box on his lap.”
“How do you know if it works?” I asked.
He switched it on, adjusted the speaker, and it started making a series of clicks. I became nervous.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s just background radiation. It’s normal. We’ll know we’re heading into radiatio
n when the rate of the clicks increases.”
I suddenly felt very lightheaded and weak. My head felt like a shaken compass suddenly righted, the ball rolling around inside, trying to find up. I felt my consciousness began to slip away. Jill and Jeff took hold of my arms.
“You need to take it easy,” Jill said. “You’ve had a very serious head injury. And I don’t know about you walking all the way to…”
“I’m fine!” I said as I forcibly freed my arms, determined to remain conscious. “I’m just tired, and I need to lie down.”
. . .
DAY 52 AT SEA, ENTRANCE TO THE STRAIT OF JUAN DE FUCA, NORTHWEST WASHINGTON STATE (DEAD RECKONED POSITION: 48.4°N, 124.8°W)
I awakened the next day to yet another pounding headache.
I rolled over and noticed that the boat pitched in a way that I had not experienced before. The boat rolled from side to side, but there was no bow to stern motion—we felt like a boat adrift. Suddenly concerned that something was wrong, I sprung out of my bunk and nearly hit my head on Sonny’s bunk. I had to hold onto the counter, not because I was unsteady on the sea—I surely was by then—but because I was still dizzy from having gotten up too fast.
I needed aspirin badly but didn’t dare ask for any. They were already suspicious enough of my health. They would insist on going with me when we got to Whidbey, and I couldn’t have that. I rummaged quietly around the cabin but found nothing. Then I remembered Jill putting the first aid kit under her bunk near the head and subsequently and discreetly found what I was after.
I downed four of the pills and sat dizzily on the edge of the bunk. Sometimes I could convince myself that I was getting better, until I tried to do anything. I worried that I was dying. What then? Jeff knew where Kate’s parents’ house was, and I felt confident that he would check it out, even if I died. I considered talking to them all about it, but then they would know for sure that I was ill, and I would become a burden. I absolutely did not want Jeff helping me at the expense of his own family.