Mote in Andrea's Eye

by Wilson, David

  When he got a response, he quickly gave the operator on the Daybreak the coordinates of the sixth barge. “Get there as quickly as you can,” he said, before signing off. “The seas are rough out here, as you may have noticed. It may take you longer than planned to get them out, and we don’t know where the Bermuda barges have anchored. We have no comms at this time.”

  “Roger, Moontide, this is Daybreak, out.” There was a silence, then the speaker crackled again, and the voice returned. “And might I add,” the operator on the Daybreak said, “it’s damn good to hear your voice.”

  Captain Menard almost laughed. “Let’s take ’em home. Moontide out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Andrea stood on the deck of the barge and watched the nose of the cutter plow through the surf toward them. The sky was very dark, and the wind had picked up to the point that, between the gusts and the choppy, rolling seas, it was difficult to remain on her feet. She was tired. She had never been so tired. Making her way up and down the length of the barge, fighting the shuddering gravitational pull each time they rolled down the side of a new wave as her weight seemed to multiply, then recede, had put a strain on her joints that would ache for weeks. It didn’t matter. The pumps were operational, the anchors, for the moment, were holding, and now their salvation was in sight. She had never been happier to see anything in her life.

  The Daybreak was making slow headway, but she knew this was mostly due to running across the seas, trying to get into position. They would be alongside, or as close as they dared to come, in moments. She called her crew close in about her and clung tightly to a pipe just outside the barge’s control cabin.

  As the Daybreak pulled alongside, she heard the sliding roll of the cutter’s anchor snaking down through the depths, and a man standing on deck, Captain Clayton, she believed his name was, called out to them to stand by through a battery powered bullhorn. They were soaked and shivering. The wind was heavy with moisture, and the clouds grew lower and denser with each passing moment.

  There was the POP of a line gun, and a balled-up and weighted knot of rope soared over from the cutter to land on the deck. Her people gathered it in, working quickly to haul the heavier lines across. Within moments they had rigged the lines, and though they creaked with the strain, they held.

  Andrea pushed the others forward, youngest first, and one by one they were hauled up the line, the harness swaying in the wind and threatening to slam them into the hull of the cutter. Each time the men on deck managed to avoid disaster, swinging the sling up and over the railing and hurriedly passing the sling back down. It seemed to take forever, but Andrea knew they couldn’t have been at it more than fifteen minutes when it came time for her to be placed in the sling. One young man remained behind, and she protested, but he pushed her firmly into the harness.

  “I’ll be fine,” he told her with a fierce grin. “I can strap myself in more quickly than I can show you how to do it. Get up there, ma’am.”

  She nodded, and in moments she was swinging crazily out over the waves. She closed her eyes and prayed then. She prayed for herself, and for Phil. She prayed for the crews of the other barges, and for the storm to pass. Before she could get to Keith, the compound, or Gabrielle, she felt a sudden lurch and was hoisted up and over the cutter’s rail.

  She stood, shaking, with one of her assistants helping support her weight as they watched the sling take its last journey down. The young man was as good as his word. He was into the sling and back up onto the cutter’s deck in what seemed less than a minute. Without hesitation, the rigging was released from the cutter, tossed over the side, and left to dangle from the side of the barge. With a roar they came about, swung away from the barge and into the seas, and angled off toward the open ocean.

  The crew helped Andrea into the bridge and sat her down in a padded chair. She brushed them off, though she still felt too shaky to stand on her own. “Have we heard from the others? Has anyone heard from Gabrielle?”

  “There’s another boat,” the captain assured her. “I didn’t recognize the pilot’s name, and I couldn’t make out much of what he said through the static. In any case, we’re out of time. I’m setting a course away from the storm. I sure hope those damned things,” he poked a thumb back over his shoulder toward the barge and its five pumps, “can make a difference. We’re going to be lucky to get out of here with our skins.”

  Andrea slumped back on the seat, drained. She needed to know that the others would be getting out as well, but there was nothing she could do. Everything she had to throw at the storm was already in place. She knew she should feel a sense of exhilaration or accomplishment, but all she felt was exhausted and worried, frightened for her friends and her colleagues. She wanted to talk to Phil, and Keith, and she wanted her computer. None of it was possible, so she drew her legs up with her knees against her chest, circled her legs with her arms, and rocked slowly, face pressed into the damp denim of her jeans.

  The Daybreak sliced powerfully through the waves, knifing away from the barge and into the dim, lightless void.

  ~ * ~

  Gabrielle could barely see the flashing lights at either end of her barge. The wind howled around them, and she was so cold her teeth chattered wildly, and her jaws ached from trying to prevent it. They huddled together in the control cabin, taking turns standing and watching. She had repeated that the boat would come for them, and that everything would be fine until the words were a mantra, chanted into the face of the coming storm and swallowed up unheard. No one believed her, she knew, but she kept repeating it anyway. There was nothing else to do but to give in to despair, and if she did that, she knew, she might as well dive over the side now and let the waves dash her against the side of the barge until she was senseless.

  They had been finished with the pumps for an hour and a half. They should have been picked up by now, should have been on their way out around the island to safety. Instead, the winds ground at the walls of their small cabin with a fury that threatened to rip it from the frame of the barge, and the waves rolled up and back like the sinewy curves of some giant serpent. They were alone. Gabrielle had never felt so alone. Even with Jason at her side, her arms around him and clinging, she felt the darkness pressing in, separating her from him, from the others, and from the world.

  She thought about praying. It had been a long time since her last confession, but she knew the words well enough. The rituals of childhood, particularly a childhood riddled with Mass, penitence, and communion, were hard to shake. She actually had the first “Our Father” on the tip of her tongue when an image burst into her mind. It was an image of God the Father in all his white-haired, bearded holiness listening to her prayer and then shrugging. Like, what did she expect him to do? “You don’t have sense enough to get in out of the rain” hardly covered it this time, did it? She snorted and almost burst into hysterical laughter, but bit it back. There would be no coming back from hysteria, either.

  It was Sandra’s turn to watch. She was a large, blonde girl—a former Olympic swimmer with strong shoulders and fierce green eyes. It took a moment for Gabrielle to drag herself out of her self-absorbed misery to understand the girl was shaking her and saying something.

  “Wha . . .”

  “The boat!” Sandra screamed. “The boat is out there.”

  Gabrielle leaped to her feet with Jason right behind her. The others crowded around the windows and rubbed the fogged glass, trying to see. Sandra was right. The cruiser was out there, rolling in slowly, turned parallel with the barge. The throb of the engines was buried in the pounding of the surf and the pumps, but the sleek lines of the boat were clearly visible, and there were men clinging to its railings, waving their arms.

  Gabrielle tried the radio. At first she got nothing, then, remembering it wasn’t one of the cutters, she flipped the frequency dial frantically. A moment later she heard the scratchy static-laced voice of the old captain. “Stand by for lines,” he said, and she nearly collapsed with rel
ief.

  It was far from over, though. The seas were much too rough for a standard transfer. They got the lines across fine, but when they had been tied off on the barge, they threatened to snap almost immediately. The backlash of such an action would cut a man in half as cleanly as a giant cleaver, and they all knew it. The lines were cast off again hurriedly.

  Gabrielle thought frantically, and then made up her mind. The barge was equipped with several standard U.S. Navy lifeboats. She returned to the radio and quickly relayed her idea to the cruiser, and after only a moment’s hesitation, got the green flag. The crews from the first four barges were already aboard. There were plenty of experienced hands on the ship—but their combined skill couldn’t change the seas that threatened to capsize them. Something had to be done, and quickly.

  Working together, they unfastened one of the lifeboats. They were stored in huge orange canisters designed to open at a certain depth from the pressure of the water. They could also be opened manually and that is what Gabrielle ordered. The boat hissed to life, and her crew scrambled around it, fighting not to be drawn or washed overboard, but fighting at the same time to secure the boat before the wind could yank it away from them. When it was fully inflated, Gabrielle climbed inside and tied off the raft to the barge to hold it in place.

  The rest of the crew scrambled aboard, and one by one they fastened themselves to the boat using short lines, ropes, and whatever was available. When all of the crew except for Jason was in place, they signaled the cruiser, and another line was shot across. Jason lunged, grabbed it, tripped on the deck and sprawled headlong. He clutched tightly to the line as the barge tilted, and scrambled crab-like, barely managing to cling to a stanchion and wrap his body around it before he was swept overboard.

  As the barge rose again, tilting the other way, he launched himself into the raft and helped Gabrielle tie the line off at the front of the small craft. Then, releasing the lines that held them in place, she waved frantically at the cruiser.

  The raft scraped alarmingly on the deck and lurched forward. The rubber craft bunched, dipped as the line was pulled taut, and then slid off the side of the barge and down about fifteen feet to the surface of the water. The crash knocked all the wind from Gabrielle’s slight frame, and she gasped. Water rolled over the edges of the raft, and it plunged forward, held by the line and drawn slowly through the waves toward the side of the cruiser. Men scrambled on the deck and wrapped the line that joined them several times around a post on deck to keep tension. The waves rolled up, then down again and the line thrummed with tension. Gabrielle ducked her head—gasped as she took in a mouthful of seawater. She clung to the boat with all her strength, and slowly—very slowly—they were dragged closer.

  It seemed to take hours. Water pounded them, and each time the seas beneath them rolled, the line threatened to snap, but it held. It held, and at last they felt the heavy bump of the cruiser’s hull on the front of their raft. Ladders dropped over the sides, and more lines, and the crew scrambled up like rats until they were grabbed and hauled on deck by those waiting above. Finally, only Gabrielle remained. She was tired, too tired to rise, and certainly too tired to unbind the lines that held her to the rubber boat. She waved feebly to those above, but she was unable to cry out—and they would not have heard her in any case.

  The lifeboat slammed into the side of the cruiser, and all the breath left her body. The world spun, and she took in another mouthful of the salty water, choking weakly.

  Then—very suddenly—strong arms wrapped around her. She felt the lines that bound her to the lifeboat cut free, and she was lifted like a child. Next came a whirling, dizzying climb. She could only flail her arms and legs weakly, and in moments she felt more hands, lifting her over the rails and onto the deck.

  She stared up and saw a toothy grin returning her gaze. The old fisherman smiled at her. “If you drown, who will bring the fish?”

  She tried to laugh, but the seawater choked it, and she slipped into darkness, visions of nets filled with flopping fish filling her mind.

  The cruiser shot out into the waves and fled for safety. The wind picked up another notch as Hurricane Andrea screamed her fury and drove toward the thin, but strengthening wall of cold water in her path.

  The small boat bounced and shuddered as it rode up one swell and down the next, but the captain piloted it expertly, angling to the north toward open water and safety. The radio was silent. Even the empty squawks of static had died away. Everyone huddled below deck except for Jason and the old fisherman, who manned the helm and tried to watch the water ahead through the rain-washed windshields. Their lights were feeble in the murky darkness, and gusts of wind tore around and though the seams of doors and under cracks, whistling and screeching.

  Behind them, the pumps thrummed and pounded at the water, their voices small and lost in the face of the coming storm.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As they soared over the storm, keeping well above the ten thousand foot level, Phil felt a dizzying sense of déjà vu. The sensation was heightened by the fact that Matt was there, driving the images of his first storm experience, and his last, into sharper perspective. This was, of course, much different than either of his other experiences. They were in a DC-8—the aircraft that Lieutenant Penn had explained to him was one of the current standards for hurricane research. Phil had always been a propeller-driven pilot; the jet was a new experience, and despite his weariness and the disorientation the last day had brought to him, he got little rest on the flight.

  They took off out of Oceana Naval Air station and in only about an hour they closed on the near edge of the storm. They had a brief glimpse of the lights on Bermuda as they flashed overhead. Lieutenant Penn tried the radio frequencies for the barges, and for the cutters, but they got no response. It was just not possible to cut through the odd interference the storm was causing. Either that, or there was no one at the other end to answer. None of them wanted to think about that.

  “We’re over the line where the barges were expected to anchor,” Penn called back to his two passengers. “We’re up pretty high, and the storm has dropped visibility to nothing, but I’ll make a run over in case we can spot their lights.”

  Matt nodded. He stared intently out his own window and down on the rolling clouds below. They were high enough that the moon was clearly visible above them, but all they could see below was an endless, twisting mass of clouds.

  “You remember that day, Phil?” Matt asked at last, turning away from the spectacle long enough to meet his old captain’s gaze.

  Phil nodded. “You know I do. Like it was yesterday. I still wake up—or I did thirty years ago—screaming, thinking that spout is driving at me to drag me down. You don’t shake a memory like that.”

  Matt nodded, as if it was the response he’d expected, and turned back to the window again.

  “Can we still reach Keith?” Phil asked.

  Lieutenant Penn flipped a couple of switches, and spoke into his microphone. A second later he turned and gave Phil a thumbs-up. It was difficult to speak over the roaring of the engines, and since all three men were pilots, they dropped easily into the silent hand communications. The lines were still open.

  “Ask him if there’s anything we should be able to see from here, or any sign we should watch for to know that it’s working,” Phil shouted, raising his voice to be heard. “I don’t want to just fly around up here—we should be doing some good.”

  Penn nodded, and Phil turned to his window, opposite the one that Matt was staring out of. There was nothing below but endless dark clouds, stretching so far to either side that the thought of Andrea, her barges, and a bunch of compressed air pumps actually doing battle with the thing had the bitter taste of futility in his mouth.

  How many years of his life—of her life—had been thrown at the walls of these storms, only to be slapped back into their faces with disdain? Andrea had lived with her father’s death for more than sixty years, but did that stack u
p to having thirty stolen out from under you? He gritted his teeth against the thoughts that threatened to spill in and jumble his mind. He focused on the clouds below and willed his mind, and his suddenly failing eyesight, to pierce the gloom.

  Once he thought he might have seen a glimmer, a flashing light, strobing in the darkness, but it was gone so quickly that he convinced himself it had only been a will-o-the-wisp, moisture in the storm reflecting back some light from the DC-8 itself, or a glimmer of moonlight.

  Lieutenant Penn turned back to them.

  “I’m going to bank back and run along the storm wall again,” he shouted. “Scharf says that if we are going to see any change in this storm, that’s where it will show up first. He also said to watch the eye.”

  Phil nodded. If he were thinking straighter, he’d have known this.

  Matt glanced at his watch. It was working fine, and he tapped it. Phil raised an eyebrow, and Matt yelled, “The storm wall should reach the point where the barges are supposed to have created their wall of cold water in about ten minutes.”

  Phil nodded again.

  “Where are you, Andrea?” he whispered. He turned back to the window and watched the endless roll of the clouds with growing frustration.

  ~ * ~

  Along a line hundreds of miles long, eighteen barges rolled and tossed, pounded by the relentless front edge of the storm. The assault was brutal, but the anchor chains were strong and somewhat more flexible in their strength than was standard, another innovation by one of Andrea’s people. Somehow, they held, though the aft anchor on one barge snapped loose near the end. The pumps functioned beautifully. Each was self-contained and held enough fuel to keep it operational well beyond the time period allotted. Either they would cool the water and break up the storm, or they would be picked up, shattered, and blown away in the monstrous grip of the wind, but they would not run out of fuel.