Fire And Ice

by Paul Garrison

  The moan in the rigging sharpened to a shriek.

  It was a sound he had heard only twice before: once in the Roaring Forties, a thousand miles from Capetown, and once in a typhoon that had wiped out half the Philippines.

  HE WAS APPALLED HOW BADLY HE HAD MISJUDGED THE SIZE

  of the depression. Time seemed to stop. He grew vaguely aware that he had ceased to care, that exhaustion and incipient hypothermia were separating mind and body. It didn't matter. If anything, he felt warmer. All he needed was a nice long sleep. Just close his eyes and sleep.

  "Michael!"

  "What? What? Ow!" His lips were burning.

  "Drink this. Wake up!"

  Hot, sweet tea, thick with sugar, like warm syrup. How she had managed to make it with the boat crashing side to side, he would never know. Nor where she got the strength to scream in his face until he remembered who he was. And where he was.

  "Don't die!" she screamed. "Look at me!"

  He drank. She came back with more. He drank half, then forced the rest on her. "Okay. I'

  m okay."

  Then, gradually, he began to realize that he was worrying about Ronnie again. It was as if his mind had registered a minute change in the storm, a lessening of the danger. He listened. The wind shriek had dropped a decibel. The sea was still chaos. It mauled them for hours. But the wind was veering northwest, north, northeast, and at last he and Sarah allowed themselves to share a look of hope.

  Dawn, two days east of Shanghai: steep waves jumping at a gloomy sky; cold rain rattling on the sails.

  Veronica beat to windward, logging seven knots under reefed main and a tall, narrow slab of heavy Dacron hanked to the inner forestay. The East China Sea was gray; the horizon ragged, oppressively close; and the sky so dark that when Sarah came up at eight o'clock to relieve him, Stone was still steering by the red glow of the compass light.

  "I wish," she said, "I had killed him when I had the chance."

  She spoke as if the thought were new. But she said it at each watch change—the only time they saw each other—and often they were her only words. He reached to take her hand, but she wouldn't let him.

  "It wouldn't have made a difference," he said. "It was the other one who grabbed her."

  "Moss is a machine. He's nothing without the old man."

  Stone could not agree that Moss was nothing; blazing through his mind was the recurring image of the black man swooping down like a bird of prey. "Four hours to go," he said, hoping to calm or at least distract her with happier thoughts.

  Sarah looked up at the radio antenna on the masthead. "Will you check the radio?"

  "Soon as I go below." He had tuned in the weather every two hours. The radio was fine.

  "Where are you going?"

  She had started forward. "Shake out the reef."

  "No," said Stone. "She'll just heel too much and slow down."

  Sarah returned reluctantly to the cockpit. He stepped away from the helm. "I'm going to get some sleep. Give me a yell if the wind starts screaming." Already the western sky was getting lighter. Sarah eyed it hungrily.

  Stone woke an hour later to feel the boat laboring under too much sail. He went up on deck. The rain had stopped, but the wind and the spray pelting the dodger were colder.

  Sarah, shivering at the helm, tracked him with a defiant stare as he took a second reef in the main.

  "Head up a little," he called. "We've got to go to the storm jib."

  "No. You'll slow us down."

  She was suffering, and he was trying to be gentle with her. But the interrupted sleep and the cold he felt so sharply stirred his own anger. "Don't tell me what'll slow this boat.

  Head up!"

  Sarah gripped the helm like a weapon.

  "Goddammit! I love her too!" Stone yelled. "Trust me to sail the boat, for crissake."

  "You think I can't?"

  "You're not doing a great job of it at the moment." "Aye, aye, Captain."

  "Head up!"

  Sarah's lips set hard. Only a spasm flickering under her cheek betrayed her confusion. "

  My child needs me."

  "Read the knot meter," Stone yelled. "What is it? Six-eight?" He couldn't see the speedometer from the mast, but everything he felt—from the noise in his ears to the wind on his face, to the minute vibrations of the deck beneath his feet—told him that the Swan was sailing at 6.8 knots and should be doing 7.1.

  Sarah tore her gaze from him to the knot meter. Then, with a strange look—a look that tore his heart—she did as he demanded and steered the boat closer to the wind. Stone dropped the heavy forestay sail and raised the storm jib in its place. Sarah wouldn't meet his eye as he went below.

  He sprawled on the leeward berth in the main cabin and closed his eyes, sleep impossible. He thought he would give his arm to have his child back. But after listening to the hollow, wet noise of the bow crashing through the steepening seas, he admitted he would give his other arm to see his wife smile again. Neither seemed likely to happen.

  He fine-tuned the self-steering gear so that he could join Sarah below when Ronnie radioed. While a close-hauled windward beat was among the best of the Swan's points of sail, the same was not true of the self-steering, particularly in choppy seas. The waves kept knocking her bow

  off course, devouring speed. He started the generator and reluctantly switched on the electric autopilot, which had a dangerous habit of shorting out with no warning.

  At five minutes before noon, he took a careful look at the horizons and then went below into the relative warmth and quiet of the cabin. Sarah was at the nav station, the radio on, the mike in her hand. Stone braced himself on the companionway steps, wondering what stratagem Jack Powell would use to ensure their privacy on the open radio waves. The answer came in Ronnie's voice.

  "Ronnie calling Veronica. Ronnie calling Veronica." "Oh!" Sarah gasped. "Oh, Michael."

  She felt blindly for his hand, her gaze locked on the radio.

  "Come in Veronica."

  "We're here, darling. We're here."

  "Mummy! Are you okay?" Used to radiophone communication, they switched from Transmit to Receive instinctively at the end of each other's sentences.

  "Yes, dear. Are you?"

  "Is Daddy?"

  "I'm fine, sweetheart. We're both fine." How many times had he overheard one side of a radiophone conversation between sailors at sea and their families at home? I'm fine, how are you? The Swan lurched. He felt her turn away from the wind. The autopilot tugged her back.

  "Oh, thank God. I was worried about the storm."

  "No problem," said Stone. "Veronica did herself proud."

  "Listen, Mummy. Daddy. Do you know who I mean by Santa Claus?"

  "Yes, dear."

  "Well, Santa Claus says remember we have each other by the short hairs. Do you know what that means?" "Yes, dear."

  "He promised huge presents when we arrive."

  "Do you think he'll keep his promise?" Stone asked.

  There was a brief pause. Sarah's hand tightened on his. It might have been static or one of them had hit the Transmit switch later. Stone imagined the old man in the bathrobe leaning over her on one side, and the huge Moss on

  the other. Finally, Ronnie came back on in mid-sentence. " . . . always keeps his promise."

  He looked at Sarah. Her face was alight, her whole being fueled by the sound of Ronnie's voice. Stone felt it too. She didn't sound afraid. That was the big thing. Not afraid. And yet, there was so much unsaid. Sarah covered the mike.

  "There's something she's not telling

  ," she whispered.

  Stone had utter faith in Sarah's psychic bond with their child. "But she does believe he'll let her go."

  "It sounds that way. . . . " She hit the transmit button. "Ronnie? Are you eating properly?"

  "Oh, yeah, Mum, Mr. J— Santa Claus told the cook to make potato chips and he did.

  And they got more Coke. And, before we leave, we're having a huge Chinese dinne
r sent aboard from the best restaurant in town."

  "What are you going to have?"

  "Peking duck"

  "Dammit," said Stone, and Sarah looked stricken. Ronnie hated duck. She'd gotten sick on it in New Zealand. She was trying to tell them something.

  He took the microphone. "Sweetie?" How to put the question? "Sweetie. When does Santa plan to sail?"

  After a staticky hiss, Ronnie said, "Santa Claus says we'll cruise away in plenty of time."

  "Sweetheart, you really missed a great storm." "Oh yeah?"

  "Fifty-knot winds."

  "You're joking."

  "I wouldn't joke about fifty knots. You would have loved it."

  "Hey, Mr.—Santa," he heard her call. "Mummy and Daddy were in fifty-knot winds.

  What? Oh. Daddy, Santa says do you need any new sails for Christmas?"

  "Tell him all I want is my second mate."

  "Oh! 1 gotta go. Santa says we'll talk day after tomorrow at sixteen hundred."

  "Good-bye, dear," Sarah cried, but they both knew her voice was lost in the air.

  Stone let loose his breath.

  "We'll talk to her day after tomorrow," said Sarah. "Thank God."

  "She sounds pretty good," Stone ventured.

  Yes, considering."

  "What do you think she's trying to tell us?"

  "I don't know."

  Veronica gave another hard lurch. By the time Stone got to the cockpit, she had fallen ninety degrees off course. He put her back on, shut down the generator and the autopilot, and searched the sky for a break to shoot the sun. The cloud, which had lifted higher as the depression rushed on, was still too thick to penetrate. He hadn't had a fix since they left the Yangtze sea buoy. Dead reckoning put them a day and a half from the Osumi Strait. But the sea chop could have thrown them many miles off course, and he knew as much about his true position as he did about Ronnie's true condition.

  Why sixteen hundred? he mused. Why not noon like today?

  Sarah came on deck. It was her watch. She said, "I think she was trying to warn us."

  "Of what?"

  "I don't know. And I don't think she knows either. . . .

  Michael, I'm sorry about before. I was so upset. I feel so

  much better now that we've heard her voice. Don't you?" "Did he offload any gas at that power plant?" "Just enough to lighten the ship to get in the river." "Why didn't he sell the whole cargo?"

  "Gotcha."

  Moss was grinning ear to ear when Mr. Jack walked onto the bridge. The OMBO

  monitor displayed a chart of the eastern reaches of the East China Sea. Kyushu, the southernmost big island of Japan, thrust into it like a tongue, forming the north coast of the Osumi Strait. Moss moved his fingers on a glidepad and tapped twice. Lines of position appeared on the screen. The second line crossed the first. The third line crossed them near the intersection, forming a tight triangle.

  "There they are."

  Mr. Jack studied the screen. "Okay. Get to the airport.

  But don't underestimate those two. Captain still can't believe they made it through that storm."

  Moss grinned. "They never met a storm like me." "And for crissake don't get caught by the Japs." "Hey, I wouldn't rat you out, Mr. Jack."

  Mr. Jack reached out and laid his mutilated hand on the black man's shoulder. "I know you wouldn't, Moss. But I don't want to lose you. Huh?"

  The poor bastard practically wept with gratitude. And Mr. Jack thought, not for the first time, how little you had to do to hijack a lonely man's soul.

  "WHY SELL THE GAS IN TOKYO WHEN HE'S SO WELL CON-

  nected in China?"

  "Maybe some crooked Japanese offered him more money."

  A clear sun shot at noon the day after they spoke to Ronnie put the Swan 360 miles east of Shanghai, 130 miles southwest of Nagasaki, and less than 120 miles from the Osumi Strait. With luck, if the clear weather held, they might by nightfall see the first glimmer of the Kusakaki lighthouse.

  The northeast monsoon was still postdepression boisterous—a powerful twenty-five knots—and Veronica was flying under double-reefed main and her high-cut inner forestay sail. But the sea, which had deepened remarkably when their course took them at last over the hundred-fathom line, was, compared to the past three days, almost orderly. Large waves moved in stately procession, crowned with white crests. A royal blue color demarked the Japanese-Pacific waters from the East China Sea.

  An hour after Stone's noon shot, they saw their first ships. A bright green car carrier steamed out of the east, bound for Shanghai or Hong Kong. Another, riding high and light, overtook them at twenty knots, racing for the Osumi Strait, and dwindled quickly.

  The high sky was streaked with the trails of jetliners converging on Tokyo. Though they were still some six hundred miles and four hard days' sailing from the city, something about nearing the Strait and the first of Japan's main islands felt like their goal was in reach and the worst was over.

  When Stone relieved Sarah at two, she stayed up in the cockpit with him, sitting close within his arm while he steered with one hand. They talked quietly, musing over the relative merits of staying on in Tokyo to visit with Hiroshi's family or sailing due south to warm water. It helped to pretend that there was no question they'd have Ronnie back and that life would go back to normal within a few days.

  The winter light faded from the sky. A few pale stars winked behind the clouds. Ducking to look under the sails, which were sheeted in hard on the starboard side, they began to sense an intermittent glow on the horizon. Illusory, at first, it materialized as a faint halo—Kusakaki Light flashing at twenty-second intervals.

  The western approach began about twenty-five miles ahead. Sixty miles beyond it they would enter the Osumi Strait. There, a thirty-degree turn to the left—if the wind would allow—and northeast to Tokyo Bay.

  Eight hours later, at one in the morning, Stone was below—having just signed off a VHF

  radio conversation with the third mate of a Yokohama-bound Korean ore carrier that had overtaken them at sixteen knots a half mile to port.

  "Sixteen-second double white flasher off the port beam," Sarah called down the hatch.

  He checked the chart—where he had plotted the position the Korean had given him—and the Light Lists. "It's Sata Misaki Light on the southern tip of Kyushu. Look for a fifteen-second red flasher on the starboard bow. I doubt you can see it yet—about twenty miles."

  He heard her safety harness shackle rasp along the jack line as she headed toward the bow for a look around the sails. She galloped back, calling, "I see the glow! Fifteen-second red."

  Stone brought her a covered mug of tea. "That's Kisika Said. Japanese is driving me nuts.

  Saki means point. Zaki

  means point. Misaki means point. Hana means point. Kaku means point. Pii means point."

  "We say point, cape, headland, promontory. Why shouldn't they?"

  "They're supposed to be more efficient. Why the hell, if Mr. Jack is as rich as he's supposed to be, is he stealing natural gas? Why go to so much trouble for ten or twenty million bucks when he's already worth a hundred times that?"

  "Maybe he's bankrupt."

  He picked up the binoculars and scanned a confusing mass of lights between the boat and Kyushu, ten miles to port. It was difficult to distinguish the fishing boats, coasters, and ships from buildings on the shore.

  "Goddamned carnival out there."

  He jiggled the glasses. The shore lights dissolved into strings of tiny dots as the movement of the glasses revealed the pulsing AC current. The sea lights, which burned on direct current, shone steadily.

  "Okay, wait till we're right between Sata and Kisika and we go to east northeast, oh-six-oh."

  They stayed up all night in the cockpit, two pairs of eyes to watch for ships. The north wind started veering to the east. In the darkness of four in the morning, the boat appeared to be between the glow of Sata Misaki far off the port quarter and the red-flashing Kisika S
aki ahead of the starboard bow—indicating they were in the middle of the Osumi Strait.

  The wind had swung into the teeth of course 060°.

  The closest they could sail was 075, which would take them increasingly offshore as the Japanese archipelago angled toward the northeast. Sarah was distraught, Stone—high on tea, chocolate bars, and the coming dawn—philosophical: he brandished the chart, saying, "Don't worry, what we lose tacking offshore we'll get back with a boot from the Kuroshio Current."

  Kisika Saki dimmed behind them to a faint glow like embers cloaked in ash, while ahead, a slowly lightening sky revealed the Philippine Sea.

  It was deep, an arm of the Pacific. The water was dark, the waves widespread and orderly. The monsoon was

  blowing a gale, steady and backing north, more to angles the Swan liked. Stone was able to nudge her closer to east northeast.

  At noon, he brought Sarah macaroni and cheese and steered while she ate it.

  "You know, he could sell the gas in China before he goes to Tokyo."

  "Possibly." Sarah yawned. "He seems to use the Dallas Belle as his private yacht."

  "Get some sleep. Nobody out here but us chickens. I'll wake you for Ronnie." He had caught three hours himself.

  At three-thirty he went below to wake her and turn on the single-sideband radio. At five of four, he started the generator and engaged the autopilot. At four on the dot—sixteen hundred—Ronnie came in loud and clear.

  "Ronnie calling Veronica. Ronnie calling Veronica."

  "We hear you, darling. How are you?"

  "How are you, Mummy?"

  "Fine. How are you?"

  "How's Daddy?"

  Stone leaned into the mike. "Doing fine, sweetheart. How are you?"

  "Fine."

  They waited. But "fine" was all they got.

  "Are you eating properly?"

  "Great food, Mum. I ate so much duck I'm going to squawk. . . . How are you?"

  "What the hell is she trying to tell us?" whispered Stone.

  "We're having a wonderful sail, dear. Brilliant wind. Clear as glass all afternoon."