Seed

by Michael Edelson

  Once they were all on board and drying their feet, Alex walked up to the control console and looked at the gas gauge.

  “That doesn’t look like much,” he said, pointing at the gauge. There appeared to be less than a half a tank.

  “Check out the other one,” she said, pointing to another gauge near the first one. It was full.

  “Two tanks? Cool. How much gas is that?”

  “Not sure,” she admitted. “But this is an offshore fishing boat, and they usually have very big tanks. Looks like this boat has been sitting here a while, maybe a long while. The owner had a small solar panel, which explains why the batteries aren’t dead. The gas should still be good, but there might be some water in it. Shouldn’t be a problem, though.”

  “Let’s pull up to that big one,” Alex pointed to the dilapidated cruising boat. “Maybe we can find more gas on board.”

  “I doubt it,” Barbara said. “Boats like that don’t use gasoline engines, they’re usually diesel.”

  “Well maybe we can find something else.” He noticed one of the instruments, a color screen that was showing what appeared to be a map with numbers all over the blue part.

  “What is that?” he asked, pointing. “What are those numbers?”

  “It’s a chartplotter and those numbers represent depth, so you know where it’s too shallow for your boat. Like…right here.” She smiled. “It’s like the GPS navigation in your car, works off the same satellites.”

  Alex grinned. “My car never had GPS navigation, that’s what phones are for. You’re such a doctor.”

  She laughed. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “So what does the thing say, we’re in Kauai?”

  “Yep,” she said. “Just as we thought. Anyway, I’ll look around, maybe I can find an owner’s manual or something. Tell us how much gas we have.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll mess around with this thing in the mean time.” He pointed to the chart plotter. “Figure out where Honolulu is.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” she said, and started rummaging around the numerous cockpit lockers.

  Alex used the device’s controls to zoom out, then move the display around to the other islands. He assumed that Honolulu would be on what Hawaiians called the “Big Island,” but he found it on the much smaller island of Oahu. Fortunately, it was the next isle in the chain, though it was still quite a way off. According to the display, it was ninety miles to Oahu’s western shore, and Honolulu was on the east side of the island.

  “Found it,” Barbara said, holding up a booklet. “Two hundred and forty gallons total. So that means we have…um…”

  “One eighty,” Yael said. She was sitting on one of the cushioned benches near the front of the boat.

  “Right,” Barbara said, smiling. “I was never good at math.” She turned to the booklet. “According to this, this boat can cruise at thirty miles per hour burning fourteen gallons an hour. That gives us a range of…” she turned to Yael.

  “Three hundred and eighty four miles,” Yael said.

  “Hey!” Alex said. “You’re like a walking calculator!”

  She shrugged. “I like math. That’s why I majored in it.”

  “Factoring in currents, extra weight and rough water,” Barbara continued. “We should probably assume it’s less, maybe three thirty, three forty.”

  “That’s plenty,” Alex said, looking at the chartplotter. “If we circle the south side of Oahu it’s a hundred and twenty miles to Honolulu, two forty round trip. Let’s search that big boat anyway, though. Who knows what we’ll find.”

  “Someone should check the radio while we do that,” Yael said. “We may be able to raise someone, or at least overhear something.”

  “What?”

  “The radio. This thing has a radio, right?”

  Alex turned to Barbara, who cringed and shook her head. “That’s right! I’m such a twit!” She walked over to the console and found the marine VHF. She turned it on, and started flipping through channels. Alex smiled. He’d thought he was the only one who suffered from such failings.

  “Let’s wait until we’re next to the other boat,” he said. “You can try to find something while we search it.”

  “Okay. I’ll need someone to push off.”

  Alex looked at his dry feet, then turned to Ryan and Patrick. “You guys. Get in the water and give us a shove.” Rank had its privileges.

  Launching the boat was easy, and within seconds they were floating, motors running, while the two men helped each other back into the boat. Barbara guided them expertly alongside the big cruiser, then lowered some cylindrical plastic bumpers over the side to keep the two boats from rubbing together. After tying the small craft to the larger cruiser with dock lines, she started to mess with the radio again.

  “Radio check,” she said. “Can anyone hear me?” After waiting a while, she switched channels and tried again.

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Tom, Yael, you’re with me. Patrick and Ryan, you two go onboard and wait on deck, keep an eye out. Everyone get your boots back on first. I don’t want anyone stepping on something and injuring their feet.”

  The boat was just as rundown on the inside as it was on the outside. There was water damage everywhere, along with garbage, broken furnishings and a very unpleasant moldy smell that, combined with the movement of the boat, threatened to dislodge his stomach. They found the fuel tank cap in the rear cockpit and Alex unscrewed it and took a sniff—definitely diesel. He was very familiar with the smell. Army vehicles generally ran on diesel.

  “Well at least we know where we can find diesel if we need it,” he said, disappointed. There was nothing else of value on board and he decided to scrub the search.

  “Anything?” he asked Barbara while he helped Yael down off the deck of the larger vessel.

  “Not a thing,” she said. “And that’s not normal. Hawaii should be crawling with VHF traffic.”

  “Not if the government bought out this island,” he said. “With the next one ninety miles away…what’s the range on those things anyway?”

  “Theoretically twenty five miles,” she said. “But this boat is small and it’s antenna is low in the water, so less.”

  “Okay. Let’s um…what do you call it? Cast off?”

  Barbara grinned. “Aye aye, skipper.”

  “Oh no,” he said, holding up his hands. “You’re the skipper. I’m just along for the ride.”

  They picked up the docking lines and bumpers, then Barbara took her position at the console, cranked the engines and moved the boat slowly away from the floating junk pile. Once clear, she pointed the boat’s nose out to sea and gunned the throttle. The motors roared and the vessel lurched forward, but didn’t move as fast as Alex expected. After a few seconds, though, the boat’s nose rose up in the air and then the entire thing seemed to pop out of the water and run on top of the waves, bouncing off each crest as it sped along at a very respectable speed. Barbara noticed his confusion.

  “It’s called ‘planing’,” she explained, speaking loudly to be heard above the roar of the motors and the slapping of the hull. “Like hydroplaning. A boat’s speed in the water is limited by the length of its hull, this one would be something like seven or eight miles per hour. As a boat moves it creates waves, and the waves move farther apart the faster it goes. Eventually it reaches the speed where it rides in the trough between two wave crests…like the valley between two mountains. To go faster, it has to climb up the face of the wave in front of it. It takes a lot of power to do that, but once most of the hull is above the water, the speed limit goes away. That’s called planing.”

  “You know a lot about boats,” he shouted, impressed. “Do they teach that at medical school?”

  She laughed. “They might as well, especially in California. It’s going to take us about four hours to get to Honolulu. We should be at the west coast of Oahu in three, though.”

  “I’ll be up front,” he said. “Trying not to hurl.”


  “Good plan! It’s called a bow.”

  “What?”

  “The front of the boat, it’s called a bow. The rear is called the stern.”

  “Good to know!” he yelled. Taking advantage of the numerous handholds scattered throughout the cockpit, he walked around the center console and made his way to the front—the bow—and sat down next to Yael. It was a little bit quieter here away from the engines, though every now and then a light spray of cold salty water cleared the hull and chilled his face and neck. The sun was bright in the sky, and the salty air and sparkling water reminded him of the tropical vacations his parents used to take him on.

  “You don’t look so good,” Yael said, noticing his discomfort. “Are you seasick?” She didn’t quite have to yell to be heard, but she did have to speak loudly.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “Aren’t you?”

  She shrugged. “Mind over matter. Looking at the horizon helps. This isn’t the best place to be, there’s more movement here than elsewhere, but I can’t stand to be back there, the smell of the engines is too much for me.”

  “I know what you mean.” Tom was on one side of the console watching Barbara work the controls, but the other three were in the back—the stern—where the cockpit was widest and most spacious.

  He started to say something, but his stomach rebelled and he managed to stick his head over the side just in time to avoid throwing up onto the deck.

  Chapter 13

  Alex’s nausea persisted for about an hour, but after being subjected to the barrier it was nothing more than a mild annoyance. After that, it began to slowly subside until by the end of the second hour it was completely gone.

  “I think I have my sea legs,” he said to Yael. “How about you?” He had kept quiet most of that time, as the boat was not an environment particularly conducive to conversation. Between the roar of the engines, the whistling of the wind and constant slapping of the hull crashing through the waves, it was hard both to hear someone talking and to focus on what he wanted to say.

  “I’m feeling better,” she said, almost shouting. “I don’t get why people think this is fun.”

  “What is?”

  “Boating.”

  “Oh. You don’t like the ocean?” He looked around as he asked her, captivated by its beauty. Sparkling blue water in every direction—vast, empty and so utterly in control of their fate that it was magnificently frightening. The slightest change in weather could destroy them, and it wasn’t hard to appreciate just how vulnerable they were, tossed around by what appeared from a distance to be minor undulations in a mostly smooth surface.

  “No,” she said. “I love the ocean. It’s just this boat, so noisy, so bouncy. What’s the point?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess I could see that. Maybe a sailboat would be better.”

  “Probably, but something like this comes in handy when you need to be somewhere in a hurry.”

  “Yeah it does.”

  “Captain Alex,” Patrick said, moving forward. “Is it okay if we switch places for a few minutes? I can’t take the smell of the engines anymore.”

  “Sure thing,” Alex said, and carefully walked back towards the boat’s stern.

  As they sped along at an even thirty miles per hour, Alex kept glancing nervously at the twin two hundred fifty horsepower Yamahas, wondering what would happen if they were to fail.

  “It’s good we have two,” Barbara said, noticing his concern. “Odds of both failing are slim to none.”

  “Don’t say that,” Alex chided playfully. “You’ll anger the sea gods.”

  “You mean Poseidon?”

  “I was thinking more of Murphy.”

  Towards the end of the third hour, a landmass became visible on the horizon. Despite their speed, it did not grow noticeably larger for quite a while.

  “That’s Oahu,” Barbara said. “Our course is going to take us around the southern side. Do you want to pass closer to land, maybe see something? Or shoot straight for Honolulu?”

  “What would be the downside of coming close to land?”

  “It’s a less efficient course,” she explained. “It would cost us extra fuel. I have no idea how much, but you could ask your girlfriend. She has a way with numbers.”

  Alex blushed. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Oh?” Barbara asked, and there was something to that “oh” that momentarily excited him. Had it been his imagination?

  “Not yet, anyway,” he explained with a sheepish grin. “I’m working on it.” He was fully aware of the potential consequences of his words, but he felt a deep and powerful satisfaction in having spoken them.

  “Oh,” she said again. “Best of luck. She seems like a nice girl. Let me know if you need any help.”

  “Help?”

  “I could put in a good word for you.”

  “Thanks, it couldn’t hurt. Anyway, let’s just shoot for Honolulu, forget about getting close to land. Shouldn’t we be seeing other boats right about now?”

  She nodded, frowning. “Yeah. We should.”

  Deciding Patrick had had enough relief, he returned to the bow. In a few minutes they were passing the south side of Oahu, too far from shore to make out any details. Yael scanned the ocean in all directions. There wasn’t a single boat in sight. After a while she reached out and put her hand over his, squeezing tightly. He tensed, afraid to move lest she realize what she was doing and take it away. Unfortunately, he saw something in the distance and had to speak up.

  “There!” He pointed with his free hand. “What is that?” It was a red metal object floating in the water a bit over a kilometer ahead and off their left side. He was used to thinking in yards and feet, but the army taught him to judge distance in meters. It was often difficult to keep the two systems straight.

  “Off the port bow?” Barbara asked. “The red thing? It’s a navigation buoy.”

  “Port bow,” Alex said. “Have to learn that cool boat jargon. Well, it’s a good sign, isn’t it? I mean we didn’t see any road signs back on Kauai, but this is like a sea going version of a sign, right?”

  “Yeah,” Barbara said. “You could look at it that way.”

  “See?” Alex said to Yael. “Maybe things are okay after all. We’re still far from shore, and if there was a hurricane or something a few days ago maybe no one would be boating.”

  “You don’t have to keep doing that,” she said, and took her hand away.

  “Doing what?”

  “Babying me. I’m not a delicate flower, I can handle the truth.”

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “No, I appreciate it,” she said, giving him a quick smile. “It’s just not necessary.”

  He nodded. “Got it. No more babying.”

  She resumed her search for signs of life. He watched her for a moment, the way her hair danced in the wind, the way her eyes narrowed to allow her long eyelashes to shield her eyes from the sun. There was such beauty and grace in everything she did, even the way she used a casual smile or a tilt of the head to mask her pain and uncertainty. He wished there was something he could do, but he was just a grunt, doing his best to keep them alive while they poked around a mystery that was far too big for him to handle.

  The better part of an hour passed before Barbara started taking the boat closer to shore, and everyone was starting to show signs of fatigue. Alex was worn out, even though all he’d done was sit still and watch the water roll by. The constant motion of the boat and the glaring of the sun, combined with the stress of constant fear and uncertainty, took almost as much out of him as an all day march in full kit through the Mojave desert.

  “What’s that?” Yael asked, pointing off to port and slightly ahead. Alex looked and saw an area of frothy water. In fact all of the water past a certain point was white with froth. Or was it froth?

  “What the hell?” he asked, squinting to make out whatever details he could.

  “I have no idea,” Barbara said. “I’ve never seen anyt
hing like that before.”

  As the boat raced closer, Alex saw that the water wasn’t frothy at all, just white. Barbara throttled back the motors and the boat fell off plane as they coasted towards the strange border between white and blue. Side to side rocking increased but didn’t bother him, while the reduced noise from the engines was a welcome relief.

  “It’s dust!” Patrick said, and reached over the side. When he brought his hand up, it was covered in a whitish residue. Alex looked around, trying to see how far the white water extended.

  “That’s a lot of fucking dust!” he said. The white water hugged the coast as far as he could see in both directions. The boundary between clean and dirty water was not as immediate as it had seemed from a distance. Looking over the side, Alex could see the water gradually changing until it was almost completely light gray. That same color looked white when seen from afar under the bright sunlight.

  “Why are we still coasting?” Alex asked Barbara. “It’s just dirty water.”

  “It may gunk up the motors. They are raw water cooled…that means sea water is pumped through them as they run.”

  “They’re getting dust in them anyway,” he said. “You want that water running through at high pressure, or your chances of clogging the passages are much higher.”

  “Good point!” Barbara admitted. “I thought you didn’t know anything about boats!” She pushed the throttle and the motors roared as the boat climbed back onto plane.

  “I don’t,” he shouted. “Neighbors used to have a spring fed pond. The pipe that fed it would get clogged whenever there was a drought and water pressure was low, unless they shut the valve in time.”

  “Makes perfect sense,” Barbara said. Alex noticed Yael looking at him, but she turned away as soon as he saw her. The others were all watching the approaching shore, waiting to spot any sign of the biggest city in Hawaii, but Alex knew with a dreadful certainty that such a search would be unnecessary if something were not terribly wrong.

  “This isn’t right,” he muttered, though no one heard him. As they got close enough to make out details, he saw no signs of a city, though the area between the tall inland mountains and the beach was mostly flat, and the trees along the coast were tall enough to conceal residential properties. There was a fair amount of debris littering the beach every so often in scattered piles, but as time went on the piles became denser until they were almost one continuous mass along the shore.