“No.”
“Nor do I. Come on out and let’s look for whales.”
We excused ourselves and went on deck. Sam demanded, “What’s on your mind?”
“Am I that obvious?”
“No. I’ve been talking to Siri. You may be totally off-base in your guess as to what’s going on, but something is, and needs to be taken seriously.”
“What did Siri tell you?”
“She filled me in where I had questions.”
Sam had been with me on the pyramid. Sam took me seriously. I wasn’t angry with Siri for talking to him. I was relieved. “Sam, if you wanted to make a great deal of money—I mean billions and billions, what would you do?”
“I suppose I’d sell something people wanted.”
“It would have to be more than a better mousetrap, for the kind of money I’m thinking of.”
“What kind is that?”
“Enough to buy Zlatovican uranium. Even if Otto has nothing more exciting than—than ski equipment in his wooden cases, he does want to get rid of the warheads that have been left in Zlatovica by the Soviets, and his country does need money, big money.”
“Um.”
“So I suppose the biggest money, if it isn’t munitions, might be drugs?”
“Might be.”
“I know there are drug barons in South America.”
“Yup.”
“Vespugia?”
“In all likelihood. Are you thinking of anybody in particular?”
“Jorge Maldonado is a friend of Guedder’s, and Guedder wants missiles, or at least a missile.”
“Um.” Sam chewed his cigar.
“Jorge has seemed—he has been—so nice.”
“He is,” Sam agreed.
“But do you think maybe—He talked about cutting back on cattle because of ecology and all that stuff. Do you think maybe he’s growing—well, crops for drugs?”
“Could be.”
“Sam!”
“A lot of nice people have done terrible things. There are some people who love their wives and their children and their native land and who have no conscience, no sense of wrongdoing. You know that. You must have learned about the Second World War and the concentration camps.”
“Yes.”
“People who lived, on the surface, ordinary, decent lives also, without any sense of evil, fed other human beings into gas chambers.”
I looked at Sam. His face was unreadable. His cigar was in its usual place in his mouth. I said, “Sometimes people do terrible things thinking they’re doing good …”
Sam took the stump of his cigar out of his mouth and threw it overboard. “Such as?”
“Well, those monks who found the pyramids in the fifteenth century or whenever it was, and destroyed a lot of what they found—they thought they were doing it for Christ, didn’t they?”
“Probably.”
“So they did evil and thought they were doing good.”
“It happens,” Sam said, “too often. We’re seldom truly sure of our motives.”
The ding-dong rang, calling us into the Womb Room for the movie. “Sam, thank you.”
“For what?”
“Listening. Not thinking I’m totally crazy.”
“You’re not crazy, Vicky. But before you put any judgments on anyone, wait until you have more evidence.”
“Yes. Thanks.”
Ten
I was still alone. The seal was fishing. The iceberg was empty. So it was still night.
Where was Papageno? I couldn’t think of anybody who’d make a better spy. Sound a little crazy and no one pays any attention to what you say or where you go.
Where was he now? Where was Cook? What were they up to? I scanned the horizon, looking for the Portia, looking, hoping. But sea and sky met in a grey, shadowless line.
Aunt Serena’s Adam had never been found, Adam II who had so loved this strange and alien land.Ice floes moved calmly past me.
Despair began to seep into my bones like the cold.
While I was getting ready for bed that night, there was a knock on my door. I opened it cautiously and there was Siri. “Benjy thinks it’s best if I bunk in with you.”
I looked my question marks at her.
“Something’s going on, Vicky, even if we haven’t the foggiest idea what, and he doesn’t want you sleeping alone, and I think he’s right. Hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m glad. Thanks.”
“Benjy said, just in case someone saw you last night.”
“I don’t think anyone did. It was after two o’clock in the morning. Nobody was expected to be up and wandering around.”
Siri put a small duffel bag on the second bunk. “I’m all showered and ready for bed. You’ll be glad to get to LeNoir Station. Perhaps we can call Cookie from there. Much easier than on the ship’s radio. And more private.” She shoved her case under the bunk. “I told Greta you weren’t feeling well, a little turista-type bug, and I’d promised Cookie I’d look after you.”
“Thanks, Siri.”
We got into our bunks, and read for a few minutes. She looked up from her book. “I talked to Sam.”
“He told me.”
“Don’t be angry—”
“I trust Sam,” I said. Then I thought of Otto’s suggestion that maybe Sam was one of the people who were on the Argosy for more than pleasure. I still trusted Sam.
I dreamed I was in the small colonial church at home. There were a dozen or more stretch limos lined up outside. I was wearing my oldest jeans and a torn T-shirt and Suzy was rushing up and down the aisle wailing, “Where is it? Where is your wedding dress? You can’t marry a prince looking like that!”
My father said, “A princess is a princess no matter what she wears, but we could at least get you a clean shirt.”
Someone was playing the organ, but it wasn’t wedding music, it was my “If it has feathers” song.
“I don’t want you to be a princess and leave home!” Rob wailed, and he was a baby again, no more than three.
I woke up, and almost laughed at the absurdity of the dream. But then I asked myself: Why did I dream it?
No answer.
I went back to sleep.
At breakfast Siri ordered rolls and cheese and cold meat, “a real Norwegian breakfast,” she said. “I treat myself every once in a while, and I feel the need of sustenance today.”
I ordered my usual oatmeal. That should be sustenance enough.
She put her elbows on the table and looked at me. There were a few other people in the dining room but we were early, and no one was sitting near us. She lowered her voice. “So you think maybe Jorge isn’t as lily-white pure as he’d like us to think?”
“I don’t know. I don’t like thinking bad things about people.” I picked up a spoonful of oatmeal, put it back in the dish.
Siri put cheese and sausage on her roll. “Neither do I. But life has brought out a certain cynicism in me. Drugs have always been a big export in South America. I know they don’t see it the way we do.”
Since Siri had been talking with Sam, this conversation did not surprise me as much as it would have otherwise. I put a spoonful of raisins onto my oatmeal. “At home a lot of kids are involved. I guess it’s everywhere. A kid in my class died from an overdose and everybody was shocked for a while.”
“It’s big money,” Siri continued.
My mind was jumping from thought to thought. “Siri—that night in San Sebastián when we met Otto and Jack, and they were sitting with Jorge—what—?”
“What were they doing?” Siri asked. “I doubt if they were just getting acquainted. They were, I assume, conducting business, but what kind of business?”
I shrugged. “Siri, I don’t know anything about business.” Where did Jack come into this story? I suspected that Jorge was buying materials for an atomic bomb from Otto with drug money—but surely neither Jack nor Texas needed either money or bombs. So what kind of business was he here for?
/> My mind continued to bounce from idea to idea. “Siri—what about Jorge’s cameras?”
She put down her roll and looked out the window at a petrel flying low over the water. “He doesn’t use them much, does he? I’ve wondered about that.”
“When he was smoothing things out near Nordenskjöld’s hut the other morning, his cases all got put in one of the tents.”
“I noticed. Go on.”
“Maybe Benjy’d ask if I’m planning on being a novelist again—”
Siri’s voice was calm. “Go on, Vicky.”
“Well—I just wondered about it.”
Siri asked, “Does the fact that Otto may be involved bother you?”
I could feel myself flush. “Yes. And no. Yes. Otto loves his country in a way I guess people haven’t loved America since the early days of the very first states—and yet Zlatovica is centuries older than we are.”
People had been coming into the dining room while we talked, but nobody was near us until the three Alaskans came and sat with us. Then Greta wandered into the dining room, looked around, and came to our table.
“Feeling better, Vicky?” she asked.
I’d forgotten that Siri had moved in with me because I was supposed to be feeling queasy. “Oh. Lots better.”
“Just a touch of turista,” Siri said swiftly, “but it kept her up a bit last night, so I think I’ll bunk in with her for another night or two.”
Leilia said, “Good idea.”
“I’m fine, really. And it’s lovely of Siri to take such good care of me.”
Leilia smiled. “We all promised Cookie we would.”
The days got longer and the nights got shorter. Nothing new happened. Greta didn’t ask why Siri was still sleeping in my cabin, partly because I think she liked having a cabin to herself.
Siri grinned and suggested that Greta might like to be alone with Jorge. That had occurred to me, too. Mostly, ship’s conversation was more or less normal. More or less. There was an undercurrent of tension in everything we said. Wherever I was, I felt watched. I knew Sam was on the alert, and so were Benjy and Siri. But my imagination had me figuratively looking over my shoulder wherever I turned.
We went to Palmer Station, one of the U.S. research sites. Quim told us that all the water in the ship would have to be turned off while the Argosy was anchored, because of some kind of water experiments. I went to the fo’c’sle to watch us draw closer to land.
Jack came out, said, “Y’all right, honey?”
“Sure.”
Jack took a couple of pictures with his cardboard camera and went in. As we drew nearer to land I saw a small boat which was anchored closer to shore than we’d be able to go, a small blue boat which looked like a fishing boat. The Portia! I was sure it was the Portia! While I watched, it began to move, and before we got to our anchorage it had pulled away and was heading in what I figured was a southerly direction.
The second I got Benjy alone, I’d tell him. If it was the Portia, it meant that Cook and Papageno had just been at Palmer Station.
The ding-dong summoned us to the Zodiacs, and I had to hurry back to the cabin to put on my boots. Siri wasn’t there, and we weren’t in the same Zodiac, though Sam was with me, and so were Angelique and Dick. I looked at Dick’s kind, lined face, and at his heavy cane, and was irrationally glad he was there.
When we landed I didn’t get a chance to speak to Benjy alone to tell him I was sure I’d seen the Portia. Everybody clustered about, looking at the buildings, and at some tanks with starfish in them. The young graduate student who showed us around was enthusiastic and hoped to have his stay extended beyond his internship. “It’s my turn to be on plankton watch tonight,” he told us.
“How do you watch plankton?” Siri asked smilingly.
“We have this floodlight on a post in the shallow water in front of the station. It attracts all kinds of zooplankton.”
“Such as?” Dick asked.
“Oh, copepods, hyperiid amphipods, ctenophores, mysids, et cetera, et cetera. Let’s go this way.” He took us into the building that held the refectory and common rooms. I was walking beside him, thinking that maybe Adam did plankton watch too, when he startled me by saying, “I have a letter for you from your friend Adam.”
I took it with a feeling that my heart was thudding. Adam had rejected me. What more could he have to say?
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“One of the scientists from LeNoir stopped off here for a few days.”
I asked, “Was it Cook or Papageno?”
“Who?”
“They left, just before we anchored, in their boat, the Portia.”
“Oh, yeah, there were a couple of older guys here for a few hours, but I didn’t get to see them. Hope the letter is good news.”
“Thanks.”
The rest of the time at Palmer Station was a blur for me. I slipped away from the group and stood in the shelter of one of the buildings and opened the letter. It was, again, simply addressed to me. Inside was a letter that was a computer printout, not handwritten. I checked the signature. It looked like Adam’s. If his last letter had left me feeling devastated, this one produced total confusion. It was all scientific stuff. There was a paragraph about something called self-similarity, and Leibniz’s theory that a drop of water may contain an entire universe. Then it got more complicated as Adam talked about scaling phenomena and hierarchies of scales which apparently destroyed the naïve ideas of self-similarity.
Naïve. I certainly felt naïve. I understood a little of what Adam was talking about, because it had come up in conversation with John last summer. But I had no idea why he was writing to me that way.
I managed to get in the Zodiac with Siri to go back to the Argosy. I whispered, “I have to see you and Benjy.”
When we got back aboard she said, “Go to the cabin. I’ll find Benjy.”
In the cabin I read the letter again and it still made absolutely no sense to me. Rejection in the last letter, and now a lot of scientific technicalities Adam must have known I couldn’t possibly understand.
When Benjy and Siri came to the cabin I handed the letter to them, and they read it together, Benjy holding it, with one arm around Siri. When they had finished, he handed it back. “What do you make of it?” he asked.
I flung out my hands in frustration. “Nothing.”
Benjy said, “Seems to me it’s an excellent smoke screen if anybody’s interested in Adam’s mail. He’s telling you he’s okay, but he’s indicating with his scientific gobbledygook that there’s more to it than meets the eye.”
“But what?”
“Like I said”—Benjy sat on the second bunk and Siri plunked down beside him—“I think he’s just telling you he’s okay, and nobody reading what he’s written will have any idea what he’s saying.”
“Neither do I.”
Suddenly Siri asked, “Do you think there could be a code hidden in the letter?”
Why hadn’t that occurred to me? “There might be.”
“Work on it,” Benjy said. “I’ve got to go confer with Quim and the captain. There’s about an hour before Wrap-Up. See if you can do some decoding.”
“Okay.”
“See you.” He left. Siri had brought her harp to the cabin and now she picked it up and began tuning it, something she had to do constantly. I reread the letter. I had not told Benjy or Siri about Adam’s “cool it” letter, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with this. I checked the first letter of every word to see if they added up to anything. John and I used to play at making up codes for each other, so we’d learned all the usual code-breaking devices. In the middle of the letter I got something. I wrote each letter down on my lined pad. THOSECLAMOROUSHARBINGERSOFBLOODANDDEATH. Then I separated it into words. THOSE CLAMOROUS HARBINGERS OF BLOOD AND DEATH.
Shakespeare. It had to be Shakespeare, though I didn’t recognize it. I felt cold. Kept on working. Found another phrase: NO MAN’S PIE IS FREED FROM H
IS AMBITIOUS FINGER. That made a little more sense. Antarctica was looked at as a huge piece of pie with lots of countries wanting a slice. At the end I found, like a signature, CONSIDERATION, LIKE AN ANGEL, CAME AND WHIPPED THE OFFENDING ADAM OUT OF HIM.
Double gobbledygook. Science and Shakespeare. Something was going on which should not be going on and he was warning me. The problem was that I did not understand the warning. I had given Adam one warning, about those cards in my locker. But his warnings were becoming more and more urgent.
“Siri,” I said, and she put her harp down. “I’ve found something.” I handed her the paper.
She read what I’d written out. “Let’s show it to Benjy.”
“Okay.”
“It all ties in with Adam’s ‘Something rotten in the state of Denmark’ card, doesn’t it?” She looked at her watch. “We’d better go up to the lounge. It’s past time for Wrap-Up, but maybe Sam will have saved a place for us.”
He had, with Angelique and Dick. Quim was telling everybody that we were just starting to enter the Le Maire Channel, one of the most beautiful parts of the trip. It is a narrow gorge that is open only a few weeks a year when enough ice breaks up so that a ship like the Argosy can push its way through. “A big cruise ship could never make this,” Sam said with satisfaction.
We started by looking out the windows, then went on deck to see the full beauty. It was so magnificent that the view broke through my preoccupation and confusion. Benjy stood next to me, looking at the indescribable loveliness, his hand lightly on my shoulder.
I noticed that Jorge wasn’t taking pictures, and the Le Maire Channel was probably the most spectacular water the Argosy had sailed in. Jorge’s usually pleasant expression was tight, his eyes narrowed as though against light much brighter than the pearly twilight we were sailing through.
When the ding-dong rang for dinner we all turned reluctantly to go in. Benjy put his hand on my elbow and spoke to me in a low voice. “Siri showed me how you broke Adam’s code. At least we’ll get a chance to ask him personally what all this is about when we get to LeNoir. Meanwhile, try to set it aside. Tomorrow Siri will sing to the seals.”
Troubling a Star Page 21
