The Last Ship: A Novel

by William Brinkley

  There remained that relatively small portion of ship’s company, previously described, who, holding their one fixation to the point of obsession, knew exactly what they wanted to do, had for some time, and now that—as they saw it—there could not possibly be any objections to doing so, more openly began to ask, why did we not all get aboard immediately, head for home, see with our own eyes what happened, if we found a habitable place reestablish our community there, if we did not, always being free to return to the island? On the surface, the case for this course seemed unarguable, correctly insistent. Closer examination revealed that it fell considerably short of answering every question. Ship’s company had put a great deal of themselves into the island, including many months of often brutal labor, under violent tropical suns on the plateau where the Farm now stood, into the altogether handsome, shipshape gathering of buildings constructed with such mighty dawn-to-dusk efforts, such infinite care (including, the women for their part surely were remembering, those lovely cottages for themselves). What was to happen to the island in the meantime—to the Farm, to the settlement itself, all the fine buildings? Left to themselves they would of a certainty deteriorate, the foliage, the thick island growth would reclaim them, make short work of them, swallow them up as if they had never been. Men like Delaney whose hand lay upon the Farm, the rocklike Porterfield, even the normally inarticulate Noisy Travis, whose great craftsmanship had been the principal author of our fine buildings, spoke up, urging shipmates to stop and think; in particular, some of the women, these generally considerably more outspoken even than before, probably across the board exceeding their male shipmates in this respect—women like Ensign Martin, never a passive violet, along with the previously less vocal Signalman Alice Bixby, informed the men quite crisply that they were out of their minds. What were they thinking of even to consider forsaking all of this?

  A tentative solution was put forth: Leave the island, and all we had added to it, in the charge of Pushkin’s ship’s company—if they would agree to that caretaker assignment. No reason in the world they would not, quite eagerly so one would imagine: such an attractive and instant living place presented them as a gift. But even here the men began to have thoughts; thoughts which strayed considerably from those beautiful sailor-brotherhood fundamentals I have so lovingly adumbrated. Someone was heard to ask: “Doing that, taking James, heading home, assuming the finding of nothing, coming back—what if the Russians should decide not to let us back on the island?” Not out of cruelty, surely they would show the returning Nathan James the identical welcome, if needed the compassion, the succor, we had rendered the Pushkin and her crew. But what if—it was Thurlow who asked this—we should come back heavily contaminated ourselves? Accumulating on top of levels absorbed in our passage from the Barents to our present island, what would be the effects of additional inroads, further invasions of our bodies, almost certain to be substantially increased on the proposed reconnoitering of our once-homeland. All of this was profoundly sobering, enough to frighten brave men. Levels that conceivably could take us into areas of a highly infectious nature, observable physical changes, no known treatment, certainly none possessed by us, so that the Russians, seeing us thus on our return, had no choice but to deny the island to the very men who had discovered it and created this functioning community, lest these, permitted ashore, destroy themselves, these new tenants, eradicate what known little was left of people and habitable place, our very return suggesting there were no others. What other option would there be but to turn us away—by force if necessary? Pushkin was a heavily armed vessel. After all, we ourselves had refused to take in those poor contaminated souls on the beaches of Italy and France. What if we should return like them, even if in somewhat lesser degree? Compassion which will wipe out one’s own ship’s company—we had never had any great difficulty in rejecting that definition of the word. Why should we expect more from the Russians than we had found ourselves able to attain to in that regard? Seen in this light, it appeared to a number of hands that the priceless fuel in point of fact did nothing for us: that we were as much as ever prisoners of the island.

  All of these matters gave ship’s company much to ponder. Myself, of course, as their captain, most of all. The problem was by no means so simple as it may have first appeared—boarding Nathan James and casting off. Other indistinct but somehow ominous considerations seemed to hover about as we debated—inwardly, outwardly—what our true course should be. Trepidations hung in the air, and the difficulty of separating the real from the imagined. One in particular of the interjections the Russian captain had made in our continuing dialogue stuck in my mind. At one point, perhaps exasperated with the idea that, after all he had personally witnessed and reported so meticulously to us, sane men could take their ship off into what he felt was absolutely unacceptable and unaccepting atmosphere beyond the seas, he burst out, “If you must go into all that contamination, Captain, at least do not take the women into it—to die, to be made sterile at best. At least leave the women—so that, if you find nothing, we can continue . . .” He stopped there, with an absolute abruptness, as if aghast at what he had been about to say, my mind finishing it for him. Perhaps he was just trying to shock us into not going. Nevertheless, that reference to the women—its startling nature greatly magnified by the fact of its being his first direct allusion of any kind to them—seemed almost a reference to the possession of them, appearing to me to have escaped unintentionally from him in a moment of anger, seeming further to suggest some sort of intent he had not hitherto disclosed, all of this planting seeds of disturbance in my mind . . . I then dismissed it. He had wanted only to shock us into our senses. That was all. “I have seen Russia,” he had said. “How can you believe America will be any different?”

  Thus it was that the Russian captain’s offer to send his own ship instead—her submerging capabilities vastly reducing possibilities of contamination—appeared heaven’s gift, perfect solution to these burdensome matters. I turned then to a close examination of which of the James’s company should fill the thirty-three billets allotted to us under his plan for Pushkin—to “rediscover the world,” as he so appositely put it. And as I did so, something totally unexpected attacked me as it were: a tremendous desire to make that voyage myself. Yes, I found myself seriously considering it, seduced into the very idea of it. Of this personal matter, tearing me as it did, I must speak here a moment for its importance, not so much in the decision I finally made as for the elements, some hitherto deeply hidden, its consideration forced to the surface and which were later to have such profound effects on our fate.

  The Magellan factor, as I had come to think of it, had an almost mesmeric appeal to any seaman; more, to any thinking human being: What was out there? What did the rest of the world look like now, consist of? And most of all: Were there various enclaves of fellow human beings—or more? And if so, where? It was an enormous pull to be one of those who would discover the answers to such questions. All of this abetted by that small hard knot in myself, who long since had accepted the overwhelming evidence of one’s own country, our home, having become to all purposes nonexistent, that twisting thought so ingrained in ship’s captains: Always consider the possibility that you may be wrong. Especially when you are absolutely certain you are right. A shudder going through me: What if considerable life still existed there? But completely apart from that, the voyage itself. I actually confronted a great temptation: to ask the Russian captain to let me sign on. I was in no way qualified to command a submarine, but I was a good seaman and I would be eager, I thought as I almost helplessly toyed with the idea, to go in any capacity on such a remarkable voyage.

  Immediately occurring, the question, who would assume command of the James, of the island? The idea of my own indispensability: I bore no greater burden, and it had grown through all our ordeal—and all our triumphs, explicitly what we had created on the island. Perhaps it is man’s ultimate curse. I even knew that, and its terrible dangers. And yet, knowing,
even employing every effort to stand away from the question and look at objectively what could never be looked at objectively, I forever came up with the same answer, infused with vanity as much as a matter could be: I was not certain as to what would happen to ship’s company, to the island, without me. I had been the only captain this ship, these people—and this island—had ever known. I was not certain what might befall this community, and all that it had achieved and represented, on my own departure, whether by a substitution of myself or by another system of governance; what disturbances, troubles, even disasters might ensue in a system unknown to them. But more than that, system retained, I saw no one to take my place; supreme vanity or not, that was the fact as I viewed it. Besides—and this may have been the most compelling reason of all—my mission here was not finished (including most particularly what was happening in those twenty very special cottages). And finally—I must have been as bewitched as Ulysses by the sirens by the Magellan “rediscover the world” magnet to forget the fact—the person who would succeed me in command of the island would almost inevitably have to be the Russian captain himself: He had had no problem in rejecting that enticement, in designating his executive officer to go, himself to stay behind. The question instantly arising again as to why; given the agreed-upon wonder of such a voyage, how not going on it, and especially as its captain, could possibly be considered . . . one could not ask him . . . Opening doors of mistrust which one chose not to enter, knowing the certainty of mistrust’s deadly poisoning in our mutual community . . . still, again despite all my elevated excursions into the propinquity of sailors, and patently into how well such a circumstance had worked with us so far on the island, I was not prepared to trust the Russian captain—or anyone else—that far: ascent to the leadership of this island, this community of men and women.

  And then, in its very soaring midst, this tide of vaingloriousness collapsed, fell apart, swept away by a matter I hardly dared admit: my relationship with Lieutenant Cirard, something that had spread to all parts of my being, all that I was, changing everything, in a way so all-embracing as to seem to me only a woman can accomplish in the experiences of men. When I said I could not leave the island, what I meant was that I could not leave her; knowing but one thing: never, so long as I might live, would I permit anything to separate us. It was a secret I kept tightly in my own heart. As I had these thoughts, the realization occurring for the first time that, with her near, I was content to live out my life on this island; bringing everything in me still, bringing as it were a final peace, all sweet and wondrous, that I had not known, it seemed, since that day, now seeming part of ancient times, that our missiles first left the Nathan James and ascended high into the blue skies of the Barents, bent on their terrible mission. No. I could not accompany Pushkin on the Magellan voyage. That decision became absolute in my heart. Thus, the faintest residue of reluctance remaining, I put the thought forever away and turned to the urgent affair now fallen upon my ship’s company as to whether they, variously, should remain on the island or take that almost mystical look at what we had once called home.

  * * *

  Specifically, what others of us should accompany Pushkin. In this instance, the proper course seemed almost self-evident.

  Other than those already suggested, another of the several advantages offered by the proposed voyage was the fact that it would enable me to get rid of our “discontents,” men who felt there was something to go home to, some in a rather passive way, others more actively. I remembered Lieutenant Girard’s perception that these were waiting for the question of the governance to arise; if “majority rule,” should ship’s company elect this, their chances of taking the Nathan James on such a mission increased. But now they did not need to wait even for that uncertain condition. The Russian’s arrival with nuclear fuel for us would seem, as I have said, to set the James free. I had other intentions. For one thing I felt if the James went, so would I have to. Everything in me as her captain, so a part of my life as to feel myself inseparable from her, rebelled at the thought of letting her go, of watching her sail off over the horizon. I did not think I could do it. Something in me also fearful that if others took her, they might never bring her back. Thus the Russian captain’s proposal of sending Pushkin instead, along with its other bounties, resolved two of our major problems in my favor: the retention of the James here at the island; and, as I say, the giving these men what they so insatiably wanted, a chance to go back or at least have their look; his suggestion to constitute about one-third of the submarine’s crew American fortuitously coinciding more or less closely with the number of those who fell into the category I have just described. I did not fail to seize on the opportunity.

  I called a meeting of ship’s company in the Main Hall, in which I explained in great detail the Russian captain’s offer to send Pushkin on a voyage which would explicitly include exploration of the coastal areas of the United States, dwelling in much particular on the immense advantage of the submarine in protecting our men from what otherwise, going on the James, the same voyage, was certain to be intense and very likely unacceptable levels of radiation, far greater than anything we had so far undergone even in our worst passages.

  “I am pleased to say,” I told the hushed listeners, “that those of you who desire to take a look back home will now be able to do so. We have the Russians to thank for that. Although I know you think differently, you could never get near the coasts in the Nathan James. You will be able to do so in Pushkin . . . I believe that your ‘looking’ will be confined to what you can see through a submarine’s periscope. Never mind. If you find differently, if the land is habitable, Pushkin will put all who so wish ashore. That is my agreement with her captain.”

  The case for Pushkin was so strong, that for sending Nathan James so weak, that the former course was entirely embraced, in the quiet manner of sailors who can recognize facts when they are calmly and straightforwardly presented to them. The only question remaining: Who would the thirty-three be?

  “They will be volunteers,” I concluded it. “If these exceed that number, lots will be drawn, within the submarine’s own requirements as to skills.”

  The plan was adopted and I so reported to the Russian captain. In the three days allotted, forty-one men made known their desire to go. The excess number was small enough that, having no taste to have left behind on the island even eight hands who had no desire to be there, I persuaded the Russian captain to take them all and put ashore that many extra hands from his own crew.

  I mention now with sadness the name of one officer who it was almost inevitable would be a part of Pushkin’s voyage. Lieutenant Alex Thurlow. To no one could the “Magellan” aspect of the voyage have held greater appeal. Its very idea excited him from the first—he had to go. I mentioned sometime back that besides being a navigator, Thurlow was a kind of “Vesalius” of the planet, in that same anatomical sense—its makeup, its peculiarities, its whimsicalities. Now it was unthinkable to him that he should not see the changes, however dread, that had taken place in his subject. But these were all selfish reasons. There were other reasons, of the most urgently prudent sort, why he must go. First, as I had told the Russian captain, “I have never known a navigator to equal him. That great gift is wasted on this island.” And of course his fluent Russian would make him indispensable as a link between the two bodies of sailors and officers: that the greatest reason of all for his inclusion. Indeed the Russian captain was so delighted to get him that he designated him to be executive officer of the Pushkin on her voyage. Thurlow was overjoyed at the prospect; I much cast down—it had been a slow process but I had become as fond of him as of anyone in ship’s company, perhaps more than any other. That mixture of blitheness and utter dependability; that curious otherworldly quality I had come to find so attractive; a man of grace; somehow making for a discrete relationship.

  Preparations went forward. The forty-one chosen Americans in effect moved aboard the Pushkin and commenced the indoctrination wh
ich would transform them from destroyer men into submariners. During the coming weeks the Russian captain and I—along with his executive officer who would succeed to command, a strikingly younger officer than either of us but one who as I came to know him impressed me as both a first rate seaman and commander of men, Thurlow also always present—spent many hours in the submarine’s chartroom plotting the course of the great voyage. Whether Pushkin would literally circumnavigate the globe remained to be seen, depending on her findings. It was likely that she would do so, inspecting principally southern latitudes on the theory that some of these might have escaped (though we had found quite the opposite in the equatorial regions of the Sunda Sea), with the promised side excursion to the United States of America, the Americans aboard ready to depart the ship there and remain should they find uncontaminated territory. Going forward simultaneously, the provisioning of the submarine. We removed from the James to the Pushkin all remaining imperishables of food stores. In addition we stuffed the freezers and the lockers of the submarine full of the island’s own offerings, both from the Farm and those indigenous to the island itself; with quantities of frozen fish. Transferred one of the James’s VLF antennas to the submarine. Steadily Pushkin, standing there below the cliffs, approached the moment of weighing anchor and casting off on her “rediscovery of the world”; each time I looked down at her, a thin small seaman’s regret remaining that I was not going with her. Meantime, with the excellent food on which they now gorged, with the healthful work such as the Farm and fishing details, the Russians, so frail and ghostlike on their arrival, fattened up as it were quite rapidly, improved remarkably as to physical condition. Finally the submarine stood ready in all respects for sea. Her day of departure was set, a week hence. The excitement in those who were about to leave: Some even clung to the half-bizarre, half-poignant notion that they somehow would connect up with those former shipmates, 109 of them, that Lieutenant Commander Chatham had led off the ship in what now seemed the impossibly long ago.