Long Voyage Back

by Luke Rhinehart

  His hands trembling, Neil lit one of the smoke flares and tossed it down into the main cabin. He lit the second and threw it down into the empty port cabin. Dark smoke billowed up out of both of the cabins within seconds as Neil returned to prepare to light one of the light flares. The missile had struck at least a half-mile in front of Vagabond but he doubted the pilot had been able to follow it. As the jet rose and swept right a second time the pilot would look back and see his target enveloped in dark smoke. Their hope lay in the pilot's being satisfied with one apparent hit. But the jet returned. As Neil watched in bitter dread and lit his third flare it came in and fired a second missile. So close did the second shot come to Vagabond that Neil thought it might have gone through the mainsail; it burst less than a hundred yards m front of them. The bright flash of the lit flare must have seemed to the pilot - if he could see it, which was doubtful - a direct hit. The jet roared over the smoke-enshrouded trimaran and Neil, coughing and being overcome with the smoke, rushed forward and dropped the jib and mainsail. Then he rushed back through the smoke and down into the starboard cabin with the others. Dark black smoke was pouring out of two of Vagabond's cabins into the sky.

  Neil's hands were black and one hand had been burned in lighting the third-flare. Jeanne and the others looked at him as if asking for him to announce their fate. He didn't have to tell them they hadn't been hit, and only later did he realize that they didn't even know they'd been fired at.

  The jet didn't return a fourth time. It returned to Brazil, apparently confident it had prevailed in its battle with the trimaran.

  After five minutes of waiting, with the smoke gradually getting worse even in the closedoff port cabin, Neil and Olly went back on deck. Both smoke flares were going out, but something was still burning in the galley. Neil had to go down and extinguish a smouldering rug. The whole inside of the main cabin was black with the smoke. The others now climbed out of Jeanne's cabin to survey the wreckage, but there was no wreckage. The multi-milliondollar aircraft had fired two highly sophisticated missiles at the plywood and fibreglass sailing boat but, as Neil explained, the missiles had been metal-seeking or heat-seeking missiles. Vagabond, engineless, was without heat and had so little metal in her aluminium spars that the missile couldn't seek it out. The pilot had been trained to fire at a general area and let the missile do the fine tuning. Vagabond and her survivors had been saved by modern technology.

  Two hours later they raised sails again. After they had discussed their next course of action they decided that they should get as far out of the area as possible: to run directly east another sixty miles and thus fifty or sixty miles off the coast. They would have to do their best for Frank and Philip and Jim and Lisa without the help of the rest of the world. They were alone.

  As they sailed on towards the equator, the heat and humidity became stupefying; only the recurrent squalls, by keeping their supply of water adequate, kept them alive and sane. All Neil dared do for Frank was give him a second blood transfusion, but with the plague victims it was an hourly battle to try to cool their bodies. The seawater was twenty degrees cooler than the air and they used it continually. But over the next three days the fevers raged on. Twice Lisa went into convulsions, twice she survived. Jim jabbered on in some otherworldly hallucination about snow and cold and the bottom of the world, sometimes giggling hysterically.

  On the third day from the onset, after Lisa had had her second set of convulsions, Neil came down into the cabin to see Jeanne up on the berth with Lisa, her face buried on Lisa's naked chest and neck, sobbing. For a moment Neil thought that Lisa must have died; a wave of sadness immobilized him. Then he became aware of her rapid shallow breathing and realized that Jeanne, who had been driving herself beyond reason, was suddenly giving up. Pressing her face and mouth against the diseased body of Lisa was almost a form of suicide.

  Neil could feel rising in him his old rage against the gods or Fate or Death or the war or whatever was pursuing them so relentlessly and now appearing to win. He felt a rage at Jeanne for letting 'them' know they were winning. But then, recalling his helplessness, it passed. He went up to the edge of the berth and gently pulled her off the berth and, as she wailed and resisted, less gently dragged her out of the cabin. With Olly and Sheila watching uncertainly, he took soap and seawater and scrubbed her face, neck and arms. She struggled and cried like a child being punished. Neil even forced the soapy rag inside her lips before finally letting her go.

  `Take her back to her own cabin,' he said quietly to Sheila. `Keep her there. I'll take over responsibility for Jim and Lisa until Jeanne's rested.'

  Back below when he felt Lisa's forehead he was horrified: he'd never felt a human body so hot. He dispensed with the side cockpit pool and the towels and instead began throwing buckets of seawater directly over Lisa and Jim and the towels and clothing lying on their naked bodies. For half an hour he lugged the buckets down and poured the cool seawater over them. Later he'd have to bail the cabin's bilge. Forty minutes later he went to see Jeanne in her cabin. She was there alone and, after asking how she was and receiving a dull reply, he said to her: 'I miss you, Jeanne.'

  `Miss me?' she said, looking puzzled. 'Oh,' she added, understanding. Ì know of no law saying I can't love you,' he said. 'Do you?' `. .. No,' she replied, not looking at him.

  `Nor a law prohibiting your loving me,' he went on. 'Is there?'

  Face still averted she said: 'Only a law of nature.' `What law is that?'

  `When a mother is threatened with the loss of her child she loses a part of herself.'

  Ì see,' said Neil. 'That I can't help.'

  `Nor can I,' said Jeanne.

  Ànd I still miss you.'

  Ì know,' she whispered.

  `There are no barriers between us now,' Neil said gently, èxcept those we erect in our own hearts.'

  Ì know,' she whispered again, crying softly. 'But I can't knock them down.'

  `But what are they?' Neil asked gently.

  She looked up at him at last, warm tears in her eyes. `Fear,' she said.

  `Fear?'

  `We're all doomed,' she said. 'No matter how hard we try, one by one we're going to die. Our desperate acts are only a dancing on a hot griddle before the end.'

  For a long moment he held her gaze, searching for words of reassurance, searching for the axe that would smash the barrier. He could find none.

  `Still,' he finally managed. 'Dancing is better than nothing.'

  Ùntil you get tired,' she responded.

  Although Frank felt better on the morning after the jet attack, some strangely detached part of himself knew he was going to die. It wasn't any rational conclusion based on medical or anatomical knowledge; it was some previously uncontacted part of himself informing him from some unknown world of reality in which, paradoxically, he didn't believe. A mystic certainty had come to him, Frank, the most unmystical of men. When the heavy sedation Neil had given him began to wear off and his consciousness began to clear, Frank was surprised at the space he was in. His anger at and jealousy of Neil was totally gone. His earlier decision to separate from Jim, Jeanne and his friends seemed that of a total madman. He knew it had come from his resentment and sadness at losing Jeanne, but now losing Jeanne seemed as trivial an event as losing an anchor. The thought of her, even now, made his heart ache, but the ache was somehow amusing, trivial: like hiccoughs.

  Even his own death had a somewhat comic quality: wrestling with one big clown, being shot by a small one. Surviving megatons of destruction, to succumb to a tiny piece of lead.

  Jim's death, if Jim were going to die, was not comic. It was sad. It was the only thing that made him sad. It was the only thing that made him resent the war, resent the holocaust. Jim should live. Lisa should live. Children should live. It was he and Neil and Olly and Philip and their generation which had let things happen: they could die knowing they deserved it, but not their children. We are the single generation in human history to snuff out untold millions, no, billi
ons, of lives of all creatures for untold centuries. We were the assholes that let it happen.

  For even as he accepted with equanimity his own fate, he felt a quiet fury at the reality that had been his life. He saw that his joyful playing with money, so dissociated from any human reality, was his personal contribution to the holocaust. He had been a part owner of General Electric and General Dynamics both when he owned some of their stock and when he didn't. He never built a bomb or pushed a button, but he helped pay the men who did.

  It made his life pathetic. All his successes and failures seemed now so trivial compared to the Big Failure; all his aspirations so selfish compared to the one he might have had, but didn't. But could men have done anything to stop the flow of events to the ultimate madness? Although he had always thought they couldn't, though his reason even now argued they couldn't, that new voice from that strange detached world announced unreservedly that men could have stopped the flow of events as inefficiently, sporadically and bumblingly as they had set the flow of events in motion. The creative capability of building rockets that occasionally blew up on their pads, was equally capable of tearing them all apart and burying them; and could have done it with the same percentage of errors.

  Although it took a lot out of him to talk and though Neil reminded him that every ounce of energy was needed, Frank was thankful that first Jeanne and then Neil let him say a few things he wanted to say.

  Jeanne was pale, puffy-eyed, and dishevelled when he saw her thirty hours after she'd begun taking care of Lisa and Jim. It seemed to Frank she was almost a madwoman. When she came down into the main cabin and washed her hands and arms and then sat for a moment beside him, he smiled up at her.

  `You look like you're the one who got shot,' he said. She looked startled and didn't smile. Ì'm sorry Lisa's sick, Jeannie,' he went on, aware that his strange lightness was out of place with her now.

  `How are you, Frank?' she rejoined, finally centring her attention on him.

  `Pretty good,' he answered. 'Even dying.'

  `You're not dying, Frank,' she said urgently.

  Ìt doesn't matter, dying's not what it's cracked up to be,' Frank went on, aware that he might be feverish. 'And I'm sorry I butted in between you and Neil.'

  `That's not important now.'

  Ì know it's not,' Frank said. ' But I still wanted to tell you.' Ì'm sorry I can't love you as you deserve.'

  `Hell, Jeanne,' Frank said, smiling. 'I'd want to be loved a lot more than that.'

  Again she looked at him questioningly as if uncertain if he were in his right mind. Then she smiled. 'Thank you,' she said. 'For being the way you are.'

  He felt a wave of weariness pass through him and then responded. 'It's simple to become wise,' he said. Just get shot.'

  The next day he and Neil talked.

  `We're only about a day's sail from the equator,' Neil announced. Frank, whose weariness was increasing and who now slept most of the time, opened his eyes to look at Neil.

  `You plan to bury me there? he asked.

  'I hope to save you,' Neil replied.

  Frank closed his eyes, nodded almost imperceptibly, then opened them again. 'Too late, Buddy,' he said.

  `Maybe,' said Neil. 'But we'll try.'

  Frank struggled again up into consciousness.

  Ì'm sorry I won't be rounding Cape Horn with you,' he said.

  `Not very likely.'

  `The sailing was always great,' he said softly. 'It was . . . the human stuff that messed us up ...'

  As Neil looked down, Frank thought he saw tears in his eyes.

  `You, me and the rest of the world,' said Neil.

  `Yeah,' said Frank.

  For another half-minute neither man spoke and a series of confused images raced through Frank's mind. He became aware of Neil rising to leave.

  `Last word,' Frank mumbled and Neil stopped. Frank opened his eyes and felt a strange giddy joy flowing through him. He smiled feverishly up at Neil. 'Advice . ..' he announced to Neil. 'I think . . . the market is . . . at its lows .. .' He felt like laughing. '

  Good buying opportunity.'

  Neil, like Jeanne, looked down at him uncertainly, then nodded, smiling slightly in return. 'Nowhere to go but up,' Neil commented.

  .. Right . 2 said Frank, closing his eyes.

  At dawn two days later, Frank died.

  Neil was surprised and unsettled by the grief he felt at Frank's death. He had known Frank was dying and thought he had hardened himself, but when Olly called him down and he saw Frank's stiff body and open mouth, an emptiness and gloom descended upon him which left him immobile. He realized how much unspoken companionship he and Frank had enjoyed even during their estranged period of the last month. The two communicated in a shorthand about the way Vagabond sailed as Neil couldn't with anyone else. To realize that he had lost this friend, first to jealousy and now to death, grieved him.

  Instead of giving Olly orders about what to do he wandered back out of the cabin and walked aft to stare out at the sea. A distant part of him felt the burden of having to tell Jeanne. But he felt passive, weary. He felt a sad, self-pitying sense that everything was useless, that Death, like a cat playing with crippled mice, could take him and his loved ones at any time He wanted. A tickling on his cheeks and saltiness in a corner of his mouth made him realize that he was crying.

  Jeanne came up to him where he stood. Seeing her eyes beaming with happiness he realized that no one had yet told her of Frank's death. She didn't even notice his tears.

  `Neil,' she said softly, 'the fever . . . the fever's down. I think . . . it's breaking.'

  Neil looked down at her, dazed, trying to absorb her words. `Lisa?' he asked.

  `Both of them,' she answered, softly - as if afraid that if she announced it too loudly the gods would change their minds. `Jim two hours ago, and now Lisa. Come see.'

  Mechanically Neil followed her down into Frank's old cabin. The floor was wet, the room sweltering in the heat of the equator. Lisa lay wanly on the first berth staringat him, a shy smile on her face, beads of perspiration or salt water on all her body. Jeanne adjusted a towel to hide Lisa's nakedness.

  Ì . I'm feeling better,' Lisa said.

  Ì'm glad,' said Neil simply, feeling tears for Frank and for joy at Lisa's life welling in his eyes again.

  Ì'm . . . hungry,' Lisa announced uncertainly, as if finally determining the unique sensations she was feeling.

  Neil nodded and reached out to put his hand briefly on hers. Then Jeanne, smiling, pulled him further forward to Jim, who was up on an elbow looking at him. Somehow Jim seemed to sense Neil's restrained mood.

  `How ... is Dad?' he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Neil, aware of Jeanne beside him still aglow with the

  survival of the two young people, couldn't answer. Ì'm glad you came through, Jim,' he said.

  But again Jim picked up Neil's unspoken feelings. `Dad . . . isn't . . . isn't?' he asked Neil.

  `Frank died,' Neil said. 'Just twenty minutes ago.'

  After hesitating, Jim began to nod slowly. 'He said goodbye to me,' Jim whispered hoarsely. 'He came to me an hour ago . . . his spirit, you know, and told me . . . to live . . . to take care of everybody.'

  Neil nodded as Jeanne leaned against him, absorbing the news of Frank's death. He put his arm around her.

  `Frank probably saved us all back at the mutiny,' Neil said. `Now we'll need you.'

  Jim now had tears in his eyes. 'But I wish . . he began again in a voice weak from three days oflittle speaking. 'I wish he could be with us when we . . . if we . . . finally . . Live .. .' Jeanne finished softly.

  1 0

  After burying Frank at sea they sailed on.

  They kept Vagabond well off the Brazilian coast, hoping to reduce the chance of again being attacked by plane or gunboat, their destination still uncertain. As long as food and water were adequate they would continue into the South Atlantic. Nothing they were hearing from around the world encouraged them to try
to land. The plague was still spreading. Shortwave transmissions from all of Europe had ceased. Most US broadcasts had ceased. An A.M. station in Uruguay reported that a series of food riots in Rio de Janeiro had been suppressed by the Army and left over three thousand people dead, and the Brazilian Air Force had attacked and sunk a freighter crammed with refugees that had tried, after repeated warnings to turn back, to enter the harbour at Rio de Janeiro. Rio was floundering under the impact of unemployed and starving millions, who were begging, stealing, rioting and fleeing to and arriving from all over Brazil. Thousands had died in the last month from either disease or starvation, many from the newly introduced plague.

  But the alternatives to landing in Brazil were equally dismal. The few small islands in the South Atlantic were governed by Brazil or Argentina and their friendliness to American refugees was as doubtful as that of the mainland. Argentina, because it didn't need to import food, seemed slightly preferable. But the last Spanish-language broadcast which Sheila had been able to understand before their transistor radio batteries lost their power, indicated that illegal immigrants were being quarantined and put in internment camps, a gloomy option unless and until they

  began actually to starve to death. In the meantime they would sail south, hope that the plague would run its course on land, and not reappear aboard Vagabond; hope that they could feed themselves from the sea, and wait.

  In eleven days they reached the latitude of Rio, passing a hundred miles to the east. Their tentative destination was the coast south of Mar del Plata, two hundred and fifty miles southeast of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

  When their shortwave radio broke down they were left with no radios functioning. They began sailing alone amidst a depressing silence from the rest of the world. And the sea too seemed silent and empty. They saw no other ships. No seabirds accompanied them. Although they trolled all the time, usually with two rods and two lures, the fish, if they were there, usually spurned their offerings. As they grew weaker from their stricter and stricter rationing, they began to dip into their emergency food kit. They established a schedule of rationing that would permit them to reach southern Argentina with an empty larder.