Far From The Sea We Know

by Frank Sheldon

  Penny was checking the heading automatically by this point, and the engine as well. There were no trouble lights, and all seemed good. People were coming out on deck, getting back to work, cleaning up, and putting away gear, but all in a relaxed way. There was not too much talking, but a few long telling looks were exchanged. It was certainly better than yesterday. It was as if a great storm had finally blown past, and in its wake people were luxuriating in the afterglow of the unprecedented effort they had made to survive.

  Dirk came to relieve her. She just said “fine” when he asked how she was doing. He took the wheel without another word, and she was thankful he left it at that. The whole thing with him and Lorraine getting together: she didn’t really want to deal with it, at least right now.

  She felt tired and sleepy and headed back to her cabin. Matthew was gone, but she didn’t mind. In the moment, it was near ecstasy to just lie down in peace for a while. A few of her concerns threatened to find their way back, but fell away like unanswered echoes as she descended into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  When Penny awoke hours later, she headed to the small media lab where they had watched Chiffrey’s video and got there just in time to meet Andrew as he was leaving. He told her that Chiffrey’s people had managed to get the side-scan files ready, and the Navy had brought them over by launch.

  “Malcolm reminded me how much easier this would be if we had our own downlink.”

  “Still has enough of his old self for that, at least,” she said.

  “And I suppose he’s right,” Andrew said with a soft laugh, “but maybe it’s a blessing since with that, everyone would get a leash and muzzle on us.”

  Andrew went on to say that Matthew had joined him for a while in the lab. He had given him a rundown of their meetings with Chiffrey, and they had watched the video together. After Matthew had left, he had gone over the scans of the ocean bottom from the Honey Pot location for hours, scrutinizing them one by one as they came off the printer. Assuming the scanning equipment had been in order, there was nothing of any interest.

  “So, you’ve given up?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” Chiffrey said, coming around the corner and sticking his head through the hatchway. “I won’t rub it in, and I appreciate your effort. Any word on the whales from your spotters up north?”

  “Nothing relevant.” Andrew said. “As much chance running into our whales along the way back as anywhere.”

  “How much of a chance is that?”

  “Given we have no idea what really happened,” Penny said, “next to none.”

  The sun in its slow sail was well on its way to the western horizon when the Valentina crew gathered again in C-lab. Almost everyone who was not on duty was there, fitting around the equipment as best they could. A few latecomers had to stand in the passageway and look in. Penny was in the back on her own. Matthew, she observed, didn’t seem to do meetings these days. Mary was absent, off ministering at the feet of Ripler, no doubt. Andrew stood up front with Chiffrey.

  The Captain explained their situation and why they were going home to let some people off. It sounded like Chiffrey’s argument had not carried, and Lorraine’s prediction was wrong. That should give a few people second thoughts, Penny noted. The fact that their heading had been south since yesterday could not have been lost, but no one made even the semblance of an objection. Lately the crew accepted whatever came their way, carefree as the lilies of the field even while they toiled. They’d gone back to work almost as if nothing had happened, or at least to the necessary work of maintaining the ship. Even Becka looked calm. Going home early without getting anywhere near the Bering Sea should have been a major upset to her. The research she was to have taken part in on this trip was specific to her thesis, but here she was, sitting on a lab bench, as serene as if attending a recital of chamber music.

  “Lieutenant Chiffrey has asked to stay onboard,” Andrew said. “I’ve agreed. Arrangements are being made to get Jack and Mary off soon. Most of the rest you already know. After we resupply at port, those of you who want to continue with us will be welcome. We’ve all been through a lot. For some, clearly enough. Our mission’s changed. We can’t be sure where it will take us or what we will find. There may be danger. Do not discount that.” He glanced at Chiffrey. “Should just kick you all off, but after all that’s happened, you’ve earned a berth on this ship. Whatever you’ve decided, you have until we reach port to change your mind. If you are still on board when we sail again, you are in this to the end.”

  Andrew finished up. “Any questions? Good.”

  CHAPTER 31

  After the meeting, Penny was walking down the companionway to her cabin when she almost ran into Dirk as he came around a bulkhead. Her mood shifted instantly, her guard came up. He smiled. She didn’t.

  “To bed?” he said. “It’s still light.”

  “But late enough.”

  “Yes. ‘Ye know not the hour.’ Just about to start my watch. Not tired at all.” He glanced out a porthole. “It was so beautiful out there today.”

  “And it wasn’t before?” She didn’t mean to have it come out so snide.

  He ignored her comment, seemingly lost in the view of the twilight horizon.

  “The last light of a Northern summer,” he said. When he finally looked at her, his eyes had a shine. “Most of my life I felt cut off in some way I could never understand. Didn’t matter if I was out in a catboat by myself or in a roomful of people. Always alone. When I was small, before I could talk, the wet snow sliding down the window glass made patterns I could almost read. The answers were all there. Everything was, but the truth fell out of me faster than it went in, and as I grew, I lost it all. Now it’s all come back to me, and more. Whatever you think, Penny, however you puzzle over it, you won’t get it the way you’re trying.”

  “Are you and Lorraine really getting married?”

  “Yes. In essence, we already are, but we’ll formalize it when we get the chance.”

  “How sweet. Congratulations, but what exactly does ‘we already are’ mean?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “How can you be so sure, when you only just met? You’ve all bonded in some way, some of you more than others and maybe that is a powerful experience, but you remember Ripler? He was so sure, wasn’t he, and now he’s a puddle of drool.”

  “What has come to me is not what happened to Jack.”

  “Being sure just isn’t enough.”

  “You’re pissed because other people got something and you didn’t.”

  “Pissed, yes, maybe I am, but not because I didn’t get a hit when the Kool-Aid went round. And don’t tell me ‘this is different,’ because they all say ‘this is different’ and not long after always comes the shit storm.”

  “What you just said is coming from your own fear.”

  “Please do not inflict your Pop-Tart psychology on me.”

  Dirk paused for a moment and looked at her as if he had never seen her before, or maybe was really seeing her for the first time. “It’s like I’m in a skiff on a calm day. Water lapping gently on the planking. Do I have to think about it? No. Can I prove to all the metaphysicians in the world that it’s really happening? Not a chance. Do I need to? Why bother? An essential certainty is there, and it’s old, like a lizard laying in the sun, or a fish in the current. No need to argue it.”

  “And facts don’t matter anymore?”

  “Almost everything we do in the pursuit of so-called knowledge is because we don’t get what’s right in front of us. Being objective means being disconnected. And we all know this, but can’t deal, so we invent all kinds of elaborate games to occupy and convince ourselves we’re learning something when really we’re out in the cold with our noses pressed up against a dirty window. It’s not about being right, having the answer. I don’t have the answer. Don’t need one, because the questions I was told to ask are all out of joint.”

  “So we just stop asking questions
and stay groovy?”

  “No, you wait and what you really need comes and feeds out of your hands like a small bird. Patience. Truth isn’t an answer, it’s a call, a heart with a beat, and you can’t just go tearing that out of the world. There are consequences. Fear runs us all, Penny, but it’s the last thing we’ll give up. Instead we clutch at it like a life preserver when really it’s a death stone dragging us down to darkness.”

  “Yes, ” she said, “but fear has a purpose.”

  “Sure, even a sliver of truth gets in, we’re dazzled, then panicked and we slam the door shut, all safe in the comfort of our fake little world. That’s what happened to Jack. He fell because he saw too much and too little. He fought the wave, when he should have let go. You do that, and the big waves lift you up. Effortlessly.”

  “Too many metaphors for me.”

  “You can’t lift yourself. It’s no more complicated than knowing something to be this and not that. Recognition. Look here.”

  Dirk reached into his shirt pocket and carefully pulled out a downy feather. He held it between his thumb and index fingernails and brought it up to the light.

  “This fell into my hands this morning from the sky. I looked up and I swear I saw an albatross. That doesn’t mean much to you, but to me, it meant everything there ever was, or will be. I could take years trying to explain it all, but it would still be thin soup. Whether they admit it or not, everyone wants to be connected, but we settle instead for something else. Sex, drugs, our enormous collection of whatever. Or religion, science, art, our name in print—it’s all the same—once maybe it inspired, then it’s a substitute for some peak moment we had, then just a glimmer of a glimmer, trying to get it back and feeling fortunate having just a memory of that beautiful moment now and then. Sounds arrogant, but what’s real is more than the truth. Truth is overrated.”

  “But you said before that Ripler resisted the truth, so which is it?”

  “I don’t have a word for ‘beyond truth,’ which is really what I’m trying to say. No, I can’t say it, so ‘point to’ is the best I can do. Why not take a look? Jack’s survival instinct—the survival of his sense of the person he thought himself to be—was just too strong. His flaw.”

  “There’s more ‘flaw’ than Jack at this point.”

  Dirk stopped smiling, and he seemed to look somewhere inside himself, his eyes fluttering, almost completely closed. When he opened them, he was staring intently into hers. “His lies are now his truth and though the root be bitter, the fruit is sweet and attractive in its first corruption. Take heed.”

  His eyes rolled back and then, thankfully, closed, but only for a few seconds. When they snapped open again, he was smiling like a schoolboy. “Did I speak?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No. Not a word.” Then he laughed as if he couldn’t care less. “Guess it was meant for your ears alone.”

  She waited, but he seemed to have nothing more to add.

  “Listen,” she finally said. “I spoke with Lorraine not long ago. She’s…compelling, I will say that, and somehow changed, maybe even transformed in some way I can’t understand. But do you really think it makes sense to marry someone who might come back down to earth at any moment and suddenly feel the need again for a six-pack of mascara and a spray-on tan? There is no reason to believe that how she is now will last. Or how you are, for that matter. And what about your career?”

  “I’m going home, done with the sea. Needed elsewhere. It’s clear to us, just like an exit on the interstate, here’s where we get off. ‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill.’ Masefield, I think.”

  “Stephenson. Robert Louis. Same guy who wrote Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. A good one for you, maybe.”

  “Not me. Jack, maybe.” His smile was still bright enough to toast bread. “I could have gone the same way as him if things had been a little different. After the whales circled us, and I was trying to pull Lorraine in, I saw it all in an instant, but I just felt so sad. I don’t know why. The world crumbled, the stars fell out of the sky. I wanted to die. Love’s the way we die sometimes. It was Lorraine who pulled me through. It happened so fast and lasted so long. Without her, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  He let out a few slow breaths and ended with a quiet laugh tinged with sadness.

  “Something began to happen with Lorraine and the whale on the day the chopper went down. She just went all the way in. I know she seemed a little crazy at first, till she found her legs, but that’s just a side effect.”

  He suddenly stared at Penny, his face solemn and his eyes wide. “Same with me.”

  He held the stare a few more moments then started to laugh, his face cracking into an ingenuous grin.

  “Sorry, couldn’t resist! It’s just that I know I can’t explain it to you. If I try to understand, I can’t, either, but I don’t care anymore. Because it’s a poor small thing, you know, to just understand.” He sighed. “‘Not be looking, but seeing.’ Sorry, can’t remember who said that. Maybe I did.”

  She didn’t answer, didn’t say anything. It was gobbledygook, but something about the way he was speaking was drawing her in. There was a kind of divine madness about it all.

  He went on anyway. “It’s as if she’s more me than I am. Lorraine. Everything she says to me, every look, every gesture, I get completely. Beyond knowledge. Knowledge is cheap, the mind is cheap. You have no idea how sure that is, how much the difference is between thinking about something, even knowing something for sure—knowing even better than your own hand—and totally being it.”

  She waited for more, but he just stood facing her, radiating a strange kind of vitality. She said, “Dirk, you seem so convinced,” and almost bit her tongue for stating the obvious, and sure enough, it set him off again.

  “An example,” he said. “We’re forward at the bow, Lorraine and I, just leaning on the rail, our faces in the wind, when she shook her head, just slightly, but I knew exactly what she meant.”

  “Well, that’s touching, but couldn’t that be imagination?”

  “No, wait. You see, I acted on it. I said, ‘Our children will still have all of this.’ I meant the sea, still living, and as it would be, coming back from where it is now, and becoming so much more.” He waved his hand slowly across the horizon as if it were all his to command. “I said, ‘It’s not too late,’ and she indicated to me that I was right. It’s beyond understanding, I can’t really explain it correctly. She’s become more me than I am, really. And the thing is, she sees what’s coming, what will be. In that moment, it was perfect, she didn’t miss a beat. It was all sorts of subtle shifts, changes of balance, her eyes, the way she moved, the way she breathed. No. Was breathed. Everything so rich and clear. It’s as if I can read her completely, but more like I become her. I’m telling you, this is real. We’ll have two children, both girls. I even know their names.”

  “You decided on names already?”

  “No, they came with names. Or will.”

  Penny must have been staring a little too long.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Just be ready.”

  “Dirk, I really do wish you both the best. Got to get some sleep.”

  She walked off before he could say anything else, but he did anyway.

  “One of them is named Penelope, after you,” he called after her. “You’ll know why, someday.”

  She quickened her step.

  CHAPTER 32

  Penny entered her cabin, shut the hatch, and slowly let out her breath. She fell down on her bunk and rolled into the bed covers.

  Too tired to sleep. Where was Matthew, she wondered? No, wait. He would come back one day from his lofty contentment. Just wait him out. Someday, it could work. Even if they weren’t together all the time, it could work. Maybe the only way. The precariousness of it all would be their binding force, their pledge of return. Apart together, a life of farewells and reunions. Wasn’t everything like that
, really? Too tired to sleep…

  CHAPTER 33

  Morning came, and the sun soon burned through the mist in golden silence. Even out here, part of that haze was air pollution, but today Penny didn’t care. Matthew was still away somewhere.

  After a quick breakfast, she went back to her cabin to get her laundry. The rest of the morning she spent washing clothes and straightening out her gear, making some notes, putting things in order. After a while, she lay down on the bunk for a quick break.

  When she awoke, almost two hours had disappeared forever. She dabbed a little water from her drinking bottle into her eyes, rubbing them gently. It was just the letdown from the intensity of the last week. Could use more sleep, but for now, coffee would have to do.

  As she headed out, she ran into Becka, her face distraught.

  “What’s up?” Penny asked her.

  “They’re taking Jack. The Navy. In a chopper, like the one that brought Lieutenant Chiffrey. They’re already on the way, but we just found out.”

  “Well, the Captain told us at the meeting last night that was the plan. I can’t pretend I’m sorry to see Jack go, but the reasoning probably is that moving him in one quick trip would be less traumatic for him than spending time on another ship with too many new people, then having to do it again on every other leg of the journey back. So, he and Mary go first class.”

  “He’s going to a Navy hospital.”

  Now it was clear. Jack had a way of getting people to listen, and his talent had certainly not gone unnoticed by Chiffrey.

  “I don’t feel good about this,” Becka said. “Who knows what they’ll do to him?”