Fragment

by Warren Fahy

  The 182-foot exploration vessel was approaching the center of 36 million square miles of empty ocean that stretched from the equator to Antarctica—a void that globes and maps usually took advantage of to stack the words “South Pacific Ocean.”

  Chartered for the cable reality show SeaLife, the Trident comfortably quartered forty passengers. Now an “on-camera” crew of ten who pretended to run the ship, fourteen professionals who really ran the ship, six scientists, and eight production staffers, along with a handsome bull terrier named Copepod, rounded out her manifest.

  SeaLife was chronicling the Trident’s yearlong around-the-world odyssey, which promised to encounter the most exotic and remote places on Earth. In its first four weekly episodes the cast of fresh young scientists and hip young crew had explored the Galapagos Islands and Easter Island, launching SeaLife to number two in the cable ratings. After the last three weeks at sea, however, enduring back-to-back storms, the show was foundering.

  The ship’s botanist, Nell Duckworth, glared at her reflection in the port window of the Trident’s bridge, repositioning her Mets cap. Like all the other scientists chosen for the show, Nell was in her late twenties. She had just turned twenty-nine seven days ago, and had celebrated over the chemical-and-mint-scented bowl of a marine toilet. She had lost weight, since she hadn’t been able to keep food down for the last ten days. Her motion sickness had subsided only when the last of the massive storms had passed last night, leaving a cleansed blue sea and sky this morning. So far, bad weather, sunblock, and her trusty Mets cap had protected her fair complexion from any radical new pigmentation events. But she was not checking her reflection for wrinkles, weight loss, or freckles. Instead, all she noticed was the look of despair glaring back at her from the glass.

  Nell wore taupe knee-length cargo jeans, a gray T-shirt, and plenty of SPF24 sunblock slathered on her bare arms and face. Her beat-up white Adidas sneakers annoyed the producers since Adidas was not one of the show’s sponsors, but she had stubbornly refused to trade them in.

  She gazed south through the window, and the crushing disappointment she was trying not to think about descended over her again. Due to weather delays and low ratings, they were bypassing the island that lay just beyond that horizon—bypassing the only reason Nell had tried out for this show in the first place.

  For the past few hours, she had been trying not to remind the men on the bridge of the fact that they were closer than all but a handful of people had ever come to the place she had studied and theorized about for over nine years.

  Instead of heading one day south and landing, they were heading west to Pitcairn Island, where the descendants of the Bounty’s mutineers had apparently been planning a party for them.

  Nell gritted her teeth and caught her reflection scowling back at her. She turned and looked out the stern window.

  She saw the mini-sub resting under a crane on the ship’s center pontoon. Underwater viewing ports were built into the port and starboard pontoons—Nell’s favorite lunch spots, where she had seen occasional blue-water fish like tuna, marlin, and sunfish drafting the ship’s wake.

  The Trident boasted a state-of-the-art television production studio and satellite communication station; its own desalinization plant, which produced three thousand gallons of freshwater daily; a working oceanographic lab with research-grade microscopes and a wide spectrum of laboratory instruments; even a movie theater. But it was much ado about nothing, she thought. The show’s scientific premise had been nothing but window dressing, as the cynic in her had chided her from the start.

  On the poop deck below, she watched the ship’s marine biologist, Andy Beasley trying to teach the weather-beaten crew a lesson in sea life.

  2:11 P.M.

  Andrew Beasley was a gangly, narrow-shouldered scientist with a mop of blond hair and thick-framed tortoise-shell glasses. His long, birdlike face often displayed an optimistic smile.

  Raised by his beloved but alcoholic Aunt Althea in New Orleans, the gentle young scientist had grown up surrounded by aquariums, for he lived over his aunt’s seafood restaurant. Any specimens that came under his study were automatically spared the kettle.

  He had gone on to live out Althea’s dream of becoming a marine biologist, e-mailing her every day from the moment he left home for college to the day he accepted his first research position.

  Aunt Althea had passed away three months ago. After surviving Hurricane Katrina, she had succumbed to pancreatic cancer, leaving Andy more alone than he had thought possible after feeling so terribly alone all his life.

  One month after her funeral, he had received a letter inviting him to audition for SeaLife. Without telling him, Althea had sent his curriculum vitae and a photo to the show’s producers after reading an article about the casting call for marine biologists. Andy had visited his aunt’s grave to put flowers on it, flown to New York, and auditioned. As if it were Aunt Althea’s last wish being granted, he had won one of the highly contested berths aboard the Trident.

  Andy usually wore bright clashing colors that gave him a slightly clownish appearance. It also made him a natural target for sarcasm. He was as blindly optimistic and as easily crushed as a puppy—a combination that drew out a maternal impulse in Nell that was surprising to her.

  Andy fidgeted with the wireless mike pinned to his skinny yellow leather tie. He wore a Lacoste blue-white-orange-yellow-purple-and-green-striped shirt, which resembled Fruit Stripe gum. Paired with the vertically striped shirt, he wore Tommy Hilfiger boardshorts with horizontal blue, green, pink, red, orange, and yellow stripes. To set it all off, he wore green size-11 high-top sneakers.

  Andy’s teaching props, a number of latex hand puppets of various sea creatures, lay scattered on the white deck before him. Beside him sat a panting, broad-nosed bull terrier with a miniature life vest strapped on his square chest.

  Zero Monroe, the lead cameraman, changed the memory stick in his digital video camera. The previous one had blinked FULL in the middle of Andy’s lesson, something that had been planned, much to Zero’s chagrin, in order to start rattling Andy and get him primed for an eruption.

  “Are we ready yet?” Andy asked, flustered but still trying to smile.

  Zero raised the camera to his right eye and opened the other eye at Andy. “Yup,” he replied. The rangy cameraman used words sparingly, especially when he was unhappy. This job was making him unhappy.

  His lean physique, wide aquamarine eyes, and deadpan humor lent Zero a vaguely Buster Keaton-like quality, though he was six-two and broad at the shoulders. He wore a gray Boston Marathon T-shirt that he had earned three times over, and battered blue New Balance RXTerrain running shoes with orange laces and gel-injected soles. His faded brown Orvis cargo pants had fourteen pockets stuffed with memory sticks, lenses, lens filters, lens cleaners, mike filters, and a lot of batteries.

  Zero had made his living and reputation photographing wildlife. He had mastered his trade in some of the most inhospitable environments in the world, taking assignments from the infested mangrove swamps of Panama (filming fiddler crabs) to the corrosive alkaline lakes in the Rift Valley of East Africa (filming flamingos). After the last three weeks, Zero was wondering which assignment was worse—this one, or standing in mud that ate through his wading boots while his blood was drained by swarming black flies.

  “Let’s go, Gus,” Zero growled.

  A grip clacked a plastic clapper in front of Andy’s face, startling him. “SeaLife, day fifty-two, camera three, stick two!”

  “And…ACTION!” Jesse Jones shouted.

  Jesse was the obligatory obnoxious member of the on-camera “crew.” The real crew wore uniforms and tried to stay off-camera as much as possible. Universally hated by both his shipmates and the viewers at home, Jesse Jones was delighted to play a starring role. Reality shows needed at least one cast member everyone could loathe with full enjoyment, one who caused crisis and conflict, one whom sailors in olden days would have called a “Jonah” and heaved
overboard at the first opportunity.

  Tanned and muscular, with heavily tattooed upper arms, Jesse wore his hair short, spiked, and bleached white. No one had taken advantage of the show’s legion of sponsors quite so much as he had. He was decked out in black thigh-low, ribs-high Bodyform wetsuit trunks, complete with a stitched-in blue codpiece, and over them a muscle Y-shirt printed with palms and flowers. On his feet were silver Nikes and on his nose rested five-hundred dollar silver-framed Matsuda sunglasses with pale turquoise lenses.

  “Where were we, Zero?” Andy said, cranking up a smile.

  “Copepods,” Zero prompted.

  “Oh yes,” Andy said. “That’s right—Jesse?”

  Jesse threw a rubber hand-puppet at Andy, who ducked too late. It bounced off his face.

  Everyone laughed as Andy replaced his imitation tortoise-shell glasses and gave a crooked smile to the camera. He slipped his hand into the puppet and wiggled its single google-eye and two long antennae with his fingers. “So Copepod, here, gets his name from this microscopic sea creature.”

  The banana-snouted dog barked once and resumed panting next to Andy’s leg.

  “Poor Copey!” Dawn Kipke, the crew’s surf-punk siren, crooned. “Why would anyone name a dog after that ugly freaking thing?”

  “Yeah, that’s uncool, dude,” Jesse shouted.

  Andy lowered the puppet and frowned at Zero, who zoomed in on his face.

  Andy’s face turned red and his eyes bulged as he threw the puppet down. “How can I teach anything if nobody ever LISTENS TO ME?” he raged.

  He stormed off the deck and down the hatchway.

  The crew turned to Zero.

  “Hey, I’m not in charge, man,” Zero said, walking backwards as he shot. “Ask the guys upstairs!” He panned up to the bridge, where Nell stood looking down at them. She made hand-antlers at them in the window and stuck out her tongue.

  2:14 P.M.

  “Looks like mutiny, Captain. I think we’re going to have to land at the first opportunity.”

  Captain Sol gave Nell a sly look over his shoulder. A trim white beard framed his tanned face and sea-blue eyes. “Nice try, Nell.”

  “I’m serious!”

  Glyn Fields, the show’s biologist, stepped next to Nell to look through the window. “She’s right, Captain. I really think the crew’s getting ready to storm the Bastille.”

  Nell had met Glyn during her second year as an assistant professor teaching first-year botany at NYU. Glyn was teaching first-year biology, and his looks had caused quite a stir among the faculty when he arrived. It was Glyn who had persuaded her to try out for SeaLife.

  Tall, pale, thin, and very British, Glyn had sharp, handsome features, nearly black eyes, and his mother’s thick Welsh crown of black hair. The biologist was a tad too vain for Nell’s taste, but she may have felt that way simply because he never seemed to notice her (like that, anyway). He wore the stereotypical clothing of an English academic: Oxford shirts, corduroys, plain leather shoes, and even blue blazers on occasion. He now wore a blue Oxford shirt, khaki slacks, and Top-Siders without socks—about as casual as he was capable of dressing, even in the tropics. Nell suspected the Englishman would never be caught dead wearing shorts, a T-shirt, or, heaven forbid, sneakers.

  She remembered how she had protested to Glyn a year ago that SeaLife would create a yearlong detour in her studies. When Glyn had mentioned that the expedition might come across the obscure little island she was always talking about, Nell knew instantly she might never get this chance again. Surprising herself, she tried out for the show and was actually chosen, along with Glyn.

  Now, as he saw Nell’s hopes dashed, Glyn obviously felt a twinge of guilt. “Maybe a quick landing would be good for morale, Captain.”

  Second Mate Samir El-Ashwah entered through the starboard hatchway, dressed in the full Love Boat–style white uniform inflicted on the Trident’s professional staff. A wiry man of Egyptian extraction, Samir’s Australian accent surprised at first. “Holy Dooley the Turbosails are in the groove, eh, Captain? What are we making, just outta curiosity?”

  “Fourteen knots, Sam,” Captain Sol said.

  “That’s getting it done, I reckon!”

  “I’d say.” Captain Sol laughed, scratching the coral atoll of white hair around his bald head.

  Nell peered up toward the skylight at the ninety-three foot Turbosail, one of two that towered over the bridge like a cruise-ship’s smokestacks grafted onto the research vessel. The massive cylindrical shaft passed through the center of the bridge, housed inside a wide column that was smothered in notices and photos. Nell heard motors whirring inside the column as the sail turned above.

  Turbosails were pioneered by Jacques Cousteau in the eighties for scientific exploration vessels, including his own Calypso II. Ideal for long-range research vessels, the tubular sail used small fans to draw air inside a vertical seam, as wind passing around it produced a much higher leeward surface speed than any traditional sail. Now that the storm had passed, the crew had raised both of the Trident’s Turbosails and rotated the seams to catch the nor’easter.

  The ship cruised due west at a nice clip, ten degrees south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

  “Captain Sol, we’ll never get this close again!” Nell said.

  “The storm did blow us pretty far south,” Glyn said. “And while as a biologist, I have to say Nell’s little island is pretty intriguing, the thought of solid ground is even more appealing right now, Captain. It sure would feel good to stretch our legs.”

  “Why can’t we go?” Nell whined.

  Sol Meyers frowned. He looked like Santa Claus on vacation in his extra-large orange T-shirt with a white SeaLife logo silk-screened on the breast pocket.

  “I’m sorry, Nell. We have two days to make up if we’re going to make Pitcairn in time for the celebration they’re planning for us. We just can’t do it.”

  “A scientific expedition to explore the most remote places on Earth!” Nell quoted the show’s opening tagline with naked scorn.

  “More like a floating soap opera that ran out of bubbles,” Glyn muttered.

  “I’m sorry, Nelly,” Captain Sol repeated. “But this is Cynthea’s charter. She’s the producer. I have to go where she wants, barring some emergency.”

  “I think Cynthea’s trying to pair us off now,” Glyn mused. “Apparently the entire crew has already boffed each other.”

  Nell laughed and squeezed Glyn’s shoulder.

  The biologist flinched and rubbed his triceps as if she had bruised him. “You’re the most touchy-feely woman I’ve ever met, Nell,” he snipped, fussing with his shirt where she had touched him.

  Nell realized they were all getting irritable. “Sorry, Glyn. Maybe I’m part bonobo chimp—they use physical contact to give members of their group a sense of security.”

  “Well, we British have the opposite reaction.” Glyn pouted.

  “Hey, I don’t mind, Nell,” said Carl Warburton. The ship’s first mate had a TV actor’s tanned handsomeness, black wavy hair frosted gray at the temples, and a late-night deejay’s voice to go along with his droll sense of humor—all of which made him irresistible. “Consider me a bonobo,” Warburton said, and he scratched his ribs and stuck out his tongue at Nell charmingly.

  Captain Sol glanced up at the bridge camera mounted over the forward window. Cynthea Leeds, the show’s producer, watched everyone through cameras like this one, which were positioned throughout the ship. Each week’s show was cut from footage collected by these cameras, as well as what was captured by the ship’s three roving cameramen.

  Captain Sol hid his lips with his hand and whispered, “I think Cynthea’s trying to set me up with ship’s surgeon Jennings.”

  “She’s trying to set me up with ship’s surgeon Jennings,” Warburton said.

  Nell did her best Cynthea impression: “Drama!”

  A loud tone blared suddenly on the bridge, and everyone jumped.

  “Captain,�
� Samir said. He checked the instrumentation. “We’re picking up an EPIRB, sir!”

  “Christ, I thought it was Cynthea,” Captain Sol sighed.

  “An EPIRB?” Warburton asked. “Out here?”

  “Double-check it, Sam,” Captain Sol instructed.

  “What’s an EPIRB?” Nell asked.

  “An Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon.” Warburton was moving quickly to Samir’s side.

  “Got a position?” Captain Sol asked.

  “We should after the next satellite sweep…” said Samir.

  “Here it comes.” Warburton glanced over his shoulder at Nell.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’ll never believe it.”

  Samir turned to her. Surprise lit his round face and a smile revealed his beautiful teeth. “According to these coordinates, it’s coming from your island, mate.”

  Nell felt her heart pound as they confirmed the signal.

  “Hold on—wait—we’re losing it,” Warburton warned.

  Captain Sol stepped around Samir and squinted at the navigation screen. “That’s strange…”

  Warburton nodded.

  Nell moved a little closer. “What’s strange?”

  “You don’t fire off an EPIRB unless you mean business,” the captain answered. “And if you do, the lithium battery should last forty-eight hours, minimum. This signal’s fading.”

  “There it goes,” Samir reported as the next data update wiped it off the screen.

  “Sam, you better hail the nearest LUT station. And check the beacon’s NOAA registration, Carl.”

  Warburton was already scanning the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration database. “The beacon’s registered. Oh man… it’s a thirty-foot sailboat!”

  “What the hell is it doing out here?” Captain Sol scowled.

  Warburton scanned the information on file. “The vessel’s name is Balboa Bilbo. The owner’s name is Thad Pinkowski of Long Beach, California. OK, this is interesting: the registration on the beacon expired three years ago.”