"The outside world!" he said excitedly to the committee when they were gathered together. They were not used to seeing the captain in such a state of animation. "The outside world!" he said again, gesturing with his arms in large circles. "A couple of those yachts from Madagascar are beautiful vessels that can sail anywhere, cross any ocean. They would have to be worked on a bit, fitted out properly and adequately supplied; but it's almost as if they've been sent here to encourage us to go exploring."
There followed a spirited discussion, which inevitably spilled out beyond the confines of the Coordinating Committee into the community at large. It was amazing how quickly the populace became swept up in a passion for journeys to distant places. The presence of the sailing yachts, plus the invasion of the pirates, had reawakened an interest in other parts of the globe, a curiosity that had been lying dormant since the Event. The earliest reconnaissance, on horseback, had convinced everyone that beyond the Ulundi Circle there was nothing but a burned-out wasteland. Additional exploration, also by horse, carried out by Inlanders determined to look for loved ones in the farthest reaches of South Africa, had revealed the same: total devastation everywhere.
But what about other continents? Theoretically, they were wastelands too. Yet how could one be sure? And no matter what their fate, no matter how bleak their condition, shouldn't these survivors seek to determine it with their own eyes? Beyond concern for the present—possible fellow survivors, possible resources to be garnered—there was the future to be considered. It might be prudent to establish colonies on distant shores. Or, prudence be damned, there might be those who wanted to migrate to distant shores for whatever reason.
A few people urged that extended voyages be delayed until the boats could be fitted out with steam engines, and even more important, short-wave radios for keeping in touch with home base. But there were no prospects of having such equipment available for a long time—at least several months for the engines, and even by the most optimistic forecast, three years for radios.
Arguments for caution and delay were swept aside, and preparations for a lengthy voyage—perhaps two—were begun. The desire to explore is an endemic fever in the human spirit. The sight of those graceful yachts had set it raging.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF WILSON HARDY, JR.
When the pirate fleet finally set sail for home across the Mozambique Channel, the two most seaworthy yachts were left behind. Nobody claimed that they were the spoils of war. Rather, it seemed a fair trade—a couple of surplus boats in exchange for food, tools, and medical aid, for the necessities of life. The pirates, most of whom had given themselves up for lost, could scarcely believe their good fortune. Free, returning home, and accompanied by a foreign aid mission to boot; they were transformed magically from surly scoundrels to simple seamen, grinning from ear to ear. Nor did they seem to regret being free of their queen's command.
Millie Fox and a few of her Peace Corps people decided to join the volunteer contingent going to Madagascar; and Millie, along with Captain Nordstrom and Pascal Ralaimongo, arranged a tentative schedule for ferrying people and materials back and forth between the two communities.
"Let's keep in touch!" shouted my friend, Herb Green, as the last of the vessels hoisted anchor and turned seaward. Then muttering: "But don't call me; I'll call you."
"Oh, come off it, Herb," I said by way of reprimand. "If there are two human habitations left on the face of the earth, the least they can do is socialize."
"Okay, if you say so," he replied. "But no more invasions, please."
No sooner had the sails disappeared over the horizon than attention turned in earnest to plans for global exploration. Work began on refitting the two sloops with new canvas, and on restoring their woodwork to its original strength and beauty. When the vessels were taken out for trial runs, large crowds gathered to marvel at their speed and grace skimming the waves.
The leaders of this enterprise were the Cortez brothers: Ernesto and Jose. The two young men were put in charge when their credentials were brought to the attention of the Coordinating Committee. The brothers come from Texas, where they were sometime students at the University of Texas at Austin. Their father was a leading petroleum engineer with one of the major oil companies. Ernesto and Jose are accomplished soccer players, skillful rock climbers, and as luck would have it, experienced yachtsmen. They have often sailed with friends up and down the Gulf of Mexico, and on several occasions across the Atlantic to the west coast of Africa. Nobody here can match their experience as oceangoing sailors. Many officers and crewmen of the Queen of Africa have spent years on the open sea, but not in sailboats. A number of Inlanders have sailed often in coastal waters, but never across an ocean. The Cortez brothers established their fitness for command not only by past reputation, but also by their knowledge as evinced in discussions with Captain Nordstrom and his officers, and by their masterful performance at the helm.
The captain had reservations based upon the youth of the two men, and also the fact that they were known to love a party. A reputation for high spirits was not necessarily a disqualification, but it did raise doubts in Nordstrom's mind. He was reassured, however, when the young men's father vouched for their conduct. They might play hard, said Mr. Cortez, but on a serious mission they were totally trustworthy.
"You know, Captain," he added with a smile, "the family's namesake, the renowned conquistador, Hernan Cortez, was said by his secretary to be haughty, mischievous and 'much given to women.' And just think of what he accomplished."
"We are not looking for someone to conquer a Mexican empire," Captain Nordstrom said, somewhat dourly. But he relented.
Ernesto and Jose were given their commands; but they were not given free rein in choosing routes of travel. Their first idea was to sail together around the world west to east, the two sloops lending support to each other as they checked out the continents one by one. But members of the Coordinating Committee resolved that the journeying should be limited to a year's time, and given that constraint, a circumnavigation seemed overly ambitious.
"Magellan was the first one to do it in the world that was," said Stephen Healey, "and it took him three years. Actually, I should say it took a few members of his crew three years. Magellan was killed in the Philippines, and most of the men died along the way."
"But, sir," Ernesto objected, "that was a long time ago."
Jose pointed out that back in the 1960s Sir Francis Chichester had sailed around the world alone in the 55-foot Gipsy Moth IV, a sailing yacht about the same size as the two now in hand. He covered 14,100 miles from Plymouth, England, to Sydney, Australia, in 107 days; and after several weeks layover, continued back to Plymouth around Cape Horn, 15,517 miles, in another 119 days, making for a total time at sea of 226 days.
"And that was nothing," Ernesto added. "There are now sailing ships that go round the world easily in seventy days. Or at least there were."
"Let's not be ridiculous," Captain Nordstrom said impatiently. "We're interested in exploration, not ocean racing. A swift trip across open water wouldn't reveal much by way of useful information."
It was finally decided that the purpose of the mission—learning about the state of the world—would best be served if the two sloops headed off in different directions. One boat would go west across the Atlantic to Brazil, then north to Florida, making as many stops in South and Central America as feasible, then back to the Atlantic coast of France, Spain, and Portugal, returning to home base along the west coast of Africa. If time and tide allowed, there could also be a visit to England and a short sortie into the Mediterranean. When someone questioned whether such an itinerary wasn't too much to tackle, Mr. Cortez Senior observed that Columbus, on his first voyage, had crossed from the Canary Islands to landfall in the Caribbean in just five weeks and had returned despite severe storms in less than seven.
Captain Nordstrom remarked, "For a petroleum engineer, Senor Cortez, you seem to know a lot about the sea."
"Only about the g
reat Spanish explorers, Captain."
"I thought that Columbus was Italian," the captain said. But he quickly smiled and held up his hand as if to say, no, let's not go down that road.
The other boat was to sail north, partway up the east African coast, then across the Indian Ocean. After stopping at Southern India, Ceylon, and Malaysia, it would enter the South China Sea. Plans called for reaching Vietnam and China. It would be good to get as far as Korea and Japan, but that seemed out of the realm of possibility. An attempt could be made, but only if such a journey proved to be feasible within the allotted year.
The aim was to move quickly, to see as much as possible. However, if either boat were to come across a large functioning community, relatively unharmed by the Event, that boat was to return home immediately with the news.
As Captain Nordstrom told the brothers, looking at them intently: "We have been operating under the assumption that world civilization lies in ashes. If by some miracle that is not the case, we don't want to wait a year to find out."
Since the boats would be starting out almost eight months after the Event, one could hope that the burned-over fields would be regenerating, and that edible plants would be found along the way. There should be sources of fresh water at every coastal stop, and our own experience indicated that fishing would be productive. Nevertheless, the crews were to carry food rations with them and were not to sail beyond the point where such rations, plus nourishment found en route, would see them safely home.
Uncertainty about sources of food meant that the size of the crews had to be severely limited. The decision was to send six people in each boat.
Ernesto suggested that he would sail to the west and that one member of his crew would be his girlfriend, Anna Colombo, who is fluent in Italian, French, and Spanish, and also speaks passable Portuguese. Anna hails from Milan, where her father, a celebrated mechanical engineer, designed automobiles. Anna is gorgeous, and comes from a world of sleek Ferraris and chic designer gowns. As for seamanship, she has done her share of serious yachting all over the Mediterranean. I never would have guessed that her glitterati lifestyle would mesh with Ernesto's beer-drinking adventurousness. But it did, as soon as they met aboard the Queen of Africa, and they have been inseparable.
Jose amenably agreed to go east, but also insisted on taking his girlfriend, Peggy McManus, even though she had no special language qualifications. As it happened, Peggy was an excellent short-order cook, having shipped on the Queen of Africa as a sous-chef. Also, under Jose's tutelage, she had become a proficient hand with halyards, lanyards, and all that sailboat stuff.
As interpreter, Jose recruited Emily Chan, who not only spoke several Chinese dialects but was conversant with other Asian languages, her special field of study. Emily was the daughter of Gordon Chan, who was not at all happy to hear of her enlistment. In fact, he forbade her to go until he could see that she was totally determined no matter what, at which point he relented and gave her his blessing. Jose, heading east, also took a representative from the Inlanders' Indian population. And he thought it prudent to take a member of the Zulu community. However, he insisted on more than language and cultural qualifications. He wanted two young men who were congenial, athletic, and familiar with boats. Since Durban had long been the center of a lively yachting community, this was readily accomplished.
As a sixth, Jose chose one of the engineering officers from the Queen of Africa, a technician who served the double purpose of being handy around a boat and knowledgeable about machines, just in case any machines were found to have survived the fires and floods.
Ernesto, in filling out his crew, also enlisted two young men from the Durban sailing community, one white and one black. He then recruited a geologist and a talented machinist. Fortuitously, the geologist was female, so each of the two vessels would have two women on board.
This pleased my father and others concerned about suitable representation of women in all our activities. On the other hand, some worried that the male-female composition of the crew might make for tensions on a long journey. To this, the brothers responded as one. They had been on ocean trips with members of both sexes, and for serious sailors and mature people there should be no problems. As for their own women friends, there was a long tradition of captains' wives or consorts accompanying them on voyages. Plus, they had picked their crews carefully, confident that they were psychologically sound as well as physically fit. And, after all, a year is not forever—and this is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth.
Work on the boats progressed rapidly, and a date was set for departure. There remained the question of giving the sloops names. Many suggestions were forthcoming, ranging from such standards as Hope, Faith, Belief, Intrepid, and Dauntless to dozens of more idiosyncratic proposals. Ridiculous as it may seem, the debates began to get acrimonious. So Ernesto and Jose were authorized to make the choice. Accordingly, the vessels were christened Atlantic and Pacific. These names, simple yet emotionally resonant, gained general approval.
One day in early August, with a festive crowd gathered at the shore and band music drowning out the sound of the surf, the two expeditions set forth.
Herb searched his memory for a poetic phrase from the past. "You know," he said to Sarah, "the one about Cortez looking out over the ocean." Sarah obliged him with the lines by Keats:
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
While the Atlantic and Pacific were being fitted out for their voyages, I was swept up in the pervasive mood of anticipation and adventure, putting behind me the bad taste left by the pirates' invasion of our peaceful community. If I had known about another expedition being planned, I would have been less high-spirited. In fact, this other journey, when I found out about it, made me sick at heart.
I learned the sad news at a meeting of the Focus Group held in October, about two months after the Cortez brothers and their crews sailed over the horizon. These get-togethers had become less frequent than they had been in the earliest days of our friendship. Marriage and busy schedules took us in different directions and we no longer felt the emotional need to check in with each other daily. Still, we never let more than three or four evenings pass without a good sitdown, often featuring the tasting of a new homemade beer. By now there were a number of different brews from which to choose, and Roxy, through her friends among the Inlanders, assured our supply.
So there we were, lazing about on a mild evening, engaged in languid end-of-the-day conversation, when Herb suddenly cleared his throat and said that he and Roxy had an announcement to make.
"We have decided to move away from Engineering Village."
For a moment there was the silence of total shock, and then everybody started to talk at once. "You can't be serious." "Why on earth?" "Hold on now." "We won't permit it." Mary started to cry. Sarah was ashen. Tom flushed. I don't know how I looked, but I felt terrible.
Tom was the first to pull himself together and ask the obvious questions: Where, when, and most important, why?
"We're moving up into the hills," Roxy said. "Right after the first of the new year. It's a question of climate." She smiled to show us that this was a joke, but there were tears in her eyes.
"No," she amended quickly, "it's not really the climate. We're moving to a kibbutz. That's always been a dream of Herb's, and it appeals to me as well."
"We're not calling it a kibbutz," Herb said. "No Israeli connotations. We're not calling it a commune, either, though that is what it will be. Commune sounds like Stalinist Russia, or American hippies, which is not what we are thinking about at all. It's just a cooperative community." Then, with a slight smile, "But I hope to organize it like a kibbutz."
"We've been thinking about this for quite awhile," Roxy said. "There are a number of people right here in Engineering Village who are anxious to give it a try. Not the engineers themselves— excep
t for a couple—but several children of engineers, like Herb, and several Queen of Africa employees, like me. And there are some Inlanders, too, who will be joining us."
"We didn't want to say anything about it until the plans were set," Herb went on. "But now they are, and while Roxy was joking about the climate part of it, she wasn't kidding about the timing. Right after the first of the year. We thought of asking you—our dearest friends—to join us. We still think of it, and we do ask you. Right now. But we assumed that this wouldn't be your kind of thing."
"Well, you're right about that," Tom said. "But why, for God's sake, Herb? Why? Just when wonderful new deeds are being accomplished each day? Just as we're finally getting organized?"
"That's exactly it," Herb said. "Things are getting organized. Or, more precisely, everybody's getting ready to reorganize. Before you know it, a year will have passed since the Event and our landing here in KwaZulu Natal. That means we'll be coming to the end of the agreed period, endorsed by the Coordinating Committee, of volunteer service to this disaster-stricken community. It's been wonderful to see how everyone has pulled together, worked with a will and achieved miracles. I never would have dreamed that a community this large and this diverse could have carried on the way it has for so long. If anything, one might have expected it to go the other way. The calamity might have generated disorder and conflict, a descent into the worst kind of savagery. I give credit to the tribal tradition of the black Africans. I give credit to the good sense of the Afrikaners. I give credit to the British and their legacy of orderly government. I give credit to the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi that hovers over this place. I give credit to Captain Nordstrom and his super crew. And, finally, I give credit to you engineers, the ultimate pragmatists. You laid out a plan and got everybody to sign on. You gave the people constructive work to do and fostered hope. You generated a wholesome feeling of accomplishment that has served us well."
The Aftermath Page 29
