The Circle

by David Poyer

  “You don’t strike me as a religious guy, Dan.”

  “Well, I guess not anymore.”

  “But you want me to explain a holy man to you, like explaining how a sonar works. Right? No, don’t be embarrassed. I’d better get used to it.

  “To start with, you probably figure me for crazy, going around with a picture like that in my wallet and calling him my ‘Master,’ as if I were a dog.”

  “Oh, no,” he said guiltily. It was exactly what he’d been thinking. “I just, you know, wondered.…”

  “Why don’t you go over there in that corner?”

  “What?”

  “There’s something over there. I saw it earlier. By the intercom.”

  Dan’s flash picked out a black shape under Bryce’s chair. “You don’t mean … a family-sized U.S. Navy—issue roach, somewhat lifeless?”

  “That’s it. I noticed it there last night.”

  “You squashed it?”

  “No. It was that way when I found it.”

  “What about it?”

  “As you noted, it’s dead.”

  “Well, everybody’s got to go.”

  “Correct and succinct. Now, what’s the difference between the roach and you?”

  Dan checked the clock again, checked the radar, rubbed the lenses of his binoculars across the blackness ahead. The conversation didn’t seem out of the ordinary. At night, at sea, men grew close enough or bored enough to talk in subdued, casual voices about things they talked about ashore only with people they loved very much, or when they were very drunk. “That I’m a thinking organism?”

  “Oh, it thought. Not clearly. But that difference is in degree only. No, the difference is that the roach was as limited by its programming as our radar there. It couldn’t choose what it was going to be or do. We can.”

  “Suppose I buy that. Then what?”

  “I think alternate paths, a degree of freedom, require the existence of a choice-maker. This implies consciousness: the awareness that we exist. That’s our gift and our curse. That’s what’s really divine in us. But how many of us use that freedom?”

  “Is it our business what other people do?”

  “Point missed completely. Of course they’re responsible for their choices, or at least it feels that way to you now. Later you realize most of that’s an illusion, like the idea of self. But most people spend their lives plotting to get more freedom, which they conceive of as enough money and time to do what they—”

  The intercom said in a gritty, hollow imitation of Aaron Reed’s voice, “Bridge, Sonar: Gained passive contact on submerged submarine, bearing zero-five-seven, range seventy-six thousand yards. Sounds like a U.S. nuclear attack running loud. Recommend classify friendly.”

  “Stand by.” Evlin buzzed the captain, spoke briefly, listened, and hung up. “Sonar, Bridge: Classification approved. Want us to do anything up here?”

  “Just stay in the racetrack. He’ll come to us.”

  Evlin signed off. “Now, what were we talking about? Oh yeah—that people will work and steal and lie to get money, and leisure, in order to do what they want.

  “But I don’t think the average guy spends ten hours of his life thinking seriously about what he really wants and why. Instead he desires what the local system, whatever it may be, wants him to desire. Liberty in Naples, or a sports car, or twenty years and a retirement check. Or four stripes, or his own command. But that’s not freedom. That’s programming. Just like the roach—only it never had another choice.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  “It leaves us face-to-face with the tough one. That consciousness, does it survive after we die? Does it rejoin something greater? Or does it just stop?

  “But even if the world’s wholly material, as the Buddha thought, if we’re going to live in it as conscious beings, we’ve got to turn away from the carnival. We’ve got to think about the important things. Such as: What are we going to do with however many years we have of thinking, acting life? That, by the way, is why I brought up Sartre before.”

  “But you don’t believe in existentialism, because you’re not an atheist.”

  “Oversimplified, but basically correct. Not secular existentialism, anyway.”

  “Are you going to try to save me, Al?”

  “Dan, I don’t think being ‘saved’ is all that hard. You don’t have to have a revelation, or starve yourself, or have some cracker in a polyester suit hit you on the forehead. A spiritual teacher helps, but I think compassion and good works will do it all by themselves. You don’t have to believe in a thing.”

  “In nothing?” He thought of Ivan Karamazov.

  “Look. The basics are ridiculously simple—as if somebody laid it all out so clearly nobody could miss it. Every religion starts from the same rule: Don’t hurt the other guy, unless you like being hurt yourself. But hell, you don’t need threats to tell you that. Most people arrive at it more or less by instinct. Maybe not right away, but once they suffer a little, they do.”

  “Not everybody has time.”

  “We get all we need.” Evlin sounded certain in the dark. “Most people get fifty, sixty years. How much do you need, if you’re serious? The Master comes out of Hinduism, he says there are millions of cycles before we wise up. I suspect that’s to justify their social system, with the Untouchables and all. There are times in everybody’s life when he’s close. When you know life’s sacred, life’s related, you’re part of a whole. If you can break through to that on a full-time basis … or make it a habit…”

  “What’s our noble XO think about all this?”

  “Bryce? He thinks I’m from another planet.” They both laughed. “So it must not be as simple to him.”

  “You don’t think everybody really knows that, deep down, but they push the plate away?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. Actually, I think I’m getting confused.”

  “Well, maybe that’s enough for one watch. But just look out there.”

  Dan glanced through the starboard window just as spray wiped across it. The wipers flung it instantly away. As the ship rolled, he caught a glimpse of a comber. It moved in on them slowly out of the north, black on deeper black, a green phosphorescence rippling and flickering along its crest.

  “There are things you can’t say in words,” said Evlin. Dan heard the crackle of lens paper. “Just look out there, and think about it. We can talk more later—if you want.”

  The wave was almost on them. “Get ready, Ali, here comes a big mother.”

  “Got her clamped, sir.”

  “Coffee, sir?” muttered Pettus, his face averted.

  “Thanks.”

  “Cream ‘n’ sugar?”

  “Yes—no, just give it to me black.”

  The sea hit square, so hard the old tin can’s bones shook. The deck tilted and he grabbed for the steadying rail. Scalding liquid slopped over his fingers. He hissed, snatched a quick gulp, and burned his mouth, too.

  When he was done cursing, he wedged the cup between two cables and bent to the radar. The white maculation of sea return covered the screen. Somewhere under this wind-lashed waste, a submarine was slipping quietly through the darkness toward them.

  A hoarse seal-like barking startled him. His flashlight found Pettus, bent over a lashed-down wastebasket. His agonized face gleamed wetly in the pink light. Dan faced forward, breathing deeply. He’d been regretting the veal since he took his first bite of it, and hearing Pettus rapid-firing his cookies didn’t help. He tried more coffee.

  “Bridge, Sonar!”

  “Bridge, aye.”

  “Contact ‘Alfa’ is now at first CZ zone, bearing zero-five-eight, range thirty-nine thousand yards. Course two-four-four, speed twenty-five. Tentative identification is U.S. nuclear attack, SSN-six thirty-seven—class.”

  “I’ll tell the captain.”

  “I’ll do it,” said Evlin, picking up the phone.

  Dan nodded. He t
urned back to the window, and froze.

  Another wave was on them. A huge one, special delivery for USS Ryan straight from the Arctic across a thousand miles of open sea. In the dim illumination of the masthead light, it curled its ragged mane toward him, hollow within.

  He snapped his eyes down. The rudder-angle indicator glowed at right fifteen. Coffey, swearing softly at the wheel, had anticipated it. There was nothing for him to do but grab the overhead rail, and then, as the old ship heeled more, and more, listen to the clatter of gear leaving the chart-house shelves, the rumble of something shifting down deep in the hull. Spray battered over the windows, blurring the dark with a roar that continued for seconds. His feet left the deck. Mats and cups and logbooks leapt free as if thrown by a squad of poltergeists, rattling down smooth tile suddenly become the side of a cliff. His eye brushed the lighted arc of the clinometer, caught the bubble wavering to the left of fifty.

  Could Evlin be right?

  Because just then, suddenly, inexplicably, and just for a moment, he forgot his nausea; forgot the tension in his back; forgot the grit behind his eyeballs from lack of sleep, the ache in his legs from hours of watch. He laughed with the glee and glory of fighting the sea in a small ship, in a world where disaster and triumph were both possible and both exhilarating. But he knew even as he wondered, this wasn’t the moment Evlin had described, the moment of insight, of revelation. This was visceral, not spiritual; a power and a glory that comes only a few times in each life. It wasn’t epiphany. It was only youth.

  * * *

  THE submarine came up as his watch was ending, and checked in on UHF from periscope depth. Evlin talked to him for a few minutes on the radio, working out ranges and bearings. Reassured, it broached its sail to provide a radar contact. Ryan was on the downwind leg, wallowing as she always did in stern seas. The two ships closed slowly, cautiously, like antique wineglasses too fragile to risk clinking. By the time Barry Ohlmeyer showed up to relieve Dan, they were close enough to make out Pargo’s sail and shears through the night glasses, a bladelike tower low to the sea. Below it in the troughs, a black cylinder showed from time to time. “Ballasted down,” muttered Evlin, holding his binoculars with the tips of his fingers. “And rolling like a sonofabitch. Guess we better get the captain up here.”

  Packer, when he came, barely glanced at the sub. He went straight to the radio remote. A moment later the transmit light went on. Dan kept his binoculars on the sub as he listened to the conversation.

  “‘Playmate reporting,’ he says,” said the gunnery officer beside him. “Casual, aren’t they? Look at the way that pig rolls.”

  “‘Real destroyer weather.’ Got a sense of humor, too.” Dan lowered his glasses, wondering whether any of his classmates were over there. “We’ll be with them how long?”

  “That’s up to the captain. And Reed, and the sonar gang. Till they’re satisfied they got enough data.”

  The captain was still talking. Suddenly Dan realized he was wasting sleeping time. “Damn,” he said. “Barry, you ready to take it?”

  “Hand it over, man. It won’t be near as lonely with somebody to talk to now.”

  He was almost to his stateroom, every nerve and muscle yearning for his rack, when he saw a small figure in khaki turn the corner ahead of him. He hesitated, then went on.

  Norden was holding the door open, his head inside. “Looking for me, sir?” Dan said.

  “The commander wants to see us.”

  “Now?”

  “Right now.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Yeah, both of us. Why else would I be here? You just get off?”

  “Right.”

  “How’s Al holding up? Never mind, he’ll give me a buzz when he gets tired. Better change that shirt. What is that? Coffee?”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  They knocked at the XO’s door. “Come in,” Bryce called. He sounded annoyed.

  Lenson followed Norden in. The room was just as he’d seen it the first day he came aboard, except that the desk was bare now, and the silver urn had a shock cord clamping it to the bulkhead. Cigarette smoke hazed the hot air. “Sit down,” said Bryce, nodding to the settee.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “So,” said the XO, tilting back in his chair. “Dan, you run into any more trouble out on deck?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How’s everything with First Division, eh?”

  “We’re keeping them at work,” said Norden, a little shortly, Dan thought.

  “Are you?”

  No one said anything. At last, Bryce took out another Camel and charred the end with his Zippo. “Cigar, Dan?”

  “No thanks, sir, one of those was enough.”

  Bryce chuckled, then stopped. “You’re keeping them at work. Doin’ what? Ship looks like nigger heaven. It’s rusty, it’s dirty, I find butts in the corners. The forward head makes me sick to go in there.”

  “We’re above the Arctic Circle, sir,” said Norden, sounding tired. “Have you been topside? We’re taking spray on the signal bridge. It’s too rough and too cold to paint and preserve.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Norden. And I have been on deck today. I make a tour daily, you know! I’m talking about the internal spaces! What about them?”

  Dan cleared his throat. “Sir, we finished the paint-out on the transverse passageway, and cleaned out the flammable stowage locker. We’ve cleared and inventoried the bos’n’s locker and we’re catching up on interior maintenance. It’s hard to keep things shipshape in weather like this.”

  “Nonsense, Ensign. Rich, do you buy this no-can-do song and dance? It’s not that hard to keep a destroyer clean and well preserved. I’ve done it. You all just got to attend to detail, detail, and don’t let the men dope off so much. I was on the mess decks a few minutes ago and I counted four deck apes sitting there over coffee, Pettus and Coffey and two others, smoking and joking and scratching their asses, not one of them in the spaces doing a job of work.”

  “They just got off watch, sir. They were probably warming up.”

  “Sir, you’ve got a point, but Dan’s right, too. I was on a new Knox-class my first tour. We managed with about the same number of men we have in First Division now. But you can’t keep an old ship in the same shape unless you’re pierside twenty-five days a month. Right now it may not look like much is going on. But when we get back into better weather, the men’ll be topside again. Believe me, nobody’s loafing.”

  Bryce leaned back, sucking exhaled smoke back into his nostrils, then breathing it out in a rush. He took a comb from his pocket and drew it through his hair. He patted it down carefully. Then he leaned forward, wedged the cigarette firmly in the shell-base tray, and slid open his desk drawer. He came out with a wrinkled pack of Kools and a penknife. He tapped them out under their eyes. Then he unfolded the penknife and slit one of the cigarettes in half and shook the contents out onto the desk.

  Dan leaned forward, examining the brownish green flakes. “What is that there, Mr. Lenson?” Bryce asked him. “What would you say that is, exactly?”

  “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “Don’t play dumb with me! You know what marijuana is!”

  “I’ve never seen any before, sir.”

  “Where’d you find this, sir?” asked Norden.

  “I didn’t find it, goddamn it. Jimmy John did. In forward berthing, up in the overhead. I don’t know what he was doing in there. My job, to do the messing and berthing inspections—”

  “Lots of people bunk there, sir. Not just First Division.” Dan heard anger in his voice, but he couldn’t erase it; he was too tired for circumspection. “I don’t think it’s right just to assume—”

  “Don’t tell me what to ‘assume,’ Mr. Lenson. That highfalutin Canoe Club bullshit don’t go with me! Rich, you’d better talk some sense into your bright boy here. Either he’s not keeping proper tabs on his division or he’s smoking rope right along with them.”

  Dan lean
ed forward, his mouth open to speak, but suddenly the curtain came down. He was two people, one enraged, the other empty, a cold, detached onlooker. He pressed his trembling hands down on his legs. The silence endured, broken only by the hissing boom of a sea on the far side of a quarter inch of steel, a clicking scrape as the penknife skittered along the desktop, scattering grains over the gray-green carpet.

  “You boys better find out who belongs to this. Hear me? Get me somebody to hang. Or else get real used to your rank, because after your next fitness report, you’ll be in it till you retire. Remember, when push comes to shove, I got a jack in my pocket.” Bryce patted his flushed scalp again. “That understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Norden. “I’ll have Mr. Lenson begin the investigation immediately.” He stood, and after a moment, Dan did, too. Part of him didn’t want to. It wanted to punch the grinning mouth across from him. But that part didn’t have control. He couldn’t afford to let it have control.

  “Thanks, Rich.” A sneer edged Bryce’s drawl. “Glad you’re seeing this my way.”

  As the door swung closed, the last thing he saw was the executive officer, smiling down at the evidence with secretive delight.

  9

  OH-FIVE hundred. He lay with one arm wrapped around an angle iron, the other dangling over the bunk edge. Against his cheek, the pillow was damp and hot.

  The sea and wind had risen steadily all night. Around him, the steel body born before his flesh screamed and banged as the sea racked it. The groans of twisting stringers and the pistol shots of riveted joints working mingled with the roar of water against thin plating.

  There’s something bad on its way, he thought, staring at the motionless hands of his clock, mysteriously luminous, like cats’ eyes closed to slits.

  During the midwatch, he’d pulled the Sailing Directions for the Arctic Ocean off the chart-room shelf. His mind was so accustomed to memorization that now he could recall it. “The navigable waters of the Denmark Strait, the east Greenland, Norwegian and southern Barents sea are subjected to a barrage of NE-moving extratropical storms with their attendant problems of strong winds, high seas, poor visibilities and frequent precipitation.… Winter’s arrival is heralded by increasing darkness, frequent and intense storms, and ice-choked waters … the Icelandic lows … raging, migratory storms that roam the periphery of the arctic regions.”