The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel

by David Poyer

  “I feel better,” the assistant murmured, not meeting anyone’s eyes. An uncertain smile curved bloodless lips. She lowered a black waterproof case to the deck, leaned against a fuel drum, and looked around. “We’re really … far out here.”

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” the actress said.

  “It’s scary. I don’t know what I … what are we supposed to do up here?”

  “I’ll show you,” Dorée said. “You can stand watch with me.” Sara glanced at her, taken aback. For a moment, she’d sounded as if she cared.

  * * *

  It wasn’t exactly warm below, but they were out of the wind. She struggled out of the heavy suit, hung it and her boots in the mildew-and-salt-rimed wet-gear locker, and padded into the salon in damp socks. A framework had been swung out of the side of the hull. Perrault was bolting supports into place beneath the bubble. The elevated seat was positioned directly beneath the dome. The buckle of a lap belt pendulumed. “This is where we’ll stand watch from, when the weather gets heavy,” he said to her questioning glance. “When things get really bad, we won’t want anybody out on deck.”

  “It’s going to get worse?”

  “We haven’t even hit a storm yet. I got knocked down twice on my first Vendée. Broke my spreaders, tore my mainsail track out.”

  Again she thought about asking, Is that the time you turned back? Then remembered no, Eddi had said that was last year, and he’d said “my first” not “my last.” “Is that likely? Isn’t this a bigger boat?”

  “Depends on what we hit. But for a green crew, you’re doing great. Step up here. You’re just about the tallest, except for Lars. I’ll adjust it so you have headroom.”

  She obediently climbed the pegs, swung in, and clicked the belt shut. A crank ratcheted and the seat slowly rose until her hair brushed the apex of the dome. She could see all around the horizon. Twisting to look aft, she spotted a shaky Georgita pointing a camera at Dorée. The actress had taken off her mask and shaken out her hair. It streamed like a black flag as she gripped the wheel. She lifted her chin as the assistant continued to record. The bow began to come left. The stern rose. Sara tensed. If a sea hit now … but at the last moment Dorée seemed to realize the danger and hastily steered back.

  “Okay, thanks,” Perrault said. The boat lurched as she climbed down; his hand cupped her butt, bracing her. “Sorry,” he muttered, staring past her up into the dome.

  “No problem.”

  She staggered to her bunk, pulled the curtain, and peeled off the track suit. The smell came up in a sickening wave. For a second she debated going to the head, scrubbing pits and crotch, all you could do with the gallon a day Quill allotted. Then shrugged it off. Too cold to even think about splashing near-freezing water over herself. She stank, so what. They all did. Eddi was smart. She’d brought baby wipes. But Tehiyah had borrowed them, and they hadn’t seen them since.

  Up forward, on a narrow sole before the equipment void, Auer was a shapeless lump inside her Goofy and Mickey sleeping bag. Sara grabbed the handhold and waited for the boat to take a leap. Then gave a tug and floated up off the deck, twisted, and slotted herself into the thirteen inches between the bunk and the curved white overhead. She groped for the strap and snapped it into place, so she wouldn’t roll out. Put her hand between her legs, rubbed once or twice, but couldn’t muster the interest to continue. She stretched and sighed. Four or five slow deep breaths, her thudding heart quieting, the world and consciousness constricting with each heartbeat. Then darkness hurtled in.

  * * *

  A hand shaking her in the dim. “You want ta eat, get up,” Quill grunted.

  Sara blinked and coughed. Every muscle ached. Every tendon twanged. At last she willed herself to grab the handhold and roll out. But was stopped dead, hanging half in and half out, caught between heaven and earth by the bunk strap. She unhooked it and dropped, narrowly missing Georgita as she too crawled out, moaning softly.

  When she slid back the curtain Eddi was standing on Goofy’s face, her blue bikini underpants sagging. Sweat showed dark on her German army sleeveless tee, and a smear of brownish red—menstrual blood?—lined the crack of her ass. Sara turned away and rooted in the dirty laundry on the deck for her fleece-lined pants.

  In the galley Quill had laid out bread and sliced cheese in a fiddleboard. “Last of the fresh,” the bearded mate grumbled as they took a bounding pitch. Plastic glasses shivered in the overhead stowage. Dishes rattled in the sink. “Canned or frozen from here on.”

  If Jamie was here, where was Lars? She craned and saw him ensconced in the dome chair like a fly trapped by a spider. His elbows were braced against the framework; his head was poked up into the bubble as he worked—on some piece of electronics, to judge by the dangling wires. “Where’s Mick?” she asked the salon at large.

  “Up forward.”

  “I’ll take him a plate.” More easily said than done, but she clamped one of the unbreakable dishes over another with the sandwich and felt her way forward.

  Past the salon and the berthing area the coachroof slanted down. She was bowing by the time she got to the semicircular hatch leading to the long narrow forward void. She knocked off the dogs with an elbow and backed in. “Mick. Brought you—”

  “Close the hatch. Right now!”

  She slammed it, nearly losing the sandwich. To find herself in pitch darkness, surrounded by a high-pitched electronic ululation like theremins in a science-fiction film. A buzzing hiss came and went.

  Within the tapered tunnel Bodine crouched in front of a screen, face lit green and pink and yellow. He turned a dial in minuscule increments, head cocked like a curious raven. The buzzing hiss sharpened, each repetition ending with a zipping snap. It grew crisp, then faded again into an all-encompassing hiss.

  “What’s that? What’re you picking up?”

  “Can you get Dru in here? Or Jamie?” he said, not looking at her. Head still tilted in that listening attitude.

  “Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  He threw a hard glance over his shoulder. “Just do it, Sara.”

  Puzzled, angry—this was her space, the lab—she slammed the dishes down. She called into the berthing area, “Dru? Jamie? Mick wants you.”

  She went back in and perched on one of the equipment cases. The captain came in immediately. He looked at her, then at Bodine. “What is it you have?”

  “Two radars, bearing roughly one three zero. Not much angular separation.”

  “Japanese?”

  “Japanese-made. All I can say for sure.”

  Perrault hung over Bodine’s shoulder watching the screen. The hatch creaked open and Madsen came in too. They huddled like husbands at a Super Bowl game. All I need is to put out the chips and beer, she thought.

  “Okay, what’s going on?” Her words emerged harsher than she’d meant.

  They glanced at her. Perrault started to turn back to the screen, then heaved a sigh. “Mick has direction-finding equipment, to home on the fleet’s radar transmissions. Up in the sea lanes, it’d be hopeless. Hundreds of radars up there. Even back by the Palmer Peninsula, it might be a cruise ship. But out here, if we hear a signal, it’s likely to be them.”

  “The Japanese. So you can hear them? From how far?”

  “Two, three hundred kilometers. Unless they shut their radars down.”

  “A few other tricks they can use,” Bodine muttered. “But until they tumble to how we’re tracking them, we’ve got a lock on their position. So, Dru? Alter course?”

  “Not just yet. We might have weather coming up. Can you tell which way they’re headed?”

  “If we can hold contact, I can get a bearing drift. Maybe work up their course from that.”

  “Sara?” Eddi’s pixie face appeared at the hatch. “You in here? We need to get up on deck.”

  Already? she thought, and sighed. “Coming.”

  * * *

  Her suit was still wringing wet, and plunging dry feet into rubber b
oots with half an inch of icy water in the bottom dampened her spirits as well as her socks. She climbed the companion ladder as if towing the weight of the world. Not just fatigue, but a visceral unwillingness to go back up. She panted to force oxygen into her bloodstream. Maybe not two hours this time. Maybe she’d give herself a break for once.

  Topside the sky was still light. The sea seemed rougher, the wind even colder. Jamie Quill was huddled before the wheel. His little pig eyes peered suspiciously out of a black nest of balaclava from which beard stuck out in tufts. “’Bout time,” he grumbled, slapping himself with flailing arms. “Fooking freezing up here. What’d they want Lars for?”

  “Mick picked up the whaling fleet. We’ll probably be changing course.”

  “Huh. Okay. But for now, we’re still on the same heading. Wind’s up to thirty, gusting to thirty-five. Main’s double reefed. Jib’s halfway out. Auto’s keeping us on course, but be ready to grab the wheel if it goes bonkers. Gonna get darker soon. The sun don’t go down, but it dips, so remember to check the lights. And keep a close eye on that radar. There’ll be ice sooner or later. We want to see it first.”

  She told him they had it, he could go below. She checked the autopilot—apparently it was all right to use it now—and made sure they were on course. Flicked it off, steered herself for a few minutes, then turned it back on. An anthracite sea built aft until it towered over them. “Hold on,” she shouted to Eddi. Anemone felt heavier, and didn’t rise as quickly as it had that morning. The sea surged up the slanted stern-ramp, over the inflatable, and detonated into a heavy burst of icy spray, soaking the wool over her face and obliterating sight as her glasses flooded even beneath the goggles.

  A waterproof intercom connected the cockpit with the salon. She pressed the button and bent her mouth close. “Dru? We’re taking a lot of spray up here. And the waves’re getting bigger.”

  “I ballasted aft. It’ll be wetter, for sure. Try and stay out of the worst of it. Keep your safety lines tight.” A pause, then, “I’ll be right up.”

  She helped him winch the main into its boom and lash it down. They wound the jib in and Anemone slowed further. He beckoned her forward, bright tangerine safety lines spinning out behind them like twin spider threads. They snugged everything tight and locked off the furling lines and beat ice off everything they could reach.

  By the time they crawled aft again she could barely creep on all fours. While she rested, Perrault got the lines up off the cockpit sole and back into their bags. He looked aft at their trailing line, which led to a fluorescent green torpedo kicking up spray fifty yards astern. If someone fell overboard and his safety line broke, his only chance was to grab that green line, hang on, and hope one of the others slowed the boat and reeled him in before he passed out from hypothermia.

  “We’re going to move you inside,” Dru said at last. “As soon as I get everything ready to stand watch from the dome.”

  When he went below again she felt twice as lonely. The sea was an infinite corrugation of huge swells. The wind shredded their tops off and blew them along the surface in long straight streamers of spray. Not even an albatross wheeled between them and the dull clouds, low and rain-leaded. She coiled her safety line and joined Eddi in the lee, where they hugged each other for the illusion of body heat as a fine shower began to fall. She sank into a stupor, broken by spasms of shivering.

  Some interminable time later Eddi was shaking her. “Get up. Sara. Wake up. There’s something ahead.”

  She opened her eyes into failing light, a low-hanging drizzle. Auer was pointing. Sara sat up and blinked. Obscure in the mist, a massive shape glowed in the falling dusk. Anemone was headed for it. A ship? An island? She hit the intercom.

  Perrault was topside in seconds, stuffing a heavy plaid wool shirt into waterproof pants. She felt guilty, he looked so obviously yanked from sleep. “Up there,” she said, pointing.

  “Iceberg. Didn’t you see it on the radar?”

  “N … no. We didn’t,” Auer said, shamefaced. “Sorry, uh, Captain…”

  He frowned. “You’ll have to be more alert.”

  “Sorry,” they chorused, and he nodded, unsmiling, but not pursuing it. He looked ahead again. “It’s a big one. Maybe a mile across.”

  The word spread. One by one the crew came up and ranged along the coachroof, staring. She gazed, forgetting her misery as they drew closer. Irregular and spiky, with scooped-out sides, the berg reminded her of a modern artist’s take on a giant white cake. Even through the pewter mist it glowed cerulean and cream, the sea frothing and seething at its base. Perrault pressed the pedal to release the self-steerer and took the wheel. They skirted it slowly. Deep bays gradually opened to reveal melt-runs like waterslides sloping down to blue pools. She took the binoculars someone handed her and focused on black specks. “Penguins,” Eddi murmured.

  Anemone rolled to a larger-than-usual wave. Dorée gave a short scream and flung herself into Perrault’s arms. He held her, face unreadable, and shouted, “Okay, most of you, below. You can take turns coming up to look, but we can’t have everybody up here at once.” Sara saw Bodine’s shaggy black head cupped by the dome, and wondered how he’d gotten himself up there. Climbed, with those incredibly powerful arms, no doubt.

  Quill, who had the wheel now, turned it to sheer away, but Dorée cried, “No! Go closer. I want to film this. Our first iceberg.”

  They sailed slowly past. The drizzle thickened to an icy sleet, dancing across the deck like steel needles punching up through it. Sara watched the sea bursting against the strangely skirtlike bottom of the berg. Portions were planed flat, tilting this way and that at queer angles. In the subdued light blue shadows shifted as if something were moving about deep within. It must once have been flat on top, but had broken apart and tumbled, then frozen back together. A strange exercise in topology, saddles and valleys, and abrupt peaks stabbing the mist. As they neared, the penguins began sliding down the wash like toddler-sized skateboarders, disappearing into the waves that frothed at the base. The ice cliff reared up many yards taller than Anemone’s mast. Another huge wave foamed past, then broke into spattering suds against the berg.

  “Farther off, Jamie,” Perrault called, waving.

  “Oh, just a little closer. Dru, please.”

  Dorée had gone all the way forward. She stood with arms outstretched, hood tossed back, smiling radiantly. For a moment Sara thought she was smiling at her. Then saw the pale assistant crouched on her heels atop the coachroof, aiming the camera.

  “Can you see it, Georgita? Get it all in the frame!”

  “Not quite, Miss Tehiyah. Wait, hold that … I’m filming now.”

  Dorée half turned and pointed. “There it is! Careful, Captain, not too close!”

  “Not quite so shrill,” the assistant murmured.

  “There it is. Careful, not too close!”

  “Better, okay … one more take.”

  “There it is, Dru. Careful! Not too close!”

  “Good. Good.”

  “Now get the sea behind me. Those white pieces bobbing around. Can you pan along with the penguins jumping out of the water between them? That’s a great shot. Higher, Georgie. Can you get a little higher, and shoot down? And get them, behind me?”

  “I’ll try.” The assistant lurched to her feet and crept to the peak of the roof, then hauled herself one-armed up onto the boom. She stood swaying, one white-knuckled hand gripping the mast, the other aiming the camera.

  “Careful,” Sara called.

  “Hey! You! Get down!” Quill barked.

  Sara turned and saw the wave bearing down. “Get down!” she called, and started forward along the sleet-slicked deck.

  Georgie looked frightened. She crouched, cradling the camera to her breast like a baby. The boat rose, rose, then sank away. She teetered, but held on.

  The wave burst against the berg, and the backwash rolled toward Anemone. Georgita, on the boom, had one foot extended to the coachroof when the boat
leaned out from beneath her. Her boot slipped, and shot out into space.

  She went down hard, rolled, and slid down the slanted roof toward the lifeline. Her right arm still cradled the camera. Her left caught the stanchion, but awkwardly, and as the weight of her tobogganing body hit it there was a loud crack like a breaking tree limb.

  An instant later both Madsen and Quill had their fists embedded in her suit and were dragging her back over the gunwale. Georgita hadn’t actually gone into the slowly passing sea, but her left arm dangled and her face had gone white as the bobbing chunks, the size of basketballs, that drifted past.

  Eddi put an arm carefully around her. “God, Georgie, you all right?”

  Her face was pale ivory around the nose and lips. “I—I slipped.”

  “I told her not to get up there,” Dorée snapped.

  Sara said, “Let us through. Let’s get her below.”

  “Oh, my. It hurts.”

  “We’ll take a look. Give me the camera.” Sara handed it to Madsen and together she and Eddi got the girl, tears and snot glazing her chin, down the companionway and onto the salon table, where they peeled off the mustang suit, then the blue fleece.

  The arm didn’t look quite right, but there was no jagged bone breaking the skin, and no blood. The injured girl stared up into the light, pupils dilated.

  Bodine staggered out of his sanctum on plastic and titanium. “She hurt?”

  “Broken arm, looks like,” Sara told him.

  “Fracture? Usually pretty easy to deal with.”

  “You have training?”

  “Battlefield medic. Want me to check her out?”

  “Please.” She turned to Eddi. “We could use a blanket.”

  Perrault came down as Bodine was manipulating Georgita’s arm. “Proximal humerus,” he told the captain. “Looks a little crooked, but it doesn’t seem grossly displaced.”

  “Lucky it wasn’t her pelvis or hip, the way she went down.” The captain stroked her shoulder. “Georgie, do you need a shot? I have morphine in the aid kit.”

  She groaned, but didn’t speak.

  “I’d rather wait a little. I want her to be able to talk,” Bodine said, tickling the tips of Georgita’s fingers. “Can you feel this? Georgie-girl?”