Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  No wonder sailors had always revered them and, as Captain Purcell later explained over dinner one night, “regarded them as a symbol of good luck. Those birds have a better global navigational system in their heads than we've got in the wheelhouse.”

  “I had a few of them keeping me company today,” Michael said, “while I was up on the flying bridge.”

  Purcell nodded as he reached for the bottle of sparkling cider. “They can adjust their dip and their speed to the velocity of the ship they're following.”

  He refilled Dr. Barnes's glass with the cider. As Michael had learned on his first night aboard, when he'd innocently asked for a beer, no alcohol was allowed on U.S. Navy or Coast Guard ships.

  “A friend of mine, a Tulane ornithologist,” said Hirsch, “radio-tagged an albatross in the Indian Ocean and tracked it by satellite for one month. It had traveled over fifteen thousand kilometers on a single foraging expedition. Apparently, the bird can see, from hundreds of meters up, the bioluminescent schools of squid. When the squid come up to the surface to feed, the bird goes down.”

  Charlotte, taking one of the serving bowls from its rubber pad, paused and said, “This isn't calamari, is it?” and everyone laughed. “I mean, I'd hate to deprive some hungry albatross.”

  “No, that's one of our cook's specialties-fried zucchini strips.”

  Charlotte helped herself, then passed it to the Operations officer-Ops, for short-Lieutenant Kathleen Healey

  “We serve lots of fresh vegetables and fruit on the way out,” Captain Purcell observed, “and lots of canned and frozen on the long way back.”

  The ship suddenly swerved, as if taking a step sideways, then swerved back again. Michael put one hand on the rubber strip that went all the way around the rim of the table and the other on his cider glass. He still hadn't gotten used to the ship's constant rolling.

  “The ship is shaped sort of like a football,” Kathleen said, looking utterly unperturbed by the turbulence. “In fact, she's not really designed for calm seas; she hasn't even got a keel. She's designed to move smoothly through brash ice and bergs, and that's when you'll be glad you're on her.”

  “We've been lucky so far,” the captain said. “We've had a high-pressure area over us-meaning low seas and good visibility-and we've been able to make good progress toward Point Adelie.”

  But Michael could hear the hesitation in his voice, and so could the others. Charlotte was holding a zucchini strip on the end of her fork.

  “But?” she asked.

  “But it looks like it's dissipating,” he said. “On the cape, the weather can change very quickly.”

  “We're gradually moving across what's called the Antarctic Convergence,” Lieutenant Healey put in. “That's where the cold bottom water from the pole sinks beneath the warmer water coming up from the Indian and Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. We're traveling into much more unpredictable seas, and less temperate weather.”

  “Today was temperate?” Charlotte said, before snapping the zucchini strip off her fork. “My braids froze so hard, they felt like jerky.” She said it with a laugh, but everyone knew that it wasn't really a joke.

  “Today will feel like a heat wave before we're done,” the captain said as he held out the big bowl of pasta primavera. “Anyone for seconds?”

  Darryl, who'd passed on the appetizer-shrimp cocktails- immediately reached out. Despite his size, they had discovered that he could eat them all under the table.

  “I'm only trying to prepare you,” the captain went on, “for what's coming.”

  His warning came true even sooner than he might have expected. The winds had been picking up steadily, and the ice, drifting their way in chunks the size of train cars, was lumbering past in even-more-massive blocks; when some became impassable, the ship did what it was designed to do and plowed right through them. With dinner done, and the sun still hanging motionless above the horizon, Michael went out to the bow to watch the grudge match unfold between the oncoming bergs and the pride of the Coast Guard's cutters.

  Darryl Hirsch was already out there, bundled up with only his eyeglasses poking through the red woolen ski mask that covered his entire head and face.

  “You've got to watch this,” Hirsch said, as Michael joined him at the rail. “It's positively hypnotic.”

  Just ahead lay a tabular slab of ice the size of a football field, and Michael felt the Constellation pick up speed as it rammed directly into the center of the snow-covered pack. The ice at first didn't give an inch, and Michael wondered just how thick it was. The engines groaned and roared, and the hull of the ship, rounded for just this purpose, rode up onto the surface of the glacier, and let its own weight-thirteen thousand tons-press down. A crooked fissure opened in the ice, then another, shooting off in the opposite direction. The cutter pressed forward, bearing down the whole time, and suddenly there was a great splintering and cracking of the ice. Massive shards reared up on either side of the prow, rising almost as high as the deck Michael and Darryl were standing on. Instinctively they stepped away from the railing, then suddenly had to lunge for it again to keep from tumbling all the way back to the stern.

  When the shards subsided, Michael looked down over the rail and saw the pieces slipping away to the sides, before being sucked under the ship, on their way toward the giant screw propellers- three of them, sixteen feet in diameter-at the other end; there, they'd be chewed and chopped into manageable size, before drifting off in the ship's wake.

  But what probably surprised Michael the most was the underside of the ice. What looked white and pristine on top did not look at all that way when broken and upended. The underbelly of the ice was a disheartening sight to see-a pale, sickly yellow that reminded Michael of snow a dog had peed on.

  “It's algae,” Darryl said, intuiting his thoughts. “That discoloration on the bottom.” He had to raise his voice to be heard over the crunching of the ice and the rising winds. “Those bergs aren't solid ice-they're honeycombed with brine channels, and the channels are filled with algae and diatoms and bacteria.”

  “So they live under the ice?” Michael shouted.

  “No-they live in it,” Darryl shouted back, looking vaguely proud of them for their resourcefulness. The ship plunged forward again, then dipped, and even in this strange light, Michael could see that Darryl was starting to look a little green at the gills.

  After Darryl hurriedly excused himself to go below, Michael got tired of trying to keep his own footing and headed down to the wardroom, which was usually a hive of activity at night, with card games going and some DVD blaring on the TV (The choices ranged from Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan to professional wrestling and the Rock.) But there was nothing going on; the crew, he assumed, must have been called to various duties. He ducked his head into the gym-a cramped exercise room tucked into the bow, separated from the icy ocean only by the bulkheads. Petty Officer Kazin-ski was on the treadmill in a pair of shorts and a tight T-shirt that read KISS ME-I M COAST GUARD!

  “How can you stay on that thing?” Michael asked, as the ship rolled again.

  “No better time!” Kazinski said, clutching the handrails and keeping up a brutal pace. “It's like ridin’ a bronco!”

  A small TV monitor overhead carried a live feed from the bow. Between the drops of water and foam that spattered the outside lens, Michael could see a grainy, black-and-white picture of the heaving sea, bobbing with slabs of ice.

  “It's getting rough out there,” Michael said.

  Kazinski glanced up at the monitor without breaking stride. “Gonna get a lot worse before this one blows over-that's for sure.”

  Michael was glad Darryl wasn't there to hear that. But personally, he was pleased. To have passed through the deadliest stretch of sea on the planet without encountering a storm would have been like going to Paris and missing the Eiffel Tower.

  With his hands outstretched toward the walls of the corridor, he stumbled back toward his own cabin and opened the door. Darryl wasn't in his bunk,
but the door to the head was closed and Michael could hear him in there, throwing up everything he'd eaten.

  Michael slumped onto his own bunk and lay back. Fasten your seat belts, he thought, it's going to be a bumpy night. Kristin had often used that old Bette Davis line when they'd found themselves stranded somewhere precarious as the sun went down. What he would have given to have her there with him now, and to hear her say it just one more time.

  The plywood door unstuck itself and Darryl, bent over double, staggered out and sprawled on his bunk. When he noticed Michael, he mumbled, “You don't want to go in there. I missed.”

  Michael would have been surprised if he hadn't. “Did you really have to have seconds tonight?” he said, and Darryl, wearing only his long johns, gave him a wan smile.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “You gonna be okay?”

  The ship suddenly lurched again, so violently that Michael had to grab the bed frame bolted to the floor.

  Darryl turned a deeper shade of green and closed his eyes.

  Michael leaned back against the interior wall, still gripping the frame. Yes, it undoubtedly was going to be a rough night, but he wondered how long a storm like this could blow. Would it last for days? And how much worse would it get? How much worse, for that matter, could it get?

  He picked up one of his Audubon books, but the boat was pitching and rolling far too much to read; just trying to focus made him nauseous. He stowed the book under the mattress. And the roar of the engine and propellers, there in the aft quarters of the ship, was louder than it had ever been. Darryl was lying as still as a mummy, but huffing and puffing.

  “What'd you take?” Michael asked him. “Scopolamine?”

  Darryl grunted yes.

  “Anything else?”

  He held up one limp wrist. It had an elastic strap, thicker than a rubber band, wrapped around it.

  “What's that?”

  “Acupressure band. Supposed to help.”

  Michael had never heard of that one, but it didn't look like Darryl would swear by it, either.

  “Want me to see if Charlotte's got something stronger?” Michael asked.

  “Don't go out there,” Darryl whispered. “You'll die.”

  “I'm just going up the corridor. I'll be right back.”

  Michael waited for a momentary lull, then got to his feet and out the door. The long corridor, tilting to one side and then the other, looked like something out of a carnival fun house. The fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed. Charlotte's cabin was about at midships, maybe a hundred feet away, but it was slow going, and Michael had to keep his feet broadly spaced.

  He could see a telltale ribbon of light under her door, so he knew she was awake when he knocked.

  “It's Michael,” he called out. “I think Darryl could use some help.”

  Charlotte opened the door in a quilted robe with a Chinese motif-green and gold dragons, breathing fire-and woolly slippers on her feet. Her braided hair was knotted in a ball atop her head. “Don't tell me,” she said, already reaching for her black bag, “he's seasick.”

  By the time they got back to the cabin, Darryl had curled himself into a ball. He was so small-maybe five-foot-four, and skinny as a rail-that he looked like a kid with a tummy ache, waiting for his mom.

  Charlotte sat down on the edge of the bed and asked him what he'd already taken. When he also showed her the acupressure band, she said, “No telling what some people will believe.”

  She bustled in her bag and pulled out a syringe and bottle. “You ever heard of Phenytoin?”

  “Same as Dilantin.”

  “Ooh, you do know your drugs. Ever taken it?”

  “Once, before a dive.”

  “I hope not too soon before a dive.” She readied the syringe. “Any bad reaction?”

  Darryl started to shake his head no, then thought better of shaking anything unnecessarily. “No,” he mumbled.

  “What's it do?” Michael asked, as she rolled up one of Darryl's sleeves.

  “Slows down the nervous activities in the gut. It's a seizure med, and, technically speaking, it's never been approved for seasickness.” She swabbed a spot with alcohol. “But divers like it.” She readied the syringe, then had to wait again as the ship took what felt like a series of body blows. “Hold real still,” she said to Darryl, then plunged the needle into the freckled skin of his upper arm.

  “Give it about ten minutes,” she said, “and you ought to start feeling the effect.”

  She slipped the used needle into an orange plastic sleeve and the bottle back into the bottom of her bag. For the first time, she looked around and seemed to take in the cabin. “Man, it looks like I did get the best room on board. I didn't believe it when the Ops told me that, but now I do.” She wrinkled her nose at a sudden gust from the head. “You boys ever heard of Lysol?”

  Michael laughed, and even Darryl faintly smiled. But when she'd gone, Michael started pulling on his parka, boots, and gloves. The cabin was foul and stifling, and the action outdoors was too tempting to resist.

  Darryl rolled his head to one side and fixed him with a baleful glare. “Where,” he croaked, “do you think you're going now?”

  “To do my job,” Michael said, slipping a small digital camera deep inside his parka; the batteries could die quickly in the cold. “Anything I can do for you first?”

  Darryl said no. “Just call my wife and tell her I loved her, and the kids.”

  Michael had never really asked him about his family. “How many have you got?”

  “Not now,” Darryl said, waving him away. “I can't remember.”

  Maybe the drug was working faster than expected.

  Michael left the light on in the cabin and made his way carefully down the corridor, then up through the hatchway, and he was just about to continue on to the bridge-he thought he could probably get some decent shots by leaning out a porthole or doorway- when he saw, through the sliding door, an apparently seamless picture of gray sea and gray sky, a panorama in which the horizon was unrecognizable and the world was reduced to a scene of flat, inarguable desolation.

  He could visualize the finished shot already.

  Putting up his hood, he fumbled for his camera with his gloved hands, and let it hang just below his neck. He had to use both hands to pull back on the door handle, and when it slid open even a few inches, the wind reached in and grabbed him by the collar. This was probably, he realized, a very bad idea, but then sometimes his best shots had come from his worst ideas. He pulled harder, then slipped through the crack, the door sliding shut again the second he let go.

  He was on the deck, just below the bridge, with ice water sluicing down around his feet, and the wind pummeling him so hard that tears were whipped out of his eyes and his forehead burned. He wrapped one arm around a metal stanchion and pulled off one glove with his teeth, but the ship was heaving too much to frame a shot. And each time he tried, some part of the boat got into the picture. He didn't want that. He didn't want anything identifiable, anything concrete, to intrude on the image. He wanted a pure, almost abstract picture of empty, disinterested, all-powerful nature.

  He waited for the ship to roll on the coming swell, then lunged for the next handhold, a steel armature that housed one of the lifeboat rigs. From there, looking out over the rail, he'd have nothing to worry about-except for the freezing salt spray that dashed into his face and doused the camera. He snagged one arm through the rail, as he had before, and raised the camera. But just then, the ship was canted at a forty-five-degree angle, and all he could get was the turbulent sky. He slipped a foot or two forward, waiting for the roll to correct itself, raising the camera. His fingers were already freezing, and he found that he couldn't open his mouth to breathe without the wind taking his breath away. He tried one shot-still at too much of an angle-and was about to try another when a bullhorn directly overhead blared, “Mr. Wilde! Get off the deck! Now!”

  Even in the roaring wind, he
could make out the voice of the Ops, Lieutenant Healey

  “Right now! And report to the captain!”

  Before Michael could even turn around, he saw the sliding door opening and Kazinski, in a waterproof jacket over his running shorts, reaching out to him with a yellow life preserver. “Just grab it!” Kazinski shouted, and Michael, slipping the camera back into the top of his parka, fell back to the stanchion, then put his gloved hand out toward the preserver; his other hand was almost completely numb.

  Once Michael had hold of it, Kazinski reeled him in like a fish, slammed the sliding door latch back, then stood there, brushing off the ice-cold water and shaking his head in dismay. “All due respect, sir, but that was truly a numbnuts thing to do.”

  Michael did see his point.

  “The captain's up on the bridge. If I were you, I'd be prepared to have him tear me a new one.”

  At the moment, Michael just wanted the feeling back in his fingers. He wiped the hand briskly back and forth on his pant leg, but the cloth was so wet it didn't help much. He unzipped his parka, and shoved his hand inside, into his armpit.

  Kazinski gestured at the stairs leading up to the bridge, as if it were the way to the gallows. Maybe, Michael thought, it was.

  He went up them slowly, and as soon as he entered the brightly lighted bridge, Captain Purcell swiveled in his chair and said, “What the hell do you think you were doing out there? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Michael shrugged and finished unzipping his coat, letting the flaps fall open. “Probably not the best idea,” he offered, knowing how feeble it sounded, “but I thought I might get some great shots for the magazine.”

  The other two officers seated in front of the navigation consoles stifled their amusement.

  “I'm used to some pretty harebrained stunts from the scientists I have to ferry around down here,” Purcell said, “but I figure they're so smart, they're entitled to act stupid sometimes. You, I can't figure out at all. You're no scientist, and you're sure as hell no sailor.”