The Emissary

by Patricia Cori

  Jamie reached into her purse, scavenging to find her luggage keys. She unlocked the case and unzipped it.

  “The big suitcase and some freshly brewed coffee are on the way,” said Liz.

  “Coffee? Ah, yes! That is just what the doctor ordered. Coffee and …” Jamie pulled a fancy cookie tin out of her suitcase. “I hold before you a box containing one of life’s greatest pleasures: Max’s chocolate chip macadamia nut specials. Right off Pier 39 in San Francisco.”

  She opened the precious tin and extended it to Liz, who held it up close to her face and breathed in deeply before reaching for one of the irresistible cookies. “I shouldn’t, says she, as she undoes two weeks of salads!” Liz broke the cookie in half and left the rest.

  Jamie took the other half and bit into it, almost moaning with pleasure. “Into every life a little sin must fall.”

  They heard the squeaky wheels of Jamie’s second suitcase rolling down the hall towards them.

  “Here comes Bobby!” Liz said.

  The scent of strong coffee wafted through the hallway. A man balancing a tray with one hand and pulling Jamie’s case with the other appeared at the door. He propped the case up against the wall and then carefully set the tray down on the entry table. Before Liz could introduce him, he extended a hand to Jamie and said, “I’m Bobby. Pleasure to meet you.” Unlike Sam, he was unpretentious and welcoming.

  “The pleasure’s mine,” Jamie said.

  “Bobby’s the second in command on the ship,” Liz added.

  By the looks of him, in his faded jeans and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, Jamie thought he was an off-duty deckhand. So far, the cast of characters on The Deepwater was just about the antithesis of her idea of a “tightly run ship.”

  “I’m more like the jack-of-all-trades around here, but yeah—I’m the senior officer. Tomorrow I’ll even look like one.” He turned back to the suitcase in the hall and lifted it across the entrance. “Service staff doesn’t come in until morning.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you were bothered with having to carry my bag, but thanks, Bobby. I do appreciate it.”

  “No problem at all, ma’am.” He lifted Jamie’s case onto the luggage stand, clearing the space in front of the door.

  She reached for the tin and offered it up to him. “I was just tempting Liz with some San Francisco sweets—please help yourself.”

  He reached in and grabbed three of Jamie’s precious cookies. “Ouch! Don’t mind if I do,” he said, and then heading back out the door, he excused himself. “Duty calls,” he said, munching on a cookie as he disappeared into the hallway.

  Liz and Jamie looked at each other and broke into hysterics.

  “And they say chivalry is dead,” said Liz. She lifted the coffee tray and brought it over to the coffee table. “May I pour for two?”

  “Of course!” Jamie carried the tin over to the table and they both sat down as Liz poured for them both.

  “I hope you don’t mind my inviting myself, but I’m just so excited to meet you. I couldn’t wait, really—I heard all about you and checked you out on the web. You’re amazing!”

  Jamie smiled, but said nothing.

  “I just love the paranormal. Actually, my mum is quite psychic. They say it skips a generation.” She handed a cup to Jamie, and then placed the creamer and sugar bowl in front of her.

  “Not necessarily,” said Jamie.

  Liz rattled on. “My father is an aerospace engineer and my mum says I took after him more than her. I’ve always been passionate about science, since I was a little girl.” She poured herself a cup. Jamie observed, silent. Something about this girl…

  “… but I am so fascinated at how some people have the gift, like you. I mean, it’s definitely not something you can learn, I know that. You either have it or you don’t, right?”

  A subtle shadow—like a black Venetian mask—passed over Liz’s face. It took Jamie aback for a second, and she felt a sudden vulnerability.

  “Well, I’m not so sure about that,” she said, guardedly. “People can develop it like anything else, with the right training and intention.”

  “Mum says you’re born with it,” Liz replied, matter-of-factly. “Weren’t you?”

  “Well, yes … I was.”

  “And you can turn it off and on?”

  Jamie set her cup down on the table and walked over to her bag, where she reached for her cell phone. She suddenly felt as if she were being interviewed, as she had been so many thousands of times, and she was ready for the conversation to end. “Sorry, excuse me just a minute—I do need to call Mat.”

  Liz got the message. “Oh, forgive me, chatting your ear off and you still haven’t even had a chance to unpack. Shall I go round up the guys in the meantime?”

  “Sounds good,” Jamie replied. “Is there a meeting room? The Good Samaritan was in such a rush to get rid of me, all I saw of the ship was a blur.”

  “Well, there are a few. There’s the executive dining room—that’s where we take our meals, with the captain. Then the mess, for the crew, but we only meet there when the crew is involved. Nice recreation area/living room space—we spend a lot of time there. It’s just down this corridor and to the right. There is an executive boardroom up on the next deck, but we never use it. Basically, any kind of space you need—the ship’s got it.”

  “You’ve been here how long?”

  “They flew me in ten days ago, when the ship came back into port.”

  “You seem to really know your way around, already.”

  Liz reacted, somewhat defensively. “Well, yes, I came out early to do some training with Sam. It’s really state-of-the-art equipment and I’ve so much to learn—just out of university, you know.”

  “I see,” Jamie replied, not wanting to trigger another conversation. “I do think I’d like to lie back and just close my eyes for a few minutes—will you excuse me?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, sorry. May I call you Jamie?”

  Jamie nodded.

  As she turned to leave, Liz looked back at her and said, “… and thanks for the thousand calories.”

  “Five hundred. You left half,” Jamie replied, accompanying Liz to the door and locking it after Liz disappeared into the hallway.

  With Liz gone, Jamie methodically unpacked both suitcases, hanging her clothes in the bedroom closet and then placing her gear in the storage area, next to the entrance door. Tucked in between her sweaters was a pure quartz crystal carved skull, which she placed on the night table next to the bed. She never went anywhere without it. Jamie believed it opened a window in the space-time continuum. She sat down a minute, and then leaned back into the soft down pillows, realizing how tired she felt after the day’s events. With an hour to go before the meeting, she decided she could indeed use a short rest to refuel.

  She slipped into the velour bathrobe she found hanging in the closet, and set the digital alarm on the nightstand for 6:00, thinking she didn’t really need it, because she had an automatic alarm in her head. Still, it was a backup, just in case. She undressed, crawled naked into the crisp linen sheets, and then, with things relatively in place, she dozed off.

  Jamie awoke suddenly, as if the caffeine had taken hold in that moment and the adrenaline rush was buzzing her back to reality. She looked at the clock: 5:59. Then, as she sat up, the alarm went off at 6:00. She leaped out of bed, ran into the bathroom to freshen up, and then threw on her clothes in a hurry. By 6:15 she was out the door, making her way down the hall and into the main public area of the ship—late for a meeting she herself had called.

  There, sitting on the sofas, were Sam, Liz, Bobby, and a few others she had yet to meet. A more incongruous group of people she could never have imagined. Sam had a bottle of beer in his hand—he was just twisting the top off when Jamie walked in.

  “Ah! Here she is,” he said, with just the right inflection to let the others know she was late. To her surprise, though, he did stand up—at least he had some manners. “Come on in, Miss Hasting
s—don’t be shy. The gang is almost all here.” He pointed to Bobby, who was standing at the bar in the corner of the room. “I hear you’ve already met Bobby, our senior officer—and bellboy in his spare time. The grumpy little guy with the crew cut next to him is Brady, the junior officer.”

  Jamie already felt uncomfortable in the strange environment but, thanks to Sam’s sarcasm, she felt all the more the outsider.

  “Doc,” he said, pointing to the man sitting across from him in the lounge. Doc was every bit the sailor stereotype with his white beard, a ruddy Irish complexion, and weathered skin, what little one could see of it behind all the hair. “He’s the medic on board, when he’s not keeping the captain out of trouble.”

  Doc didn’t even bother to stand up for Jamie. He nodded, rigidly, as if he had already formed an opinion about her. Jamie could feel his disapproval. So much for Mat’s promise of a full support staff on board. She felt like she did the first time she walked into the police station of the LAPD, with a whole squadron of tough-guy, macho cops against her.

  For some reason, part of Jamie’s mission in life was to help these archetypal men—cops, sheiks, sailors—understand and recognize that there was, indeed, a realm they couldn’t penetrate and dominate. They couldn’t reverse engineer it, build it and tear it down again. They could not dissect or restructure it. Her world, the quantum field, was the state of consciousness where one recognized how all is interconnected and accessible. It was a world where new perceptions were constantly replacing old structures—one in which “feeling” prevailed over “thinking.” It simply didn’t conform to their model of reality, which they clung to, despite all odds, like medieval scholars who held, unyieldingly, to their conviction that the Earth, the center of the universe, was flat.

  Jamie represented sailing to the edge and falling off the world. She simply scared the hell out of them.

  The door from behind the bar swung open and in walked a swarthy, good-looking Italian man, in shirt and tie—the first to resemble a professional crew member. Count on the Italians to always leave everyone else in the dust when it comes to style. He carried a tray of appetizers into the room for the meeting. When he saw Jamie, he put the tray down and walked over to her, shook her hand, and greeted her.

  “Benvenuta a bordo.”

  Jamie was thinking how refreshing it was to find a little class and charm on the ship, and charming he was, for certain. She inadvertently looked over at Liz, a little woman-to-woman acknowledgment, and Liz winked at her.

  “That’s Alberto,” Sam announced. “He’s Italian, in case you couldn’t guess. God blessed us with an Italian chef. How did that joke go? In a perfect world, the mechanics are German, the French are the lovers, and the Italians are the chefs? Somebody help me out here.”

  “Actually,” Alberto said, looking right into Jamie’s eyes, but responding to Sam, “it goes that the French are the chefs and the Italians are the lovers …”

  She felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “Oh my god,” Jamie thought to herself, “I’m blushing? When was the last time that happened?”

  Alberto picked the tray back up and, starting with Jamie, offered hors d’oeuvres to each.

  “Where’s Philippe?” Sam asked Liz. “Our marine biologist is missing.”

  Liz jumped up. “He went to find the captain.” That was a job Jamie had told Sam to do. Clearly, he wasn’t about to take orders from her. “They’re on their way.”

  Sam took a swig of beer, looking superior and self-satisfied: in charge … on top. “Then there’s Mike, the chief engineer—you may never even see him; Spyros and his band of mechanics—them neither. They live in the below. Let’s see … ah yes, Mr. D, the machine man, and the steward, Domenico. He boards in the morning. Is that everybody?”

  Philippe’s big, robust frame filled the doorway.

  “Here he is. Philippe, representing the Marine Authority.” He was there to assure that no violations were perpetrated in Canadian waters, and also to conduct studies on the marine life, so Jamie figured they were bound to hit it off.

  Philippe approached Jamie, shook hands, and apologized for being late. She felt a connection with him immediately: it was in his eyes, his voice, and the strength in his hands—a kindred spirit.

  Sam spoke again. “As you can see, it’s a pretty international team we’ve got here.”

  “Well, it’s great to meet you all, thank you. Hopefully the captain will be here soon, so I can just give you a quick briefing and get out of your hair.”

  Outside the door, the sound of a dog’s collar jingling alerted the staff that the captain had arrived. The dog, a golden Labrador retriever, pushed the swinging door open and entered the room. Jamie was delighted to see there was a dog on board. That meant for sure there would be at least a little unconditional love on the trip.

  “Ah, here we go!” said Sam. “Allow me to present the amazing Fin … Captain’s alter ego.”

  Fin walked straight over to Jamie, as if no one else were in the room. That was always the way with Jamie and animals. They gravitated to her, no matter where she went. It seemed as if he had read her mind, as animals do, and that he wanted to show her that unconditional love immediately. She put her hands out to him, letting him sniff and investigate her, and within seconds he started licking her fingers. He bonded with Jamie like he’d known her all his life, fully trusting and receptive. Within moments of sitting near her, getting familiar with her energy, he lay down right by her side, placing his big front paw over her feet, letting her and everyone else present know she was safe.

  And then, in walked Jimbo.

  If ever a solitary word could epitomize someone’s essence, then “presence” was surely that word for Captain Jim. His was such a big energy, he filled the room before he even entered it. When the door swung open and Jimbo walked through, his huge personality was five steps ahead of him, projecting itself through the space like a floodlight in darkness. Here was a proud African American, the ship’s master, with a style all his own. He wore a faded brown leather hat crushed down low over his left eye, faded jeans, and a sky-blue plush parka, unzipped halfway down his chest to reveal one really big shark’s tooth, hanging from a leather cord around his neck. His skin was weathered from the sea, his gray hair peeked out over his ears, and you could see, just reading the road map of the wrinkles in his face, that this was a man who had definitely lived a big life. His eyes told her so much of his story—eyes that had seen way more than they had ever wanted to.

  He was surprised when Fin did not run to greet him. That was a first. “Well, well, Miss Jamie Hastings.” Speaking to her from just inside the entrance, he said, “I see you have met my staff.”

  Fin got up and walked over to his master, and sat by him, obediently.

  “And my main man, Fin, here. It looks like we’re all here.”

  Jamie felt the edge in Jimbo’s voice, and she realized that demanding a staff meeting before even meeting the ship’s captain was overstepping her bounds … she regretted it now. She had reacted—to Sam, and in the end she had come across like a bulldozer. And, of course, the captain was going to have to put her in her place, with a little cold-shoulder overture.

  Jimbo walked to the refrigerator, grabbed a beer, and crossed the room to his armchair: the captain’s official armchair. Fin followed, and lay down in front of him. He twisted off the bottle cap, threw his legs over the coffee table, and took a nice long swig from the bottle. “I would have liked to introduce you properly, but you have beat me to it.”

  Jamie looked around at the eclectic cast of characters before her, feeling unusually uneasy, as if the curtain had just gone up, she was on stage all alone, and she had forgotten her lines. “Okay, well … I’ll be very brief. Mat Anderson told me you’ve all been instructed as to why I’m here for these next few weeks, and I can understand that you may not be comfortable with the whole idea of a psychic oil hunter, but nonetheless, here I am.”

  Fin got up, unexpectedly, and walked
across the room to be near Jamie. It came as a surprise to everyone that he would do that. He was attached to his master like iron to a magnet, and he was rarely more than a few steps out of reach.

  Jamie scratched him behind the ears, as she spoke. “I work with subtle energy. That means that how we all interact energetically is so very important. A lot depends on how things flow on every level, and I need a positive exchange with each of you from the start, like I’ve had with Sam, for example.”

  Liz lowered her head, rubbing her fingers over her forehead as if she had a headache, when in reality she was shielding her reaction to Jamie’s barb at Sam.

  “I know it’s not easy to find yourselves in this situation, not that it is easy for me either, I assure you. You’ve got to be wondering what it is I do and why I’m here. I do get that.”

  Philippe appeared to be genuinely interested in what Jamie had to say, while the others merely accommodated her, because they knew they had to.

  “In fact, before I located those three drill sites in Pakistan … I’m sure you know about that?” she said, pointedly, “… I wondered if the locals were going to grab me from my bed some night and drag me into the public square, to burn me at the stake, like some sorceress infidel Western whore.”

  Philippe and Liz laughed out loud. They hadn’t expected that one.

  “But they came around when all that sweet crude started bubbling up out of the deep sand.”

  One by one, the attitudes in the room seemed to shift, with the exception of Sam’s, and Jamie knew she had their attention. “I guess what I’m saying is, even if you don’t understand what I do—even if you think it’s ridiculous—your boss does not. I had no intention to ever do this again, I assure you—but he sought me out. He has given me a huge assignment. It’s immense. Probably the most difficult test I’ve ever been presented with, and I am going to have to have your cooperation to pull it off.”