by John Yunker
“Angela.”
She heard her name but did not look up, focused on the penguins perched on the ledges of icebergs. Adelies. Gentoos. Chinstraps.
“Angela!” She turned to see Aeneas staring at her impatiently. “You’re going to want to hold onto something,” he said.
Aeneas had taken the helm, and he began to swerve more closely between the icebergs. The doors on both sides of the bridge were hinged open so that Lauren, on the starboard wing deck, and D. J., and on the port deck, could see the outer edges of their ship.
“Does everybody have their survival gear on?” Aeneas said to nobody in particular. “Brace yourselves, people, here we go.”
“Four hundred yards,” D. J. said, looking back.
Ahead, they were approaching a narrow but towering iceberg, head-on. Angela watched Aeneas’s hands as they began to steer the ship ever so slightly off the direct path.
“How am I?” he called out.
“Three feet more,” shouted D. J.
“That’s too close,” Angela said. The iceberg had a flared base, on which a half dozen penguins had assembled themselves. They were raising their heads, flapping their wings, trying to intimidate the oncoming beast as best they knew how. With twenty yards to go, penguins began to abort, sliding down on their bellies—yet some remained, frozen by panic. Angela, heart pounding, looked at Aeneas and said sharply, “Watch the birds.”
He did not respond.
Angela cringed as the ship grazed the base of the iceberg, sending a loud thud echoing through the hull. So this is your plan, she thought, looking at Aeneas: turn the Antarctic Peninsula into one giant slalom course, cutting back and forth between the ten-story gates, hoping you don’t sink along the way, hoping your pursuer is not as fortunate.
Once clear of the iceberg, the Tern dropped speed and banked hard to the right. From the starboard window, Angela saw the iceberg awaken, leaning left and then right. The Argentine ship appeared, staying as far from the ten-story pendulum as it could without getting too close to the iceberg on the other side. But the iceberg did not topple. And when their pursuer cleared the gantlet, Angela heard curses on the bridge.
When she faced forward again, she saw another, taller iceberg looming ahead—with at least a hundred penguins standing on the steep terraces of its base. This time, she spoke loudly enough for the entire crew to hear.
“Watch the penguins!”
“Angela, I don’t have a choice,” Aeneas said.
“You’re going to crush them!”
“D. J., get me closer,” Aeneas said, eyes focused ahead.
“Half a foot!” D. J. yelled. “But no more.”
Penguins were clinging to the ice as the ship glanced hard against the glacier, sending Angela and the rest of the crew off their feet, a thunderous noise coming from below. Angela pulled herself up as they banked right again, glimpsing another unbalanced iceberg bobbing in the water, and the Argentine ship passed with ease. She felt the mood in the bridge turn grave.
But Aeneas did not seem to register the fear around him. He accelerated yet again, heading toward an iceberg shaped like the Matterhorn, rising more than six stories tall, with penguin residents along the waterline. This time, he lined up the ship to hit the iceberg on the port side, perhaps to give the starboard hull a much-needed break.
Angela had a direct view of the penguins, hopping up the edges of the ice instead of down, the poor creatures not understanding the intention of this mass of metal and noise. It would macerate them against the ice. She couldn’t stand by and watch any longer. As the ship bore down on the iceberg, Angela’s body swung into action almost before her mind registered what she was about to do. She grabbed the steering wheel, shoving Aeneas aside with a strength she didn’t know she had.
“Angela, stop!” Aeneas tried to pry her hands away, and she stood strong. But Aeneas was stronger, and with the boat’s next lurch, she fell to the floor. She held her ears tight; she did not want to hear the cries of the penguins.
* * *
After the boat had slowed, Angela stepped outside the bridge and carefully began her descent down the stairs, now coated with glistening white dust and shards of ice. When she reached the rear deck, she witnessed a terrain of boulder-sized chunks of ice, as if a giant snowman had just exploded.
Then she saw the penguin.
A young Adelie, most likely a male, no more than three years of age. It looked especially small to Angela because she was so accustomed to Magellanics; this breed was three inches shorter, on average. Black body and head, brilliant white chest, white rings around its eyes. The bird flapped its wings and was limping badly as it moved about, directionless and frantic.
Angela got on her knees and shuffled slowly toward him. He tried to back away but didn’t have anyplace to go. The penguin had no tag, which made him look somewhat naked in her eyes. She did not know where his colony was or when he was born. She knew nothing about him, only that he needed help. His feathers were coated with an oily substance that must have come from the deck. He had a dime-sized laceration above his right wing. There was no way he could survive in the water without being cleaned and mended.
She heard a noise and glanced up to see Lauren standing nearby. The look on Lauren’s face told her that no matter how she may have felt about Angela, animals came first. “How can I help?” Lauren asked.
“Get me something to hold him in,” Angela said. Lauren disappeared for a few moments, returning with a large plastic pail.
As Angela crept closer to the penguin, he turned and tried to run away, then fell over its bad left leg. Angela moved quickly and grabbed it firmly by its neck, its beak snapping wildly, and lifted it into the bucket.
She glanced over the rear deck at the immobilized Argentine ship, and for a moment she wished that it had succeeded in catching them, so there would be no more running, no more casualties. And so she could go home again.
She grabbed the pail by its metal handle and carried the frantically flapping penguin into the ship.
Ethan
Ethan held in both hands a full-body immersion suit, like the kind the surfers in San Diego wore during the winter months. A moment earlier, when the man they’d called Hedley opened the door and tossed the suit at him, Ethan assumed they would soon be tossing him overboard.
Put it on, Hedley had said. In case we sink. Then he shut the door again, and Ethan heard the lock click.
Ethan could tell by the engines, the high-pitched clanging of icebergs, that they had accelerated. He tossed the suit aside—what good would it do if he couldn’t escape from this room? Why bother at all? Annie was dead.
The ship lurched to the left, and Ethan found himself sprawled on the floor again, dodging the boxes that had scattered during the ship’s wild swings. He crawled to the door and pulled himself up, clasping the door handle firmly. He pounded on the door, shouting as loudly as he could, but he doubted anyone could hear him over the sounds of steel scraping against ice. He kept an eye on the floor for signs of water seeping through.
At the next impact, Ethan let himself be thrown to the floor again; it was easier than trying to stay upright. Eventually, the noises subsided, the heaving slowed, and by the time the ship came to a stop, Ethan’s mind was mired in a fog of memories and regret. Just as he’d believed, Annie had been on this ship— and he’d come so close to being with her. Now, he was trapped in this little room, having been downgraded from stowaway to prisoner. This was not what he imagined; for all his planning, for all the possible outcomes he’d run through in his head, this variable had never been among them. But he was not creative that way—he’d never been able to prepare himself for that which was not rational in life.
And maybe that had been the problem—or rather, one among many: that he was not creative the way Annie had been, that he was too predictable, too uncomfortable with any situation whose outcom
e he could not foresee within a certain degree of probability. He was the type to buy cruise tickets, to schedule airline flights, to draw up packing lists in Excel. She’d been the type to leave at a moment’s notice, to forego packing altogether, to throw herself under a boat to save a few fish.
What had he ever done in his life that could compare to that?
But that was what he’d loved about Annie—her sense of purpose. He’d wanted her to be as passionate about him as she was about all those animals, but that was impossible. Hers was a blind passion that could never be reciprocated, that wasn’t meant to be reciprocated.
For so long, he’d been lost in a virtual world of if/else statements—if he hadn’t asked Adam that question; if he hadn’t let Annie get away; if he hadn’t left San Diego. But now he began to wonder whether all those ifs were not mistakes after all. Whether he was meant to be here, somehow.
He heard voices outside the door. When the door opened, he leapt up to see Angela in the hall, with another woman holding a set of keys. Angela thanked the woman, then stepped inside, carrying a bucket. “Help me,” she said. “We need to create an enclosure out of these boxes.”
Ethan peeked into the bucket. An anxious, fidgeting penguin looked up at him.
“It’s important to keep him away from people,” Angela said, waving him away. “He needs to relax and not expend any more energy than necessary.”
Ethan arranged the boxes, then stood back as Angela lifted the penguin from the bucket and placed him on the floor. The bird scurried into a corner, then turned and flapped his wings at them.
“Where did you find him?” Ethan asked.
“He fell off one of the icebergs we hit. Injured himself along the way. Do you mind assisting?”
“I’d love to.”
Angela left to get supplies, and Ethan knelt on the floor, eye level with the penguin. “Now there are two stowaways,” he said quietly. The bird looked at him warily.
Angela returned with another bucket, this one filled with soapy water. “We have to clean the oil from his feathers; it destroys the insulation. We can’t return him to the ocean until he’s clean, or he’ll freeze to death.”
“Just plain old soap and water?” he asked, indicating the bucket.
“Dishwashing liquid,” Angela said. “Specifically, Dawn. It works wonders.”
Ethan followed her instructions, holding the bird as she massaged the viscous black oil out of the feathers, careful not to destroy the underlying structure. After half an hour, they switched roles. He could tell Angela was watching him carefully.
“Not bad,” she said.
“You think?”
“You’re doing great. Maybe when this trip is over, you’ll visit me in Punta Verde. We could always use an extra pair of hands.”
Ethan looked up to see if she was joking. But she smiled a genuine smile, and he felt his mood brighten, followed by an immediate, sharp pain. “Ouch!” He looked down to see the penguin’s beak locked on his forefinger.
“Do not move,” Angela said. “Hold completely still.” She held open the beak until Ethan pulled away, blood dripping onto the boxes.
“I guess I’m better suited for working with computers,” he said. He wrapped his hand in a t-shirt.
“You’re not a true naturalist until you’ve got a few scars to prove it,” Angela said.
He held the penguin as Angela finished the cleaning. Then she let it scurry off into its enclosure, and she disappeared again.
Ethan looked down at his throbbing finger, blood soaked through the shirt, and wondered again whether Angela was serious about him visiting her. Something about holding the penguin, about the unpredictability of the procedure, had been invigorating—in a way he’d never experienced before.
Angela returned with bandages for him and thin strips of extra-firm tofu for the bird. “I’m afraid he won’t be eating fish,” she said. “This will have to suffice.”
She dropped the tofu into the enclosure and went to work cleaning and dressing Ethan’s wound. He looked over at the enclosure, watching the bird snap at the tofu.
“We should give him a name,” he said.
“No,” Angela said. “No names.”
“Why not?”
“The minute you give an animal a name, everything changes.”
“Don’t you name any of the penguins you study?”
“Not anymore,” she said.
* * *
While keeping an eye on the penguin, Ethan had stretched out on a row of boxes and nodded off. When he opened his eyes, he saw Aeneas standing over the makeshift pen, studying the penguin solemnly. Aeneas had a faraway look and did not appear to notice Ethan sitting up.
“I’m not a spy,” Ethan said.
Aeneas looked at him then sat on a box. “I know that now. I reacted strongly, and I am sorry. Tensions have been running high since we lost Annie.”
“If she really died, how come I didn’t read about it?”
“She wouldn’t have wanted anything to get in the way of our mission. She would have wanted us to move on, to continue the fight. And I couldn’t have kept her out that Zodiac if I tried.”
“You could have kept her from falling out of the Zodiac.”
“She didn’t fall,” Aeneas said. “She knew exactly what she was doing.”
Ethan looked at him, not sure what to believe. He wondered what was going through Annie’s mind as she faced the hull of the fishing trawler. Did she make a fatal mistake, or did she make a fatal decision? Once, he’d asked her how far she would go to protect animals. It’s not about how far you can go to protect them, she said. It’s about how far humans will go to hurt them. I’ll always go one step further.
Aeneas stood. “When this boat touches land again, you’ll be free to leave.”
“What if I don’t want to leave?”
“Excuse me?”
Ethan wasn’t sure what he was saying, but he wasn’t ready to go home—back to work, back to that empty apartment. “I could take Annie’s place. If you still need volunteers.”
Aeneas studied Ethan for a moment. “You ever driven a Zodiac before?”
Robert
The Roca had nearly cleared the iceberg—nearly—and when the iceberg began to lean away from the ship, Robert thought they were safe. But he quickly realized that no matter what side you were on when an iceberg tipped, it was the wrong side.
The underside of the iceberg lifted the Roca diagonally out of the water, sending men sliding across decks, setting alarms blaring, and, by the sound of the screeching from the below, rendering the propellers useless.
As Robert watched the Tern pull away, he began thinking of the report he would file at the end of this trip, how similar it would sound to the report he last filed after pursuing Darwin. The reckless mistakes and the missed opportunities. Back then, Robert had offered to resign, but Gordon talked him out of it. Ours is an ugly business, he’d said. Entrapment. Trickery. And we don’t always get the bad guy. Gordon had sent Robert on a forced vacation, and cleared his slate. If only Robert could have done the same thing with his memories.
Now he was watching the Arctic Tern disappear behind an iceberg. He should have been more patient. He’d known Aeneas had wanted him to take the bait and chase him through this sharp-edged ice field—narrow passages favored small ships like the Tern. All the Exocet missiles in the world could not protect the Roca from an iceberg.
The ship’s engines were silent, and in the bridge Zamora tended to an array of frenzied lights and monitors. Men argued through the radio slung over his shoulder. And though everything was in another language, Robert understood perfectly what was going on. The ship was damaged, not fatally, but badly enough to require repair, not to mention reports and repercussions. Zamora looked nervous, as if he were sharing Robert’s thoughts, wondering how he was going to explai
n this debacle to the higher-ups.
Robert watched as Lynda spoke to Zamora in her calm, matter-of-fact manner. She had a way of calming any man. She even got Zamora to crack a smile. What Spanish joke did she tell him? When Lynda turned and made eye contact with Robert, she was still smiling. In a matter of minutes, the end of the world had been put on hold.
“How long will it take to fix?” Robert asked.
“A few hours,” Lynda said, and shrugged.
He left the bridge. On the rear deck, men in dry suits and scuba gear were lowering Zodiacs into the water. Robert found someone who spoke English and offered his services. He’d been pretty good at wet welding once, a skill acquired from his apprenticeship on the Eminence, stitching together old propeller blades and patching hulls. And so he spent the rest of the day with the engineers, diving into the icy water, holding onto a nine-foot steel blade as a blue torch made it pliable again.
The men took frequent smoking breaks, leaving Robert alone. He was just another grunt, seated on the deck, following orders—the life of a deckhand, a life he’d lived once. If only he had kept his mouth shut, he could still be living it.
He watched the men mill about, a few in full uniform, machine guns strapped to their shoulders. There was a time he would have envied them—their swagger and camaraderie. For someone raised in a family that wasn’t very much a family, Robert had grown up with an unspoken urge for control in his life. A father off in a plane somewhere at 33,000 feet, a mother on a couch in the living room just as high on vodka and Vicodin. Everything would have been okay if his father had returned on occasion, paid the bills, and mowed the lawn. But one day during Robert’s sixth grade, a weekend layover in London stretched into a month, then two, and all the teary phone calls from his mom couldn’t bring his father home again. He had found someone else, began working a new route, and Robert’s shrinking family was demoted from owning to renting, from private school to public school, from McDonald’s to White Castle. In a matter of months, everything in his life churned in reverse: his mood, his attendance, his grades. By miracle or momentum, he made it into junior high, but fights dominated his school days, and it wasn’t until the high school principal gave him a choice between the football team or the rest of his Saturdays in study hall that he found his salvation.
