Viator

by Lucius Shepard

  Seven

  “…Cape Lorraine and environs…”

  Wilander lost track of the fog’s duration (days, certainly) because he wanted to lose track, to muffle his fears, to blunt his every understanding, and, toward this end, channeled his energies into the creation of maps: terrain maps of the hills that built inland from the coastal city; a street map of the southernmost quarter of the city; maps of the island grouping, rudimentary except for that of the largest island, shaped like a tail-less stingray and supporting a town on its seaward end; maps of the coastline to the north, recently revealed by images emerged from the walls of the bridge; maps roughed out in pencil and, once he was sure of their accuracy, painstakingly redrawn in ink and shaded with pastels, as he once had done for extra credit in his fourth grade geography class, attempting to curry favor with Mrs. Louise Gatch—a gaunt, fiftyish, deathshead Marine colonel trapped in a teacher’s body, she still patrolled the halls of Wilander’s memory, ready to pounce at the slightest sign of smudged lines or bad penmanship. He strayed from his station in the officers’ mess to cook and piss and sleep, but for no other reason, pausing often to phone Arlene, who was probably screening her calls and refusing to pick up; however, he could not bring himself to phone Lunde—he dreaded what the old man might say and decided to wait until he was well away from Viator, when the information, whatever it might be, would have no power to menace him. Soon the desire to talk with Lunde left him and the maps came to occupy him to the exclusion of all else and he began to add details that were not shown on the walls, making these additions surehandedly, swiftly, as if he were remembering things about the city and the shore, and, as this apparent familiarity deepened, he took to naming portions of his imagined landscape. The names bubbled forth from the depths of his mind, solitary words and random syllables, sounds that aligned with other sounds: Sirkasso Beach, a sandy crescent along the inner edge of the lagoon; Cotaliri Bay, a notch in the coastline to the south; Mutikelio, one of the islands, and the islands themselves, the group he named the Six Tears, a reference to the legend that, millennia ago, tears had spilled from the eyes of a giant as he died and these were the seeds about which the islands had grown, whereas his bones had petrified and now constituted a section of the coast, the waters of the lagoon being enclosed by an orbital socket, and it was claimed that threads of protein from the giant’s humor still drifted at the bottom of the lagoon and swimmers there were thus prone to see things that he had seen in life, relic visions of the barbarous world in which he had thrived, and occasionally some feature of those visions would become real, a predatory fish or a moasaur or an undersea castle, an architectural fantasy of curving pink towers, dozens of towers, a veritable anemone among castles, to which an expedition had been dispatched, all of whose members vanished when the castle rippled and faded and washed from sight. Further scraps of lore attached themselves to every name Wilander applied to the maps, and before long he recognized that he was creating not merely a series of maps, but the traditions and natural history of the area mapped, a section of coast known as the Iron Shore due to the color of the rocks that guarded its length, its forests populated by wiccara (the sluggish, wonderfully camouflaged ground animals) and qwazil (the always hidden metal-throated birds); and, among other elusive creatures, the whistlers, a shy, slender, physically beautiful subhuman folk with whom it was forbidden to mate, although such liaisons were commonplace due to the pheromone-laced perfume they could release at will, and were especially common during the winters, when famine drove the whistlers into the outskirts of the city, searching for food (the remainder of the time they subsisted by hunting small animals, killing them with piercing whistles pitched too high for the human ear to detect); and from the skies the wormlike fliers of Wilander’s dreams would swoop down to terrify the city, yet never attacking, never damaging life or property, as if they had an intellectual interest in the place and were driven to check on it on a regular basis. Cape Lorraine was the city’s name, a name deriving from the fact that the original settlement had been established on the peninsula that formed the outer edge of the lagoon, and when Wilander arrived at that name, he was intrigued by its commonality in contrast to the rest and explored his memory, trying to recall if there might have been a significant Lorraine in his past, but the only Lorraine he could recall was Lorraine Scheib, a friend of a friend during his college years, an aggressively plain lesbian girl who wore overalls and wrote violent anti-male poetry, and it seemed this might be an indicator that he was not inventing the names, he was remembering them, that as Viator sailed closer to the Iron Shore, moving in its mysterious fashion, coursing along a metaphysical northwest passage, he—borne along with it—was receiving increasingly elaborate impressions of their destination, just as a sailor peering from the bow of a landward-bearing ship would receive impressions of the coast, its scents, its colors, its configuration. Though not a new thought, it was newly credible, and the possibility that he was somehow seeing what lay ahead for them made him afraid. He set aside the maps for a night and sat at the table wrestling with the problem of whether to call Lunde, but couldn’t keep his focus and began drowsily leafing through his memories of Arlene until one stuck in his head: watching her put on her bra, as she stood naked by the bathroom door, with lemony dawn light behind her, bending at the waist so as to let her breasts fall into a shape that would more readily conform to the cups, a pose an artist might choose for its intimacy, its graceful female specificity, the nearly perfect horizontal of her back, her legs positioned as if she were a ballerina bowing into a curtsey, responding to imagined applause, alone in an empty theater where she one day hoped to triumph. He couldn’t fathom why the memory seemed sad; he remembered that morning well, a good morning, a happy morning, and he supposed that remembrance itself was by nature sad, or perhaps women’s relation to their breasts was intrinsically sad, something about their simultaneous gift and limitation, how they served as emblems of both ripeness and inadequacy…Something. Lonely for her, he dug out his phone and called. To his surprise, she answered on the fourth ring.

  —Please don’t hang up, he said.

  —Thomas. Her voice was tired. What do you want?

  —Just to talk.

  —I don’t think that’s a good idea.

  —If you didn’t want to talk, why’d you answer?

  —I was falling asleep—I forgot to look at the caller ID.

  —What time is it?

  —After eleven sometime.

  —Sorry.

  She made a diffident noise and he said, You wouldn’t have answered if you saw it was me?

  —Is this what you want to talk about? About whether or not I want to talk?

  —No.

  He would have liked to tell her about Cape Lorraine, the Iron Shore, but it wasn’t the kind of thing he could explain over the phone; he’d have to sit her down face-to-face and persuade her to listen to everything, to react unemotionally. He thought to ask how she was doing, canceled that because she would probably respond with irony, and finally said, I miss you, and added hurriedly, I realize that’s my fault, but it’s true nonetheless.

  She was silent, then an indrawn breath, signaling that she had started to speak; then another brief silence. Would it make you happy if I said I missed you? she asked.

  —No, it wouldn’t make me happy. Arlene, I…

  —Why did you call? What do we have to talk about? Should I tell you the latest gossip? I got in the plasma TV Gary ordered for the bar. Is that what you’re after?

  —If it works for you…Yeah. I’d settle for it.

  Despairingly, she said, God! Why did you call?

  —The truth? I was remembering watching you get dressed one morning. I got lonely.

  He heard her television switch on, a voice blaring.

  —It’s been ten days, she said.

  That seemed too big a number, but he couldn’t prove it. I’m past the deadline, huh?

  —That wasn’t my point. I was remarking that it’s
taken you ten days to get lonely.

  —Not really. It didn’t take ten minutes.

  —All right. It’s taken you ten days to feel lonely enough to call.

  —I didn’t mean it to go ten days.

  —I know. You got busy. With your maps. Time just flew by!

  Visible in the deck lights, a curl of fog squirmed against the glass of the port; over the phone, he heard what might have been a comedian telling jokes, an audience laughing. If I was to come into town tonight, he said, how would that be?

  —I’m not going to answer that. It’s not a real question. You’re not coming in tonight. You won’t come in tomorrow. Eventually, I suppose, you’ll drag yourself into town, but I’m not expecting you anytime soon.

  Her tone, in the span of those five sentences, had gone from embittered to angry, and he tried to mollify her, but she wouldn’t allow it, she kept talking over him, and at last she yelled, Shut up! Okay? Don’t say anything for a minute! Please! They had always been at cross-purposes, he realized. Always off by at least a degree or two, never quite equal in commitment or desire, in the direction they were seeking to push the relationship, always making slight, off-center shifts that left them imperfectly aligned—even at the beginning, when Arlene had been seductive, he had feared a disappointment and suppressed his emotions. Most of that was his fault as well. He’d had responsibilities.

  —After tonight, she said, calm now, I don’t want you to call for a while.

  —How long’s a while?

  —I’ll tell you when I know.

  He let four or five seconds drag past and was about to speak when she said, It’s okay to call if there’s an emergency. Or if it’s about supplies. Then I’ll put you on with Terry. But otherwise…

  —I understand.

  The recognition that she needed to be alone so she could kill off her feelings made him hate the world. He flung himself out of the chair and walked along the wall opposite, trailing his fingers over the Iron Coast, touching the Six Tears, six spots of rust in the lime sherbet sea, taking consolation from their strangeness, their valuable, validating strangeness, from all the strangeness of Viator. The immensity of the ship seemed to solidify around him, to grow suddenly palpable; he thought he could feel its shape and weight and dimensions particularly, the long, honeycombed half-cylinder of the hull wedged in place, as if the iron were a skin and he the nerve through which Viator transmitted its nightly report.

  —Where are you? Arlene asked. In your room?

  —Cape Lorraine and environs, he said, picking at a flake of paint on the edge of Mutikelio Island, wondering if he were to pull it loose, if the island did exist in the world next door, would that alter its geography?

  —What?

  —I’m in the mess.

  After a pause she said, Did you call Lunde?

  —I make my reports, but if you’re asking did I bring up what you told me…No, I didn’t.

  —Why not?

  —I haven’t got around to it. I’ll call him again soon.

  —Don’t you want to know why he sent you here?

  —I’m not sure him being Viator’s captain has anything to do with that. All it means is he knew about the ship.

  —But why wouldn’t he tell you he was captain?

  —Why would he?

  —He was your friend! Telling you he was captain of a ship that he was sending you to salvage, to live on…that would be natural for a friend. He’d tell you things only he knew. He might want you to report on how his cabin looked, or if you found where he carved his initials.

  —Swedish men of his generation, they don’t tend to be chatty about their pasts.

  —Perhaps not. But this was such an important part of his life. Did I tell you…I can’t remember. About him losing his license? His company was going to prosecute him. He must have gone through hell. What happened with Viator changed everything for him.

  —All the more reason he wouldn’t talk about it. He’s probably ashamed. Maybe he was drunk. Maybe that’s all that happened. He was drunk, he lost it and ruined his career.

  He no longer heard the comedian and assumed that Arlene had gone into the living room and pictured her throwing magazines off the sofa and lying down, wearing her plaid flannel pajamas, the phone tucked between her shoulder and jaw; he went out onto the deck so he might feel closer to her, removing the barrier of iron, separated from her by darkness and trees alone.

  —The maps, the other stuff you’ve talked about, Arlene said. Aren’t you anxious to learn what he knows?

  —I’m interested, but not anxious.

  —You know, I don’t understand this. Ever since I met you, you’ve been dying to know what Lunde had in mind, and now you’re all blasé…Like, whatever.

  —I’m going to call him. All right? But it’s not the most urgent thing on my mind.

  —What could be more urgent? It’s not like you’re overtaxed out there.

  He started to say, no, he wasn’t overtaxed, not like her, he had no important inventory to take of spark plugs, tampons, Diet-Rite, string cheese (a favorite Inupiat treat), nothing so pressing as that, but he didn’t want an argument, no more than was already in the air, and he said, I’ll take care of it soon. I promise.

  —We’re past making promises. Do it or don’t do it. It’s not my concern anymore.

  He walked along the deck, moving toward the bow, passing beyond range of the spill of light from the mess, keeping a hand on the rail to guide himself through the dark. We don’t have to be enemies, do we? he asked. Even if you consider me worthless, an idiot, we can treat each other respectfully.

  —For now, I have to be your enemy…a little.

  He had the notion that the silence surrounding him was pouring out of the phone from Arlene’s apartment, which was flooded with an endless supply. The damp and chill of the night worked beneath his skin. He considered asking what would happen between them if he came to her a week from now, a month, but realized that whatever answer she gave, it would somehow serve to harden a negative attitude. I guess I should let you go, he told her.

  —Yeah, I’ve got to sleep. Another early morning tomorrow.

  —Okay. Well…Good night.

  —Good night.

  He had felt only intermittently connected with her during the call, sparks and flickers, the sputtering of a faulty connection, but after switching off the phone, he felt that a protective envelope had dissipated, the cold moving in to fill the vacuum, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, leaning against the rail at the very peak of the bow (was there a word for that precise spot, the last firm footing behind the prow, some Latinate term, the perigolum, the spitaline, or maybe a vulgar British term dating from the days of the lash?) amid the spicy smell of the firs, peering off into the night, unable to make out a trunk, a bough, a fern, and then seeing shapes melt up from the darkness, amoeboid blotches of a shinier black than the air, shiny like patches of worn velvet, gliding and jittering across his field of vision, a whole zoo of them slipping about, and he thought that here in this forward position, at the edge of Viator, aloft from the world, he should have a perfect angle on things, a true perspective in every direction, even inward, unless such an angle was impossible and no matter what promontory you scaled, hoping to penetrate the incidental distractions that blinded you to your life, to understand its central circumstance, you discovered that you had no central circumstance, no fundamental issue, no rational pivot by which to steer—it was all distraction, all a flowing (according to Heraclitus, at least), a flux impossible to navigate, and you were borne along on unknowable currents and tides until you, the mad captain of your soul, ran yourself aground on the reef of a heap of white powder, a homeless shelter, an abandoned ship, an abandoned relationship…and sometimes that tactic worked out for the best, as it may have for Lunde, as it might have for Wilander if he’d had the good sense to strand himself on the shoal of the trading post and cultivate the illusion of a central circumstance wit
h Arlene. It could work out yet. He would have to surrender himself to the principles of the relationship, principles they’d establish, but a week or a month from now, perhaps longer, he could walk into town and, after a probationary period, after hurt feelings had been soothed, she would take him back. He hated the confidence that knowing this gave him; it tempted him to believe she loved him more than he loved her, and he refused to believe that. Despite mis-alignments, tentativeness, and ungainly steps (and how else could a dance like theirs have proceeded, two people so unused to each other, so variant in their experience, going from strangers to lovers in the space of a few weeks, a few walks, a few conversations, very similar to how things had developed between him and Bliss Zouski, except the situation had been reversed, she’d been the one drawn by some mysterious force to withdraw from the affair, money or security, some more reasonable incarnation of Viator, some powerful edifice or mass of philosophical iron that magnetized her will, pulling her toward a false north), he believed they were equal in their mutual attraction and, once past this blunder, once he ridded himself of his fixation with the ship, once he felt solid…This thought, a trial balloon floated, an attempt at bravado, didn’t have enough lift to complete itself, because he was no longer sure he had the will to take that walk. Viator’s hold had tightened on him; in that, he was no different from Arnsparger or Nygaard or Halmus. Mortensen, now…Perhaps Mortensen was different, or perhaps he was simply farther along the path. Wilander leaned forward over the prow, imagining himself to be the ship’s tiny figurehead, wishing that he felt as unassailable as a figurehead. As stoic. His vision had adjusted and he could see intimations of trees, of a limb half-snapped away from its trunk, drooping in front of Viator, and he had an apprehension of the great entanglement and complexity in which he lived, the vines and toadstools, the rotting logs and mattes of compressed, decaying branches, the beds of salvia carpeting the earth, the vivid productions of mold and moss, the chains of his life, verdant and virtual. Everything was still. Then a noise broke from the depths of the forest, a faint but distinct groaning. Not a sound generated by flesh and bone—it was unmistakably the groan of metal under stress. Simultaneously, in the distance, farther away than he had thought it possible to see in a straight line, given the obstructions of hills and trees, a corruscant white light flared and shrank, flared again, like the sputter of a welder’s torch. The groaning escalated into a shriek; the light fluctuated wildly, growing so bright, it threw into silhouette the shapes of tangled coils and loops that looked to be close by the radiant source. Vines? Wire? They were gone before Wilander could make a more informed guess. The light fizzled, winked out; the groaning lapsed; a breath of warm air touched his face, carrying a richly bitter scent and then something sweet, almost a chocolate smell, a smell such as might be released from a barista’s cart. The stillness of the forest had been abolished. Metal-throated qwazil lamented on high. From the hill to starboard came a concentrated rustling, as of small animals stampeding through the underbrush. Wilander squeezed the rail, all his muscles tight, intent upon these sounds and other, less familiar cries: a repeated passage of seven rapid, hollow notes, reminiscent of notes on a glockenspiel; a shrill attenuated quavering, like the whine of an open frequency; a soft mammalian chuffing. He did not seek to rationalize what he saw and smelled and heard, nor did he stand long at the rail. The cold began to bother him. He turned from the prow and walked toward the yellow glare chuting from the door of the officer’s mess and, as he stepped inside, the qwazil that haunted the linden gave its cry, louder than usual, its articulations plainer, as if it had roosted lower in the tree, and what had previously come to Wilander’s ear as sorrowful now seemed to illustrate a more complicated quality, a weary yet joyful relief like that expressed by a lookout, aloft for days, who—having sighted a dark green line on the horizon or a seagull riding a landward current—called down to his mates that their long voyage was nearly done.