Long Voyage Back (53 page)

`You plan to bury me there? he asked.

'I hope to save you,' Neil replied.

Frank closed his eyes, nodded almost imperceptibly, then opened them again. 'Too late, Buddy,' he said.

`Maybe,' said Neil. 'But we'll try.'

Frank struggled again up into consciousness.

Ì'm sorry I won't be rounding Cape Horn with you,' he said.

`Not very likely.'

`The sailing was always great,' he said softly. 'It was . . . the human stuff that messed us up ...'

As Neil looked down, Frank thought he saw tears in his eyes.

`You, me and the rest of the world,' said Neil.

`Yeah,' said Frank.

For another half-minute neither man spoke and a series of confused images raced through Frank's mind. He became aware of Neil rising to leave.

`Last word,' Frank mumbled and Neil stopped. Frank opened his eyes and felt a strange giddy joy flowing through him. He smiled feverishly up at Neil. 'Advice . ..' he announced to Neil. 'I think . . . the market is . . . at its lows .. .' He felt like laughing. '

Good buying opportunity.'

Neil, like Jeanne, looked down at him uncertainly, then nodded, smiling slightly in return. 'Nowhere to go but up,' Neil commented.

.. Right . 2 said Frank, closing his eyes.

At dawn two days later, Frank died.

Neil was surprised and unsettled by the grief he felt at Frank's death. He had known Frank was dying and thought he had hardened himself, but when Olly called him down and he saw Frank's stiff body and open mouth, an emptiness and gloom descended upon him which left him immobile. He realized how much unspoken companionship he and Frank had enjoyed even during their estranged period of the last month. The two communicated in a shorthand about the way Vagabond sailed as Neil couldn't with anyone else. To realize that he had lost this friend, first to jealousy and now to death, grieved him.

Instead of giving Olly orders about what to do he wandered back out of the cabin and walked aft to stare out at the sea. A distant part of him felt the burden of having to tell Jeanne. But he felt passive, weary. He felt a sad, self-pitying sense that everything was useless, that Death, like a cat playing with crippled mice, could take him and his loved ones at any time He wanted. A tickling on his cheeks and saltiness in a corner of his mouth made him realize that he was crying.

Jeanne came up to him where he stood. Seeing her eyes beaming with happiness he realized that no one had yet told her of Frank's death. She didn't even notice his tears.

`Neil,' she said softly, 'the fever . . . the fever's down. I think . . . it's breaking.'

Neil looked down at her, dazed, trying to absorb her words. `Lisa?' he asked.

`Both of them,' she answered, softly - as if afraid that if she announced it too loudly the gods would change their minds. `Jim two hours ago, and now Lisa. Come see.'

Mechanically Neil followed her down into Frank's old cabin. The floor was wet, the room sweltering in the heat of the equator. Lisa lay wanly on the first berth staringat him, a shy smile on her face, beads of perspiration or salt water on all her body. Jeanne adjusted a towel to hide Lisa's nakedness.

Ì . I'm feeling better,' Lisa said.

Ì'm glad,' said Neil simply, feeling tears for Frank and for joy at Lisa's life welling in his eyes again.

Ì'm . . . hungry,' Lisa announced uncertainly, as if finally determining the unique sensations she was feeling.

Neil nodded and reached out to put his hand briefly on hers. Then Jeanne, smiling, pulled him further forward to Jim, who was up on an elbow looking at him. Somehow Jim seemed to sense Neil's restrained mood.

`How ... is Dad?' he asked in a hoarse whisper.

Neil, aware of Jeanne beside him still aglow with the

survival of the two young people, couldn't answer. Ì'm glad you came through, Jim,' he said.

But again Jim picked up Neil's unspoken feelings. `Dad . . . isn't . . . isn't?' he asked Neil.

`Frank died,' Neil said. 'Just twenty minutes ago.'

After hesitating, Jim began to nod slowly. 'He said goodbye to me,' Jim whispered hoarsely. 'He came to me an hour ago . . . his spirit, you know, and told me . . . to live . . . to take care of everybody.'

Neil nodded as Jeanne leaned against him, absorbing the news of Frank's death. He put his arm around her.

`Frank probably saved us all back at the mutiny,' Neil said. `Now we'll need you.'

Jim now had tears in his eyes. 'But I wish . . he began again in a voice weak from three days oflittle speaking. 'I wish he could be with us when we . . . if we . . . finally . . Live .. .' Jeanne finished softly.

1 0

After burying Frank at sea they sailed on.

They kept Vagabond well off the Brazilian coast, hoping to reduce the chance of again being attacked by plane or gunboat, their destination still uncertain. As long as food and water were adequate they would continue into the South Atlantic. Nothing they were hearing from around the world encouraged them to try to land. The plague was still spreading. Shortwave transmissions from all of Europe had ceased. Most US broadcasts had ceased. An A.M. station in Uruguay reported that a series of food riots in Rio de Janeiro had been suppressed by the Army and left over three thousand people dead, and the Brazilian Air Force had attacked and sunk a freighter crammed with refugees that had tried, after repeated warnings to turn back, to enter the harbour at Rio de Janeiro. Rio was floundering under the impact of unemployed and starving millions, who were begging, stealing, rioting and fleeing to and arriving from all over Brazil. Thousands had died in the last month from either disease or starvation, many from the newly introduced plague.

But the alternatives to landing in Brazil were equally dismal. The few small islands in the South Atlantic were governed by Brazil or Argentina and their friendliness to American refugees was as doubtful as that of the mainland. Argentina, because it didn't need to import food, seemed slightly preferable. But the last Spanish-language broadcast which Sheila had been able to understand before their transistor radio batteries lost their power, indicated that illegal immigrants were being quarantined and put in internment camps, a gloomy option unless and until they

began actually to starve to death. In the meantime they would sail south, hope that the plague would run its course on land, and not reappear aboard Vagabond; hope that they could feed themselves from the sea, and wait.

In eleven days they reached the latitude of Rio, passing a hundred miles to the east. Their tentative destination was the coast south of Mar del Plata, two hundred and fifty miles southeast of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

When their shortwave radio broke down they were left with no radios functioning. They began sailing alone amidst a depressing silence from the rest of the world. And the sea too seemed silent and empty. They saw no other ships. No seabirds accompanied them. Although they trolled all the time, usually with two rods and two lures, the fish, if they were there, usually spurned their offerings. As they grew weaker from their stricter and stricter rationing, they began to dip into their emergency food kit. They established a schedule of rationing that would permit them to reach southern Argentina with an empty larder.

Vagabond sailed now in peace. Their harmony was not simply the result of the lassitude brought on by malnutrition, but rather of the trust and affection that had been forged from surviving together the horrors of the previous two and a half months. Neil and Jeanne were lovers, husband and wife; so too were Jim and Lisa, although she still had not recovered from the disease, being barely able to walk. Sheila and Philip were their benevolent Aunt and Uncle; Olly the grandpop. Neil lived now with Jeannne and Skippy in her port cabin, the Wellingtons taking over his aft cabin. Jim had slowly recovered his strength. At first Neil and Jeanne had thought that his quiet dignity was only weakness from the after-effects of the disease, but soon they realized that with the nearness of death Jim had developed the same tranquillity that Frank had come to during his last hours. He developed a new low-key sense of humour and was no longer in awe of Neil but able to poke fun at him.

Lisa, although the disease had left her pathetically weak, was childlike in the joy she showed in being alive and in love with Jim. Each morning he carried her from their starboard cabin to the open cockpit areas where she could be with the others. Neil urged books upon her; Skippy urged her to play games with him; Philip began to teach her navigation. She did a little of each. Although her weakness was sometimes heartrending - they had no idea how completely she might eventually recover - her joy in Jim, her happiness in living, made it impossible to be depressed in her presence. But as they moved further south they moved, paradoxically, into the late winter of the southern hemisphere. They were pitifully unprepared for the cold, especially after having just suffered through two weeks near the equator. Their bodies were lacking in the fat that could be burned off to warm them. Their ship had little winter clothing. With the propane supply exhausted and the kerosene almost gone, they had no fuel to burn to warm a cabin. The three women took the two woollen blankets aboard and began to convert them to clothing. The only cold weather gear they had was Neil's orange float suit and they needed two or three other winter garments so that at least three people could be out on deck at once if necessary. They cut and sewed one small woollen jumpsuit to fit Lisa and Sheila, and another larger one to fit Jim, Neil and Philip. From the remains of the blankets they managed to create a third jacket to fit Olly and Jeanne. Two pairs of sweatpants became winter underwear. Clothing was no longer individual but held in common by two or three similarly built individuals, items worn as the need arose. They were now without soap so clothing began to stink. Their limited number of socks began to disintegrate.

The strangeness of their clothing was only another symptom of their dissociation from their previous lives. Just as they were physically, electronically and geographically detached from most of the rest of the planet, so too they were now in some way detached from the mammoth events which

had transformed the earth. The fears and violence of those in the southern hemisphere against refugees like themselves seemed to them as natural and unhatable as the squalls that had afflicted them north of the equator - something to reef for. The destruction of much of the world by the nuclear war seemed like some natural tragedy, as if the earth had been hit by some errant comet.

The plague did not reappear. After two weeks they dared assume themselves free of that danger. They were healthy. They were starving. The bringing in of a single fish was cause for a major celebration. The loss of a hooked fish before boarding it left them limp, empty, afraid. When their emergency cache of food was mostly gone; when they were down to a few days' ration of dried fish; when all their previous stores of food were down to a few rotting potatoes and the last unopened rusted can of spam, they turned, filled with dread, again towards land.

Their lives, which for three weeks had taken on a peaceful, dreamlike quality from their isolation and undernourishment, now, they feared, would once again take on the quality of a nightmare. They approached land feeling themselves aliens. about to visit a foreign planet.

But the land came out to them. An Argentine frigate met them thirty miles off the coast and warned them through an electric bullhorn that no Norteamericanos' were being allowed on the mainland of Argentina. If they came any closer to the coast their boat would be confiscated and they would be taken to the recently seized Malvinas Islands with other plague victims and illegal immigrants. They: turned back to sea. Yet even as they did so Neil realized that in two or three days they would have to try to land again because they were now almost totally out of food and low on water. They hoped that further south, with the coast often uninhabited, the vigilance would be much less.

And so for two more days, during which they ate only the

last of some rotting potatoes, they sailed southwest another three hundred miles down the coast, remaining seventy miles off. They saw neither another boat nor a plane. A cold front brought with it an overcast sky and Neil was unable to take a sunsight at noon. He had only a rough estimate of his position, but it made little difference. He had absolutely no detailed knowledge of the coast he would be approaching and thus any part of the fifty-mile stretch he estimated himself near was as good as any other. He didn't know whether to expect to crash into towering cliffs or surf up to a sandy beach blooming with tourists.

They made it into the darkness of the night without being stopped or attacked. Neil wanted to close with the shore just before dawn and anchor or tack off until they could determine their next course of action. Approaching at night they would not only avoid detection but also be able to see the lights of any major town and, close to shore, perhaps the lights of individual houses or farms.

At four A. M. with Jim at the helm tightly bundled up in the woollen jumpsuit and foulweather gear, the depthmeter indicated the depths were rapidly shoaling. They had seen no lights or other signs of civilization. As Neil stood beside Jim at the wheel he felt as if he were on a foreign planet approaching some shore never seen before by human eyes. All he knew of the land he was visiting was that the natives feared and hated aliens. He and his friends were aliens.

Ìt's eerie,' said Jim. 'I like sailing in the blackness, but not when we're nearing land.'

`The sea will let us know when we're getting close,' Neil replied.

`How far off will we hear the surf?' Jim asked.

Àt least a mile.'

Then they became silent. They had both picked up a sound: a distant hum beneath the splash and hissing of Vagabond through the water. For two minutes they stood side by side in the darkness straining to clarify the hum. It

gradually grew: muted by distance, the crash of the surf on land. Neil flicked on the depthmeter: thirty-six feet.