The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (28 page)

“He says come a little to starboard,” Eddi called down from the masthead. When the Zodiac was directly on the bow, Sara couldn’t make out Perrault’s hand signals. She brought the wheel right, leaning far out over the gunwale to see where she was going. The water was intensely blue-black between the bergs and she couldn’t suppress a shudder, looking down. She had no desire to be stranded on this restless ice. Even if they got a message off before they went down, there might not be a ship within a thousand miles. She didn’t want to think about their chances if that happened.

“Tea?” Kimura’s serious face appeared like the rising moon, framed by the companionway hatch. Without waiting for an answer, he set a steaming mug on the cockpit seat. She balanced on one foot to reach for it, then sipped, keeping her attention forward. The hot sweet brew warmed all the way down. “Thanks, Hy,” she murmured.

“A little left … slower,” drifted from the masthead. She nudged the throttle back.

“Are we making any headway?”

“Creeping along, but we’re getting there.”

“We are chasing the fleet?”

“I guess we’ll be trying to find it again. Once we get out of this friggin’ ice.”

“I would be happy to help. In any way I can.” He looked away. “I feel you are all part of something. And I am not. Not yet. But I would very much like to be.”

“Just let it happen, Hy. Don’t worry. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Thank you, Sara.” He sipped from his own mug, his exhaled breath an uneasy ghost. “The captain depends on you. I wish I could steer.”

“I’m sure you have other talents.”

“Do you want to talk about your theory? About spindle neurons.”

“Uh, not just now, Hy. Got to keep my head on this. No offense—”

He said quietly that he understood, he’d see about making lunch. “There are smoked ‘kippers’ in cans. Are those … fish? I can make
onigiri
—”

“Yes, kippers are small fish. You can make what?”

“Sticky rice balls, with the fish inside. You can eat them with one hand. Good for while you work.”

She said that would be great. His head bobbed, vanished, and she craned to see over the deck house as a craggy, violet-seamed overhang loomed along the port side. The outboard whined, echoing in a sudden quiet as the wind died away again. Very slowly, the lead widened, and she advanced another couple of boat’s lengths toward the distant flat sootiness she hoped was open sea.

*   *   *

They weren’t that far from that longed-for haven when it happened. She was still on the helm as
Anemone
nosed into a narrow gap between three large, slowly heaving masses of chocolate-seamed ice, made a few yards, then slid to a halt with a crackling reverberation. Bodine popped up from the forepeak, yelling “The hull’s bending in!” Sweat trickling down her ribs under the exposure suit, she checked that the stern was clear, eased into reverse, and advanced the throttle. The engines growled, then whined as the turbochargers cut in. The whole stern vibrated. But the boat didn’t move. Not an inch. Just shivered like a whipped horse, and began very slowly to heel to starboard. She remembered the wire bracing the keel. What was happening below the waterline? She eased the throttle back, disengaged the gears, and walked forward, leaving the engines idling.

Perrault stood in the stern of the inflatable. “No luck,” she reported.

“Shift the rudder back and forth. Race the engine. See if you can pry her out backward.”

“I’ll try, but I was at full power. She didn’t budge.”

The captain braced himself on the center console and peered up at the largest chunk, which rose twenty feet over his head. Roughly pyramidal, it surged with massive slowness, and
Anemone
moved in perfect synchronization. Madsen probed the black water with a bow hook. “There’s an underwater shelf,” he said at last. “That’s what we’re hung up on. Probably, by the wire brace. If we can free that, we could slide by. I think.”

“We need to K-Y this bitch?” Bodine contributed, from the forward hatch.

They regarded him stonily. Perrault shook his head. “That’s open water ahead. Let’s see if we can open this gap up just a little.—Or no; wait; the boat’s got much more power than this outboard. Sara, put your rudder full left. Your right engine, full ahead. The port engine, back down. That will twist you into this piece, and I’ll push at the same time. If something gives, put both engines ahead and try to bull through. But if you hear more of that shuddering, back off.”

“Got it.” She turned and walked aft, bootsoles crunching on crushed ice that had fallen on deck as they’d squeezed past overhanging bergs. She was ready to get out of here, to revel in what felt now like the safety of open ocean. She set up the gears and advanced the throttles. The engines hummed, then roared. From up ahead the outboard rose to a whine as well.

For perhaps a minute nothing happened. Then, with a violent lurch, the boat sagged, coming free of whatever had snagged it—though it actually felt as if something holding it up had snapped away, suddenly subsiding under them. She craned over the deckhouse. Perrault, still standing, was circling a finger above his head, telling her
full power
. She hesitated, then advanced the throttles again, both together, smoothly, just as he’d taught her.

The boat lurched again and shouldered forward. But at the same moment the massive wall of ice to their left began to tilt toward them. To her disbelieving gaze, it inclined farther.

For a moment she didn’t understand. Then a mass of greenish-yellow, creamy ice came thrusting up out of the sea on the far side of the boat, surging violently to the surface as if just released from bondage far below.

Her hands froze on the throttles as the whole immense frozen mass to port began to roll. With the underwater shelf on their side snapped off by
Anemone
’s weight, it was capsizing. Revolving, its towering upperworks coming down in front of the boat. Coming down right where the inflatable rode—

Oh God. She pushed both throttles all the way forward, instinctively trying to interpose the boat between the rotating hundreds or thousands of tons of ice and the bobbing Zodiac, but though the engines whined and the bowsprit grated, boring icy chunks out of its slowly rotating flank like a drill bit, she could not move forward at all.

From the mast, Eddi screamed.

Sara slammed both throttles to idle and the shift to neutral. Grabbing a throwable life preserver, she ran forward, slipping and sliding on the ice littering the deck. The massive berg kept rotating, with the low, rough grumbling of a giant gravel crusher. Half-melted angles reared up dripping into view, coated with shaggy masses of bluegreen algae. Crablike crustaceans scuttled over them in mad terror at the sudden exposure to air and sunlight, and the fulmars began wheeling and dipping with abrupt shrieks.

Each step seemed to take an age. By the time she got to the bow Eddi was right behind her, having unclipped her harness, wrapped her legs around the mast, and slid down fireman-style. The mass of ice was still teetering, sloshing the water in the lead back and forth like some superpowered wave machine as it settled to a new stability. They stared down into a welter of small ice, green froth, bubbles, masses of algae.

The inflatable burst through the surface, nose up like a broaching whale. It leapt halfway out of the sea, then settled back, capsized. “Oh God,” Auer breathed, hand to her mouth. “Lars—Dru—”

“What happened?” Dorée shouted, behind them. They didn’t answer.

A head broke the surface, and flung the sea from its hair in a golden wheel. Madsen. Sara aimed and pitched. The preserver rotated in the air and hit five feet from him. He took two easy strokes, grabbed it, and floated, craning around. Then yelled up, “D’you see Dru?”

“No! We don’t see him!”

Madsen nodded. He looked around again, then jackknifed under. The water was so turbid he disappeared the instant he submerged.

Eddi swung a leg over the bow pulpit. “Stay here. I’ll help him look.”

“Be careful. Don’t dive—there could be more ice down there. Please, Eddi—”

She poised on the gunwale and sprang off in a graceful dive, entering the water at a shallow angle with barely a splash.

Sara turned. Dorée stood struck dumb atop the deckhouse. “Tehiyah! We need more flotation. Life preservers. And we’ll need blankets, when they come out—”

“What happened?”

“A berg capsized on the inflatable.”

“But … Dru?”

“He hasn’t come up yet.” She turned back, wanting to do more, but knowing someone had to stay with the boat. Perrault and Quill had drilled that into them. And she’d been on the wheel when it happened.

Lars and Eddi surfaced together. They consulted briefly in the still-murky water, then dove again in opposite directions. The inflatable rotated slowly, bobbing in the choppy pool. To one side floated what must have been the shelf
Anemone
’s weight had sheared free. Snapped off the berg, it had reduced its buoyancy on one side. And the much larger mass had capsized, seeking a new equilibrium. The same process must have happened over and over to the misshapen, melted-looking forms all around them. No wonder Perrault had been so tense, threading his way through this white labyrinth.

She shook herself and lifted her head, noting that the lead was narrowing. The massive floes were still pressing in. Slowly barring their escape. She leaned over the bow and when the pair in the water surfaced again shouted down, “Do you see him?”

“No sign,” Lars shouted up. His face was blue like a Smurf again. “He might be—he might be pretty far under that berg. The way it is now. Farther than I can swim.”

“Look under the inflatable.”

“I did. He’s not.… I don’t know where he is. He might have just … gone down.”

Auer came up and floated on her back. Looking up at the sky. “Anything?” Madsen called. She shook her head.

“You both need to get out of the water,” Sara shouted down. Flinching at its cruelty, she added, “He can’t be alive now. And we have to keep moving. The ice is closing in on us.”

“I know,” Madsen called.

“What are you saying?” Dorée snapped, behind her. She had an armful of life preservers, which she held over the bow and dropped one by one into the slowly gentling currents. “Did you find him?”

“I’m afraid he’s gone, Tehiyah.”

“Gone,” repeated Kimura dully. He’d come up on deck and stood shivering, arms wrapped around his chest, looking bewildered.

“Move up in the lead,” Madsen called up, side stroking toward the inflatable. “Sound the horn. Maybe he came up on the far side, and can’t see us to swim back.”

Sara walked aft, the ice crunching again, and sounded several long, very loud blasts. They died in thousands of echoes, pealing out and away, answered only by the sullen rumble of ice. She sounded it again, then looked ahead. The lead was even narrower. She put the boat in gear with the engine still in idle.
Anemone
floated forward, almost too slowly to be perceived, and edged past the still-rolling berg with no more than a slight scrape, a nearly imperceptible quiver.

“Where
is
he?” Tehiyah breathed. “Oh my God, my God—”

“I’m afraid, still down there,” Sara told her.

“No.” She stood stock-still, palms clapped over her face. Hideyashi hesitated, then put an arm around her, but she shook it off. “He was my … we were soul mates. Oh my God.”

“Help them aboard, Tehiyah. Hy. Snap out of it! We’ve got to keep going.” Through her disbelief and shock Sara felt heartless, a monster. But regardless of what had happened, the ice was still closing in. If they didn’t escape now, the lead would vanish.
Anemone
would be crushed, and none of them would get out alive.

“‘Keep going’? What are you talking about? We have to look for him. He’s out there somewhere.”

“Tehiyah, it’s been too long. Dru died trying to save us. Don’t waste it, all right? We’ll cry in a few minutes, when we get out of the ice. Okay?”

The actress wavered, then broke. She stumbled aft, weeping and screaming that tragedy followed her, that whenever she found love it fled. Kimura lowered lines to the Zodiac. When they had it turned right side up and in tow, with Lars and Eddi shivering but safe aboard, Sara pointed the prow into the next twist in the lead. The path from there was twice as wide and in a hundred yards the pack began to loosen, the sea-gaps growing larger and larger.

When next she looked over her shoulder, the berg that had capsized was difficult to locate among the others. At the next, as the open horizon yawned and she pressed the button to unfurl the sails, it had become merely another nameless and indistinguishable atom in the immense, slowly undulating mass of white, like a field of huge, blanched bones, that slowly dwindled astern.

14

Council of War

The sky clouded over and the wind picked up that afternoon. By dusk it was blowing at thirty knots, raising heavy short seas through which
Anemone
, heading east, rode with a violent pitching stagger, boom and stays groaning. After canned cheese ravioli hastily heated, they gathered in the salon. Now there were seats for everyone, at least once Lars asked Hideyashi if he’d mind steering. He said he didn’t know how, which meant a twenty-minute postponement for lessons. When they reconvened Eddi poured more tea and they sat in the swaying light, grabbing for holds when Kimura misjudged a sea.

And then, they did not seem to know where to begin.

Finally Bodine cleared his throat and hitched forward. “Nobody wants to, but let’s get down to it. Dru’s gone. We all miss him, but he’s fucking gone. So we got a decision to make. Where we go from here. What we do next.”

Madsen said, “We sailed under the CPL flag, to defend whales. That’s still the mission.”

“It’s still the mission, but now we don’t have a captain or even a mate,” Eddi said, then doubled over and coughed. She had on her blue track suit, a sweater over that, and a brown towel wrapped cravat-style around her neck, and wore gloves and a wool cap jammed low over her hair. Yet her face was still pale as a snowman’s and she still shuddered so deeply now and again that her fingernails rattled on the table.