The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (42 page)

“We can’t keep stuff frozen in the fucking Antarctic?”

No one answered. Sara was stuffing herself. The rice tasted different the way Hideyashi made it. She wondered how, then didn’t care. Just filling her mouth with hot food seemed to make everything better. Even the ache in her back and arms ebbed as she swallowed.

Their self-anointed captain laid the GPS on the table. “We’re still only getting two satellites, but the good news is we’re making four knots downwind. A hundred miles a day.”

“Forty days,” Sara said. “And forty nights.”

“I was thinking. The reason we couldn’t transmit on the radio is, we lost the antenna.”

“Did you try the handheld? Like you said?”

“Yeah, for an hour. Giving a Mayday and our position over and over. No answer. But if I can find some way to get another antenna up—a kite, maybe—we could broadcast shortwave.”

“A kite?” she said. But anything was worth trying. “Uh, sure—maybe. But hadn’t we better stop this water rising first?” He seemed to want to spend more time tinkering with the engine than bailing.

Lars nodded halfheartedly. “I just don’t see how we can do that without restarting an engine. The wind genny doesn’t give us much, and you can see we’re losing ground, as far as the bailing goes.”

“But you said you can’t start it.”

He blinked slowly. “I haven’t given up yet.”

“Would anyone like more?” Hy said from the galley. They held their plates out and he heaped them full again.

*   *   *

That night she rigged a line to keep her back from truly breaking. It ran across the cabin into the galley with a pulley she’d found under one of the lockers. No longer did she have to dip the pail far down into the keel well to fill it. The water eddied just below her knees now, flashing in the lanternglow that was the only light they had. All she had to do was pull it down, tip it to fill, then run it along dangling into the galley. She could lift only about half a pailful this way, but it went so much faster she had to be coming out ahead.

As long as she didn’t stop, the water stayed where it was. If she sat down to rest, soaking feet dangling in freezing water, it gained on her. Her feet no longer itched. In fact, she couldn’t feel them at all. She floundered about banging into things as the boat rolled.

Occasionally, bending to fill the bucket, she seemed to hear, or maybe feel, a faint clicking that carried up through the hull.

Toward midnight the water made a sudden rush. In less than an hour it rose from below her knees to just above them. She went forward and found Hy in his bunk. He moved slowly even when she screamed at him, but at last crept out and joined her, wielding the spaghetti pot. They battled for another hour as she passed into a daze from which she returned only now and again, usually panting folded over the sink, watching a pailful of bilge swirl down. It really did go the other way in the Southern Hemisphere. For some reason that seemed deeply significant.

Anemone
swayed far over to one side, and the water swept that way too. She lay over for a long time, drifting in a logy way. Then suddenly flipped, and all the water rushed to the other side. This made it harder to judge the depth, but Sara marked it on the bulkhead with a pencil.

Finally, wading through the water, she tripped and fell full length into it. It was freezing but didn’t feel cold. She lay relaxed as a starfish before the fire penetrated and she screamed bubbles into the cold sea. She staggered up again, sobbing, just as the boat creaked ominously.

The roll started fast. She grabbed a handhold, expecting it to stop, but it didn’t. The boat just kept on going over, farther and farther, and the water went to that side and it rolled even faster. The lantern tipped and fell and went out. Kimura cried out in Japanese. His pan clattered and splashed in the dark. She skidded downhill and caught the corner of the nav table in her solar plexus. Stars flashed.

Madsen came awake instantly when she shook him. “We’re going to turn over,” she yelled, right into his ear. “We almost did. Just then. Lars,
wake up
!”

*   *   *

Madsen stood in the slanting salon, staring in the glancing too-white beams of their flashlights at the sea that had shoaled up to starboard, covering the nav station. And the radio, she suddenly realized. That horror, the loss of even the possibility of calling for help, was only a small addition to the fear she felt now, clinging as the boat bucked and the sea within rolled like the dark sea without. “We’re going to turn over,” she said again. “Capsize and go down. Lars. The raft?”

“Up forward,” he said, but when she shone the beam that way the water was already above the hatch to the forepeak. The whole boat echoed and protested as it rolled, nose down, stern slanting up, and the bitter cold gripped her thighs and belly.

“Hy?” he shouted.

The curtain to Kimura’s cubicle stirred. He was back in the upper bunk, still above the glimmering surface.

Abruptly Sara saw flame. She waded forward. “You were supposed to be bailing, you asshole!”

“I was tired. And there’s no point.”

“No
point
? We’ll die!”

“We are going to anyway. Why should I do so with my hands bleeding?” He yawned in their conjoined beams. She couldn’t decide what this was: resignation? Realism? Utter fatigue? Terminal apathy?

She could sympathize. But she wasn’t going to give up. “We’ve got to get that emergency raft ready,” she told the tall man beside her.

“I don’t think that’s the answer, Sara. We’ll just die out there instead of in here.”

“So you’re saying it’s hopeless too?”

“I can work on the engine more. Try to start it again. The water’s not as high back there. I’m starting to think there must be air in the lines. Get it out somehow, I might get one started. Then we could run the pump.”

She was about to say No, don’t, but instead muttered, “If you can. Do it.”

“And you’ll bail?”

“Oh, yes. We’ll both bail,” she said grimly, and waded forward, fixing the beam of her light on the sallow slack face that blinked slowly from the upper bunk.

*   *   *

They bailed, though it made no difference she could see. She didn’t need to push the bucket back and forth now, which was good, because the deck was too steep now to climb. She just bent, filled it, and poured it into the sink. Now and then the water sloshed up and into the sink all on its own, it was getting that deep. At first this encouraged her, until it started vomiting back up. Then she understood. The drain too was underwater and the sink at the waterline. Which was not good. Not good at all.

All this went on in the near dark and freezing cold, with Kimura wheezing unwillingly beside her. She lifted three buckets to his one. Her back passed through agony to numbness to renewed agony. Her fingers burned, and the tips of her ears. She couldn’t feel her legs at all.

At last he lowered his container and slumped. She ignored this for a while, hauling up bucket after bucket. Then sucked a breath, about to scream at him, when a whoosh surrounded them all.
Anemone
gracefully inclined, like a kneeling elephant, and went hard over to starboard. The water flooded up and covered her, so shocking, burning cold it felt somehow glutinous. She let go of the sink and drifted, expecting to die.

She came up sputtering and flailing. About her the boat was rocking, seeking some new equilibrium or preparing for some new overturn. Then something twanged outside, the sound ringing through the water like the snap of a guitar string.

Anemone
staggered. Wavered. And slowly settled back. Not to an even keel or anything like it, but to a less extreme angle. The hissing all around came again, and she rocked gently as a babe in a nanny’s arms.

A grinding from aft was succeeded by a burring like a drill at low speed vibrating against loose metal. It died away, followed by hollow clicks and Danish curses.

Kimura was splashing and floundering off toward the companionway. She hung back, then decided she’d better follow. If they went down, the only exits would be underwater.

They reached the ladder, which now led up at an angle like the steps from a hotel pool, together. The hatch cover slid back, and past his head she saw the starless gray of Antarctic half-night and felt the chilling blast of the wind. The boat sagged. More things fell from the shelves, splashing now instead of shattering. Strange, she’d have thought everything that could fall had already come down. They had to get out,
now
—

With a grinding whine the engine fired. It hacked and whined and snorted and fired again. The starter slowed, then speeded up, as if whoever was on the button had decided to stake every amp in the battery on one last effort to turn it over. It fired and whined and whined and fired.

It caught in a jarring discordant clatter that filled the salon. Choking smoke eddied from aft. She sneezed and retched. Her heart seemed to vibrate between joy and terror in seconds-long alterations. She wanted both to weep and to laugh an insane chortle, but only crouched in the water, elbows on her knees, and shuddered.

In the engine room Madsen danced like a drunken bear, boots splashing. He grabbed and whirled her and for a moment she caught his glee and grinned and threw back her hair. Then released him and staggered back, caroming off throbbing steel that filled the space with a deafening roar. “I’m running full out, to recharge,” he yelled into her ear. “And run the pumps, too. If we can get the bilge dry we can fix the leaks. Then rig an antenna.”

“The radio was underwater.”

“Yeah, but everything aboard’s supposed to be waterproof. Dru always said that. First-class equipment.” He seized her again and they whirled in a tarantella that ended only when she pushed herself away and staggered to the step and sat down, panting, clutching her face with fingers that burned as if they had been dipped in molten lead.

They weren’t dead. Not yet.

They might even still make it home.

*   *   *

She woke to a slightly brighter sky through the portlight. The engine was still running and
Anemone
, or the mastless wreck she’d become, was rolling wildly. Sara shuddered in the bunk—her old one, Quill’s was too far from any exit—and slid out.

She shivered again in the moldy cold as she pulled on wet clothes that stank, thrust numb feet back into boots soled with ice. But when she dropped to the deck there was no splash. When she pulled the curtain aside only two or three inches of sea filmed the deck and rolled in gleaming sheets over itself. She took slow breaths, afraid she was going to wake from a reassuring dream. But the growl of her stomach told her this was reality.

She opened the freezer, but all that met her was the stink of rotting food. She held her breath, dug deep, and found a slab of still partially frozen tofu. She tore pieces off with her teeth, holding it in both hands, swallowing even as she gagged on the cilantro marinade. For a moment she seemed to glimpse herself from above, freezing, ulcerated, crouching like a cave dweller. She closed her eyes and tore off another ice-gritty mouthful.

Kimura joined her. He looked mournful and ill and the way he stared at her made her feel even more like a barbarian. “I will make hot tea for us,” he said.

“That’d be good. Lars up yet?”

“I don’t think he went to sleep.”

A stir at the engine room door, and Madsen staggered out. His weeping eyes were rimmed with scarlet. Beneath a mask of grease and soot curved a tentative smile. He said hoarsely, “We might be able to jack one of the shafts back in place. Get one of the propellers going again.”

A shuddering thud ran through the hull. They looked at each other. “Ice?” Kimura ventured.

She suddenly straightened, visions of white walls and sharp pinnacles running through her brain. How long since anyone had been topside? She dragged herself to the dome. Peered out through the scratched plastic, half crusted with frozen snow.

“Might be a berg way off. Maybe a couple miles. But I can’t see alongside.”

“I’ll go.” Lars wiped his hands on a rag, zipped his suit, and climbed the ladder. Halfway back he turned and said, “That tea sounds good.”

The bump came again, but it didn’t sound like ice. She frowned and craned up in her seat, trying to see over the side. No luck. The sky was overcast, as usual. The seas moved past in the same relentless succession. Birds wheeled over a disturbance on the surface, far off.

When she climbed down Kimura handed her a mug. The hot sweet liquid went down like grace itself and she gulped it all, not caring as she scorched her tongue. “More, please?”

“I boiled only a little water, so it would not take long. I will take some up to Lars.” He balanced another mug toward the companionway. She hesitated, looking at the blue flame on the stove. She bent over it, inhaling the eddying fumes, turning her face from side to side to bathe each cheek in the rising heat. How could anyone ever complain of being
too hot
?

Then she followed him.

*   *   *

The wind blustered, gusting and then falling away. She clung to the cockpit coaming, knees so weak she swayed. The raw bean paste wasn’t sitting well. She’d always loathed cilantro. Madsen was huddled atop the coachroof, staring over the side. She looked over, following his gaze, and all thought ceased.

The whale lay alongside, longer than the boat. Its massive back seemed to undulate, like a Dijon-colored mudbank, as the crests passed, lifting it a portion of a second after the hull, then letting them both down. As she watched the nostril opened and the spout jetted with a rushing hiss like a tractor-trailer releasing its brakes, spraying water and steam many feet into the air. It blew over them, bringing the nauseating now-familiar smell of decay, spoiled fish, and the sea. The aperture gaped again as the thing inhaled. The tail stirred in the water, yet did not rise. The massive bulk drifted slowly in to meet the hull with that same soft, yielding thud she’d felt from inside. The bilge pump hummed and a stream spurted from the side and played over the thing’s flank.

“It’s not ice,” Madsen muttered. He grinned at her through the mask of grease and soot. Crystal blue eyes glittered madly. “Not ice.”