The Whiteness of the Whale: A Novel (8 page)

“The Japanese. So you can hear them? From how far?”

“Two, three hundred kilometers. Unless they shut their radars down.”

“A few other tricks they can use,” Bodine muttered. “But until they tumble to how we’re tracking them, we’ve got a lock on their position. So, Dru? Alter course?”

“Not just yet. We might have weather coming up. Can you tell which way they’re headed?”

“If we can hold contact, I can get a bearing drift. Maybe work up their course from that.”

“Sara?” Eddi’s pixie face appeared at the hatch. “You in here? We need to get up on deck.”

Already? she thought, and sighed. “Coming.”

*   *   *

Her suit was still wringing wet, and plunging dry feet into rubber boots with half an inch of icy water in the bottom dampened her spirits as well as her socks. She climbed the companion ladder as if towing the weight of the world. Not just fatigue, but a visceral unwillingness to go back up. She panted to force oxygen into her bloodstream. Maybe not two hours this time. Maybe she’d give herself a break for once.

Topside the sky was still light. The sea seemed rougher, the wind even colder. Jamie Quill was huddled before the wheel. His little pig eyes peered suspiciously out of a black nest of balaclava from which beard stuck out in tufts. “’Bout time,” he grumbled, slapping himself with flailing arms. “Fooking freezing up here. What’d they want Lars for?”

“Mick picked up the whaling fleet. We’ll probably be changing course.”

“Huh. Okay. But for now, we’re still on the same heading. Wind’s up to thirty, gusting to thirty-five. Main’s double reefed. Jib’s halfway out. Auto’s keeping us on course, but be ready to grab the wheel if it goes bonkers. Gonna get darker soon. The sun don’t go down, but it dips, so remember to check the lights. And keep a close eye on that radar. There’ll be ice sooner or later. We want to see it first.”

She told him they had it, he could go below. She checked the autopilot—apparently it was all right to use it now—and made sure they were on course. Flicked it off, steered herself for a few minutes, then turned it back on. An anthracite sea built aft until it towered over them. “Hold on,” she shouted to Eddi.
Anemone
felt heavier, and didn’t rise as quickly as it had that morning. The sea surged up the slanted stern-ramp, over the inflatable, and detonated into a heavy burst of icy spray, soaking the wool over her face and obliterating sight as her glasses flooded even beneath the goggles.

A waterproof intercom connected the cockpit with the salon. She pressed the button and bent her mouth close. “Dru? We’re taking a lot of spray up here. And the waves’re getting bigger.”

“I ballasted aft. It’ll be wetter, for sure. Try and stay out of the worst of it. Keep your safety lines tight.” A pause, then, “I’ll be right up.”

She helped him winch the main into its boom and lash it down. They wound the jib in and
Anemone
slowed further. He beckoned her forward, bright tangerine safety lines spinning out behind them like twin spider threads. They snugged everything tight and locked off the furling lines and beat ice off everything they could reach.

By the time they crawled aft again she could barely creep on all fours. While she rested, Perrault got the lines up off the cockpit sole and back into their bags. He looked aft at their trailing line, which led to a fluorescent green torpedo kicking up spray fifty yards astern. If someone fell overboard and his safety line broke, his only chance was to grab that green line, hang on, and hope one of the others slowed the boat and reeled him in before he passed out from hypothermia.

“We’re going to move you inside,” Dru said at last. “As soon as I get everything ready to stand watch from the dome.”

When he went below again she felt twice as lonely. The sea was an infinite corrugation of huge swells. The wind shredded their tops off and blew them along the surface in long straight streamers of spray. Not even an albatross wheeled between them and the dull clouds, low and rain-leaded. She coiled her safety line and joined Eddi in the lee, where they hugged each other for the illusion of body heat as a fine shower began to fall. She sank into a stupor, broken by spasms of shivering.

Some interminable time later Eddi was shaking her. “Get up. Sara. Wake up. There’s something ahead.”

She opened her eyes into failing light, a low-hanging drizzle. Auer was pointing. Sara sat up and blinked. Obscure in the mist, a massive shape glowed in the falling dusk.
Anemone
was headed for it. A ship? An island? She hit the intercom.

Perrault was topside in seconds, stuffing a heavy plaid wool shirt into waterproof pants. She felt guilty, he looked so obviously yanked from sleep. “Up there,” she said, pointing.

“Iceberg. Didn’t you see it on the radar?”

“N … no. We didn’t,” Auer said, shamefaced. “Sorry, uh, Captain…”

He frowned. “You’ll have to be more alert.”

“Sorry,” they chorused, and he nodded, unsmiling, but not pursuing it. He looked ahead again. “It’s a big one. Maybe a mile across.”

The word spread. One by one the crew came up and ranged along the coachroof, staring. She gazed, forgetting her misery as they drew closer. Irregular and spiky, with scooped-out sides, the berg reminded her of a modern artist’s take on a giant white cake. Even through the pewter mist it glowed cerulean and cream, the sea frothing and seething at its base. Perrault pressed the pedal to release the self-steerer and took the wheel. They skirted it slowly. Deep bays gradually opened to reveal melt-runs like waterslides sloping down to blue pools. She took the binoculars someone handed her and focused on black specks. “Penguins,” Eddi murmured.

Anemone
rolled to a larger-than-usual wave. Dorée gave a short scream and flung herself into Perrault’s arms. He held her, face unreadable, and shouted, “Okay, most of you, below. You can take turns coming up to look, but we can’t have everybody up here at once.” Sara saw Bodine’s shaggy black head cupped by the dome, and wondered how he’d gotten himself up there. Climbed, with those incredibly powerful arms, no doubt.

Quill, who had the wheel now, turned it to sheer away, but Dorée cried, “No! Go closer. I want to film this. Our first iceberg.”

They sailed slowly past. The drizzle thickened to an icy sleet, dancing across the deck like steel needles punching up through it. Sara watched the sea bursting against the strangely skirtlike bottom of the berg. Portions were planed flat, tilting this way and that at queer angles. In the subdued light blue shadows shifted as if something were moving about deep within. It must once have been flat on top, but had broken apart and tumbled, then frozen back together. A strange exercise in topology, saddles and valleys, and abrupt peaks stabbing the mist. As they neared, the penguins began sliding down the wash like toddler-sized skateboarders, disappearing into the waves that frothed at the base. The ice cliff reared up many yards taller than
Anemone
’s mast. Another huge wave foamed past, then broke into spattering suds against the berg.

“Farther off, Jamie,” Perrault called, waving.

“Oh, just a little closer. Dru,
please.
”

Dorée had gone all the way forward. She stood with arms outstretched, hood tossed back, smiling radiantly. For a moment Sara thought she was smiling at her. Then saw the pale assistant crouched on her heels atop the coachroof, aiming the camera.

“Can you see it, Georgita? Get it all in the frame!”

“Not quite, Miss Tehiyah. Wait, hold that … I’m filming now.”

Dorée half turned and pointed. “There it is! Careful, Captain, not too close!”

“Not quite so shrill,” the assistant murmured.

“There it is. Careful, not too close!”

“Better, okay … one more take.”

“There it is, Dru. Careful! Not too close!”

“Good. Good.”

“Now get the sea behind me. Those white pieces bobbing around. Can you pan along with the penguins jumping out of the water between them? That’s a great shot. Higher, Georgie. Can you get a little higher, and shoot down? And get them, behind me?”

“I’ll try.” The assistant lurched to her feet and crept to the peak of the roof, then hauled herself one-armed up onto the boom. She stood swaying, one white-knuckled hand gripping the mast, the other aiming the camera.

“Careful,” Sara called.

“Hey! You! Get down!” Quill barked.

Sara turned and saw the wave bearing down. “Get down!” she called, and started forward along the sleet-slicked deck.

Georgie looked frightened. She crouched, cradling the camera to her breast like a baby. The boat rose, rose, then sank away. She teetered, but held on.

The wave burst against the berg, and the backwash rolled toward
Anemone
. Georgita, on the boom, had one foot extended to the coachroof when the boat leaned out from beneath her. Her boot slipped, and shot out into space.

She went down hard, rolled, and slid down the slanted roof toward the lifeline. Her right arm still cradled the camera. Her left caught the stanchion, but awkwardly, and as the weight of her tobogganing body hit it there was a loud crack like a breaking tree limb.

An instant later both Madsen and Quill had their fists embedded in her suit and were dragging her back over the gunwale. Georgita hadn’t actually gone into the slowly passing sea, but her left arm dangled and her face had gone white as the bobbing chunks, the size of basketballs, that drifted past.

Eddi put an arm carefully around her. “God, Georgie, you all right?”

Her face was pale ivory around the nose and lips. “I—I slipped.”

“I told her not to get up there,” Dorée snapped.

Sara said, “Let us through. Let’s get her below.”

“Oh, my. It hurts.”

“We’ll take a look. Give me the camera.” Sara handed it to Madsen and together she and Eddi got the girl, tears and snot glazing her chin, down the companionway and onto the salon table, where they peeled off the mustang suit, then the blue fleece.

The arm didn’t look quite right, but there was no jagged bone breaking the skin, and no blood. The injured girl stared up into the light, pupils dilated.

Bodine staggered out of his sanctum on plastic and titanium. “She hurt?”

“Broken arm, looks like,” Sara told him.

“Fracture? Usually pretty easy to deal with.”

“You have training?”

“Battlefield medic. Want me to check her out?”

“Please.” She turned to Eddi. “We could use a blanket.”

Perrault came down as Bodine was manipulating Georgita’s arm. “Proximal humerus,” he told the captain. “Looks a little crooked, but it doesn’t seem grossly displaced.”

“Lucky it wasn’t her pelvis or hip, the way she went down.” The captain stroked her shoulder. “Georgie, do you need a shot? I have morphine in the aid kit.”

She groaned, but didn’t speak.

“I’d rather wait a little. I want her to be able to talk,” Bodine said, tickling the tips of Georgita’s fingers. “Can you feel this? Georgie-girl?”

“No.” She spoke into the light, not looking at their faces. Shivers racked her. Eddi came back with the blanket, spread it and tucked it in. “Thanks,” she whispered.

“I’m going to have to do something now that’ll hurt. But I’ll get it over fast as I can.” Without waiting for an answer, Bodine turned the arm and began pressing strong fingers deep into it. A reddish-purple blush bloomed under the skin. His fingers probed behind it, paused, moved on. Came back and pressed harder. The girl stiffened and cried out.

“Displaced?” Sara muttered.

“Can’t really tell without X-rays. But I think I can get it back where it belongs. Or close. Got to do this now, before it swells. Dru, get her feet. Eddi, take her shoulders.” Auer, freckles standing out, took her place at the head of the table, biting her lip. “Sara, I need downward tension. When I say so, pull on her arm.”

“How hard?”

“Hard as you can, but pull steadily, don’t yank at it. The biceps is starting to knot. Get braced—ready—
now
.”

A full-throated scream burst from the woman on the table. Auer grabbed for her free arm, but took a whack across the face as Georgita thrashed. A flailing boot caught Perrault in the mouth before he pinned it. Sara kept her attention on Bodine as she maintained tension on the arm. His fingers pressed deep into the purpling flesh, expression abstracted, remote, as he probed. Then he shifted his thumbs and leaned into them. Georgita screamed again, a burst of agony that filled the salon.

“Okay, the ends are lined up. You can let go.… All done, kiddo. We’ll get you fixed up, then give you something to help you sleep.”

Sara was wringing with sweat despite the chill air by the time they were done. Helped by Perrault, Bodine sawed a spare antenna into seven-inch sections, then splinted them around the break with an elastic bandage. He dosed her with morphine and Aleve and sent Eddi topside for ice to make a pack. “The less swelling, the less she’ll hurt,” he explained. “You can sit up now, Georgie. Cradle that arm with your other one. I’m going to make you a sling.”

When he’d folded and pinned a canvas reefing strap into place, Sara and Eddi stood on either side as the girl swung her legs down off the table. She said in a shaky voice, “I think I’m going to v-vomit.”

“Into the bathroom … oops. Never mind. We’ll clean that up. Let’s just get you into your bunk.”

Some time later Sara told Perrault, who was sitting in the elevated chair beneath the dome, “She’s resting.”

“Strapped in?”

“Yes. I wedged her in good.” She hesitated. “We’re heading back, right?”

He didn’t look at her. “Heading back? Why?”

“Well, I mean … her arm…”

“I’ve sailed single-handed with a broken arm. She’ll be fine.”

She blinked. “Are we still expecting bad weather?”

“Well, I’m hoping to avoid it,” the captain said, pressing keys on a dashboard beneath the dome. A pump hummed aft. “But we need to get ready, just in case. There’s a big low-pressure system headed our way. Weather marches west to east down here. Fifty-knot winds, gusting to fifty-five or sixty. In open sea, that means thirty-foot waves. Maybe more. Plus snow. We’ve been casual up to now. About stowage, and … other things. Now we have to get serious.”