Corcovado, Or Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

"The Waco?" How is she?"

"Fine, Captain. Mechanics were out last week, got her ready, just in case."

He nodded, saw the exploratory wells off to the south. First reports said there was at least thirty million barrels under the sand around here, maybe more.

No...he'd never sell. But he'd not tell Ted about any of this, either. At least, not until he was through with school. Nothing ruined people faster than easy money.

He turned for the porch and made his way slowly up the steps, then sat in Pop's old chair.

"Could I get you something to drink?" Margaret Stillwell said. "I made blueberry iced tea, just for you."

He looked at the woman and smiled. "Yes, that'd be nice. Thanks."

"You're welcome," the woman said, and she seemed puzzled by the look on his face. It almost, she thought, looked like a smile.

Coda

Log of the Sailing Vessel Altair

7 July 1230 hrs

Position: N43.14 E149.52

SOG: 6.1 knots COG 310º

Tried to shoot a noon site a few minutes ago, but still too much fog. Water temp 46ºF and the current is setting Altair to the north, and much more than expected. Some blue whales greeted me this morning and though I tried to steer clear they seemed to want to check me out. Seemed gentle enough, though I've heard all the stories about them attacking small boats. That typhoon is still building in the Philippine Sea, and as the track is turning more to the north Hokkaido is looking like the better choice now. Maybe Otaru. Supposed to be a good hurricane hole. Not quite 300 miles to landfall.

+++++

He finished writing in the logbook and put it on the little cockpit table, then picked up his old Steiner's and swept the horizon once, and something caught his eye so he flipped the radar to standby, then tried to pick out the object with the glasses again. Just a little gray notch that shouldn't be there, he sighed, then he switched on the radar.

"There you are, little buddy. Now...just who the hell are you?"

Then...the target simply disappeared.

"Odd," he said.

"What's odd?" Brigit said from the galley.

"Something on the horizon, picked it up on radar about ten miles out, then it just disappeared."

She came up the companionway steps, two cups of chicken soup in hand, and she handed one to him and sat beside him.

"Where?"

He pointed ahead and to starboard. "About 340 degrees."

"Any buoys out here?"

"Nothing on the chart."

"How big was it?"

"Not very. It looked weird, too. Like almost black, and small."

"Fishing boat?"

"No. No rigging, no antennae, either." He swept the horizon with his glasses, then took a sip from the mug. "Damn, that's still hot..."

"Sorry. Cold soup just doesn't cut it out here."

He shook his head, cleared his throat. "What did you put in this batch? Jalapeños, or some plutonium?"

She laughed. "Last of the freeze-dried scallions. If we don't find a grocery store, and soon, we'll be into those ramen noodles."

"I never imagined this would take fifty-five days."

"Neither did I," she said, grinning.

"Sorry you came?"

"I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

"So..."

It was the way he stopped speaking, in mid-sentence, that made her look up. She saw the expression on his face, in his eyes, and so she turned - and looked where he was looking.

A tall metal cylinder had just appeared beside Altair, not twenty yards away, and it was just standing there, inert. Gray, with splotches of gray, it was sticking up out of the sea like an old tree...

"Jim? What is that...?" Brigit asked.

"Submarine."

"Ours, or theirs?"

And, as if to answer the question, a vast bubbling surrounded Altair, then a huge, black sail broke the surface, the number 741 in palest gray on its side. Moments later, crewmen in orange parkas appeared on the conning tower.

A man came to the edge and peered down at them, then pulled out a loud-hailer and spoke: "You Captain Patterson?"

He cupped his hands and called back: "Yessir."

"Y'all need anything?"

He looked at Brigit, who whispered in his ear...

"Uh, you wouldn't happen to have any spare caviar on board, or some Champagne, would you?"

"Sorry. No."

"Well then, I think we're good."

"Uh, listen, some folks back in D.C. are worried about you guys..."

"We're fine. Really. I have at least three more boxes of Trojans, so fear not..."

"Well, someone said y'all are trying for Yokosuka? You keeping track of the typhoon?"

"Yessir. We're going to try for Otaru. Where are you headed?"

"That way," the submariner said, pointing vaguely towards the sky, and they all laughed at that. "You have a watermaker on board?"

"Yessir."

"Well, I'm sending over some spare fruit and fresh baked bread."

"Okay. Won't turn it down."

Crewmen inflated a small dink and rowed over, handed up a couple of canvas bags then rowed back, and Brigit took the bags below while Jim stood at the helm.

"Look," the skipper of the Maine said, "we have orders to see you get into port. We have other orders, too, but we'll be in the neighborhood."

"Okay. Understood." And with that, he saluted and the thirty or so men on the Maine's deck saluted back, then the diving klaxon sounded and everyone scurried below - and seconds later she was gone, just a black hole in the water.

"Jim?"

Something in her voice caught him off-guard. "Yeah," he said, turning to her.

She was holding a piece of paper in one hand, hanging on to a rail with the other as she stepped into the cockpit, then she handed him the paper.

It looked like an old dot-matrix Telex, printed on fan-fold paper, and the ink had, apparently, been running low on this particular unit."

'Susan pregnant. Word is they're doing the deed first August. If you think you can manage it, all would love to see you. MG. Oh, Your boy soloed two weeks ago, in the old Waco. Thought you should know.'

"Soloed, in a Waco? What does that mean?"

He stood there, hanging on to Altair's wheel, trying to hold onto life, and he tried to explain - but he knew he was making little sense now. He stumped his way below, opened the Iridium sat-phone and downloaded five weeks of messages and he read through all the ignored correspondence. A few minutes later he typed out his replies and sent his words on their way, and he wondered why he'd tried to cut himself off from that world so completely.

It didn't matter, he knew. It was a done deed now.

He looked at the chartplotter and made another entry in the log, then he went topsides and looked at the halo around the sun. Rain soon, he thought. Maybe the first outer bands of this monster typhoon. Well, they'd make port in two more days, so with plenty of time to spare.

Brigit was at the wheel, rolling with the swell, checking the sails as he looked at her.

'How did I get so lucky?' he said, if only to himself.

He went to the aft rail and looked down into his wake, into his passage through time and all the places he'd been, and for a moment he thought he heard someone laughing. It sounded like Pops, laughing at the stars again, then all was quiet and he was alone with his memories, bubbling along the surface of a black sea, running from the storm.

(C) 2018 adrian leverkühn | abw