The Last Ship (75 page)

“I would not dishonor it by calling it the satisfying of a curiosity, this look at one’s home . . . that part is a duty. But the ship really goes for something else altogether. However great the necessity of the other, that is not the ship’s principal mission. The ship has a far more important one than that. She goes looking for places with greater likelihood of having people. That’s what she’s really looking for—people. Human beings. Like ourselves.”

He paused, reflectively. “There’s a practical side to this. She might, let us say, find people to bring here, making certain first that they are uncontaminated—the radiation officer would see to that. Not many—the island is too small. A few people carefully chosen. We would be compelled to be selfish, selective . . . people chosen for their skills or for something else useful to this community. More women would help.” That reference so quickly made, with no emphasis whatsoever, a mere example, his moving so immediately on that any particularity as to it was lost, if intended in the first place. I decided not. “That but one of many possibilities. All dependent on what the ship finds out there.” The slightest nod of the head toward the unrevelatory horizon.

Abruptly he turned directly to me, his voice while full of conviction all equable up to now, modulating to something deeply earnest, insistent, even with a proselytizing note.

“But the true reason for sending the ship is not even the practical one in that purely selfish sense. The reason is . . . simply that we have to know. If there are other people than ourselves. That is what we have absolutely to find out, Captain. We have no choice. I cannot explain why. I do not think I need to do so.”

Of course I understood all of that. But there was something else and I held in my hand the core of my astonishment. This time I stepped in with it.

“You want to take your ship off and do that?”

He smiled faintly. “Not exactly, Captain. The ship, yes. I have a plan there, too.”

I was about to ask the next question, feeling for the first time in the air that foreboding sense that after all of these brotherly interchanges, something else—hard, barrier differences—was about to make its appearance, when deliberately before I could, he proceeded in almost a new voice, discursiveness vanished, replaced by short, clipped phrases as to a plan obviously workable, perhaps brilliant.

“Pushkin
to make that voyage. Ship’s company . . . say, two-thirds of it—by necessity consisting of our people . . . the particular skills known only by submariners. The other third brought ashore . . . taken into this community. Replaced, that one-third, by your own sailors . . . their skills as destroyer men, seamanship skills, radio communications skills for an instance, easily transferable to a submarine . . . no problem whatsoever there, a minimum of indoctrination . . . a Russian-American submarine at that point and thereafter . . . just as here an American-Russian community.”

And he simply stopped. I sat quite overwhelmed by my impressions. More than by any other single one, at the fluent way he had taken over, as it were. His references to the island, to anything . . . as if they were now all jointly held, by my people, by his people, jointly owned, simply taking that for granted. He had a complete plan for everything, down to the finest detail: One-third of
Pushkin
’s crew put ashore, to be replaced by an equivalent number of our people . . . yes, it was almost as if he had taken charge. I could not—indeed at this point was not prepared to do anything . . . other than stall.

“An interesting arrangement. I would hate to see yourself leave, Captain.” I said it almost as a formality.

An actual grin, a tone turned light. “But I would have no intention of doing so. My fine executive officer is qualified in all respects to command—as much as I may like to think otherwise, my own presence entirely unnecessary.
Pushkin
goes on an exploration to find out what there may be on the rest of the earth, beyond this island. May find nothing. The important matters will be here . . .” He paused, seemed again almost proprietarily to look around. “This island. Where we have something of a certainty . . . All the important matters will be proceeding here . . . After all, this is now the center of the universe.” He smiled mischievously . . . “Wouldn’t want to miss them. Why, I would not think of leaving here.”

I was astonished. Since the “Magellan” voyage was almost irresistible to any sailor, especially to the captain of the ship which would make the voyage, why was he himself not going? Wonderments crowded my mind, yes, suspicions. To give voice to these . . . if there was one thing above all we must avoid, it was suspicion of any kind as to each other’s motives. Once they got in . . . To assure that they did not, he had taken that first immense step himself—the immediate, voluntary transfer of the fuel I have mentioned, without first trying to extract concessions of any kind. I must not be the one to introduce misgivings as between us.

“I would not think of leaving here,” he had said. A beat of a pause. I believe I suggested that there was no reason to suppose that his uprightness excluded cunning. “Unless you should not want me.”

It was my turn. “Come off it, Captain.”

“I thought I had rather good English. I don’t think I know that expression.”

“Of course you do. You do now.”

He laughed outright. “Then I shall consider myself invited aboard. That is to say, if . . . if the plan goes with you. Naturally you will need time to consider . . . Of course, if you do not like my plan, you can take the
James
and all her ship’s company, conduct all of these explorations yourself, leave the island to us in safekeeping—we’ll keep it in good shape for you until you return.”

He had looked at me, saying that. His eyes had a light in them, his face an expression to be sure of a certain mirth . . . still, I had the distinct feeling one could not be sure that if I had said, “Why, what a splendid arrangement; we’ll see you in a year . . .” One could not be sure at all. Impressions, thoughts, feelings, many of them in conflict with one another, rushing in on me; a time to say nothing, make no commitment; to back off; establish, after the hardest and coolest appraisals, a position. Then I knew what my problem was. Through all of this onslaught came one overriding concern—two such sea captains as sat on this cliffside both being on a single island . . . each accustomed to sovereignty, himself of a strong personality, hardly a man inclined to passiveness . . . such a circumstance seemed to me fatally flawed . . . there could be trouble, built-in, inherent, inescapable . . . trouble . . . Frankly, I wished he would go with his ship. I could hardly order him to do so . . . if nothing else the fuel he had brought us restraining me, seeming to exclude that option. Indeed that seemed to be the problem: I could not order him to do anything. I spoke pleasantly.

“I will discuss it with my officers and ship’s company of the J
ames,”
I said. “And let you know. Quite presently.”

“I shall await your answer, Captain. Incidentally, if
Pushkin
goes, we will need a new VLF antenna for her to report her findings back to us.”

It was as though he had anticipated every detail.

“That will be no problem.”

I had half-risen to go.

“Captain?”

“Yes?”

He spoke offhandedly, as though he had simply forgotten to mention another detail.

“One thing is to be taken for granted, of course. I hardly need say this. But lest there be any mistake, let me state it clearly—in what I believe you call plain English. I have been too long a sailor not to know that there can be but one ship’s captain. Surely you assumed this in all that I had to say. I simply want there to be not the slightest misunderstanding as to that. Remaining here, I submit myself without reservation to your command, Captain. And to whatever duties you may deem me fit for.”

So at last, I thought, he was inside my mind. If I had not known it before, I knew it now: I was dealing with a formidable human being.

“The matter had not occurred to me,” I said. “But I appreciate your stating it so definitively, Captain.”

He had stood up. “I am very hungry,” he said.

I stood alongside him, held his arm for a moment, why I cannot say, perhaps as though, subconsciously remembering the Jesuit, remembering also that he was still in recovery from his long ordeal on the submarine, I wished to remove him from the cliff’s edge.

“Then let’s go eat,” I said.

Climbing down through the green, it was with a certain startlement that I realized he had not so much as come near to asking about the women, whether the participation of his ship’s company in the settlement was to include participation in them as well. I wondered why he had not done so. That he took it for granted? Or, just the opposite, that he would not even ask, now or ever? Simply leave it up to us. Even as I had these thoughts, as we walked along the stream bed, from him came the most casually pitched question, seeming idly asked.

“Any effects of the radiation on your men you’ve noticed so far?”

Something quite awful passed through me. I continued my steps, steadied my voice.

“Nothing noticeable.” I told a technical truth.

“I’m glad to hear it. That was my chief concern about you. Especially when you were telling me about the passage through that terrible winter. Naturally—as I’ve indicated—that was one advantage—maybe the chief one—a submariner would have over a surface-ship sailor.”

 *  *  * 

It was Silva’s crew who found them. Having taken his fishing detail off the northern part of the island, a vicinity which had been yielding with exceptional abundance of late, he sighted something come to rest against a tiny spot of sand, one of those that here and there interrupted the high rocky cliffs on the eastern side. Saw the boat, approached, saw then
Nathan James-2
painted on its upturned side. The boat itself heavily battered, the sail which had been rigged collapsed, as if having encountered vicious seas. Later, looking at it, I was to remember that strong storm that had hit the island. It was not until he had come still nearer that Silva saw what was lying across the deck. They had tied themselves in. He put out a line and towed what was left of the boat down the waters to the settlement. We would never know but I was to wonder. Had they found nothing, realized it was hopeless and headed back to the only refuge? The Jesuit conducted the funeral services, brief readings from the Scriptures in the Main Hall. All of ship’s company then marched up the hill, following men bearing the two coffins Noisy Travis had fashioned, of very differing sizes, hers Preston alone carrying on his shoulder. Earlier Noisy had made a cross to place over Billy, of the same fine wood that had gone into the settlement buildings; then had come to see me in a quandary about Meyer.

“A Jewish girl, I believe,” he said. “A Star of David, Captain?”

Meyer had been about as nonreligious as a person could be. I remembered that humorous scene by the lifeline when she had complained of Billy’s going on a bit too much about it. I was certain she would not have wanted the Cross, little more the Star of David.

“We have to put something,” Noisy said. “Can’t have something over Billy’s, not over hers. Wouldn’t seem right, Cap’n. I knew her pretty well, sir. I reckon she wouldn’t mind.”

It was a remarkably long speech for the carpenter, and the only one involving an effort at persuasion, even insistence, I could recall ever having heard from him, its heartfeltness reaching through to me.

“You’re right, Noisy. Make it a Star of David.”

Our little cemetery stood on one of the island’s highest points, over the green a vast circumferential view of the sea, reaching to all horizons. It was as if we were still aboard ship, committing their bodies to the deep. We stood there, all wearing whites instead of the dungarees that had become our uniform, as the Jesuit read the familiar words. A slight easterly breeze was blowing, rustling the pages in his breviary, his having to hold them down 
. . . In sure hope of the Resurrection 
. . . In sailor fashion, ship’s company joined in its own requiem, Porterfield in his wisdom choosing not a hymn, in consideration of Meyer, but a song, in consideration of Billy, that for reasons unknown has long had an almost mystical meaning to sailors; one also he knew they both had liked. “Shenandoah.” The voices, men’s and women’s, rising softly in the air, falling out over the peaceful sea.

Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter,

Away, you rolling river,

For her, I’ve crossed the stormy water,

Away, away, I’m bound away,

’Cross the wide Missouri . . .

They went down in the separate coffins; the burial ground itself one space, however, so that they lay side by side, under Noisy’s two escutcheons, united at last, forever so, high above the immortal sea.

A
ship will deteriorate if it just sits. An exercise run: the
Nathan James
needed that, and regularly, say every couple of weeks. Before, not daring to expend the fuel, we were now freed up to indulge this matter virtually essential if we were to preserve the ship. We had had three now. The ship casting off at first light, returning at last light. Standing out, going over the horizon, making turns, executing various drills, shiphandling, seamanship, gunnery, sonar tracking and a score more, keeping her at low speeds to conserve fuel even though she now had such ample reserves. For purposes of these maneuvers I had divided ship’s company into “starboard” and “port” crews; each of about eighty-five hands, alternating in the biweekly run, one under myself, the other under my executive officer Thurlow, so that all hands could keep their shipboard skills up to the mark. It had turned out that the men actually looked forward to the cruises, to resume being sailors if only for a day. Men now farmers, yanked from their tilling; men now carpenters from their settlement-upkeep chores; fishermen from that detail; all to discover again that they were still seamen, sailors; boatswain’s mates, radarmen, electrician’s mates, signalmen, machinist’s mates, gunner’s mates, enginemen, and all the many other specialties, given a chance to turn once again to their old skills, the idea being if they should ever be needed again—if the ship should go somewhere—neither she nor her crew would have rusted away. Wholly unlikely that eventuality now seemed, unless—what each week appeared a more and more remote possibility, until it became in our minds an almost dismissible idea—radiation might yet move in, attack the island which by now had become such a possession of ours, an ever-growing satisfaction in it, in its livability, in what we had made of it—more and more feeling, not just a refuge, but like—home. We could not protect ourselves against that distant chance of contamination except, should it ever happen, to flee from it on the ship. The exercise also serving another need—to keep the men sharp in what also seemed improbable, some attack on the island by unknown other ships or persons suddenly appearing from over the horizon and seeing what they would see, understandably desirous of possessing for themselves this forthcoming island, and all we had added to it—Billy Barker’s claimed sighting came to mind; the ship then being required to defend the island. As to the former contingency, I had had a conversation once or twice with Thurlow, who, after Selmon, being ship’s company’s most knowledgeable man in the field, had succeeded him as radiation officer, concerning the possibility of anything atmospheric ever driving us out of here. He was entirely reassuring—well, not quite entirely, having acquired from his predecessor that mind-set as to the always unpredictable character of that new element, though not confronting us, it seeming an incontestable truth that elsewhere it had become an ineradicable part of the earth; of its very anatomy.

“Even with the most farfetched aberration of the winds,” he said one day as we sat chatting in my cliffside cabin, “anything that was going to reach here . . . it would seem to be valid that it would have long since done so. Except . . .” He glanced out at the vast Pacific, at those horizons over which, if anything ever arrived at all, it would come. “I can think of but one circumstance that could alter that projection.”

“And that?” I said mildly. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Mr. Thurlow.”

“No, sir. The only thing that might threaten us would have to be if someone, somewhere, fired off more nuclear missiles, dropped more nuclear bombs.”

“Now?” I said in astonishment. “Who in the world would launch them or drop them? And at or on whom?”

“I’m just speaking of a very finite thing, sir. Surely we’ve all learned by now that in this field it’s difficult to speak in absolutes, absent evidentiary data.”

He was getting as lofty and as circumlocutory as Selmon sometimes had been. Understandably, it went with a profession in which the capricious, the unforeseeable, was commonplace.

“Try speaking some English, please, Mr. Thurlow.”

He smiled gently. “Well, sir, we don’t
know
what else there is in the rest of the world, especially in every particular part of it, do we? I hold as much as ever to the belief, all data as conclusive as you can ever get to absoluteness, barring visible authentication, that everything is gone. Correct that.
Almost
everything. Most of us have always felt that there were pockets of people somewhere, haven’t we? Still are.”

“Yes. I feel that, too,” I said, a bit impatiently. “Other people. We’ve covered that ground. Please come to whatever your point was, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir. I was getting to that. Suppose one of those places was a little larger than what we call ‘pockets’ . . . Suppose it had some missiles . . . Suppose there was one such group somewhere else, similarly supplied . . . Suppose they let go at each other . . . given the record to date I’m sure they could find some reason to do so . . . and introduced a fresh new supply of rather large contamination into the atmosphere . . . suppose the winds, such efficient couriers as we’ve seen, transported it here . . .”

“Suppose,” I said.

He stopped. I simply looked at him. He remained entirely unperturbed under that steady gaze.

“You asked me about absolutes, Captain. There just aren’t any absolutes in these circumstances, are there, sir? And what I describe is no more than what happened before.”

“Quite a scenario. You wouldn’t care to quote odds?”

“Captain, I don’t think we can permit ourselves that indulgence where radiation contamination is concerned, where the winds are concerned . . . if we’ve learned anything we’ve learned that. But I will say, if not infinitesimal—we’ve learned also not to call any conceivability infinitesimal when speaking of those two forces—I would judge remote. Quite remote. I would go so far as to say extremely remote.”

“I’m extremely glad to hear it,” I said.

“Sir, one thing.”

“Yes, Mr. Thurlow?”

“Our own missiles.
James
’s missiles. Now added,
Pushkin
’s missiles. I was doing a few calculations the other day. I happen to have taken a look down at the two of them lying there so close together—must have started these mental exercises. What’s still sitting in the holds of those two ships . . .”

He stopped, as if sorry already he had brought the subject up. It was my turn.

“Yes,” I said. “Go on, Alex,” a certain insistence in my voice.

“Well, sir, their supplies have been scarcely touched. The
James
has forty-four Tomahawks in her magazine—seven hundred and four H’s in our old Hiroshima terms.
Pushkin
has twenty-four SS-N-20’s with eight five-hundred-kt warheads per missile—she only had to expend two: seven thousand six hundred and eighty H’s left. Together, both ships, a total of eight thousand three hundred and eighty-four H’s.” He had no notes before him and the figures emerged as tonelessly as a memory-perfect accountant reporting any routine inventory. “Do you understand what I mean, sir, by the possibility of there still being forces existent that could do it all over again—I mean recontaminate the earth’s atmosphere, or certainly a considerable portion of it, almost as badly as those things did before? Why, sir, one could simply look over the cliffside and strike the word ‘possibility.’ These two ships alone could quite do the job.”

Thurlow’s voice, all of equanimity before, seemed to my ear just at the very last there to have mutated a notch into something carrying the unintended tones of urgency. The ships were sitting just below us. We could actually see them. An element absolutely new had entered the dialogue, its chatlike nature abruptly catalyzed by those ships into something as real as could be, and strangely scary. I looked at him in a different way.

“Are you getting at something, Mr. Thurlow?”

“Nothing, sir . . . except the fact that the very existence of those objects—whether ten thousand miles away or a cable’s length—prevents me from ever being able to reach those absolutes you were mentioning. I take it you meant absolutes as to freedom of concern from precisely what it is they cause—when launched, of course.”

“Who in God’s name would launch them?”

“You mean ours?” He shrugged. “Nobody, I suppose. Their . . .” He hesitated, found the word. “Being means they could be launched. I believe you were asking me as to possibilities, sir.”

It was a merited reproof of his captain, a lesson in the most elementary of logic.

“So I was, Mr. Thurlow. And you were entirely in line.” Now I watched his eyes very carefully as I asked it. “You’re not proposing any particular action for us to take?”

“Sir, that is not my field . . .”

I spoke more briskly. “I asked you a question, Mr. Thurlow. When I do that, I expect an answer. I’m telling you to make it your field.”

“Well, sir, if you put it that way, I would prefer . . .” For a moment, the rarest thing in the world for this officer, he seemed to find himself unable to say what he wanted to say, as if sorry he had ever got into the matter in the first place, opened this Pandora’s box, his reward for doing what he was paid to do, analyze, complete with the best data available, every contingency, near or distant—his reward for fulfilling as radiation officer this essential duty, he must surely have felt, being to be most unfairly put on the spot. So be it, he seemed to be saying—since they want it, I will let them have it.

“I would prefer that the missiles ceased to exist,” he said. “Our ship. The Russian ship. Hugging our island.”

Coming from Thurlow, such counsel was enough to pop one’s spine straight up, while sending a trickle of chill down it. I addressed him now in a soft tone, full of some heartfelt undefined gratitude.

“I want to thank you, Mr. Thurlow. You have been very helpful.”

“Yes, sir. I feared I might have stepped across the line, mine of supplying facts and projections and yours of decision-making, sir.”

I kept my smile inward, assumed a bit of his own academic-lecture tone.

“You need never concern yourself with that danger, Mr. Thurlow. Ship’s captains need all the help they can get and are in no way infallible.”

He seemed to find it unnecessary, perhaps even unwise, to make any comment as to that observation. Lieutenant Thurlow was never an officer to be underestimated—and not just in his naval duties, but also in naval relationships.

Taking that as his signal of dismissal, he rose and left. When he had gone I stepped out on the deck that formed almost a bridge, looked straight down at the two ships, standing so near each other. I could see men moving around on both. It had always given me a sense of peace to do so, and of reassurance—they could take us away if ever need be. Now my eyes seemed to pierce their hulls and see what was inside them; my mind recalling Thurlow’s rather ominous words, “hugging our island”; seeing into their magazines, their huge inventory of missiles, comprehending, as an absolutely new thought, incredibly never having had it before, that in the sense in which he had spoken they by their very nature constituted the most immense risk to anything you might care to name, anywhere; let alone to the place from which one could almost have spat on them. For the first time as I studied them, those two ships appeared to me not as sources of comfort, of peace of mind, whether as to getaway or defense, but actual threats; our very own ships seeming that to ourselves. It seemed wildly fanciful. Nevertheless I stood there for what must have been a long time, looking at them, pondering the possibility of the impossible.

Thurlow’s conversation: That had been a couple weeks ago. I had thought and rethought the matter. It would be a tremendous step to take. But then . . . what possible good could there be in retaining them? If Thurlow’s nightmare should somehow come true, in some unforeseeable manner . . . so farfetched also as to have to wedge itself into the resistant mind, yet its realization not at all to be absolutely excluded . . . an aggregation of armament of a virtually limitless capability, the literal disappearance of the island itself so trifling for it as to constitute but a minor side effect . . . What in God’s name were they doing there . . . doing anywhere? They would never conceivably be wanted by us to destroy anything or anyone else. They were in no way defensive weaponry. We were loaded to the gunwales with other armament for that; the Harpoon, the five-inch, the Phalanx CIWS; the Russian ship, similarly so. A species of horror struck the mind: There could be but one possible use remaining for them: to destroy ourselves. Slowly, ineluctably, my mind proceeded toward the unthinkable, of not just getting rid of our own Tomahawks, but of persuading the Russian captain that he should do the same with his SS-N-20’s.

Another consideration entered: If her captain said no as to
Pushkin,
would I proceed in any case to purge the
James
of her missiles? No reason not to do so. Yet I hesitated at that final step; the ingrained instinct of a man-of-war’s captain, the feeling that if we jettisoned ours, he should do the same. I was foolishly anticipating. Why would he possibly say no? Finally I reached a determination. I would put it to him. Let us both dispose of these things . . .
James
and
Pushkin
both, and let our minds rest easy. And with that decision mine did. I waited only for the appropriate moment to broach the subject with
Pushkin
’s commander.

Then I forgot the matter in the satisfaction of gazing down at the
Nathan James.
The ship even looked better since her biweekly runs. What a pure joy it had been to take her out to sea again, remembering my having done so yesterday. I felt a little sad that it would be four weeks before I would do so again; next time, two weeks hence, being Thurlow’s turn with his “port” crew.