Far From The Sea We Know (51 page)

Chiffrey acted almost as if he had never met
her or her father before and was formal except for one moment when
he said, “We just want to ask you a few things about your last day
on the
Valentina
. If you’re not ready now, they’ll send
someone else later.” She understood the implication. Her father
must have, too, given the way he looked her way and nodded
consent.

The civilian did nothing at first but watch
and listen, while Chiffrey seemed to do a thorough job debriefing
her father and her about “the last known day” of the
Valentina
’s whereabouts. Yet without avoiding anything,
Chiffrey subtly framed his questions so they were able to supply
answers that, though honest, contributed little more to what was
probably already known. They were able to maintain the impression
that they were essentially all in the same situation as far as
having the facts, that is, that they were as astonished and in the
dark as anyone else. As to the matter of Matthew’s disappearance,
she was able to say that she had a hard time remembering it and
“must have been in some kind of state,” but was now recovered.
Since the Navy had had more than a few of its own in that
condition, she felt her answer was acceptable. Chiffrey asked her
if she knew where Matthew was. Again, but with some pain, she was
able to answer truthfully that she had no idea. If she didn’t
completely know why Matthew had to leave when he did, leaving even
her in the dark, she did now.

Later, the still nameless civilian took over
and essentially went through all the questioning again to see if he
could shake their story. Since they avoided any lies the first
time, they were able to keep to the same line. In the end, the
investigator expressed no satisfaction or thanks but simply
explained the obligations that came with the security clearance
they were given on the
Valentina
, as if he had given the
same speech a thousand times before. At this point though, and not
only because of Matthew, neither she nor her father had any wish to
publicize what had happened anyway, so they agreed to the
restrictions without resistance. They would keep what happened on
the
Valentina
to themselves as long as the incident was
classified, which most likely would mean their whole lives.

The agencies involved had nothing legitimate
they could draw on to bring Penny or her father into custody
regarding the
Valentina
’s inexplicable disappearance. More
to the point, harassing them would simply attract the glare of
publicity. The investigator had told them if they stuck to the
agreement, they would never be bothered again. So far, he had kept
his word. In the weeks that followed the interview, no one else
came to their door.

This included reporters. In the news
accounts, all the leaks, unintended and otherwise, had combined
with the public’s tendency to either dismiss or exaggerate. The
last known voyage of the
Valentina
was distorted into
unrecognizable fictions. Experiments gone wrong. Radiation accident
on a submarine. Tabloid theories, including UFOs and Atlantis. In
the end, it seemed, all the conflicting tales taken together
canceled each other out and many came to believe it was nothing
more than overblown summer filler. A few well-placed, but
misleading, words in the media from those behind Chiffrey
accelerated that process, but it was probably inevitable as what
falls beyond our comprehension slips past the hooks of memory.
After a week, the story dropped out of the news cycle as the public
moved on to other entries from the daily all-you-can-eat menu of
endless distraction.

The evidence that the crew had gathered,
little as it was, had disappeared along with the
Valentina
.
Chiffrey’s employers would keep the few scraps they possessed for
themselves, hidden away to be scrutinized in some secure location.
The videos, scans, and even the affected Navy personnel could only
yield so much information.

So what. Penny no longer cared about
convincing anyone of anything. Let them all believe whatever they
would. She only wanted time and solitude.

After their return from the
Valentina
, the afterglow of Penny’s encounter with Matthew
in the tank had lifted her up for days, but as time wore on it
slowly faded, and left her feeling the like some cast-off skin
whose owner would never return. Denying it at first, she began to
slip into despondency, but was able to keep this to herself. She
was surprised at how well she outwardly carried on just as if all
was as it should be. Later, she resolved that although she may not
have that rare song singing in her heart anymore, she would still
keep a place for it.

In late August, she gave notice to the
research team she had been a part of that her leave of absence
would be permanent. She had remained at her parents’ house without
really deciding. Her parents never mentioned it.

The next few months passed slowly. While the
nights grew longer, daytime was in steady retreat and seemed in
danger of surrendering forever to eternal darkness. The rains that
year were light but almost constant, and the grounds around the
house seemed perpetually half-hidden in slow rolling mist.

“Your mother and I are going to meet an old
friend in Bali,” her father announced one morning. “And we’d like
to stay there for a few months. Kind of a retreat, really, and one
we need to do together.”

“So, you decided.”

“I sent in my resignation to the Point this
morning. It was that or be forced out. No regrets,” he said as if
reading her thoughts. “We all knew this was coming, and I’ve come
around to believing it might be the best thing that could ever
happen to me. Already it is, pardon the cliché, as if a great
weight has been taken off my shoulders.”

“Good to hear that, and maybe you’re
right.”

“We’ll be gone till next July. Think you
could look after things here for us?”

“Give the devil something to do, right?” she
said with a quick laugh. “To keep her out of mischief. Of
course.”

“So you’ll have a retreat as well,” her
mother added. “On your own. A bit of heaven.”

Her mother and father had never been overly
protective of their children. They knew Penny needed solitude at
regular intervals and perhaps needed even more now. They trusted
her. She suspected they were going away at least as much for her as
for themselves.

A few weeks after they set sail on a classic
liner, on a day made dark by the dense clouds of late December, she
was going through some old papers in her room, sorting them in
piles, most of them to be discarded. The world outside had reached
that pause of the pendulum before the season finally swings back.
The air outside was still, the wind having lost its way in the
mountains somewhere. She was enjoying the song of winter birds in
near silence until the sound of an engine rose up like a prelude
from the driveway below the cliff. An unannounced visitor to see
her parents? Sounded like a motorcycle. An old one. She walked out
to wait at the stone terrace.

“Wonderful to see you, sugar. As welcome a
sight as the sun would be.”

Chiffrey, back to his old self. Or maybe
not. He was wearing an old leather jacket with a flannel shirt
hanging out below, and well-worn black jeans with grease on the
cuffs.

He leaned on the galvanized iron railing
that ran around the terrace in a semicircle, his back to the sea.
His smile had returned, but not completely the old one. He seemed
different. Though he looked like he had been spending much time
outside, it was more than that.

“Yeah, this is me now,” he said. “Gone to
earth, back on the street.”

“You left the Air Force?”

“More like it left me.”

“And what about your…other employer?”

“That too. I left it all. Had a little
encouragement truth to tell. Hey, you believe what I’m saying.” He
laughed a little and shook his head. “Not like you.”

“
You’re
not like you. Something’s
gone.” She gave him another quick once-over and sniffed a few
times. “You even smell different.”

He laughed, but didn’t say anything.
Instead, he turned and looked out across the Strait for a while. A
lone fishing boat was passing by.

“I started seeing things differently than
some people thought I should,” he finally said. “After a decent
mourning period for my career, I made it my own decision before it
became someone else’s. Just walked away from the whole game.”

“Must have been hard.”

“Hard to come to, but once I did, I was
done.” He ran his fingers through his now longer hair. “Anyway,
Becka and I were staying together. I thought we might get married.
She turned me down gently, but it was not just a ‘let’s wait a
while’ thing. She’s living on a boat again, by the way, but not at
sea. In Ladakh, on a mountain lake in northern India. Just ‘needed
to be there’ she told me, but not why. Another string to bow, I
guess.”

He turned toward the house again and took a
small step sideways along the path back. “Well, just wanted to
check in, say hello, see how you were.”

She shook her head. “No need to hint. Come
along, we’ll have some tea.”

While Penny poured hot water into the pot,
Chiffrey sat at the ancient kitchen table and casually examined its
surface. The top had long since worn down to bare wood. Her mother
scrubbed its vaguely rounded surface with sand once a month, but
otherwise, she let it take whatever stains found their way into the
bleached grain. In so doing, the table had become a record of the
heart of this house, a story that spanned her entire life.

“The way things worked out in the end made a
number of people extremely unhappy with me,” Chiffrey said. “Some
felt I mishandled the whole thing, but the loss of the
Valentina
with the DNA samples and other stuff was
especially bad. It was my idea to leave just the Captain on board
until everyone else disembarked, if you remember.”

“Appreciated.”

“Glad to hear, but no one else did. And
there were plenty of others who never quite bought what happened,
and as time went by with little hard evidence, they bought it less
and looked for other explanations. They’ve archived the study of
what evidence they do have so deeply that it’s become almost a
myth. Even the few supporters I had knew that someone had to fall
on their sword for the whole mess. At that point, my name might as
well have been Lieutenant Someone.”

“And no honor burial.”

“I don’t really blame them. I mean the
people who wanted me gone. It’s a risk that comes with that kind of
work. Just the way the game has to go sometimes, and we all go in
knowing that. Thing is, when Captain Thorssen beamed out with the
Valentina
, I was not only stunned like everyone else, but
stunned that I felt damn glad he’d done it! Wished I’d gone with
him, to tell you the truth. That’s when I knew the job was no
longer for me.”

“And now?”

“The mind is such a sticky web,” he said.
“Good for catching flies, but you try to think some things out and
you only catch yourself.”

He nodded as if waiting for her to respond,
but she had nothing to add so he continued on his own. “The history
that thing must have. Deep in the ocean, growing, but never growing
old. Never dying.”

He looked out the kitchen window at the now
falling rain. “Guess I’m going to get wet on the way back.”

He lowered himself a little in the seat,
hunched down over his steaming cup, and said, “So, okay, it was
born and raised here, been around a long time, took a little
holiday and came back. And might be gone again or not, no one knows
for sure. Far as I know, at least. I’m mostly out of the loop now.
But if you take humankind as a whole, we’ve also had a long and
continuous history on this planet.”

“The difference is our generations roll by
and most of us forget and are forgotten.”

“We’ve learned how to preserve experience.
We pass on what we know and future generations build on that.”

“If you mean information, yes. We acquire,
preserve, and build on knowledge. The dome remembers everything,
not the way we do, but as if it’s always all happening now.
Everything is one big ‘now’ for it, she can hold it all like a
grain of sand in the palm of your hand. Everything! That’s the
clearest way I can put it.”

“Well, you didn’t really have that
long…”

“By the clock, maybe not, but it felt like a
lifetime. Believe me.”

“I have no reason not to.”

“Well, we all lie, it’s all we can do no
matter how hard we try. You and me, everyone. That is the
fundamental human tragedy. For most of us, by the time we have an
inkling of what might be possible, we are near the end of our
existence and it’s too late.”

“Kind of pessimistic. And strange to hear.
You seemed to have had such a strong connection that night on the
ship. Inspired, if you will, though I didn’t fully appreciate it at
the time, I’m sorry to say.”

“Lately, it feels like it happened to
someone else.”

“I think that’s one reason Becka left. Went
looking for what she lost, maybe.” He sipped from his cup then
looked at her carefully. “If you feel so disconnected now, why do
you keep evangelizing? Sorry, but you used to hold some of the
others onboard up for scrutiny for much the same reason.”

“And I probably still would.” She got up and
turned on the oven to give a little warmth against the chill.
“There’s a difference between how something first emerges and what
we later twist it into for the sake of what we can bear.”

“Amen,” he said with a smile. He watched her
for a moment, then stared into his tea as if to divine some answers
before adding, “Still, I keep wondering about the ‘Orb,’ as Becka
now calls it.”