The Last Ship (42 page)

I heard the ship under me, its very sound seeming to remind me of the true seat of my concern: the ship herself. The fact that we ourselves were such a stupendously dangerous device, racked up in magazines not far below where I stood 44 Tomahawks, each carrying a 200-kiloton nuclear warhead, a capability of destructiveness even I had really never attempted to comprehend; this infinite instrument able to go anywhere, do anything, now beyond any control other than that of the people aboard her. Yes, the truth was this: All of my anxiety, my dread, immense and profound, lay in not wanting another to gain dominion over this force, least of all an officer like Chatham, trusting no one but myself with such power. There it was.

From the rising sea I could feel now and then a tossed-off spray touching my face; refreshing, freeing up, it seemed, the full faculties I now brought to bear as I undertook quietly to assess the circumstance, even allowing myself to stretch it to its extreme limits. I was positioned by the lifeline aft, a matter of feet away from the after missile launcher. Due perhaps in part to its proximity, I had for the first time a thought that sent through me a wave of shock quite unlike any I had ever experienced in regard to the ship and the people on it, or any one of them, relating to a matter I have touched on, my growing concern over the fact that Chatham held, jointly with myself, the key to the missiles themselves, and to the devices that would send them off . . . the mind halted, made a movement, opened a door, permitting something quite terrible to enter, an errant and wild thought of what might happen if they should fall into the hands of one bent—for whatever reason or cause, fancied or real enemies, madness, revenge upon the human race itself or what might be left of it if you took the ship across the seas looking for these remnants . . . Perhaps the thought itself was the truly mad thing; but perhaps not, one often hardly knew of late, the rational and the aberrant sometimes seeming separated by a line thin as a human hair: The mind had presented only what was after all factually, insofar as we had knowledge of it, a largely accomplished matter. What remained might be viewed as merely a mopping-up operation . . . of the species . . . Chatham, for instance—I had not the slightest doubt of this—would have blown that Russian sub out of the water . . . All doors now opened, I even remembered once, in some random wardroom conversation, his saying, “I am glad to be a member of the generation that will see the last of the human race,” a remark taken so unseriously at the time, viewed by all who heard as intended as shock treatment—perhaps Chatham angry at some mechanical problem aboard ship in his complex charges, the missiles, all of this long forgotten. Now suddenly even that surely ridiculous remark came back to repeat itself to me—preposterous that I should think of it just now; not able for a moment to bring myself to believe he, any man, could believe that literally. Still, the mind, recalling it, filled with a kind of distortion, a madness of its own . . .

The mind stepped back from the horror, slammed the door: but not before imbedding in me an idea untainted by the slightest doubt, cold as truth could be, felt now infinitely more sharply, frighteningly, than before: I would not want the missiles . . . weaponry I had even considered jettisoning, an impossibility without the collaboration of his key, no way even to get them off the ship without it, something he was certain never to give; his more than touch of arrogance I had long felt could itself be traced to his feeling of proprietorship as to the missiles . . . I would not want them under the governance of Lieutenant Commander Chatham. After the initial brutal impact of the idea, with surely its excesses, this I judged not excessive at all. Though I tried to put it away. To no avail: It was to hang on, never to leave me, try as I did to make it do so. Rather to increase: myself to come in rather a short time almost to wish for some act on his part (Was it this? Was I actually hoping he would undertake to lead a party against my choice as to course?) that would justify my separating him from his key: the fact of our keys canceling each other, one impotent without the other, somehow seeming no longer adequate protection—if I was considering going after his, it was not a difficult step to imagine his contemplating going after mine; the first time, too, for that terrible thought.

The mind halted, came to a full stop; aware that such imaginings, whatever their portion of truth, themselves could become the true danger. I looked up at the heavens. The clouds had opened up a small space, just sufficient to permit a handful of brave stars to gaze tremulously down, their abrupt appearance, sparkling as a cluster of diamonds on a black field, immediately somehow lifting my spirits. In their glow I reminded myself that we had not given up all hope on the Mediterranean. Some time back Selmon, in view of the absence of life on the beaches, had suggested a land foray of a kind not yet undertaken to establish perhaps conclusively the facts there, one way or the other. Involving a not inconsiderable personal risk, hence a risk for the ship, in his being such an indispensable officer, which had made me wish to think it over and to postpone decision. Now I decided to turn him loose on it tomorrow. It was something we had to know.

With the conversation with the CSO I ceased my nightly rovings and returned to the traditional calm austerity, and a certain remoteness, of a ship’s captain. Just as well. Applicable to the ships that traverse the great oceans, there stands a small handful of rules, known to all mariners from times the most ancient, so validated by the centuries, on vessels of every description, ship’s companies of every origin, as to be immutable. Among these is that which states that the concept that some favorable result is to be achieved by a ship’s captain’s efforts to draw closer to his men through so-called familiarity, by an effort to diminish the distance between them which the all-knowing sea herself has long ago decreed, is but the most naïve of myths, in fact dangerous in the first magnitude to the ship’s very functioning, not least to the welfare of the men themselves, and the captain who attempts it a fool. If anything, the law held more firmly in our circumstance than ever. Men are to be commanded; and to be loved.

 *  *  * 

As stated, I had no intention of majority rule in the matter, not the remotest thought of instituting some shipboard seagoing plebiscitary system; the whole notion foolish in the extreme, perilous as a thing could be. But now, considering the possibility that I may have gone too far in my estimate of his potential for bringing disaster upon us; considering above all that unforgiving precept that a ship’s captain, in his sovereignty, his power, in the absence of the normal checks and balances that restrain men, carries in him by these very essentials of his position more capacity for being wrong than perhaps in any trade men follow and therefore must never forget that he may be . . . reminding myself of these verities, very soon I found myself actually having a look at Chatham’s proposal. Of allowing ship’s company to make this one decision on the moral idea that they had a right to decide something so irreversible as to their own future lives. For the first time since assuming command of this ship, I considered in all seriousness letting them do so. Nothing could have been more strange, the very act, the mechanics of it, so contrary to the world of ships and of sea life. How in the name of heaven would you go about it—call for a showing of hands, with the majority to rule? Even the visualizing of it made it seem a ludicrous thing: sailors raising their hands while the captain counts them as in some sort of town meeting voting whether they wished to do this instead of that. Its only virtue—and a compelling one—appeared to be that it was the one certain way of forestalling any possible revolt in the crew: They could hardly object to a course chosen by themselves. But on further consideration, even this supposed advantage appeared to have its inbuilt fallacy.

What if the vote were close? You would then have a ship split against itself. I was far from sure ship’s company would even
want
to make the decision: Among other things it would force each hand to declare himself before his shipmates, the divisiveness then a known and permanent thing, brought starkly out in the open. Shipmates thereafter working alongside one another knowing that there existed a profound disagreement among themselves as to the most fundamental of matters: where the ship was taking them. A ship divided on such an issue: I could taste, as surely as I could tell the movements of stars, her pernicious fruits. Bitterness, rancor, dripping so into that incessant immensity of tasks, navigation, engineering, and the rest of it that constitute proper shiphandling, as to threaten the ship at every turn in a world that has always been constructed on the principle of unquestioned one-man rule: orders, commands, decisively given by the captain and obeyed unhesitatingly by all others aboard, men and officers alike. This at a time that called for men working together to the utmost, shipmates toward a goal desperate enough of achievement even so.

As I continued to think on the matter, so many other objections presented themselves as to seem unending. To be allowed to make this decision might make them wish to make further ones; control of the ship and the course she should take slipping through the captain’s hands, and at the very moment, fuel and food headed inexorably toward the zero point, that we commenced our most perilous times. A ship soon to be without a rudder. I would not myself wish to be on such a vessel even as the lowliest seaman; would flee from her as from a death ship.

And the final and greatest argument of all: They might make the wrong decision, based on false sentiments, unrealistic hopes; based on the wish that matters were a certain way, rather than on what they were; feeling confident I, the captain, could and would in the end turn away from such lures; much less certain that a diverse body of men given such authority would do the same.

No. I would make this decision as I made all others; fully aware that that method also was not without risk; it not being inconceivable that those against whose preference the decision fell might go so far as to rise up. I did not believe so. But whether it should happen or not: No weight must the prospect be granted. For a sea captain, that a course having been chosen by him as in his view the sole right one, has really no choice but to march into it; simply put, do the duty and take the burden that are lawfully his alone to carry out, his alone to bear.

E
ach day, it seems, I gain respect for his knowledge. No radar, no sonar, none of the ship’s supremely sophisticated devices for forecasting an enemy’s approach are of the slightest account here. The fineness of his judgments, telling us where we can go and where we cannot, defining what we can do at a place and for how long, what we can pick up in our foragings and what we must leave be, however useful to our future . . . Lieutenant (jg) Selmon is showing himself an officer of very high professionalism. His vocation is the new priesthood. We do nothing without first obtaining his approval—his blessing. Even the distance off we cruise—inshore or actually out of sight of all land—is determined by his calculations.

Remembering the time, seeming so far back now, when quite a number of the learned felt they could predict with fair accuracy what would happen: The truth now stands clear that they had known virtually nothing of what they were talking about. In actual practice the nature of radioactive fallout turns out to be a matter of infinite, ever-changing complexities, of obscurity and treachery, of chimeras and realities, and the everlasting, mind-devouring difficulty of determining one from the other. A great deal, perhaps the major part of it, having to do with the winds, with currents of air—these, as any sailor knows, being the most permutable, undivinable of forces even in normal conditions, the importance of this fact tyrannically multiplied now that they have become the transportation system of our foe. The winds dictate now, deciding where the deadly substances shall go, and how much of them, and where they shall not; all of this deviable and unpredictable in the entire, the fancies, the mercuriality, the conceits of these deities of the atmosphere determining in great measure our every act and intention, what place it is not safe to be at all, what place it is safe to be for one hour, and what place for four. All of them at times existent in a narrow range of geography, sometimes a matter of only miles apart, and their individual statuses as to safety and peril constantly varying with the arrival of new atmospheric cargo, or even departure of the old, as the winds may decide. The one characteristic they have in common is that there is some contamination everywhere, enough so that no land we have yet approached permits us an indefinite stay, all proffering a hospitality measured at the most in hours. Every day we stand in to scan and test the shore and then return to sea where we wash down the ship with the system designed to seek out and send overboard whatever particles she may have attracted. It works well, Selmon’s radiac shows. But even at sea we constantly run into “pockets” of the toxicant (perhaps brought there by winds, then stalled by sudden windlessness)—the radiac is always manned, as much so as are the ship’s helm, her radar, her sonar—and have to scoot out of them and once more wash the ship down.

Since our actions and our future are confined within those limits dictated by the field of Selmon’s experience and his knowledge, I have a kind of continuing dialogue with him, undertaking myself to master to a degree the fiendish subtleties of this new dimension, a fourth now added to the ancient triad wherein life has dwelt and had its being since time began—earth, sea, sky. Now this sovereign newcomer, more fickle by far than any of the others, moving about, settling here, not settling there, almost whimsically one would say if the game were less deadly, its nature less feral, inflicting all with disconcertion, confoundment; and infinitely more stealthy than any of the elements sailors have heretofore had to deal with in its impregnability to all of man’s customary warning devices—you cannot see, taste, smell, hear, touch it. That clandestine characteristic indeed constituting its most terrible threat, the men having to learn, a fact that in itself leads to an active and continuing disorientation, that the testimony of their senses is here worthless, the only guide of any reliability being Selmon’s instruments. There have been one or two occasions when, gone ashore for some purpose on some perfectly lovely day of blue and sunlit skies, of sweetest air, to all evidences, I have had to speak sharply to men to make them reembark in the boat when Selmon murmured the ritualistic phrase he has adopted: “It’s time, Captain.” He has become like some oracle—half seer, half sorcerer—we cannot do without; any more than the ship can dispense with her gyro-compass.

This new dimension: None aboard has penetrated to and come to terms with its almost spiritual meaning, if one may use such a term, so deeply as himself. His dispassionate calm, his—I must say, almost serene acquiescence in the fact of it: It is as though he has quietly not just acceded to but embraced this new order as having become in the nature of things, simply recognizing that to fuss or grieve or to rail against it is on the order of railing in previous times against the inconstancy of the sea or the capriciousness of the elements. There is one constant: the farther we are from land, the more out at sea, the lower the radiation count. Out there we have seen dolphins play, following alongside our ship. Also the deeper we move into the land the higher the readings. The latter had been established near Carthage where Selmon for that very purpose—a permission I granted reluctantly (and on the very next day following my night’s talk by the lifeline with Lieutenant Commander Chatham), for I had come absolutely to comprehend that I could let no harm befall this officer—had marched straight inland as far as a mile, the rem count rising steadily until he knew he must go no farther. Later, behind the closed doors of my cabin, we had discussed this circumstance, this finding, and its implications for us; his first repeating to me at my request the readings he had encountered, nothing we had run into being anything like that high; figures which kept me silent for a while before saying it.

“It suggests that the continent is gone, all of it.”

There seemed a stillness about, a calm not to be explained except perhaps by that other fact of how far we had come, in our beings, in our souls, knowing acceptance itself—of whatever probable reality—to be the very price tag of our survival. Clear explanation, too, a kind of parenthesis, now brought of why we had not seen human beings even on the beaches—the land so close behind rendered impossible to get through. I could hear Selmon’s softly pitched voice.

“There is no way to know or to find out, Captain; not absolutely. But we know this: the larger the land mass, the greater the contamination. And its corollary: the greater the distance from the sea, the higher the level. With that immense mass far away from any sea, and with a mere mile from the shore become unacceptable, and climbing steadily . . . Close to a certainty, sir.”

There is a curious thing, scarcely given to our comprehension of it, having to do with the unlimited capacity of the mind itself. If one is living in virtual entirety in the purlieus of unknowns, certainties of whatever kind can, in some bizarre and unknowable manner, have their comfort, especially if accompanied by a practical side, however final. Just as absence of knowledge paralyzes, this corollary: To know is to be able to act. With food supplies ever-diminishing, with each day one less of propulsion power for the ship, we had no time to throw away. If the message now was, move along, get on with it . . . That, in its brutal way, was something. Though perhaps not quite yet: Selmon was speaking, his words quietly, insistently, breaking through my thoughts.

“Sir, I think we should continue to take an occasional beach reading clear to Suez. Shouldn’t require all that much time. It is just possible—somewhere down the line between here and there. Some place that for some not very logical reason escaped. Some fluke . . .” The words trailed off in their sense of the unlikelihood, the remoteness of the idea. “At the same time it might be prudent perhaps to begin to think further ahead . . . geographically, that is . . .”

His voice ceased—it took me a moment to realize. I sat looking at him, thoughtful.

“It went up—steadily—as you went inland?”

Somehow I needed the fact restated and certified. “Affirmative, sir. No backing off at any point. Even the rate was even. It was like a thermometer registering some rising fever. A very obvious correlation. I could see the ruins—in the distance. I had to stop.”

I spoke an aside. “Still there?”

“No visible change, sir.” He had mentioned before he went in that he had seen Carthage, on a holiday, not a half dozen years ago, and hoped to make it there this time. His counter meter had not permitted him to do so.

We spoke in studious, uncompulsive tones, in a manner meditative, our minds set to reassessments in this new light; the taking of fresh compass bearings for a ship blocked in its present course by impenetrable minefields. I was thinking of those inexorable laws of mathematics here applied of which he had just spoken, of land masses, of distances from the shores of seas. I had already, scarcely aware of the transition, the mental crossover, begun to look ahead, to put the Mediterranean behind me. Then—it was the first time—a thought took shape, a hypothesis.

“The one consistency appears to be that: the farther from land, the more out at sea, the less the contamination. Now you have added: the farther into the land, the higher. Might these taken together suggest an island as possibly having the best chance to escape it entirely? A particular sort of island. Not very large—and provided, most important, it be surrounded by vast spaces of water?”

I could see his mind carefully evaluating; he then spoke as if having reached a careful preliminary position.

“Based on the finding over there, and our knowledge of the substance’s behavior to date, it would seem to be a strong candidate,” he said. “Yes. A piece of land far from all other land, no part of it distant from the sea—also, as you say, the place itself situated in the most immense body of protective water possible.” He paused a beat. “The problem: if such a thing can be found that meets other requirements.”

I shrugged, deliberately, and spoke offhandedly. “Of course, we are speaking theoretically. It was only a thought, and a premature one. We are certainly not searching for any island. However high on that one list, it would almost be guaranteed to be woefully far down on the other—those requirements you mention.”

A warning signal went off in a captain’s soul. I decided we had gone far enough with this. It was the first time the idea of an island had been broached. Beyond this exploratory stage, I felt it was much too early at present to take it further. It was hazardous territory: the immense difficulties such a life would bring in its train; worse, for now, the certain hostility of ship’s people to any such proposition, isolating them on some island in nowhere. Best not to test it further now, to let the notion—it was hardly more than that—retreat into our minds; rest there, a kind of possible fail-safe, if it should come to that.

“A wild thought probably,” I said. “And Mr. Selmon?”

“Sir?”

“You are not to speak to the crew of this, any member of it. Any talk of islands. Is that understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“I don’t think it’ll ever come to that. Another thing. I see no reason to broadcast your findings—over there. Would serve no useful purpose. And might well add to the difficulties—mental, emotional . . . They have enough to handle. No need at all to hit down on them with that kind of news.” I moved my tone of voice up a notch. “Clear?”

“Clear. I understand fully, sir.”

The truth was, I was saving it. I looked quietly at him. “Meanwhile, I take your suggestion: We will stop now and then between here and Suez. Places you deem the best bets, if anything like that appears. It would be nice to be wrong, to find one of those freaks, flukes, you speak of.”

“It would indeed, sir. In my view, we shouldn’t give over all expectations there. Some place that by a twist lucked out: I would not rule it out. We have seen other aberrations. Nor would I place high odds there.”

“I shall be careful not to do so.”

He smiled thinly. We sat, silent, lingering for a few moments, pensive, contemplating, both of us, the knowledge he had brought back; undertaking, I believe, to get deeper into it, finding that not an easy thing; acceptance, I think, for the reasons given, being achieved much more readily than comprehension. I felt an unaccountable need in him to say something more before he left, so did not dismiss him. He made a slight movement.

“Africa,” he said. He spoke the name of the continent barely aloud, as though to himself, as one speaks of the bygone, the dead.

“Yes, Mr. Selmon?”

“Odd, sir. I was thinking of the animals. Not to put them first. But rather that we have become accustomed almost to what happened to the people. London. Those beaches in Italy. And of course everything north of there. Paris. Grenoble . . . very pretty place. I competed once in the European games at the University of Grenoble—gymnastics.”

“Did you?” I said.

The sudden personal note constituted almost rambling for him. “Sorry, sir.” He waited a moment, collecting himself. “It’s only that we have become used to . . . to hardly expecting that anything
but
that would happen to the people . . .”

“I understand,” I said, for I did.

“So one thinks of the zebras and the lions, the giraffes and the elephants . . .” Poignant fell his voice, and strangely gentle . . . “The animals may still be alive. In fact, probably are, most of them. Not for so very long, I shouldn’t imagine . . . though again we have no certainties. But for the present still around, down inside there. We know that.”

“Are you saying that the animals will live longer than men?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Of course not a great deal so. And even among themselves, varying quite considerably.”

Something jumped up, alert, in me. He went on to explain that for some reason nobody had ever been able definitively to determine or account for, virtually all other members of the animal kingdom stood superior to man in the amount of radiation they could absorb. Sufficient amounts, of course, would take any of them in time but all both endured eventually lethal doses longer and could survive unharmed doses that would affect deleteriously their alleged better on evolution’s ladder. He continued in a mood contemplative, almost of a nostalgic character, a temperament in which I had not before seen him, an officer as he was entirely professional, to the point, given to excluding all extraneous matters. I found myself listening with a special intentness as he continued to educate me.