The Last Ship (61 page)

“As to whether there are others. Had we best not forget it? Keep up the ship’s communications watch, of course. Otherwise . . . for one thing, to continue these speculations, in any way to encourage ship’s company to do so . . . would only make for disquiet. Of that I feel certain. Rather we had best act as if we were . . . in the absence of other evidence, act, conduct ourselves, as if we were the only ones . . .”

Across the sky had begun to move shoals of white clouds that were nearly pink, high voluptuous cumulus of an extraordinary loveliness against the pristine blue, and we sat simply watching their movement, infinitely languid, somehow seeming to announce to us that though the sea might be wiped clean of ships, the sky still had its own mighty fleets; taking in their beauty, taken with the thoughts that had just been expressed; myself reflecting the while on the man beside me. His mind was as fine a tool as I had known. A Jesuitical-Navy mind! What a force that twain made, I had often thought, not without a kind of wry humor. An extraordinary mind to begin with, forged and repeatedly tested under two of the most unforgiving disciplines known to man, each labyrinthine in its complexity, replete with subtleties, with sometimes cruel nuances, that no outsider could ever hope to understand. Navy from youth myself, I once in a while felt that from knowing him so intimately, the experience of seeing his mind at work, I had also added the Jesuitical aspect to my own armory, so that our minds were two evenly matched forces—an illusion, I realized; I could never hope to equal that aspect of his. As I have recorded elsewhere, he was the only person I could talk with in absolute forthrightness. Knowing as I now prepared to do so that the tentative, possible “solutions” I had worked out might well find in him their strongest adversary; none more formidable given his influence with the men, the moral authority that during his time on the ship had long flowed to him, increasingly so, not so much from his title as from the kind of man he was, a man tolerant, even expectant, almost wryly amused, as to human failings but inflexible where principle—as he saw it—was involved. And speaking of power: now, with what was to be upon us, Lieutenant Girard, the leader of the women, moving up to equal, perhaps to surpass, the priest. His own power in a way seeming locked in some sort of indistinct contest with that burgeoning power of hers, my sense of the two forces seeming to be headed on some uncertain collision course.

“Their health,” I said. “Physically I have never seen them looking better. The to-be-expected minor interferences. Hardy”—he was a seaman apprentice in Delaney’s farm crew—“cut himself pretty savagely on one of those grappling-iron plows the other day. Shanley”—he was an electronics warfare technician in Silva’s fishing detail—“same thing out on the coral, though not so badly. Otherwise, the ship’s people: fit as they’ve never been. The doc is astonished—but not surprised really. The men are eating well. Fresh fish. Fresh vegetables. They’re working hard on the settlement. They’re getting in all that swimming, volleyball, touch football, in their off hours. Cigarettes have run out. No liquor. Christ, a man can’t help being in good shape.”

I laughed shortly. “You know what the doc said to me? ‘Captain, if there were other Navy ships around and we had some sort of fleet fitness competition, the
Nathan James
would win sailing away. And if we had a fleet-wide Atlantic City “good-looking contest,” our ship’s company—our men, our women—the others would just take one look and give up. We’re coming to have a company of Greek gods and goddesses on our hands, Captain.’ Isn’t that fancy language for the doc?”

The Jesuit smiled. “A bit overdone, perhaps. I don’t see Preston especially enjoying being called a Greek god. Or Noisy Travis. But I take the doc’s point.” He spoke quietly. “When I look back on those half-alive creatures we were when we came out of that passage in the Sunda Sea—as a lad I always imagined hell as being something like that—into the Indian Ocean . . . the angels must have been riding on our topmasts, sir.”

“Let us trust they still are. If there are tropical angels.” I took a breath. “So much for the physical side of ship’s company. Otherwise . . .”

I lingered, hearing that sole sea sound, reflecting on the past weeks: On the whole, the ship’s company appeared well content. If beneath this one sensed the expectancy, one felt no unbridled urgency on their part; now that the women themselves were fashioning the details of a plan to be announced and execution of it to commence at the completion of the settlement—all this they had been told—the men seemed not just to accept but almost to embrace this order as to precedences, the idea that it was imperative other undertakings be attended to first; preeminently, that a settlement be established as the first essential to our well-being, to our survival. They could expect—aye, look forward to—the other thing, but they understood full well that in their own best interests this order was but fitting: first to get the community working. And we were achieving that. Far from there being the slightest sense of rapacity in the air, the men waited not just with patience but with respect. A distinct sense of a special consideration in the air operating from the men toward their women shipmates; and—if I did not misread it, an immense percipience on their part—a realization which translated into sympathy for the great difficulty the women were even now facing in trying to work out something, solve a problem filled with such infinite complexities. Along with an extra solicitation for their welfare. Delaney, for instance, coming to me one day, concerned. “Captain, don’t you think you should take the women out of the fields?” “I don’t see the slightest reason why, Gunner, but I’ll check and get back to you.” Referring the matter to Lieutenant Girard, her confirming my reading. “Why, that’s very thoughtful of Delaney, sir. But it’s nonsense. What would the women do with themselves?” I summed up the essence of this assessment now to the Jesuit. He was in substantial agreement.

“The men themselves,” I said. “Something like a feeling of contentment.”

It was a question. He waited a moment. I could sense his own independent evaluation at work. Then: “Reassured as to the way things progress. Contentment may be a little too strong a word.”

“Then of expectation, you mean? Of waiting for it?”

“Yes, that says it. They know it will be soon. They wait.”

“For the word from the women?”

“Yes. But I think they wait in trust for the most part. And a certain perplexity. Wondering themselves how it could possibly be worked out.”

“And some trepidation?” I was prying on the lid of his confession box; he would know that, and knowing, protect it; but afford me that which violated no confidence, and filled in blanks of dangerous ignorance.

“Trepidation? Oh, yes. For everybody.”

“Perfectly natural.”

“Perfectly natural.” The Jesuit gave a low laugh. “Preston said something to me.” With the name I knew we were outside the confession box. “‘Father, it’s going to be almost like incest—a man’s own shipmates.’ He was entirely serious; concerned.”

I smiled wryly. “I think when the time comes most of the men will bring themselves to overcome such sentiments.”

“Affirmative,” the Jesuit said again.

I turned a little toward him on our parapet perch on the sea cliffs. I needed to get it out of the way, that one thing that had haunted me so; fearful of its augustness, its presumptuousness; yet it would not leave me; here beside me the only man I could say it to.

“Listen to me, Father.” Deliberately, given the subject matter I was about to broach, employing that form of address. “I need to say something before we go any further. Not as to the fact of doing it. But as to another consideration.”

Again he waited, attentive only to my needs, and I said it, trying to present it as might any naval officer making a report, in the prescribed manner drilled into naval officers from midshipman days, straight, emotionless, but certain hard facts to be taken into account before reaching a vital, perhaps fateful decision as to course, which these facts directly bore on.

“However great we look, as the doc says, and actually truly healthy, no one knows what may have happened to us. All that contamination we went through. Changes not affecting our own health, now or—we hope—in the future. Something else: We may or may not be capable of reproducing ourselves. Some of us may be sterile. All of us may be sterile. And if we, or some of us, are not—can reproduce, some of those may be flawed as to the kind of children resulting, others not. All of us may be flawed in that way; none of us may be. The doc says that. Selmon says that. There is no way to tell as to any of these matters. No way to tell the whole from the sick—genetically speaking. No way to hide from the fact. So it concerns me. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes. I understand. I understand the circumstance and I understand your concern.”

“I’ve been trying to come to my own understanding as to it—to the position we must take. I am still doing so.” I paused. “Father, let me give you one point of view . . . a kind of theological argument, you might say. Bear in mind that I’m an amateur in these matters of reasoning, logic, compared with yourself.”

He smiled. “That kind of statement always makes me want to grab my pocket to see if my wallet’s missing. Please proceed.”

I reached now to that quieter, more philosophical manner, tone, that flowed customarily between us, bound us in a kind of rhythm; two men quietly exploring a difficulty, a problem: seeing how far it might take them down the road to some form of solution. Now trying to reach him on his own grounds. Somehow, as I began, more intensely aware even than before of the great emptiness of the sea stretching before us, of the stillness of the green island all around.

“It goes this way. God intended to wrap it up. Otherwise, given the fact He has all that power, as you religious ones are forever assuring us, why did He let it happen? Could it be that He decided He made an error back when? That man didn’t work out, that he is a biological and evolutionary freak; that unlike any other to inhabit it only disturbs the earth, does harm to it; that he must simply disappear, and let evolution start over and see if it can come out better next time. So that to try to continue ourselves is only standing in the way of God’s intent, so far as we know pretty well accomplished except for ourselves—maybe a few others out there somewhere; in that sense such acts almost a defiance of God’s will. Consequently, our first responsibility is not to reproduce ourselves, even if we can; on the contrary, it is to make certain above all that we do not do so. In order to accord with His expressed and obvious purpose.”

I stopped, conscious of what a long and laborious speech it had been; nevertheless knowing that I had to say what had for so long been in me, burning there in a way not without its torments. I sensed his soft smile. I had entered his territory and its pursuit obviously interested him; gripped him.

“A pretty argument,” he said. “I see a good deal of cogency in it. It has one flaw, of course. Man hasn’t been done away with. We are here.”

“Are we? Men and women who, in the first place, do not know if they can reproduce at all. Secondly, that if they do, do not know but what the result will be mutagenic babies. I hardly call that being here in the sense of whole human beings alive on the earth.”

“But those are mere conjectures, Captain. You said yourself that the doc doesn’t
know,
Selmon doesn’t
know.
They’re just throwing dice. We may be flawed. We may not be flawed. Quoting yourself, we don’t have the faintest idea. Even if only one man of us is not, one woman of us is not, then God has not done away with the human race.”

“Do you wish to take that chance of mutated babies to care for? On this island?” I said brutally. “Or worse: create a mutated race?”

I heard a certain upward movement in his tone, a detectable rise in the temperature of our dialogue.

“Captain, we have taken many chances. If there is any matter where there is no choice it is this one. If there is the slightest possibility that we have life in us . . . we simply must find out.”

“It’s quite possible that the only way we are ever going to discover the answer is for every man to screw every woman.” I meant, probably—a stupid idea—to shock him. And I could not help repeating the other argument. “And I say again, it’s whether we should, whether we deserve to be continued.”

He seemed to have had enough at least of that one.

“Deserve? Are you God?” he said viciously.

It had come suddenly. For a moment a tense impasse held between us. We stepped back from it as from a chasm; fearful, equally both of us, of dangerous emotion. Serious rift between us greatly inexpedient on my part, his influence with the men. Though this tolerance had its limits, not yet reached. I quieted down, felt him doing the same. He waited a moment. Then turned from looking at the sea to looking at me, a certain quiet fixity of gaze in those deep-set, anthracitic eyes; that face I had always thought with its curious mixture of spirituality and sensuality. His voice was quiet again, no attempt at being persuasive but rather as though stating a home truth or two.

“Do you realize what a fluke it is, Captain, that we have women aboard? God put them here for a purpose. The most important purpose of all.”

I always had profound reservations about people who enlisted the Almighty on their side, with no visible permission on His part. In fact one of the things I liked best about the Jesuit was that this was a practice he almost never engaged in. Until lately, when he had begun, to me an ominous, almost sinister sign, to drop the name of the Divine now and then into our dialogue, as if that Being were automatically in his corner in all matters. There was nothing I suspected more in human intercourse. He said now:

“It is not by accident that we have women aboard.”

I came away from it; feeling that to pursue what God had in mind when the most pressing concerns were coming right down on top of me was a waste of precious time . . . Besides, there suddenly occurred to me another way to resolve this matter . . . another source whose decision and province it more rightly was than that of either of us.