The Last Ship (74 page)

He shifted a little on the rock ledge. “I wanted to get your opinion because . . .” He paused, as if wishing to be exact with his words. “In a way, that was the strangest part of all. I used to wonder if that had ever happened before: the people in the uniforms, the naval, the military people, most of them—not wanting it. Certainly they had in times past: After all, it was their profession. Not this time. True on our side. Yours?”

“Practically nobody wanted it,” I said. “Military or not.” I had become thoughtful, concentrating, caught up in his own odd exercise of trying, apparently, to solve a baffling enigma. “And yet it was going to happen. To me that was the strangest part. It was almost as though these things were there—so they simply were going to be used.”

He examined that thoughtfully in turn. “Had to be used maybe? It would have been too much of a waste not to use them?”

I found myself beginning to have something almost strange as an affection for this man. Felt something of the same sort happening in him as regards myself—such feelings can hardly exist one-way. Nikolai Bazarov his name was: I caught myself from addressing him by his Christian one. He, meantime, brought himself back, as from a reverie, or a trip into the otherworldly, to his factual account.

“We had got as far as off Brittany when everything happened.”

“And being handy, you were ordered to take out our Spanish bases . . . And Gibraltar a side effect.”

“Precisely, Captain.” He spoke in reflective tones, simply as if wanting to wind up the account in a neat, sailorlike fashion, one ship’s captain to another. “I don’t know if your ships had fixed targets.” My heart, mindful of Orel, fearful he would ask that of the
Nathan James,
not certain I would give a truthful reply, skipped a beat. “I expect so. In any case ours did. I came to identify our squadron of Arctic submersibles not so much with their actual names as with the American cities they were variously assigned. This one, Washington. That one, Chicago. That one, Houston.
Pushkin
’s happened to be New York.” A soft, indefinable trace of a smile. “I pretty much came to think of her as the
New York.
”

“New York?” I repeated inanely. Why that should have given me such a turn I couldn’t say. Someone had to have that assignment; then—of course, the fact of the man who did being beside me. I listened to that voice, a peculiar, almost musical note now in it.

“Odd thing: I always had a desire to visit New York. Of course, I suppose everybody on earth did. The great city of our times. Like Rome of old. Wished I could somehow get a leave, a week or so, have a good look around before we ourselves . . .” He took a deep breath. “One got some strange thoughts on a ship submerged up there in the Arctic . . . One got strange thoughts in a submarine with our mission . . .”

“Not just on a submarine,” I said, remembering some of ours in the Barents.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. New York: We had to be very good to get that mission. And I won’t deny a certain pride in having been given it; true of myself; of
Pushkin
’s company.”

He waited in contemplation, in ponderment; I could see the parade of things past trooping through his mind; a spectral feeling unaccountably beginning to take hold of me.

“I spoke just now of how most of us—and on both sides you agreed—who were out there possessed the least taste of all for what we knew was going to be. Still, I am ashamed to tell you the feeling I had when I knew the hour had at last come and that by the unlucky chance of where we happened to be, our mission was downgraded to a couple of Spanish bases instead of the honor of taking out your great city. I actually felt cheated. For one small moment I had exactly that thought. Regret. What a terrible thing to have had it at all.”

I felt no shock whatsoever at that, and promptly told him so.

“A very natural feeling, Captain, to my way of thinking. Not to want it but if it was going to be . . . I would guess that to have been true of just about everyone commanding a ship with your assignment, with our assignment. Every one of us . . . ship’s captains.”

“Perhaps. But I tell you, things had happened to our minds, Captain.”

He paused a moment. “We never learned to talk with each other, did we? How monstrous that was.”

He looked out at the vast seascape. “At all events, our own regular Arctic station . . . Fourteen minutes: That was the distance we thought of New York as being. Our entire cargo of missiles navigationally always targeted on her. One of them would have done the job—we had allocated twenty of the SS-N-20’s just to that one city. Redundancy. I know you did the same.”

“Oh, yes. It was the governing word.” Now myself falling into his rather relaxed analytical mood, as if examining, as he said, some historical curiosity. “Just about the most important word ever it became. The reason for so many; for always adding on.”

“One of the poets from my city of Orel might have written—if he had been around to do so—that we succeeded in making the world redundant.”

We waited in the silence.

“Dostoevski.” He said the word with a singular reverence. It seemed to hang in the air. “Do you know the Grand Inquisitor scene in
Karamazov?”

“Yes.”

“The Inquisitor may have had a point. Man had too much freedom. Freedom to eliminate himself.”

In his words there was an absolute absence of bitterness, of cynicism, virtually—except for that one instance—of emotion. I did not find this strange—something of the sort had come to be true of myself, of my ship’s people. With some exceptions, a singular detachment—I had always connected it with the mind’s concern as to holding on to its reason; mind knowing that men in our circumstance must hoard their bank accounts of emotion, frugally expend. In this respect himself having progressed to a point perhaps a step ahead of our own. He talked more like a calm and professional student of history, preoccupied less with the morality than the actuality of accomplished events, probing matters of fascinating scholarly interest. Nevertheless suddenly a quiet laugh, equally free of the slightest trace of the sardonic, reaching my ears, actually startling me and enhancing that sense of the phantasmal I felt.

“Where was I? Oh, yes. New York was obviously turned over to one of our sister ships. And we got the Spanish bases.”

The account was complete. I was silent a moment, again looking down the coastline at the huge submarine in the distance, reflecting on her story, her fate, which at last had brought her here. I murmured a banality.

“So you still have left an Arctic submarine.”

“Anchored here in the tropics.” He sighed. “Ironic, isn’t it?” He suddenly brightened. “I wish there was an ice pack around to show how easy it is for
Pushkin,
” he said, again with that allowance of pride any captain has in his ship, in what she can do. “She loves ice packs.”

“It’s still a good piece away but I guess the closest place would be the Antarctic.”

He grinned. “Ice is ice. Same as the Arctic as far as
Pushkin
is concerned. Shall we make a quick voyage there—at those forty knots—so that I may demonstrate her capabilities to you?”

“I’ll take your word for it, Captain.”

We turned away from that diversion. Waited, thoughtfully. Then, back to realities, presently I could hear him going on. Tones again conversational, even, straightforward—in short, the briefing tones of a trained and disciplined naval officer who has something to say and was now, temporarily sidetracked, coming to the point; yet, as he continued, at times strange hesitancies which at first baffled me until I made up my mind that, not just a briefing, he also was feeling his way as he went, as any good seaman would, knowing himself in unfamiliar waters, these including the people he was dealing with, and represented in myself. He was not into my mind yet. I think he was trying to get there, and that all of the otherwise rather inexplicable dialogue he had initiated was part of his method of doing so.

“I have a plan,” he said, looking out at the horizon, the sea having darkened a fraction, its line clearer. “With your permission, I would like to set it forth, the principal lines of it, inviting you to disagree. May I proceed with that understanding?”

“Please do so, sir.”

“We have two ships; each now able to go anywhere.
Nathan James:
five-year fuel supply.
Pushkin:
ten years. Go separately; go together. But we also have the island . . . a place. A place which you Americans . . .” It was the first time in this context that identification or distinction of any sort had been made and it came in all praise . . . “good seamen, found. Something habitable, a place free of contamination . . . and having found, have built something fine, built well, built as sailors build . . . have brought food from the earth, from the sea . . . labors so hard one can scarcely imagine them . . . yes, something fine, very fine . . . I see it, I sense it. No, have done something much more . . . Have started a way of life . . . a community, one which functions . . . That community, this island—that is the most precious thing of all. We must hold on to the island . . .” I became aware with a certain shock of the word “we” entering this monologue . . . “We must never give up the island . . .” The word “island” striking like an epiphany, but now with a new ring, as if it were no longer just ours in fee simple, but his as well . . . an astonishment in me at this sudden interjection of joint proprietorship from one so newly arrived, deciding it meant nothing, actually could be favorable in the sense of taking him and his people in, and perhaps after all he had purchased his share with the most valuable of coin, the fuel . . . “It must be held. A great treasure, greater even than the ships . . . one such blessed plot of earth . . . that accepts men . . . more, nurtures them. A place without price . . . And yet . . .”

It was a rather marvelous speech, not without eloquence, and no reason in the world for me to think it was anything other than heartfelt. Still, I felt it a time to keep silent, to wait for the proposal he said he had in mind. And now this thing of substance came, the words breaking into the vast silence that held everywhere, otherwise broken only by the metronomic collision of the sea and the great rocks far below; his voice reaching me in quiet, rather pleasingly assuasive cadences. He simply nodded at the horizon.

“I do not think we can escape the . . . necessity . . . the responsibility, I believe it fair to call it . . . of sending one of our two ships on a mission to find out. The ship—either ship now, as I say—has the fuel to go anywhere. How long the voyage will take . . .” Again his shoulders shrugged almost imperceptibly, as at an unimportant detail. “Three . . . six months perhaps. In any case something less, I would judge, than, say . . . a year. Either ship can carry enough provisions for that period, even a submarine—those missiles we shot off gave us some extra space. What we would do, you and I, is: chart a general course. The ship herself free to make alterations, course and destination changes, as she proceeds, based on her own findings. Based, too, on what she reports back to us, final decisions to be made here. It should be an interesting voyage.” He smiled thinly, turning slightly to me. “Rediscovering the world. A Magellan, a Drake, a Bellingshausen, all over again. Eh, Captain?”

He had just named three circumnavigators of the globe. The last mentioned, a Russian naval officer, being also in my own opinion one of the greatest of Antarctic explorers, I could not resist the opportunity to show off.

“Fabian Gottlieb Von Bellingshausen,” I said.

He turned to me. “Captain, you have impressed me.”

“Good. I was trying to do just that.”

“The world needs circumnavigating again.” His glance found the horizon. “What a voyage to make now—to
see
what is out there!”

“Agreed, sir. Any seaman would jump at the chance.”

“Precisely. Do you find any major objections so far, sir?”

“I would prefer you continue.”

“Of course. As between the two vessels, it would seem obvious which should undertake that voyage. A matter surely hardly arguable.
Pushkin.
Far less exposure for the crew. Submerged, she could penetrate the deepest zones of radiation . . . we did so in . . . Russia. Any coastal city, anywhere. She could . . . just for example, having spoken of that city . . . come right into New York harbor. Stick her scope up. Find out what really happened, what it’s like, or a pretty good firsthand idea. To your people. Of course we know what in substance we shall find there. That is hardly the point. It is that there is something to having seen for yourself—in a matter so urgent—what you already know. One is compelled to do so, have one’s own look. There is something in a man that insists on that if it is at all possible—as it is now. Something especially in a seaman that says this must be done. I found that true for myself and my men as to Russia,” he said matter-of-factly. “We knew what we would find. Still, we had to see with our own eyes. Terrible as it was, I know now it was an absolute necessity—for the mind. For one’s soul.”

He paused, rearranging himself a bit on the rock. I had a small worry that he had moved too near its edge. An odd thing occurred to me—he seemed to be trying to persuade me, almost as a bait, that we should have a look at our home as he had had at his, at its known devastation (supposedly taking a given number of us in
Pushkin
—I waited for that, as to its details); odd in that it seemed a strange sort of concern for him to have. It was time for me to insert something.

“Some of my ship’s company believe they will find habitable land there, thriving people; a place they can stay.”

“Good,” he said calmly. “Those possessing such fantasies above all should be included in those who go in
Pushkin.
When they find out so differently, they can come back and tell the others. You will be rid of that problem.”

It was as if he had disposed of a minor detail, speaking very much like a ship’s captain instructing me in the handling of a vexing, if easily solved problem. Having done so, he continued at once from this aside; above all, his voice radiating a captain’s certainty as to course.