Authors: Madeleine L'engle

Troubling a Star (23 page)

BOOK: Troubling a Star

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I said, softly, “I'm glad.”

“Vicky, I would not have any harm come to you. I know we have known each other only a short time, and to make true friends takes time. But alreadyâI want you to know that if ever you need me, I'm here for you. At any time.” He leaned toward me, taking my hands. His eyes were warm and golden.

He looked around to make sure we were alone, that nobody had followed us up the mountain except a few penguins. Then he kissed me.

It was a lovely kiss. I liked it.

I had liked Adam's kisses. They were not my first kisses, I was not “sweet sixteen and never been kissed.” But both Adam and Otto were more experienced than I was.

“We'd better go down,” Otto said. “Look.” The small group of penguins was leaving us, waddling downhill. Otto took my hand and we hurried to join a cluster of red-parkaed people with Jason, our geologist, in their midst. We looked as he held out his hand. “Petrified wood,” he said.

Wood, here in this barren place where there was no vegetation except for a little lichen, a little dried-up moss! Once upon a time there had been trees here.

Jason put one of the pieces of wood no longer wood but stone into my hand. “See, Vicky, those little white things? They're fossils of extinct species of clams.”

More people gathered round, exclaiming. Jason, slipping into his lecturer's voice, said, “Even though the petrified wood tells us that there were once trees here, millennia ago, there are no indications of any indigenous humanoids ever having lived on the Antarctic continent.” He held out another fossil to Angelique, who took it, looking at it with awe.

Dick reached out with one finger and touched the fossil that lay in Angelique's palm. “You can't escape the great chain of life in this place. Perhaps it's just as well there have never been any human beings around here to muck it up with our bloody history.”

Angelique handed the fossil to Jason, put her arm around Dick's bulky parka. “Not always bloody, my darling. Not always.”

I was writing in my journal and was nearly ready to go to the lounge for Wrap-Up, when Benjy knocked on my door, came in, and plunked himself down on the second bunk.

“Everything okay?”

“Sure.”

“You look a little preoccupied.”

I looked down at my journal. “I'm just being a broody adolescent.”

“Nothing on your mind?”

“Oh, Benjy, that'll be the day! There's lots on my mind.”

“Want to talk about it?”

I looked at my watch. Benjy would have to join everybody in the lounge in a few minutes. What I wanted to talk about would take real time. “Not yet. Soon.”

“Otto appears to be taking good care of you.”

“Um.”

“You know, Vicky, Otto may not be twenty yet, but there's pressure on him in Zlatovica to marry, and there aren't that many princesses around.”

“Hunh?” I was so startled I was inarticulate.

“Are you old enough to have heard of Princess Grace?”

“Vaguely. I know she was supposed to be as beautiful as a fairy-tale princess.”

“And a commoner.” Benjy grinned.

“Benjy, what are you implying?”

“Otto is very interested in you. Perhaps I'm letting my imagination run away with me, but remember, Vicky, all that glitters is not gold.”

I said, rather stiffly, “Otto glitters, I know that, butâ” I stopped. Caught my breath. I'd started to say, “But he's not coming on to me.” But wasn't he? I stood up. “Hey, Benjy, I'm only an ordinary adolescent American girl, planning to go to college and do all that stuff. Okay?”

“Sure,” Benjy said. “Okay, time for Wrap-Up.”

We went into the lounge together, and he headed for the table where Siri was and sat down beside her, giving her a look of love that almost brought tears to my eyes. Because I wanted that. I know not everybody in the world gets it, but I wanted it. Angelique and Dick had it. I think maybe my parents have it, but it probably gets diffused when there are four kids vying for attention.

Otto was sitting at the table next to us, and reached over to grab my hand for a quick squeeze.

Do royals ever have it? Or do they get so mixed up in politics and diplomacy and all that other stuff that the real thing gets lost?

And I am not, definitely not, princess material.

That night I went to sleep right away and then woke up suddenly. I looked at my watch. Just after two. I didn't know what had roused me, probably ice bumping against the hull of the
Argosy
. I was wide awake. I turned over and tried to go back to sleep. I rolled from one side to another. My mind jiggled like a
broken kaleidoscope. Vespugia. Antarctica. Adam's letter, cold as ice. Zlatovica and Princess Grace.

If I'd been at home, I'd have gone to the kitchen and made cocoa. I very seldom have trouble sleeping, but it does hit occasionally, usually when I have too much on my mind, and there's no point trying to get back to sleep until I can stop my thoughts from swimming around like fish in a bowl. I remembered that there's always hot water up in the bar area of the lounge, and powdered cocoa as well as tea or coffee, so I got out of my bunk, put on my warm bathrobe and slippers, and opened the door. All up and down the corridor, cabin doors were closed. I thought I heard a snore from the cabin next to mine, which, now that Cook was no longer on the
Argosy,
was Sam's alone.

I went up the stairs to the main deck. Only the dim nightlights were on. The exit light over the fo'c'sle door was lit, but it would be much too cold out on deck. The lounge was full of the dark shadows of round tables and chairs. I put some powdered cocoa into a mug, filled it with hot water and stirred it smooth, then sat on the padded seat at one of the corner tables. I wished someone else were awake, so we could talk.

Suddenly I heard a sharp sound. A bang. Louder and closer than ice hitting the ship.

I ducked down on the seat. There was no reason I shouldn't be in the lounge, but it was a reflex. My face was down on the cushion of the seat and I peered under the table. I could see Otto coming out of his big cabin carrying one of his wooden packing cases. He looked around, as though to
make sure he was alone, then went to the fo'c'sle door, pushed it open, and went out.

Why didn't I just say, “Hey, Otto, I'm here”? I didn't. I stayed hidden. I didn't dare try to make a run for my cabin, all the way across the lounge and down the wide stairs to my deck. I didn't know who else might come, or when Otto would return. If someone saw me, I'd be terribly embarrassed. I felt like an idiot, hiding in the corner.

Finally the fo'c'sle door opened and Otto came back, without the box. Where was it? Overboard?

It was after two o'clock in the morning, the time when imagination is most likely to run wild. Zlatovica had Soviet silos with nuclear weapons. Suzy's precious Ned was concerned about the disposal of such weapons.

I knew what I was thinking was crazy, but I still thought it. No, Vicky. Nobody with any intelligence would travel with radioactive material unless it was properly protected from any kind of leakage, and Otto was certainly intelligent.

But what was in the box?

Several people on the
Argosy
had talked about the danger of disposing of nuclear waste in Antarctica. But what about the Antarctic Ocean?

All these thoughts darted through my mind in the time it took Otto to cross the lounge and go into his cabin. I heard him turn the lock on his door. I listened. Heard only the creaking of the ship moving through the waters. Then I heard a loud sound and finally understood that this time it was the ship's hull hitting an ice floe, not Otto coming out of his
cabin. Slowly and carefully I stood up. Then I moved as quickly and quietly as possible across the lounge and down to my cabin. Closed the door slowly and carefully so it wouldn't make a noise.

I was sure I wouldn't sleep, but I did.

In the morning we anchored off Half Moon Island and got into Zodiacs immediately after breakfast. Otto was in the Zodiac which followed mine, and he hurried over to walk with me, and suddenly there was Benjy on my other side.

Otto was talking about his need to finish his studies, probably back in England, but he wasn't going to be able to until newly independent Zlatovica was more stable. I was only half listening, because all I could think of was the night before.

Benjy picked up on what Otto was saying. “And this trip? How is it that you have time for Antarctica?”

Otto laughed openly, merrily. “It seemed wise for me to leave Zlatovica for a few weeks. Some of my ideas for educational reform did not sit well with my conservative uncle, who is one of our chief ministers. And my father wanted me to look for options for energy, always a problem in a small, emerging country. But mostly it seemed the better part of valor to make myself scarce until tempers cooled.” He took my arm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “This, too, is true.”

My green-booted foot slipped on a round stone and both Benjy and Otto steadied me. Others joined us as we came to a large group of penguins, but Benjy was talking to Otto about alternate sources of power. “The sun has all the power we
need, and when the technology is worked out, it will be available to us without any drain on the sun itself.”

“Ideal,” Otto agreed. “The sun is a massive atomic furnace, and if we could simply pick up what it discards every day, we'd have enough energy for the entire planet.”

Benjy sounded suddenly severe. “No matter what happens to the earth's energy sources, there's no need to draw on Antarctica.”

“Quite,” Otto agreed. And then other people began to ask questions, about solar energy, about penguins, about what we were going to do after dinner.

When we got back to the ship, I'd hardly changed out of my boots when the ding-dong sounded and Todd's excited voice told us that there were three humpback whales ahead of us to starboard. I rushed out to the fo'c'sle, and so did almost everybody else. It was awesome, watching those huge bodies swimming alongside the ship, coming all the way up to
whoosh
through their blowholes, going under, then rising slowly until they were grey shadows under the water, then rising to
whoosh
again. They were so enormous and so marvelous that they took my mind off all my questions. Most people had cameras out, including Jorge with his enormous Hasselblad, and Jack with a cardboard throwaway camera.

Benjy and Todd were working with an underwater recorder which played humpback-whale music, hoping these whales would hear it and sing for us, but they didn't. I've heard recordings of whale song, and it's strange and wonderful, and Siri told me of the work of the composer Alan Hovhaness, who was one of the first music writers to use actual
whale song in an orchestral composition. That gave me an idea of something to get Mother for her birthday.

The whales stayed with us for over an hour, though it seemed much less. Todd once again asked people to get as many pictures as possible of their flukes, but the whales apparently did not feel like fluking, for every time we thought they were going to dive and show us their flukes they just went under, and Todd and Benjy groaned, and then cajoled, “Come on, whales, come on! Aw, come on! Be good whales! Come fluke for us!”

It really seemed as though these great creatures were teasing us, because there'd be shouts that they were about to fluke, and groans as they dropped down under the water again. Benjy and Todd looked both disappointed and frustrated, and finally, when we'd all about given up, Benjy yelled “Hey!” and suddenly, as a goodbye present, the whales fluked their great glorious tails for us. All kinds of cameras went off, taking as many shots as possible before the whales disappeared. And I felt the same surge of joy I had felt when Siri first played for the penguins.

In the early afternoon we took the Zodiacs to Hannah Point on Livingston Island. Siri and Sam were in the Zodiac with me, and Benjy was at the outboard. Otto was in the Zodiac ahead of us with Jorge and Jack, big Jack standing out as usual, with his cowboy hat making him a head higher than anybody else.

On Hannah Point we saw our first elephant sealsâblubber slugs, Benjy called them. They were enormous creatures, lying together in a great, shapeless pile, with steam
rising up from their massive bodies. They weren't as big as the elephants they were named for, of course, or they couldn't have moved their great bulks about on land. Even so, they were cumbersome and clumsy. Otto came over to me and pointed, and we watched one great wrinkled body heave itself up and struggle over several prone seals who just happened to be in its path, before flopping down again. And they did smell.

Otto put his arm about me.

Otto, Otto. What were you doing last night?

BOOK: Troubling a Star

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