Troubling a Star (24 page)

Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Troubling a Star

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I said, lightly, “I don't think the elephant seals are much of a threat, not unless we get in their path when they want to move somewhere.”

Were there other nights, too, when I was asleep and Otto slipped out of his cabin and threw cases overboard? Cases of what?

Sam joined us, saying, “Unlike some seals, leopard seals, for instance, elephant seals don't eat penguins.” The beach was full of penguins waddling about, ignoring the seals.

“Chinstraps and gentoos,” Otto said. “Look. The chinstrap has a black line under its jaw, and pale pink feet.”

“Um.” Sam nodded. “And the gentoo has a red bill and red feet.”

If I thought about penguins, I forgot to worry. We climbed a steep, stony hill to see hundreds more, including one lonely macaroni penguin with a funny little topknot on its head. Benjy said that it was like the hairdo of dandies at the time of the American Revolution, and in “Yankee-Doodle Dandy” the “put a feather in your cap and call it macaroni” was a sort
of slap at the colonial dandies. “The penguins aren't particularly dandy,” he said. He looked at the funny little macaroni and said probably it didn't lay its egg in time, and wouldn't be able to complete raising its chick. There's a lot of infant mortality.

I turned away from Otto, and Benjy was pointing out nesting petrels and gulls on a ledge above us. I felt irrationally sad. And uneasy.

Siri had left the group and gone back down to the beach with her harp. I said, “Siri's getting her harp out of its case. I'm going down.”

“Okay,” Benjy said. “Take care.”

Otto said, “I can take care of Vicky.”

Sam hooked his arm into mine. “Vicky and Otto will take care of me.”

Together we went down the slippery mountainside. Sam slowed us. “Creaky knees. Thanks for your help.”

Siri was already singing when we reached the beach, an old ballad, “I wonder as I wander,” and several penguins were clustering about her. As far as I could tell, the seals were paying no attention to the music, but maybe seals are less sensitive to music than penguins are. Elephant seals do look like enormous blobs of protoplasm.

Three of the penguins began to chitter, and maybe I was being anthropomorphic or something, but I was sure they were trying to sing along with Siri. I looked around for Benjy. He was still standing up on top of the cliff, slightly apart from the rest of the group, looking down on us.

Icebergs. Ice floes. Sleeping seals. Sunlight flashing off ice, touching and deepening the amazing blue of the bergs. I sat on the side of my bunk and wrote a sort of song:

I've made myself vulnerable,
I've let myself care.
I've opened my firmly closed heart.
My safety is gone,
It's no longer there,
My protection is falling apart.

Nobody promised
Our hearts would be safe
Or our bodies protected from harm.
A moment can change
All we think that we have,
But still we must welcome the storm.

I wasn't sure about welcoming the storm. Maybe it should be something like “strongly” or “staunchly we'll weather the storm.” I'd have to brood on it, so I left it for a while. I'm getting braver about poetry. I wrote some more in my letter to Aunt Serena, then copied the poem for Siri, finally writing the last line as “Hope will endure through the storm,” and slid it under the door of her cabin. I was learning a lot from penguins.

I was nervous and restless. Part of me felt I was making much ado about nothing (Shakespeare again), and part of me
felt I wasn't taking all the accumulating warnings seriously enough.

I went to the lounge, but for once nobody was there, so I opened the door to the fo'c'sle. It, too, was empty. I wanted to be alone with the wind and water. I leaned on the rail and looked at the horizon. The sky was grey, the water even greyer, but sunlight still seemed to reach the white of icebergs, to touch their incredible blue. I heard the door from the lounge to the fo'c'sle open, and backed away from the rail until I could see who it was. In our winter clothing and bulky red parkas, we all looked pretty much alike, male and female. It was Leilia. Not Otto. I was glad it was Leilia; she exuded practicality and solidity and, yes, trustworthiness. We used to use that word when I went to Scout camp. You don't hear it much anymore.

Leilia came and stood by me. “Beautiful, isn't it?”

I nodded. “It's so beautiful I can't even begin to describe it.”

“Interesting group on this trip,” Leilia said. “Not that I'm surprised, because Antarctica tends to draw interesting people. But we're all rather old for you, even Otto, who bears the burden of being a prince fairly heavily despite his seeming lightheartedness.”

I watched a seal on an ice floe to starboard, so close I could see his whiskers. “I guess I think princes should take their jobs seriously.”

“Has he shown you the snapshot of his fairy-tale castle?”

I nodded. “Right out of the Brothers Grimm.”

Leilia laughed. “Sometimes the Brothers Grimm can be pretty grim.”

The door opened and Jack Nessinger came out. The wind almost took his cowboy hat, but he grabbed it before it blew overboard. “Hey, ladies. Looking for whales?”

“Haven't seen any,” Leilia said. “I just like it out here.”

“Me, too. But it's too cold for me today. My Texas blood is thin. See you gals later.”

Leilia and I stood looking at the majesty of the icebergs for a few minutes longer. Then she turned to go in. “See you at Wrap-Up.”

“Sure.”

As she opened the door to the lounge, a couple of other people came out. It was Benjy in his tan parka, and Siri in her regulation red one. They walked over to me and Siri said, “Thanks for the poem, Vicky.”

“I know it's not terrific,” I said hastily.

“I'm not sure about it as poetry,” she said, “although I like it. I needed to hear what it said.” She smiled at me.

There was a silence as we looked at one especially magnificent iceberg, with turrets and towers and sworls and incredible coloring. Then Benjy said, “Vicky, I think you need to trust us enough to talk to us.” I looked at him. Nodded. He continued, “Cookie told me what happened, or nearly happened, at the pyramids in Vespugia. He showed me his peculiar postcard from your friend Adam, and told me about yours.”

“What about the warnings in my locker at school?”

“Incomprehensible,” Benjy said. “Is there anything else we ought to know?”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I told them about finding Esteban's card on the floor.

“What else? There's something more on your mind.”

I told them about Otto and the night before.

Benjy leaned his elbows on the rail, whistling softly between his teeth. “He didn't see you?”

“No.”

“Got any theories?”

I said bluntly, in order to sound neither tentative nor hysterical, “I think it's all about dismantling and disposing of nuclear warheads.”

Benjy said, “That's a horrendous, universal problem. What's it got to do with all this?”

I asked, “What was Otto dumping last night?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Benjy protested. “You can't believe Otto was carrying anything radioactive aboard the
Argosy
.”

“Why not? It could have been shielded in lead or whatever.”

“Vicky, sweetie, you're crazy.”

I said, stubbornly, “Siri, you said Generalissimo Guedder has a case of missile envy.”

“Sure, butâ”

“So he needs uranium.”

Benjy demanded, “Do you realize how heavily that stuff has to be shielded?”

“I think so.”

“After Chernobyl, some workers went in on what was a suicide mission, and they were dead in a few days. You can't take uranium or plutonium and forget it's lethally radioactive.”

“I know that. But bombs are being dismantled and â¦”

Benjy turned and flung up his hands. “Vicky. Yes. And no. I mean, it's an unsolved problem, and Antarctica has been discussed as a possible place for disposal, and it's being fought. The thought alone is intolerable. It could have disastrous consequences. But even if some country broke all the treaties and tried to get nuclear waste to Antarctica, it couldn't be done on a small ship like the
Argosy
.”

“Okay, butâ” Now I was formulating thoughts that had been below the surface. “If Vespugia wanted to make a nuclear warhead, and didn't have any uranium, then, if they had a lot of money, they might try to buy it from another country â¦”

Benjy looked at me with his intense stare. “Are you planning on being a novelist?”

“There are worse things to be.” I glowered at him.

“Hey, relax. Sorry, Vicky. I'm a simple guy and I know a lot about penguins and not much about politics. I want to keep Antarctica an international zone free from greed and corruption and power games. I realize that makes me as naÃ¯ve asâ”

Siri said, “As me. I'm naÃ¯ve, too, and it's not a good thing to be in this wicked world. Something's going on around us on this trip. Vicky blundered into it at the pyramids. Sam was with her when she nearly fell, and he takes it seriously.”

“Okay, okay,” Benjy said hastily, “so do I. Listen, it's almost time for Wrap-Up and I've got to get in and confer with Quim about plans for tomorrow. Since our suspicions don't add up to anything tangible, let's keep them to ourselves, okay?”

“Sure.”

“See you both in a few minutes.”

“Sure,” I repeated.

Siri looked at me with a slight smile as the door closed behind Benjy. “Vicky, sweetie, handing over a nuclear device from one country to another, more than half a planet apart, is just about impossible.”

“Okay.” I pulled my parka hood more tightly around my face. “I know I'm no scientist.”

“I
am
a scientist. I'm trying to look at all the elements of this puzzle, and I have to admit I can't make any sense of any of it. What do you suppose Otto was doing last night?”

I shook my head.

Siri shook hers. “What bothers me is that it does seem you have been given warnings, and I can't see you as any kind of threat to anybody.”

“Neither can I.”

“Since my marriage busted up, I've tended to keep my head buried in the sand, and refused to be involved with anybody or anything. Not good. Thanks again for your poem. It really hit me. I think you're right about being vulnerable. If we can't be hurt, we might as well be dead. It's a good poem.”

“Thanks, Siri. Thanks a lot. We've talked about Aunt Serenaâwho gave me this tripâ”

“Yes. She sounds marvelous.”

“She told me about penguins being communal creatures, but never intimate.”

“Yes. Benjy talks about that in one of his lectures.”

“But we're human. We can't be like that.”

“We can try.” Siri's voice was low. “As part of a university community, I've been almost as communal as a penguin. But I forbade any more intimacy after getting my heart smashed.”

“Are you feeling vulnerable again?” I asked.

She nodded.

After I'd spoken to Benjy and Siri I realized that my suspicions were crazy, just as Benjy had said. There was no way Otto could have had nuclear warheads, mantled or dismantled, in his wooden boxes. But something was in them. Something he went out on deck with, and came back without.

Zlatovica had warheads it desperately wanted to get rid of. Zlatovica, via Prince Otto, would be glad to sell them. But who had the money? And how would they dispose of them?

After dinner there was going to be a movie about whales. While I was finishing my meal, Sam looked at me. “Do you want dessert, Vicky?”

“No.”

“Nor do I. Come on out and let's look for whales.”

We excused ourselves and went on deck. Sam demanded, “What's on your mind?”

“Am I that obvious?”

“No. I've been talking to Siri. You may be totally off-base in your guess as to what's going on, but something is, and needs to be taken seriously.”

“What did Siri tell you?”

“She filled me in where I had questions.”