The Forcing, page 25
Argent was sitting with his back to the cockpit bulkhead, eyes shielded behind reflective Ray-Bans, mouth crisped tight. Francoise had gone below, and I could see her feet at the end of the main cabin berth. I called to her to come back on deck. The vapours were heavier than air and would accumulate in the cabin. Her feet stirred a moment and then settled. There was no answer.
Argent looked up at me and hauled himself down the main hatch, appearing a few minutes later with Francoise tottering in his arms. He grinned up at me, almost comic now with his missing teeth, and pushed her up the gangway. She flopped down onto the cockpit bench. Her face was pale, her eyes narrowed against the sun. I pulled off my cap and was about to put it on her head when she wrenched herself around and stuck her head over the side. Her body heaved, and I could hear the splatter of vomit on oil and a moment later the acid odour of half-digested food. She lay like that for a while, hugging the deck, her head on her arms, panting in the heat.
I raised the binoculars and scanned the northern horizon, but there was only the string of abandoned oil-production platforms we had passed hours ago, rusting and derelict, tiny now in the distance, and the empty grey of the Gulf. I estimated we were some fifty nautical miles offshore, maybe more. With the mainsail up, I had poled the jib to catch whatever breath of wind there might be, but the sails flapped uselessly, and there was no wake whatsoever on the surface.
I left the wheel with rudder centred and cinched, took a deep breath, and went below to the galley. Dizzy, I opened the locker beneath the stove and found three new dish towels. I poured a quarter-litre of water from one of the small plastic bottles into the aluminium sink, dumped in an eighth of a box of baking soda, and soaked the cloths thoroughly in the mixture. The air above deck was foul, only marginally better than below. I handed a cloth to Argent and one to Francoise, folded mine in half and held it over my nose and mouth, sealing it as best I could against my skin. Francoise smiled thinly at me and pushed the cloth over her face. Argent did the same. It was an improvement – psychological as much as anything – but after a few minutes the vapours seemed to have grown in strength and I knew that if something didn’t change soon, we would all be overcome.
I had not wanted to try the engine. I wasn’t sure about the driveshaft and I feared that motoring through the slick would make things worse by stirring up the oil, releasing even more of the volatile compounds – but our options were few. I looked out across the water for any ripple or sign of wind and down at Francoise and Argent, their eyes closed, the wet rags smeared ineffectually to their faces. They looked asleep, unconscious, dead.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the engine key and inserted it into the ignition. It would not fit. As I bent down to inspect the panel the blood rushed to my head. I staggered forward onto my knees and pushed out my free hand to steady myself. I stabbed the key into the panel, missing the lock hole altogether. My hand seemed impossibly large. I felt as if my fingers were made of foam. My head was spinning violently now. Francoise was out, a lick of drool spilling from the corner of her mouth. Argent’s eyes were closed. I knew I was next. I looked up at the mast, the sails hanging limp in the dead air. Altitude – that was what I needed. Even a few metres would make all the difference. I managed to pull myself up and clamber to the top of the cabin housing. Even here the air was better. Holding the boom for support I made my way forward to the mast. Then I grabbed the main halyard in one hand and hauled myself up until I was standing on the boom.
Here, my head was a full three and a half metres above the surface. I sniffed at the air. My sense of smell was almost gone, but I could tell that here it was purer. Slowly, my head cleared a little. I wrapped my legs around the mast and using the halyard I shimmied up, gaining height, until I reached the spreaders. A breath of cooler air bathed my face, wicked the sweat from the back of my neck. I closed my eyes, dizzy still from the vapours. This far above the deck each yaw and roll of the hull sent me swaying far out over the water. I clung tight to the mast, gulping in lungfuls of clean air, trying to purge the toxins from my blood, knowing that if I fell, I would be overcome before I could make it back to the boat.
I stayed there a long time, looking down at the oiled surface of the sea, the boat swaying beneath me as the sun moved closer to the horizon. To the north, three orange flares spun long, vertical threads of black smoke from deepwater rigs that had exploded in the sudden sea-level rise and storms of four years ago. Neither the companies nor the government had had the resources to deal with the disasters, and ever since the fires had raged and the deep reservoirs had poured forth their epochal store of crude oil into the Gulf.
It had all happened so fast, this unravelling. In his letter, Lachie had described some of it. As the rains around the globe shifted poleward – Hadley cells behaving exactly as the models had predicted they would, exactly as I had taught my senior high-school students they would – crops failed everywhere. Prices skyrocketed. Tens of millions died of starvation in Asia and the subcontinent. The changing rainfall patterns threw already eroded terrestrial ecosystems into freefall. During the Repudiation, successive Brazilian governments had promoted widespread development of the Amazon. Roads and rail lines were cut, concessions offered, land cleared and burned. Big new mines were opened, and dams built. Then, in one fire alone, one-third of the remaining forest burned away, leaving a moonscape of ash and smouldering stumps. The Amazon, a perennial carbon sink, became a net emitter. The new Brazilian youth government, combating unrest and food riots, was powerless to fight it. It burned on and on, month after month, the TV screen a daily conflagration of unimaginable dimensions, the fires of hell itself, the smoke blanketing Calgary and most of North America, and even on some days London and Madrid. Then, as the war deepened, they just stopped reporting it. News was banned, replaced by official government announcements and a steady barrage of light comedy. As far as anyone knew, the fires were still burning now. We knew people were still starving.
I thought of Lachie, running through every word of his letter again in my head, still unable to come to terms with what it contained, the despair in his words. Lachie was tough and resourceful, I told myself. He would find a way through. He always had before.
From high on the mast, I looked down at my companions, unconscious in the tiny cockpit, adrift in a vast wasteland. And there was nothing I could do for them. Forgive them, I thought. Forgive us all. For we know not what we do.
Everything Was Possible
I haven’t thought about Lachie for weeks, months even. Too long. God, I miss him.
I have never believed in God.
The evidence disproving His existence is everywhere. No supreme intelligence would ever have allowed this cataclysm, and if it had, as Kwesi believed, then it was no deity worthy of worship. And if the reward for a corporeal life of piety is eternal life in empyreal radiance, absolution of all sin, then nothing here matters anyway. No, Argent was right: religion is nothing but superstition, a weak-minded salve for the terrifying implacability of truth.
And the more I think about it, the more I suspect that this is exactly why we lost our way so badly, why history unfolded the way it did. The power of unrestricted social media for all gave us the ability to destroy truth. By forcing each of us into our own orbits of belief, no commonly held fundamental truths remained. And in that way, and very quickly, all was lost. We lost the ability to causally link action, or inaction for that matter, to consequence. Everything was possible, and so nothing was real. I think it was Tolstoy who said that, or something like it. We forgot that this life, here on Earth, is all we have, and all that matters.
And yet, as I did high above the deck of that boat so long ago, I close my eyes and pray with all my being for my son, out there somewhere, alone on the raging sea.
46
As evening approached the temperature fell. I shifted my weight, still perched on the spar high above the deck. To the East, a thin strip of the surface seemed to break away, flashing from hydrophobic mercury to rippled copper. I pulled myself to my feet, balanced on the spreader and peered into the distance. But it was gone. My eyes were offering wishful mirages just when I needed them most. I rubbed my eyes and stared hard. There was a definite interface, there, almost at the horizon. I watched it disappear and reappear in the haze, shifting, lengthening, widening and contracting again, until I was sure. It was the edge of the slick.
Charging my lungs with air, I slid down the mast and jumped into the cockpit. Francoise and Argent lay as I had left them, unconscious. This time the key slid home first time, and I flipped the switch, centred the throttle and pushed the starter button. The engine fired and then spluttered and died. I counted to ten and tried again. This time the engine took, roughly at first, belching smoke from the stern exhaust, rattling and pinging below my feet. I gave her some revs and the engine smoothed out. The splash of water aft told me the sea-water cooling pump was working. I let it idle a moment and then eased the engine into gear. We started to move. There was almost no vibration. I had done a better job than I had thought. It didn’t take us long to get clear of the slick.
*
It wasn’t until after dark that the wind came up. We had been clear of the oil for a few hours, and my dizziness had been steadily replaced by a brain-shattering toxic hangover. At least the air was cleaner now, and the wind was freshening quickly from the south. I raised the sails and trimmed up for the first tack, east-southeast by the green glow of the cockpit compass. The sheets creaked as they tightened under the load and the boat heeled into the tack, the water hissing past. I looked at my watch, hit the timer for a two-hour tack, cinched down the wheel and stood on the high-side rail and watched the little boat slide through the dark water.
Francoise and Argent were still sleeping off their chemical overdoses. They would feel like hell when they came around, but they were alive, breathing clean air now, their chests rising and falling steadily. I checked the compass heading and looked up into the spreading canvas. We were moving. The air was clean. We would be okay. But I still had the problem of Argent. Despite recent events, and though I had saved his life back there, and most probably he ours, I knew that he wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of me as soon as it suited him. His designs on Francoise were as clear as those of that lunatic Saint John. I had to be careful, for both of us.
I found Argent’s metal case stashed deep inside the starboard berth locker. The black duffel bag Argent had taken from the marauders’ camp was there too. I picked up the case, examined its keypad and locks. From the way he’d described its treatment at the hands of the marauders, I had expected to see at least a few dents and scratches, but the polished surface was flawless. Whatever was inside was important enough for Argent to kill for. Inside the duffel bag, buried under a convenience-store aisle of brightly coloured junk-food packages, was a shotgun, four boxes of twelve-gauge shells, another handgun, several boxes of nine-millimetre ammunition, and a wad of old-issue American cash. I stashed the guns and ammunition in the forward berth under the storm sail, put the bag and the case back where I had found them.
By now my head felt as if it was splitting open from the inside. I fumbled for the medical kit, sprung the lid, spilled the contents across the chart table and to the floor. Nausea flooded my senses, pushed me to my knees. I searched through the strewn packages, managed to find a box of painkillers, punched the pink and white codeine tablets from their foil envelopes, swallowed them one after the other, drank down half a jug of spring water, sprawled there on the floor of that tiny cabin in the middle of a poisoned sea.
Francoise had been right. Luck had handed us this lifeboat just when we had needed it. I slipped the box of painkillers into my pocket – the others would need them when they finally came to. From the sound of the water moving over the hull, we had picked up speed. I went above. The wind was rising, and a noticeable swell had developed. Francoise and Argent were still wedged into the low side of the cockpit where I had arranged them.
I went back below and sat at the nav station and flipped on the chart-table light. It flickered and steadied. The batteries had charged. I opened the chart table and found the ship’s log. Inside, Daniel Menzels’ neat hand recorded their last voyage, just over two years ago. A shakedown cruise from Miami to Key West and back. Providence had been provisioned for a long voyage, probably south. Everything still had a pre-departure newness to it. But then some calamity had befallen them. Either they had not had a chance to get to the boat, and it had been unmoored and cast to sea in one of the recent hurricanes that had lashed the coast, or they had been swept overboard early in their journey, and Providence was left to wander the seas alone, a post-Repudiation Marie Celeste, until Saint John’s men had found her. And despite everything, despite losing May and not knowing where my son was, or even if he was alive, and despite the wreckage all around, I knew then that I wanted to survive, to live, to hope for something better, some chance to make things right again, even in just the smallest way. Aloud, I thanked Daniel and his wife for their foresight.
Suddenly, the bow pitched up, held for a moment, and then crashed down the lee of a wave. I steadied myself and swung up into the gangway as a gust of wind hit the sails, heeling the boat over momentarily so that the rails were awash. I looked out across the lonely darkness of the Gulf. The wind was rising and had backed to the southwest. The swell had grown and was now overlain with a chop that thudded against the hull. A storm was coming.
47
I could tell that Francoise had no idea where she was. She sat for a long time, disoriented and groggy, looking out into the night, the wind whipping her hair. She closed her eyes and slumped her head to her knees. Later, she described to me her profound shock at the ferocity of the storm. Slanting rain stung her eyes. Knifepoints of pain twisted in her brain. The scream of the wind through the rigging deafened her.
With each wave the ship was pitched up, up towards the screaming heavens, to tremble there a moment at the crest so you could look out at the torn surface of the ocean stretching away as far as you could see, until the wave was past and you were falling, down in gut-hollowing free-fall with the sea towering all around until the bone-crunching impact as the bow disappeared down into the black water, and for that eternity you believed with all your being that the ship would be swallowed whole, that there was simply no possible way that it could ever survive such a maelstrom, until finally she struggled free, shedding that burial weight of water in silver cascades as you were lifted up again to reach the next crest to do it all over again.
She had not expected any of it: the violence of the water, the way it wrenched the boat like a rat in a terrier’s jaws, the noise, the malevolent impersonal fury of it, the blackness of the shroud that covered the world. I’d been in storms before. But never anything like this.
Argent was just coming to when a huge wave hit the boat. Half awake, he was thrown against the lifelines and toppled back into the cockpit. Francoise scrambled over to help him, reaching him just as another wave hit. Water flooded the cockpit, and she was knocked sideways. I reached out for her, helped her up. Then I handed them each a life jacket. Once she had put hers on, I tied a length of line around her waist and made it fast to one of the cleats, then handed another rope to Argent, signalled him to do the same. He was in bad shape, reeling, sodden.
Another wave broke over the cockpit, sending Francoise crashing down on top of Argent. The cockpit was full of water and for a moment they were gone. Then they reappeared, coughing up water. The boat yawed violently.
Argent stared up at me, wild-eyed. ‘Where are we going?’ he shouted over the gale.
I pointed astern. There was just enough diffused moonlight to reveal a surface in turmoil, waves whipped to enormous heights, bigger than I had ever seen or imagined.
‘Away from that,’ I yelled.
Argent grabbed the wheel frame, pulled himself up and looked at the compass. ‘We need to go southeast, goddam it. This takes us to fucking Mexico.’
We held tight to the frame as the boat slid down the back of a wave.
‘Are you insane?’ I shouted.
‘Mexico is fucked. We can’t go there.’
‘I’m trying to keep us alive,’ I yelled. ‘Heading doesn’t matter now. Weather does. Sit down and hold on.’
Another wave twisted Argent to the cockpit floor, still clutching the steel tube frame of the wheel mount. He pulled himself back to his feet, muscles straining, but Francoise pulled him back. She was soaked, her hair running in sodden shivers across her face. ‘Teacher knows what he’s doing,’ she shouted.
‘You owe me,’ Argent spluttered. ‘Without me you’d be back there having Saint John’s babies.’
‘I don’t owe you anything.’
He grabbed her wrist, squeezed it hard. ‘You ungrateful little bitch. Who do you think bought this boat, sabotaged their Whalers?’
‘Leave her alone,’ I screamed over the wind. ‘So help me Argent, let go of her right now.’
Argent looked up at me, still holding her wrist.
‘Or you’ll what?’
She glared at him. He glared back a moment, and then suddenly the anger was gone, and he bent forward just as a stream of vomit spewed from his mouth over the cockpit floor. He doubled up, gasping for breath.
‘You’re seasick, Argent,’ I yelled. ‘Probably high from the chemicals too. Go below. You need to lie down. Please.’
‘We are going the wrong way,’ he said, pushing her away. ‘This is not the plan.’ He jammed the heel of his hand into my chest and grabbed the wheel, wrenching it hard to starboard.
