Chapter Two

 

I skip lunch as I often do, feeling that my head is clearer, my decision-making sharper when I am hungry. I’ve thought that since I was a child. I liked the tenacity, the inventiveness that arose in me when I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. If I was the smartest kid on the street, if I hustled, then I got to eat. So I was always the smartest kid on the street, always thought a few steps ahead, brought groceries home when I could and learned to cook, to feed my mom, too.

I stay up on deck as the men go below. I update our approximate position with a sextant on my paper map, paranoid that the GPS equipment could go out. Both the old-fashioned way and the modern grid show that we will reach our destination tomorrow, early or mid-morning.

By dinnertime my will is weak. Hungry and a bit anxious, I lead the men all down. They line up to fill trays with lemon baked chicken, mashed potatoes and buttery garlic green beans. I wander over to Ceely at the coffee station.

“You don’t sleep much, do you?”

It triggers a yawn that she hides in the blue mug. “Forgot how. Happens when you get old.”

“Have you eaten?”

She shakes her head. We meander over together and end up sitting alone at a far table. Jacob goes to sit at a table with Roshin and a few others, but not before looking over at us. Ceely notices.

“He doesn’t like me anymore. I hurt his feelings yesterday.”

“I hurt his feelings today,” I say, meaning to take the blame. Then I realize that she has a right to know. “He saw you going down below on a security camera. He went inside your submarine and he was the one who found the bodies.”

She blinks. “I never would have thought he had it in him.”

“Big week for the kid.” I realize she and I still haven’t discussed what she took from the engine room or why she felt like she had to sneak down there, endangering herself instead of just asking.

She beats me to addressing it. “There are some things you think you might want to know about me. I know. It’s your job to know these things. But you’re not entitled to every detail about me, just because you’re the captain of this ship. Everyone needs their privacy. It’s actually better that you don’t know, that you trust me enough not to ask. Can you do that?”

I feel uneasy, knowing that I don’t know everything. But the way that she says it makes me realize that there is truth in it. We are entitled to our separate lives, even though there is nothing I wouldn’t want to tell her. I can understand that she is different. Women need mystery, think it creates allure.

And if she tells me the honest truth and lays all her great designs out in front of me, if they are in direct conflict of interest with the company’s regulations -with the wellbeing of the crew, the mission, and my career- then I’ll have an impossible decision to make. She is trying to spare me that, keeping me blissfully ignorant. So I nod my acceptance in the end.

“Good. How’s the food?”

The chicken is a bit dry, but thick pieces like this can be hard to keep moist while ensuring a proper cook all the way through. The seasoning and lemon are good enough to make up for it.

“Delicious,” I say.

“No it’s not. It’s dry.”

“You’re harder on yourself than anyone else is. You don’t know how bad we were eating before you showed up. Better food in prison.” I’m nervous as soon as it leaves my mouth, but it hardly fazes her.

“Oh? How long were you in for?”

“Two years.”

She finishes chewing a bite. “And what landed you there? Or is that something better left unsaid?”

She’s giving me the same window that she asked for. I don’t have to answer. But I want to. “Dealing drugs.”

“What kind?”

“All kinds, since I was nine or ten. I needed the money, for food and to keep the lights on. I didn’t want social services stepping in and taking me from my mom, although it ended up happening anyway… I never used.”

“I thought not. You don’t seem like the type. But your mother did?”

“Mm-hm. We were living in California, too, when the creature came up. We weren’t hurt, but she lost friends, her job, our home. She was never really the same again.”

“That’s too bad. I’m sorry you had to go through that so young.”

“It wasn’t all bad… The rest of the world tells us to cover up our culture to be liked by the white bosses, to get anywhere. It’s lonely and it’s dehumanizing. Then you find something like a family, that never tries to smooth out your rough spots or hide who you are? You’d die to hang onto that. Especially when you’re a dumb kid.”

Ceely nods. She looks like she’s thinking it over, trying to understand, so she says nothing. We finish our dinner in comfortable silence, and when the rest of the men have gone, we bring dishes back. She washed and I rinse and stack, with a radio tuned to an oldies station. Ceely hums along with a few that she knows. It’s a deep and rich sound, not girlish. I can feel it reverberate in my own chest as clearly as if it were me making the sound.

It's almost too pleasant a way to spend an evening, at least on a doomed oil tanker crewed by the damned in the middle of a monster infested ocean, selling our lives for some corporation’s bottom-line, to the tune of wild profits we’ll never see, can’t even dream of.

When we finish, I ask, “Spending the night with me?”

She blinks, her lips purse as she considers, then she shakes her grey head. “Not this time.”

It stings for a moment. I try to keep it from showing. Nod. “I’ll walk you back to your room, then.”

We go and she quickly tells me goodnight before shutting the door. I hear the lock click into place and my heart sinks. I guess I had been hoping she would change her mind and invite me in. I double check the knob for security, then lean my burning forehead against the cold metal of the door, and walk through what I am feeling.

I can’t carry this disappointment around with me, and certainly not this feeling of expectation -almost entitlement- that has sprung up without me noticing. I will not be like some fiendish crackhead stealing car stereos on the street, some young hotshot breaking down his woman’s door after she closes it on him. I cannot. There are plenty like that, already. It’s okay to want, it’s human. But not to need, never to demand. I repeat it in my mind as I walk to my quarters.

To be a great man, a wise man, you’ve got to constantly humble yourself. That’s what the wisest of my father-figures had taught me. K was always imparting wisdom, the smartest guy on the block. Always thinking two steps ahead. He had to be, with a name like Kevin. He taught me to play chess.

K died too young, but he went out on top, and it used to be the most I could hope for, for myself. Now I take those grains of wisdom and apply them every day. It’s all mostly the same, on the streets of California, or in prison, or in international waters.

In bed the sheets still smell like Ceely and it makes me hard instantly. I could masturbate, but feel it would be a mistake to reinforce her power over me with that kind of physical response, so I repeat a mantra in my mind of my duties to myself, to the crew, to the company, to the country, until my yearning has subsided.

When, finally, I sleep, it is deep and dreamless. I am not rousted by alarms or nightmares of them; the ship is not under attack, there is no hurricane or tidal wave or destructive, enraged creature from the deep screaming toward us. I don’t know if it’s the day’s activities sapping my strength that allow for such rest or if it’s that the sirens did go off, that I did rise to meet the situation to the best of my own abilities, and all that came of it was her.

In the morning, I feel elastic and strong as I first stretch every muscle out on the bed. The sun streams in my porthole window. It rises so early this close to the equator, it’s only quarter-past five.

I think of Ceely as I stand in a cool shower -always cool, it’s for waking up my mind, not to dull my libido- and by the time I’m dressed and ready to face the day, I’ve convinced myself that she will have disobeyed me and snuck out again. She will have gone to the engine room to take more tools and supplies, and maybe met with one of the several crewmen who is a truly violent opportunistic sadist.

I move briskly to Jacob’s office and knock, but he’s not up yet, so I let myself in. I don’t sit at his desk, just bend forward as I wake the computer and open the surveillance system.

First, I check the kitchen, and to my great surprise there she is. She’s wearing her grey hair pulled back, a white apron over the crew-issued navy-blue coveralls she wears. She’s whisking what must be three dozen eggs in a huge bowl, with a deeply focused and also far off look on her pretty face, which is not bruised or harmed in any way. A strand of her hair has come loose and sticks to her temple. It must be hot in the kitchen, ovens preheating to cook whatever breakfast casserole she is concocting.

I won’t eat it. I usually just have a protein bar to get my metabolism going, and besides, I hate eggs. One of our nosy, do-gooder neighbors was always bringing them over, inviting me to come and collect them with her from her chicken coop. She would explain how to tell if they had gone bad, teach me how if they were left unwashed, a protective coating on the shell would keep them fresh much longer than if they were washed, and no need to refrigerate them. She knew that the power was off half the time, at our house, and that food was scarce if mom was having a rough week.

I got so sick of eating eggs that I finally went out and did my first drug deal.

So Ceely is safe; that part of my suspicion is wrong, and my muscles relax all over my body. I puff out a big breath and hit rewind. Video reverses all over the screen; on deck, in hallways, in the med bay and down in the ship’s bowels.

No one in our out for most of the night. There’s midnight gone, eleven. Ten-forty-two, she walks by the camera in a blur. I jam a finger down on the key to freeze it, then press play and watch her go at a normal speed, from the hallway in one frame to the lower deck in the next. She walks right past the engine room, though.

I search viewpoints and there she is, climbing into her submarine, closing the hatch. Staying there all night, on the cold floor next to the cold bodies in the ice chest. I shut my eyes and live in the sadness the image conjures for a few long seconds. I need to get her to come sleep with me, tonight. She has obviously forgotten how to feel warm and comfortable and safe somewhere, and I need to remind her. It won’t do.

The door opens and Jacob jumps halfway out of his skin when he sees me. His hand shoots up over his heart. “God!”

“Sorry. Come here.” I jerk my head to accentuate the statement. I have realized I don’t want to make an enemy of him. He could be a problem. He has friends high up and he has access to things that even I don’t. Not to mention he jumps to hurry over, always eager to obey me. It seems I’m forgiven without having to offer any explanation for my harshness, but I still do.

“What’s this? She was sneaking around again?”

“Going places she shouldn’t, disobeying my direct order, yes…” I rewind and let him watch her walk through the bay and climb up into her submarine.

He shivers.

I say, “The bodies are her daughters’. They were killed when the creature emerged, thirty years ago. She built the sub to go down and get them, she shot that thing while she was down there. And somehow, the thing whipped up a storm and she blacked out. When she woke up, she was thirty years later, thirty years older, her children’s bodies changed, too. And now she thinks that there’s a chance she could create the same reaction as before -or an opposite one- that might move her backward and let her save their lives. Only if she keeps them close, in range of the creature and its storm.”

Jacob’s mouth has dropped open. He is staring, processing, he finally shakes his head. His tone is skeptical. “Moved through time? As some sort of defense mechanism? You really believe this?”

“Yes. She wasn’t lying when she told it to me. I’m sure of it.” My resolute belief shakes his own.

He clearly thinks me to be a good judge of these things, probably better than himself.

“Even if it’s true, that doesn’t mean that it can send her back, or that it will, or reanimate the bodies, or that it won’t just kill her instead.”

“I know.”

“In fact, if she attacks it while in range of the ship, it could kill all of us-.”

“-I know-.”

“Or move all of us through time!” He’s a bit hysterical, laughs as he says it, waves a hand and wheels around.

“I know. I won’t let that happen. Do you trust me that much?”

He is already nodding.

“I also can’t jettison the bodies, I can’t do that to her, and I can’t let her run off chasing that thing again. She’ll die out there, all alone. I don’t want that to happen, I don’t think that you do, either. Because you see what I do. She’s a good person who’s been through something unimaginable, and it messed her up. Like it would anyone. I think with a little time, and a little bit of compassion, we can save what’s left of her life.”

Face grim, eyes big and a little moist, he nods. “Alright.”

“I’ll leave you to it, then.”

I try to go, but he stops me when my hand is on the doorknob.

His voice squeaks, uncharacteristically tight. “Captain?”

“Yes?”

Clearing his throat, he goes on. “A communication came through, late last night, from my superior. There’s a man named James Bender who is requesting permission to communicate with Ceely. Some old acquaintance.”

It puts me on edge. Old acquaintance, or former lover? Either way, could it be good for her to hear from him? Or could it only put up more walls between us? Remind her of what she has lost? Could he be the little dead girls’ father? I feel prickly all over, I can’t help but think that it will only further stall our progress, that I know that I’m trying to do what is best for her, and I can’t know this man’s intentions.

If she wanted to speak to him, she could ask me, could reach out on her own. And she hasn’t. In the end, I trust that fact and also the discomfort twisting inside of me. It’s my call, all communication -other than Jacob’s with the superiors at home base- is on lockdown, for all of our protection.

I check my watch and realize that I’m behind schedule.

“No. And don’t bring it up to her.”