Far From The Sea We Know (50 page)

“Hello, it’s me,” she said, knocking on
Andrew’s cabin door.

“Come in.”

He was at his small desk, writing something
by hand in a journal. To the side, shelves of teak held a few rows
of old books, some with calfskin covers. The picture of his wife,
fastened to the wall above the desk, seemed to look down at him.
Around her neck was a beautiful string of shells and silver, the
same one now hanging above the compass on the bridge.

“Valentina’s necklace,” she said, indicating
the portrait.

“Someday it will be yours. Promise.”

“Oh, Andrew, thank you, but I was so happy
to find that it wasn’t lost with…that you still had it. And I want
to thank you for everything you did and tried to do on this trip.
You were the only one I could always count on. Don’t give up.”

“I won’t, but this is the last ship for me,”
he said, his sea-worn smile hiding nothing.

She could only answer with a deep sigh. He
pulled opened a drawer without looking and soon a shot glass of
whiskey stood between them.

“Thanks.” She drank some then poured a
little water from a bottle she brought into her hand and splashed
it on her face. “Okay. Dad says it will be hard to win, but I don’t
see how they can just take your ship.”

“They have ways.”

“But you will try to stop them, right?”

“Of course.”

“We can make a story out of this. Dad and
you are still beloved by many, from the old TV specials. Is there
any way I can help?”

“Rest and gather your strength. We’ll all
need it.” He stopped smiling, closed his eyes for a moment. “You
helped us…and me, more than you know.”

“Yeah, well, you for me, too.”

She couldn’t stop her gaze from wandering up
to Valentina’s picture. “I remember the day we named the ship for
her. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. As time went by, I grew old,
Valentina didn’t, that’s all. She’s never really left me. I keep a
place for her, and always will.”

He glanced at the brass weather clock on the
wall. “Got to get up to the bridge.” He stood up and gave her a
hug. “To home,” he said, lifting a phantom drink to the rest of
hers, and they walked out together.

The way back home only took a few days, but
it dragged for Penny. She avoided people whenever she could, with a
single exception: a requested interview by one of the civilian
investigators who had come on board. She answered everything, but
kept strictly to the external facts, what she had done, what she
saw and heard, but nothing about what she thought or felt. Almost
as if what she was describing had happened to someone else. And by
now it almost seemed as if it had. Yet she would never be the same.
The energy wasn’t there to run her old self. And if it ever came
back, she would put it in service of something else. Right now she
didn’t know what and didn’t care. When the time came, when it
mattered, she would. Now she only wanted to head into the silence
of deep woods far, far away from the sound of waves.

As they pulled up to the pier of the naval
base, the frigate that had been chaperoning them started coming
around in a slow circle. It was not going to leave until the
Valentina
was fully in hand.

Lines were secured and the gangplank
extended. Penny stayed on the bridge with Andrew and her father,
watching the crew depart in a line. No one they knew was there to
meet them, just Navy personnel and a few civilians in government
suits. No reporters either. The disinformation machine had been
successfully deployed, and nobody knew their whereabouts. It was
disheartening. No family, no one.

Chiffrey had at least agreed that Andrew, as
captain, would be the last to go. To add a little dignity, she
supposed, to what was essentially the impounding of his ship. Once
Andrew was gone, a new crew would come on board. “They’ll take good
care of her,” Chiffrey had assured her. “I’ll do anything I can to
get her back to you someday. If that’s at all possible.” Hedging as
always, yet he almost seemed genuinely concerned.

She wanted to wait and go down with Andrew,
but he insisted she go with her father. The Captain of the
Valentina
wanted a last moment alone with his ship.

And now the time had come. They were up on
the bridge, Andrew behind the wheel even though they were tied
securely to the pier.

“After this,” her father said to him,
“things may never be the same, old friend.”

Andrew gave the faintest hint of a smile, a
small burning coal in the face of a bitter chill, welcome even
though it could do no real good.

“And we have people, too, and they have been
busy the last few days,” her father added. “They say it is not
completely hopeless. There are options.”

Andrew remained silent, just nodded his
head. The last of the
Valentina
’s crew had boarded a waiting
military bus and it now pulled away toward some debriefing center.
No one spoke for a while, but it wasn’t awkward. They knew each
other too well. Finally Andrew said, “It’s time. They’re
waiting.”

“All right, then,” her father said. “We’ll
see you sometime.”

“You will.”

“Why don’t we meet after this?” Penny said.
“Go have a drink or something?”

Andrew looked past them, out toward the
canal. “I have something I need to attend to.”

“Well, perhaps…”

“Certainly. Another day.”

Their bags had already been taken off.
Chiffrey’s idea, to simplify things. As Penny went down the
gangplank, the occasion seemed to call for a long glance back.
Instead, she just kept walking. There was no point in hanging on to
what was already gone. The feel of dry land under her feet felt
like a quiet room after a long noisy day. She would have liked
nothing more than to keep walking for hours, looking for a path
into some forgotten woods, except a low thrumming beat that had
become as familiar as her own heart’s suddenly reached her ears.
The engines of the
Valentina
were rumbling back to life,
sounding as healthy as the day they were forged.

The ship was already in motion when she
turned around, but both fore and aft hawsers were still lashed
around massive cleats on the pier. Everyone seemed frozen in place.
Chiffrey’s mouth hung open in stunned disbelief. The ship glided
through still water, seemingly without effort, but the thick ropes
failing to yank tight. Instead, the lines simply glided off the
decks and into the water, their cut ends splashing impotently.
Mateo’s head popped up from behind the gunwales, wearing a smile
like the Cheshire Cat. The
Valentina
immediately turned out
to sea. But this wasn’t the sea. They were far up the Hood Canal.
What could Andrew possibly achieve by pulling this now?

The Navy guards standing by raised their
rifles and looked to Chiffrey. He motioned them down and fixed his
gaze on the frigate that had been chaperoning the
Valentina
.
It was already altering course to intercept. Chiffrey walked over
to Penny and her father. “I’m sorry this had to happen. You know
there is nothing I can do but stop him and take him off.” He looked
at the departing ship, and the frigate already narrowing the gap.
“Not how I hoped this would play out.”

He hand signaled to some of the guards and
said, “We’ll get a radio down here in a minute that can connect to
his frequency.” He looked at her father. “I would like you to try
to contact him. We don’t want a bad situation to get worse.”

“I…I will do what I can,” was all her father
could say. “Be careful. Please…”

Chiffrey nodded. “We’ll do it right.”

The
Valentina
could make decent
headway when she had to, but the frigate was gaining. A couple more
minutes and they would pull alongside.

Penny swiveled around toward Chiffrey. “If
he is hurt in any way, I will hold you personally responsible. This
never would have happened if—hey, listen to me!”

But the look on Chiffrey’s face had changed,
and she followed his stare. The frigate had slowed and begun to
turn, like a leaf eddying in a stream. The Valentina glimmered
until it dazzled like a million shards of glass. There was an
in-rush of air as the light abruptly faded. Then only a turbulence
of waves and chop remained to mark the place where the ship had
been. Soon that was gone as well.

“That damn old rover!” Penny yelled. “He
knew
!” She stood there and laughed with utter joy.

The Navy guards had collapsed on the ground.
One slowly opened his eyes and smiled as he looked up at Chiffrey.
The man got to his feet, cleared his rifle of all ammunition, and
removed the magazine. He carefully laid everything out on the
grass, took off his boots, and walked away, humming. The others
then got up, seemingly fully alert, and stood at attention as if
waiting orders. As Chiffrey opened his mouth they all did an about
face and marched away double time, perfectly synchronized, except
they walked with a high stepping lope as if they were trekking
across a savanna somewhere and had been doing so all their lives.
They raised their rifles in the air with both hands, pumping them
up and down in some strange counter-rhythm.

Chiffrey took a few breaths. “Well,” he
said, “here we go again. I’m almost getting used to this. And at
least the question of whether the transceiver was really gone or
still active has been answered. That’d be my guess anyway. Nicely
done.”

The frigate continued to slowly turn until
it was coasting backwards.

“Must have lost rudder control as well,” her
father said.

Chiffrey stared up at a security camera for
a moment, but shook his head. It wasn’t at the right angle to have
recorded the
Valentina
’s departure. His gaze returned to the
Navy guards marching off to the beat of some other drummer. The
group was now twice as big and growing as more personnel
spontaneously joined in, including the two remaining government
men.

“Got to see what I can do to pick up the
pieces and see if anyone is not under the spell around here.” He
started to go, but stopped and turned back to them. “Do I seem the
same to you? I don’t feel the same at all, and yet I can’t tell one
thing different. Never mind. I’d leave quickly before they reboot
if I were you. Enjoy your return home. Catch up with you later.” He
gave Penny a wink and ambled away.

“Advice we should perhaps take,” her father
said. He closed his eyes as if trying to bring some memory back.
“The way Andrew’s been lately…a few words, an odd phrase…I had a
feeling, but I didn’t expect anything like this. And where on earth
is he now?”

“In the place he wanted to be more than any
other,” she said. “At least, that is my hope.”

“If you’re right,” her father said, gazing
out to the last known location of the
Valentina
, “he’s
earned it, if ever anyone has, no bones about it.”

Dice. Rolling the bones. Bones of the
sea…

An image finally burned its way through from
the back of her mind, an image of shells, tiny and white, turning
slowly, somehow connecting all the way through their lives on an
endless string. “Dad, didn’t you once say that shells were the
bones of the sea?”

He nodded. “Andrew told me that once. It’s
true.” He stared at her and began to look sleepy.

“Dad! Valentina’s necklace was hanging above
the compass on the bridge. Some silver, but mostly shells.
Bones
of the sea
.”

Her father rubbed his face with both hands
and looked at her as if waiting for something else.

“I can’t explain it,” she continued. “I
really can’t, but I believe Andrew somehow made a connection to the
transceiver through Valentina’s necklace on the bridge. A direct
connection.”

Her father still looked bewildered, but made
an effort to speak. “The altered transceiver…you mean was some sort
of interface? It sounds like magic.”

“A way to access the same forces we have all
witnessed, which did seem like magic, but it wasn’t. Just beyond
human ken. And it needed something else.”

“Ah, the necklace, I see, except of course,
I don’t.”

“Think about Andrew’s rapport with sea
mammals, you know it was more than just empathy, it was almost
communion.”

“And he has a deep rapport with his ship as
well. The
Valentina
. Still do not really understand,
but…”

The look of youthful illumination that had
briefly played on his face faded to the sad joy of one who’s seen
the consequences of a life played at the edge. His voice now lower,
he added, “And he had…has an even deeper connection to the one
whose name his ship bore. Valentina, his wife. Lost to the sea with
the best. The necklace, yes, a way to…”

He let out a heavy sigh.

“I don’t know, really. It’s completely mad,
yet it fits.” He nodded his head for a while and added, “And
perhaps someday, in this world where everything we thought we knew
has been turned upside down and given a good shake, I will know
how
it fits.”

Her father looked across the now placid
waters and smiled. “A fair wind, old friend.”

Then he shrugged his shoulders. “We’d best
leave while we can. While it seems our Lieutenant has realized that
justice sometimes flies higher than the law, I doubt if everyone
here will be so inclined when they come back to their senses.”

No one stopped them on their way out.

Two days after Penny and her father returned
to her parents’ home, Chiffrey showed up, his demeanor noticeably
subdued, the goofy humor all but gone. Perhaps because he was not
alone. Another man in civilian dress had hovered just behind him
like a shadow. Penny recognized the man as one of the investigators
who had boarded the
Valentina
while they were still at sea.
He was neither tall nor short, had thinning blonde hair, rather
nondescript in almost every way. The exception was his pale gray
eyes. They crouched half closed behind steel-rimmed glasses and
never seemed to blink.