Long Voyage Back (47 page)

And in the blackness of that night, with the sounds of waves crashing against rocks or reef less than a hundred yards away three times terrifying them into preparations for disaster, they somehow sailed through. At one point with Sheila wielding the spotlight they saw surf shattering itself against a reef less than forty feet to their left. At another point Vagabond struck something, probably - since their depthmeter was registering eight feet of water - a little shaft of coral, but she sailed on. By midnight the storm wind, as Philip and Neil had expected so long ago in their initial planning, moved around to the southwest and the seas and wind began to fall. Having sailed free of the last of the little cays and reefs, they were able to sail easily due east. It was just possible, thought Neil, after he had finished checking Jeanne and Philip again and come up and seen how quickly the waves were diminishing, that they might survive this night after all. They would live to suffer some more.

Part Five SPIRIT

The war - the holocaust war, the war of missiles, bombers, submarines, lasers, satellites and all the sophisticated technology of modern military science - this war between the United States with its western and oriental allies and the Soviet Union with her allies, was, by most measurements, over. No more missiles were being fired; nuclear explosions had ceased. Although death still came out of the sky it fell now gently, subtly, like a soft rain. Although people still died, they no longer disappeared in a flash of light or exploded into fragments like a smashed pumpkin, but died in more natural animal ways: of starvation, of typhoid, of cholera, of dysentery, of fever, of pneumonia, of weariness and of grief. Although no winner had been declared or loser surrendered, the big war was over. Another had begun.

The new war, in that tradition as old as humanity itself, found the former enemies fighting now on the same side against new enemies. The new war was between the devastated nations of the northern hemisphere and the starving but relatively undamaged nations of the southern hemisphere. .Those who had survived the first war, finding themselves often with radioactive food and undrinkable water, with diseases known and unknown afflicting them and medical care scarce or absent, fled to those places that they supposed to be safer. The southern nations and peoples were first appalled by the invasion of survivors, then frightened by it, and finally angered by it. If the white nations of the north had blown up the world, let them not try to escape the consequences by fleeing to the south. Thus the new war had begun.

It actually had been going on since the first week of the old war. Venezuela's Navy had forcibly prevented US Naval ships from refuelling in their ports. A sea battle had been fought. Tactical nuclear bombs had been dropped. In miniature, such battles had been repeated throughout the world ever since. American and Russian ships and planes, low on fuel, their home bases destroyed, sought refuge in neutral countries to the south. At first their ships or planes were impounded, their crews quarantined or imprisoned. Later, beginning in the second month of the war, they were sunk or shot down, any survivors killed on the spot. As the warring nations slowly ceased to be nations, so too their armies, navies and air forces slowly ceased to be armies, navies and air forces. Individual units, a plane, a squadron, a company, a tank unit, decided to become a nation unto itself and acted to survive. Often this entailed moving forcibly from a dangerous area to a safe area, and the nations and peoples in the safe areas began to organize themselves to resist these forcible mini-invasions. By the end of the war - and it was over in less than a month - any unidentified or foreign ship, plane or person was considered an enemy to be eliminated. When the unknown deadly epidemic disease which became known as either '

the plague' or as 'Nevada X' began to decimate populations as it spread from the American west down through Mexico to Central America, and, in long deadly bursts, to other countries around the world, foreigners, especially Americans, became triply feared, resented, and resisted. To protect themselves, most of the southern nations simply shut down all commercial air and ship traffic with the northern hemisphere. In effect they tried to build a wall and order the war and those who survived it not to enter. From the point of view of nations like Brazil, all unidentified people, planes and ships, of whatever size or ostensible threat, were, if approaching their territory, considered the deadliest of enemies and treated as such. Untouched by violence, with only a tiny proportion of arriving refugees in relation to their own population or in relation to the masses of refugees flooding elsewhere, Brazil had the healthiest major economy left on earth. It was a shambles. Since those nations to whom they had traditionally exported their coffee, sugar, soybeans, and other goods now lay in ruins, they found themselves without markets for most of their major products. With international trade and travel ended, many stores and jobs ceased to exist. Unemployment had tripled within two weeks of the beginning of the war; it doubled again over the next two months. Without imports, adequate food supplies disappeared. Scarcity, hunger and related diseases became more general each week. Drastic rationing of fuel further curtailed economic activity. Brazil's modern economy ground to a halt. With half the population unemployed food lines and food riots became the norm. The rich retreated to their luxury homes and apartments and tried to hold the police and military forces in line. In the West Indies and Central America the desperate and starving masses rose up and forcibly took from those who still had something all that they had. Slow starvation and susceptibility to disease thus became shared and universal there. In the countries of South America, where food was still more available and disease less out of control, the rich were able to hold on, while the great masses of people, unemployed and barely fed, became more and more weakened, more and more desperate. And so, in effect, a third war was beginning: a war again as old as humanity, but exacerbated by the gross overpopulation of the planet by the late twentieth century: the war between those who had enough to eat and those who did not. The number of people who didn't have enough grew greater each day; their need greater; their strength less. The governments of South America held on: shooting all who resisted, shooting all who tried to enter from foreign countries, shooting all who questioned the siege mentality that they hoped would sustain them.

And thus throughout the world the war refugees fought a usually losing battle for survival. Their enemies were legion: radioactive fallout, starvation, polluted water, dysentery, typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, 'Nevada X', the guns and desperation of their fellow survivors, the guns and desperation of their own armies and navies, the guns and ships and planes of the safe countries to which they tried to flee. The war was over. They didn't notice.

The 'fleet' of Vagabond and Scorpio was reunited off the nothern coast of Anguilla late in the afternoon of the day following their flight from St Thomas. „Olly and Jim had brought Scorpio through the wild, bone jarring hundred-mile passage despite blowing out two sails, developing frightening leaks that had them pumping almost continuously, and having Gregg's arm broken.

With the wind and seas much diminished and their boats anchored off the lee shore of Anguilla, those on Vagabond and Scorpio transported supplies, adjusted ship's crews, established radio frequencies and hours of transmission, determined signalling procedures and defence strategies in case of attack, and set their course and rendezvous points if unexpectedly lost to each other. But even as they took heart from their safe passage Lisa reported to Neil something which Katya had mentioned briefly as they were fleeing the pirate estate: Lisa and Katya had apparently smoked a joint with a plague victim aboard the Mollycoddle. In Katya's brief, emotional recounting of her capture and imprisonment, she had warned Neil tearfully that a black girl aboard the Mollycoddle had been thrown overboard when Michael had realized how feverish she was. Katya had hysterically volunteered to Neil not to sail with them, but in his obsession with getting back to Mollycoddle and out to sea, Neil had barely understood. If he had, he still would have brought her.

When Neil informed everyone on both ships and gave orders to use always the same personal cup for drinking and plate and utensils for eating, Oscar and his shipmates insisted that Jim and Lisa be transferred back to Vagabond. This was done, with neither one to be involved with food preparation

or galley clean-up. Jim joked that it was the best excuse for getting out of doing the dishes he'd ever had. Neil also suggested that mouth to mouth contact should be avoided. If the disease didn't appear in a week or ten days they could assume they were safe and relax some of the stringency of the regime - 'Perhaps permit the holding of hands.' If there was no sign of the disease after a further ten days they could 'have an orgy'. But despite Neil's efforts to lighten the orders, their effect was to make everyone realize that they might be carrying on board the very thing they were at sea to escape. While anchored off Anguilla Neil sent Jim and Sheila ashore to try to locate the nearest doctor. They returned ten hours later with the depressing information that there were no longer any doctors left on the whole island. They had all fled. Starvation was almost universal. Actually there was one old doctor they'd located in a small fishing village, but he was feeble and indicated he couldn't cope with a bullet wound in the stomach. Philip, who had been placed on the dinette settee in the main cabin where the pitching and rolling of Vagabond would be least felt during their topsy-turvy passage in the storm, had developed a fever. Macklin indicated that an infection had begun in the abdomen. He had started Philip on an antibiotic, was giving him codeine for the pain, and was feeding him only liquids. Philip was urinating normally but had had no bowel movement since being shot. There was still no evidence of internal haemorrhaging. His fever varied between 102 and 103 degrees. Most of his pain was in the back where the bullet had shattered a rib. Jeanne's wound showed no signs of infection and she insisted on being up and about, her left arm in a sling.

Since their southeasterly course towards the eastern tip of Brazil at the mouth of the Amazon would leave them never more than a one-day sail downwind to land, Sheila advised Neil to go ahead with his proposed course and they would see if Philip improved. They both knew that medical skill on most

of the islands was probably limited. The further south they got the more likely they'd be to find competent doctors.

Neil made no effort to hide how long and difficult a passage they would have simply to get south to the equator, much less to find a home somewhere along the coast of Brazil or on Ascension or St Helena Islands if that became the decision. By their third day at sea, Oscar and Tony were complaining of the plan. To reach the equator was a voyage of almost two thousand miles, much of which would be against the prevailing winds and along an inhospitable coast. If Scorpio's leaking couldn't be greatly reduced they might not be able to continue as a fleet. Although the leaking was reduced from what it was during the initial stormy passage from the Virgins, it still took five to ten minutes an hour of pumping to clear the bilge. Oscar and Tony were arguing that Barbados might make a possible haven but Neil, happy that the northeasterly wind was letting them head directly southeast towards the equator, refused. Their goal was to cross the equator to escape the fallout and 'plague' of the northern hemisphere and to get to a country not overwhelmed by the effects of the war. Neil also felt it was important to avoid any land until the '

plague' had run its course.

But from the beginning there was a heaviness and conflict to the voyage that was new. The death of Katya, the wounding of Philip and Jeanne, the knowledge that at any moment one or more of them might sicken from disease, the awareness that for all the effort and violence of their raids on the Mollycoddle pirates, they were still living on short rations and dependent on the sea for their sustenance - all these created a depression in most deeper than ever before.

Yet on Neil, the effect was quite different and unexpected. Something had broken inside him. Some coiled spring that had him tensely concentrating every moment on the right strategies for survival was no longer there. For him, despite acting with all his skill and energy, the worst had happened: a loved one killed, two others wounded. Some part of him gave

up. Or rather, some major part a him now accepted his own fallibility, mortality, inability to deal with the forces attacking them. He still led, but without the desperation that had driven him since the wars began. Instead of feeling his usual rage at the forces of destruction when he realized that Lisa might be infected with the plague he felt strangely tranquil, gentle even. When Tony publicly attacked him for the death of Katya, Neil felt no anger at Tony: he knew himself both to be at fault and to be helpless, and he now accepted both. He was helpless: somehow that new awareness liberated him. Although he and Frank had had no formal reconciliation, Neil found himself feeling his old affection for him and turning over to him most of the decisions regarding the sailing of Vagabond. On Scorpio 01ly was captain with watch teams led by Tony, Oscar and Arnie: on Vagabond Frank, Jim and Sheila were the mates, Jeanne, Lisa and Macklin crewing as necessary.

Neil no longer made any effort to disguise his affection for Jeanne. He touched her, caressed her hair, tended to her wound, spoke to her with love. He made no effort to make love to her, both because of his concern for Frank and his fear of being a carrier of the disease.

When Neil listened now to the shortwave radio and heard of the horrors others were facing throughout the world he felt part of a larger family. On the second night out from Anguilla in particular he listened to two new ham operators, one from Florida, the other from Texas. At first he thought the anonymous voices had revived his Americanism, reminded him of his American roots and citizenship, but when he thought about it further he realized that the larger family he felt connected to was that of survivors. He felt no connection with the President and his martial law and executive directives and his empty claims of victories. He felt no connection with the heroic pushers of buttons, the pilots of bombers, the submarine captains, the generals generalling from half a mile down inside the earth somewhere. His people were the survivors, survivors throughout the world, American, English, German, Russian, yes, Russian even, fleeing this incredible madness that had somehow come about. And, strangely, Neil found he could read again. From the first day of the holocaust until the evening of their anchoring off Anguilla he now realized that he had been unable to read fiction or history or philosophy: everything had seemed so trivial or so irrelevant in the face of his quest for survival he couldn't get into them. Then suddenly that evening he spent two hours reading Tolstoy's War and Peace, one of two dozen classic novels he had aboard. The scenes of the adolescent joys of Natasha and Sonya and young Count Rostov brought tears to his eyes: the joys that Lisa and Katya were missing - had missed. The battle of Austerlitz, although totally remote from their experience of the last month, seemed so real, so human that his own life and the wounds of Philip and Jeanne again seemed human, bearable. He knew that his joy in Tolstoy represented, paradoxically in the light of Katya's tragic death, his strangely recovered joy in and acceptance of life. And his acceptance of his powerlessness.