The Surfacing (32 page)

Oh God, he choked. He could not stand this devastating happiness, this pitiless game.
His arms were pressing stupidly against the thin walls. He felt faint. He was falling.
He was holding himself in place. With short, shallow breaths he was keeping himself
alive.

He could not say what the boy wanted or what he wanted himself. He only knew it was
painful pleasure, this call and response. There was no way to receive or cheat it.
He had been lured and trapped. Somehow he had to get out of this iron-plated room.
He had to get into the open air, free, out of range.

1st March

DeHaven made sure now to knock on the cabin door every morning, before he began his
hospital round. Morgan was never eager to go. He knew all too well the state of their
decline. More than once, coming in from the cold, he himself had fainted dead away.
So far, he had always managed to reach his cabin, where the thing could be concealed.
He told DeHaven they needed more exercise. DeHaven said they needed fresh meat. At
last count, five men had the flux.

It's Petersen now, DeHaven said. He can't even move his legs.

In the forecastle it smelled worse than a stable. They pulled back the hospital curtain
and stepped inside.

How do you feel? DeHaven said. Describe it, he said. He was taking notes.

Like I been at the wrong end of a good hiding, the man said.

Open up, DeHaven said. Let's have a look.

The man's tongue looked like he'd been eating blackberries.

DeHaven rolled down the blanket, told the man to undo his johns. Much like a bruised
apple, the skin near the armpit was stiff and wrinkled, the flesh beneath dark and
soft. DeHaven touched it with his fingertip. Morgan himself had something similar
at the top of his thigh, just where he'd caught an arrow, coming into Kandahar. The
thing followed no logic that he could see.

They moved along. The next man was Petersen.

It is what? Petersen said.

From a small blue bottle, DeHaven poured a measure onto a soup spoon. Open wide,
he said.

Come on now, be good, Morgan said. All the other boys have taken theirs.

The mouth remained shut, obstinately.

You think we're trying to poison you? Morgan said. Carefully he took the spoon, and
threw it back in a go. He held the stare a moment, then poured another dose.

In the half-light, the other men lay watching. In the end, Petersen did as his captain
had done. Even as he swallowed his face crumpled, and they all began to laugh. Morgan
too gave a smile, but kept his lips closed. He did not want to admit it, but his
own gums were blistered and raw. He felt like he was teething again, decades on.
It was a less a moulting than a revival, of all the old woes.

We need fresh meat, DeHaven said. Not just for the hospital, but for the boy.

Morgan said nothing. There was nothing to say. Day and night he had the memory –
the foretaste – of it in his mouth. He'd already been to see the hunters. Blacker,
Banes, Jones. It was pointless. There was nothing to aim at.

The estate seems hopelessly short of game, DeHaven said. Quite shot out. Present
company excepted, of course.

We're not quite come to that, Morgan said. Not yet.

15th March

Kitty was sitting at his desk, writing on an orange slip. The latitude and longitude,
the date, the name of the ship. Done, she dropped it in the basket, and took another
from the stack of blanks. Five hundred, she announced. Beside her, Morgan didn't
answer. He'd done as many himself, as had every man aboard with a legible hand.

During their first winter's drift, on Myer's orders, once a month he'd thrown overboard
a special tin with a similar slip inside. He'd done it once a week last summer, as
long as the ice was still loose and there was a chance of the tin drifting away.
But he'd been wary of it from the off, as he was
wary now of launching their last
balloon. It was too perfect a picture of futility, the commander who placed his only
hope in these useless appeals.

While you were still laid up, late June perhaps, one day Cabot came rushing in all
a-fluster with one of the tins, that he'd fished from a lead way out, Morgan said.
He knew he shouldn't have been so surprised. The strollers were always scouring,
always hoping for some sign they too were now being searched for, that help was on
its way.

It might be just what they need, Kitty said.

Morgan didn't see what she meant. The men already knew where their ship lay, at what
date. You should have seen Cabot's face, he said, when we opened it up.

What if it were another date? she said. Another ship.

Some other ship, searching for us?

Why not? she said. Let them find it, she meant. Let it give them hope, encourage
them to persist. What harm could it do? We could write out a few now. Different-coloured
slips, different ink. Smuggle them out, and discreetly tag them to the end. The first
to be reached by the fuse, she meant. Those that would fall closest to the ship.

The better to justify an abandon, he thought. With the direction to take. Melville
Island would be best, and most plausible. It was not such a bad idea. Afterwards,
when they got to Melville Island, they would be safer. No one would mind the fraud.
Saved or perished, the deceit would be of no consequence.

When they'd done their quota, she put on her sealskin jacket and her sealskin coat.
Their amusements were few and far between, and she wanted to see the thing go up.
The boy was napping. She would ask Cabot to keep an ear open, to call her if need
be.

They stood their backs up against the hull, out of the wind, and watched DeHaven
seal his mixture in the keg. They waited for the reaction. When it was ready, DeHaven
ran out the gas through their rubber pipe, to the waiting heap of silk. The tail
too was waiting nearby, in an impressive heap. A full
five thousand slips of their
brightest orange paper, each one handwritten with their details and coordinates.

Morgan remembered playing hide-and-seek in his father's garden, when he was a boy.
He told her about it, asked had they that game in Denmark too.

Hide and sick? Kitty said.

Seek.
Search. Some children hide, the other children look for them.

Then, he'd always been impatient to be found. But how could he reasonably expect
anyone to be troubling over his sort now? It was only eighteen months since they'd
last been heard from. Even those aboard, most of them, appeared not to appreciate
the essential fact, that they were not lost, but beyond helping. They had pushed
too far.

They watched the silk quietly come alive. Something inside was searching, prodding,
feeling for a way out. They watched it swell, take shape. Its ambition was clearer
now.

Do you remember Myer wanted to send a man up in one? Morgan said. With a rope attached,
obviously.

A rope can always be cut, she said.

The idea wasn't as barmy as it sounds, Morgan said. It would have improved our navigation
no end. How many days did we waste driving ourselves into dead ends?

He wasn't prepared to go up himself, though, was he?

I don't think the discussion ever got that far.

Would you have gone up in one? DeHaven said. Would you go up now?

That would depend who built it, and did they build it right, and how far up I had
to go. How long are our ropes?

We have the ropes. We have the silk. Cabot and Banes could easily knock together
the frame. Slick the seams. Coke gas from the stoves run up through the pipes. I
watched them do it once in a fairground in the Phoenix Park. The air here as cold
as it is, she'd shoot up.

By now the balloon was beginning to stretch and swagger, to lift itself off the ground.
The last dent was gone and suddenly the thing looked solid, hard.

How far up does she need to go? Morgan said.

The higher the better, DeHaven said. Once the tickets are loosed, there's only one
way they're going to fall.

When he judged it ready, he whipped out the pipe and tied the knot. Already she was
leading westward, straining. Banes and Daly were struggling to hold her in place
with guy ropes. Another guy was tied to the whaleboat kedge.

DeHaven shouted at them to keep her steady. He was fixing the quick-match tail. Now
he had them let her off a little, and the tail uncoiled magically. Its papers were
rattling.

A little more, DeHaven said. Easy now. That's enough.

They watched him light and shield his match and heard him curse. He lit another.
Eventually he managed to get it alive to the end of the tail. The thing began to
crackle, just like a fuse.

Hold her, he shouted, but the wind had risen and she was leading hard, and Banes
and Daly had both to come round shipside. As in a tug-of-war, they planted their
heels hard in the ground and were leaning backward, not far off forty-five degrees.
The tail swung back and forth freely, smoking. DeHaven nodded to let her go. The
guys slid through their gloves with a pleasant, rasping sound, fell dead on the snow.

The anchor! Morgan roared, but it was too late.

They watched the anchor bump along the surface, snag and snatch at the hummocks,
drag on. Morgan himself went after it, but refused to rush. There was no need. The
thing was too light to stall the balloon, and too heavy to lift. He could let it
walk ahead of him with no risk of ever being lost.

It was almost a mile before the anchor finally jammed between two blocks and held.
He wrapped the guy three and four times around his arm and put all his weight into
it, to loosen the draw, the better to unwork the knot.

Free, he did not let the rope go. He could feel its strength, his own measly ballast,
the giddy call. Standing up straight he was nearly jerked off the ground, found himself
staggering after it. He could not keep his feet, and unless he wanted to be dragged
along the ground he had to run, to jump, let himself
be lofted into the air. These
were giant steps he was taking now, bounding grandly, due west.

He watched it rise and watched it shrink. Very soon it was nothing but a little blue
dot. Anchor in his arms, hugged to his chest, he began to slog across the crust.
Coming back the wind was against him, and soon he was working hard. Already his arms
were trembling, wanted only to drop their load. He drove on. He got angry. Underneath
was drift deep enough to swallow him whole.

Every few minutes he dropped the anchor and stood to breathe. He looked south. It
was almost noon. He stared fearlessly at the glow. It was not a source of light,
but of emotion. It did not warm his skin, but fell directly on something inside.
Under its heat, Morgan felt that thing wake, stir, like a seed. He could feel it,
physically, planted deep in his flesh, alive. The idea, pure and simple, of abandoning
the ship.

1st April

APRIL, the calendar said. The word promised buds, warm breezes, greenery. What they
had was raw havoc. It was another promise broken.

He lay on his bed, letting his mind go where it would. It was fantasy. It was confession
of a kind. Eyes closed, he heard open sea labouring loose ice.

Writing his journal, he hardly knew how the sentence would end. It seems to me we
have attained – he wrote, but struck that. He started over. We have reached – We
have met some kind of limit, he wrote. We might persist here longer,
or push a little
farther by other means, if I thought it useful, which I do not. He held off the pen
and read over what he'd written, to see did he agree. He had once dreamed of pushing
all the way to the west, coming out somewhere the far side of Melville Island, and
from there to Behring's Strait. He had even calculated how many weeks of open sailing
might be necessary. It seemed a ridiculous notion now, as did so many of his plans.

They had calm, clear days. They had scorching winds. Overhead, they had lurid green
flames, that made the needle frantic. There was more to the days now. There was more
light. The eyes stared, working hard to see their former friends. They seemed ashamed
of what they saw. They looked like inmates. They were shabby, men and clothes. The
weave was wafer-thin in places, failing at the seams.

Then, on the 3rd, at noon, against a blackboard facing south, the spirit thermometer
gave them 25°. Under a bell-jar, untouched for thirty minutes, it rose to just above
the freezing point. Morgan had already checked the log. It was their first positive
since September.

To the men, these first hints of spring were reassuring, earned. They saw the promise
of open water, open sails. Morgan envied their faith but could not share it. They
were too far north. No matter what moderation, the break-up would never come. Day
after day now he tried to shepherd thoughts of an abandon. Day after day, he called
himself back, in the hope of being saved some other way.

4th April

That Sunday they woke to a stout wind from the north. After breakfast, Morgan went
up to admire it alone. As he passed the galley, he suddenly stopped – mid-stride
– to stare at something on the deck. Too late, the fear rushed through him, because
he had almost stepped on it. His own shadow. The day was cold, the wind harsh, and
under all the layers he was smiling, feeling less like an orphan than he had in years.
He sent down the order for the officers all to put on their furs. For the first time
in months, he had decided, they would take their coffee up on deck.

A godsend. A veritable godsend, MacDonald told them, almost as soon as he came up.

The lines were stirring overhead, the colours rattling happily.

I wonder why God did not send it before, DeHaven said.

Perhaps He feared we would not appreciate it, said Morgan.

Cabot came and placed the tray on one of the crates, with stern formality. They watched
him pour. MacDonald was watching with a kind of wonder. He waited for Morgan to raise
the cup to his lips.