She almost went down for the third time. "Andy?"
Then, sharply, "Shh! Sound carries over water. Meet me on the other side."
"What?"
"Hush! The other side of the boat! Meet me around the other side of the boat!"
It took all of her remaining energy to push and pull her way around the hull, ducking beneath the anchor chain at the bow, and by the time she reached the opposite side she was nearly spent. Back on Anua the Navaho revved its engines and began the long whine to takeoff.
Galvanized, Kate said, "Andy?"
"I'm here."
She paused for breath, just trying to speak exhausting her all over again. "I can't get up, Andy. Can you help me? Don't turn on the deck lights!"
His whisper was annoyed. "I wasn't going to. Hold on a minute."
"To what?" she asked.
A moment later there was a soft scrape. "Here. Grab this."
It was the boat hook, and with the last ounce of strength left in her Kate grasped at it with both hands, realizing for the first time that she'd forgotten to pull her mittens back on before reentering the water. The suit had been leaking up her arms all the way back to the boat. She wondered in a detached sort of way if her hands had the strength to hold on long enough to get her aboard. The next thing she knew she had collapsed on the deck, gasping like a dying fish. Andy knelt next to her. "Are you all right? What the hell were you doing out there?"
Kate gave a ghost of a laugh. "Surf's up."
"Surf's up, my ass!"
"Why, Andy," she said weakly, "you're sounding more like me every day." A giggle rose to her throat.
Recognizing the beginnings of hysteria, she quelled it sternly.
"Where's the skipper? And Ned and Seth?"
Wet, cold, sore, tired, she said, her voice an unconscious plea, "Can you get me to our stateroom?"
In stiff-lipped silence he hauled her to her feet. "No," she said, when he would have taken her through the galley,
"let's use the aft cabin door. And you go in first and get some towels so I don't drip all over everything."
He did as she said, helping her out of the survival suit and mopping up the floor where it had dripped. With impersonal hands he stripped her to her skin, rubbed her down and tucked her up in her bunk with three extra blankets on top of her sleeping bag. She was shivering uncontrollably and he wanted to make her a hot drink but she wouldn't let him. "Get into your bunk. Now." When he hesitated, she said, her voice a thin thread of sound,
"Now, Andy. Please. They can't know we were awake."
He hesitated a little longer, and then reluctantly did as she asked. Together in the darkness, they listened as the bow of the skiff bumped the hull, as oars were shipped, as footsteps padded the length of the boat, as doors creaked open and slid shut.
"Are you asleep?" Andy whispered.
"No," she whispered back.
"Care to tell me what the hell is going on?"
"No," she said. "Not yet."
She went to sleep listening to him toss and turn in the bunk above.
SEVEN
THEY pulled the hook and got under way early the following morning. Kate slept right through it and woke to a rolling, ocean-going swell and the steady throb of the engines. She yawned and stretched, her muscles sore but not as sore as she'd expected. She heard a muffled noise and looked around. Andy was back under his sheet pyramid, taking up most of their limited floor space. A low hum emanated from beneath it.
"What does that thing do again?" she asked in a lazy voice. "Reinforce your penis?"
"Prana. It reinforces my prana, and you know it." His fair head poked out from between the sheets. "It's about time you woke up."
"Why? What time is it?"
"High noon."
"Jesus, did I sleep through my watch?" Kate sat up and threw back the sleeping bag.
"Relax. We're going back to Dutch. The skipper's taking us in."
"What!"
"We're going back to Dutch," he repeated, eyeing her with a curious expression.
"The hold isn't even half full," Kate protested. "We haven't picked any pots to speak of, and what we've set are scattered from hell to breakfast up and down the Chain. We're just going to leave them there?"
"Evidently." Andy seemed unperturbed at the prospect, although his paycheck was going to be as short as her own on their return.
She flopped back down on the bunk, her mind busy formulating and discarding scenarios. "Well, well, well.
What do you know."
"I don't know. What do you know?" He saw her look and said firmly, "I mean it, Kate. What was all that business about last night?"
"Shush!" she hissed.
In a lower voice he demanded, "Where were we?
What were the guys doing on shore? What were you doing on shore? What was that plane I heard doing there? Why'd I have to drag you out of the water in a survival suit, and why was it so important that the other guys not see us? What's going on?"
"What did you do with the survival suit?"
"I snuck it back in the locker when no one was in the galley."
She blew out a relieved sigh. "Thanks."
"You're welcome. Now tell me what's going on."
She looked at him, sitting facing her in the middle of the floor, draped in folds of white cloth like some minor Middle Eastern potentate, his legs twisted into an impossible position and a stubborn look on his fresh, open face.
She liked Andy Pence. He was very attractive in his youth and his innocence, and his boundless enthusiasm for all things Alaskan had rekindled her own. She might not have been so open to Olga's tales and teachings had she not been first exposed to Andy's enthusiastic and indiscriminatory endorsement of all things Alaskan.
Oh, she would have gone along with the old woman, would have listened to her, might even have taken a few winds with a weaver on a spoke, but it would have been in a mood of amused tolerance and only as a means to an end; specifically, a way to weasel herself into the old woman's confidence. Instead, she had been an actively interested participant. All her childhood she had listened to the stories and watched the ivory carvers and the basket weavers and the oomingmak knitters and kayak builders, but she had resisted taking an active part, chiefly, she realized now with no little chagrin, because of her grandmother's determination that she would.
The discovery that Andy's company was a pleasure, New Age enthusiasms and all, was a distinct shock. It was not enough, however, to take him into her confidence.
Not yet. "Andy, I'm grateful for what you did last night," she said, meeting his eyes frankly. "I'd about had it. I'm not sure I could have climbed back aboard without help. But I can't tell you what's going on. For one thing, I'm not sure myself. For another, the less you know, the safer you are."
He looked frustrated, and she said, "When it's over, I'll tell you everything you ever wanted to know about Harry Gault and Ned Nordhoff and Seth Skinner but were afraid to ask." She stuck out her hand. "Deal?"
He hesitated. "Promise?"
"Promise."
He took her hand with no enthusiasm. "Okay," he grumbled. "Deal."
"In the meantime, I've got to trust you," she told him.
"You've got to keep all this under your hat."
He was hurt. "Of course." He looked at her, a speculative gleam in his clear blue eyes. "You're not really a fisherman, are you?"
She smiled and admitted, "I'm not even a fisherwoman."
"Never mind," he said, consoling her on the mortification she undoubtedly felt at having this disgraceful admission wrung from her. "You're out here now.
Even if it is on the Avilda. Even if you are working for Harry Gault. And you know, Kate? You are pretty good at it."
"Why, thank you, Andy," she said gravely, and burst out laughing in his affronted face.
It took the Avilda fourteen hours to make her way back to Dutch, and when they tied up at the dock it was too late for Kate to go find Jack. She rose early the following morning and was in the galley assembling breakfast when she heard the thump of feet hitting the deck. The starboard door swung open and she looked up. She recognized him at once. It was the shark who had tried to pick her up in the Shipwreck Bar.