At eleven they went back topside. Macklin had gone below to sleep, and Sheila was steering. When Jeanne went below to check on Philip, Neil went aft to his cabin to radio Olly. There was something strange in Olly’s voice when they made radio contact. After answering Neil’s initial question about how badly Scorpio was leaking—it was taking fifteen minutes of manual pumping every hour to clear the bilges— Olly quietly lowered the boom: Lisa was sick. She had stomach cramps and a fever. She probably had “that disease thing we been worrying about.”
So, thought Neil, after he’d given Olly instructions for isolating both Lisa and Jim in the forepeak, this was how it all ended. You could run, but you couldn’t hide. You could do everything you could think of to flee south as fast as possible and still Death, in unhurried omnipotence, overtook you.
Sitting in his cabin in the darkness, he didn’t feel like moving. He’d have to tell Jeanne, Sheila, the others. He’d have to deal with the panic, here and, probably worse, aboard Scorpio. He’d have to decide what to do.
What to do? He wondered how many thousand people, no, million people, in the last two months had looked up into the ash-gray sky, asked what to do, knowing all the time that there was nothing to do but die.
Had they reached that point? Was Jeanne doomed, even when he felt he’d barely met her? Was Jim, who had grown from a boy to a man in two months, now literally going to burn out at eighteen?
Lisa was sick, cramps and fever. There was an enemy to be fought. They had the advantage of an infinite supply of cool seawater to counteract the fever, and a good supply of aspirin from the Morison. Lisa, while thin, was still not weak or severely undernourished from their long weeks of short rations. She would begin her personal battle with youth on her side.
As for the disease spreading, Jim was probably infected, but whether others were or would be depended on luck and discipline.
The standing orders he’d given regarding food, sanitation, and personal contact had not been taken very seriously—until today.
And who was to care for the sick? Olly would do it. He didn’t know about the others aboard Scorpio. Over here on Vagabond Jeanne would do it, would insist on doing it. Frank maybe; the old Frank would have. Sheila would volunteer. Himself? No. It wasn’t his kind of suicide mission.
Well, time to go to it. He stood up, took a brush to his hair and beard, as if preparing for a formal call, and left his cabin. By the light of the kerosene lantern hanging down in the main cabin he could see Sheila at the helm. He could hear Jeanne’s voice below in the main cabin. He came up to Sheila and impulsively put his arm around her.
“How are we doing?” he asked.
“Eight knots southeast,” she said, glancing at him quickly, her small gray eyes looking at him slyly, like a cat, the lines of aging around them crinkling nicely.
“How’s Philip?” he asked.
“The same. A hundred and two.”
Neil frowned.
“Well, a hundred and two won’t kill him,” he said, “but it won’t have him raising sails soon either.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Olly thinks Lisa has the plague,” Neil announced abruptly.
Sheila looked at him again and then half-leaned against him, taking her left hand from the wheel and letting it fall awkwardly against Neil’s.
“Oh, Neil,” she said’, slipping her arm around his waist now. “What a bloody shame.”
“You don’t catch Death napping.”
They stood beside each other, staring forward for another moment, then exchanged a warm look and a brief hug.
“I’ve got to tell… the others,” he said, and went below. Jeanne was there with Frank, drinking tea and sitting up with Philip who, now that Vagabond was pounding to windward again, was propped up in position on his makeshift dinette berth. He was lying under a thin sheet, awake, staring at the ceiling. The paneled room had a warm glow from the kerosene lantern that hung from a hook right above his head. Frank was sitting on the edge of Philip’s berth, Jeanne standing up. Both looked at him intently when he came in.
Neil had the same impulse to embrace each of them. He went up first to Frank, leaned down close to him, and put a hand gently on his shoulder. Frank stared back at him in surprise. Neil smiled.
“You’re a wonderful man, Frank,” he said.
Frank flushed. “You’re stoned,” he said. “You’ve raided Mollycoddle’s pot..”
“You still alive, Phil?” Neil asked, then straightening up, leaving his hand on Frank’s shoulder, gently kneading it. Philip smiled and turned his head slightly to look at Neil.
“I believe so,” he said. “I just wet my pants again.”
“Good sign,” said Neil. “Corpses rarely piss.”
When he turned next to Jeanne he saw that she was also staring at him in surprise. He went up to her and took her in his arms, caressing her lower back, careful of her left shoulder. Looking down at her, he asked, “How are you?”
“I’m fine. What’s wrong? Has something happened?”
Neil, not smiling, nodded in reply. Then he released her, glanced at Frank, and paced over to the companionway steps before turning and facing them.
“Olly reports that Lisa has cramps and a fever,” he said. “He assumes it’s the disease we’ve been worrying about.”
All three of them looked at him without immediate response. He realized that this statement seemed so inconsistent with his earlier tone of humorous affection that they briefly wondered if this was a sick joke.
“We… I chose this risk,” he went on, feeling embarrassed by the way he had acted earlier, though it had seemed so appropriate at the time. “Now we have to pay. I think there’s a good chance we can pull her through. But we’ve got to take absolutely insane precautions to keep it from spreading further.”
“I’ll go take care of her,” Jeanne said.
Neil felt his heart sink.
“I’m not letting you go,” he said gently. “I’ve already assigned Jim to care for her. I don’t think she can give him anything now she hasn’t already given him.”
“Is Jim all right?” Frank asked.
“Apparently. Olly said only Lisa is sick.”
“I’m going over to her,” said Jeanne.
So this is how it ends, thought Neil again. Modern technology finding ever new ways to kill brave people, and brave people rushing to get their share.
“No,” said Neil. “Jim will take care of Lisa.”
“I can see my own daughter, can’t I?” Jeanne suddenly shouted at him.
“No, you can’t,” Neil replied quietly. “As you once said, we’re one family now and you can’t endanger the rest of us unnecessarily.”
Jeanne turned away and began to cry. Both Neil and Frank went over to her and made comforting sounds and caressed her, and even as they did, Neil realized they were also trying to reassure themselves and each other as well. But of course there was no comfort or reassurance for any of them.
“Neil!” Sheila shouted from the helm.
Neil hurried up on deck. She was pointing off to starboard, where a bright red glow was visible off Scorpio’s stern.