The weather dirtied up, cluttered gray skies, snow flurries driven by offshore winds, dazzling explosions of light, like huge photic rips in the landscape, no more than fifteen or twenty yards ahead of the prow, and the din of metal under stress grew so articulated, Wilander could imagine the precise injuries being done, the iron plates gouged, dimpling, tearing. Wind howled about the ship; fir trees dumped loads of old snow onto the decks, and snow blew across the shingle, building drifts against the boulders. At night they would go into the mess for an hour or so and during that time Aralyn would run outside, probably to do her business—he hadn’t attempted to instruct her on the use of the toilet—while he leafed through his maps, adding a detail or two, wondering if they were accurate, and after she returned, they would return to the cabin. Lunde called on Friday morning to hear his report (Wilander having failed to call) and, recognizing the number on his caller ID, not wanting to talk, Wilander switched off the phone and left it off. If they were leaving the Alaskan Coast, and he could no longer harbor any reasonable doubt that they were, he did not wish to spend his last minutes on earth supplying Lunde with a blow-by-blow account of the passage, committed to routine like an astronaut. He sat brooding on his bunk, despairing of himself for having traded in a decent life with Arlene for a trip to nowhere with this womanly animal, who was playing with a candy wrapper on the floor. A pretty animal, an animal who appeared to be naturally housebroken, a relatively intelligent animal, yet not a terrific conversationalist. She had forgotten Tom, but every so often she would smile, a smile whose seductive quality was neutralized by the vacancy in her eyes, and say, Food. They had only engaged in sex the once, but that night Wilander, who had reminisced about Arlene much of the day, tormenting himself with the idea of abandoning Viator, knowing he would never do it, came to feel so desolate that he could no longer psychically afford to give weight to the question of whether or not he was debasing himself—he wanted to lose track, to forget Viator, forget Halmus, Arnsparger, Nygaard, Mortensen, to forget Arlene, and he beckoned to Aralyn and patted the blanket beside him. Either she did not understand or she chose not to comply.
—Come here, he said, patting the blanket harder.
Squatting on the floor, her bare arms and legs sticking out from what could have passed for a ratty shawl and a vest of dirty blond hair, she looked like a feral child, and, though he realized she could alter her expression by a shade and then seem much less the savage innocent, that didn’t soften the comprehension of what he was doing, and he felt a distant displeasure, angry that she was forcing him to control her. He shouted, slapped the blankets, and that confused her. At length he dragged her onto the bunk beside him and showed her how a zipper worked—not that she would retain the information—and pushed her head down, hoping that she knew what came next. She did. Clever girl. But as he lay back, shutting his eyes, he saw the photograph that was about to be mounted in his permanent scrapbook, the shot that would fix for all time the image of derelict ex-human living in the shell of a wrecked ship with other derelicts and getting sex from a creature who was a pedophile’s wet dream and had less than a room temperature IQ, a photograph so vivid, he could smell his own decaying spirit, the soul rotting in the rotten flesh, and he went limp, shoved her to the end of the bunk, where she sat a moment bewildered, spittle on her lips, then tried to crawl up beside him, and he shoved her back again, cursed at her until she scooted down onto the floor, huddling in a corner by the sink, staring fearfully at him. Tears started from Wilander’s eyes and he understood that the emotional sponsor of those tears was neither regret nor loss, but a febrile self-pity based on a knowledge of what he was becoming. That daydream of his, playing Moses to the whistlers’ Israelites, he envisioned it differently now; he pictured himself reclining on a mattress of boughs, surrounded by whistler women, using them whenever the mood struck, eating the berries and meat they brought him, the lord of a flyblown forest kingdom, purveyor of a petty colonialism, his hair lengthening to a moss-like robe from which his penis would occasionally protrude; growing older and weaker until he could do nothing more than digest a few berries and wait in dread for the whistlers, gone past innocence under his tutelage, to kill him with their teeth or the flint knives he’d taught them to make so they could be more efficient in the hunt. He flicked off the light and turned onto his side, facing the walls, wishing the world would hurry up and end. He thought he had been another kind of man once, basically good, not perfect, but he couldn’t remember how it had felt. The wind gnawed at the iron bones of the ship, its harsh voice falling silent for an instant as if it were choking, having to dislodge a fragment from its throat, maybe a chunk of chian or shaumere, and then began to feast again.
Ten
“…what about Mortensen…”
He woke to the absence of wind, of all sound, the port enclosing a circle of pewter morning light, and, sitting up, rubbing his eyes, he registered the absence of Aralyn. The cabin door stood ajar. He felt a pang in his chest, knowing that he had frightened her away, but immediately thereafter felt relieved and hoped she had gone. He splashed water on his face, changed into fresh underwear, a clean shirt, a little worried that there was no sound, no groaning metal—not that the sound was continuous, it was intermittent, Viator forging ahead, then storing up more energy, forging ahead again, shattering the barrier in stages, but lately, more often than not, he woke to the groaning and he worried that Viator might have run out of energy, that they would be stuck and how much would that suck?, fuck, fuck, fuck…He straightened out his thoughts from the skid they’d been in and saluted his image in the mirror, Bon soir, mon capitan!, and went briskly along the passageway to the mess. Which was a mess, coincidentally. His maps strewn about the floor and the outer door wide open, doubtless left so by Aralyn in her haste, letting in the wind. He bent a knee, prepared to start picking them up, but an animal chill touched the back of his neck and he straightened, suspecting that something was wrong. He stepped out onto the deck. The air was warmer, the icicles were beading at their tips, the snow underfoot was mushy, melting, and it was difficult to read the tracks, but there looked to be two sets of footprints leading to the stern. A soft grunting came to his ears. Perhaps some other animal wandered away from the Iron Shore. Wilander grew cautious in his approach, edging along the bulkhead. The grunting stopped. He paused, listening, and when it did not resume, he eased forward again, more of the stern coming into view, more yet, still more, and finally he spotted a gray-haired man standing facing the aft rail some thirty feet away, buckling his belt. Nygaard? Aralyn was there as well, creeping away along the rail until Nygaard barked at her, slapped her, raised his hand, threatening another slap, and she cowered. Wilander took in her chastened attitude and Nygaard’s masterful pose. He gave a cry, a feeble thing, it sounded as if he’d been shot in the lung, and charged, tripped, went sprawling on the icy deck. Aralyn broke for the starboard, passing from view, and Nygaard made a scuttling run forward, his face registering a comical degree of panic; then he retreated and flung himself over the rail.