The Amaranth is underway, but all is not as it seems. Still, I guess when you get right down to it, nothing really ever is. What did Poe tell us? Life is but a dream within a dream?

Time for tea? Certainly, so put on the kettle and fire up your preferred source of music and have a listen to She Runs Away by Duncan Sheik. Or maybe put on Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet; the last lines from the Death of Juliet remain, in my mind, one of the most powerful pieces of classical music ever written. Pat Metheny has a new album nearing release (MoonDial), and You’re Everything seems a bit wistful but still quite beautiful, or perhaps you could submerge yourself in It Starts When We Disappear, now a few years old. I’ve also been listening to Trevor Rabin’s new solo album (Rio) quite a bit, as well. Give Big Mistakes a watch; he’s really a talented artist, something of a genius in the Prog pantheon, I think.

Now, off to the story.

+++++

3.3

“Hello, Devlin,” Ralph Richardson said as he was wheeled from Amaranth’s saloon to the aft cockpit. “How are you?”

Sara/Devlin turned around and looked first at MacKenzie, and if she projected anything at all it might have been despair. ‘Why didn’t I see this coming?’ a faraway voice deep inside asked. ‘What did I miss this time?’

“Why can’t you just leave me alone?” she sighed.

“Because you’re too dangerous,” MacKenzie sighed. “What you’re doing is too dangerous.”

“Why, Devlin?” Richardson asked. “Why? Peter Weyland…of all people. Why did you run to him?”

“Because,” she whispered as she turned to face Richardson and Bacon, “of what comes next, what he’s planning. I have to be there. I have to stop him.”

“Do you know when, Sara? And do you know where this is going to happen, Sara…or is it Devlin?” Spudz asked, obviously confused.

She looked away for a moment, and MacKenzie wondered how she was accessing the information she was looking for.

“41°45’59.99″ North Latitude, 50°13’60.00” West Longitude,” she said as she turned and looked at Spudz again. “You know those coordinates, don’t you, Admiral?”

MacKenzie nodded slowly, and though his arms had suddenly, involuntarily crossed over his chest, he tried to project a kind of simmering nonchalance to counter the venom hidden within her last few words. “Yes, of course,” he said, though he felt somewhat light-headed as he tried to distance himself from the trailing sarcasm that she seemed to have left lingering just for him, “but why do you need us to get you there?”

“I can never be there as it was, Admiral,” she sighed, now afraid of him, wanting to keep some empty space between him and what she’d, up until a few minutes ago, thought she understood him to be. Now, once again, she wasn’t sure of anything, only that she felt tired, defeated, and that she felt the need to run away again.

But she slowly turned and walked out onto the swim platform, then slowly slipped out of the clothes she had taken from one of Spudz’ cabinets. Now naked, she then turned to face the early morning sun.

MacKenzie walked to Richardson’s side and knelt beside the old man’s wheelchair. “What’s she doing now?”

“Charging her fuel cells. She needs about a half hour a day.”

“I don’t think I ever really understood – until last night, anyway.”

“Tell me, Admiral. Did you fall in love with her?”

“For a moment…I thought so, yes.”

“Did you feel anything from her? Something like love being returned?”

MacKenzie nodded uncertainly. “I thought so, once.”

Richardson turned to Sumner Bacon and took a deep breath, then looked to his old friend for solace. “Then she may be the one for you, Spudz. Sumner? See if she’ll let you download a copy of her buffer.” Then he turned to the other woman waiting patiently by his side and sighed: “Go to her, Eve. She’s feeling lost.” 

Spudz watched the other woman, an exact duplicate of Sara, as she stepped down onto the swim platform. ‘No, her name is Devlin,’ he told himself again. ‘I can’t let her run from that too. Not again.’ Jim Turner came up from behind and gently tapped him on the shoulder, then handed him a small clipboard. He read the update from the P-8 circling overhead, then turned and followed Turner to the bridge.

He looked at the tactical display Valdez had laid out on a folded chart of the mid-Atlantic coast, then he turned to Jim Turner. “Do we have any idea where Weyland is?”

“Our best information would put him here,” Turner said, “about four hundred miles north-northeast of Natal, Brazil, so somewhere near the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago.”

“Any idea which boat he’s got?”

“Again, our best guess is the Medusa II. She’s that 61 meter Feadship.”

“Range more than 3,000?”

“2,700 nautical – so she’s already burned through some of that, as it’s my best guess she last took on fuel in Recife; that means she’ll have to take on fuel again, either in the Azores, or possibly Iceland – so we should arrive long before she does.”

“Jenny, get an encrypted channel to Truman, give Captain Anderson our ETA at Hatteras and advise we’d like him to shadow us. Jim, what’s the latest on that MAD contact?”

“Now an intermittent contact, sir, about fifteen hundred meters off our starboard quarter.”

“When will Vermont make it to our neighborhood?”

“Call it seven hours, sir.”

“Very well. Make our speed nine knots, and Jim, lay out a course to intercept Truman at that speed. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” He stepped outside and walked up to the upper, so called flying bridge and picked up a pair of binoculars, and with these he swept seaward, looking for anything out of the ordinary. He saw the P-8 Poseidon flying very low about a mile off to his right, and he saw a fresh line of sonobuoys being dropped, their parachutes opening a moment after the small, gray, cylindrical buoys exited the heavily modified 737s aft compartment, then floating on unseen currents to their splashdowns in the sea. He knew what was out there, at least he did if his briefings had been kept up-to-date.

With his binoculars still firmly in hand, he walked down through the galley to the aft cockpit and resumed standing beside Richardson’s wheelchair. “Anything new going on?” he muttered.

Richardson looked up at him and smiled. “Look aft, about 200 yards, Admiral.”

MacKenzie brought the field glasses to his eyes and scanned the water, then he caught the tall, black dorsal fin gleaming in the sunlight. “Orca,” he said. “Looks like a lone male, and a big one.”

“Keep looking, Admiral.”

MacKenzie scanned the area slowly, quickly spotting two females and a couple of calves, then two more very large males bringing up the rear. “Geesh…a family, or part of a pod…”

“Look to port,” Richardson sighed, grinning.

“Holy Mother of God,” MacKenzie whispered. He’d never seen so many orca in one pod before, and he quickly lost track as he tried to count the dorsal fins. “Looks like at least fifty…maybe seventy-five. When did they show up?”

“Just after you left,” Sumner Bacon said. “Keep an eye on the closest one, the big male. I think he’s moving in now.”

Spudz didn’t need the binoculars now. The male was sprinting in, his dorsal fin easily six feet tall, his breath exiting the blowhole as visible as an old steam locomotive’s.

Eve and Devlin were now side-by-side on the swim platform, their heads tilted back, their arms wide  – as if harnessing the power of the sun to summon the pod.

Spudz pulled the FRS radio from his belt and called the bridge. “Jim?”

“Here sir.”

“All stop. Turn on all cameras to hi-res video record, and get what you can on audio.”

“All stop, aye sir. Pelican 3-0-1 just called it in. They’re picking up fifty five strong echos, and twenty-two faint. Converging course, one rapidly.”

“Ask 301 to record the intercept, will you, Chief?”

“Aye, sir. Engines answer all stop, both engines at idle speed and in neutral.”

“Better stand-by on the boat deck, Chief, in case we need the Zodiac.”

“Already there, sir. Tank full, extra MOB gear ready to deploy.”

MacKenzie grinned; Turner was still reading his mind. He stepped close to the transom, watched as the big male came to within five meters of the swim platform, and then both Devlin and Eve dove off the platform and swam over to the orca. “Two in the water, Chief,” Spudz said quietly. “Standby, but take no action yet.”

“Admiral?” Valdez interrupted. “3-0-1 wants to know if we need assistance with the MOBs.”

“Tell ‘em we’ve got this one, Jenny.”

“Aye, sir.”

He looked up, saw the P-8 in a tight radius, very low speed left turn just a few hundred feet overhead and he waved at the pilot, then smiled when he saw the gal waving back at him. Both Devlin and Eve were now treading water beside the big male, but the pods’ calves were quickly zeroing in on them, too. “Jim, launch the Zodiac, but head forward and maybe you’d better just loiter a couple of hundred yards away. Whatever you do, don’t close on the calves in the pod without hearing directly from me first.”

“Understood.”

MacKenzie went to the swim platform and secured the dive ladder off the stern, then he stepped back and watched the – for all intents and purposes – two identical twins communing with the huge male, their hands and faces in direct contact with the orca, just behind his huge brown eyes. One of the smaller calves drifted over and leaned into, he assumed, Eve, and then Devlin came over to be near Eve – and MacKenzie had the strangest feeling that introductions were being made. After the first calf arrived the remaining orcas, all of them, drifted in close, until the group had formed a huge, writhing ball…

“Admiral, 3-0-1 just asked me to relay a question,” Jenny said.

“Go ahead.”

“The skipper up there would like to know what the hell is going on down here…”

“Better tell her we ain’t real sure our own fat selves.”

“Gotcha.”

“As soon as we figure it out we’ll let her know.”

“The skipper up there wants to know if you’re going in?”

“Please tell her, and a direct quote now will suffice, but Hell no I ain’t going in there.”

“She wants to know why not. It looks fun.”

“That’s because she can’t see the teeth on those males. Anyway, tell her I will – if she goes first.” 

“Roger that.”

MacKenzie heard more than felt Richardson struggling to get out of his wheelchair, and he turned just in time to see the old man leaning over the stern rail, taking deep breaths. “You need a hand?”

“Oh, all I can get.”

Spudz stepped over and helped Richardson over to the gate in the transom, then helped him out onto the swim platform. “You going in?” he asked – maybe a little too incredulously than he should have.

Richardson nodded. “Good a time as any, I think.”

Sumner Bacon hopped down onto the platform, already down to his boxers, and MacKenzie just shook his head and took off his sweatpants and t-shirt, then he jumped off the boat and into the warmish waters of the Gulf Stream.

He heard a splash, then saw Richardson was side-stroking away from Amaranth’s stern, Bacon not far behind – and then Pelican 301 flew by, the PIC making a shrugging motion with her shoulders and hands…as in: “WTF is going on down there?” MacKenzie arced his right arm high up over his body, placing his hand on top of his head, making the universal ‘OK’ sign rescue SAR divers and downed pilots-in-the-water use to signal ‘all okay here.’ Then he too swam away from the boat, wanting to get closer to Devlin and Eve and the big male – more out of curiosity than anything else – but as he swam closer one of the larger females placed her body between the interloper and the human females. And when he tried to swim around her, she kept repositioning her body, fending him off – keeping them apart.

But then the big male released them and, in effect, pushed Eve and Devlin towards MacKenzie – and in the next instant several of the female orcas corralled the three of them, then began swimming around them at a dizzying pace. The remaining males circled the female orcas and began swimming in the opposite direction, soon creating something of a maelstrom – with bubbling salt water soon turning milky, and then MacKenzie realized the ocean was beginning to smell heavy, almost musky, and for a moment he wondered if this was what orca semen smelled like.

And then Devlin – or was it Eve – was straddling him, frantically reaching inside his boxers then taking all of him in hand, the orcas pushing them closer and closer, so close that it was getting hard to breath…then the moment of the fire and the rain came for him – just before he passed out.

The dream was lucid, beyond any he’d ever experienced. He was huddled in a steamship’s crow’s nest, standing watch on a bitterly cold night – when dead ahead he spotted a large iceberg – but when he turned to sound the alarm he saw Devlin – or was it Eve? – by his side. “There’s nothing you can do now,” the woman said, adding: “The water is very cold, isn’t it?”

As MacKenzie came-to, he found he was in the Zodiac and feeling very disoriented, sprawled out on the floor near the center console behind Turner; Richardson and Bacon, as well as the two girls, were bundled-up in blankets, nicely cuddled-up in the Zodiac’s bow. One of the girls was staring at him, a knowing smirk showing faintly on her lips. When Spudz lifted his head a little he saw they were headed back towards Amaranth – but that they were apparently several hundred yards away from her – and when had that happened? The P-8 was circling overhead, and he realized that onboard cameras in the bottom of the Boeing’s fuselage had – apparently – been recording the scene for a while. That recording would be more than humiliating when his old team in J-2 got wind of it.

But what the devil had happened out there? Had he actually had intercourse with one of the women, and if so, what role had the orcas played in that – because the whole thing had begun to feel like a ritual or ceremony of some sort. The purpose being? And whose ceremony was it? Certainly not human, at least no cultural groups he was aware of practiced anything at all like this.

And what of that peculiar musky odor – and the milky sea water. That it was semen was altogether unlikely, but why had the orcas participated like they had?

He’d had very little sleep for several days now and MacKenzie showered once he was back on Amaranth, then he locked his door and crawled under the sheets, yet as soon as deep sleep returned – so too did the dream.

© 2024 adrian leverkühn | abw | adrianleverkuhnwrites. com | this is fiction, plain and simple.

Let’s finish up with a Greg Lake piece from ELPs Works, Vol. 1, Closer to Believing. Be safe out there.