Some twists and turns here. Have fun, and yes, plenty of time for tea.

I ran across this piece of music a couple of days ago, Modern Blues by Elan Noon. Kind of a quiet shade of Paul Simon here, but look up some of his lyric compositions. He’s been called a genius and I can see, or rather hear why. His Facebook page has something like 600 followers, which I think kind of sad – in a Nick Drake sort of way. The album is called Color Story and is on AppleMusic; I didn’t check out the other streamers.

3.4

First You Make a Stone of Your Heart, Part 2 – The Amaranth

Beaufort, South Carolina

A park bench in shade, one of many that line the water’s edge. A red brick walkway, uneven, worn down by time and shaded by overhanging live oaks – some draped with lingering strands of Spanish moss. A woman, a uniformed woman, dressed as a chef – perhaps – or perhaps a waitress. She looks care-warn, almost depressed as her mind processes the words on the sheet of crisp, white paper in her hand.

She sits on one of the benches by the water’s edge, lost inside a rose garden of meandering implications, not quite sure how to proceed amongst the thorns, not at all sure what even her next step might look like. She turns away from the paper and shakes her head – a brief, imperceptible shake to the casual passersby – as she watches the incessant parade of boats and barges moving along this stretch of the intracoastal waterway, and she wonders where all the people out there are headed. A marina to her right is full of boats – but rarely do people head down the ramps and board one of them.

She looks down at her phone and checks the time – it is one fifty in the afternoon so she must go up to the restaurant now – one last time. The notice in her hand has advised that after almost 90 years both the restaurant and the inn will be closing…for good. Today will be her last day of work, and despite all the swirling uncertainty ahead she doesn’t know quite what to feel. She has worked in the kitchen for a few years yet she has few friends.

A freshening breeze fills in from the north and little arcing williwaws race across the water. She watches the passing boats for a moment longer then shrugs before she turns and walks through the little park to the inn.

Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort (Merritt Field)

The civilian yacht had been tied-off at the fueling docks at the end of Quilali Road, adjacent to to a row of patrol boats lined up like sharks’ teeth lined up with their bows pointing into the intracoastal waterway. All of the patrol boats were on alert, their gun stations reporting manned and ready; two Block Three F-35Bs circled ten thousand feet overhead, their sensors trained on the seaward approaches to Beaufort and Hilton Head island, while an Air Force RC-135S ‘Cobra Ball’ MASINT aircraft orbited the area at flight level three-four-zero, her medium wave infrared array turned skyward as her operators watched, and listened to, Russian and Chinese satellite operations half a world away.

A half hour window was about to open, and during this brief pause in satellite surveillance a civilian Gulfstream would touch down at Merritt Field; its three passengers would be rushed to the waiting yacht and the business jet would takeoff and return to her original routing to Jacksonville, Florida. Once everyone was aboard, the yacht would cast off her lines and head to the seawall off Chambers Park, in central Beaufort, and tie up for the night. And this would mark the beginning of the most dangerous, not to mention consequential, part of the operation.

Admiral James ‘Spudz’ MacKenzie sat in the radio room just aft of the yacht’s bridge, talking with the colonel in command of the old Boeing circling miles overhead. “Anything new?” MacKenzie asked.

“Nothing,” came the crystal clear reply from Colonel Jim Parker. “No changes in orbital trajectory; no launch detections. Congrats, Spuds. Looks like you spoofed ‘em.”

MacKenzie nodded while he looked at the countdown timer on an adjacent display, then picked up the mic to VHF COMMs 3: “Merritt, Nord 1. Stop repeat go.”

“Go repeat stop,” came the static-filled reply. 

MacKenzie switched over to Merritt’s main tower frequency and listened-in as the Gulfstream made its approach; as soon as the jet was on the ground MacKenzie turned to Command Master Chief Jim Turner and nodded. “Secure all fuel lines, standby to cast off.”

“Aye, Admiral.”

“Tanks full?” MacKenzie added.

“Seventeen thousand, five hundred gallons onboard, Sir. Fuel pre-heated and polished.”

“Okay, Jim. You better go see to the deck.” Turner saluted and started to turn – but MacKenzie stopped him, then hastily added for the umpteenth time: “And Jim, in case you’ve forgotten…please recall that I am in fact retired. Okay? No salutes? Understood?”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Turner had been with MacKenzie since the late-90s, during his two years as CO of the Constellation, and he’d been with MacKenzie ever since. First following him to the Joint Analysis Centre at RAF Molesworth and then on to the Pentagon, when the freshly minted admiral began working in the Joint Intelligence Center, he tagged along when MacKenzie was sent to the White House as the president’s naval attaché. With the president twisting his arm, MacKenzie spent his last year in uniform working with the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research before, once both had officially retired, Turner joined his admiral when he took a position at Northrop-Grumman – until the very same president twisted MacKenzie’s arm – once again – and sent him back to the Pentagon – again – this time as Secretary of Defense.

And that, Turner had wittily observed more than once, was when things got really weird, and soon turned very, very dark.

Beaufort, South Carolina

The mood in the inn was very, very dark, way beyond palpably depressed. People who had worked in the inn’s restaurant, and for quite literally decades, had no frame of reference to deal with their sudden unmooring. Cast adrift as if miles from shore and with no idea which way to swim, the older waitstaff and kitchen crew had devoted their professional lives to carrying on the restaurant’s fully justified 144-years-old reputation. 

She watched these people going about their routines as if they were functioning on some kind of emotional autopilot, their forced smiles and easy shrugs worn like masks to hide the cascades of emotion she assumed each felt. She hid behind her work, carefully shaved a handful of fresh shards from a new block of parmesan and placed them ever-so-delicately atop a perfectly prepared bowl of shrimp & grits, then sprinkled thinly sliced rondels of crisp green scallion on the cheese. She looked over her plates, as always her own worst critic, and hit the pickup light to summon the waitress who would serve her creation.

She turned and looked at the clock over the door that led to the dining room and saw they were down to their final hour, and just then one of the waitresses she had grown friendly with walked into the kitchen and up to her.

“Well, well, well…lucky you,” the old waitress asked. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

Sara Caldwell simply shrugged off the question, because in a way none of that mattered anymore.

“It’s your favorite customer, if you know what I mean?” the waitress added a little too salaciously. 

“Spudz?” she asked. “Really?”

“He just got off a boat and is walking through the park right now.”

“That’s not a boat,” Lucien Rousseau sighed, “that’s a yacht…with a capital Y.” Lucien was the youngest member of the dining room crew and he usually waited on Spuds whenever he happened by – which wasn’t all that frequently – but he had appeared to take a real interest in Caldwell several months ago. Whenever he was in town he made it a point to visit the inn and always made it a point to speak to Sara, complimenting her skill in the kitchen and usually asking her to take a walk with him after the restaurant closed for the evening. He was always very polite, almost gentile; everyone referred to him as ‘old school,’ a real old fashioned gentleman, and she’d begun to look forward to his visits.

And now she suspected she’d lose even that modest sense of connection, too, and it hit her just then. This was what it felt like to miss someone, even though she and Spudz had never done anything more than take a few brief walks in the park together. He was polite, almost solicitously so,  and she often had felt that he really cared about her. Then again, she’d had no idea that he had a boat, or a yacht, or whatever Lucien thought it was, so in the end he was realistically little more than a stranger.

She went back to work and wasn’t at all surprised when his order for filet mignon Marchand de Vin came in; he always ordered the same thing, daring to change only what he had as an appetizer. And he always dressed for dinner, never came dressed casually. And as had always been the case, he finished his meal a few minutes after the restaurant closed and then asked to speak with her.

But tonight she really didn’t know how to proceed. Tell him about the inn closing, the restaurant too?

He was in the main dining room with his back to the kitchen, his close-cropped steel-gray hair instantly recognizable to her. She threw aside her caution as easily as she had her apron and did her best to smile as she walked through the remaining dinner guests, stopping to ask each table if their evenings had been satisfactory, and then she was there.

“Was your filet as you remembered?” she asked as she walked up by his side.

He stood attentively and walked around the table to the empty chair opposite his own. “Sara. Please, would you join me for a modest libation?”

This was something new; he was breaking their script, taking a new way forward.

She saw two untouched drinks on the table as he pulled out the chair; with his eyes he was asking, no pleading with her to join him, and she couldn’t resist the sincerity she witnessed there. She nodded and sat, and he went back to his chair and joined her.

“Drambuie,” he said, picking up his glass. “I hope that’s alright.”

She nodded and smiled. “It’s perfect,” she sighed, watching him watching her.

“Lucien told me the news. How are you holding up?”

“I haven’t…I really haven’t had time to process everything yet.”

“I can’t imagine. Any idea what you might do next?”

“No. None.”

He nodded and looked away for a moment, then turned and looked at the massive yacht tied-off by the benches in the park…

“Is that yours,” she asked.

“It is,” he said, turning back to face her.

“What’s her name?”

“Amaranth.”

She blinked rapidly then looked away for a moment, and he found he couldn’t take his eyes off hers.

“Isn’t that a type of plant?”

He nodded. “Yes, just so. However, in Attic Greek it translates roughly as immortal.”

“Ah. I remember one variety of the plant is called Love Lies Bleeding,” she said, now looking him directly in the eye.

“You have to love the British,” he rejoined, now watching her intently.

“How so?”

“Prolific gardeners. A bit florid, I suppose, but c’est la guerre.”

“Ah. So, you love the British?”

“I suppose we all have an affinity with our original homelands. I’m sorry, but the Drambuie isn’t to your liking?” he asked, noting that she had yet to pick up her glass.

“I don’t drink,” she said, her voice dull, flat, emotionless.

“Care to take a walk? I know, I know, it’s cool out, but…”

“So, you want to show me your etchings,” she replied, now smiling just so, almost provocatively.

“Would you like to come aboard?”

She stood and he stood quickly, reflexively. “Let’s take a walk,” she sighed.

They walked down the red brick promenade towards water and she found it impossible take her eyes off his brightly lighted yacht. It had three levels – that she could see, anyway – and the light gray hull and gleaming white superstructure looked huge surrounded by the blackness of night – almost looking like a ship suspended in the black ink of space.

“Amaranth…” she whispered. “Do you think yourself immortal, Spudz?”

“Me? Goodness, no. The sea, I think…the sea is immortal.”

“Where are you going now?” she asked, stopping and turning to look at him.

He shrugged, an indifferent, noncommittal shrug. “I’m not really sure yet.” He turned to face her, his eyes locking on hers, and for a moment he felt like he was back on the Connie, on her bridge turning his ship into the wind. “So tell me. If you could pack up and go right now, and I mean go anywhere, where do you think you might you go?”

“Far away,” she whispered without the slightest hesitation. “As far away as I could get.”

He reached out and took her hand, his eyes now boring into hers. “Sara, what…or who are you running from?”

She gently shrugged away from the question but then, after hesitating on the icy precipice of her indecision, she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his waist, the side of her face settling softly, almost naturally against his shoulder. “I don’t…I wish I knew,” she just managed to say – before a sudden tremor passed through the moment.

Almost caught off guard, MacKenzie leaned into her, held her fast against the opposing tides of doubt and destiny, unsure what all this meant but wanting to meet the measure of the moment, the measure of her need. “I guess I probably shouldn’t mention this again,” he whispered, “but would you like to come aboard, maybe take a look around? With me?”

“When are you leaving?” she asked.

“Is there anything here you need? Clothing? Medications?”

“No. Not really.” She leaned back, not wanting to let go of him – or the moment. “Is there anything I could do?”

“Onboard? No, not really, unless you wanted to cook.”

“You…need a cook?”

He smiled, then just sort of shrugged, and like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar he rolled his eyes. “Well, I reckon we could make do with bologna sandwiches for a while.”

“How many people are onboard?”

“Three guests, and I’ve got five people helping out. People who used to work with me.”

“Oh?”

“Co-workers that, well, they’re all the family I have.”

“Is there room for me?”

“Yup. Your own stateroom, complete with head.”

“Do you think maybe I could stay with you for a while?”

His head canted quizzically just a bit and he felt a completely unexpected flush of excitement roll from his brow as he continued to hold her in his eyes. “Would you like that?” he asked after what felt like a lifetime had passed.

“I’ve been alone for a long time, Spudz. A really long time…”

He nodded, his eyes brimming with empathy. “So have I.”

“I’ve never really felt like I could trust anyone, you know? Not until I met you, anyway.”

His stomach lurched and knotted – and suddenly he felt like the lowest form of life there is – but he nodded and held her close. “I know, I know,” he whispered. “I’ve felt that way too,” he added, perhaps a little evasively.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, concern growing in her eyes as she heard – and felt – a darkening change come over him. 

“Sara, can’t you tell me what you’re running from? I’d really like to…no, that’s not quite right…I need to know…”

She pushed away gently, looked into his eyes – searching for the truth of the moment: “I haven’t broken any…no one’s after me…”

“No one?” he asked, his eyes cold and hard.

She looked away, then shrugged.

“Are you in any danger? Sara? Please, no evasions. I have to know.”

“I don’t know,” she sighed, suddenly tired of this life all over again. That was why she had run away the first time, and every time since. Only now she felt like she was running out of time. Like her life was running on empty and now, suddenly there was nowhere to run or no one to turn to – if only to make the noise all stop.

She needed more signal. Not this noise.

But then a voice called out – from within the darkness of Amaranth. 

“Admiral, it’s 22:30. Slack water in ten.”

MacKenzie turned to the boat and nodded, then he faced Sara. “The choice is yours, Sara. I’d love to have you with me on this trip…”

“You never answered my question. Could I stay with you?”

His acquiescence went unspoken; instead he simply kissed her forehead and took her hand. “Let’s go,” he said, finally, though he waited for her to make the first step towards his little ship.

She looked at the ship then gave his hand a gentle squeeze as she started down the bricks to the water’s edge.

+++++

Two hundred and thirty miles over head cameras within a NRO orbital surveillance satellite tracked her every movement, waiting for one of the small blue spheres to arrive.3.2

Spudz stood at the wheel, his eyes focused on the depth sounder and the forward scanning sonar, slowly, carefully threading Amaranth through the shifting mud and sand-bottomed channel after leaving the seawall. The sounder was showing just two feet under the keel, so Amaranth’s nine foot draft presented a serious challenge to the careless navigator. To make their departure more interesting, the first few hundred yards of the channel passed through a no wake zone, meaning his NordHavn 120 had to proceed with the twin throttles almost at idle, and contrary to expectations the best route for his deep keel did not follow the center of the channel. Instead, he guided her to the starboard, side of the channel – which was fractionally deeper.

Sara stood by his side, watching his hands. 

She had noted his hands the first time they met. They had looked clean and almost delicate, yet visibly very dexterous, and she’d at first thought he must be a surgeon – but no longer. She saw two throttles under his right hand now, yet he manipulated them individually; a little left forward throttle here, yet every few seconds, as the sounder and sonar painted a vibrant picture of the way ahead, he’d slip the right throttle into neutral, and occasionally into reverse, in effect yawing the vessel around underwater objects as he approached each one. It was slow-going, almost excruciating to watch – because one slip up here could drive the ship’s 850,000 pound displacement hull into soft mud. It would cost, she imagined, thousands to affect a recovery – under even the most favorable conditions.

He was steering for a flashing red light, and channel marker he said, and as they passed this mark he asked her if she could red the number painted on it.

“Two-forty, and the marker looks red, too.”

“Got it,” he sighed before his eyes left the sonar display. “Fourteen feet now,” he said absently as he began steering for the next marker, a flashing green light a few hundred yards ahead. “Oh, swell,” he snarled suddenly, and Sara looked ahead and noted that the air was condensing – which could only mean one thing: fog. Spudz opened another display and pulled up the outside air temp and relative humidity and grumbled something about dew point and that this wasn’t exactly the best time to run into dense fog, yet as they watched the air just above the water turned milky white…

…and Jim Turner walked onto the bridge and over the MacKenzie. He assayed the situation, turned on the radar and assigned that readout to the screen in front of the admiral, overlaying the radar’s information on top of the marine chart and putting the sonar’s screen on an adjacent display.

“Everything stowed?” MacKenzie asked Turner.

“Aye, sir.”

MacKenzie grumbled and shook his head, knowing that Turner would never be able to address him as anything other than the four-star admiral he’d been, then scanned the sonar display and corrected his course to clear a very large submerged tree limb. “This still a No Wake Zone?” he asked Turner, his attention still on the submerged hazard.

“Yessir, all the way to the bridge.”

MacKenzie noted the depth ahead was in the twenty foot range, so he let himself relax a little, but then he looked up and noted the fog had suddenly grown so thick he could no barely see the waving ensign on Amaranth’s bow. Instinctively he throttled back – until the boat was just maintaining effective steering speed – as he used the chart plotter and sonar to keep in the deepest part off the channel.

“I can just make out a green light to our left,” Sara said, and Spudz smiled.

“You’re going to be a good navigator, you know?”

She smiled too. “How do you know where to go?” she asked.

He pointed at the large screen just beyond the wheel and looked at her: “See the green boat icon here?”

“Yes.”

“That’s us, our current position, and that is accurate to within a few feet. The red line here is the route we’re following, and we need to stay as close to that as we possibly can. Look here,” he said, pointing at their position. “We passed Red 240 right there, at the bend in the river, and you saw the green light when we passed Green 241. The next is another green, 241A to our left, and the next one after that will be Red 242, beyond that one on our right, but look further ahead, to that red one.”

“Two-four-four, right?”

“Yup,” he said as he zoomed in on that mark, “but look at the depth by that one.”

“Ten feet?”

“Uh-huh, but if you keep to the middle of the channel here we have 14 feet, so if you cut the corner too close you can find quickly yourself in very shallow water.”

“Okay, I see that. But you can’t rely on that chart all the time, can you?”

“That’s right. Tidal rivers are tricky because the bottom contours are shifting all the time, but the nice thing about these charts is that they’re updated all them time, and I do mean all the time. Users that pass through here can report unexpected changes, and those reports show up as advisories on these charts. That’s actually a really big change from the way things worked just a few years ago, too.”

“What’s that line on the radar?”

“That’s the Highway 21 bridge to Port Royal.”

“Uh, Admiral,” Turner said, coughing under his breath, “I don’t mean to intrude, but you’ve been up for twenty hours. You really should hit the rack.”

MacKenzie looked at a GPS display and nodded when he saw the time. “Okay Chief, you’ve got the watch. Wake me at 0600 hours…uh, better make that 0530, and keep it at five knots in this fog.”

“0530. Aye, sir, and five in the fog.”

MacKenzies cabin was just aft of the bridge – on the same deck – so he hopped down from his helm seat and turned to Sara. “Shall we?” he asked as he walked to the short corridor that led to his cabin.

As she walked in she stopped and looked around. “This is really nice, Spudz. Elegant, I guess,” she said as she walked over to several framed pictures on a dresser. “You were a pilot?” she asked.

He walked over and stood beside her. “That was a long time ago, right after I got out of the Academy.”

“Annapolis?”

“Yup.”

“What kind of plane is that?”

“An EA-6B, an electronic warfare aircraft.”

“Were you ever in combat?”

He nodded. “Dessert Storm. I was the squadron CO then, then the Wing’s CAG, and then I went to surface warfare school, was XO on a cruiser before taking over as skipper of an aircraft carrier.” 

“Turner? He worked with you?”

Spudz nodded. “He’s been with me since the Connie…uh, the carrier.”

“Connie?”

“Constellation. She was the last non-nuclear boat. That’s here, there,” he said, pointing to one of the pictures.

“And you flew planes onto that?”

He nodded. “Feels like all that happened in another lifetime.”

“How so?”

He shrugged again, almost like it was a habitual gesture, quick and restless. “You sure you want to bunk out with me up here?”

“Would you mind?”

He shrugged again. “No, but I really need a shower.”

“I think I’d like a bath. Don’t suppose there’s one of those onboard, huh?”

“I’ll do you one better,” he said, walking to the huge sliding glass doors along the aft most wall, and as soon as he was within a foot or so the door automatically slid open and lights in the ceiling above a circular hot tub came on. “Water’s set at 102 Fahrenheit. Will that do?”

She walked out and looked at the tub and sighed. “Is there anything not onboard this thing?”

“I didn’t want a house, and there were a bunch of people I really didn’t want to leave behind so this kind of came to mind. I made a couple of good investments along the way, enough to live like this for a while, anyway, and when I talked to my friends they were all happy to sign on. There’s plenty of room and we’re planning on seeing the world we missed. Europe, mostly, then the Seychelles and Polynesia too. Then we’ll see.”

“Do you have anything I can wear?”

“Sweatpants, gym shorts, hoodies. Do you have a passport?”

She shook her head and looked away. “No.”

“Well, we’ll take care of that tomorrow. What about shoes?”

“What?”

“What size? I’ll ask the chief, see if we have your size onboard already.”

“Nine, narrow.”

“Got it,” he said as he walked over to a cabinet and pulled out a couple of bath sheets. He handed them to her and smiled. “Hop in when you want. I’m going to shower now,” he said, ready to return to the warmth of his cabin – but as walked in she followed him, and she did so all the way to his bathroom. He finally saw her in one of the mirrors and stopped, then turned and looked at her.

She reached out and unknotted his tie, then started to unbutton his shirt, and his lower lip started to tremble.

No one had expressly told him this might happen – yet he really didn’t understand why he hadn’t figured this out on his own, let alone what to do if she did – so he simply acquiesced. For a moment.

“Let me rinse off,” he sighed, “then I’ll meet you in the tub.”

She looked at him a little quizzically, then she saw the dilemma in his eyes, the conflict and uncertainty written across his face – and right then she knew that he knew. “Okay,” she whispered, but even she could register the defeat in her words.

He watched her walk back to the tub, and though she kicked off her shoes and slacks before she stepped up and then into the hot water – while still wearing her blouse and, he assumed, her underwear – before sitting down. He nodded then stepped into a cold shower and soaped off quickly, then slipped into a clean t-shirt and boxers before making his own quick dash out to the tub.

As he sat he just made out the highway bridge as Amaranth crept along through the dense fog, then he felt her come close and lay her head on his shoulder – again. He slipped his arm around her and pulled her close, and after that everything just sort of happened naturally.

Port Royal Sound

He woke with a start and looked at the clock on his bedside table and smiled when he saw 0525 on the pale blue digital display. Some things, he realized, never changed, and waking up minutes before the alarm sounded had always been a blessing – and a curse. Then he remembered Sara and rolled over, saw that she was already sitting up and watching him quite intently.

“You were so sweet last night,” he finally said, still felt a little shy. “So easy to be with.”

She held his eyes in her own and smiled with a warmth she’d never known. “You were my first.”

His eyes popped wide open as he processed those words. “What?”

“I’ve never wanted to before.”

A knock on the teak door, then Jim Turner’s voice boomed: “Admiral?”

“I’ll be up in a moment, Chief.”

“Aye, sir.”

MacKenzie dressed in plain khakis and slipped on a pair of sneakers and a navy blue ball cap and she watched him dress, never took her eyes off him.

“If you want to shower and change,” he began, “just help yourself to the sweats. Second draawer,” he added, pointing. “I’ll be at the wheel until 0600, then we can head down for breakfast.”

“Okay.”

MacKenzie went to the helm, noted they had already passed Saint Michaels Breakers and were coming up on Port Royal Channel Marker 7 and that their depth was ranging between 13 and 20 feet; the autopilot was engaged and Jenny Valdez was on watch. Valdez had been a Machinist’s Mate before pushing and shoving her way through SEAL training, and she’d been on Spudz’ security detail at the Pentagon. She was also Jim Turner’s main squeeze, and between the two of them there wasn’t anything onboard they couldn’t fix.

“Good morning, Admiral,” Valdez said, grinning. “Have a good night’s sleep?”

“I managed,” MacKenzie growled. “When do we clear the channel?”

“Six thousand feet to the Entrance Buoy, sir.”

“Maintain course until we’re ten miles offshore, then make zero-five-zero degrees at seven knots.”

“Ten offshore, zero-five-zero at seven, aye.”

He stepped outside onto the bridge and found Orion down hard in the southwest sky; he took in the brisk salt laden air then made a swing around the foredeck before walking aft to the steps that led up to the flying bridge. Once up in the unfettered breeze he settled into a helm chair and turned on the main NAV display and scrolled to the weather page. Temp was warming, the dew point falling, so before long they’d be out of the fog, and that was good, he thought. Radar was clear, AIS too, then he heard Turner coming up the steps.

“Skipper? How do you want to handle this?”

“Let me go down with her and get breakfast going. When she’s finished go ahead and bring them out.”

“You want me to stand by there while this goes down?”

He thought a moment, then nodded. “Better keep a sidearm handy, Chief. Just in cast.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Anything from the airdales?”

“A P-8 made a routine sweep an hour ago. There’s a Russian boomer off Savannah heading south, with at least one Virginia on his ass, and the Truman is off Hatteras doing workups and car-quals.”

“So nothing from our friend in Seattle?” MacKenzie noted, meaning the old spy on Puget Sound.

“Still docked at Shilshole, sir,” Valdez added.

“This doesn’t smell right, Chief. Something ain’t right.”

“I know. I feel it, too. All the missile boats have sortied, all the carriers, too. Docks in Norfolk are empty, Admiral.”

“Hell, been a while since we’ve seen that, Chief.”

“Better safe than sorry, sir, but I guess you know that.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty smart…for an officer, anyway.”

“I wouldn’t put it exactly that way, Admiral.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You need anything right now, sir? Coffee? Condoms? Penicillin?”

Spudz looked at Turner and shook his head. “No. Let’s head down and get this over with.” He turned of the display and stood, and the little ship was beginning to roll a little in the open roadstead, and just then Valdez upped the throttle and corrected to port a few degrees before settling in on her new heading. 

Turner led the way down the steps and MacKenzie found Sara Caldwell on the bridge standing beside Valdez. “Sara?” he said to her. “Let’s head down and grab some chow.”

“We’re being followed,” Caldwell said, her voice flat, emotionless.

Valdez looked at the admiral and shrugged. “Radar clear, sir.”

“Who’s upstairs?” he asked, looking at Turner.

Turner went to a clipboard and flipped a page. “Should be Pelican 3-0-1 out of Jax.”

“Have him run a MAD run and drop a line of buoy from here to Wilmington.”

“Aye, sir.” Turner went over to a radio and began keying in a frequency.

Sara was looking at Spudz, just now beginning to wonder what was really going on. “What’s a MAD, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Magnetic Anomaly Detector. An aircraft will fly along our route looking for any unusual magnetic influences, then comparing anything that pops to nominal datums for this part of the coastline.”

“Magnetic?” Sara asked. “You mean…something like a submarine?”

Spudz shrugged. “Let’s see what they turn up before we jump to any conclusions, okay? Now, let’s head down to the galley.”

MacKenzie disappeared down the stairway and Sara followed him, and then he showed her around the galley – which was immense and as well equipped as any she’d seen in her travels. Two Sub Zero refrigerators, a six burner induction cooktops, two dishwashers and a trash compactor were in the galley proper; in an annex just forward was a huge freezer and two commercial grade ice-makers. “Why such a big galley?” she asked.

And he shrugged. “It’s the standard arrangement. Lots of space for frozen stuff for long passages, and besides, who wants to eat PBJs for weeks on end?”

“Would you like me to cook breakfast?”

“Could you?”

“Sure. Just you and me?”

“No. We’ve got an engineer in the engine room, then Jim and Jenny. And we have three guests onboard, and one more down below.”

“So, breakfast for nine?”

“Yup. Think you can handle that?”

She poked around the refrigerators, then found some English muffins and decided on Eggs Benedict and home fried potatoes. She found several bags of oranges and an electric juicer then got to work, leaving Spudz with little to do but sit and watch her.

Which was, in and of itself, amazing. She moved with an impressive economy of motion, almost like she was trying to conserve energy with every move she made, and then she started to chop some shallots and her hands moved so quickly he could barely follow the motion. She poached eggs and sliced bacon, then set up a double boiler and fired off a Hollandaise while the muffins toasted. For good measure she sliced fresh honeydew melon and made her plates.

Turner came down and carried two plates up to the bridge, and someone mysteriously appeared and carried three plates forward, then the engineers arrived from below – with spotless hands – and carried their plates away, leaving her alone with Spudz…and once again she felt like everything had been pre-planned. He carried their two plates to the dining room – and that’s exactly what it was, she saw – and after he put them on the table he waited for her then pulled out her chair. And that, she thought, was a completely unexpected gesture.

He sat and immediately took a bite – then coughed a little to clear his throat. “Did you put cayenne in the Hollandaise?” he asked.

“Always,” she smirked. “Too hot for you?”

“No, not really. I just wasn’t expecting a hit like that at breakfast.” Then the little FRS radio on his belt chimed and he picked it up, toggled the mic. “Yes?”

“Admiral,” Valdez said, “first MAD run picked up a minor hit. Vermont notified and now en route, but  sir, there’s not enough water in here for a sub.”

“Have the P-8 drop a grid ahead of us, then let’s start a zigzag course; maybe they can pick up something that way.”

“Aye, sir.”

“What’s Vermont?” Sara asked.

“A Virginia-class fast attack sub. She’s assigned to the carrier battle group training off Cape Hatteras. If someone’s following us, the sub can pin her in shallow water.”

“I’m curious, Spudz. Why would someone follow us? Is someone after you?”

MacKenzie shrugged. “What do you think of our little galley?”

She stared at him, wondered what his real game was, but he was focused on his eggs – too obviously ignoring her question. “All the comforts of home, I guess.”

He looked at her then, his eyes cold and hard again, almost inquisitorial. “How ‘bout your home? Growing up, I mean? What got you interested in cooking?”

“I wanted to be…useful.”

“Surgeons are useful. So are engineers. Why cooking?”

“I don’t know, Spudz. Are warriors useful?”

He leaned back and looked seaward – out the adjacent wall of windows, and he had to think about that one for a moment. “In an ideal world there’d be no need. Then again, we don’t live in an ideal world, do we?”

“I tried medicine once, but I found it unsatisfying.”

“What? You were, you are a physician?”

She smiled. “That troubles you?” 

“No, not really, but it was – well, it is – a little unexpected, I guess, but let me add that to the list,” he smiled.

“You don’t trust me, do you?”

“Of course…but look, you wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, okay?”

“I don’t believe you. Who are the other guests onboard?”

“Let’s clear the table, do the dishes first, okay?” he said. She stood abruptly and went to the galley while he ferried their dishes and utensils to the sink. “I’ll rinse and you load,” he added, taking a minute to wipe down the obsidian granite countertops after they finished with the cookware.

Then he walked through the main saloon and out to the open aft cockpit, and she followed along without his asking, finally stopping at the rail and looking at the churning water in their wake.

“Why am I here, Spudz?”

“Try not to be angry, okay?”

“Angry? Why would I be…?”

They turned when the pneumatic door hissed open again, and Sara turned around – only to find Ralph Richardson, Sumner Bacon…and another woman that looked exactly like she did.

Her betrayal complete, she turned to MacKenzie at a complete loss for words. Not only did he know who she was, this Navy admiral had spent months, perhaps years setting up this moment, slowly seducing her to break cover and run again. But now she was trapped, unknown miles out to sea and in the hands of the two men she had run from more than once.

3.3

“Hello, Devlin,” Ralph Richardson said. “How are you?”

Sara/Devlin wheeled around and looked 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. “What you’re doing is too dangerous.”

“Why, Devlin? Why? Peter Weyland…of all people. Why did you choose him?”

“Because,” she whispered, “of what comes next. I have to be there. I have to stop him.”

“Where?” Where is there, Devlin?”

“41°45’59.99″ North Latitude, 50°13’60.00″ West Longitude,” she said as she turned and looked at Spudz. “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 words. “Yes, we can do that,” 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?”

“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, 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.

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

MacKenzie walked to Richardson’s side and knelt beside his 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?”

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, 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 now, Eve. She’s feeling lost.” 

Spudz watched the other woman, this 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 again.’ Jim Turner came up from behind and gently tapped him on the shoulder, then handed him a small notepad. He read the update from the P-8 now 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 wound put him,” Turner said, “about four hundred miles east-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 burned through some of that as it’s my 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. What’s the latest on that MAD contact?”

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

“When will Vermont get 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 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 before the small, gray, cylindrical buoys exited the heavily modified 737s aft compartment and floated to their splashdowns in the sea. He knew what was out there, at least if his briefings had been kept up-to-date.

With his binoculars still firmly in hand, he walked down to the aft cockpit and resumed standing beside Richardson’s wheelchair. “Anything new?” 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 on 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. 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 bely 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 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 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 his, just behind the 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 until the had formed a huge 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 there…”

“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 that male. Anyway, tell her I will – if she goes in 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. More a little more 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 and 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 the female orcas corralled the three of them, then 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 experienced before. 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, 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 the 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 the peculiar odor – and the milky sea water. Semen was altogether unlikely, and why had the orcas participated?

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.

3.4

He’d read the intel briefs, all of them, at least all he could lay his hands on. 

Claire Aubuchon’s rise through the Manhattan project, her friendship with FDR. That American 777 crash and the Dana Goodman incident on the bridge over LA Harbor, and now here was Sumner Bacon, a witness to that singular event, down in a stateroom right now. And Ralph Richardson, founder of Richardson Autonetics was here too, and Mark Stuart’s ‘Girl Friday’ Eve had come along with him. Why? He’d read one unforgettable briefing about the girls coming out of Richardson’s silicon valley facility in Palo Alto, girls that weren’t quite, well, human. Then came the most idiotic rumor yet, that FDR and Chester Nimitz were somehow still alive, working aboard some kind of colossal orbiting battle-star slash aircraft carrier – that always, somehow, seemed to evade terrestrial detection. And yet, Richardson’s girls routinely visited this supposed ship. All of it was, taken at face value, pure malarkey. 

But then, during his stint on the board at Northrop-Grumman, he’d seen his first ARV, the first real evidence of an advanced civilization beyond Earth’s. He’d seen firsthand, with his own eyes, a few of the technologies Grumman’s best people had managed to reverse engineer, and if even half of what they claimed was possible the planet’s energy crisis would soon be at an end. We’d be a multi planetary species within a few decades. The problem, he soon realized, was how to introduce these technologies to a gullible public. Slowly? To make it appear these magical technologies had been developed ‘in house?’ Preserve multiple generations’ scientific-religious myopia just a little longer? But how much longer could the planet wait?

Then again, MacKenzie thought, maybe that was the rub. Maybe whoever ‘lost’ this technology hadn’t exactly meant for something like that to happen. Maybe these spacefarers wanted their tech back, perhaps wanted to put the genie back in the bottle. To do so, they’d have to be very, very careful, wouldn’t they? 

But then MacKenzie had started to learn other truths. Darker, more dangerous truths.

The first bombshell revelation…? There were at least four different groups ‘out there’ watching events unfold on Earth, and at least one of these civilizations slipped through time as easily as we took our next breath. The implications were beyond staggering and plain to see in the light of day, so yes, of course, keep everything wrapped out in shadow. But, MacKenzie thought, what if multiple space-faring civilizations had developed similar time-warping technologies? What if these disparate groups had different expectations of what they wanted to accomplish here, if, for instance, each group might be looking to engineer radically different outcomes? Would they fight amongst themselves, when push came to shove, to prevail over the other factions?

But…what might happen if a group here on Earth – say a political group with ill intent? – what if they had made an alliance with one of these civilizations? What if Roosevelt had learned about it – somehow, maybe way back in the 1920s, and what if another group, one potentially more friendly to Earth, wanted to thwart the efforts of the ill intentioned group? What kind of world war might result from those alignments? And if just one of these groups could manipulate time? Then what? If they lost one battle could they just go back and stage a replay? Or endless replays…until they achieved the outcome they desired?

Then the second bombshell dropped. A very advanced but hideously damaged ARV, located at one of Sukhoi/United Aircraft Company’s R&D center in far eastern Siberia out on the Kamchatka peninsula, had been – literally – stolen in the dark of night – by an unknown agent. But now there was word that this ship was the most advanced ever recovered, was now located in central Washington state, and in the possession of Boeing’s Phantom Works. The Russian’s were beyond angry and making noises about punishing America and Europe and just about the time Spudz began thinking that things couldn’t get more screwed up, here comes bombshell number three: Richardson reported to the current SecDef that the so-called Adler Group, a neo-fascist cult located somewhere down in Argentina, was up to something possibly involving time travel. Then, just a few months ago, word was passed down that one of Peter Weyland’s yachts was now in play and reportedly heading north, and somehow Richardson had learned that Weyland’s objective had something to do with the Titanic.

And as soon as plans were set in motion to interdict that effort, Richardson had spilled the beans about one of his girls – Devlin, he called her – and how she had slipped through time and made contact with Weyland’s father, Peter Senior, allegedly sometime back in the early 1970s. Then she had mysteriously reappeared in South Carolina, clearly terrified about something she’d seen, or learned, from Weyland, and yet she was very clearly in contact with someone giving her tactical updates about Weyland, his evolving plans, and even developing actions the larger Adler Group in Argentina had – potentially – put into motion.

He’d been retired more than a year when the president called him again. He had just taken delivery of Amaranth out in Dana Point, California, and with his friends and former cremates he was off to see the world he’d missed. Polynesia, New Zealand, Cocos-Keeling and the Seychelles, then maybe Tanzania and Cape Town before heading to the South Georgia Island group and Tierra del Fuego, finishing their circumnavigation back in California in a leisurely five or so years.

He could put alien civilizations and their world changing technologies back in his memory warehouse and close that door for good, and he couldn’t wait to leave it all behind.

Then the phone call. The rushed flight back to Andrews, the seduction of all that power. The power to shape events, to change destinies. He’d found himself split – between wanting to run from all that Washington D.C. had become and still impossibly obsessed with the dynamics of the place. It was a giant, impossible chessboard where one bad move might end not just careers, but potentially human civilization.

Such power was a drug, maybe the most addictive there was, and he knew he’d been an addict for decades.

So when his president asked who was he to refuse?

But now, this? He hadn’t signed up for this. Or maybe he had?

He was still chilled to the core from his swim with the girls that day – and the swirling mass of orcas, and even after ten minutes under a hot shower he felt certain something was wrong. Not knowing what else to do, he walked out to the aft deck off his cabin and fired up the hot tub, then threw off his robe and climbed into the blissfully hot water. He settled into one of the molded seats and lay his head back and looked up at the sky as it quickly morphed from orange to purple and then to the all-enveloping black of the infinite, and trying all the while to put the day’s crazy crap out of mind – even for just a few minutes. Why was it impossible to simply shut off the noise, he wondered, to stop thinking for even just one minute? How, he wondered, could the human mind tap into an infinite silence…? 

Death offered such a retreat, but MacKenzie had fought death every day of his life. He hated death. And, he admitted, he was often quite afraid of death. What sane being wouldn’t be?

Sitting under the infinite, he realized that just a few years ago he’d never heard of any of these things, and yet now he felt like he knew too much. There was no way to compartmentalize these kinds of confounding information streams, simply because too many paradigms were shifting – all at once – and yet it seemed as if everything was about to come to a head…and sooner than anyone had previously expected.

He heard the automatic door from his cabin hiss open and turned, expecting to see Jim Turner – but no, it was one of the girls – standing there in a navy blue robe. He hadn’t been able to tell them apart since they had all clambered out of the Zodiac a few hours ago, but at least this one was alone – and she was slipping out of her robe and stepping into the hot tub.

“Are you still cold,” she asked, her nakedness overtly tantalizing.

He nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so…I’ve never felt anything like this.”

“Why didn’t you marry, Spudz?”

“You know, pardon me for the intrusion, but I have absolutely no idea who I’m talking to.”

“It’s me. Sara.”

“I’d ask you to prove it, but I guess that would be pointless.”

She nodded. “Maybe so. Time will tell.”

“So, let me get this straight. You’re, technically anyway, human. Right?”

“Just like you.”

“But your systems are flooded with nano-robitic enhancements? Is that about it? You can’t age? You don’t get sick?”

She shrugged. “If there’s a warranty, I haven’t seen it,” she said quietly, her smile as seductive as it was beautiful.

“And you can travel through time, is that correct?”

“That’s not quite right. I was the second to have a limited ability to jump, but I have no real idea how to control it. My grandmother was supposed to be the first, we think. I’m not so sure about that now.”

“What do you mean…by…a limited ability?”

“It’s very hit-or-miss, Spudz. It’s not like I can just go to last Tuesday at noon. It doesn’t work like that, but then again, as I said…”

“It’s a limited ability. Right, I picked up on that.”

“I wish I could be more specific.”

He shrugged.“I appreciate the honesty. So, you gave me coordinates for Titanic, where she went down. You think Peter Weyland is heading there right now, don’t you?”

“His father is, I think, but there’s no way to be sure. Peter Senior learned of my ability, and that’s what set this whole chain in motion. His son is just the next link in this chain.”

“I see. The law of unintended consequences at work.”

“Sorry. Yes.”

“That leaves one big question. What’s going on with these orcas?”

“They have factions, Admiral, just like we do,” Ralph Richardson said, wheeling up beside the tub – with Eve behind his wheelchair, pushing him up to the edge of the hot tub. “I still cold as hell. Mind if we join you?”

MacKenzie’s eyes rolled skyward as he blushed away the sudden embarrassment he felt. He was naked as the day he’d been born and had always been more than modest, then Sara – or should he call her Devlin? – had shown up. But now this? Well, after all…they were from California, so when in Rome…

But as Richardson struggled to push himself up from his wheelchair Eve rushed to help, but then Sara stood to help out too and together they had the old man in the tub quickly and, Mackenzie thought, almost too easily. “So, you think the orcas are like us? Factions, I mean?” Mackenzie said after Richardson had caught his second wind and settled down in the steaming water.

“Oh, indeed so. Very much so, as a matter of fact. Remember all those violent encounters between orca and sailboats off the Iberian peninsula a few years ago? Just one pod was responsible, Admiral…”

“Please. Call me Spudz.”

Richardson nodded. “And yet at the same time I can give you at least two accounts of orca coming along and saving humans who’d fallen from boats…”

“But not the Iberian pod, correct?”

“Yes,” Richardson sighed. “Paternal territoriality and deep, almost violent protective instincts in one group, while in others we find empathy and vast reserves of maternal courage.”

“Are you saying one group is paternal, the other maternal?”

“I’m not saying anything, Spudz. I’m recounting observations.”

“But that’s what you’re thinking, right?”

“It’s a compelling hypothesis, but so far we have little to back it up.” Richardson looked at MacKenzie, his eyes wide open, his countenance one of gentle mirth, of a battle joined. “You’ve been…you were staring up at the heavens when we arrived. Do such things interest you?”

MacKenzie nodded. “At Annapolis, the summer after my plebe year, I spent a month on a cruiser in the arctic. The XO was a complete stickler about everything to do with celestial nav and he drilled us incessantly. Noon sights at first, but then we started shooting the stars and it was an epiphany. Like a bunch of people, I grew up in a city and I’d never really known my way around the night sky…”

“And that sparked…?”

“I think on a childish level, well, that somehow I’d always wanted to get closer to them. I always wanted to fly, too, so after that summer I focused on aeronautical engineering, but I added a minor in astronomy.”

“Never any interest in NASA, I take it?” Richardson asked.

Mackenzie shook his head. “Apollo was over with and the shuttle always looked like a silly diversion to me. So no, never any real interest.”

“I dare say,” Richardson sighed, “the Shuttle probably was a diversion. The question remains, however – diverting us from what?”

“That seems obvious now, don’t you think?” Spudz almost smiled.

“Yes, of course. But that brings us full circle, back to factions. I suspect you realize that, like most of us – myself included, naturally – we came of age deep inside the womb of a very anthropocentric culture? Yet we’ve quite consciously ignored the obvious. Hobbes blinded us with his singular truth, I think? Life is indeed nasty, brutish, and above all, short – but ants fight too, Spudz. Did you know that? Big, organized armies, fighting for territory, territory for their queen. Yet predatory oceanic rogues like great whites don’t organize and fight, however, which is curious, while the mammalian porpoises and whales do. But the sharks have been around for hundreds of millions of years, so where does that lead you?”

“That once a species begins to organize they start down the road to extinction.”

“Possibly. Assuming your planet isn’t taken out by an asteroid or comet…”

“Or a Trident III ICBM,” Spudz sighed.

“Yes, that has indeed been something new – and unexpected. We weren’t ready for that kind of power; it was our undoing.”

“It…was? That’s an interesting perspective, given the current reality.”

“Admiral, I hate to be the one to break this to you, but you have absolutely no idea what reality is. On the other hand, I think within the next week or so you might begin to understand just how terrifyingly precarious our understanding of the current reality really is.”

“What are you not telling me?” Spudz asked, goosebumps dancing across his torso and up his neck.

“Sara? Anything you want to pass along to the admiral? Now would seem to be the perfect time to do so.”

She looked away, perhaps up to the stars, as she searched for the very words she knew she should never say.

Spudz looked at her, saw a life of careworn evasions, endless running away and the cascading uncertainty of the moment come together, and he really didn’t know what he could do to help her…but take her hand in his. He then leaned back and looked for Orion rising in the southeast which, for some odd reason he’d never bothered to understand, almost instantly made him feel a little more at ease. Maybe, he thought, Orion represented certainty in a rapidly devolving world. Maybe…because that Hunter would still be up there long after we were gone from the Earth. Then again…hadn’t he been a hunter all his professional life? Hadn’t he killed, or help kill, hundreds of people in the Middle East and South Central Asia? 

“I think we,” Sara said quietly, “are going to have a baby.”

“Who? Who…is we?”

“You, Spudz. You and me. A baby.”

He was thunderstruck, speechless. “And you know this…how?”

“I’m not sure I understand the how or the why, but I’ve seen it.”

“You’ve…seen it? Care to elaborate?”

She looked at Richardson, who simply nodded his approval, and then she seemed to collect her thoughts  again – and maybe a little courage along the way…

“When I was with Peter Weyland Senior, well, Spudz, I met someone. A homicide detective with the police department in San Francisco. All I know is it has something to do with his mother.”

“Sara, you’re not making sense.  You know what, exactly? What are you trying to tell me?”

“He knows how to jump, Spudz. Anywhere. Any time he choses. He can do what no one else can.”

“What? Are you sure?”

She nodded, and when Spudz looked at Richardson the old man just smiled as he looked up at the night sky, maybe somewhere off beyond the stars.

“Wait,” Spudz whispered. “Didn’t you say that was back in the early 70s? He’s, this cop, he’s not still alive, is he?”

And now Eve spoke. “Oh, he’s very much alive, Admiral.”

“You’ve seen him – recently?” he asked, staggering under the weight of dangerous expectations.

“Oh, yes, about a week ago.” She wanted to tell MacKenzie about her mad dash with a priest in his new Ferrari to the observatory atop Mount Lick, above San Jose, but now wasn’t the…time.

“What’s he doing? Trying to take over the world?”

Eve smiled and laughed at the incongruity between this errant expectation and reality, then she looked MacKenzie in the eye: “For the most part he plays an old, broken down upright piano at a bar down on Fisherman’s Wharf. And he doesn’t drink anything but tea. Hot tea.”

“What?! That’s it? And he has the ability to…”

“Just so, Spudz,” Richardson sighed. “If it turns out he’s one of the Good Guys, and believe me when I tell you, there aren’t very many in this sordid tale, everything may very well revolve around what this old cop does.”

“Would he help us?” Spudz asked.

“Doubtful,” Eve said. “He seems to have made some kind of quiet peace with this ability of his. He understands the implications, and I think he’s afraid of making a mistake.”

“What does that even mean, Eve?” Spudz grumbled. “How can he be a so-called good guy and stand by quietly on the sidelines while the whole world unravels? I don’t get that. No, I don’t get that at all.”

Sara cleared her throat, then gave Spudz’ hand a quick squeeze. “I’m going to go back, Spudz. I’m going to go back and try to convince him to come with me, to join us.”

“And if he doesn’t? Then what?”

“Then I’ll have to go back to San Francisco again. To Peter Weyland again. And I’ll have to kill him.”

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

Dana Goodman Claire Aubuchon 

[Trevor Rabin \\ Tumbleweed]

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

And one last musical interlude for you. Gypsy, by the Moody Blues, was one of my favorites back in the day, and I can’t even begin to count how many times I saw them play this one live. Thanks for the memories, and that don’t even begin to tell that tale.