Rozhdestvenskiy felt his smile fade. 'The survival of the race, Comrade—the survival of the race.'
Rozhdestvenskiy said no more.
Chapter 25
Rourke, Paul Rubenstein and Natalia sat, their eyes transfixed as were the eyes of the submarine's complement not on duty—to the television monitors in the crew mess. It had been the same with San Francisco when they had passed the ruins—watching a city where once people lived now an underwater tomb. With this city it was doubly difficult—a young seaman first class had been born there, lived there—his mother, father, two sisters and wife and son had died there.
But he had insisted on watching—and now he wept.
Not one of the men touched him; Rourke, feeling perhaps like the rest of them, not knowing what to say, to do.
Natalia—wearing a robe borrowed from the captain, moving slowly, her left hand holding at her abdomen where Rourke had made the incisions—stood. Rourke started up after her, but she shook her head, murmuring, 'No, John,' then walked. She supported herself against the long, spotlessly clean tables, moving to alongside the weeping man.
'I am sorry—for your family—and for you,' she whispered, Rourke watching her, watching all the others watching her.
The young man looked up. 'Why'd you and your people wanna kill us—we coulda talked it out—or somethin'?'
'I don't know, sailor—I don't know,' she whispered.
He looked at her, just shaking his head.
She moved her hands, touching them lightly to his shoulders. He looked down, his neck bent, his shoulders slumping. Natalia took a step toward him, leaning against him to help herself stand, her arms folding around his neck, his head coming to rest against her abdomen.
She closed her eyes as he wept.
Rourke breathed.
Chapter 26
Rourke stood in the sail, the snowflakes thick and large, the temperature barely cold enough for them, he thought. They melted as they reached the backs of his hands on the rail, the knit cuffs of his brown leather bomber jacket, occasionally one of the larger flakes landing on his eyelashes—he would close his eyes for an instant and they would melt.
The flakes melted down from his hair, the melted snow running in tiny rivulets down his forehead and his cheeks—he could feel them.
Natalia Anastasia Tiemerovna shivered beside him and he folded his arm around her to give her warmth.
The submarine was moving—through the fjord-like cut in the land and toward the new coastline—it was north central California and beneath the wake the sub's prow cut were the bodies of the dead and cities they had lived in.
' Rourke thought of this—he could not avoid thinking of it ...
There was a bay that had been carved at the far end of the inlet, Commander Gundersen on the sail beside Rourke, Rubenstein and Natalia, in constant radio contact with his bridge for depth soundings of the fjord—it had been created by the megaquakes that had destroyed California beyond the San Andreas faultline on the Night of The War. There were no charts.
