doesn't make them safe-Daddy.'
'I guess not.' He sighed. 'I haven't always told you what's in my heart, Lulu, but you have to know it's all for you.' With grim intensity, he insisted, 'Ask any of the old-timers, and they'll tell you. Now I'm tired, so you'll have to excuse me. Go, g'bye! Get the hell outta here before someone catches you.' Even as he said this, he was shuffling away.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We crossed the Arctic Circle on the twentieth of February, in an area of the sea between Baffin Island and Greenland called the Davis Strait, inadvertently following Amundsen's route of a century before. At some point, the ice closed tight above us, ending surface sightings. There was a high-powered light on the sail, however, which allowed the periscope to function as an underwater camera. The video could be shown on any monitor in the sub, but Coombs had found a way to improve on this: While taking inventory of the remaining artifacts in the Big Room, Robles had turned up a number of eighty-inch high-definition flat plasma displays. These were intended for supercomputer simulations (the computer itself-an experimental Cray-was still in the box), but Coombs didn't think there would be any harm in setting a few up around the control room and linking them to the periscope. The first time they were turned on, they elicited gasps. These were not just pictures on TV; they were vivid undersea windows, on which we could watch the milky jade icescape passing above, and every glowing mite streaming by. It made some of the guys claustrophobic, but for me in my ignorance it was too abstract to be really scary, just amazing.
As we followed the converging lines of longitude to the top of the world, gossip and speculation ran rampant: What was our objective? The unofficial consensus seemed to be that we were heading for Alaska via the Arctic Ocean, and this quickly became such an accepted matter of common knowledge (or wishful thinking) that people spoke of it openly, as in, 'When we get to Alaska-' or 'I can't wait till we get to Alaska so I can-' The minute this reached the ears of Coombs, he took me aside, and said, 'You know what the 'butt' on a ship is?'
'The stern?'
'No. On old sailing ships they called the drinking-water cask the 'butt.' It was kind of like the watercooler- sailors would stand around it and gossip, just like people in offices do today. Used to do, I mean. Understand?'
I nodded sagely.
He said, 'Sometimes the talk would be out of order, even mutinous. The kind of thing that could lead to the scuttling of the ship. You know what they called that kind of talk?'
'Scuttlebutt?'
He deflated a little. 'Yes, scuttlebutt. Maybe you also know the expression, 'Loose Lips Sink Ships.' You let those kids know I won't have it. Not in my control room, not anywhere. Our destination is classified, and it'll remain classified until such time as I find it prudent to reveal it. Is that understood?'
'Yes, sir.'
'I don't want to have to make an example of anyone.'
'No, sir.'
'Dismissed.'
When I told Julian about the directive, he acted as though it confirmed his Alaska hypothesis.
'How can you be so sure?' I asked.
'Come on, it's obvious. It's America, it's frozen solid, it's geographically isolated, there's a strong military presence, and we can use the Arctic Ocean as a shortcut. There's even a huge Trident submarine base just south of there in Bangor, Washington. Do I have to go on?'
'Have you heard anything about this from Robles?' I knew Julian was understudying for the quartermaster position presently filled by Robles.
'Of course not, but he's got us learning the sextant, the NAVSAT, the loran, the radar, the Fathometer, the SINS, the gyrocompass, and the accelerometer-if I can't estimate where we're going, it'd be pretty sad.'
'You said it, not me.' I nudged him playfully, but he wouldn't crack a smile. For some reason it had become imperative for me to get him to smile, but he just wouldn't do it.
Julian Noteiro was interesting, an unusual combination of strength, intelligence, character, and good looks. I had never liked people who were too competent because they made me feel inadequate, yet Julian was not stuck-up. You couldn't call him humble, but he was not self-obsessed. Order was his way of coping. Having come from a troubled working-class family with alcohol issues, anything irrational galled him, and in this need for control I saw something of myself. Perhaps I felt that if he would smile, it would mean I could, too.
Ignoring my nudge, he said, 'You'll know I'm right when we make a ninety-degree course change into Lancaster Sound. Wait and see.'
Cowper had another opinion.
'Alaska, you say?' he asked from behind the door.
'That's the scuttlebutt.'
'That doesn't make sense. Not west of Greenland. Our approach would have to be up the eastern side, where there's some depth to work with.'
'Wouldn't that take longer, though?'
'Sure, but you're not gonna save time if you get hung up in the shallows. That ice is gonna be thick as a bastid this time a year, and this beast needs a lot of elbow room, especially at these latitudes. The nearer you get to magnetic north, the harder it is to navigate.' He conferred with Sandoval out of earshot. After a moment he said, 'Sandoval thinks Alaska is impossible. He says the last he heard there was a war going on there between coastal defenses and an armada of refugee ships. Food supplies from the lower forty-eight had been cut off, so you had starvation, you had cold, you had panic-'
'Not to mention Xombies,' I said.
'Sure. Anchorage is a big city-had to be pretty bad. Doesn't sound like much of a haven. Not to mention there's a good chance the Russians may have mined the approaches to the Arctic Ocean. I know we did-while I was in command, I found active mine coordinates in the safe. Coombs knows that.'
'Then what's he up to?'
'Give us a while to think on it. And Lulu?'
'Yes?'
'Neither one of us is doing too well in here, but me with my ticker… you never can tell. And if I go, he's gonna go right after, if you know what I mean. Just in case, I wanted to tell you again what's in my heart. You still got that baby picture?'
'Yes.'
'Well, look at it when I'm gone. Don't think badly of me-it's what's in my heart that counts.'
I wanted to reply, Easy for you to say, but I held my tongue-this was obviously important to him. Frustrated as I felt, I couldn't hurt his feelings, and the thought that he might die-after everything we'd survived so far-it was unthinkable. He was all I had.
There was a hush in the control room, making me feel even more conspicuous than usual as I found a place to sit. On-screen I could see an immense black object suspended in pale ice, like a seedpod in dirty cotton. It was fat at the sides and ridged down the center, narrowing to a wedge just above us. It looked ready to split along that seam and spill its contents on our heads.
'What's that?' I whispered.
'It's a ship,' Julian said impatiently. 'The hull of an ocean liner, trapped in the ice. She's about nine hundred feet long.'
Kranuski was speaking to Coombs: 'She's not doing too well, sir. About a ten-degree list to port, heavy at the bow. You can see where the ice is staving her in-there's a flooded compartment in there.'
'So she's sinking?' Albemarle asked, listening in. 'Why the hell are we underneath her?'
Ignoring the civilian, Kranuski went on, 'We're not picking up any sounds, so the flooding must have stopped
