Surfacing by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

spool of cable, a couple spare microphones, and a pair of rusting Danforth anchors. He stowed the food in the hold, put the electronics in the compartment under the mattress, jammed the Danforths farther into the peak on top of the anchor chain where they belonged. He wiped the grime and rust off the mattress and realized he had neither sheets nor a second pillow. He would need to purchase supplies on the next trip to town.
    The peak didn’t smell good. He opened the forehatch and tried to air the place out. Slowly he became aware that the whales were trying to talk to him. Odd scentings , they said. Things that stand in water . Anthony knew what they meant. He went up on the flybridge and scanned the horizon. He saw nothing.
    The taste is distant , he wrote. But we must be careful in our movement . After that he scanned the horizon every half hour.
    He cooked supper during the white dwarf’s odd half-twilight and resisted the urge to drink both the bottles of bourbon that were waiting in their rack. Philana dropped onto the flybridge with a small rucksack. She kissed him hastily, as if to get it over with.
    “I’m scared,” she said.
    “So am I.”
    “I don’t know why.”
    He kissed her again. “I do,” he said. She laid her cheek against his woolen shoulder. Blind with terror, Anthony held onto her, unable to see the future.
    *
    After midnight Anthony stood unclothed on the flybridge as he scanned the horizon one more time. Seeing nothing, he nevertheless reduced speed to three knots and rejoined Philana in the forepeak. She was already asleep with his open sleeping bag thrown over her like a blanket. He raised a corner of the sleeping bag and slipped beneath it. Philana turned away from him and pillowed her cheek on her fist. Whale music echoed from a cold layer beneath. He slept.
    Movement elsewhere in the boat woke him. Anthony found himself alone in the peak, frigid air drifting over him from the forward hatch. He stepped into the cabin and saw Philana’s bare legs ascending the companion to the flybridge. He followed. He shivered in the cold wind.
    Philana stood before the controls, looking at them with a peculiar intensity, as though she were trying to figure out which switch to throw. Her hands flexed as if to take the wheel. There was gooseflesh on her shoulders and the wind tore her hair around her face like a fluttering curtain. She looked at him. Her eyes were hard, her voice disdainful.
    “Are we lovers?” she asked. “Is that what’s going on here?” His skin prickled at her tone.
    Her stiff-spined stance challenged him. He was afraid to touch her.
    “The condition is that of rut,” he said, and tried to laugh.
    Her posture, one leg cocked out front, reminded him of a haughty water bird. She looked at the controls again, then looked aft, lifting up on her toes to gaze at the horizon. Her nostrils flared, tasted the wind. Clouds scudded across the sky. She looked at him again. The white dwarf gleamed off her pebble eyes.
    “Very well,” she said, as if this was news. “Acceptable.” She took his hand and led him below. Anthony’s hackles rose. On her way to the forepeak Philana saw one of the bottles of bourbon in its rack and reached for it. She raised the bottle to her lips and drank from the neck. Whiskey coursed down her chin, her throat. She lowered the bottle and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at him as if he were something worthy of dissection.
    “Let’s make love,” she said.
    Anthony was afraid not to. He went with her to the forepeak. Her skin was cold. Lying next to him on the mattress she touched his chest as if she were unused to the feel of male bodies. “What’s your name?” she asked. He told her. “Acceptable,” she said again, and with a sudden taut grin raked his chest with her nails. He knocked her hands away. She laughed and came after him with the bottle. He parried the blow in time and they wrestled for possession, bourbon splashing