Surfacing by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

everywhere. Anthony was surprised at her strength. She fastened teeth in his arm. He hit her in the face with a closed fist. She gave the bottle up and laughed in a cold metallic way and put her arms around him. Anthony threw the bottle through the door into the cabin. It thudded somewhere but didn’t break. Philana drew him on top of her, her laugh brittle, her legs opening around him.
    Her dead eyes were like stones.
    *
    In the morning Anthony found the bottle lying in the main cabin. Red clawmarks covered his body, and the reek of liquor caught at the back of his throat. The scend of the ocean had distributed the bourbon puddle evenly over the teak deck. There was still about a third of the whiskey left in the bottle. Anthony rescued it and swabbed the deck. His mind was full of cotton wool, cushioning any bruises. He was working hard at not feeling anything at all.
    He put on clothes and began to work. After a while Philana unsteadily groped her way from the forepeak, the sleeping bag draped around her shoulders. There was a stunned look on her face and a livid bruise on one cheek. Anthony could feel his body tautening, ready to repel assault.
    “Was I odd last night?” she asked.
    He looked at her. Her face crumbled. “Oh no.” She passed a hand over her eyes and turned away, leaning on the side of the hatchway. “You shouldn’t let me drink,” she said.
    “You hadn’t made that fact clear.”
    “I don’t remember any of it,” she said. “I’m sick.” She pressed her stomach with her hands and bent over. Anthony narrowly watched her pale buttocks as she groped her way to the head. The door shut behind her.
    Anthony decided to make coffee. As the scent of the coffee began to fill the boat, he heard the sounds of her weeping. The long keening sounds, desperate throat-tearing noises, sounded like a pinioned whale writhing helplessly on the gaff.
    *
    A vast flock of birds wheeled on the cold horizon, marking a colony of drift creatures. Anthony informed the whales of the creatures’ presence, but the humpbacks already knew and were staying well clear. The drift colony was what they had been smelling for hours.
    While Anthony talked with the whales, Philana left the head and drew on her clothes. Her movements were tentative. She approached him with a cup of coffee in her hand. Her eyes and nostrils were rimmed with red.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “Sometimes that happens.”
    He looked at his computer console. “Jesus, Philana.”
    “It’s something wrong with me. I can’t control it.” She raised a hand to her bruised cheek. The hand came away wet.
    “There’s medication for that sort of thing,” Anthony said. He remembered she had a mad father, or thought she did.
    “Not for this. It’s something different.”
    “I don’t know what to do.”
    “I need your help.”
    Anthony recalled his father’s body twisting on the end of its rope, fingertips trailing in the dust. Words came reluctantly to his throat.
    “I’ll give what help I can.” The words were hollow: any real resolution had long since gone. He had no clear notion to whom he was giving this message, the Philana of the previous night or this Philana or his father or himself.
    Philana hugged him, kissed his cheek. She was excited.
    “Shall we go see the drifters?” she asked. “We can take my boat.”
    Anthony envisioned himself and Philana tumbling through space. He had jumped off a precipice, just now. The two children of mad fathers were spinning in the updraft, waiting for the impact.
    He said yes. He ordered his boat to circle while she summoned her yacht. She held his hand while they waited for the flying yacht to drift toward them. Philana kept laughing, touching him, stropping her cheek on his shoulder like a cat. They jumped from the flybridge to her yacht and rose smoothly into the sky. Bright sun warmed Anthony’s shoulders. He took off his sweater and felt warning pain from the marks of her nails.
    The drifters were