James Morrow - Towing Jehovah

Closing her eyes, she brought her mother into focus: Rebecca Fowler of Hollis, New Hampshire, a cheerful and energetic Unitarian minister whose iconoclasm ran so deep it shocked even her own congregation. BEAGLE II SUNK BY HURRICANE… I’M SOLE SURVIVOR… PLEASE TELL OLIVER…

Her thoughts drifted. Mission, Anthony Van Horne had said, a ship with a mission — and from the peculiar countenance Father Thomas had assumed back in his cabin, it was the most portentous mission since Saul of Tarsus had suffered an epileptic seizure and called it Christianity.

“I gather this isn’t a regular voyage.”

Lianne tugged on her UTERUS ENVY button. “It’s a goddamn cover-up, Cassie. Evidently Holy Mother Church has detected some huge tarball coagulating off Africa, but she’s promised to keep the matter quiet if Carpco ropes the sucker in and gives it to charity. Personally, I think the whole arrangement stinks.”

“I’m a charter member of the Central Park West Enlightenment League,” said Cassie with a knowing nod, as if it went without saying that any charter member of the Central Park West Enlightenment League needn’t be instructed in the defects of Holy Mother Church. “A vital organization, I believe, a real bulwark” — she pointed to Lianne’s pendant — “though you wouldn’t like our opinion of those things.”

“Small tits?”

“Magic crystals.”

“It got rid of my herpes.”

“I doubt that.”

“You have a better explanation?”

“The placebo effect.”

“Know what, Cassie Fowler? You should spend more time on ships. Standing lookout in the bow, with the ocean roaring all around you and the entire universe spread over your head — well, you just know there’s some sort of eternal presence out there.”

“An old man with a beard?” said Cassie, suppressing a sneer.

“Sweetie, if I’ve learned anything during my ten years at sea, it’s this. Never confuse your captain with God.”

July 12.

Two days ago we reached our destination, 0°0’N, 0°0’E, 600 miles off the coast of Gabon. Both scopes remained clear, and I should’ve expected as much — Raphael told me the body’s been drifting.

I guess I was hoping we’d find something.

Our search pattern is an ever-expanding spiral, south to north, west to east, north to south, east to west, south to north, a course that should bring us within sight of Sao Tome by Tuesday. We’re weaving a net in the sea, Popeye. Big gaps. But then again: big fish.

Crock O’Connor’s still giving me my 18 knots, which means we’ll hit the equator twice more before midnight.

That Cassie Fowler hates me, I can tell. No doubt she’s one of those. Tree huggers, bug lovers, squid kissers — I can spot them a mile away, people for whom a polluter like Anthony Van Horne deserves to be eaten alive by ferrets. But I must say this: she’s an appealing lady, voluptuous as old Lorelei here on my arm, with frizzy black hair and one of those long, horsy faces that look comical one minute, beautiful the next. I’ve decided to put her to work — scraping rust, maybe scrubbing a John or two. On the Carpco Valparaíso there are no free riders.

At dinner I issued a standing order. “Call me the minute anything odd shows on either scope, night or day.” To which Joe Spicer replied, suspiciously, “All this fuss over a lousy hunk of asphalt.”

We’re not a happy ship, Popeye. The crew’s fed up. They’re sick of steaming in circles and seeing The Ten Commandments and wondering what I’m hiding from them.

Every time we cross 0° north, Spicer drops a penny on the equator.

“For luck,” he says.

“We’ll need it,” I tell him.

“Captain, this is strange…”

Anthony recognized his navigator’s voice, crackling out of the intercom speaker: his navigator’s voice, and more — the same mix of incredulity and fear with which First Mate Buzzy Longchamps had delivered his verdict, Sir, I think we’re in a peck of trouble, the night the Val slammed into Bolivar Reef.

He lurched toward the wall-mounted intercom, tearing at the sheets, clawing his way through his insomniac’s daze. “Strange?” he mumbled, pressing the switch. “What’s strange?”

“Sorry to wake you,” said Big Joe Spicer, “but we’ve got ourselves a target.”

Climbing out of his bunk, Anthony picked a tiny grain of sand from his eye and rolled it between thumb and forefinger, then glanced around for his shoes. He was otherwise fully dressed, right down to his ratty pea jacket and canvas Mets cap. Ever since reaching zero-by-zero, he’d stripped his life of irrelevancies, eating sporadically, sleeping in his clothes, letting his beard grow wild. For seventy-two hours, his mind had known only the hunt.

He grabbed his Carpco mug, shoved his knobby feet into his tennis shoes, and, without bothering to lace them, sprinted to the elevator.

A soft glow lit the bridge: radar scopes, collision-avoidance system, Marisat terminal, clock. It was 0247. Spicer stood hunched over the twelve-mile radar, fiddling with the rain-snow clutter control. “Captain, I’ve seen my brother-in-law’s laserdisc of Deep Throat and just about every episode of Green Acres, and I swear to you” — he pointed to the target — “that’s gotta be the weirdest thing ever to show on a cathode-ray tube.”

“Fog bank?”

“That’s what it looked like on the fifty-mile scope, but no more. This sucker’s got bulk.”

“Sгo Tomй?”

“I checked our position three times. S гo Tomй’s fifteen miles in the opposite direction.”

“The asphalt?”

“Much too big.”

Anthony made a fist. His chest tightened. The mermaid on his forearm grew tense. “Steady,” he told the AB at the helm, the brawny Lakota Sioux, James Echohawk.

“Steady,” said Echohawk.

Anthony locked his bleary eyes on the scope. The screen displayed a long jagged blob, momentous as a shadow on a lung X-ray. Fuzzy, shapeless — and yet he knew exactly Whose electronically graven image he was beholding.

“So what is it?” asked Spicer.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.” Anthony grasped the throttles, dropping both screws to sixty-five rpm’s. He hadn’t pushed his ship past the recommended speeds and driven her through Hurricane Beatrice just so they could smash into their cargo and sink. “I’ll stand the rest of your watch for you, Joe. Go grab some sleep.”

The second mate looked into his captain’s eyes. Silent signals traveled between the men. The last time an officer had left the bridge of the Valparaíso, eleven million gallons of oil had poured into the Gulf of Mexico.

“Thanks, Captain,” said Spicer, joining Anthony at the console, “but I think I’ll stick around.”

“How’s Follingsbee’s coffee tonight?” Anthony asked the helmsman. “Strong enough?”

“You could prime a kingpost with it, sir,” said Echohawk.

“Let’s drop her another notch, Joe. Sixty rpm’s.”

“Aye. Sixty.”

Anthony seized the Exxon thermos, splashing jamoke into the stained interior of his Carpco mug. “Come left ten degrees,” he said, eyes locked on the radar. “Steady up on zero-seven-five.”

“Zero-seven-five,” Echohawk replied.

“Glass falling,” said Spicer, fixing on the barometer. “Down to nine-nine-six.”

Lifting the bridge binoculars from their bin, Anthony gazed through the grimy, rain-beaded windshield toward the horizon. Glass falling: quite so. Lightning flashed, dropping from heaven like a crooked gangway, illuminating a hundred thousand white-caps. Fat gray clouds hung in the northern sky like acromegalic sheep.

“Fifty-five rpm’s.”