Seabound (Seabound Chronicles Book 1) (3 page)

“A regular
position? How’d you hear about them?”

“We’ve been
talking.”

“You and the group
of cruise ships?”

“Me and their
communications officer. Marianna.” He said the name slowly, like it was a final
coffee ration that he wanted to make last for as long as possible, sipping
until the dregs were cold.

Esther grinned. “I
take it she’s nice?”

“She’s more than
nice, Esther. She’s brilliant, and beautiful. She speaks four languages, and
she’s teaching me Spanish. The words are like butter in her mouth.”

Esther stared at
her friend. She’d seen Neal go gooey over girls before, but he’d never talked
like this. He certainly didn’t look the part of a hopeless romantic.

“How do you know
she’s beautiful? You have a picture?”

“I don’t need a
picture,” Neal said. “Her voice is the most beautiful sound in the world. I
could live and die just listening to her voice.”

“How long has this
been going on?”

Neal twisted the
cord from his headphones between his fingers, eyes distant. “We started talking
over a year ago, around when I took over the radio full-time. At first we just
exchanged weather information, like I do with the comm officers all over the
place. But I got curious about her, and we started talking more
often—whenever we’re in range.”

“What do you have
to talk about?” Esther asked.

She was surprised
Neal hadn’t told her about this sooner. It wasn’t like him to keep secrets from
her.

“Everything. She
told me about life on the
Galaxy
, about her childhood in Mexico City,
about words . . . It’s nice to know someone outside this tower, you know, and
we have a lot in common.”

It stung Esther a
little that Neal didn’t feel her friendship was enough, but then she had Cally,
Frank, and the crew to keep her company while she worked, and there was always
her father. Neal was usually alone up here, just him and the best sea view on
the ship. He had been an original paid-up passenger on the
Catalina
, but
his mother had succumbed to pneumonia in the early years. The community had
looked after him, but it wasn’t the same as having family on board. He must
feel just as tied to the people he chatted with on the radio every day.

“Are you thinking
of trying to meet Marianna on this
Galaxy
?”

“How would I get
there?” Neal sighed. “Judith only ever wants to meet up with the
Amsterdam
because she trusts them,
sorta. She’d never sail to a group of stranger ships on purpose, even if we had
enough fuel.”

“So next time we
dock with the
Amsterdam
, join them,”
Esther said. “You’d have a better chance of hopping another ship there than you
do here.”

“I might not find
a ship there that’d meet up with the
Galaxy
.”

“So what are you
gonna do? Just sit here pining after her in this tower for the rest of your
life?” Esther punched him in the shoulder, trying to elicit a smile. “Come on,
Neal, let’s fix this!”

“I don’t know,
Esther.” Neal’s face remained glum, and he fiddled with the headset around his
neck. “What if she doesn’t like me in person? I am so in love with her voice
that I don’t care what her face looks like. But she might not feel the same
way.”

“Won’t know unless
you try.”

“Judith wouldn’t
let me leave anyway. No one else knows the radio systems as well as I do since
Kim Wu left.”

Esther stood up,
her decision made in a flash. “Well,
I’m
going to leave; otherwise, I’ll never finish the project I’m working on. I’ve
had it with Judith. And you’re coming too. It’ll be easier if we go together.”
Excitement swept through her. This was it: the change she needed.

“I don’t know,
Esther . . .”

“We’re not
scheduled to dock with the
Amsterdam
for another four months. We’ve got plenty of time to work things out.” Once
she'd made the decision, it felt easy. Esther had never been one to agonize
over her choices. She could find a job as a mechanic on the
Amsterdam
; they’d have quality materials
that she could use to work on some of her ideas. If Judith wouldn’t trust her
to experiment, maybe someone else would.

“It isn’t going to
work,” Neal said, but his face bore a hint of a smile that hadn’t been there
before, a slight sign of hope.

“We’ll figure it
out.”

She just had to get
out of there.

Chapter 4—The Atlantis Dining
Hall

Esther blazed through
her
regular checks in the engine
room, then looked in on the power grid. Last night’s storm had generated enough
reserves for them to run an extra batch of water through the reverse-osmosis
system. They’d even have extra left over for their next journey to the
Amsterdam
without dipping into their
backup fuel unless they hit a big storm before then. They rarely fired up the
huge marine diesel engines or the propulsion system. The
Catalina
survived by floating and conserving energy, but they needed to be ready to sail
at any moment—whether to run from storms or scavengers. They’d had close
shaves in the past.

As she worked,
Esther thought about how to tell her father she wanted to leave the
Catalina
. It was the right decision—she
hoped. Her confidence from that morning dissipated as her muscles grew tired.
She started thinking about their good years. She remembered when he’d taught
her to swim, back when they still kept water in the pools instead of supplies.
She remembered his strong hands supporting her belly as she flailed forward,
swallowing huge gulps of water. Then he’d helped her float on her back, taught
her to calm her body and watch the shapes in the clouds. The first time they’d
ventured out into the sea, she had nearly drowned him when a school of tiny
silver fish swam around her ankles and she tried to climb on top of his head to
get away. How he had laughed! Then, again, he’d helped her to be calm, to float
and regain control before she tried to swim.

That’s what Simon
was like: calm, strong. But lately he’d been so quiet and distant. She didn’t
want to hurt him.

At dinnertime she
scrubbed the grease off her hands with a cloth grown stiff from too many
saltwater washings and went to look for him. She found him in the Atlantis
Dining Hall, a room that had once served a grotesque buffet of red meat and
pasta and root vegetables. It still had the original tables from when it had
been a proper restaurant, but they’d chopped up the tablecloths and sewn them
into clothes. They had bolted the chairs and tables to the floor after a
long-ago storm, one they probably would classify as a runner now, had sent the
furniture cascading around the room, crushing bones and denting walls.

Esther’s father
often picked up his meals before everyone else arrived, and ate elsewhere. He
would hide out in the derelict Mermaid Lounge, sitting at the shabby bar and
staring out to sea. But he was in the dining hall today, at a table in the
corner. That was a good sign. As Esther joined the line for dinner—cod
again—members of the community trickled in from their duties.

Clad in a mishmash
of crew uniforms, repurposed tablecloths, and whatever else had survived this
long, the people of the
Catalina
were
thin from a diet of seaweed, fish, and crustaceans. Most talked and laughed,
but a few bore the vacant, resigned looks of those who spent too much time
thinking about the emptiness of this world, about their long-ago losses.
Everyone had to fight despair in some form. Some did this more successfully
than others. They kept themselves busy, found projects, learned new skills.
Bernadette, for example, took on responsibility for the beautification of the
Catalina
.
She’d spent years painting the walls with images of the old land whenever she
could get her hands on suitable supplies, making her own paints from creatures
dredged out of the sea. Her murals showed pastoral scenes of green fields and
animals, cityscapes, deserts, mountains.

Others didn’t
succeed in distracting themselves from the truth. The dentist, who had set up
in the gift shop using tools fashioned from kitschy figurines and souvenir
spoons, had given up six months ago. He left a note on the cash register before
he stepped into the sea.

That was what Esther
feared for her father. She worried that he would simply give in to the
hopelessness.

She sat down
beside him and studied his profile. There were more wrinkles on his face every
day. At fifty-six, he wasn’t particularly old, but life on the ship was hard.
His gray hair was getting long again. She’d have to remind him to have
Bernadette trim it for him.

She remembered the
first days. Everyone had lost everything. Terror and sadness threatened to
overwhelm them—a fate worse than being drowned in ash. There were
quarrels, violence. But, through the haze of his own grief, Simon had forged a
spirit of cooperation on the desolate ship. He had thrown himself into making
their band of survivors function as a community. As they eked out a living on
the water, unable to return to land, he’d helped them develop roles and
routines that kept them sane. It had been his purpose, his mission, and his
energy had been infectious.

Simon set up the
original governing council. Being on the council was a rotating duty shared
equally by all the adults on the ship. He told them how important it was not to
hold everyone to his or her former roles or social positions. It didn’t matter
if you had once worked as a cleaning lady or ran onto the
Catalina
at the last moment, or you’d spent several thousand
dollars for a cruise that saved your life. Everyone participated in adjusting
rations and approving the ship’s course on the rare occasions when it needed to
move. They were there to survive and build a new life, and everyone needed to
have an equal say.

But some were not
happy with this arrangement—and that was the hook Judith had needed. It
made Esther’s blood churn to think about it. The survivors owed their sanity to
Simon, but Judith had made him a pariah.

Simon looked up at
Esther and gave a vague half smile, leaving behind an extra crease at the edge
of his mouth. As they dug their battered forks into the day’s catch—the
cod was dry again—she prepared to broach the subject of leaving the
Catalina
.

“How’s the work
going, Dad?”

“Fine, fine. I’m
having a hard time remembering the details of our first meeting with the
Amsterdam
. I can’t recall how many ships
docked there permanently the first time.” Simon stared up at the murals on the
walls, seemingly lost in thought.

“You could ask
Neal to relay the message through the radio chain and ask them,” Esther said.
“We’re a bit far from the
Amsterdam
right now, but it shouldn’t take too many jumps to get the answer.”

“Oh, Neal has more
important things to do than research ancient history for me,” Simon said.

“You make yourself
sound like such an old whale. It was only, what? Ten years ago?” Esther tried
to sound chipper, but Simon sighed deeply. “Speaking of the
Amsterdam
,” she began, but just then
Penelope Newton, the woman who lived across the hall from them, bustled over.

“Hi there, Simon,
Esther. May I join you?” She had curly brown hair and a wide face. A cross
necklace glinted on a chain around her neck. “The boys are still out collecting
seaweed. Seems this storm has blessed us with a lot of it.”

“Please sit,
Penelope,” Simon said, keeping his eyes on his plate.

“Do you mind if I
say grace before I eat?” Penelope said.

“By all means,”
Simon said cordially. He didn’t believe in God anymore. Penelope Newton was one
of the few people aboard the
Catalina
who still did. Esther had taken to
calling her Mrs. Noah when she wasn’t around.

Mrs. Noah said her
prayer aloud, gripping her cross necklace in both hands. “Dear Heavenly Father.
We thank you today for the bounty of the sea and for your continued protection
over us. We know you are watchin’ out for us, no matter what storms and trials
and tribulations come our way. In these End Days, we know you have a perfect
plan for us. Be with us, Lord, and come soon to reveal yourself in glory. In
Your Name, amen.” Mrs. Noah smiled expansively at Esther and Simon and picked
up her own fork. “I’m sure the Lord has a plan for us. You know, during the
storm last night I could feel His presence saying He’d be coming for us soon. I
know ya’ll are part of His Chosen People, but you might want to get acquainted
with Jesus too.”

“That’s nice of
you to say, Penelope,” Simon said.

He used to talk to
Esther and her sister about what it meant to be Jewish when they were children,
but it was always about their people, not their god. His secularism had turned
to atheism aboard the
Catalina
.

Mrs. Noah, on the
other hand, spent the early days leading a vibrant religious group. Everyone
dealt with this new world in their own way. As a child, Esther had listened, enraptured,
when Mrs. Noah told them they would be preserved on the sea for seven years,
after which Jesus would come down with his celestial army to rescue them from
their tribulations. When Esther was thirteen, seven years after the disaster,
Mrs. Noah had kept watch on the top deck, looking to the sky, often accompanied
by her three solemn-eyed sons. When the seventh year ended, she said she’d been
wrong to interpret the seven years literally.

She kept praying,
but most of her disciples had fallen away by now. Esther had grown out of that
phase too. She preferred to focus on things she could take apart and understand.

“Esther, dear,”
Mrs. Newton said, “have you thought about getting married lately? You spend so
much time climbing around in the engine room. You’re at just the right age.
Don’t you think it’s about time to move out and start a family?”

“I haven’t really
thought about it,” Esther said. She took a sip of water from her plastic
tumbler. It tasted a bit off. It was probably time for another filter change.
She’d speak to Frank about it.

“You should find a
partner,” Penelope continued. “Marriage is such a beautiful thing. I don’t know
what I’d do without my Jeb.”

Simon glanced at
her, then looked back at his plate.

Mrs. Noah and her
sons had come from South Carolina. They were in California to visit SeaWorld
when the volcano blew. Her husband had stayed behind to take a nap at the
hotel, and they’d run to the ship without him. “The angels will give him clean
air to breathe,” she’d told her children as they stared back at the devastation
on land. Simon and Esther had accepted that her mother and sister were dead,
but Mrs. Noah held to her hope like it was a towline in a storm.

Esther sighed.
“Who would I marry? Isaiah?”

Mrs. Noah blinked
slowly. Her son was five years older than Esther, a morose young man with a
disconcerting streak of cruelty. Neal had once caught him torturing one of the
ship’s cats.

“Isaiah’s always
had a preference for delicate blonds,” Mrs. Noah said. “What about your friend
Neal? You two seem to get along so well. It’s our responsibility to multiply
and refill the earth in preparation for Jesus’s kingdom.” She patted Esther on
the arm.

“Why don’t you
marry him then?” Esther mumbled.

“Esther,” her
father said. His tone communicated volumes.

“I’m sorry, Mrs.
No— Mrs. Newton. I’ll think about your advice.”

Esther felt bad
for snapping at her. Neal was probably her best bet. They’d fumbled a bit as
teenagers—making out in the laundry room, that sort of thing—but
they’d decided not to take it any further almost immediately. Being with Neal
wouldn’t be much better than living in the tiny cabin with her father. And now
Marianna was in the mix. All the more reason for her to move on.

As Simon and
Penelope talked quietly about the storm the previous night. Esther leaned back
in her chair and scanned the dining room for Judith. Cally sat with her mother,
Constance, on the opposite side of the dining room. Cally waved tentatively at
Esther, as if she was nervous that Esther might still be annoyed about the
pumps. Esther waved back, resulting in a huge smile on Cally’s face. Reggie was
laughing with some of the hull crew, his voice booming over the dining hall.
The Cordova family, affectionately called the Clan, was engaged in a rousing
argument at the largest table. Mother, father, and six children had all escaped
from San Diego together. They’d been embarking on a family reunion, but it had
never ended. Their eldest daughter, Gracie, had brought a skinny, nervous husband
into the mix about ten years ago. They’d already produced four rambunctious children
of their own. The tiff seemed to be between Gracie and the middle sister, who
was waving her fork around, bits of fish flying off the end. A few elders
watched from a nearby table, then returned to picking over their fish. They’d
seen it all before. Everyone in the floating community knew everyone else. It
was difficult to keep much of anything a secret on the
Catalina
. Esther
longed for the anonymity of another life, where mistakes wouldn’t continue to
bounce around and temper people’s opinions of you forever—and where
people wouldn’t feel the need to comment on why you hadn’t yet married your childhood
friend.

She spotted Judith
and Manny with their heads together on the opposite side of the dining hall.
She couldn’t talk to her father about moving with Mrs. Noah around, but she
could speak to Judith about making her application to the council. Officially,
she needed council permission to join another ship, though Esther doubted that
would stop her when it came to it. It was always safer to talk to Judith when
lots of other people were around. She might even be able to avoid the whole
probation business if she was going to be leaving anyway. She stood and crossed
the hall. Bernadette winked at her as she walked past.