“It’s all right. Don’t be frightened. I’m here. It’s okay. Try to remember. You’re Doc. Doc Weary. Born Halloween, in Perth, Australia.” No, that simply wasn’t right. And a name. Hood had called him a full name. What was it?
She couldn’t bear to look into those hurt, terrified little boy’s eyes of his. Instead, she buried her face into the hot angle between his shoulder and his neck, whispering like a lover while her mind raced.
“You’re Doc Weary. Born Sydney, Australia, November fifth, nineteen forty-eight…” That was better, she thought. It was coming. “William Weary, born Sydney, Australia, November fifth, nineteen forty-eight.”
But still he twisted and bucked beneath her. She rose against him, forcing him down with her hips, arching her back and breathing deeply. And so it was she noticed that his hair had fallen back, revealing the great scarred dome of his forehead. The sweatband! It came to her in a flash. The sweatband was his security blanket. Like her old plaid shirt and tatty jeans. He would never come back without it! It was in the bundle of gear under the bunk. She reached down for it.
At once his freed hand was round her neck, forcing her down until mere inches separated their eyes. “Who am I?” he screamed.
And, in the midst of the crisis it came to her. The answer. “Albert Stephen William Weary. Born Sydney, Australia, November fifth, nineteen forty-eight. Don’t be frightened, I’m here with you. You’re Doc and you’re going to be fine.” Her hand scrabbled among the rubber, fingers searching for that discarded strip of elastic toweling. Terrified instincts telling her to scream, struggle, tear free of his overwhelming power, and run. Cool, calm mind delivering the words gently to her softly whispering lips. And something started stirring in the lost depths of his eyes.
Pain.
Of course, it would be. He had run away into his nothingness because of the pain of Sam’s death, and here she was calling him back to face it. To suffer it. But she had no choice. Things needed to be done that only he could do. And he couldn’t stay away forever.
Her fingers found the sweatband and she let go of his other arm, rearing up again against his weakening grip, thrusting both elbows into the mattress just above his shoulders. Still speaking soothingly, the calm tone never faltering, even as that second arm whipped around her waist, crushing her down again, she stretched the headband carefully and slid it gently over his head with shaking hands.
And suddenly the pressure on her was lessened. Suddenly his lips were moving in a silent echo of hers. “Albert Stephen William Weary…”
Until his eyes came to life again.
For a time they lay as they had been, bizarrely like lovers, crushed against each other on the bunk. From who knows what hidden recesses deep within her, a terrible warmth washed over Christine Martyr then. Affection that she had kept dammed within her for nearly fifteen years burst its barriers at last and flooded out of her long green eyes in tears. So, as the pressure of his arms about her neck and waist slackened away at last and his strong, broad body lay absolutely still beneath her, she pressed her lips down on his lips and she kissed with all her might. She did not know if he responded. For now she did not care.
After unnumbered, delirious moments, she broke away, gasping for breath. She looked down into the blue eyes that were watching her quizzically. Into a face as soaked in tears as her own. And when she spoke, her voice was broken, husky, as though she had been screaming for hours. “Welcome back, Doc,” she said.
And he said, “Welcome back, Chris,” as though he knew how long she, too, had been away. Now it was her turn to look quizzical, and his turn to reach up and move gentle fingers across her forehead into the long spun gold of her hair. Then her father came down the companionway and so she rolled off him and sat up.
Martyr hesitated in the doorway as they looked up at him. He was slightly confused for a moment, almost disoriented. Something seemed to have changed during the last few minutes. Something beyond Sam’s death. Something almost as crucial. He felt certain of it but he could see no evidence of it. Only Weary, back to normal, sitting beside Christine on the bunk.
“They’ll meet us at the old Fate platform in about eighteen hours,” he said. “We’ll have to get moving if we’re going to be there.”
They had two important duties to perform before they could up anchor. They had to stow the box of thunderflashes and they had to find some way of saying good-bye to Sam. Sam had been a preacher’s boy. He kept a Bible and a service book with him at all times. So, after they had put the box of grenades beside the Kalashnikhovs in the lazarette, they read a prayer over Sam. It was as simple as that. Unreal. Pack away the thunderflashes, read a prayer over Sam.
They pulled up the anchor and got under way at 01:30 local time.
The south wind that had been coming and going over the last few weeks was a phenomenon related exclusively to the fierce heat of the day. At night the prevailing wind returned, blowing stiffly from the north. For the next nine hours, they cut across this at speed until it began to falter in the midmorning. But by that time they were well north of Sirik. When the wind died, they tacked easily in the dead air and waited for the southerly to spring up as it had done at this time every day. And it didn’t let them down. While Martyr was checking on the radio with Angus at base, Chris and Doc set the sails and waited for the first furnace gust. It came within minutes and built to that steady rush of air they had grown used to. Katapult leaned steadily away from it and sped southwest across it, her automatic knot meter clicking up from fifteen knots through twenty to twenty-five. It was exhilarating sailing, and, but for the dark cloud cast by Sam’s death, they would have been ecstatic. Even so, Weary called across the keen song of the wind, “You wait till we put the spinnaker up. Then you’ll see something!” They hit a long comber and white spray exploded back across the cockpit, soaking them.
She stripped her shirt off and let the spray hit her flesh, completely at ease in the bikini now. And yet the fact of this caused a twinge of memory and guilt. She looked across at Doc and he was frowning. Of course he was, she thought. She was herself, now. Well, let him mourn. There would be time enough to make him smile. Then, having nothing else to do, she leaped up to her favorite perch, on the weather side, by the shroud. “Put on a safety line,” he called at once. “We’d never be able to stop in time if you went over.” She was happy to do so. Especially as she realized that, for all his sad preoccupation, he had been watching her all along.
As they sailed back in through Hormuz without even deviating from the rhumb line that would take them down to Fate, Martyr reported in again that they were running tight to time.
They sighted the old platform at 16:15 local time and were beside it in ten minutes. They were all exhausted after the long, exhilarating run and, as Doc hit the buttons controlling the automatic sail-furling equipment, they looked around themselves, as if surprised to be here. Katapult began to pitch in the chop as the way came off her, that damaged mast moving in jerky arcs across the hard blue sky. A sense of anticlimax gripped the three of them as they stood gazing about at the empty sea.
But then Chris’s sharp ears heard, above the slapping of the water on the hull, the whine of the wind in the minimal rigging and the distant surf-rumble of the waves against Fate’s great hollow legs, the rhythmic throbbing of a helicopter engine. At once she was searching the sky with shaded eyes. And there it was, high in the air almost due south, riding the wind toward them. It was overhead within minutes and the first figure was being lowered onto the afterdeck. It was Richard, and after he had landed, he paused there to guide down first Robin, then Salah. Then the Mariners ran forward while Salah oversaw the lowering of their luggage, boxes, and bags.