"Unless you transferred to data coordination or something else where you could work at home." Everard leaned forward. "You know, that's an excellent idea in itself. You've got the brains for it. Be done with all that risk and hardship and, yes, witness of suffering which you're forbidden to prevent."
She shook her head. "I do not wish to. In spite of everything, I feel I am worth most in the field, my field, and will be until I am too old and feeble."
If you survive so long. "Yeah. Challenge, adventure, fulfillment, and the occasional chance to help. You're that sort."
"I could come to hate the man who made me give them up. I do not wish this either."
"Well, uh—" Everard rose. "All right," he said. It felt like bailing out of a plane. You gave yourself to your parachute. "Not much domestic bliss, but in between missions, something extra special and entirely our own. Are you game?"
"Are you?" she answered.
In midstride toward her, he halted.
"You are aware of what my work can require," she said. Her face had gone pale. It's not a blushing matter, he thought at the back of his mind. "On this past mission, too. I was not all the time a goddess, Manse. Now and then I found it useful to be a Germanic woman far from home. Or I simply wanted a night's forgetfulness."
The blood thudded in his temples. "I'm no prude, Janne."
"But you are a Middle American farm boy. You have told me so, and I have learned it is true. I can be your friend, your partner, your mistress, but never, down inside you, anything more. Be honest."
"I'm trying," he said harshly.
"It would be worse for me," Floris finished. "I would have to keep too much from you. I would feel I was betraying you. That makes no sense, no, but it is what I would feel. Manse, we had better not fall more in love. We had better say good-bye."
They spent the next few hours together, talking. Then she laid her head on his breast, he hugged her for a minute, and he departed.
IV
Mary, mother of God, mother of sorrows, mother of salvation, be with us now and at the hour of our death.
Westward we sail, but night overtakes us. Watch over us through the dark and bring us on into day. Grant that this our ship bear the most precious of cargoes, your blessing.
Pure as yourself, your evenstar shines above the sunset. Guide us by your light. Lay your gentleness on the seas, breathe us forward in our faring and home again to our loves, carry us at last by your prayers into Heaven.
Ave Stella Maris!
THE YEAR OF THE RANSOM
10 September 1987
"Excellent loneliness." Yes, Kipling could say it. I remember how those lines of his rolled up and down my spine when first I heard them, Uncle Steve reading aloud to me. Though that must have been a dozen years ago, they still do. The poem's about the sea and the mountains, of course; but so are the Galapagos, the Enchanted Islands.
Today I need just a little of their loneliness. The tourists were mostly bright, decent people. Still, a season of herding them along the trails, answering the same questions over and over, does begin to wear on a person. Now they've become fewer, my summer job has ended, soon I'll be home Stateside, commencing grad school. Here is my last chance.
"Wanda, dear!" The word Roberto used is querida, which could mean quite a lot. Not necessarily. I wonder about it for a flicker or two while he: "Please, at least let me come along."
Headshake. "I'm sorry, my friend." No, not exactly; amigo doesn't translate one-on-one into English, either. "I'm not sulking or anything. Far from it. All I want is a few hours by myself. Haven't you ever?"
I'm being honest. My fellow guides are fine. I wish the friendships I've made among them will keep. Surely they will if we can get back together. But that's uncertain. I may or may not be able to return next year. Eventually I may or may not make my dream of joining the research staff at Darwin Station. It can't take many scientists; or another dream could come along meanwhile and take me. This trip, where half a dozen of us are knocking around the archipelago with a boat and a camping permit, may well be the end of what we've called el compañerismo, the Fellowship. Oh, I suppose a Christmas card or two.
"You need protection." Roberto has put on his dramatic style. "That strange man we heard of, asking around Puerto Ayora about the blonde young North American woman."
Let Roberto escort me? Temptation. He's handsome, lively, and a gentleman. We haven't exactly carried on a romance, these past months, but we've gotten pretty close. While he's never told me in words, I know how much he's hoped we'd get closer yet. It hasn't been easy resisting.
Must be done, for his sake more than mine. Not because of his nationality. I think Ecuador is the Latin American country most yanquis feel most at home in. By our standards, things work right there. Quito is charming, and even Guayaquil—ugly, smog-choked, exploding with energy—reminds me of Los Angeles. However, Ecuador is not the USA, and from its standpoint I've got a lot wrong with me, starting with the fact that I'm not sure when I'll be ready to settle down, if ever.
Therefore, laughing, "Oh, yes, Señor Fuentes in the post office told me. Poor dear, how worried he was. The stranger's funny clothes and accent and everything. Hasn't he learned what can crawl off the cruise ships? And how many blondes do the Islands see, these days? Five hundred a year?"
"How would Wanda's secret admirer follow her, anyway?" Jennifer adds. "Swim?" We happen to know that none of the ships has touched at Bartolomé since we left Santa Cruz; no yachts are nearby; and everybody would have recognized a local fisherman.
Roberto goes red under the tan we share. With pity, I pat his hand while telling the group, "Go ahead, folks, snorkel or whatever else you feel like. I'll be back in time for my share of supper chores."
Quickly, then, striding from the bight. I really do need some solitude in this weird, harsh, beautiful nature.
I could merge myself in it skin-diving. The water's glass-clear, silky around me; now and then I see a penguin, not so much swimming as flying through it; fish dance like fireworks, seaweeds do a stately hula; I can get friendly with the sea lions. But other swimmers, never mind how dear they are, will talk. What I want is to commune with the land. In company I couldn't admit that. It'd sound too pompous, as though I were from Greenpeace or the People's Republic of Berkeley.
Now I've laid white-shell sand and mangroves behind me, I seem to have utter desolation underfoot. Bartolomé is volcanic, like its sisters, but bears hardly any soil. It's already hot beneath the morning sun, and never a cloud to soften the glare. Here and there sprawl gaunt shrubs or tussocks of grass, but they become few as I walk toward Pinnacle Rock. My Adidases whisper on dark lava, in simmering silence.
However . . . among boulders and tide pools, Sally Lightfoot crabs scuttle, brilliant orange-and-blue. Bound inland, I spy a lizard of a kind unique to this place. I'm within a yard of a blue-footed booby; she could flap off, but simply watches me, the naïve creature. A finch flitting across my vision; it was the Galapagos finches that helped Darwin understand how life works through time. An albatross wheeling white. Higher cruises a frigate bird. Unship the binoculars hung at my neck and catch the arrogance of his wings in the spilling sunlight, the split tail like a buccaneer's twin swords.