7 comments/ 24116 views/ 8 favorites In Silent Water By: Adrian Leverkuhn The sun's fierce light bore down mercilessly on the shimmering water, the relentless light scattered into a million crystal shards, each blinding ray intent on finding it's way into Walter Hansen's tormented eyes. He scanned the light gray instrument panel quickly, noted the threat receiver still blinking intently, and he looked at his airspeed indicator. 460 knots. Altitude so low the altimeter was bottomed out. He glanced out the canopy and could just make out wave-tops as they roared by in blue-brown streaks; he guessed he was low enough to be sucking sea-spray directly into the battered Pratt & Whitney engine, but it really didn't matter anymore. The A-4 Skyhawk had been hit by God only knew how many rounds of small arms fire on it's way outbound from Haiphong Harbor, and Hansen watched with growing alarm as the engine's compressor pressure began to climb and the fuel flow gauge pegged out at max. Not much fuel left. He had nursed the jet back to the coast and was hoping he would have enough JP-5 to make it back to the Constellation. He'd heard stories about how pissed off the sharks were in the South China Sea, and he really didn't want to find out if those stories were true. Sweat was running down his face, and he reached with his right hand to the little silver air nozzle beneath the right side of the canopy and directed the tepid airflow up onto his face. It didn't help, but he saw a flash in the middle of all the reflected sunlight just as the threat receiver began howling in earnest, and he instinctively pulled back on the stick and turned toward the threat - presenting the lowest possible aspect to the threat - and popped off a canister of chaff and a couple of flares. He saw a line of tracers arcing up and watched as the bullets disappeared off his left wing, and he jinked to the right in a tight snap-roll, then again hard to the left in a counter-roll. He pushed the stick down hard and dove toward the water - and there they were, right in front of him. Two North Vietnamese patrol boats. Lines of tracers arced up from their bow platforms toward his jet, and he - knew - he was caught, that there was nowhere to go. Hansen slammed the throttle all the way to the stops and made sharp, hard movements with the stick as he dove toward the two boats, and he moved to line up the first boat in his gunsight as he closed on it. But too fast - he was past it, and then the second boat shot past and he pulled back on the stick to level out. He looked down at the radar altimeter just above his right knee - it was bottomed out again, he must be back down in the waves again - and he shot a quick glance to the upper left panel and saw his airspeed was inching up toward 600 knots. Shit! You didn't take a Skyhawk trans-sonic a sea-level - at least no one had done so and lived to talk about it. He eased back on the throttle, pulled back on the stick to get out of the wave-tops. He felt the rounds slam into the aircraft somewhere aft, and he yanked back on the stick now, and felt the old bird reach for the sky one last time. Fire warning light! Pull the bottle. Exhaust gas temp off the scale now, compressor pressure pegged, fuel warning light going off now. Secondary fire light going off - just a few more seconds and she's going to come apart. Quick! Altitude? 8500 feet and climbing. Get on the radio, now! "Boomer five-oh-five, twenty-five from point x-ray on one-ten radial, just ran into two patrol boats, about ten offshore, packing it in now - gonna punch out." "Boomer five-oh-five, radar contact, good luck." There it is - the short and sweet of it. Straighten your spine, keep your neck straight or it'll snap off when the ejection seat fires, get the cover off the ejection seat handle between your legs and - PULL! The dank smell of sweat and testosterone blows away with the canopy, the near quiet of the raspy turbine sound in the cockpit is ripped away into the violent airstream as the ejection seat explodes beneath your seat and hurls you into the maelstrom - and then - it is quiet - and you're falling through space. Why does that feel so familiar? Why? Falling. Falling toward coffee colored water full of sharks. Pissed-off sharks. The water looks malignant now, not passive, and you feel afraid. The water is reaching up for you, ready to pull the life out of you. Noise, motion . . . The 'chute opens and the seat falls away, and you feel the survival pack and life raft fall on their tether, yanking you down. Toward the water. There she is. You watch the old Skyhawk in her agony, flames spilling out from behind ruptured panels on her skin as she tumbles toward the water below, her light-gray form still elegant as the sea reaches up to claim her. She hits the water in a spray of foam and she is as quickly gone. It's so quiet up here, you're thinking. Almost peaceful. You look down past your boots at the water below, and you want to stay up here in the air where it's been so nice and safe. The shimmering waves reach for you, the blinding shards of sun dance past your outstretched hands, and you see them. Dark forms lazily arcing through the water, just beneath the surface. And the patrol boats. About five, maybe six miles away, arcing through the water toward you. You reach for the little radio clipped to your harness, and are reassured to feel that it is still strapped snugly there. How much longer? How long until I hit? About 2,000 feet - or so it seems - make that 25 feet per second in this dense air. What's that, 80 seconds, give or take? I wonder how warm it is? I wonder if it's as warm as my blood? ______________________________________ You're sinking, salt water runs up your nose and you remember the tank at Whitby Island, the ditch drills - slamming into the water and going inverted in a heartbeat - what was it they said, exhale slightly through your nose, force the water out? Don't panic, don't get tangled up in your 'chute. The May-west will pop any second now, feel for the knife, get ready to cut any lines that you'll inevitably get tangled up in. It's dark water, not much sun getting through the mud and salt. Ears are popping . . . am I going up or down? Feel the vest . . . is it inflated? Yes? Good, gotta be going up. Light? Is that light? Your head breaks the surface, and water coats the dark gray plastic of your helmet's visor, creating fluidly shifting prisms of light in your eyes, and the breath you've been holding bursts forth in a spasm of cough and the overwhelming need to vomit. You feel something tugging at your waste, and you're afraid to look, afraid of the dark shapes you know are just out of sight, never out of mind. You turn and see the yellow-orange life-raft bobbing on the waves, and you work your way out of the parachute harness and swim toward the raft. You reach the webbing that hangs down into the water and use it to wiggle up into the raft, and your breathing comes easier once you're in the womb of the raft. You reach up to the radio on your chest and turn it on. "Boomer five-oh-five, in the water and no company visible." You hold your breath, waiting for the voice on the other end of the precious circuit that means life. "Ah, five-oh-five, that's a roger. Pop some dye." You reach into your survival vest and pull out an olive colored canister little bigger than a can of beer and pop off the safety, then toss the dye-marker out into the water, and the water around your raft turns a vivid florescent green. Someone once told you the stuff repels sharks. "OK five-oh-five, we got you. Charlie is about three miles out and a little off course. Some fast-movers are coming in to keep you company." "Roger," you hear yourself saying between spasms of vomit. You swallowed a ton of sea-water, and it burns as it flows up and out your mouth and nose on it's way back to the sea. The air all around you ruptures and ripples as the first F-4 Phantom screams overhead; the concussion of the sonic boom almost knocks you out of the raft but you feel elated, and you want to rise and shout at the patrol boats you know are about to get toasted. A second Phantom flies past somewhere behind you, but you hear a new sound. An artillery shell whizzes overhead and hits the water several hundred feet away, and that concussion does in fact knock you out of the raft. You take on more water while vomiting and almost lose your grip on the raft. Another round lands in the water, this time much closer, and as the high explosive round goes off you feel your body compress as the sound waves move through the water. It is at that moment that you feel the shark grazing along side of your body, it's coarse hide feeling like 40 grit sandpaper as it slides along. In an instant you feel yourself levitating out of the water and are back in the raft. You hear a huge explosion in the distance, and then hear one of the Phantom pilots screaming on the radio: "Jolly Three, we're hit, ah, wait one - punching out! Jolly One, watch that lead boat, they've got some kinda SAM on board." After a moment you poke your head above the edge of the raft and can see the stricken Phantom cart-wheeling toward the sea behind a curtain of flame and black smoke, and you look around hoping to see a pair of 'chutes blossoming when another round lands behind you and your raft tumbles through the air. You're in the water again, and you don't need to be told that the hissing you hear is coming from your rapidly deflating raft. You look skyward; there's a large dogfight shaping up as a couple of Mig-17s arc across your field of view while another pair of Phantoms roar over - coming from somewhere out of the east. You grab another canister of dye and pop the top, toss it into the water a few feet from you. The dye spreads like radioactive blood on a wet tile floor, and you hope the shark hates it enough to look for his next meal somewhere - anywhere - else. A pair of ancient A-1 Skyraiders thunder overhead, their old propellers beating the air like vulture's wings, and their cannon fire rakes the lead patrol boat as one of the Vietnamese gunners on the foredeck squeezes off a burst in your direction, and you watch as the seaman disappears in a pink haze, and when the boat bursts into flames you hear yourself cheering. You're thrashing the water as you yell, and only then do you remember the shark - that sharks are attracted to motion, to signals of distress. And there it is, a dorsal fin cutting through the water like a scathe, lazily arcing back and forth at the perimeter of the dye, testing the currents in the water and not at all deterred enough to stop hunting. You become motionless, pull your legs up into your chest, and pop another canister - your last canister - and toss it into the water between you and the shark. In the distance you see two parachutes lofting down toward the water, maybe three hundred yards away. Should you swim in that direction, swim for another raft - yet risk exposing yourself to the shark. You look back toward the fin, and it's - gone! The water beneath you ripples with electricity, and a dark shape glides by under your feet. Your body contracts, compacting itself more tightly, and you reach for the Kabar survival knife on the left strap of your survival vest, and gently take it out of the scabbard, moving as slowly and gently as you can. There it is, over there! The fin seems to stiffen, and as suddenly it is coming straight at you. No lazy arcs now, there is purpose in it's trajectory. You are it's purpose. Your mouth is dry, and you ready the knife in your hand. Then . . . The shark is flying through the air, flicking about in lightning that dances in the air, and it is in that instant of time - gone. You feel a presence in the water. It is next to you, it is all around you. It is inside of you. You turn, and she is their. Her skin is luminous blue-green, mottled by faintly etched deep purple veins that shimmer with purpose, and you realize - somehow - something very beautiful has happened to you. Time seems to have stopped, even the water seems to dance to a slower rhythm. You can just make out her face. It is human. Maybe even - familiar. But the eyes are off, something's really not quite right with the eyes, the structure of the bone around the eyes is crisper, more sharply delineated, and the "whites" of her eyes are sky blue, the iris of each eye an electric copper color that radiates - what? Love? No, not love. Knowing. 'She knows me . . .' She is smiling at you, and laughs gently as she looks deeply into your eyes. Her hair is incredibly long, and long streams of her copper colored hair drift about in the swaying water. You haven't taken a breath in what feels like forever, and you can't take your eyes off her even though you know it's a dream. Maybe the shark has taken you, and you're on your way to heaven even as the form of your hopes and dreams drifts on the surface in front of you. She drifts on the water like a dream, and her eyes glance down toward unseen forms that drift in lazy circles below your body. She struggles with a choice, then moves through the water until she is right in front of you. She leans forward those last few inches and touches you. You close your eyes when you feel her hand on your face, and you are among the stars for a moment. You open your eyes, and she is gone. You are lost in darkness. ____________________________ "What the fuck did you do to that shark, man?" You're sitting on the hard metal floor of the rescue helicopter, your iron-white fingers clutching the lifting harness that pulled you from the sea as your teeth chatter like a jack-hammer. You can't remember anything other than her eyes. Something about her eyes has torn it's way into your heart and soul, and nothing else seems to matter. Something so familiar . . . "What?" "What did you do to that shark, Lieutenant? Thought it had you for sure." You feel the question in your head - but it doesn't make sense - then your whole body is shaking, and this world goes dark. Again. _____________________________ You never felt the odd bits of blazing metal that had torn into your left thigh and right calf. No wonder the sharks had come so quickly. You'd lost a lot of blood. They'd stabilized you on the carrier, then shuttled you off to DaNang. But you missed all that as you drifted past a dizzying array of stars, you never really woke up during all those tortured moments. And now here you are, somewhere in Hawaii, your legs swaddled in bandages, and IV bottles of antibiotics drip remorselessly into a burning vein in your left arm. Your gauzy eyes are open, but there isn't much to see in the darkness. But there is a feeling in the air . . . A nurse, actually a pretty young woman, is leaning over your chest adjusting the lines that ground you to the earth, and you smell her. It smells like something from a place you might have once called home. She is like someone you once knew, but the feeling is different. You want to say something, but your mouth is so dry. Your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth, and you struggle to move it. Panic. Don't panic. "Water," you manage to say. "Oh! It lives. It speaks," the girl says with sarcasm born of too many bad Frankenstein movies, yet you feel a straw at your lips, and you pull the plastic into your mouth and furiously pull at the cold water. It sears your throat as it runs down, and you swish some in your mouth a couple of times until your tongue breaks free. It feels so . . . good . . . "You smell - nice." "Yeah? Pleased to meet you, too." She is looking at you with knowing eyes. "How are you feeling today?" "Where am I?" "Hawaii. Pearl Harbor." "I was in the water . . . a shark . . ." And suddenly you're back there, in the water, and you're filling with panic as you watch the shark's fin arrowing in on you. "It's all right . . . sh-h-h-h . . . you're all right now, Lieutenant. You're safe now . . ." And you're holding on to the nurse, sobbing, looking for the hole in your memory. Looking for that whole truth. Those eyes. Why can't I remember anything else. What happened. What happened to me? Who am I? __________________________ The nurse, her name was Sarah. Sarah Henderson. For some reason, she liked you. You spent a lot of time together while you were recovering. When, after a few weeks you started to walk regularly, you started talking to her about Vietnam, about the missions you'd flown, about the friends who'd gone up North and not come back, you found she listened to you. She cared. The more you talked, the more she cared. She gave of herself to you, and that meant something. It seemed so unreal, this connection. And the things you talked about . . . The blood soaked cockpits in many of the planes that did make it back. The death you'd visited on targets in North Vietnam - hopefully all military targets - but you really weren't sure, were you? You sat on that red brick patio in the sun. Talking. Remembering. You could see the ocean as you talked, the palm trees swaying in the tradewinds. It was so easy to talk to this woman. When you looked at her, you could almost forget those eyes that had held you in the sea, that beings smile that held time in abeyance. That knowing laugh just before she touched you . . . and was as soon gone. Sarah Henderson was flesh and blood, and there was a connection. How could you reconcile connection in this world. This world of death and destruction. Soon the only thing that mattered was this woman's hand in yours. In time, you grew well, you walked more as the torn muscles in your leg healed. And your heart healed in that woman's hands. The connection grew stronger. Orders. New orders. Back to Whitby Island. Help train fresh meat for the grinder of this, our first national nightmare. Ask her to marry me? Yes, that is right. Right. And you did, too, with humility and a boundless love in your soul. She said yes. You flew back to Washington state, rejoined the world of war. She transferred just weeks after you left, continued to work as a nurse. You married a few months later, and when your hitch was up you signed on with Delta, moved to Atlanta, started flying 727s. Sarah was soon pregnant, you bought a house, fixed up the baby's room. Not long after that, you were fixing up that spare bedroom - the one that was going to be your 'office' (like you really needed an office), remember - for your second kid. It was all so easy. The forgetting. ___________________________ It started one night in the late eighties. The dreams. You were in the water, floating in a sea of blood. It was night, and a crimson moon bathed a seascape littered with disfigured bodies. Bodies burned and charred floated all around you in distorted packs, and sharks tore into the feast. They slipped by as you floated in quiet agony, their black eyes rolled back in sated lust as they brushed past you. She was there, too. Her blue shimmering skin glowed in defiance of the forsaken moon, yet you could see tears forming in her eyes, tears that left no doubt - no doubt - that she was powerless to repeal all the death that had been born of man's wars. The waters shook with the echoes of great explosions, and the sky on the far side of the earth grew intensely white. Rainbow hued shockwaves danced through the sky, and the heat grew unbearable as the energy of man's final assault on man reached like Satan's fingers through the sky. Sharks danced in the light, their death-lust overwhelming the last vestiges of hope in the sea-nymph's eyes, and she turned to you, looked at you with infinite sorrow in her eyes. "Why?" she asks you. "Why have you done this?" As she slips beneath the water you wake up. Why have I done this, you ask yourself, not really sure who you are. In Silent Water ________________________ It was called Operation Desert Shield. You were flying troops into Saudi Arabia. It was an incongruous sight. An airliner, flight attendants serving meals before the in-flight movie as the L-1011 arced across the Atlantic, the jet full of fresh young faces headed to yet another war. Four stripes on your sleeve now, you sat in the left seat. You were looking out over the curving earth that lay ahead, watching the moon rise from a distant horizon, and you leaned forward to look down on the clouds that covered the ocean almost eight miles below. A KC-10 and four F-15s were refueling off to your left, and you turned and looked at them with wonder in your eyes. Why do we continue to do this to one another? Not so many years ago this vantage above the clouds would have been reserved for the Gods, yet here I am, gliding on silver wings above the earth of our fathers, carrying limitless potential across the face of creation to bring death to life once again. Is this all that I am? Now you watch as sleek jets line up to drink fuel at 41,000 feet, and all you can think of is how amazing the Big Dipper looks out here, so far from the works of man. So far away. The moon lifts out of the orange mire of the earth and begins another innocent journey across the sky. You wonder if she's out there, swimming in faraway seas, looking at your moon - and thinking of you. But here in this life, there is my love for Sarah. It binds me to life, though it be ever so brief. __________________________ The desert heat is overwhelming, even in November. You're walking around on the blistering concrete of tarmac at the King Khalid International Airport, marveling at the architecture while the ground crews service the huge Lockheed. Despite the enormity of the airport, everything is eerily quiet. Nothing moves, nothing wastes energy in the omnipresent heat, and the irony of the situation isn't wasted on you. Everywhere around you the sands seem to drift on top of oceans of crude. This new war - your next war - will be about this stuff. Young men will die asserting ownership of this stuff. Thousands of pounds of this stuff are being pumped into the beast you'll fly back west tonight, where billions of gallons of this stuff are being burned in the cars that move back and forth between jobs that are - by and large - predicated on a never ending supply of this stuff. Blood money. Nothing more, nothing less. You walk back up the beige metal stairs on the side of the Jetway and lunge back into the air conditioning. It's so hot out in the heat that the sweat evaporates from your skin before it has a chance to cool you, and the expected chill when your body hits the cool inside air doesn't come. You shake your head and walk back into the aircraft, stop off to use the forward head, then walk back into the cockpit. The Flight Engineer is cycling through the hydraulics - checking pressures - while the First Officer enters coordinates into the inertial navigation system for the first leg back to Frankfurt. You sit in your seat, and squint into the late afternoon sun that slants into the cockpit, and you unconsciously rub your eyes. In the darkness of the moment, you feel her presence in the cockpit. You feel her eyes on you, questioning you. "When will you learn?" her voice asks. "Your presence here is pointless." Startled, you look around. The first officer is staring at you. "Learn what?" he asks you. "What?" "You asked me, 'when will you learn'," he says accusingly. "Learn what?" "Skipper, I heard it too," the Flight Engineer is saying, and your stomach lurches at this revelation. "But it was a woman's voice. Didn't you hear it?" You look at them blankly, not wanting to invite them into your private delusions, then you shake your head and turn to the radio console at the top of the instrument panel and begin entering frequencies. "Skip, you didn't hear it?" You ignore the question. "Walt, you didn't say that?" your co-pilot asks you. "I didn't say anything, Stewart, and I didn't hear any . . ." Your lie is cut off by a gentle laugh that cuts through the air like a knife. You look at the other two men in the cockpit and you see them looking at the ceiling, clearly alarmed at what they hear. "The day may yet come," the surreal voice says, filling the close air with quiet dread, "when you have no time left to learn." The air in the cockpit grows very cold. You turn back to the radio panel and enter the frequency for Departure Control. _____________________________ "Delta two-one heavy, taxi to position and hold." "Two one, Kennedy," you say into the radio as you advance the throttles a bit. The 767 rolls onto runway two two right. "Delta two-one heavy, clear for take-off. Contact Kennedy departure on one two seven point three." "Two-one heavy, one-two-seven point three." You advance the throttles to full take-off power. The New York skyline looks pristine on this crisp September day, and the big Boeing lumbers down the runway. The co-pilot is calling out your speeds, first V-one, then rotate, and you pull back on the stick. Slowly the nose comes up and the ground recedes. "Kennedy departure, Delta two-one heavy." "Two-one heavy, turn right to two seven zero, clear to climb to seven thousand." "Two-one heavy to two seven zero, clear to seven." You're gently banking to the right and you flip on the cabin intercom. "Ah, ladies and gentlemen, Captain Hansen here. Just a quick howdy from up here in the front office. Those of you on the right side are going to have a real nice view of Manhattan. When we get up out of the chop we'll turn the seat belt light out, and update you on our . . ." "Skipper, what's that guy doing down there, there on the river . . . about two o'clock?" You look down and see another 767 screaming across the Hudson, and you follow it as it slams into one of the World Trade Center towers. "Ah, two-one heavy, we've just seen a United 67 hit the World trade Center." "Two-one heavy, say again." "Delta two-one heavy, repeat, we've just seen another a/c hit the World Trade Center." "Ah, roger, two one. Turn left to two three zero, climb to flight level two two zero, contact Philadelphia Center on one three one point seven. Good day." ______________________________ The whole world seemed to fall apart after that September morning. You retired a few years later, right after your country invaded Iraq. You watched from afar this time, however, though you still trained pilots transitioning into the 767 for a few more years, until that first big heart attack nearly took you out. You got serious about exercising again, even started to jog a little after the docs gave you the green light. You tried to play golf, but it bored you. An old war buddy invited you to go sailing with him down on the Gulf one December day, and you liked that, that feeling of gliding, of flying through water, and suddenly you missed flying, and it hurt. You thought about it enough to talk Sarah into buying a boat one winter day while vacationing in Tampa. God, what bounds does love know. She's been so patient with me. The mood in the country is subdued. After the calamity of Iraq and the subsequent invasion of Iran, energy prices have tripled, inflation and unemployment are seemingly out of control, and the government seems tense - almost twitchy - like a fish out of water. Dan, your oldest boy, has been flying F/A-18s off the Stennis for months when word comes that his plane has gone down in that other Gulf, and not an hour later word comes over CNN that the Stennis has been hit by Iranian Silkworm missiles and is on fire, sinking. The United States retaliates with low-yield tactical nuclear weapons on the Iranian forces that threaten to sweep into Baghdad, and both China and Russia threaten to use nuclear weapons on America. Word comes the next day that Dan has been picked up by a British mine-sweeper and is fine. Dictators in Beijing, Moscow, and Washington, D.C. pull back from the brink, and a sense of sanity returns to the political arena, if but for a short while. Later that spring, Dan, your oldest boy, brings his wife and newborn daughter to Key West to visit you and Sarah. The two of you have been cruising the Gulf Coast of Florida ever since the Second Missile Crisis. It just seemed the safe thing to do. You moor the boat and rent a car, pick them up at the airport and drive them back to the boat. Once everyone is aboard and gear stowed, you putter out of the harbor, intent on making Fort Jefferson in the Tortugas by the next morning. Dan stays up with you that night, and as you watch waypoints come and go on the GPS display over the wheel, you talk about the ties that bind. It's the first time the two of you have talked like this in your life. "You were shot down once, weren't you, Dad?" "Yeah. Wasn't one of my better days, but I guess you know what I mean." He chuckles, then you feel more than see that he's looking at you intently. "What happened?" "My squadron, the old VA-165, had just hit a rail depot near Haiphong. SAMs and AA were pretty real that day, and my A-4 took a bunch ground fire, began to lose fuel real fast, but I had enough to make it back to Yankee Station. Barely. A couple of patrol boats got in my way, though. They shot the crap out of that little bird; I barely got off a distress call before she started to come apart and I punched out at about eight thousand . . ." "How fast were you moving?" "I don't know, son. I seem to remember getting close to six at one point when I was evading the first boat, and after I got hit I wanted to climb as high as I could before I ejected. Call it maybe four, four fifty. Why?" "Nothing. Go on." Well, I guess it was pretty text-book. Hit the water, about half the Tonkin Gulf went into my belly, and I made it into the raft and got on the radio. Helo picked me up about a half hour later." "What about the patrol boats?" "Oh, a couple of Phantoms on CAP blew over and messed 'em up a bit. One of the birds, from - 96 I think - went down. Some Skyraiders came in and finished off the boats." "Did anything happen to you in the water. I mean, that's when you got shot up, right. Weren't you bleeding?" "Oh. Yeah. I guess I try to forget about that part. I must have been bleeding pretty bad, cause, you know . . ." "That's OK, Dad, you don't have to talk about it if you don't . . ." "No, son, it was a long time ago. It doesn't hurt anymore, you know." "You sure?" "Yeah. Well, anyway, there was a shark that gave me a pretty bad time. Used up all my dye on the son-of-a-bitch, and one of the patrol boats got a round in close and shredded the raft, and I got tossed in right about the time that shark got, well, more than curious. Anyway, I think another round must have hit the shark, cause it kinda . . . well . . . just disappeared." "Disappeared?" "Yeah." "Dad. That doesn't ring true." "Yeah." "Did she say anything to you?" Your heart skips a beat. "What did you say?" "You heard me, Dad. Did she say anything to you?" "What are you talking about?" "Forget it, Dad." "What did she say to you?" "Dad?" "Maybe you better start from the beginning, son." "Not much to tell, I guess, Dad. Couple of Sukhois jumped me while I was returning from a hop over Kuwait City. It was about three days after the Republican Guard moved into Kuwait, before all that nuclear bullshit. One of the missiles hit somewhere aft and shit just started flying off the airplane. I was in a high cruise, you know, about f-l twenty, maybe four fifty knots and all of a sudden the ECM starts honking and then a missile warning. It happened way too fast. Anyway, I'm on my way down, looking at the sun going down. I remember the horizon, back toward Kuwait, the fires. It looked like a medieval scene, you know, like out of Dante." "That's war, son. Man killing man, usually in the name of God." "Yeah. Must suck being God, you know. Always catching the blame for our fuck-ups. Anyway. I'm in the raft and all of sudden the sky lights up with flares and an old Antonov lumbers over, and some Gomer with a mini-gun opens up on my raft. Water all around the raft starts to explode, you know, and I know, I mean really know that right then I'm gonna die . . ." Your heart is thundering now, remembering those frozen moments forty years ago when you, too, knew death was coming for you, and wasn't going to take no for an answer. "That's when she came, Dad." You can't speak, can't even open your mouth. Your chest is growing tight. "She grabbed my hand, pulled me under." Everything is swimming now, the world has stopped making sense. "She told me she was waiting for you, that you were her destiny." You grab your chest, the pressure is bad this time. "Son," you say quietly, "go get me my pills. Mom knows which one." "Dad? You OK?" "Yeah. Just get 'em up here. I'll be alright in a minute." You watch your first-born slip quietly down the companionway and move forward to your "stateroom," and a few moments pass before Dan and Sarah are both climbing back up into the cockpit. Your wife, the other woman who kept death away those many years ago, hands you a tab and you slip it under your tongue. The acrid taste annoys you with it's implications - as it always does - but she wipes your forehead with a cool cloth and before too long the moment passes. Truly there are no ties strong enough to hinder love. You drift in the moonlight. "You want me to drive for a while, Dad?" You remember where you are. "Yeah, maybe you oughtta." As your son slides behind the big stainless wheel, it feels like a changing of the guard. You sit and watch these two people, these two souls so central to your happiness, yet you wonder what waits for you out there in that night. Suddenly the feeling is very clear. There's nothing to be afraid of. You are her destiny. You always have been. _____________________ The next morning breaks clear; a small front has passed through in the night, and today's sky is so clear and blue you can see stars for an hour after the sun breaks the horizon. Only at sea . . . Before long you are dropping the anchor in the clear, shallow water, and when things settle down you go forward and start inflating the Zodiac. Maybe time enough before lunch to take little Dan for a walk on the beach . . . By mid-day the sun has warmed the boat, and you think the ancient red brick of the Fort has a comforting feel to it. Something so intimately linked between men and their fortifications, something so tenuous - yet so permanent - and now here you are with your son, warriors both. Yesterday's war, and today's. But you stand in the sun and think for a moment, and that uneasy feeling returns. We're linked by something far more disconcerting than the past and the present. Something so . . . unfamiliar. Something so precious. The water is so clear it looks like a swimming pool . . . very shallow, too. Maybe ten, fifteen feet. You look over the side and watch as a school of bright yellow and silver fish drift by, their passage marked by flickers of splintering sun dancing off their backs. You move your hand to shade your eyes, and you just catch your little grandson as he crawls over the cockpit coaming and waddles over to the lifelines and in a moment he is gone . . . over the side . . . "Dan . . . overboard!" you yell as you make your way aft. You can see the little boy's form floating down to the coral heads that dot the seafloor, and in a flash you are over the side knifing into the water. The current is taking him, and you watch as his little body moves away from you, and you start to kick furiously, try to catch up with your future as it drifts toward the deep blue water of the Florida Straits. It hits hard this time, the vice in your chest, and you struggle for the surface, struggle to gain the air that will sustain you, but he's so close. If you give it your all, maybe you'll get to him. Your world starts to turn white as your brain fights to use all of the oxygen left in your veins, and you reach for the boy. There, no, almost, NOW! Yes, you have him. You fight for the surface, holding the little boy close to your chest all the while, and you break into the light, and you both cough and spit. The sun feels so good, and the boys wet skin on yours feels so right. You are so connected through time to the boy, one of a line that stretches back through time to heaven only knows how long ago . . . You start to swim against the tide, back toward the boat. You realize you've been swimming against the tide for a long time. Maybe since that day. Maybe for all eternity . . . The pressure in your chest is unbearable now, and you turn to look at your boat. No one has seen you . . . no one is on deck . . . no help is coming. You look into the little blue eyes . . . they look into yours like yours once did - oh! - those many years ago. The shock of being alive, the trust found in the arms of a savior. The crushing blow hits, you struggle to keep your head above the water - the little boy's face looks at yours with trust - and from somewhere you find the will to struggle back toward life. You hold him to your chest as your pull with your free arm, pull the past and the future through the arc of time. Dan is on deck, looking around. He sees you, he sees your arm waving, sees your distress, and he dives into the water. Swimming with the current he is soon with you, and now the three of you are together in the waves, your hands joined in a circle of life. The water is as warm as blood, and you are cold. "Are you alright, Dad?" "I don't think so." "Yes, he's ready. Aren't you?" The three humans turn in the water, turn to the voice, her voice. You look at her. She hasn't changed. Not one thing about her has changed in the four decades that have passed since you last saw one another. The copper-colored eyes, the shimmering bronze of her eyes, the luminous blue skin. But you've never associated the voice with the vision, and now you know that the voice you heard twenty years ago - sitting on the ramp in Saudi Arabia - was hers. What was she trying to tell you? "The day may come when you may have no time left to learn." Why was she trying to tell you? You? Who am I? "Dad? Dad?!" What role was I supposed to play? What have I turned my back on? You see the world around you for what it is. Men will never learn from their mistakes, the past isn't prologue. The past is the present is the future. "Why him?" you hear your son asking, pleading. "Why now?" This world recedes from your view, and a brutal coldness grips your chest. You hear waves washing against eardrums, and in an instant of furious light the universe is collapsing in on itself in. You are spinning, you know you are leaving this place, yet you know you have made your choice, lived this life on your terms. "It's alright, now." It is her - her voice - and it feels so familiar. Your time was at an end in that world - this you know now . . . It is so clear now. "You're with me again, my friend. You've come back to me." "Yes." "I tried to tell you. We all did?" "Yes." "They can not learn. Their time always comes to an end." "So sad." "No, my friend. It is their choice. But you are with me now. We will never part again." "So lonely. They are so lonely." "Yes. And that is the truth of their choice." "Why? Why would they choose loneliness . . . when all is connected?" "Oh, my friend! Can't you see it? Only in the end, when your time was short did life grow precious, only then did the sacrifice of human principle become obvious to you. Only then was human blood precious. You went to them as nothing, the human was as new to you. You took their form, you embraced their concept of thought. Your actions became as if preordained. You chose war. You chose sides, affirmed your humanity when you chose to sunder the connection all life shares, affirmed that humanity is doomed to live a life that is nasty, brutish, and short." In Silent Water "So much lost." "Yes, that is true, my friend. But only because they were given so much. But we have other worlds to see now. Let us begin again." You turn and look at the world below you, a world once green and blue, a world once rich with life. Points of light circle the world, information floods the consciousness of the people there, but they can not hear, can not see. They are always looking inside themselves, dissolving their connection to life. "I will never understand them." "Yes, my friend. But your time in that world has come and gone. It is in the past. Come now." You take her hand, and resume your journey through the stars. You are happy to be back with her. But you are changed. Something of the human has touched your soul. You wonder what happened to your son, to your grandson. To the woman you loved there. It is a bitter feeling. To love as humans do. With so many conditions attached to life, love loses it's intensity. And with the end of life always the reward for your journey, there is so much to fear. You think back on your time there. Of flying through clouds in great machines, of holding the hand of the woman you loved while your child struggled to find it's way into the light. You think of the boy you held in your arms when he was so small, and the boy he soon held in his hands. Of your circle in the water. Perhaps the journey was the reward. Perhaps the violence was an inevitable consequence of the journey, an inevitable consequence of the human need to find redemption. How could they 'evolve' when each new birth started the journey anew? When the choice between good and evil wasn't the question, wasn't the crux of life. It was just the beginning to understanding. Somehow humanity had lost sight of it's relationship to the cosmos. Of the interconnectedness of all things. And that in all the vastness of the universe, life was utterly precious, a gift worthy of worship in and of itself. It became so easy to hate when that relationship was lost, so easy for lost souls to destroy one another. The Being drifted away from the pale blue planet, but he looked over his shoulder at all he had been there. As he traveled past glowing gas giants while looking at the Companion by his side, he felt a startling emptiness. What did he feel here in the vastness of space-time? Immense? Limitless? How could Emptiness be Limitless when all was Connected? What did he feel for this Companion? Love? Was there love in this relationship? No. Not love. There was only Time. How could he balance the prospect of Limitless eternity - but without love - against living what time was left in his human form - with love? He looked back at the earth, at his recent past, and he felt confusion for the first time in his Limitless existence. His companion moved off in light, but he regarded the earth, regarded love as a fact of existence. Of his existence. And he turned away from the receding light. His chest was on fire, and he felt his son's arm around his chest, his grandson's squirming body against his chest, and he spit bitter salt water from his mouth. He saw Sarah on the boat coiling a line, then throwing a rope out to them. As the rope uncoiled in the air, as it arced toward them against a backdrop of infinite space, he regarded his choice. He looked up at his wife, saw the love in her eyes, and the love in his heart exploded back into his consciousness. Here was home. Here, in the limitless vaults of time, in the hallowed recesses of a withering world, here love was found. And here he would stay.