Passage

The Mackay-Bennett, Joanna thought, watching the ship steam toward them. Coming out from Halifax with a minister and a hold full of ice to pick up the corpses, to bury them at sea. It must be near the end, Joanna thought, looking across the water at the ship. The sky was changing again, darkening, yellowing, like decaying flesh.

The last neurons must be dying, the last cells of the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus and the amygdala going out, shutting down, the synapses flickering faintly, failing to arc. V… V… and then what? Irreversible brain death, she thought, and the Mackay-Bennett.

“If it’s the Carpathia, then we’re saved,” Helen said happily, and gathered the little bulldog up as if she were collecting her luggage, getting ready to disembark.

The sky had turned a dull, uneasy brass. The Mackay-Bennett’s stack stood out blackly against it. They won’t know who we are, Joanna thought, and looked for her hospital ID, but it had fallen off in the water. I should have had Mr. Wojakowski make me a set of dog tags, too, she thought.

They had known John Jacob Astor by the initials embroidered inside his collar. She fumbled in her pockets, looking for a pen to write Helen’s name in the collar of her dress, but there was nothing at all in her pockets, not even a coin for Charon the boatman.

“I think you were right,” Helen said, “it doesn’t look at all like the Carpathia.”

Joanna looked up, bracing herself to see the deck stacked with coffins, the embalmer standing ready. The ship was still a long way off, but its shape was clearly defined against the brassy sky. What she had first thought was its smokestack was instead its central island, spiky with masts and antennas, and under it the broad, flat deck and the incurving triangular prow.

“Is it the Carpathia?” Helen asked.

“No,” Joanna said wonderingly. “It’s the Yorktown.”

“The Yorktown?” Helen said. “I thought the Yorktown sank in the Coral Sea.”

“It did,” Joanna said. She could see the wireless shack now, high up on the island, and the antennas, shaped like crosses. And was raised again in three days.

“What’s it doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you know it’s the Yorktown, if you can’t read the name?” Helen said, but there was no mistaking it now. She could see the planes. Sailors lined the railing of the flight deck, their white uniforms blindingly bright.

“Do you think they’ll see us?” Helen asked. “Maybe we should signal them or something.”

“We have,” Joanna said. “SOS. SOS.” She stood up and faced the ship as if it were a firing squad.

“Are we saved?” Helen asked, looking up at Joanna.

“I don’t know,” Joanna said. This could be some final synapse firing, some last attempt to make sense of dying and death, some final metaphor. Or something else altogether. She looked up at the sky. It was changing again, deepening, brightening to gold. The Yorktown plowed toward them, impossibly huge, impossibly fast, its narrow prow cutting like a knife through the shining water.

“Are you scared?” Helen asked.

The Yorktown was nearly upon them. Flags were flying from the tower and the masts and the antennas, and on the flight deck, sailors stood at the railing, waving. In the center, the captain, all in white, held up a pair of binoculars and looked toward them, the lenses glinting gold.

“Are you?” Helen demanded.

“Yes,” Joanna said. “No. Yes.”

“I’m scared, too,” Helen said.

Joanna put her arm around her. The sailors were shouting from the railing, waving their white hats in the air. Behind them, above the tower, the sun came out, blindingly bright, gilding the crosses and the captain.

“What if it sinks again?” Helen asked fearfully. “The Yorktown went down at Midway.”

Joanna smiled down at her, at the little bulldog, and then looked back at the Yorktown. “All ships sink sooner or later,” she said, and raised her hand to wave in greeting. “But not today. Not today.”