Free Sailors on the Inward Sea by Lawrence Thornton

was fixed in the captain’s mind. As he went to the door Fox-Bourne ordered Higgins and Chambers to take the wounded helmsman below and find a replacement.
    â€œWhen you have done so, take another look at the bulkhead.”
    The ship was still backing away. The engines sounded louder with only the two of them on the bridge. The rhythmic beat of huge cam lobes turning on their shafts, driving pistols into cylinders lubricated with amber sheens of oil, seemed to count out the meters between the Germans and the ship while Fox-Bourne stood at the wheel like something made of stone, some ancient, cracked, and weathered monolith.
    â€œCaptain,” Conrad said, “those men will drown.”
    â€œI must mind the ship.”
    â€œWe’re well away from the debris field.”
    â€œYes? Well, you have a point, Conrad. Perhaps we’ve gone a bit too far. Hard to tell, you know. Worst fog I’ve seen in years. We will go back a ways. How’s that?”
    He rang “slow ahead.” During the drift, before the screws stopped, Conrad was inclined to blame the lapse in judgment on the strain of Whelan’s death. Why he should be so bereft, why his eyes reminded Conrad of a statue’s, set, strong, impenetrable, was beyond his knowledge, but the emotions were real and he wanted to believe that was the cause. Insisting that Whelan’s body be transferred, sending Higgins and Chambers on another inspection were understandable in that context, just the sort of thing that follows a terrible shock. But his conviction would not hold up in the face of another interpretation. Ordering the officers off the bridge clearly served another purpose, which was to put even more distance between the Brigadier and the survivors. The moment the idea came to him he said he remembered looking down from the peak in the Carpathian Mountains at the soldiers looting the fields. There it had been silent. No wind. No birds. Not even a chattering squirrel. Here the steady beat of the engines was like a chorus. Just then Higgins and Chambers and Scorsby reappeared one after the other, all troubled,especially Chambers, who refused to meet Fox-Bourne’s gaze. Conrad was glad for their company. Being alone with Fox-Bourne was now unbearable. The officers seemed to be aware of his distress, glancing at him quickly.
    â€œNow,” Fox-Bourne said, “I want each of you to command a lifeboat.” He looked at the compass and told them to follow a course that should put them in the midst of the survivors. “And make sure they aren’t armed before you haul them in.”

M ERCIFULLY, C ONRAD took another breather in telling me of the Valkerie. He had to, you understand, for both our sakes. We also needed to pay our respects to those voices coming out of the fog whose more piteous modulations Conrad thankfully kept to himself. I understand now that Conrad knew he needn’t quote one of the poor devils. Those cries have stayed with me, Ford. I expect they will haunt you as well.
    And yet a gesture haunts me even more: Fox-Bourne’s blink. When Conrad described it, my first thought was that it was the act of a man struggling with the consequences of what he had done and was still doing. And then I realized it was much more than that, more and darker, black. He was ignoring the meaning of those cries, batting away the fear and agony they represented like a man waving away flies that are pestering him. I was about to say that it would have been bad enough in a story of Conrad’s but even worse in fiction, but real or imagined the effect is the same, isn’t it?
    There was enough time while Conrad was pulling himself together for me to begin to understand his experience in a new way, adjusting some half-perceived signals I’d given myself to these new revelations. I remembered his sorrowful expression when he had paused before launching into the Brigadier ’s story, his eyes like an overture