Truth and Beauty 4-1

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CHAPTER 4
But sleep did not come. Thoughts continued to burrow through his mind, uncatalogued and disorganized, seemingly endless. Eventually he sat up.

Roth, having stood down to anchor watch, was now nine parts asleep. The only sound reaching Jack’s ears was the steady rush of the ventilation system. The only light was the mood lighting, faint and blue.

He swung out of his cot, his feet momentarily surprised to find polished wood beneath them instead of cool metal. At the door he fumbled with the latch for a moment then let himself into the cabin.

Light from the wharf drifted in through the stern windows. Jack freed a chair from its wall brackets and pulled it over to the desk, where his sextant was still busy synchronizing with Roth’s central computer. He moved the sextant to one of the upper shelves of the desk and sat, staring out the stern windows at the wharf. Eventually he turned on the desk lamp and began to look through the desk drawers and cubby holes, pulling out a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.

Jack had never kept a journal, and was uncertain how to begin, so he took refuge in sharpening the pencil. Once it was as sharp as he could reasonably expect he found a rubbish bin and carefully swept the pencil shavings into it.

“It was a strange thing,” he eventually wrote, “hearing the bosun pipe for me. I’ve heard piping before but never for me - never did it mean,” he stopped.

Crossing out what he had written, he started again: “it was almost like watching a movie - hearing the piping - the familiar piping - and watching the hero walk forward - coming aboard his own vessel,” and, frowning at the word hero, he stopped again.

“People talk of an out of body experience - watching themselves do something - and till now I’ve always thought that was bilge water - but today I heard that piping and saw myself walk forward. And there was Mr G. and the other officers - saluting me. And how did I never realize just how many names a captain - even a lieutenant - needs to know. The muster book will have to be my bedside reading for the next several days or weeks.”

Four bells rang softly on the cabin regulator repeater. Jack put down his pencil and rubbed his eyes. “Four bells,” he said. “Good heavens.” He had written surprisingly little, given how much time had passed, but he slid the paper and pencil into one of the desk’s cubby holes, turned off the desk lamp and locked up the desk, pocketing the key.

Back in the sleeping cabin he slipped back into his cot. I must remember to send a midshipman for Dr - for Russ, he thought. “Good heavens - I don’t even know his last name," he said aloud to the darkness, "I’ve invited him aboard as a personal guest and I don’t even know his last name.”

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