The Apothecary Page 0,73
The count found a spot inside the wheelhouse, but Benjamin and I had to stand in the galley with Jin Lo, the men’s backs partly blocking our view of the apothecary. I wished we had coached him, wished we could have given him some of the fervour Benjamin had against the lunch lady.
He put on his spectacles again. “As you know,” he began, but the engines and the wind drowned him out.
“Speak loud,” Jin Lo said.
The apothecary coughed. “As you know,” he said more loudly, “our plan is to contain an atomic bomb being tested on Nova Zembla, and to counteract its destructive effects. That is the task we have been working towards for many years, and I am confident that we have the correct approach.”
The men waited. They knew this part, and he sounded like a boring teacher. I wished he would use fewer long words. He was going to lose them. “But now it seems that our friend Leonid Shiskin has been sent by the Soviet authorities to stop us. He is restrained in his cabin at the moment, but we are exposed. The Soviets know we are coming.”
The men looked at one another in silence.
“I know that many of you have children in Norway,” the apothecary went on. “I realise that the danger of the trip is now heightened to the point of impossibility, and I can’t ask any man to risk his life for me. My best advice to you is to take us back to England, and go home to your families.”
I winced. It was one thing to lose the men’s faith, but another to try to send them home. He was supposed to talk about the radiation, the fish, the reindeer, the Samoyeds, the children!
“Actually, that’s my request to you,” he said. “That we go home. It’s the only rational thing to do.”
A clear, loud voice came from beside me. “This not our request,” Jin Lo said. She was standing very straight. “Not mine.”
“It isn’t mine either,” Count Vili said, his fur collar up, leaning on his walking stick just inside the door.
The apothecary looked surprised by the objections. I wondered if he had worked alone for so long, getting only letters from disembodied scientists, that he’d forgotten he had colleagues and friends. “Well,” he stammered. “I suppose—I suppose we could go on. That is what I intended to ask you to do, in the first place. But the immensity of what we are facing . . .” He trailed off and I realised he had caught sight of Benjamin, standing behind the men. He hesitated, and his eyes softened, and something seemed to shift in him.
When the apothecary began speaking again, his voice had become oddly strong and thrilling. “You have children,” he said. “And you want to be able to protect them. I want you to be able to go home and protect them. But I believe what my colleagues are saying is this—that we should not stop at our desire to protect our own children in their immediate world. We want the streets they walk to be safe, and the walls around them to be sound, and we want to be able to put food in their bellies. These are natural desires.” He paused.
“But if we truly want them to be safe and well, we must make the greater world a different place. As it stands, we are all threatened, at every moment, and nothing we do to lock our own doors and earn our pay and tuck our children in bed will make the slightest difference. I believe we can achieve a safer world, on this voyage, if we succeed. But I can’t guarantee success. The Soviet Navy, as I have said, is waiting for the Kong Olav. They have our description and will be very difficult to elude. So I leave you all to make your choice.”
No one spoke, and we kept moving north towards the waiting Soviet ships. Suddenly, I heard my own small voice in that crowded wheelhouse of grown men. “Could we make the boat invisible?” I asked. The men turned to see where the voice had come from, and I felt myself blush.
The apothecary shook his head. “It’s too big, I’m afraid.”
The sailor at the wheel with the earrings said, “We could disguise her.”
“I’m sorry?” the apothecary said, blinking behind his spectacles.
“The boat,” the skinny young crewman said, understanding. “We could disguise the boat, like pirates and warships used to.”
“That would be difficult,” the apothecary