She glances at the table next to us, gauging whether its occupants are paying any attention to our conversation at all. “—Arcadia?”
I know who you are, her question says, leaping right to the end game.
“Yes, Mere,” I reply, using the familiar form of her name. I know who you are too. “We are.”
* * *
“There's a woman here. An investigative reporter,” Nigel tells Talus when we return from the mess. “Her name is Meredith Vanderhaven. She has a history with Silas.”
“Why is she here?” Talus echoes Nigel's question. He stalks back and forth across the tiny room we've made our own, his restless energy making the room feel even smaller. His beard bristles and the top of his bald head gleams in the wan light.
“Why else would a prize-winning investigative journalist be on a Prime Earth boat in the middle of the Southern Ocean?” I go for the “playing dumb yet being helpful” answer.
“Why else?” Talus replies, not being taken in by my feigned innocence.
“I don't know,” I say with a shrug.
“But you know her.”
“I do.”
“What does she know of you? Of us?”
“Little or nothing,” I say.
“She knows Arcadia,” Nigel points out.
I shake my head. “She knows the name, but she doesn't know anything else. She is, for lack of a better word, fishing. Nigel, frankly, knows more about her than she knows about us.”
Talus doesn't like my answers; they don't fit his mission profile. I wish I could tell him otherwise, but I'm telling him the truth as far as the woman's presence goes. She's an aberration, an unexpected element that could cause all manner of trouble, and I don't like not having the answers as little as Talus does. Why is she here? Even that question has produced a palpable tension in our quartet. There is little trust among us, and we do not fit together as a cohesive team. There is something awry with this mission—we all know it—and we're jumping at the slightest provocation. There is a poison in our roots, and we fear that it will spread.
It's the water. None of the others have spent any time at sea; it unsettles them. I remember the back-breaking rhythm of rowing and the howl of enraged storms that could never quite capsize a ship, but the memory is very old and frayed.
“Where are the whalers?” Talus asks Nigel.
“A hundred nautical miles due south, but Morse isn't looking in that direction.” Nigel might not have been a sailor, but he had an unerring sense of direction. He always knew where the prey was.
Talus growls in his throat, an ursine sound that belies his size. “Show him,” he tells Nigel. “Let's get this job done and get back on land.” He had never been on a boat during his previous life, and he didn't like the way the floor squirmed beneath his feet, or the way the horizon moved—when we could see it. The weather gnaws on his psyche too. He had fallen during Napoleon's march on Moscow, and the ground had been too hard and the weather too brutal for the dead to be buried. He had lain in the snow for five months before the ground could claim him, and his bones never quite forgot the touch of winter.
“How?” I ask. “This boat is scheduled to be out here for three weeks.”
“That doesn't matter,” Talus says. “Once we're done, we'll convince Morse to return.”
There's a lot about his response that I don't like, and I'm sure my displeasure is clear on my face so I don't bother vocalizing what's on my mind.
“Who is this woman?” Talus ignores my annoyance, and gives me a hard stare that probably terrified Cossack cavalry, but which is wasted on me.
“A reporter,” I tell him again.
“What story is she chasing?”
“I have no idea.” I let some of my annoyance show in my voice. Our conversation is becoming circular.
“She wants Arcadia,” Nigel says.
“We don't know that,” I counter.
“Why do you care?” Talus snaps.
“She's useful to us,” I say. “Do you remember the E. coli scandal around Beering Foods two years ago? She broke the story for the Boston Herald. Nearly won the Pulitzer.”
“What was our involvement?”
“The Grove wanted me to give her some data. We found a way to give her a trail to its location. We weren't exposed.”
“So how does she know you then?”
I have to be careful now. “I was assigned to watch her. Until the data was understood. Until we were sure she would run with the story.”
“And you weren't