How They Were Found Read Online Free Page B

There is only the sound of his breathing, of mine in turn, until he says, I wish you could remember for yourself.
    He says, It's not as if this is the only time I've told you.
     
     
    XIII
     
    Now it is my turn to look away, ashamed, for him and for myself. For what we did together.
    I say, You have done your duty well, my captain.
    And you yours, he says. Better than you hoped, even.
    But why switch places? How did we know? That you would remember, and I wouldn't?
    He shakes his head. You've had your three questions, and now you must go.
    No, I say. Tell me. How did we know?
    We didn't, he says. We guessed.
    The captain says nothing more. Eventually, he falls asleep in his chair, resuming his quiet snoring, his hands folded over the ampleness of his belly. I try to stay awake, to hold on to what he has told me, to try to see how these newly remembered truths might save our men, but they cannot, or perhaps they already have. Exhausted, I doze myself, and when I wake I can recall only a little of what was said between us. Maybe it is for the best. Maybe whatever he remembered is an illusion, another hallucinated landscape we dreamed up together to replace all we have lost. Perhaps all there has ever been is this receiving tower and the others like it, separated by ice and snow and mountains, and then, somewhere else, some lost continent, shapeless in my mind, where some interminable war cost us everything.
     
     
    XIV
     
    I leave the captain alive not because I have promised to, but because I am afraid that at the end of my journey, it will be proven that he has always been right, that there is no ship waiting, that to lead these men out across the tundra would be to lead them to their deaths. I walk the halls of the receiving tower one more time, making one last effort to remember, to hold onto what is left of the captain's words. I meet some of the dim going about their duties, each of them following my commands to leave me alone, obeying me as they would the captain. I take my time, knowing they will not remember seeing me, will not report my small betrayal. Eventually, I find myself wandering the rows of empty bunks at the far end of the barracks, too many beds for the number of men I can remember being lost. I try to remember who these others were, but I cannot. Their bunks are covered in dust, their bedding stripped to replace our own threadbare blankets and pillows. These bunks must belong to the dead stacked in the courtyard, but perhaps also to others like me, men who took it upon themselves to reach the sea long ago, farther back than I can remember.
    There must have been so many men here, and now they are nearly all dead and forgotten by us, the very men they'd meant to rescue.
    As a final act of defiance, I climb the tower to the listening room, where I make one last attempt to hear something, anything. I put on my headphones and slowly move the dials through the full spectrum of frequencies. I hear nothing but the hum and hiss of the omnipresent static, a blizzard of meaningless sound falling unceasingly upon my ears.
    There was a time when I knew over one hundred words for static, but now there is only the one, so insufficient to the complexity of the thing it describes.
    I take off my headphones, then move to shut down my console. Before I do, I change the password to some new word, some gibberish, something I would never have been able to remember, even in the prime of my life, all those long decades ago.
     
     
    XV
     
    I do not look back as I cross the threshold of the receiving tower, nor when I open the gate at the far end of the courtyard, but I can feel the captain watching me from atop the parapets. I wonder if he has kept vigil for all the others who began this desperate exodus, the lost men who once slept in those long empty bunks. I wonder if, like now, he kept quiet, hurling neither threats nor warnings against the piercing wind, leaving those brave men to question and to doubt, to wonder if it