Chapter 12: Ark Penitent — A Settlement That Voted to Stay

The ferry to Ark Penitent ran twice weekly if the weather held, once weekly if it didn't, and not at all for six days in the month of the autumn surge when the swells off the Voss Line ridge came up over the breakwater approaches and made the transit a decision rather than a schedule. Karev had timed it wrong by two days. He spent those two days anchored in the lee of a drowned radio tower — still standing, barnacled to its upper third, guy-wires trailing in the current like the hair of something drowned — watching the swell patterns and eating cold rations and not looking at his left hand.

On the third morning the surge backed off. He made the transit in four hours on a borrowed skiff, sitting in the stern with his kit bag between his feet while the operator, a woman of perhaps sixty with a burn scar covering the left side of her jaw, said nothing at all for the entire crossing. He respected this. The water was the color of old iron and the sky was the color of the water and somewhere beneath both of them the Voss Line ridge continued its particular work, undisturbed by weather.

Ark Penitent resolved out of the grey at the third hour.