Igor lowered our sails and set anchor. We stood in this fashion for some time, facing each other across a strip of sea and a beach. Eventually, Igor suggested that we had waited long enough to give them a chance to change their minds if they wanted to. He lifted the anchor again, set the sail, and turned the 'ship' into the wind toward the open Pacific.

     We were far from shore when the setting sun lit up the overcast from below. It drew a brilliant, golden line on the water. Jennie came up just in time to see it. She had gone down into the boat to change and wore a bright red jump suit when she came up. Wow! We had found the suit in a store in Tofino when we were looking for something comfortable to wear. But it hadn't looked nearly as wonderful as it did now.

     Igor was telling me all about our 'ship,' as Jennie came up. He explained that the type of boat we had was properly known as a ketch.

     Jennie interrupted the talk with a shriek of surprise at seeing the sun. She smiled as she looked into the glare of the sunset. Her red jump suit appeared almost florescent in the bright sunlight. She turned and hugged me. I welcomed this open affection! I had been right on Maui. This had become another grand day! We held each other in a tight embrace.

     "I am so glad we got through this day and still have each other," she said quietly.

     I glanced at Igor. Igor looked straight into the sunset, not at us. He seemed uncomfortable with what was happening.

     Some time later Jennie tried to get him to restart the conversation she had interrupted. "Is a ketch classified as one of the tall ships?" she asked.

     "To be honest, I don't know," Igor said, smiling again. "Hey, look over there! There's a whale spouting!" he added, pointing to a place near the sun's glittering reflection on the sea.

     "Isn't it great!" Jennie exclaimed. "Isn't it grand, just to be alive, to be free, to be surviving.... There is so much beauty in this world, so much vitality..."

     "...And gentleness," I added, looking her in the eye.

     "Yes, that too," she said, smiling. "Do you recall seeing that mother, yesterday evening by the swimming pool, with her tiny new baby?"

     I shook my head.

     "Oh yes, you were looking at me," she grinned. "Anyway, the mother held the baby in her arms, smiled at it, and gave it its bottle. In the background were flowering bushes, flooded with sunlight. It was a beautiful scene. I wished that I had my camera with me. To me, this simple scene was incredibly rich, a marvel, so full of beauty and life, endowed with feelings and integrity." She turned to Igor. "By what insanity do people conspire to sacrifice all this, and what for?"

     She looked at me, and then at Igor again to watch for our reactions.

     "Scientists say the ozone in the air shields us from the sun's ultraviolet rays. They say that once nuclear war has destroyed this protection, the beautiful gentleness that I saw by the pool won't ever be possible again," she said. "Nothing as complex as human life will likely survive or ever come back. The earth won't last long enough for the development to repeat itself that created us as a species with such profound spiritual qualities that we find in our humanity. By what madness do people feel justified in destroying this delicate world that supports so much beauty, including their own being?"

     "Strategists don't think in these terms," said Igor. "Our country alone has build enough bombs to burn out entire continents. We may all be dead by tomorrow. Then, what's the hype for that caused us to build bombs for protection?"

     "We do it to maintain a looting empire in power that makes a mockery of law and humanity," I grinned. "We do it to protect a financial system that is looting the needy. We do it to maintain an economic order that generates hunger and death. We do it to have a world in which dictators are given free reign. We build the bombs to protect financial manipulators, arms dealers, drug czars, who together wield power more sinister and destructive than a thousand Hitlers put together."

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Stories about  Sex from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche