The Eve of RUMOKO.
Roger Zelazny.
I was in the control room when the J-9 unit flaked out on us. I was there for purposes of doing some idiot maintenance work, among other things. There were two men below in the capsule, inspecting the Highway to h.e.l.l, that shaft screwed into the ocean"s bottom thousands of fathoms beneath us and soon to be opened for traffic. Ordinarily, I wouldn"t have worried, as there were two J-9 technicians on the payroll. Only, one of them was on leave in Spitzbergen and the other had entered sick bay just that morning. As a sudden combination of wind and turbulent waters rocked the Aquina and I reflected that it was now the Eve of RUMOKO, I made my decision. I crossed the room and removed a side panel.
"Schweitzer! You"re not authorized to fool around with that!" said Doctor Asquith.
I studied the circuits, and, "Do you want to work on it?" I asked him.
"Of course not. I wouldn"t know how to begin. But ... "
"Do you want to see Martin and Demmy die?"
"You know I don"t. Only you"re not ... "
"Then tell me who is," I said. "That capsule down there is controlled from up here, and we"ve just blown something. If you know somebody better fit to work on it, then you"d better send for him. Otherwise, I"ll try to repair the J-9 myself."
He shut up then, and I began to see where the trouble was. They had been somewhat obvious about things. They had even used solder. Four circuits had been rigged, and they had fed the whole mess back through one of the timers ...
So I began uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the thing. Asquith was an oceanographer and so should know little about electronic circuits. I guessed that he couldn"t tell that I was undoing sabotage. I worked for about ten minutes, and the drifting capsule hundreds of fathoms beneath us began to function once again.
As I worked, I had reflected upon the powers soon to be invoked, the forces that would traverse the Highway to h.e.l.l for a brief time, and then like the Devil"s envoy or the Devil himself, perhaps, be released, there in the mid-Atlantic. The bleak weather that prevails in these lat.i.tudes at this time of year did little to improve my mood. A deadly force was to be employed, atomic energy, to release an even more powerful phenomenon, live magma, which seethed and bubbled now miles beneath the sea itself. That anyone should play senseless games with something like this was beyond my comprehension. Once again, the ship was shaken by the waves.
"Okay," I said. "There were a few shorts and I straightened them out" I replaced the side panel. "There shouldn"t be any more trouble." He regarded the monitor. "It seems to be functioning all right now. Let me check ... "
He flipped the toggle and said, "Aquina to capsule. Do you read me?"
"Yes," came the reply. "What happened?"
"Short circuit in the J-9," he answered. "It has been repaired. What is your condition?"
"All systems returned to normal. Instructions?"
"Proceed with your mission," he said, then turned to me. "I"ll recommend you for something or other," he said. "I"m sorry I snapped at you. I didn"t know you could service the J-9."
"I"m an electrical engineer," I replied, "and I"ve studied this thing. I know it"s restricted. If I hadn"t been able to figure out what was wrong, I wouldn"t have touched it."
"I take it you"d rather not be recommended for something or other?"
"That is correct."
"Then I will not do it."
Which was a very good thing, for the nonce, as I"d also disconnected a small bomb, which then resided in my left-hand jacket pocket and would soon be tossed overboard. It had had another five to eight minutes to go and would have blotted the record completely. As for me, I didn"t even want a record; but if there had to be one, it would be mine, not the enemy"s. I excused myself and departed. I disposed of the evidence. I thought upon the day"s doings.
Someone had tried to sabotage the project. So Don Walsh had been right. The a.s.sumed threat had been for real. Consume that and digest it. It meant that there was something big involved. The main question was, "What?" The second was, "What next?" I lit a cigarette and leaned on the Aquina"s rail. I watched the cold north sea attack the hull. My hands shook. It was a decent, humanitarian project. Also, a highly dangerous one. Even forgetting the great risks, though, I could not come up with a good counter-interest. Obviously, however, there was one.
Would Asquith report me? Probably. Though he would not realize what he was doing. He would have to explain the discontinuance of function in the capsule in order to make his report jibe with the capsule"s log. He would say that I had repaired a short circuit. That"s all.
That would be enough.
I had already decided that the enemy had access to the main log. They would know about the disconnected bomb not being reported. They would also know who had stopped them; and they might be interested enough, at a critical time like this, to do something rash. Good. That was precisely what I wanted.
... Because I had already wasted an entire month waiting for this break. I hoped they would come after me soon and try to question me. I took a deep drag on the cigarette and watched a distant iceberg glisten in the sun. This was going to be a strange one, I had that feeling. The skies were gray and the oceans were dark. Somewhere, someone disapproved of what was going on here, but for the life of me I could not guess why. Well, the h.e.l.l with them all. I like cloudy days. I was born on one. I"d do my best to enjoy this one.
I went back to my cabin and mixed myself a drink, as I was then officially off duty.
After a time, there came a knocking on my door.
"Turn the handle and push," I said.
It opened and a young man named Rawlings entered.
"Mister Schweitzer," he said, "Carol Deith would like to speak with you."
"Tell her I"m on my way," I said.
"All right," and he departed.
I combed my sort of blond hair and changed my shirt, because she was pretty and young. She was the ship"s Security Officer, though, so I had a good idea as to what she was really after.
I walked to her office and knocked twice on the door. As I entered, I bore in mind the fact that it probably involved the J-9 and my doings of a half hour before. This would tend to indicate that she was right on top of everything.
"h.e.l.lo," I said. "I believe you sent for me?"
"Schweitzer? Yes, I did. Have a seat, huh?" and she gestured at one on the other side of her expensive desk.
I took it.
"What do you want?"
"You repaired the J-9 this afternoon."
I shrugged. "Are you asking me or telling me?"
"You are not authorized to touch the thing."
"If you want, I can go back and screw it up and leave it the way I found it."
"Then you admit you worked on it?"
"Yes."
She sighed.
"Look, I don"t care," she said. "You probably saved two lives today, so I"m not about to fault you for a security violation. What I want to know is something different."
"What?"
"Was it sabotage?"
And there it was. I had felt it coming.
"No," I said. "It was not. There were some short circuits ... "
"Bull," she told me.
"I"m sorry. I don"t understand ... "
"You understand, all right. Somebody gimmicked that thing. You undid it, and it was trickier than a couple of short circuits. And there was a bomb. We monitored its explosion off the port bow about half an hour ago."
"You said it," I said. "I didn"t."
"What"s your game?" she asked me. "You cleaned up for us, and now you"re covering up for somebody else. What do you want?"
"Nothing," I said.
I studied her. Her hair was sort of reddish and she had freckles, lots of them. Her eyes were green. They seemed to be set quite far apart beneath the ruddy line of her bangs. She was fairly tall, like five-ten, though she was not standing at the moment I had danced with her once at a shipboard party.
"Well?"
"Quite well," I said. "And yourself?"
"I want an answer."
"To what?"
"Was it sabotage?"
"No," I said. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"There have been other attempts, you know."
"No, I didn"t know."
She blushed suddenly, highlighting her freckles. What had caused that?
"Well, there have been. We stopped all of them, obviously. But they were there."
"Who did it?"
"We don"t know."
"Why not?"
"We never got hold of the people involved."
"How come?"
"They were clever."
I lit a cigarette.
"Well, you"re wrong," I said. "There were some short circuits. I"m an electrical engineer and I spotted them. That was all, though." She found one someplace, and I lit it for her.
"Okay," she said. "I guess I"ve got everything you want to tell me." I stood then.
" ... By the way, I ran another check on you."
"Yes?"
"Nothing. You"re clean as snow and swansdown."
"Glad to hear it."
"Don"t be. Mister Schweitzer. I"m not finished with you yet"
"Try everything," I said. "You"ll find nothing else."
... And I was sure of that.
So I left her, wondering when they would reach me.
I send one Christmas card each year, and it is unsigned. All it bears, in block print, is a list of four bars and the cities in which they exist. On Easter, May Day, the first day of summer, and Halloween, I sit in those bars and sip drinks from nine until midnight, local time. Then I go away. Each year, they"re different bars.
Always, I pay cash, rather than using the Universal Credit Card which most people carry these days. The bars are generally dives, located in out-of-the-way places.
Sometimes Don Walsh shows up, sits down next to me and orders a beer. We strike up a conversation, then take a walk. Sometimes he doesn"t show up. He never misses two in a row, though. And the second time he always brings me some cash.
A couple of months ago, on the day when summer came bustling into the world, I was seated at a table in the back of the Inferno, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. It was a cool evening, as they all are in that place, and the air had been clean and the stars very bright as I walked up the flagstone streets of that national monument. After a time, I saw Don enter, wearing a dark, fake-wool suit and yellow sport shirt, opened at the neck. He moved to the bar, ordered something, turned and let his eyes wander about the tables. I nodded when he grinned and waved. He moved toward me with a gla.s.s in one hand and a Carta Blanca in the other.
"I know you," he said.
"Yeah, I think so. Have a seat?"
He pulled out a chair and seated himself across from me at the small table. The ashtray was filled to overflowing, but not because of me. The odor of tequila was on the breeze, make that "draft", from the opened front of the narrow barroom, and all about us two-dimensional nudes fought with bullfight posters for wall s.p.a.ce.
"Your name is ... ?"
"Frank," I said, pulling it out of me air. "Wasn"t it in New Orleans ... ?"
"Yeah, at Mardi Gras, a couple years ago."
"That"s right. And you"re ... ?"