"You"re a dumb broad."
"I don"t think so."
"Well, we"ll see."
After I woke up from one of the deepest sleeps in my life, I went and signed for duty.
"You"re late," said Morrey.
"So have them dock me."
I went then and watched the thing itself begin to occur. RUMOKO was in the works.
They went down, Martin and Demmy, and planted the charge. They did the necessary things, and we got out of there. Everything was set, and waiting for our radio signal. My cabin had been emptied of intruders, and I was grateful.
We got far enough away, and the signal was given. All was silent for a time. Then the bomb went off. Over the port bow, I saw the man stand up. He was old and gray and wore a wide-brimmed hat. He stood, slouched, fell on his face.
"We"ve just polluted the atmosphere some more," said Martin.
"h.e.l.l," said Demmy.
The oceans rose and a.s.sailed us. The ship held anchor. For a time, there was nothing. Then, it began.
The ship shook, like a wet dog. I clung to the rail and watched. Next came a mess of waves, and they were b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, but we rode them out.
"We"ve got the first reading," said Carol. "It"s beginning to build." I nodded and did not say anything. There wasn"t much to say.
"It"s getting bigger," she said, after a minute, and I nodded again. Finally, later on that morning, the whole thing that had come loose made its scene upon the surface.
The waters had been bubbling for a long while by then. The bubbles grew larger. The temperature readings rose. There came a glow. Then there was one fantastic spout. It was blasted into the air to a great height, golden in the morning sunshine, like Zeus when he had visited one of his girlfriends or other. It was accompanied by a loud roar. It hung there for a few brief moments, then descended in a shower of sparks. Immediately thereafter, there was greater turbulence. It increased and I watched, the regular way and by means of the instruments.
The waters frothed and glistened. The roaring came and went. There came another spout, and another. The waters burned beneath the waves. Four more spouts, each larger than its predecessor ...
Then an ocean-riving blast caught the Aquina in something close to a tidal wave ...
We were ready, though, built that way, and faced into it. We rode with it, and there was no let-up.
We were miles away, and it seemed as if but an arm"s distance separated us.
The next spout just kept going up, until it became a topless pillar. It pierced the sky, and a certain darkness began at that point. It began to swell, and there were fires all about its base.
After a time, the entire sky was fading over into a false twilight, and a fine dust filled the air, the eyes, the lungs. Occasionally, a crowd of ashes pa.s.sed in the distance, like a covey of dark birds. I lit a cigarette to protect my lungs against pollution, and watched the fires rise. With our early evening, the seas darkened. The kraken himself, disturbed, might have been licking our hull. The glow continued, and a dark form appeared.
RUMOKO.
It was the cone. An artificially created island. A piece of long-sunk Atlantis itself, perhaps, was rising in the distance. Man had succeeded in creating a landma.s.s. One day it would be habitable. Now, if we made a chain of them ...
Yes. Perhaps another j.a.pan. More room for the expanding human race. More s.p.a.ce. More places in which to live.
Why had I been questioned? Who had opposed this? It was a good thing, as I saw it.
I went away. I went and had dinner.
Carol came into the commissary and joined me, as if by accident. I nodded, and she seated herself across from me and ordered.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"Maybe you"ve done some of your thinking by now?" she said, between the salad and the ersatz beef.
"Yes," I replied.
"What are the results?"
"I still don"t know. It was awfully quick and, frankly, I"d like the opportunity to get to know you a little better."
"Signifying what?"
"There is an ancient custom known as "dating." Let"s do it for a little while."
"You don"t like me? I"ve checked our compatibility indices. They show that we would be okay together, buying you at face value, that is, but I think I know more of you than that."
"Outside of the fact that I"m not for sale, what does that mean?"
"I"ve made lots of guesses and I think I could also get along with an individualist who knows how to play the right games with machines." I knew that the commissary was bugged, and I guessed that she didn"t know that I did. Therefore, she had a reason for saying what she had said, and she didn"t think I knew about it.
"Sorry. Too quick," I told her. "Give a man a chance, will you?"
"Why don"t we go someplace and discuss it?" We were ready for dessert at that point.
"Where?"
"Spitzbergen."
I thought about it, then, "Okay," I said.
"I"ll be ready in about an hour and a half."
"Whoa!" I said. "I thought you meant, like, perhaps this weekend. There are still tests to run, and I"m scheduled for duty."
"But your job here is finished, isn"t it?"
I started in on my dessert, apple pie, and pretty good, too, with a chunk of cheddar, and I sipped coffee along with it. Over the rim of the cup, I c.o.c.ked my head at her and shook it, slowly, from one side to the other.
"I can get you off duty for a day," she told me. "There will be no harm done."
"Sorry. I"m interested in the results of the tests. Let"s make it this weekend."
She seemed to think about this for a while.
"All right," she said finally, and I nodded and continued with my dessert. The "all right" instead of a "yes" or an "okay" or a "sure" must have been a key word of some sort Or perhaps it was something else that she did or said. I don"t know. I don"t care any more.
When we left the commissary, she was slightly ahead of me, as I had opened the door for her, and a man moved in from either side. She stopped and turned.
"Don"t bother saying it," I said. "I wasn"t quick enough, so I"m under arrest. Please don"t recite my rights. I know what they are," and I raised my hands when I saw the steel in one man"s hand. "Merry Christmas," I added. But she recited my rights anyway, and I stared at her all the while. She didn"t meet my eyes.
h.e.l.l, the whole proposition had been too good to be true. I didn"t think she was very used to the role she had played, though, and I wondered, idly, whether she would have gone through with it, if circ.u.mstances dictated. She had been right about my job aboard the Aquina being ended, however. I would have to be moving along, and seeing that Albert Schweitzer died within the next twenty-four hours.
"You are going to Spitzbergen tonight," she said, "where there are better facilities for questioning you."
How was I going to manage it? Well ... As if reading my thoughts, she said, "Since you seem to be somewhat dangerous, I wish to advise you that your escorts are highly trained men."
"Then you won"t be coming with me, after all?"
"I"m afraid not."
"Too bad. Then this is going to have to be "Goodbye." I"d like to have gotten to know you somewhat better."
"That meant nothing!" she said. "It was just to get you there."
"Maybe. But you will always wonder, and now you will never know."
"I am afraid we are going to have to handcuff you," said one of the men.
"Of course."
I held my hands out and he said, almost apologetically, "No, sir. Behind your back, please."
So I did, but I watched the men move in and I got a look at the cuffs. They were kind of old-fashioned. Government budgets generally produce such handy savings. If I bent over backward, I could step over them, and then they would be in front of me. Give me, say, twenty seconds ...
"One thing," I asked. "Just for the sake of curiosity and because I told it to you straight. Did you ever find out why those two guys broke into my room to question me, and what they really wanted? If you"re allowed to tell me, I would like to know, because it made for some rough sleeping." She bit her lip, thought a moment, I guess, then said, "They were from New Salem, a bubble city off the North American continental shelf. They were afraid that RUMOKO would crack their dome."
"Did it?" I asked.
She paused.
"We don"t know yet," she said. "The place has been silent for a while. We have tried to get through to them, but there seems to be some interference."
"What do you mean by that?"
"We have not yet succeeded in reestablishing contact."
"You mean to say that we might have killed a city?"
"No. The chances were minimal, according to the scientists."
"Your scientists," I said. "Theirs must have felt differently about it."
"Of course," she told me. "There are always obstructionists. They sent saboteurs because they did not trust our scientists. The inference ... "
"I"m sorry," I said.
"For what?"
"That I put a guy into a shower ... Okay. Thanks. I can read all about it in the papers. Send me to Spitzbergen now."
"Please," she said. "I do what I must. I think it"s right. You may be as clean as snow and swansdown. If that is the case, they will know in a very short time, Al. Then, then I"d like you to bear in mind that what I said before may still be good."
I chuckled.
"Sure, and I"ve already said, "Good-bye." Thanks for answering my question, though."
"Don"t hate me."
"I don"t. But I could never trust you."
She turned away.
"Good night, " I said.
And they escorted me to the helicopter. They helped me aboard. There were just the two of them and the pilot.
"She liked you," said the man with the gun.
"No." I said.
"If she"s right and you"re clean, will you see her again?"
"I"ll never see her again," I said. He seated me, to the rear of the craft. Then he and his buddy took window seats and gave a signal. The engines throbbed, and suddenly we rose. In the distance, RUMOKO rumbled, burned, and spat.
Eva, I am sorry. I didn"t know. I"d never guessed it might have done what it did.
"You"re supposed to be dangerous," said the man on my right. "Please don"t try anything."
Ave, atque, avatque, I said, in my heart of hearts, like. Twenty-four hours, I told Schweitzer.
After I collected my money from Walsh, I returned to the Proteus and practiced meditation for a few days. Since it did not produce the desired results, I went up and got drunk with Bill Mellings. After all, I had used his equipment to kill Schweitzer. I didn"t tell him anything, except for a made-up story about a ni-hi girl with large mammaries. Then we went fishing, two weeks" worth.
I did not exist any longer. I had erased Albert Schweitzer from the world. I kept telling myself that I did not want to exist any longer. If you have to murder a man, have to, I mean, like no choice in the matter, I feel that it should be a b.l.o.o.d.y and horrible thing, so that it burns itself into your soul and gives you a better appreciation of the value of human existence.
It had not been that way, however.
It had been quiet and viral. It was a thing to which I have immunized myself, but of which very few other persons have even heard. I had opened my ring and released the spores. That was all. I had never known the names of my escorts or the pilot. I had not even had a good look at their faces.
It had killed them within thirty seconds, and I had the cuffs off in less than the twenty seconds I"d guessed. I crashed the "copter on the beach, sprained my right wrist doing it, got the h.e.l.l out of the vehicle, and started walking.
They"d look like myocardial infarcts or arteriosclerotic brain syndromes, depending on how it hit them.