It was on our wedding night, and you"d just got it, and you kept asking it to tell you limericks."
The Major snapped his fingers. "Knew I"d get it," he glowed. Then abruptly he scowled again and turned to face Vern and me. "Say--" he began.
I said weakly: "The boilers."
The Major stared at me, then glanced out the window. "What boilers?"
he demanded. "It"s just a thunderstorm. Been building up all day. Now what about this? Is that thing--"
But Vern was paying him no attention. "Thunderstorm?" he yelled.
"Arthur, you listening? Are the helicopters gone?"
YESYESYES
"Then shove off, Arthur! Shove off!"
The typewriter rattled and slammed madly.
The Major yelled angrily: "Now listen to me, you! I"m asking you a question!"
But we didn"t have to answer, because there was a thrumming and a throbbing underfoot, and then one of the "clerks, typists" screamed: "The dock!" She pointed at a porthole. "It"s moving!"
Well, we got out of there--barely in time. And then it was up to Arthur. We had the whole ship to roam around in and there were plenty of places to hide. They had the whole ship to search. And Arthur was the whole ship.
Because it was Arthur, all right, brought in and hooked up by Vern, attained to his greatest dream and ambition. He was skipper of a superliner, and more than any skipper had ever been--the ship was his body, as the prosthetic tank had never been; the keel his belly, the screws his feet, the engines his heart and lungs, and every moving part that could be hooked into central control his many, many hands.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Search for us? They were lucky they could move at all! Fire Control washed them with salt water hoses, directed by Arthur"s brain.
Watertight doors, proof against sinking, locked them away from us at Arthur"s whim.
The big bull whistle overhead brayed like a clamoring Gabriel, and the ship"s bells tinkled and clanged. Arthur backed that enormous ship out of its berth like a racing scull on the Schuylkill. The four giant screws lashed the water into white foam, and then the thin mud they sucked up into tan; and the ship backed, swerved, lashed the water, stopped, and staggered crazily forward.
Arthur brayed at the Statue of Liberty, tooted good-by to Staten Island, feinted a charge at Sandy Hook and really laid back his ears and raced once he got to deep water past the moored lightship.
We were off!
Well, from there on, it was easy. We let Arthur have his fun with the Major and the bodyguards--and by the sodden, whimpering shape they were in when they came out, it must really have been fun for him.
There were just the three of us and only Vern and I had guns--but Arthur had the _Queen Elizabeth_, and that put the odds on our side.
We gave the Major a choice: row back to Coney Island--we offered him a boat, free of charge--or come along with us as cabin boy. He cast one dim-eyed look at the hundred and nine "clerks, typists" and at Amy, who would never be the hundred and tenth.
And then he shrugged and, game loser, said: "Ah, why not? I"ll come along."
And why not, when you come to think of it? I mean ruling a city is nice and all that, but a sea voyage is a refreshing change. And while a hundred and nine to one is a respectable female-male ratio, still it must be wearing; and eighty to thirty isn"t so bad, either. At least, I guess that was what was in the Major"s mind. I know it was what was in mine.
And I discovered that it was in Amy"s, for the first thing she did was to march me over to the typewriter and say: "You"ve had it, Sam. We"ll dispose with the wedding march--just get your friend Arthur here to marry us."
"Arthur?"
"The captain," she said. "We"re on the high seas and he"s empowered to perform marriages."
Vern looked at me and shrugged, meaning, you asked for this one, boy.
And I looked at him and shrugged, meaning, it could be worse.
And indeed it could. We"d got our ship; we"d got our ship"s company--because, naturally, there wasn"t any use stealing a big ship for just a couple of us. We"d had to manage to get a sizable colony aboard. That was the whole idea.
The world, in fact, was ours. It could have been very much worse indeed, even though Arthur was laughing so hard as he performed the ceremony that he jammed up all his keys.
--FREDERIK POHL