An Exaltation of Stars (1973) Anthology

by Terry Carr (Ed. )

  So I fastened it in place, and this took me about twenty minutes. He inspected the work, patted me on the shoulder, and nodded. I moved to connect the systems then, but stopped to glance at him. He indicated that I should go ahead.

  This only took a few minutes, and when I was finished I had a certain feeling of satisfaction thinking of that light going on again on the big board back at the station. I turned around to indicate that the job was done and that he could come admire my work.

  But he was no longer with me.

  For a few seconds I froze, startled. Then I began shining my light around.

  No, no. Nothing…

  Growing somewhat panicky, I moved to the edge of the abyss and swept downward with the light. Luckily, he was not moving very quickly. But he was headed downward, all right. I took off after him as fast as I could move.

  Nitrogen narcosis, deepwater sickness, or “rapture of the deep” does not usually hit at depths above 200 feet. Still, we were at around 170, so it was possible, and he certainly seemed to be showing the symptoms.

  Worrying then about mv own state of mind, I reached him, caught him by the shoulder, turned him back. Through his mask, I could see the blissful expression that lie wore.

  Taking him by the arm and shoulder, I began drawing him back with me. For several seconds he accompanied me, offering no resistance.

  Then he began to struggle. I had anticipated this possibility and shifted my grips into a kwansetsuwaza position, but quickly discovered that judo is not exactly the same underwater, especially when a tank valve is too near your mask or mouthpiece. I had to keep twisting my head away, pulling it back. For a time, it became impossible to guide him that way. But I refused to relinquish my grip. If I could just hold him a while longer and did not get hit by narcosis myself, I felt that I had the advantage. After all, his coordination was affected as well as his thinking.

  I finally got him to the DC—a wild antenna of bubbles rising from his air hose by then, as he had spat out his mouthpiece and there was no way I could get it back in without letting go. Still, it might have been one of the reasons he became easier to manage near the end there. I don’t know.

  I stuffed him into the lighted chamber, followed, and got the hatch sealed. He gave up about then and began to sag. I was able to get his mouthpiece back into place, and then I threw the pull-up switch.

  Wc began to rise almost immediately, and I wondered what Barthelme and Davies were thinking at that moment.

  They got us up very quickly. I felt a slight jarring as we came to rest on the deck. Shortly afterward, the water was pumped out. I don’t know what the pressure was up to—or down to—at that point, but the communicator came alive and I heard Barthelme’s voice as I was getting out of my gear.

  “We’ll be moving in a few minutes,” he said. “What happened, and how serious is it?”

  “Nitrogen narcosis, I’d say. Paul just started swimming out and down, struggled with me when I tried to bring him back.”

  “Was either of you hurt?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He lost his mouthpiece for a little while, but I got it back in and lie’s breathing.”

  “What shape is he in otherwise?”

  “Still rapturing, I’d guess. Sort of collapsed, drunken look to him.”

  “All right. You might as well get out of your gear—”

  “I already have.”

  “—and get him out of his.”

  “Just starting.”

  “We’ll radio ahead and have a medic hop out and be waiting at the dispensary, just in case. Sounds like what he really needs most is the chamber, though. So we’ll just take it slow and easy in getting him back to surface pressure. I’m making an adjustment right now…Do you have any rapture symptoms yourself?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, there. We’ll leave it at this setting for a little while now…Is there anything else I should know?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “All right, then. I’m going forward to radio for the doctor. If you want me for anything, whistle into the speaker. That should carry.”

  “Right.”

  I got Paul out of his rig then, hoping he would start coming around soon. But he didn’t.

  He just sat there, slouched, mumbling, eyes open but glassy. Every now and then he smiled.

  I wondered what was wrong. If the pressure was indeed diminished, the recovery should have been almost instantaneous. Probably needed one more step, I decided.

  But—

  Could he have been down much earlier that morning, before the workday began?

  Decompression time does depend upon the total amount of time spent underwater during about a twelve-hour period, since you are dealing with the total amount of nitrogen absorbed by the tissues, particularly the brain and spinal cord. Might he have been down looking for something, say, in the mud, at the base of a broken mast, amid the wreckage of a certain old vessel? Perhaps down for a long while, searching carefully, worried? Knowing that he had shore duty today, that there should be no more nitrogen accumulated during this workday? Then, suddenly, an emergency, and he has to chance it. He takes it as easy as possible, even encouraging the new man to go ahead and finish up the job. Resting, trying to hang on…

  It could well be. In which case, Barthelme’s decompression values were off. The time is measured from surface to surface, and the depth is reckoned from the deepest point reached in any of the dives. Hell, for all I knew he might have visited several caches spotted at various points along the ocean’s bottom.

  I leaned over, studied the pupils of his eyes—catching his attention, it seemed, in the process.

  “How long were you down this morning?” I asked.

  He smiled.

  “Wasn’t,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter what was involved. It’s your health we’re worried about now. How long were you down? What depths?”

  He shook his head.

  “Wasn’t,” he said.

  “Damn it! I know you were! It was the old wreck, wasn’t it? That’s maybe twenty fathoms. So how long? An hour? Were you down more than once?”

  “Wasn’t down!” he insisted. “Really, Mike! I wasn’t.”

  I sighed, leaned back. Maybe, possibly, he was telling the truth. People are all different inside. Perhaps his physiology was playing some other variation of the game than the one I had guessed at. It had been so neat, though. For a moment, I had seen him as the supplier of the stones and Frank as the fence. Then I had gone to Frank with my find, Frank had mentioned this development to him, and Paul, worried, had gone off while the station slept to make certain that things were still where they were supposed to be. His tissues accumulated a lot of nitrogen during his frantic searching, and then this happened. It certainly struck me as logical. But if it were me, I would have admitted to having been down. I could always come up with some lie as to the reason later.

  “Don’t you remember?” I tried again.

  He commenced an uninspired stream of curses, but lost his enthusiasm before a dozen or so syllables. His voice trailed off. Then, “Why don’t you b’lieve me, Mike? I wasn’t down…”

  “All right, I believe you,” I said. “It’s okay. Just take it easy.” He reached out and took hold of my arm.

  “It’s all beautiful,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Everything is just—like it’s never been before.”

  “What did you take?” I asked him.

  “…Beautiful.”

  “What are you on?” I insisted.

  “You know I never take any,” he finally said.

  “Then what’s causing it, whatever it is? Do you know?”

  “Damn fine…” he said.

  “Something went wrong on the bottom. What was it?”

  “I don’t know! Go away! Don’t bring it back…This is how it should be. Always…Not that crap you take…Started all the trouble…”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.


  “…That started it.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Spoiled things,” I ventured. “Shouldn’t have.”

  “…Talked,” he said. “…Blew it.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. But we got him,” I tried.

  “Yeah,” he said. Then, “Oh, my God!”

  “The diamonds. The diamonds are safe,” I suggested quickly. “Got him…Oh, my God! I’m sorry!”

  “Forget it. Tell me what you see,” I said, to get his mind back where I wanted it.

  “The diamonds…” he said.

  He launched into a long, disjointed monologue. I listened. Every now and then I said something to return him to the theme of the diamonds, and I kept throwing out Rudy Myers’ name. His responses remained fragmentary, but the picture did begin to emerge.

  I hurried then, trying to learn as much as I could before Barthelme returned and decompressed us any further. I was afraid that it would sober him up suddenly, because decompression works that way when you hit the right point in nitrogen-narcosis cases. He and Mike seemed to have been bringing in the diamonds, all right—from where, I did not learn. Whenever I tried to find out whether Frank had been disposing of them for them, he began muttering endearments to Linda. The part I hammered away most at began to come clear, though.

  Mike must have said something one time, in the ashram back of the Chickcharny. It must have interested Rudy sufficiently so that he put together a specialty of the house other than a Pink Paradise for him—apparently, several times. These could have been the bad trips I had heard about. Whatever Rudy served him, he got the story out of him and saw dollar signs. Only Paul proved a lot tougher than he had thought. When he made his request for hush money and Mike told Paul about it, Paul came up with the idea for the mad dolphin in the park and got Mike to go along with it, persuading Rudy to meet him there for a payoff. Then things got sort of hazy, because the mention of dolphins kept setting him off. But he had apparently waited at a prearranged point, and the two of them took care of Rudy when that point was reached, one holding him, the other working him over with the jawbone. It was not clear whether Mike was injured fighting with Rudy and Paul then decided to finish him off and make him look like a dolphin slashee also, or whether he had planned that part carefully too and simply turned on Mike afterward, taking him by surprise. Either way, their friendship had been declining steadily for some time and the blackmail business had driven the final nail into the lid.

  That was the story I got, punctuated rather than phrased by his responses to my oblique questioning. Apparently, killing Mike had bothered him more than he had thought it would, also. He kept calling me Mike, kept saying he was sorry, and I kept redirecting his attention.

  Before I could get any more out of him, Barthelme came back and asked me how he was doing.

  “Babbling,” I replied. “That’s all.”

  “Pm going to decompress some more. That might straighten him out. We’re on our way now, and there will be someone waiting.”

  “Good.”

  But it did not straighten him out. He remained exactly the same. I tried to take advantage, to get more out of him—specifically, the source of the diamonds—but something went wrong. His nirvana switched over to some version of hell.

  He launched himself at my throat, and I had to fight him off, push him back, hold him in place. He sagged then, commenced weeping, and began muttering of the horrors he was witnessing. I talked slowly, softly, soothingly, trying to guide him back to the earlier, happier part of things. Nothing worked until I shut up, though. So I stayed silent and kept my guard up.

  He drowsed then, and Barthelme continued to decompress us. I kept an eye on Paul’s breathing and checked his pulse periodically, but nothing seemed amiss in that area.

  We were fully decompressed by the time we docked, and I undogged the hatch and chucked out our gear. Paul stirred at that, opened his eyes, stared at me, then said, “That was weird.”

  “How do you feel now?”

  “All right, I think. But very tired and kind of shaky.”

  “Let me give you a hand.”

  “Thanks.”

  I helped him out and assisted him down the plank to a waiting wheelchair. A young doctor was there, as were the Cashels, Deems, and Carter. I could not help wondering what was going on at the moment inside Paul’s head. The doctor checked his heartbeat, pulse, blood pressure, shined a light into his eyes and ears, and had him touch the tip of his nose a couple of times. Then he nodded and gestured, and Barthelme began wheeling him toward the dispensary. The doctor walked along part of the way, talking with them. Then he returned while they went on, and he asked me to tell him everything that had happened.

  So I did, omitting only the substance I had derived from the babbling part. Then he thanked me and turned toward the dispensary once more.

  I caught up with him quickly, though.

  “What does it look like?” I asked.

  “Nitrogen narcosis,” he replied.

  “Didn’t it take a rather peculiar form?” I said. “I mean, the way he responded to decompression and all?”

  He shrugged.

  “People come in all shapes and sizes, inside as well as out,” he said. “Do a complete physical on a man and you still can’t tell what he’d be like if lie got drunk, say—loud, sad, belligerent, sleepy. The same with this. He seems to be out of it now, though.”

  “No complications?”

  “Well, I’m going to do an EKG as soon as we get him to the dispensary. But I think he’s all right. Listen, is there a decompression chamber in the dispensary?”

  “Most likely. But I’m new here. I’m not certain.”

  “Well, why don’t you come along until we find out? If there isn’t one, I’d like to have that submersible unit moved over.”

  “Oh?”

  “Just a precaution. I want him to stay in the dispensary overnight, with someone around to keep an eye on him. If there should be a recurrence, I want the machine handy so he can be recompressed right away.”

  “I see.”

  We caught up with Barthelme at the door. The others were there also.

  “Yes, there is a unit inside,” Barthelme told him, “and I’ll sit up with him.”

  Everyone volunteered, though, and the night was finally divided into three shifts—Barthelme, Frank, and Andy, respectively. Each of them, of course, was quite familiar with decompression equipment.

  Frank came up and touched my arm.

  “Nothing much we can really do here now,” he said. “Shall we go have that dinner?”

  “Oh?” I said, automatically glancing at my watch.

  “So we eat at seven instead of six-thirty,” he said, chuckling.

  “Fine. That will give me time to shower and change.”

  “Okay. Come right over as soon as you’re ready. We’ll still have time for a drink.”

  “All right. I’m thirsty. See you soon.”

  I went on back to my place and got cleaned up. No new billets-doux, and the stones were still in the disposal unit. I combed my hair and started back across the islet.

  As I neared the dispensary, the doctor emerged, talking back over his shoulder to someone in the doorway. Barthelme, probably. As I approached, I saw that he was carrying his bag.

  He withdrew, began to move away. He nodded and smiled when he saw me.

  “I think your friend will be all right,” he said.

  “Good. That is just what I was going to ask you.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “All right. Fine, actually.”

  “You have had no symptoms at all. Correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Fine. If you were to, you know where to go. Right?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Okay, then. I’ll be going now.”

  “So long.”

  He headed off toward a tiny hopper he had landed near the main lab. I continued on over to Frank’s place.

  Frank came out to m
eet me.

  “What did the doctor have to say?” he asked.

  “That everything looks all right,” I told him.

  “Uh-huh. Come on in and tell me what you’re drinking.”

  He opened the door, held it.

  “A bourbon would be nice,” I said.

  “With anything?”

  “Just ice.”

  “Okay. Linda’s out back, setting things on the table.”

  He moved about, putting together a pair of drinks. I wondered whether he was going to say anything about the diamond business now, while we were alone. But he didn’t.

  He turned, passed me my drink, raised his in a brief salute, took a sip.

  “Tell me all about it,” he said then.

  “All right.”

  The telling lasted into dinner and out of it again. I was very hungry, Linda was quite quiet, and Frank kept asking questions, drawing out every detail of Paul’s discomfort, distress. I wondered about Linda and Frank. I could not see her keeping her affair secret on a small place like the station. What did Frank really know, think, feel about it? What was the true function of their triangle in this bizarre case?

  I sat with them for a while after dinner, and I could almost feel the tension between the two of them, a thing he seemed set on dealing with by keeping the conversation moving steadily along the lines he had established, she by withdrawing from it. I had no doubt that it had been precipitated by Paul’s mishap, but I came to feel more and more awkward in my role as a buffer against an approaching quarrel, a confrontation, or the renewal of an old one. Thanking them for the meal, I excused myself as soon as I could, pleading a weariness that was half-real.

  Frank got to his feet immediately.

  “I’ll walk you back,” he said.

  “All right.”

  So he did.

  As we neared my place, he finally said it.

  “About those stones…

  “Yes?”

  “You’re sure there are lots more where they came from?”

  “Come this way,” I said, leading him around the cottage to the patio and turning when we reached it. “Just in time for the last couple of minutes of sunset. Beautiful. Why don’t you watch it finish up? I’ll be right back.”