by Pat Murphy
“I had a bone to pick with that fellow,” she said. “Sorry I had to rush away like that.”
“Ian says you signed in at the beauty salon as Mary Maxwell,” Susan went on.
“That’s my name,” Mary said. “I had to talk with Weldon Merrimax. He’s a dangerous man.”
“Wait a second,” Susan said. “Slow down. What did you have to talk to him about?”
Mary sipped her Rum Monkey, looking thoughtful. “A lot, actually. It’s all about the nature of reality. And dreams, of course—it has a lot to do with dreams.”
Susan blinked, more baffled than before.
“Come on,” Mary said, taking her arm. “Let’s go outside where we can talk without being interrupted.”
Still clutching her drink, Susan let Mary lead her from the bar, out into the corridor, then through the double doors onto the promenade deck. The door swung closed behind them, shutting out the shouting of the Clampers, the music of the band.
A cool breeze blew from the ocean. Overhead, the stars were bright and still. Susan leaned against the railing. She felt drunk. She felt that she had the right to demand answers. She wanted to know what was going on.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked Mary. “Why are you pretending to be Mary Maxwell? Who is that guy who’s pretending to be Weldon Merrimax? What’s going on, anyway?”
Mary was gazing out to sea, where the dark water rose and fell in gentle swells. “So many questions,” she said softly “So much confusion. Isn’t it lovely?
“I think some answers would be nice,” Susan said.
Mary grinned, leaning back against the railing. “One more question, first. Have you ever read Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll?”
“Many times.” That had been one of Susan’s favorite books to read aloud at the library’s story hour.
“Do you remember when Alice meets Tweedledum and Tweedledee? They show her the Red King. He’s sleeping—wearing a red nightcap and snoring. And Tweedledum says that Alice is just a thing in the Red King’s dream.”
Susan nodded. She remembered the scene. “Alice says she’s not just a thing in his dream, she’s real. She starts to cry and Tweedledum says, ‘I hope you don’t think those are real tears.’”
Mary nodded.
Susan went on. “In the end, the whole story is Alice’s dream.”
“Is that what you think?” Mary said. “It isn’t really, you know.”
“Of course it is,” Susan said. “That’s what the last chapter is all about.”
“Oh, yes, the last chapter is Alice talking about how it was a dream,” Mary said. “And she thinks it must have been either her dream or the Red King’s dream. But you know it wasn’t really either one.”
Susan stared at her. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s really a story told by Lewis Carroll,” Mary said. “Alice is imaginary and so is the Red King. So you could say it was Lewis Carroll’s dream …”
Susan nodded slowly. “I could go along with that.”
“… but Lewis Carroll was imaginary, too,” Mary went on.
“No, he wasn’t,” Susan protested. “He was a mathematician and a deacon in the Church of England. He was reputed to like little girls a bit too well.”
Mary shook her head. “That was the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,” she said gravely. “He wrote as Lewis Carroll, but that’s not the same thing as being Lewis Carroll, now is it?”
Susan hesitated, thinking of Max Merriwell and Mary Maxwell and Weldon Merrimax. “I suppose not,” she admitted reluctantly.
“I’d say it was all a dream of Dodgson who dreamed of Carroll who dreamed of Alice who dreamed of the Red King. Or it could have been the other way around. Maybe the Red King dreamed up the whole thing.”
Susan’s head was spinning. “But what’s real?” she asked.
Mary laughed. “Have you ever read the work of Chuang Tzu?” Susan shook her head. The only thing that seemed clear was that Mary was not going to clarify matters.
“Oh, you must. It will help you come to grips with all this. Chuang Tzu was an ancient Taoist poet and philosopher. He wrote about dreaming that he was a butterfly. And when he woke, he wondered if he was really a butterfly, dreaming he was a poet.” Mary shrugged. “There’s no way to know. And as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter.” She gazed into the distance for a moment, as if concentrating on something only she could see. “Listen,” she said.
Susan heard a strange sound on the breeze—like the wind howling through a gap. “What’s that?” she asked. “Sounds like wolves to me.”
“Wolves?” Susan shook her head again. “That’s ridiculous. We’re in the middle of the ocean.”
“Just a small pack,” Mary said, as if the size of the pack made a difference. A chorus of distant howls rose and fell with the breeze.
“How could there be wolves here?” Susan said, bewildered.
Mary shook her head, looking amused. “You haven’t been listening. Reality is a much more flexible concept than most people think. The borders are fuzzy.” Mary shrugged. “It’s all about the power of the imagination. The shifting nature of reality. The possibilities of the dream. You need to trust your imagination. You need to believe your dreams.”
“This isn’t a dream,” Susan protested. “I’m really here.”
Mary just smiled. She was looking over Susan’s shoulder. “Look who’s coming this way.”
Susan turned to look, and she saw Max Merriwell approaching, walking along the railing and smoking his pipe. When she turned back, Mary was gone.
Max came up beside her. “Susan!” She turned to look at him. “It is you!” He studied her for a moment. “Quite a change. You look very nice.” He puffed his pipe.
She glanced around, looking for Mary. Max was studying her, frowning. “Is something wrong?”
Yes, Susan thought, I’m going nuts. I’m imagining conversations with lunatics. I’m hearing wolves.
“No,” she said. “No, I’m fine.” She didn’t want to ask Max if he had seen a woman disappear. She didn’t want to try to explain what they had been talking about. “I … I just stepped out for a breath of fresh air.”
“We missed you at dinner,” Max said. “It was quite dull without you and Pat and Ian.”
“Pat and I decided to make do with bar snacks,” she said. She realized as she said it that they had never gotten around to ordering any snacks. No wonder she was feeling so drunk.
“Ah. Well, I’m meeting Ian for a drink at Aphrodite’s before I turn in. Will you join me?”
She shook her head. “No, thanks. I’ve had enough for now.” More than enough, she thought. She stared out to sea, feeling dizzy.
“I’ll go in then. Come and join us if you feel like it later.”
She heard a burst of music when he pushed open the door, silenced when the door swung shut. She closed her eyes. She had drunk too many Rum Monkeys. Mary’s last name was Maxwell. There were wolves howling in the middle of the ocean. That made no sense at all. Her imagination was running away with her.
Now that Max was gone, Susan could again hear wolves howling somewhere above her. A sweet wild sound, stretched thin by distance. It couldn’t be wolves, Susan thought. There were no wolves in the middle of the ocean. But it sounded like wolves.
It could be the wind, she thought. That was the only logical explanation, the only sensible thing to think. Mary was some kind of lunatic and the howling was just the wind. Susan tried to believe that it was the wind, blowing across a narrow opening and howling in a way that sounded just like wolves.
She tried to believe that, but she didn’t want to believe that. When it got right down to it, she wanted to believe that there were wolves up there. There are, she thought drunkenly, so many possibilities for a woman who knows how to use her imagination.
Susan imagined members of the pack exploring among the deck chairs on the recreation deck, lapping water from the sparkling pool,
bedding down in a heap of towels, overlooked at day’s end by the towel guy. Something strange was happening, and she did not want to believe that there was a sensible, reasonable explanation for it.
She followed the sound, heading toward the bow of the boat. She found a door marked “emergency exit” that led to a companionway, and she climbed the stairs. She pushed the door open and stepped onto the silent recreation deck.
The poolside chairs had been stacked neatly, their cushions stacked beside them. Nets covered the swimming pool and the jacuzzis—a safety precaution, she suspected. The cruise line didn’t want a drunken passenger falling into a pool and drowning. The water in the swimming pools surged back and forth with the rolling of the ship, overflowing the pool and washing across the deck.
She circled the pool, peering behind the stacks of deck chairs, searching for wolves. There were lights beside the pools, lights on the ship’s railings. Beyond those circles of light, the ocean was dark. When Susan looked over the rail, the only light came from the moon and the cold, distant stars. The ship had seemed so large in New York harbor. Now it felt tiny, insignificant in the vastness of the ocean.
The dark ocean surged and swelled. So much darkness, all around them. Unknown territory, she thought. Terra incognita. She sympathized with the ancient mapmakers who had drawn dragons in the unknown seas. There could be dragons out there, lurking just beyond the limits of her vision. There could be sea serpents below the waves hiding in the darkness of the deeps.
When she was in the bar, in the dining room, in her stateroom, she felt like she was in a resort hotel, as safe as she was on dry land. But out here—where the wind tousled her hair and the stars gazed down with chilly indifference—out here, she could feel the power of the ocean.
It was terrifying—and at the same time, it was fascinating. So many possibilities. So much to explore. So much unknown territory. That was what she loved in Max’s books, in Mary’s books. The sense that something wonderful or terrible might be waiting just around the corner. You could find a gold ring and talk with dragons. You might walk through a gate in a garden and find yourself caught up in a battle between the owls and the ravens. (A woman did that in Mary’s book, The Owl Kingdom.) You might experiment with a Mobius strip and get caught in a dream that circles around and around, never letting you go. A man did that in Max’s book, A One-Sided Story. You might fly across the galaxy or live among the wolves. Anything could happen.
This was all Max’s doing, she thought. Worlds that Max had created were bleeding through into the reality of the cruise ship. Max had opened a door and strange things were coming through.
Susan walked carefully beside the swimming pool with its sloshing water, a miniature imitation of the ocean around them. She was drunk and she knew it. She was very careful.
She heard the wolves again, howling in the distance. Above her, always above her. An exhilarating sound, the sound of mystery, the call of adventure.
She climbed the stairs that led from the recreation deck to the observation deck. When she was halfway up the stairs, the howling fell silent and she heard a rattling sound—like claws scratching against the deck surface. But when she reached Cyclops’ Lookout, it was empty. She listened for the wolves, and heard nothing. Only the wind of the ship’s passage as it traveled across the face of the deep.
FIFTEEN
“You’re not looking for adventure?” The pirate laughed. “That’s no guarantee of a comfortable life. Perhaps adventure is looking for you.”
—from The Twisted Band
by Max Merriwell
Tom stopped by the security office after dinner. On his desk, he found a note from Ian: “I’m meeting Pat and Susan in Aphrodite’s Alehouse for a nightcap—want to join us?”
Tom was tired, but restless. Dinner had been tedious. Susan, Pat, and Ian had been absent, Max had been quiet. That left Charles Rafferty and Bill Carver, supported by their wives, to dominate the conversation. They discussed, at great length, the quality of the wine list on various cruise lines. Charles had worked up quite a head of steam over the selections of merlot available on the Odyssey—apparently his educated palette required more than four choices.
Tom decided that a nightcap might be just what he needed. He headed for the bar.
Aphrodite’s was noisier than usual; the crowd seemed drunker than usual. Tom watched a waitress carry a tray filled with flaming drinks to a group of ladies at a table near the stage. Some new invention of the company, no doubt. Tom couldn’t keep track of all the cocktails served aboard the Odyssey—silly things with umbrellas and strange names like Juno’s Revenge and Cupids Sting.
Tom spotted Ian, Pat, and Max deep in conversation at one end of the curving bar and went to join them. “Hello, Tom!” Ian called as Tom approached. “Pull up a stool.”
Tom looked around for Susan. Perhaps she had stepped into the ladies room. He pulled up a stool.
Max looked up from his brandy snifter. He had been quietly drinking brandy at dinner, as well.
He looked rumpled and sleepy, Tom thought. He was not wearing his usual tweed sports coat, having finally surrendered to the tropical heat. He wore a knit polo shirt from the ship’s boutique and he did not look entirely comfortable in it.
“Max was just telling us about a dream he had last night,” Ian said.
“Strangest thing,” Max said. “I dreamed I was in the ship’s library and I saw a novel titled Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell. I took it from the shelf, but before I could open it, I woke up.” He shook his head.
“Who was the author?” Pat asked.
Max shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t look.”
Tom watched the waitress carry another tray of flaming drinks to the table by the dance floor. “What is that drink?” he asked Ian.
“A Flaming Rum Monkey,” Ian said. “It’s a drink your friend Susan suggested to Frank.”
Tom took advantage of the opportunity. “Where is Susan, anyway?” he asked.
“Frank said she stepped outside with her friend Mary,” Ian said. “Maybe half an hour ago.”
“A Flaming Rum Monkey?” Max said. “I didn’t think that drink really existed.”
“She left with Mary?” Tom continued, not willing to stop for Max’s interruption. “A woman with short dark hair?” Ian nodded. “That’s what Frank said.”
“I saw Susan on the promenade on my way in,” Max said. “She was alone then.”
Tom nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll go look for her.”
As he walked away, Tom heard Max say, “I’ve always wondered what a Flaming Rum Monkey tasted like. I made up the name a number of years ago. It’s Mary Maxwell’s favorite drink, you know.”
Tom walked the promenade that led around the ship. The night air was pleasantly cool, and he passed a few couples, but he didn’t see Susan or Mary. He was thinking about checking some of the ship’s other bars, when he got a call on his radio from one of the security staff. A woman was on Cyclops’ Lookout, the observation platform at the front of the ship. She’d been there for the past hour. Did Tom want to check on the situation?
He went.
The woman stood at one side of the observation platform, staring up at the sliver of a moon. The wind tousled her curly hair.
“Susan,” he said, and she turned to look at him.
“Hi, Tom. What are you doing out here at this hour?”
“Just checking up on things. Where’s your friend Mary?”
Susan shrugged. “Abducted by aliens,” she said solemnly. She was drunk, Tom thought. He wondered how many Flaming Rum Monkeys she had consumed.
“Ian said you left the bar with her.”
“I did. Then she disappeared. Abducted by aliens.” She was gazing at the horizon. “I heard some wolves howling and I came looking for them.”
“Wolves?” he said.
“They sounded like wolves,” she said. “I suppose they could have been drunken Clampers. There are so many po
ssibilities.”
Tom leaned against the railing beside her. She wasn’t making much sense, but she seemed relaxed and cheerful and a little drunk. “So what are you doing up here?”
“Watching a UFO.” She pointed up at a blinking light crossing the constellation of Orion. “I figure it could be the aliens who abducted Mary.” She smiled, clearly joking.
Tom watched the blinking light in silence for a moment. “I could ask the navigator if he knows what it is. He pays attention to satellites and such.”
“You could do that. But if he doesn’t know, he’ll just explain it away. Swamp gas, he’ll say.” She watched the blinking light for a moment. “What do you think UFOs are?” she asked him.
Tom frowned at her. “What do you mean?”
“Some people think that they’re swamp gas. Some people think that they are filled with little green men who are coming to rescue us. Some people think they are filled with little green men who are coming to destroy us. What do you think?”
“Remember the other night when Max said that people lie,” Tom said. “I don’t think they always know that they’re lying. I think sometimes, people make things up and decide to believe in them.”
Susan nodded, staring out to sea. “Sort of like a dream that everyone agrees to believe in,” she said. “Sort of.”
She turned her head and studied his face. “Did you ever watch The Twilight Zone when you were a kid?”
The summer that Tom was ten years old, he had watched The Twilight Zone with his father every Thursday night. It had been reruns, all reruns, but his father had loved the show.
Tom’s father had been a plumber, a big, hard-working man with callused hands. Tom had two older brothers, but they had spent their Thursday evenings with friends, with girls, in the parks, on the street corners. Tommy had spent his days with friends, but on Thursday evenings, after dinner, he would sit with his dad on the battered brown sofa. He remembered it well.
He could hear his mother in the kitchen, washing the dinner dishes. His dad held a can of beer in one big hand, a cigarette in the other. Tommy could have had a glass of lemonade if he had gone into the kitchen to get it. But his mother would have put him to work—drying dishes, running an errand, something, anything. His mother thought TV was a waste of time. So Tommy stayed with his dad, laying low and hoping to escape her notice.