“Then you take this camera pen and bring me picture of inside of empty box,” Mrs. Abdurov said, “so I know you really look. You are sweet boy, Jeremiah, and I trust you. But you are stupid and sentimental, so I verify.”
* * *
Jeremiah’s grasp of mathematics was rudimentary at best, but according to his understanding of statistics, the fact that his morning thus far had been such an unmitigated and relentless disaster meant that he could expect a sharp upturn in his fortunes at any moment. So promised the law of averages or some such thing—some variation on the general idea of lightning not striking the same tree twice (Jeremiah being, in this analogy, the tree, and everything else on the Einstein IV the lightning).
But at 11:15 Jeremiah discovered that he had a bone to pick with the next statistician he happened to run across.
Mrs. Mayflower, stealthy as ever, finally showed up, peeking her head around the corner of the office door. Once she confirmed that Jeremiah was alone, the rest of her body followed with the same abrupt energy, as if she bathed daily in restorative waters. Today she came dressed for an ancient fox hunt in country pants and jacket, crowned with a curl-brimmed hat cocked almost sideways on her head, held in place with a hairpin that would have qualified as a concealed weapon back in Detroit or anywhere else less civilized than Edwardian England.
“I am here,” she announced, and then paused, as if not sure that she wanted to diminish this assertion by qualifying it, “for my bandora.”
“Hello, Mrs. Mayflower,” said Jeremiah. “Unfortunately it’s not done.”
“For two days I have tried to fetch my property: one day you were absent entirely, replaced by that older gentleman, and on the second day the hallway outside your door was consistently occupied by either a brooding young man skulking around in the shadows or a hippie with appalling leg warmers. Now that you are finally where you are supposed to be, when you are supposed to be there, and your hallway is finally free of brooding young men and hippies, you tell me that in two days you have not managed to perform routine maintenance on my bandora? This is unacceptable, young man.”
“I apologize, Mrs. Mayflower. If you could come back tomorrow—”
“I need time to practice for the talent show,” she said. “As one of the great cellists of a bygone era said: one day without practice, I notice. Two days, the critics notice. Three days, everyone notices. I have now gone three days without practicing. When I rejoin the society of those less fortunate than myself—some who have even made their own money—I intend to come bearing gifts befitting my station, including a performance that will move them. I cannot give them this gift without practicing, and I cannot practice without my bandora. Do you understand?”
Jeremiah could find no flaw in this chain of reasoning, and admitted as much.
“Then I will return tomorrow,” said Mrs. Mayflower, “and if my bandora is not ready, I will take the matter up with Mr. Grubel.”
With that she left, employing the same dignified counter-intelligence measures as she had upon her arrival.
16
The Title of Your Next Autobiography
Still Tuesday (5 days until arrival)
The next 45 minutes were quiet—restoring some modicum of Jeremiah’s faith in the law of averages and the statisticians who had sworn to uphold it—but Jeremiah had no desire to tempt fate by waiting in the office one minute longer than necessary, so on the absolute pin-prick of noon he locked up and left for the cafeteria.
He felt the walls of the ship closing in on him. It now seemed to Jeremiah that the moment Grubel had called him into the financial office, he had fallen through the thin ice of sanity, and the ensuing struggle not to drown hadn’t left him the time or mental space to consider just how screwed he really was. Now, with the dubious benefit of such reflection and the portentous return of Mrs. Mayflower, Jeremiah realized exactly how hard it had become even to maintain in good working order the list of insoluble problems that were going to land him on this ship for another 2/20 years, let alone figure out how to resolve them. He tried to take stock of his problems as Ms. Domenico had taught him, but the exercise did not go well.
Mrs. Abdurov and Mr. Drinkwater, locked in dance of love and hate: (sound of screaming)
Breaking into Mr. Drinkwater’s safe deposit box at Mrs. Abdurov’s insistence: (sound of screaming)
Procuring a stage in the next four days: (sound of screaming)
Mrs. Chapin’s revolution: (sound of screaming)
Canadian stalker: (sound of screaming)
Jack’s quest to get mellow: (sound of screaming)
Luis’s legal worries: (sound of screaming)
Boyle’s maybe murder: (sound of screaming)
Carolus the Bold still missing: (sound of screaming)
Marya Jana vanished as well: (sound of screaming)
Mrs. Mayflower’s bandora broken and demanded: (sound of screaming)
Katherine drinking coffee and eating breakfast with The Specimen rather than Jeremiah: (deep sighs and sound of screaming)
Part of Jeremiah’s brain, inspired by the sound of screaming, proposed a plan of raw panic—sprinting down the hallway while screaming the above catalogue of his misfortunes, waving his arms, perhaps bashing his head into things, without much focus on the longer or even medium term, which would just have to take care of themselves. And Jeremiah had to admit that this plan had a lot to recommend it—for one thing, at the moment it was about as much as he felt capable of.
But before Jeremiah could quite accede, still another part of his brain weighed in. This part barked like an old veteran, heroic and bandaged, no longer in possession of all his limbs, leaning on crutches and waving off assistance with insane, gleaming eyes.
“Fuck that candyass arm-waving!” it said. “All these things you can’t do? All these problems you can’t solve? Find one you can, and solve it! And then another, and solve that! And another! Another! And at the end of the day, Jeremiah, if we go down, we’re going to go down swinging so hard, burning in such a blaze of fuck-you glory, that they’ll write songs about us for generations—fucking generations, I tell you!”
This part of his brain was clearly mad as a hatter, but Jeremiah found its never-say-die attitude oddly attractive. He’d never imagined himself thinking such thoughts, and he felt both proud and ridiculous, as if he were trying on an outfit in a radical new style, checking himself in the mirror, scared to admit that it just might actually—dare he say it?—flatter him. Was that really all it took to be one of those never-say-die people? Just not to say die? Well then—he’d give it a shot.
“Proud of you, son,” said the grizzled old veteran. He shifted his weight onto a single crutch so he could give Jeremiah a gesture of approbation with his remaining thumb. The grizzled old veteran’s zeal dimmed just a tad when Jeremiah decided that the first problem he’d take a crack at solving would be lunch.
* * *
Jeremiah’s excommunication from the Mexican table remained in force, but he found Katherine on the other end of the cafeteria and sat down without asking. She looked up, raised her eyebrows, and returned to her synthed ham and pea soup.
“I feel like I owe you an apology,” said Jeremiah.
“I feel the same way,” Katherine replied.
“I appreciate that, but you don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“No, you idiot. I also feel that you owe me an apology.”
“Oh. Then we’re in agreement.” Jeremiah could have hoped agreement might feel sweeter than this. “So: I’m sorry. Sorry as a Canadian.”
“For what, exactly?”
This, Jeremiah recognized, was the million-credit question. He had always thought of apology as a fine art, and of himself as a five-year-old scribbling on a dirty napkin with a dull brown crayon. There seemed to be some agreement in place between the polite men and women of the world, that an apology represented not a chance to actually apologize, but to dance an intricate sarabande around unspoken truths.
You did not apologize for not liking your mother in law—you did not even acknowledge that fact, though all parties knew it to be true. Rather you professed with great vehemence the special apartment you kept for the great lady in your heart, all the while regretting the misinterpretation, misspeaking, or miscue that might have led someone to believe that she might ever have found its doors barred to her passage.
Jeremiah had tried this dance many times, and discovered that, when it came to the subtle fox-trot of the apology, he had two left feet. Inevitably such apologies left the apologee piqued and Jeremiah exhausted, and the prospect of playing that scene with Katherine was so unappealing that Jeremiah decided to try something new—something radical—something completely inadvisable: honesty, which many a silver tongue and straight face had, with perfect disingenuousness, recommended as the best policy. If she was going to be angry with him, let her be angry for the things he had said and done, and let him be clear about what those were.
“First of all,” Jeremiah said, “I’m sorry for taking it out on you with all that ‘snatch and grab’ stuff when really I was just upset because I was a little jealous—which I’m allowed to be.”
Katherine looked at him suspiciously, like an experienced chess player unsure whether the child across the board from her has just made a move strong beyond his years or simply plunked a random piece on a lucky square.
“Second of all, I’m sorry I took you and your help for granted. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Katherine crossed her arms. She looked almost nervous, as if she were watching a gymnast dismount after a solid showing on the pommel horse, and feared he might not stick the landing.
“Finally, I’m not sorry that I asked for your help, or that you gave it. We make a good team, and when the shit hit the fan, you were clutch. And I for one thought the whole thing was larky.”
Katherine raised her eyebrows again, but her expression this time was different.
“All right,” she said, “apology accepted. Don’t look so pleased with yourself—you’re still a jerk.” She resumed eating her soup.
“Now that we’re square,” said Jeremiah, “can I ask you something?”
“As long as it’s not about John Battle.”
“No, it’s about Mrs. Mayflower.”
“What about her?”
“Exactly,” said Jeremiah. “What about her? My friends at the Mexican table won’t even talk to me since I mentioned her name, and when Grubel found out I was fixing her bandora he practically fell all over himself trying to be nice to me. Who is she?”
“She’s a ghost story,” Katherine said. “Supposedly she haunts the halls of the Einstein IV at night. I’ve heard she was killed during construction of the ship, I’ve heard lost love drove her to suicide. But as far as a bunch of people on board believe, you’re repairing a bandora for a phantom.”
“Grubel doesn’t seem like the kind to believe in ghost stories.”
“No, and despite your many flaws, you don’t seem like the type to tell them. Plus there’s the bandora itself, which we have pretty solid evidence is—well, solid.”
“So then who is she, if she’s real?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
“I don’t think she’s disposed too favorably towards me—and that’s just going to get worse when she sees the state of her bandora.”
“The repairs aren’t going well?” Katherine asked.
“That’s putting it mildly,” said Jeremiah. “But I’m on this kick where I’m trying to get in touch with my inner grizzled veteran.”
“Sorry?”
“You know how you get in touch with your inner child and reawaken your sense of naive wonder?”
“I’ve heard of that, yes.”
“I’m trying to do the same thing with my inner grizzled veteran—trying to never say die, to just pick a problem and solve it. But I think maybe Mrs. Mayflower is the wrong place to start.”
“Why don’t you tell me all your problems, and I can help you pick the right one?” said Katherine.
“You really want to hear this?”
“If it will help me stop wondering what’s in this soup,” she said, “I’m all ears.”
* * *
“I have to hand it to you,” Katherine said, pointing her spoon at the empty bowl, “your troubles were so engrossing that I don’t even remember eating that. I never realized that iguanas were basically the Houdinis of the animal kingdom.”
“Recently I decided I was going to title my autobiography ‘A Business of Ferrets.’ Now I’m leaning towards ‘A Mess of Iguanas.’”
“Like the term of venery?”
Jeremiah nodded, delighted and saddened at the same time. He resisted the urge to point out that the Specimen probably thought a “term of venery” was a name for social diseases that you could use at dinner. More evidence—if any was needed—that he did not deserve someone of Katherine’s caliber.
“I like it,” said Katherine. “That could be the title of your next autobiography.”
“So where do I start? Mr. Drinkwater? Jack? Mrs. Chapin?”
“Boyle,” said Katherine.
“Is that really a problem, though, as opposed to a mystery?”
“It’s not a problem or a mystery: it’s an opportunity,” said Katherine. “A chance to cut the Gordian knot. Every authority on this ship thinks Boyle was a suicide. But if you prove he was murdered—by finding the murderer—then all of a sudden you’re a hero. The waves on Earth all go crazy for the story: ‘Disinherited Amateur Sleuth Cracks Case in Deep Space.’ Golden Worldlines owes you big time. A broken bandora here, a missing iguana there—they can’t ding you for such details at that point. Not without risking a gigantic PR backlash. Prove Boyle was murdered, and solve all your problems in one stroke.”
“But what if he wasn’t murdered? Then the whole thing would just be a wild goose chase and a colossal waste of time.”
“You kiss your inner grizzled veteran with that mouth?” said Katherine.
“I like this girl,” said Jeremiah’s inner grizzled veteran.
“We struck out on motive,” Katherine continued, “which leaves means and opportunity.”
“Means turned into a nightmare—anyone could get their hands on some pesticide.”
“Then how about opportunity? The murderer had to get into Boyle’s room to give him the pesticide.”
“The keycards!” said Jeremiah. “Do they keep logs of when and where they’re used?”
“I don’t know. But I know who will.”
“Who?”
Katherine looked at him.
“Oh,” he said, catching on. “Of all the people I would never in a million years ask for help, you want me to ask him?”
“I want you to ask yourself if you’re the type of detective who will do whatever it takes to solve the case.”
“What other types are there to choose from?”
“The types who should be getting ready to spend another two years on board the Einstein IV.”
“I’m the first type,” said Jeremiah. “I guess.”
* * *
“Hey you,” said The Specimen, stepping back and inviting Katherine into the security office. “Ah—I see you brought your roommate.”
“I’ve never properly introduced you two,” said Katherine, with a voice that could smooth a tablecloth. “John, this is—”
“We’ve met,” Jeremiah and John Battle said at the same time and in the same tone.
“Jeremiah and I were wondering if you kept logs of room access—what time the doors opened, stuff like that.”
“Yes,” said John Battle, warily.
“And would you still have the logs from three days ago?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“That’s great. Would you let us see them?”
“No,” said John Battle.
“Because of guest privacy?” asked Katherine.
“Yes.”
“About that,”
Jeremiah said. “What if the guest in question were—how do I put it—no longer with us?”
“You mean Boyle,” said John Battle.
“He doesn’t exactly need his privacy guarded anymore, does he?” Jeremiah said. “Not in his condition.”
“Yeah, Katherine, it’s great to see you, but this doesn’t seem like something you should be involved in,” said John Battle. “And I don’t have time. You see what’s going on back there?”
He pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to where the second security officer was scowling at a monitor. Jeremiah had never seen this officer before—he supposed that, since this Specimen #2 was merely a recruitment poster come to life rather than the incarnation of a Greek god, Golden Worldlines did their best to keep him tucked away in the back office, safely out of sight.
“We’re doing our pre-arrival security audit,” John Battle continued. “It’s a pain in the ass in the best of circumstances, which these aren’t. So if you could stop playing detective or doing whatever it is you’re doing, I’d really appreciate it.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Katherine said to John Battle.
“You mean for another minute?”
“No, I mean in the hall.”
Jeremiah did his inconspicuous best to eavesdrop through the door, but Specimen #2 had given up even the pretense of continuing his audit and was giving Jeremiah the hairy eyeball (which, Jeremiah noted, was the only hairy thing on him—he looked as if he performed his morning ablutions with baby oil).
After a couple minutes the door opened again and John Battle came back in. He walked right past without acknowledging Jeremiah, whom Katherine waved out into the hall before the door closed.
“John’s going to get the logs,” she said. “We’ll only have a couple minutes with them, so be ready.”
“And he agreed to do this out of the goodness of his heart?” said Jeremiah.
World Enough (And Time) Page 17