The Girl With a Symphony in Her Fingers

by Michael G. Coney

  Charles smiled blandly. “I’ve been called names before.”

  Later that evening, as we drank beer in the cabin, I asked Charles, “What does it really feel like to be called … that, you know?” I must have had several drinks by then. “I mean, don’t you feel pretty degraded? It sort of subtracts from your individuality.”

  Charles grinned. “Always trying to pump me, aren’t you, Joe? I often wonder if you’re a revolutionary on the quiet, gathering information.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not a Foe of Bondage.”

  “But Carioca Jones is right, you know,” he said surprisingly. “I am a Spare Parts man. I’ve wagered my body against a shorter sentence. I went into it with my eyes open and so far I’ve been lucky. And I don’t mind Doug’s sling-gliding, because I’ve done it myself and I know the thrill of it all. Now that’s where Carioca Jones is wrong. I know that we would glide whether or not, uh, spare parts were available. Miss Jones doesn’t know that. She can’t. She’s a woman.”

  I addressed Doug, pushing it a bit further. “Doug, just supposing you smashed yourself up and you needed, say, a leg. Would you use Charles? Or would you spend the rest of your life with a tin leg, watching Charles walk about whole?”

  “The beer has brought honesty,” said Doug quietly. “And I can say in all honesty that I don’t know. And it’s one thing about myself that I never want to know.”

  During those days of preparation there were constant undercurrents at the club, which occasionally surfaced in outbursts of temper or, in the case of the prison governor, a mood of deepening gloom. Heathcote Lambert was becoming increasingly preoccupied, and frequently could only recall himself to Committee business with an obvious effort.

  “The Foes causing you problems these days, huh, Heath?” boomed Walter Ramsbottom on one such occasion—and Lambert seemed hardly to hear him. Certainly there had been considerable exposure of the penal system on News-pocket recently; it seemed every time I glanced at my pocket portovee some politician was under fire, some ex-con waving his steel arm at a sympathetic studio audience.

  The results of the Penal Reform Act were coming home to roost. The time had come for certain ex-members of the Ambulatory Organ Pool to be released, and the public was becoming suddenly aware that it had created a monster in the guise of social justice—cells-full of monsters, in fact.

  I still felt a slow fury whenever I thought of the prison officers’ curious moral code and, unfairly perhaps, I tended to identify them as the oppressors of Joanne. They were here and now; whereas the Penal Reform Act was a somewhat nebulous abstraction. You can’t punch an idea on the nose, and I wanted to hit at the state pen and those in charge of it.

  I didn’t at that time think the Foes of Bondage were suitable allies. They were a bunch of female crackpots. Not that I have anything against women—far from it—but there is no denying that the middle-aged unmarried female is more inclined to get herself involved in social and community organizations and action groups than her male counterpart. Maybe this is indicative of the female’s more highly developed social conscience; I would like to think it is. But although on paper such organizations are fine and benevolent bodies, nevertheless the actions they tend to take can be nothing short of destructive. So it was with the Foes of Bondage.

  Looking back on those days, it now seems to me that I was becoming obsessed. At times, I would make a deliberate effort to transfer my rancor to the crew of the Ancia Telji; this was not difficult, since the recollection of those bastards leaving me to drown was etched vividly into my brain. I made attempts to trace the ship but without success; indeed, I seemed to come up against a wall of silence. I suspected that this was due to a recent fishing dispute with a neighboring Latin country which had caused the authorities to tread very warily in matters concerning foreign vessels. And Warren Rennie was no help at all.

  From time to time I would climb onto the promontory south of Black Bay—which juts well out into the Strait—and spend an hour or so watching the passing yachts and occasional merchantman through binoculars, but without success—and I’m not sure what I would have done, had I spotted her. Maybe I was still a shade unbalanced those days; yet at the time my actions seemed perfectly logical.

  Then, one windy evening, somebody came into the club and told us that there was an old coaster in trouble, out in the Strait.…

  8

  The strong onshore wind had freshened almost to gale force and this, together with the outcrops of rock in the middle of the rough track, made the journey up to Black Point a difficult one. Finally I killed the engine, and the swaying, bucking hovercar steadied as it sank to solid ground. I looked around at the gloomy twilight, wondering what I had come for. The lights of the state pen gleamed down to my left; in the distance down the right coastline I could see the Skipper’s Marina and the clubhouse. Ahead, the gray sea tossed angrily and the area around Wolf Rock was a turmoil of spouting spray. The rain gusted against the windshield and I turned on the wipers. It was a good night for driving quietly home and enjoying a drink in comfortable surroundings.

  Then I noticed the activity on the concrete wharf near the foot of the penitentiary walls. A group of men, their oilskins flapping like bats’ wings, were busy around a large hoverlaunch. They stripped the covers from around the skirting and climbed in, while other men watched, huddled in their waterproofs. They were too far below for me to recognize any faces.

  Spray fountained around the base of the vessel as it slid down the slipway into the turbulent water; seconds later the high whine of turbines reached me. The hoverlaunch was big, probably sixty feet long; but even so it was not the type of craft I would like to ride with an easterly gale blowing straight into the bay. In fact there would be very few vessels abroad in the Strait tonight. From my vantage point I could see the ferry terminal beyond the pen; the big hover-ferry was stationary, the service suspended until dawn.

  I looked out to sea again, shivering in sympathy with anyone who had to be out on such a wretched night; then something caught my eye. As the windshield wipers cleared my vision I saw a large vessel; then rain flooded down the glass again. I saw it again, long and black. I climbed out of the car; the wind snatched the door from my grasp and slammed it shut behind me. With eyes half closed I peered into the driving rain and now I saw it clearly—a large displacement vessel with the appearance of a coaster, crabbing across the Strait at right angles to the strong current, heading directly for Black Bay beneath me.

  I climbed quickly back into the hovercar and looked through the side window, where the rain was not so fierce. The hoverlaunch was well under way, forging through the tossing water toward the wide bay entrance where Wolf Rock stood like a sentinel; I caught sight of the coaster, nearer now, bucking and plunging toward me with the wind behind her.

  I think it was the ponderous, heaving inevitability of her approach that convinced me something was indeed wrong. The launch was hove-to now, riding the waves awkwardly in the lee of Wolf Rock, unable to go farther as the steep seas nullified her lift. I wondered what the launch was hoping to achieve, what she was waiting for. One thing was sure; everybody was waiting for something. I could sense it in the stormy air, in the position of the rolling launch, in the attitudes of the huddled men on the wharf—while the coaster came barreling on.

  A rocket leaped into the twilight, bursting blood against the dull clouds. I heard the report, watched another trail arch upward, another crimson starburst. Still the coaster came on.

  At a guess, the heavy following seas had damaged her steering gear, while her engines were not powerful enough to turn her or even hold her, in those seas. Maybe she only had one screw, maybe that was damaged; I don’t know. Whatever the reason for her distress, she plowed on, turned almost beam-on to the waves now, so that she rolled viciously.

  She was headed directly for Wolf Rock.

  A siren wailed from the tower of the state pen and I saw men running among the buildings as the floodlights came on. I heard the de
tonation as the coaster launched another distress flare. I watched the tall pen gates swing open, watched the uniformed men pouring through, running down the short road to the wharf.

  The beam of a searchlight sprang from the hoverlaunch and eyed the doomed ship like a voyeur. Black hull plates, rusted upperworks glistened in the wetness.

  It was all intense and real and here and now, nothing like a 3-V drama as I found myself standing in the driving rain, staring down at the eternal sight of Man losing his battle against the sea. The hoverlaunch was holding at full power, spray gouting unevenly from the sideskirts as the tall waves rolled by. The coaster came on, an ancient ruin, now broadside to the waves and rolling so that the decks were constantly awash. Spray leaped from Wolf Rock just a few yards away.

  The coaster struck.

  I saw her lurch and after a while I heard the noise, muffled but huge; and I could make out the little men scuttling about the wet deck as though it were an upturned stone. I watched as she pivoted slowly and came free, drifting on across the bay toward where I stood, listing as she took water through the wound where Wolf Rock had ripped the guts out of her. I was aware of other cars arriving, of doors slamming around me, but I paid them scant attention.

  The coaster came on, much closer now, and I saw men jumping, God knows with what desperate purpose, into the maelstrom that was Black Bay. I saw the hoverlaunch move in, maneuvering clumsily as the wind swept her around, throwing lines to the struggling figures in the windblown surf, finally pausing at a respectful distance from the coaster, waiting like a scavenger.

  Then the guards arrived, a file of uniformed men trotting past me, stationing themselves at intervals along the clifftop. They stood peering downward, leaning against the wind with capes flapping.

  A sudden hand tapped me on the shoulder. “I must ask you to leave.”

  I swung around to find a man in prison uniform with his hands cupped to his mouth, shouting at me against the storm. “What the hell are you talking about?” I shouted back. He wore silver pips on the shoulders of his streaming trench coat and I took him to be some sort of officer; but I am ignorant of ranks and have no intention of learning.

  I saw Doug Marshall grappling with another official. “There are people down there who are going to need our help, for Christ’s sake!” he was shouting.

  I moved nearer to them; Charles was there too, and a few more besides. It seemed to me that we were strong enough to tell officialdom to go to hell.

  I was followed by the officer who had first addressed me; he spoke to us all, rivers of rain streaming down his broad face. “I must ask you people to have some consideration for those poor wretches down there. Their lives depend on the efficiency of my men, and I will not tolerate a bunch of amateurs fouling up the operation. For God’s sake, don’t you have any pity? Must you gape around like a pack of ghouls?”

  Respect and fear for the law is deeply instilled into us these days—one of the consequences of the Penal Reform Act. With a lurching sensation in my stomach I realized that we were trying to buck authority. I began to edge toward my car. “Now get the hell out of here, all of you!” someone shouted.

  “Just hold on there,” came a new voice, and I paused. It was Charles speaking; he stood lazily above the prison officer, smiling easily. “I really can’t see the necessity for this kind of talk,” he said. “We’re all members of the Peninsula Sling-gliding Club—whereas your men, I understand, are merely prison guards. We’ve had much more experience of sea rescue than you have. We do it every day. So just shut up and let’s get on with important things like lifesaving, shall we? That is, unless you want to find your picture on Newspocket as the man who rejected expert assistance and caused a lot of people to die. We all know there are going to be lives lost here—but I’ll make goddamned sure that you’re blamed for every one. May I have your name, please?”

  The prison officer stared at him for a second, then strode rapidly away toward a stocky figure which I recognized as Gallaugher. They held a short conversation, and the whiteness of Gallaugher’s face turned in our direction; after a while the prison officer nodded and began to walk back to us.

  So it was Gallaugher who was in charge, Gallaugher who had given the orders for us to be removed. I wondered what the hell he had been thinking of—and why he hadn’t addressed us directly. He, too, was a member of the club. I decided to tackle him, took a step forward, but he had gone.

  “Take the area of cliff to the right of my men,” snapped the prison officer. “You’ll find ropes there already.”

  As we hurried to our positions I wondered how the man would have felt, what his reaction would have been, had he known Charles was a bonded man.

  Then there was a cataclysmic grinding, screaming of steel against rock as the coaster struck, immediately below us.

  Fortunately the cliff was not sheer at this point; it descended in a steep slope of salt grass and granite outcrops to the jumble of jagged boulders where the waves pounded, where the coaster now struggled. As I watched, the waves caught her and rolled her against the shore, and the tip of her foremast lay for an instant parallel with the slope, so close that I could have almost stepped forward and touched it. Then it swung away and I became aware once more of the struggling people on the decks, large numbers of men and women sliding about, grabbing for handholds, fighting and screaming and being buried against the gunwales by rolling waves and avalanches of tumbling humanity.

  We drove the hovercars to the edge of the slope and anchored the ropes to them, then scrambled down the short grass as near to the pitching hull as we dared, and shouted to people to jump. A few did, and we grabbed them as they landed stumbling with flailing arms, and we got their hands onto the ropes and set them climbing to safety. Sometimes they fell, or we didn’t grab them in time, and they rolled down the slope to the rocks, where they lay looking up at the hull as it descended on them. They never made much noise; they seemed stunned. They just lay and waited passively to be reduced to so much ground meat—and when the ship rolled away again they were usually gone, and the rocks washed clean. In my horror, this seemed to me a very efficient way to die.

  There were people in the water on the far side of the wreck too; the hoverlaunch was picking these up where possible, although I knew that the current would carry numbers of them around the headland toward Roberts Bay and Dollar Bay and the Skipper’s Marina. Later, we would have to make a complete search of the shoreline.

  Finally there seemed to be nothing more we could do. Hoverbuses had been plying between the promontory and the penitentiary sickroom, and I heard a guard say that a large number of cells had been made ready, and doctors called in from Louise. The ambulopter was busy removing the more serious cases to the Louise General Hospital. We assembled on the clifftop again, coiled up the ropes, and looked at each other while the coaster screamed and groaned below. The guards had spread out and were searching the cliffs farther around the point.

  “My God!” said Doug Marshall to nobody in particular. We seemed in no hurry to disperse; the events of the last couple of hours had forged a bond too strong to be broken immediately. We needed to compare people’s feelings with our own. We needed to debrief.

  “They hardly spoke,” muttered Presdee. “They hardly said a goddamned word, hardly screamed even. Like goddamned zombies.”

  “Shock,” said Ramsbottom wisely. “Shock does strange things to a person.”

  Somebody asked, “Who the hell were they?”

  “God knows,” replied Marshall. “A crowd of cut-rate tourists, maybe? Difficult to say. They were dressed like tourists, I thought. You know how tourists look.”

  “Lousy end to a vacation. Not much of a ship, either.” Ramsbottom peered down at the floodlit wreck grinding and rolling below us. “Ancia Telji,” he read. “Pretty much of an old tub, if you ask me.”

  After leaving Black Point and, surprisingly, being thanked for our efforts by Gallaugher, we reopened the clubhouse for a much-needed last drink. Lat
er I drove along the coast road home.

  It was past three now, and the road deserted. Gusts of rain swept across the low coastal scrub and jolted the hover-car off course; tiredly I fought the wheel, thinking of bed.

  Suddenly I jabbed the emergency brake as a figure lurched into my headlights. I saw the flash of bare legs, I saw long hair blowing stringy in the rain. It was a girl; she half-turned and looked back into the headlights, dazzled, lifting her hand to shield her eyes. There was something very familiar about the gesture and I found myself thinking about the sun, and the south; Halmas, the beach, the banana plantation.

  I flung the door open and jumped out. “Marigold!”

  She saw me coming and collapsed toward me. I caught her, held her as the wind and rain flayed at our clothes. “Take … take the Roberts Bay road,” she mumbled, eyes half closed. “You can’t miss the place, it’s right by the sea—” Her mechanical voice trailed off. She sagged in my arms.

  I dragged her into the passenger seat, arranged her comfortably and shut the door, then climbed in on my side and drove away, fast. Eyes glinted in the headlights as a small pack of land sharks watched us go. I had picked up Marigold just in time. I couldn’t begin to think what she was doing beside me.

  I carried her to the house and was about to call the doctor when she stirred and said something. I laid her on the couch, turned the bath on, and mixed a couple of drinks. When I raised her head and tried to get some scotch into her mouth she kept turning away so I gave up after a while, organized the bath, and took her clothes off. She was as helpless and unresisting as a young baby.

  I called several doctors but got no reply; I told myself that this was because they were all busy at the hospital and the pen, and nothing to do with the fact that it was always impossible to get hold of a doctor at night.