by Pat Murphy
She shrugged, remembering Max’s advice. Sometimes it was easier to avoid telling the whole truth. “I wasn’t there,” she said. “I saw them from the observation deck and went down to join them.”
“Because it looked like so much fun out there?”
She shrugged again. “It looked like they could use a hand.” They left Max and Pat in the doctor’s care, and Tom took Susan to her stateroom. He only asked if she were all right. “I’m fine,” she said. “A little shaky, but fine.”
“Could you tell me what was going on out there?” he asked.
She wet her lips and took a deep breath, deciding that she didn’t want to lie to Tom. “Mary Maxwell and I were watching from the observation deck. Weldon Merrimax was trying to kill Pat. Max went to save her.”
He nodded, looking skeptical. “What happened to those wind-screens?”
“A flying saucer landed on them. That was my doing, I’m afraid. Mary sent in a pack of wolves.”
“Of course,” he said. He was shaking his head. “And where’s Weldon now?”
“A giant squid reached over the railing and snatched him overboard. I think Pat made that up.”
“A giant squid,” he said dryly. “I should have guessed. That would explain everything. And then you raced to their rescue.”
“That’s right.”
He put his arms around her.
She leaned into his embrace, smiling. She considered telling him about the monster in the companionway, then decided against it. He’d had enough to deal with for one night.
BAD GRRLZ’ GUIDE TO PHYSICS
WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?
What do women want?
It’s an old, old question. And I’m pleased to tell you that I know the answer.
What do women want? An explanation.
That’s really all we want. We just want to understand why. Why did he say that? Why, oh why, did he ever do that? And why was that giant squid on the sundeck, anyway?
Women—Bad Grrlz in particular—are interested in the answers to these questions. Like scientists of all kinds, we search desperately, persistently, for an explanation.
In the interest of science, I will explain a few things here.
What, you may ask, was I doing out on the sundeck with that thug Weldon Merrimax?
Well, when I met Weldon Merrimax, he was intriguingly mysterious about the goings-on aboard the Odyssey. He told me he couldn’t explain it all to me just yet. But he said that if I met him on the sundeck at midnight on Halloween, he would explain everything. Who could turn down an invitation like that? A mysterious rendezvous with the promise of an explanation—how intriguing!
Oh, sure—it was stupid to meet him. I’ll grant you that. When I went to the party at Penelope’s, I hadn’t really decided whether I’d go or not—but after a Rum Monkey it started to seem like a fine idea. I figured I’d just slip away and find out what Weldon had to say for himself.
Out on the sundeck, Weldon told me that he was going to kill me. I asked why. (What did I tell you: Bad Grrlz always want an explanation.) And he told me about a dream. He had dreamed he was in a library and he found a book titled Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell. In this book, Weldon Merrimax was just a pseudonym of Max Merriwell. “It wasn’t fair,” he said.
“What does that have to do with me?” I asked him.
“The author was Pat Murphy,” he said. Then he tried to grab me. It was nice of Max to come to my rescue.
Apparently, he had wandered out of his cabin and spotted me in the corridor as I headed out to the sundeck. He decided to follow me. “I was worried about you,” he told me in the infirmary. “I thought you might need some help.”
So I was on the sundeck with Weldon and Max came to rescue me. My memory of events gets a little blurry right after Weldon punched me and I fell in a heap. I’ll tell you: getting punched in real life is a hell of a lot worse than it looks in the movies. This spunky heroine did not immediately leap to her feet to fight back. That really hurt.
While we were in the infirmary, Max told me that I missed seeing a pack of wolves and a flying saucer. I remember blinking away tears just in time to see Weldon Merrimax coming toward me like the killer in a B-movie. He was, I think, going to toss me overboard. I saw a blast of spray shoot up behind him. And I thought about how nice it would be if a giant squid were to snatch him overboard. I imagined a tentacle grabbing the railing.
There it was, just as I had imagined it—a lovely tentacle wrapping itself around the railing. Then I imagined another tentacle, as thick and strong as the first. And there it was. Finally a third tentacle, whipping over the railing and wrapping itself around Weldon’s waist.
As the tentacle dragged Weldon over the side, I managed to struggle to my feet and peer over the railing. I looked into the eye of the monster of my imagination—the giant squid. Its eye was the size of a dinner plate—as black as obsidian, as smooth and unreadable as an ocean swell. As I watched, another wave crashed against the ship. The monster released its grip on the railing and slipped back into the water, taking Weldon with it.
Max told us about the power of the imagination. I’ve always had a good imagination. I’m not sure how all these events fit into my understanding of physics. I’m not sure how to reconcile Schrodinger’s cat and Pat’s giant squid. I don’t know how the mind of this observer influenced the potentialities to bring a giant squid up from the depths. But I think it’s all quite intriguing.
After Weldon sank beneath the waves, Susan came running out to save us. Tom showed up just a few minutes later. Max and I spent an hour or so in the infirmary before Ian came to claim me. Apparently Tom had tracked him down and told him a little about what had happened. The doctor allowed him to take charge of me. We left Max chatting amiably with the doctor.
Ian tried to take me to my stateroom and tuck me into bed, but it takes more than a black eye to slow this Bad Grrl down. I took advantage of his efforts to comfort me. After a bit, his comforting hugs became something less platonic. I took him to his cabin and one thing led to another. (I made sure of that.) He was sleeping like a baby when I woke up this morning and slipped out of his bed. I came to the sundeck to survey the aftermath of last night.
This morning, the weather is clear. The sun is shining; the sea is calm. When I arrived on the sundeck, a workman was painting over the gray marks that the giant squid’s tentacles had left on the white railing. Another was sweeping up the broken glass from the shattered windscreens.
I asked the man sweeping up the glass what had caused the damage, just to see what he would say. “Big waves,” he said. “Fierce storm last night.”
The fierce storm didn’t explain the scorch marks where the saucer had landed, but they wouldn’t be there much longer. The workman with the paint was heading for that patch of deck, preparing to cover over the evidence.
Last night, I asked Ian whether the folks on the bridge had seen what happened on the sundeck. He called up there and asked. He told me that they talked about seeing ball lightning, a rare form of lightning that takes the form of a globe. I looked at him skeptically, and he shrugged. “People see what they want to see,” he said.
The folks on the bridge apparently had nothing to say about the wolves, the giant squid, or the passenger who vanished overboard. Of course, there’s no evidence that Weldon was ever on board—he wasn’t on the passenger list—so he can go missing without provoking an official inquiry. It’s all very convenient.
I lingered on the sundeck long enough to watch the deck crew eradicate all evidence of untoward happenings—painting over the scorch marks, removing the twisted frames of the windscreens. They are on the side of order, after all. And last night’s events were definitely on the side of chaos.
TWENTY-FIVE
The descent into madness is an inevitable part of the process of writing a novel. You can’t escape it. Just go with it. You really have no choice.
—from On Writing Novels
; by Max Merriwell
That night, Susan slept soundly in Tom’s bed, rocked by the storm waves, soothed by the rattle of rain on the window. She had waited up until he was off duty, and then joined him for a nightcap in his cabin. One thing led to another, as she had known it would. And she spent the night.
And as she slept, she dreamed. In her dream, she stood on the balcony of her own stateroom. The sea was covered with mist, as if they were sailing over clouds. She wondered what monsters the mist might be hiding, then decided it didn’t matter. She could handle any monsters that might show up.
She heard the glass door slide open and glanced behind her, expecting to see Pat. Mary Maxwell stepped out. Through the glass door, she could see Pat still asleep in bed.
Susan smiled at Mary: “You’re not gone,” she said.
Mary shrugged. “Apparently not. Just thought I’d see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine. Seems like all the troubles are over.”
“You think so?”
“Of course. It was Max and Weldon that stirred everything up. Weldon’s gone and Max seems okay now.”
“So you think everything will calm down?” Mary asked. “I think so.”
Mary looked a little skeptical. She glanced through the glass doors at Pat. “She’s sleeping so peacefully,” Mary said. “She’s dreaming. What do you think she’s dreaming about?”
Susan shrugged. “I have no idea.”
“About you, of course. About us, standing here talking. And if she stopped dreaming about you, where would you be?”
“Right here,” Susan said.
Mary laughed. “You’d be nowhere at all. You’re only a sort of thing in her dream. If she woke up, you’d be gone. Poof! just like that.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Susan said. “What about you?”
“Poof!” Mary said. “just another thing in her dream. Ridiculous or not, it’s true. I just figured it out myself. Why else would Weldon have been after her?”
Susan shook her head and turned away from Mary, looking out over the misty water. She shivered as a cold breeze blew on her face.
She blinked and she realized that she was in bed, cuddled up against a warm, masculine back. Tom turned over, then, putting his arms around her and pulling her close. In the darkness, she could see the glowing numbers of the digital clock. It was five thirty in the morning. Tom had to get up at six, she remembered.
“Good morning,” Tom said. “I have to get up at six.” He kissed her. “But we have a little time.”
They made the most of the time they had.
“Be careful about deciding you want to be a fiction writer. It’s not an easy path. You have to rely on your imagination—and your imagination is a dangerous thing.” Max looked bright and alert, despite the alarms and excursions of the previous night. “Fiction writers are all a little crazy, and science fiction writers may be crazier than most. It comes, I think, from spending far too much time alone, imagining new worlds inhabited by strange people, making up stories, talking to yourself—and having conversations with your imaginary friends, people who don’t really exist. It’s not such a big step from imagining conversations to hearing voices.”
At the end of workshop, Max smiled at Susan and Pat. “I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch,” he said.
Pat nodded just as Susan noticed Tom and Ian stepping in the door. Tom waved to Susan. “I thought you might want to have lunch,” he said.
“I’d love to,” she said.
“Great,” said Ian. “We’ll all go together.”
Susan frowned and glanced at Tom, thinking he might suggest that they break off from the group and have lunch alone, but he just nodded, going along with Ian’s suggestion.
Susan sat between Tom and Pat, with Max and Ian on the other side of the table. Tom took Susan’s hand, smiling at her.
She should be upset, she thought. It was the last day of the cruise. She had spent two nights with Tom, and soon they would be saying good-bye. They hadn’t talked about what was going on between them. There hadn’t been time for that.
But she was surprisingly relaxed. Something would work out, though she had no idea what.
“How are you feeling this morning?” Tom asked Pat.
The skin surrounding Pat’s eye had darkened to shades of deep purple and blue, forming a spectacular shiner. But she was smiling.
“Just fine,” she said.
“How about you, Max?” Tom asked.
Max smiled. “Quite well,” he said. “I think I’ve finally got a handle on the book I need to write.”
“Can you tell us about it?” Ian asked.
Max nodded. “It’s obvious, really. A serial killer on a cruise ship.” Susan stared at him. “An imaginary character who is a serial killer?”
Max shook his head. “Oh, no—an actual killer. Seems to me a cruise ship is the perfect environment for a killer. It’s so easy to dispose of the evidence. In the end, the killer turns out to be the ship’s chief security officer.” He smiled at Tom. “Sorry, Tom. It’s just that you’re the least likely candidate. I think it will be one of Weldon’s best.”
Tom nodded. “Speaking of unlikely,” he said slowly, “I was hoping that the two of you might be able to explain what happened last night.” He was looking at Pat and Max.
Max shrugged. “You know, I don’t much care for explanations. I’ve found they usually just get in the way.”
Tom looked at Pat, but Ian spoke up first. “I disagree,” he said. “I love explanations. I like to have as many as possible. Then I can choose among them. Or pile them all together. Explanations are easy. We are in the Bermuda Triangle where strange things happen. Dreamers in parallel dimensions are dreaming overlapping dreams. We have tapped into a quantum reality where many possibilities overlap—and the overlapping realities are bleeding through into this one. Why have just one answer when so many are available?”
“But that’s not satisfying,” Pat said.
Ian shrugged. “Maybe not for you. It’s satisfying for me.”
Susan squeezed Tom’s hand under the table. “Reality is a much more flexible concept than most people think,” she said. “The borders are fuzzy. You can do a lot with a little bit of dreaming and a lot of imagination. Isn’t that so, Max?”
Max nodded. “Absolutely,” the writer said.
Tom shook his head. “What about all those cryptic notes?” he asked.
“Not cryptic,” Ian said. “Ambiguous, perhaps, but that’s the nature of the I Ching. It offers possibilities. What you do with them is up to you.” He looked a round the table. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one question left now. What’s next?” He smiled at Susan. “I wanted to talk to you about that. The ship needs a librarian, you see.”
Apparently, Ian had been busy. It seems that the ship needed a librarian for its winter cruise season in the Mediterranean. Ian had convinced both the Captain and the company that he had found the perfect candidate and now all he had to do was convince her to apply.
Susan listened in a daze. She looked at Tom, who was grinning. “So I’d stay on board the ship?” she said. She’d stay aboard, she’d have a chance to see if this thing with Tom was going anywhere, she’d sail around the Mediterranean and have adventures.
“You’d move to crew quarters, of course,” Ian said. “And you need to fill out an application, but that’s just a formality. It’s all set, really.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I have an apartment in San Francisco. I don’t see …” The sentence trailed off as she thought of the apartment. It wasn’t really her apartment. It was Harrys apartment as far as she was concerned. With Harry’s furniture and Harry’s television and Harry’s stereo. The books were hers, but the rest was Harrys.
“I figured that I could take care of your apartment until you get back,” Pat said.
Ian and Pat talked about details while Susan listened, feeling that matters had been taken from her hands and handed over to som
eone much more competent. She was willing to give it a try.
Susan sat in the library, reading the end of Through the Looking-Glass to a group of children. Alice had returned home and was talking to a black kitten about her adventures on the other side of the looking glass.
“‘Now, Kitty, let’s consider who it was that dreamed it all. This is a serious question, my dear, and you should not go on licking your paw like that …! You see, Kitty, it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course—but then I was part of his dream, too! Was it the Red King, Kitty? … Oh, Kitty, do help to settle it! I’m sure your paw can wait!’ But the provoking kitten only began on the other paw, and pretended it hadn’t heard the question.”
“Which do you think it was?” Susan closed the book and set it down in her lap. She smiled at the children. “Any ideas?” she asked.
One little boy said it was the Red King and one little girl said it was Alice. Another little girl made a long and earnest speech about her own black kitten back home, which didn’t really seem to relate to the topic at hand. And another boy said he didn’t care whose dream it was but he liked Tweedledum best because he got to put a cooking pot on his head when he dressed up in armor (the illustration showed that), and the little boy thought that was a good idea. The discussion reached no conclusions, which was fine, since Susan hadn’t expected that it would. Some children went with Trudy to the swimming pool, and parents came to reclaim others. One mother stopped to talk with Susan.
“What a wonderful job you have!” the young mother said. Susan nodded. “I certainly do,” she said.
“How on earth did you end up here?” the woman asked.
Susan thought for a moment, watching the woman’s face. “Well,” she said easily, “a month ago I decided to leave my husband and run away to sea. I sailed with the Odyssey to Europe. It was such a wonderful trip, I decided to stay aboard.”
There are so many stories to choose from, Susan thought as she watched the mother leave with her children. You had to know when to say, “That’s someone else’s story, not mine.” You had to know when to claim a story as your own, even if it didn’t happen quite that way.