Lost Yesterday td-65

by Warren Murphy

  She was built by an Arab prince at the height of Arab oil power, despite warnings from advisers that so much oil in one place would be a danger to the entire world. In its full belly was more wealth than most Third World nations possessed, and its construction cost more than the gross national product of all but three African nations.

  When she was done, only three ports in the world could handle her, and despite the danger of her spills or threats from one nation or another, no one could afford not to use her anymore. Too much money had gone into building her to have her be idle. Dockage cost two million dollars a day. Her insurance premiums were so vast that her government underwrote them.

  When she lumbered across the Atlantic, crewmen competed in long-distance runs across her deck. It took her fifteen minutes to build up cruising speed and thirty miles to stop.

  Only one pilot was allowed to guide her in, and he was flown out to the ship with his crew ten days before the vast island prepared to dock.

  “So you're back. I thought you went down to the Bahamas for some crazy religious convention,” said the harbor pilot as his junior mate climbed aboard the seaplane at their Bayonne dock.

  “It's not crazy,” said the junior mate. “It's a way of life. It's a religion. Like any other religion.”

  The harbor pilot was in his early sixties, with light gray hair and alert blue eyes. He was in better shape physically than his junior mate, who was in his twenties.

  The harbor pilot, Cal Peters, strapped his seat belt and glanced over to the junior mate to do the same to his. Peters knew the lad was a good boy, always a hard worker, but he tended to worry too much. He had often told the boy to “care about what you do, but don't worry about it. Worry won't help you do spit.”

  He thought the boy was taking his advice when he seemed to be worrying less. Of course the junior mate also seemed to be without enough money for lunch at the time, and Peters asked him what was wrong. If anyone on his harbor crew had problems he wanted to know about it before they cropped up while guiding some city-size tanker into dock.

  He found out then about Poweressence.

  “Son,” said Peters, “I don't interfere with any man's religion. How he comes to God is his business. But those people are frauds.”

  “They called Jesus a fraud too, in his time,” said the junior mate. His name was Arthur, and he had graduated from the Coast Guard Academy, served his time, and come to work for the harbor commission right after.

  “But Jesus didn't have a moneymaking operation.”

  “What do you call the Vatican, the poorhouse?”

  “But the Catholic Church provides hospitals and schools. Poweressence only seems to be more expensive for every class you go to.”

  “They aren't classes. They're levels. If you joined, you would see. Your life would enhance itself. You would be happy all the time,” said Arthur.

  “Son,” Peters told Arthur, “the day I am happy all the time is the day I commit myself to a sanitarium.”

  “Happiness is what we are supposed to have. The negative forces have convinced you to be this way.”

  No matter how Cal Peters tried to reason with the young man, Arthur always seemed to have an answer. And then one day he disappeared, saying he was following his better self, and then just as mysteriously he returned. Cal almost refused to let him back on the harbor crew. Except that Peters liked the boy. And against what he thought at the time was his better judgment, he took him back on.

  “Don't go running off again unless you give me plenty of warning. We run a harbor-pilot service here, not some street-corner pencil stand. We have major ships coming in. And the Persia-Saud is the most major.”

  “That was the last time,” Arthur promised.

  It was a small plane, but Cal Peters liked small planes. It gave him a better sense of the wind and the sea as they flew out to the Persia-Saud.

  “What did they have to do down there in the Bahamas anyway? I hear there's trouble down there. A rebellion, sort of.”

  “It's always called trouble when people want to be free,” said Arthur. “When people are tired of taking it anymore. When people are ready to fight to preserve what is holy and good.”

  “So you're a revolutionary now, is that it?” asked Peters.

  “The only revolution I want is within myself.”

  “Just what did you do down there?”

  “I learned to love what was good and hate what was bad.”

  “And who was doing the deciding what was good and what was bad?”

  “It was obvious,” said Arthur. He kept his eyes fixed ahead of him, into the clouds. In the small plane they could see right over the pilot's shoulder at the front windshield. They could feel the vibrations of the engines in their seats.

  “Well then, you're one step up on me, son, because the older I get, the less obvious things seem.”

  “If you get rid of your negative impulses, everything will be obvious.”

  “What a damned dull world that would be,” said Peters. The aircraft pilot laughed. The rest of the crew laughed. Only when the great Persia-Saud Maru came into view ahead of them did they stop laughing at poor Arthur, who could withstand their laughter. He felt he could withstand anything. He knew the one right, true way and they did not. Besides, many of them would be dead within a few days and he would not.

  It was not murder. Murder was when you harmed an innocent. But he had learned in the Bahamas at an absolutely free course, raising him up to where he could control his own destiny, that people were not innocent just because they seemed to be doing nothing harmful.

  You were only innocent when you were helping the positive forces of the world. When evil abounded and you worked within an evil system, you were as guilty as the President of the United States.

  The aircraft pilot circled the Persia-Saud Maru looking for a piece of sea that would not be subject to her massive wake with the undertow force of a whirlpool. In some seas he would have to circle for an hour until explorer boats, now being let down from her building-high decks, could find safe landing for a light seaplane.

  This day on the calm seas they found it rather readily, and the plane put down easily. The power boats, smaller than destroyers but larger than PT boats, anchored the seaplane, and the harbor pilot and his crew went aboard. Arthur went with Cal Peters.

  Before the power boats were allowed near the Persia-Saud, the harbor crew had to be frisked and their baggage searched. This was in accordance with the safety protocols which allowed no uncleared person or vessel within range of the massive ship.

  Cal Peters' bag contained four days of clothing changes and a picture of his wife, along with his charts.

  Arthur Daniels' bag contained twelve course-level books from Poweressence, four days of clothes, and a red plastic water pistol, filled.

  “It's mine,” said Arthur, stopping the ship's inspector from touching it.

  “Fine, so long as it doesn't shoot bullets,” said the inspector.

  “Well, glad to see you're having some fun in your life at least,” said Cal. But he also noticed Arthur had a package of headache capsules, and he had never seen that before. He was relieved to see it apparently had only one capsule inside. At least Arthur hadn't become addicted to anything chemical.

  Addicts, whether alcohol or otherwise, always made sure they had good supplies available. This was a thing Cal Peters had learned to watch out for early on. When you brought in the Persia-Saud you could no more call something this massive back than you could redirect a bullet. What the Persia lacked in speed she made up in size, and Cal could afford no problems.

  Elevator cranks lifted the power boats up her sides. But it was a short lift this day. The Persia-Saud's holds were laden with Arabian light. She had come out of the Arabian Gulf a month ago with enough oil that if it were sold on the spot market immediately it would have shot the skids out from under the already shaky prices. But this load had been sold years before in an agreement with a major oil firm that had been
emptying its Bayonne, New Jersey, tanks for months.

  An entire depot was waiting for her cargo.

  Cal Peters liked the Persia-Saud. Most ships had a pitch to their decks; the Persia had a roll little more noticeable than a sidewalk in Missouri.

  Cal didn't take over immediately. He first held the meeting of the harbor crew. There were the navigator, engineer, junior mates, and the rest, all preparing the schedule of entrance. To stop the ship they had to start slowing down by morning, and take very careful readings every hour as to speed and distance to shore. If the Persia-Saud sighted land going faster than a crawling two knots an hour, no force on earth could stop her from crashing into the dock. But if she went too slowly and the tides caught her, it could mean a day before they got her back in control. She was as touchy as she was massive.

  Arthur Daniels volunteered for the first day, and Cal Peters was glad to see him do it. It showed that despite his eccentricities the boy still cared about the job. And that was the bottom line with Cal Peters and always had been.

  Peters felt good about his decision to accept the boy back despite the unauthorized vacation, right up until Arthur Daniels brought the water pistol onto the captain's desk.

  “Arthur, if the ship's captain ever saw us playing with those things he'd head right back to the Arabian Gulf,” said Peters.

  He saw the little red plastic gun point at him. He saw Arthur pull the trigger. He saw the stream come right at his face. That was it. He was going to fire Arthur, if the nice man wasn't so nice to him, and hadn't given him a shiny silver dollar to play with. He could even put it in his mouth if he wanted. That was very nice. Cal's mommy never let him put things in his mouth like this nice man. All Cal had to do was stay in the room and anytime anyone came in he was to nod.

  “Just nod,” said Arthur. “Good boy. You're a very good boy. That's nice.”

  In that first moment, seeing Mr. Peters responding like a baby, Arthur Daniels had his first doubts about what he was doing. But such was the wisdom of Poweressence that they had prepared him.

  “When you feel guilty, that is an old habit pattern,” he had been told. “You were always made to feel guilty to keep you in line. Guilt is the old way of doing things. We are the new, positive way of doing things.”

  But still, no matter how he focused on his positive essence, he could not dispel the guilt. And there were five days ahead of them. On the fourth day the relief pilot asked why they hadn't started to slow. On the third day he demanded to know and accused Arthur of being insane for trying to shoot him with a water pistol. Now Arthur had two grown men in his hands, neither of whom knew enough not to soil their pants. On the final day, even the captain became aware of problems and seized the bridge. By then it was too late.

  “Why on earth did you do it? Why did you do such a thing?” said the captain.

  Arthur Daniels only smiled. He had taken the pill Mr. Dolomo himself, the finest mind in the world, had personally given him even as the Warriors of Zor stood to salute his sacred mission.

  But unlike Arthur Daniels, the captain of the Persia-Saud Maru did not worry about grown men whose pants smelled, didn't even bother to worry that he would soon have Arthur's undies to worry about. He had a ship headed for Bayonne, New Jersey, and no way to stop it, no time to turn it, and only an hour before an entire city went under a flood of oil.

  In Washington, D.C., the President called Smith in to listen, adding that the Oriental was not needed at this moment.

  “We have that… that Beatrice on the line again,” said the President. His hand covered the speaker.

  “What is she saying?”

  “Says it's all our fault,” said the President, nodding to another line. Smith picked it up.

  “I never like to hurt innocent people. I have nothing against Americans, Mr. President. I am an American. But what will happen in Bayonne, New Jersey, today is all your fault.”

  “What will happen, your Majesty?” asked the President.

  “Your fault it will happen. Stop the anticult bill in Congress before more harm is done.”

  “If I stop it, your Majesty, what will you stop?”

  “I can't stop it now and neither can you. That's why I am telling you. When you think of hurting a beautiful, charming, decent woman again, think of Bayonne, New Jersey. I would advise you to evacuate now.”

  Then the line went dead.

  “Are the advisers ready to invade Harbor Island?” asked Smith.

  “Just about,” said the President. “We've got to get them into protective suits first. That's what's slowing them up. What are the science boys up to?”

  “Nothing yet. They won't even touch it with rubber suits. Experimenting on animals, but it doesn't seem to affect them the same way. Chiun says — and in his own strange ways he often understands things about the body we don't — it possibly only attacks learned memory, intellectually learned memory.”

  “Is there another kind? Instinct isn't memory.”

  “There is, but we had better order Bayonne to evacuate right now.”

  “Where the hell can they evacuate to, Jersey City?” asked the President.

  The Persia-Sand Maru moved slowly into Bayonne, New Jersey, so slow it could make an onlooker, if there were any left, believe that the slightest nudge would stop it. But that was because it was moving at fifteen knots, the speed of a good jogger.

  The thing about the Persia-Saud was it just kept going. It crumpled the offshore rocks, and the force of its lake of oil continued to move at the same speed, taking the upper prow with it as the lower hull stayed behind, dismantling itself on the shore.

  It was as though someone had driven a large lake into Bayonne, New Jersey. The lake was black and sticky and became a tidal wave that swept up the narrow city into Jersey City. There at the ebbing of its powerful thrust it subsided, looking to hovering aircraft like a plateau of liquid black that suddenly lots its energy and widened into the largest parking lot in history, fouling both the neighboring ports of Elizabeth and New York City.

  It was the greatest natural and commercial disaster in history.

  Alone in his new White House office, the President of the United States counted the seconds before the advisers, assisted now by scientists, would invade Harbor Island.

  * * *

  It was a crazy world. Remo heard about the disaster in Bayonne and wondered if Newark policemen were going to be called up to assist. When he was a Newark policeman the Vietnam war was going on. It was a lot of years since then. He was afraid to pick up a newspaper. Everything had changed so much. There had been so many presidents.

  And the Oriental face was still in front of him. It was telling him there was no such thing as a president. Didn't he realize that there were only kings using different titles? Remo should know that. Remo should breathe properly. Remo should let his body fight for him. Remo should return to the Oriental. Remo should return to that funny-sounding place, Sinanju.

  But Remo had never been in Sinanju. And stranger, still, when he got to the ticket window of the airline he would use to take him back to Newark, he noticed two Orientals having difficulty explaining what they needed. They were from Seoul, South Korea, and they wanted to fly to Phoenix, Arizona, where they had a daughter.

  They had difficulty making themselves clear. Remo translated for them. He asked them in Korean where they were going and then he explained to the counter person what they wanted.

  “You speak an old formal sort of Korean. In some parts of the north they speak that,” said the man in Korean.

  And then Remo realized he knew Korean, knew it like English. The thing was, no one had ever taught him Korean. He didn't remember ever learning it. And then he realized that was the language the vision used.

  And he also didn't like the couple's Korean. It was less precise than the language he knew. And for some incredibly strange reason he was thinking of them as foreigners because they spoke that bad Korean.

  Koreans were better than others,
but not all Koreans. One was only home in Sinanju, he thought. Sinanju? There was that place again.

  “Do you know where Sinanju is?” he asked them.

  “Sinanju, yes. Way north. No one goes there. No one.”

  “Why?”

  “We don't know. No one goes there.”

  “But why?”

  “It's the place no one goes,” said the man. The woman thought her grandfather knew.

  “He said it was the place everyone was afraid of.”

  “Afraid? They're the nicest people in the world,” said Remo. How did he know that?

  “You've been there?”

  “No,” said Remo. “Never.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I don't know,” said Remo. “I don't know lots of things. I was born in Newark, I think. I was raised in an orphanage. I went to high school. I played linebacker. I went to Vietnam as a marine. I came back. And then boom. I am in California and I don't know what's going on.”

  “Yes, that is how we got here too. Life moves so quickly, yes? We were born in Seoul, Korea, raised, moved to California, boom. Now we see our daughter in Phoenix.”

  On the plane back to Newark, Remo heard people talking about the great Bayonne disaster. They said no one knew whether to rebuild the city or scrap it entirely and use it and Jersey City as expanded parking lots for New York.

  Someone said it was a terrorist act. Another said they didn't know which terrorist group had done it because a half-dozen had taken credit for it.

  “Of course we'll blow them out of the world,” said Remo. “Crazy bastards, admitting something like that, admitting doing something like that to America. They'll never get away with it.”

  “They all do,” said another passenger.

  “I don't believe it. You're lying.”

  Remo wanted to punch the passenger in the mouth. Someone else behind him was saying how America deserved it.

  The first thing Remo did when he got to Newark was go into a bar that had a television set. The disaster in Bayonne was a major news stony and announcers were breaking into every program for it.