Buzz Cut

by James W. Hall

  "You have me confused," she said precisely, "with someone else."

  "I don't think so."

  She pushed off from the rail and headed into the crowd. Thorn held his place and called out to her. "I used to set fire to you every night."

  She halted. Kept her back to him for a time, then took a deep breath and turned to face him. From two yards away she regarded him, her mouth clamped tight as though she were stifling a curse. Then she rejoined him at the railing.

  "The wanted posters," Thorn said, "the ones with your photograph on them. I used them for months to start my evening cooking fire. I hated to do it, such a face. But apparently someone got lazy and dumped a stack of them in a ditch outside my house. The posters turned out to be good kindling, so I spent a lot of time looking at that photograph. More than I needed to, I suppose."

  Behind her a handful of middle-aged couples had gathered in earnest debate about the hijack announcement. One man calling it a tasteless prank, another convinced it was the beginning of some shipboard fun, one of those special planned activities Fiesta was famous for.

  The blond woman lowered her eyes and consulted the back of her hand for several moments, then lifted her gaze again and noted unhappily that Thorn had not moved.

  "Where have you been all these years?" he said.

  Her lips parted, searching for the words.

  "It's you, isn't it? Monica Sampson."

  She winced at the name, then glanced around to see if they'd been overheard. "Who are you?"

  "My name is Thorn."

  She ran her eyes over him. Didn't seem to think much of his outfit. He watched her consider him, watched an idea take form slowly in her eyes. A careful smile materialize.

  "And what cabin are you in, Thorn?"

  He smiled back and gave her his cabin number.

  "What would you say if I stopped by later, we could look out your porthole, watch the water slosh. The snotgreen sea. I understand it's very restful."

  The words were right, but the tone was a half step off. Thorn had met his share of assertive women. He'd had his fanny patted more than once. He was used to it by now, though it struck him as oddly disappointing that women gloated over this new freedom when it seemed they'd done nothing more than appropriate the worst hunting habits of men.

  As Thorn was fetching for something bright to say, Monica manufactured an alluring smile, and languidly, she raised a hand to his face and gave his cheek a backhand stroke as if to check for stubble.

  A moment passed between them, she continuing to eye him in her parody of a sultry babe, Thorn smiling, mildly charmed, but letting her know with his eyes that he wasn't buying her silliness for a second. Finally she gave him a small private smile and helpless shrug, as if to say at least she'd tried.

  A half second later her eyes strayed from his to something in the distance behind him, and the last shreds of her contrived erotic charm evaporated in an instant.

  Thorn swung around and saw a group of people working through the crowd. Sugarman led the way, looking haggard, his face sheened with sweat. Behind him was a pretty blond woman with her mouth hardened into a grimace. Trailing her by a step or two was a tall bald man with shocks of white hair on his temples. He wore a white silk shirt and even whiter slacks and he seemed to be fighting a losing battle to keep his smile in place.

  Thorn stepped into view and without breaking stride Sugarman waved him along.

  "Wait," Thorn said, and turned back to Monica. But she was no longer there.

  He hesitated a moment, searched the crowd, but when he didn't see her, he tucked in close behind the white-haired man and followed. The sea of passengers parting, several of them calling out as the group passed. Hailing them by name, Lola and Morton Sampson, asking if this was a prank, what were they supposed to do, what the hell was going on?

  The bald man gave a hearty laugh and waggled his hand at the crowd like a candidate driving past in a parade. Thorn tagged behind the troop down a narrow outside stairway. Around a tight corner and halted before a hatch door where the red-faced security man from last night was standing guard. When McDaniels caught sight of Morton Sampson, he tore the red drinking straw from his mouth and gave two quick raps on the hatch door, their clever secret code. The hatch promptly swung open.

  Thorn hustled along behind the group, past the guard into the cool half-light of the bridge.

  CHAPTER 18

  Blaine Murphy was assistant chief engineer for the M.S. Eclipse. Short, curly reddish blond hair, held the all-time sit-up record of eight hundred and fifty-three at the Coast Guard Academy. After finishing up there, he'd served two years hauling Cuban rafters from the Florida Straits, then he jumped to the private sector and now was zinging his way up the pay scale with Fiesta. Normal time frame for making chief engineer, getting the hell out of the control room and up to the bridge, thirty months. Blaine's goal was to beat that by six.

  Every second of the day, focused on that. Nine decks away, up in the sun, the wheelhouse, chart room. Chuck his gray jumpsuit. Don those starched white uniforms, gold buttons, rub the captain's shoulder. Best of all, step up, take command, grip the controls in his own two hands.

  Moving swiftly, ahead of schedule, Murphy had outlasted, outengineered, out-ass-kissed every new Coast Guard jock they'd thrown at him so far. For the time being he manned the control room, where it was his job to monitor the computer screens, keep the ledger up to date, make careful notations in the log book, the history of every alarm and the corrective procedures taken. One eye constantly flicking up to the video screens that surveyed the engine room and boiler room from several different angles.

  Blaine Murphy's domain, the control room, was jammed with long sleek console panels and tall switchboard stations, a wall of dials and meters and gauges, all of them numbered. A cross between a high-tech recording studio and the NASA command center. The room hummed constantly with current, and the regular throb of the engines one deck below vibrated day and night through the gray tiles. The walls and tabletops and panel covers were done in a boring beige Formica. If Blaine could've chosen the motif, he would've used scarlet Scotch plaid. His favorite pattern for shirts, pants, slip covers, hell, for anything. Red Scotch plaid. Jazzed things up nicely, kept the pulse cranking.

  In his two years in the drab confinement of the control room, Blaine had overseen the repair of dozens of pieces of malfunctioning equipment on all sectors of the Eclipse, from its propulsion systems to its water treatment plant, alternators, navigation devices, voltmeters, bow thrusters, refrigeration, the incinerator. Every crucial operation on board was wired through that room. The heart of the ship, center of power. If something failed or was about to fail aboard ship, Blaine Murphy was the first to know.

  Still, with so many repair functions automated, there wasn't that much knuckle-busting work. Change a circuit board now and then, a chip, minor dial adjustments, flip a breaker switch. Two men was all it required to oversee every fuse, every junction box in that small floating city. The heavy, complex labor was almost always performed in dry dock, or back at port. But once or twice a month Blaine was called on to troubleshoot, patch together some crucial circuit or piece of machinery, bypass a broken valve, rig a gasket out of cardboard, do whatever jury-rigging it took to keep the systems up and running while the Eclipse was out at sea. Those were the occasions when he scored his points, made the small ratchets ahead in his career. In two years his repair record was spotless, batting a thousand. Ingenious, resourceful, and well trained, Blaine Murphy had never had a single breakdown he couldn't get up and running in half a day.

  So when the man's voice came out over the PA system, a voice that wasn't Captain Gavini's or the cruise director's or anyone's on the crew, Blaine began to prickle with excitement. He'd heard the rumors about some ongoing problem with security. Casino thefts, a recent suspicious death. Someone apparently preying on the Eclipse. But to his great frustration, Blaine had not been consulted in the countermeasures. So when the voice finis
hed his weird pronouncement and immediately thereafter the white phone on the central control panel rang, a call from the bridge, Blaine knew his expertise was finally being solicited. He was about to be brought into the loop on the most important voyage the Eclipse had ever taken.

  It was not the captain on the phone, but one of his Italian stooges. Chief Officer Rudolfo Vincetti wanting to know what Blaine could tell them about that voice. Pudgy Vincetti.

  "I heard it," Blaine said. "What exactly do you want to know?"

  "Did it originate in the media room? The captain wants a response immediately."

  Blaine told him to hold on. He moved across the room to the bank of power switches. Everything from the refrigerated morgue to the two hundred slot machines was wired through that giant circuit breaker board. He ran his finger down the row of switches, found the media room toggle, then went back to the phone and told Vincetti, no, the voice could not possibly have originated there. The media room was off-line. Typically, not turned on till two hours into the voyage when the stream of public announcements formally began. Blaine heard Vincetti repeat the information to the captain, and Gavini replied in Italian.

  Blaine waited, absently watching the screens of the engine room. The Asian sweathogs down there with their ear protectors, their blue jumpsuits grease-stained already, moving like dwarfs in the catacombs. Then seeing someone else walking in a strange bowlegged gait down the narrow metal grating between the big turbines. This man wasn't one of the midget Filipino or Malaysian mechanics. This guy was tall and thin, lugging a nonregulation tool bag. He thought for a moment it was Robbie Dorfman, the junior assistant engineer on this watch. Half an hour ago Blaine had dispatched Robbie down to the engine room to answer a call, and he hadn't reported back. But this guy was taller than Robbie. Didn't move like him. Blaine was angling closer to the TV screen, squinting, when Vincetti's voice rattled in his ear.

  "Captain also wants you to check on NFU for port rudder."

  "What's the problem?"

  "He wants you check it. See if any difficulty exists."

  "Is this an exam or something? You're not going to tell me what the hell I'm supposed to be looking for?"

  Vincetti said something to him in curt Italian. Blaine was pretty sure it was a curse. Calling him a shithead, probably, or something similar. The Italians were fond of shit curses. Shit on your sandwich, they'd say. Shit in your marriage bed.

  He smacked the phone against the console, went over to the NFU control board. The navigational function unit relayed electronic messages from the autopilot up on the bridge down to the hydraulic power modules in the engine room. The NFU box was a way station for the flow of data through the navigational process.

  Week after week routine procedure rarely varied. A few miles out, the captain turned on the autopilot with its preset destination encoded. He entered the desired ETA and sat back for the next several hours, letting the unit calibrate course heading, factoring in tidal differentials, wind speed, taking the ship along its course. The computer's job was to absorb all the electronic garble flowing through the various sensors and decide any necessary course adjustments and speed settings. Normally the captain took the control of the ship only as it approached the shipping lanes or harbor.

  The NFU box was simply one of several monitoring devices along the track between bridge and rudder. If Gavini suspected trouble with the NFU, it probably meant he was having difficulty reconciling the actual course with the preprogrammed course. If the NFU unit was defective, bad things could happen. Worst-case scenario, you could find yourself sailing north when you'd instructed the autopilot to take you south.

  But the fact was, in two and a half years, Blaine had never seen a single defect in the ship's navigational equipment. Once the autopilot was set, Gavini could damn well sit back and light up his pipe. And this time, just as he'd thought, there was no indication in the NFU box that anything was operating at less than a hundred percent. The unit was alive, green light lit, normal functioning.

  He returned to the phone, told Vincetti everything was normal, and Vincetti relayed the information to the captain and Murphy asked again what the hell was going on. Without a thank you or good-bye, Vincetti hung up.

  Blaine Murphy slammed the phone down. He stood staring at it for a moment, feeling the blood heat his face. "Fucking wops. Fucking third-world wops."

  He sat down in his swivel chair, brought it around so he could glance at the video screens again. For half a minute, Blaine stared at the image on the number-two screen without absorbing it. Some blob obscuring the normal view.

  He sat up straight. Then rose from his chair and marched across the room, craning up at the monitor. He stood just below the screens and peered at number two. Something he'd never seen before was filling the screen. A solid mass, a blurry pale shape suspended an inch or two from the video lens, blocking the camera as if somebody had hauled himself ten feet off the floor and was holding the palm of his hand in front of the lens. Whatever the hell it was, the object was vibrating from the beat of the engines like everything else down there.

  Blaine had a small degree of control over the engine room cameras, so he went back to the main control board and toggled the camera to the right, then abruptly sent it left. The movement nudged the object hanging in front of it, sent whatever the hell it was into a small pendulum swing.

  He repeated the process, toggling right and left, then did it again and one more time, swinging the object into wider and wider arcs. He pushed away from the control board, skipped back over to the screen, grabbed a swivel chair from behind the radio panel, and climbed up for a closer look.

  On one swing to the right, Blaine made out what appeared to be a coil of electrical cord, three loops, four, on the next he was staring at what looked a whole lot like a fucking human eye.

  He yelped, jumped down from the swivel chair, ran back to the control panel, rocked the camera back and forth, getting a rhythm that sent the object into ever wider paths. Four, five, six times, then running back to his swivel chair, climbing up and bringing his face close to the screen. Getting right up there into the halo of electrons until he was certain what he was looking at.

  Blaine Murphy felt his throat clamp, the fluorescent light in the room yellowed, and his body swayed on the chair. Suddenly he was feeling very ungainly.

  He drew a careful breath. Gingerly he let himself down. Blaine had never had a fainting spell before. Never even come close as far as he knew.

  He sat back on the swivel chair, lowered his head to his knees. A rush of nausea flooded his throat. He knew he should get to the phone, call security, call the bridge. Protocol, protocol. And he'd do that, sure he'd do that. As soon as the dizziness passed. As soon as he got the image out of his head—Robbie Dorfman's face swollen up, tongue peeking out, the noose at his neck.

  "Gives you the collywobbles, doesn't it, Blaine?"

  Blaine jerked upright, lost his balance, had to lunge to his right, grab the console to keep from tumbling out of the chair. A man was standing on the other side of the control panel. Tall and thin, his blond hair grown out long in the three years since Blaine had seen him last.

  "What the fuck you doing in here?"

  "What's wrong, Mr. Sit-up Champ, you having some technical difficulties down here? Something you can't fix?"

  "You! You did that. To Dorfman."

  Butler Jack smiled sadly. Glanced over at the number-two screen: Dorfman's mouth was smushed against the video lens, a corner of his tongue.

  "I could tell you what's wrong with the NFU box, and for that matter with the entire navigation system. Hold your hand, lead you through it step by step, show you all the trapdoors, the tricks, the little surprises. You could pass the info on to Gavini and win yourself some more brownie points. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mr. Sit-up. Add to all the points you got stacked up already."

  "A fuckup like you, Butler, what could you show me I don't know already?"

  "Well, I guess we're about to f
ind out, aren't we? And, Murph, you be real careful now, you hear? You don't want to wind up like our friend Dorfman."

  Leaving him with a tricky smile.

  ***

  Thorn could see that Lola had passed on to Sugarman her best features. Her delicate nose, her long lashes, and narrow lips. The exquisite cheekbones of a Scandinavian princess. As they gathered behind the center console, the captain greeting each of them, Lola gave Thorn a brief but empty smile.

  She wore a sleeveless jumpsuit, sand colored. A string of shiny black beads at her throat. The diamond on her slender hand probably exceeded the combined net worth of everyone in the room. Excepting, of course, Sampson himself. She was tanned and fit and seemed to have lost most of the nervous flutter Thorn remembered from his youth. She moved with the studious ease of someone born to this role. A bland nonchalance that probably fooled her TV audiences. But Thorn knew a little of her real history, and he could see in the way her eyes warily clicked over the men on the bridge that she was on constant lookout for anyone who might call her bluff.

  Hovering beside Lola was a gaunt young man in his midtwenties in jeans and black high-tops. His wavy black hair hung to the middle of his back, almost obscuring the red script lettering on his silk athletic jacket. LOLA LIVE. He had the weary eyes of someone used to the headier climate of the Pacific time zone. He checked out everyone on the bridge, his smile becoming lazy and indulgent as if he'd seen all this a few times before, seen it done far better on a half dozen different movie sets.