“I’m sure it’s all right,” said Harry. “It’s just a side effect of the bump on your head. Let me help you back into bed and I’ll give you something. Some pills. You can have a jab if the pain gets bad.”
Pitman’s hand went to her head, felt the bandage, jerked away, returned, gently exploring. Her eyes seemed to see her nurse clearly for the first time. “This is bad,” she said.
“If you still can’t walk properly tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep, then you may need some more serious medical attention. I doubt it, Angela. If you get a good night’s sleep tonight, you’ll wake up fine, I’m sure.”
“Who told you my name?”
“Sam what’s-his-name. Your buddy. I made him. I needed to be able to call to you. It’s standard first aid.”
“You made Sam do something?”
“I made him tell me your name, yes.”
“Must be more to you than meets the eye, lady.”
“Well, if there is, Angela, at the moment it’s all working for your benefit.”
“I’ll be better in the morning, huh?”
“I’m sure. I’ve seen it before.”
“I’d better be. If I can’t pull my weight, they’ll hang me out to dry. Some of them’ll have a little fun with me first, I guess. Sam won’t be able to stop them. Dall won’t care.”
“No sense sitting there worrying about it,” said Harry bracingly. “Go to bed. Get some sleep. Worry about it in the morning. Here.” She reached down. Pitman reached up. They embraced, cheek to cheek. Harry heaved and deposited Pitman none too gently on the bunk.
“Aaahhh!” she said, quite loudly. “How come a pain in the butt can hurt my head so fiercely?”
“I don’t think pills will be enough. I think it’d better be something stronger.” Harry held up a syringe. “Another pain in the butt, if you’ll allow me.”
“Lady, you’re going to give me back my legs. You can stick what you like where you like.”
Harry rolled Pitman on her side and slid the needle expertly into the slope of gluteus behind the swell of the hip joint. “You’ll feel sleepy,” she said. “Just give in to it. Sleep is what you need most.”
“You going to stand stag over me for a change?” asked Pitman, rolling back and settling herself.
“Your friend Sam seems to have kept all your weapons,” said Harry, pulling the sheet out from under the supine form and arranging it with some propriety. “But yes, I’ll stand guard over you.” It was the first time she had actually lied to Pitman. And she wondered why that should worry her.
Pitman’s eyelids drifted shut; she said something impenetrable in Dutch and began to snore. Harry rose to her feet, took some of the medical kit, put it in the bowl and hurried off towards the library.
With her heart in her mouth, she pulled out a pile of books from the medical section and put them on one side of the keyboard. Then she put the medical kit on the other side and sat. She was finding it hard to breathe, her heart was fluttering like a bird caged by her ribs. Her mouth was dry and her palms were clammy. “Here goes nothing,” she said and switched on the computer.
The disk drive whirred. The printer clattered as it re-set itself. The screen began to clear, numbers spinning, programs recognising keyboard, mouse, drives. Windows came up, then the icons denoting the first levels of accessibility. She scanned these with some care. The Internet icon was not among them. So the modem was switched off still. Bob Stark would have to have another word with O’Reilley.
Using the mouse, Harry selected the Network icon and then, when that opened another layer of icons, she chose File Organiser, and, within that, Network Manager. The screen went blue. A box appeared in the middle, a bevelled grey with a letterbox two-thirds of the way down.
You cannot proceed, it told her, without a password.
The password was “Cleopatra”.
It had begun as yet another little game designed to irritate the late unlamented Stevenson and Cohen, and she very much hoped it still irritated the foul O’Reilley. Anyone gaining access to the inner reaches of her systems could only do so by listing the names of some of the greatest women in history and one or two particular favourites of her own. Harry had never really believed that anyone would want to break into her systems for nefarious purposes. There was nothing particularly secret in here. The codes were primarily to ensure that nothing important could be done or undone unthinkingly or accidentally. The passwords had never been meant to function as real barriers, therefore it was not particularly important that they be unbreakable or particularly illogical.
By introducing the network to Boudicca, Lucrezia Borgia, Amy Johnson, Marie Stopes, Lieutenant Uhura, and several others, Harry was able to gain access one by one to each of the systems which were displayed as a group on the wall of screens above her work area on the bridge. She had just gone through Ellen Degeneres who, with the Starship Enterprise’s communications officer, was guardian of New England’s communications system, when she was suddenly overcome by an irrational fear that she was being watched. The feeling was so strong that she swiftly cleared the screen and turned, certain that someone had entered silently and was standing inside the door.
The door stood very slightly ajar, just as she had left it. No one had entered or left. Frowning, she returned to her work.
Having checked Internet access and general systems access, according to her discussions with Ann and Bob she must now see whether it was possible for her to influence the programs from here. She had devised an innocent little test which even if it was discovered could be explained in a hundred ways. A change that only she or Bob could check swiftly and easily. It would not make much difference to Dall and his pirates but would be substantial enough to be unmistakable when checked.
Something, above all, she could do swiftly, confidently and precisely, even under these circumstances. She was going to reverse the ON/OFF to the hold lights. They had been working in the hold all day. She had no idea whether they were going to be continuing tomorrow, but even if the holds were battened shut it would take only five seconds’ unobserved activity on the bridge to throw a switch and check a remote monitor. And if she had pulled it off, then the next step would be something more substantial.
Trying not to think about what she might be asked to do next if this went well — or, indeed, what would happen if she was caught doing even this — Harry worked with all the speed she could muster, placing her secret little virus at the heart of that one particular system. The lights were off at the moment, it seemed. Very well. The next time they were switched they would come on, and then go off normally. Fifteen minutes after that the virus would click in and they would come on and stay that way until someone put the switches to ON, at which point only they would go off.
When she had finished, she switched off the machine, put everything back in place around it and exited the room. Feeling that she had achieved quite a lot for one afternoon, she dropped off the medical equipment in the infirmary, then hurried back up to her cabin. She came round the corner from the companionway and froze. The door to her cabin was open, wedged by the massive shoulders of the pirate with the mad eyes. He was looking at something immediately within. “Hey! Get away from there! What do you think you’re doing?” Harry called and sprinted down the corridor without thinking how dangerous such an action might be.
The man swung back, giving Harry a view of Pitman’s body uncovered on the bed, her legs sprawled wide, with Lobo standing speculatively at the bed foot looking down.
“Lobo,” she shouted. “Get away from her, you bastard. She’s hurt. Leave her.”
She hit the big man at the door in a kind of football tackle as though this was the Superbowl. He simply gathered her into his arms and held her as though she was a child. “What d’you think, Wolfman?” he rumbled. “Double-header?”
Harry sucked air into her lungs with every intention of screaming the place down. Casually, her captor put a massive hand which smelt of gun oil and exercise ma
chines over her mouth.
“Nah, Lazio,” said Lobo. “I prefer mine with a little more life. And yours is probably a dyke.”
“Maybe I should screw her in the ass then, huh?”
“Put her down, Lazio, you sad bastard.”
“Put her down, Patay!” said another voice. “And do it gently.” Harry, faint with shock and the need to breathe, turned her head to see Dall standing halfway along the corridor. He looked perfectly relaxed, his hands in his pockets.
Lobo stepped forward and stood beside his buddy, blocking the doorway. Tut the dyke down, Lazio,” he said sotto voce.
He put Harry down with a great show of solicitude. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she fought to get away, but he held her in place, pulling her clothing straight and patting her hair tidy in a parody of paternal concern.
Then Lobo caught her and pulled her free. She wriggled past him and ran into the cabin. The unknowing cause of this lay like a sleeping centrefold. Harry busied herself arranging the sprawled limbs more decorously and covering the pale body with the discarded sheet. While she did this, a lazy conversation liberally salted with expletives took place behind her. When she had finished turning down the sheet and tucking it in like the matron at a boarding school, she turned. The would-be rapists were gone but Dall stood there looking at her. She had never seen anything as utterly cold as his eyes. “Where were you?” he asked.
“I was in the infirmary, putting back the equipment I needed.”
“Not when I checked.”
“I looked up something in the library. She was unconscious for nearly half an hour. Her legs didn’t work when she woke up.”
“Were you anywhere near any of your computers, going through the systems?”
“No!”
“Trying to break out through the communications system?”
“No! I swear…”
“Well, you just remember, little lady, if anything goes wrong with those machines, I’ll be looking for your ass. I’m not convinced by your wide-eyed innocent expression. I think you’re up to all sorts of shit.” The focus of his intense gaze shifted. “Pitman can have tonight off duty but she’d better be one hundred per cent tomorrow. I’m not carrying dead weight.” His frightening eyes shifted back. “Dead weight is dead meat. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“Tell that to your room mates. Both of them. And remember, you only go out of this room with an armed guard. For you it is always curfew.”
When Ann returned a few minutes later, she was confronted by a woman completely in the grip of rage. Harry had spent the interim pacing up and down the cabin, eyes spilling tears of frustrated anger, striking out at anything soft to try to get rid of some of the overpowering emotions that held her in their grip far more powerfully than the obscene and loutish Lazio Patay. If Dall had hoped to frighten her into some kind of submission, he had achieved the exact opposite.
When Ann had helped lance the boil of temper by listening to Harry’s account and offering a great deal of sympathetic support, she and Harry started plotting again. It seemed obvious to them, as it must have to the others as evening gathered magnificently over the wilderness of south-west Ireland, that there was no prospect of release or of help in the forbidding Heaven’s Gate, and that New England was preparing to set sail again. They spent much of the evening formulating wild plans which were all too easily frustrated by the presence of Lobo and later Lazio outside the door. Quite who was being punished most by the double stag it was difficult to tell. Pitman slept on, blissfully unaware. Eventually, exhausted both physically and emotionally, Ann and Harry joined her.
They seemed hardly to have closed their eyes before the stirring of the ship woke them again. Harry came to first and rolled stiffly off Pitman’s sleeping bag, picking herself up to look at the recumbent figure in her bunk. A moment of panic seized her. What would happen if she had been wrong and Angela couldn’t walk properly this morning after all? She crossed to the bunk and put a hand on the sleeping woman’s shoulder. She caught her breath as her fingers touched the cool flesh, and Pitman stirred. Her eyes opened and she looked up with no recognition at all.
“You have to get up,” said Harry. “They’ll want you on duty.”
“What’s the time?” asked Ann throatily from her bunk.
“Seven.” Harry did not take her eyes off Pitman. “You’re expected on duty as normal. Captain Dall said dead weight is dead meat.”
“Seven?” said Ann, never at her best in the morning. “God give me strength…”
“Dall…” whispered Pitman, her face still blank.
“Angela! Pitman! Snap out of it, for God’s sake!” In her frustration, Harry shook her patient. Pitman was out of bed in one fluid movement, panther-swift. Harry found herself standing helpless with her arms twisted behind her. There was no pain, and yet she knew that one more movement by the woman pressed so close to her would unleash a great deal of pain. Time seemed to stand still for a moment, then Ann said, “I see your legs are working OK now, Pitman.”
Harry felt her arm being released and suddenly a cold wind seemed to sweep across her back. She turned to find Pitman slumped on Ann’s bed. “Take it slow,” she said. “You’ll be all right.”
“My head hurts like a son of a bitch.”
“I can give you some pills but you’ll just have to fight through it as well as you can. Can you stand?”
“Just did.” She pulled herself up and stood, swaying slightly.
The door burst open. Lazio shoved his head and shoulders round it. “Nice to see you up, Pitman. Captain wants you on the bridge in five.” His hot eyes lingered on Pitman, and his gaze seemed still to be sliding intimately up and down her body after he closed the door again.
A thought struck Harry. “You’ll have to borrow underwear. Yours is not wearable.” She crossed to the drawer and pulled out a pair of her own plain white cotton briefs. “I don’t think my bra will fit you. Your vest is covered with blood but I guess you could wear it at a pinch.”
“Underwear’s for wimps,” said Pitman. It was the closest she had come to sharing a joke. It was a first step. She held the briefs against herself to show they would have been too tight over the hips and too loose at the waist. Then she climbed into her uniform, eschewing the vest as well. “My bergen’s with the men’s kit,” she said. “I’ll rummage about if I get a chance.” It wasn’t much as girl talk went but, like the joke, it was a start. “Now, where are my babies?” she asked as she zipped the last zip.
Harry looked blank.
“My big bowie and my ASP? Weapons.”
“Sam Copeland has them.”
Pitman straightened. Took a deep breath. “You said pills.” Harry gave her two. “When these wear off, you’ll just have to be a man about it,” she said.
“What?” said Pitman. “You mean I got to sob and scream and ask for my mommie?”
“That’s about it.”
And she was gone.
“Well, how’d you like that?” huffed the rumpled Ann from the depths of her bunk. “She didn’t even say thank you.”
“Oh, I think she did,” said Harry contentedly.
*
As the last of the mysterious additions to the cargo were made in the dull light of early dawn, Dall re-assigned his men and his woman for the next section of the passage. Then, as New England began to nose westwards out through Heaven’s Gate, he called all the deck and engineering officers to their posts and sent all the others to their quarters. His main priority seemed to be keeping an eye on the active members of his captive crew, however, and almost all of the pirates were ordered to stand guard in the command and engineering areas. Lobo and Lazio Patay were assigned to patrol the crew’s quarters, watching the cook, the steward and two unassigned seamen. Sam Copeland was posted inside the Charlestons’ suite which also housed Professor Miles. And in Pitman’s absence nobody at all kept guard on Harry’s door.
“Honestly!” whispered Ann, for all the world
like an errant schoolgirl up after lights out. “There’s no one here. Let’s risk it!” After Dall’s lecture last night, Harry was less than willing but she reluctantly gave in to Ann’s insistence. They crept down the corridor to the head of the companionway, and then down to the next deck. All around them the ship was beginning to throb and bustle with the threat of gathering speed. Outside, as the day gathered to a full, bright morning, the green fields above the hamlet of Schull played hide and seek beyond the humps of the islands nearer at hand. The northern coast began to fall back as the chain of little islands petered out. By the time they reached A deck, the Mizen was visible in the far distance; to the south, the Fastnet light gleamed on the very rim of the horizon.
Ann reached the library door first and eased it open. Harry hurried in after her and crossed to the computer while Ann kept guard at the door. Harry went into the radar guidance system first, catching the picture Stubbs could see just as it switched to the first forward setting. “They’re definitely coming to speed,” she whispered to Ann. “What shall I do?”
“Where are we going?”
Harry called up the course planner. Saw the threat of a storm system coming in out of Newfoundland, slightly fuzzy and ill-defined but obviously dangerous. “West,” she said. “But south round some kind of weather system, I think.”
“Can you get to the communications? Can you pass the information out at all?”
“I can try. Wait a minute.” She called up “Uhura” and “Ellen”. The screen went blank. “Ann, there’s something not right here.”
“What?”
“The screen’s gone blank. I don’t understand it. I — ”
The door burst open, throwing Ann bodily back against the bookshelves with such force that her shoulder cracked the glass in their doors. Harry leaped to her feet and turned. Dall stood in the doorway with New England’s radio officer O’Reilley at his side.
“There!” snarled O’Reilley. “I told you she would be at it again, Captain. You just can’t trust tarts like her.”
Hell Gate (Richard Mariner Series Book 9) Page 16