I jammed a couple of extra rolls into a paper bag and filled a thermos with coffee. Excusing myself, I left the galley and made my way to the Slider berth. It was just the way I remembered it. I threw a few switches and the shortwave hummed.
“That you, Carl?”
“That’s right, Mike. Let me have some juice down here, you double-crossing rat.”
He thought it over, then I felt the hull vibrate as the generators cut in. I poured my third cup of coffee and found a cigarette.
“So why am I a double-crossing rat this time?” came his voice again.
“You knew about the cameramen at Hangar Sixteen?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a double-crossing rat. The last thing I want is publicity. ‘He who fouled up so often before is ready to try it, nobly, once more.’ I can read it now.”
“You’re wrong. The spotlight’s only big enough for one, and she’s prettier than you.”
My next comment was cut off as I threw the elevator switch and the elephant ears flapped above me. I rose, settling flush with the deck. Retracting the lateral rail, I cut forward into the groove. Amidships, I stopped at a juncture, dropped the lateral, and retracted the longitudinal rail.
I slid starboard, midway between the Rooks, halted, and threw on the coupler.
I hadn’t spilled a drop of coffee.
“Show me pictures.”
The screen glowed. I adjusted and got outlines of the bottom.
“Okay.”
I threw a Status Blue switch and he matched it. The light went on.
The winch unlocked. I aimed out over the waters, extended the arm, and fired a cast.
“Clean one,” he commented.
“Status Red. Call strike.” I threw a switch.
“Status Red.”
The baitman would be on his way with this, to make the barbs tempting.
It’s not exactly a fishhook. The cables bear hollow tubes; the tubes convey enough dope for any army of hopheads; Ikky takes the bait, dandled before him by remote control, and the fisherman rams the barbs home.
My hands moved over the console, making the necessary adjustments. I checked the narco-tank reading. Empty. Good, they hadn’t been filled yet. I thumbed the Inject button.
“In the gullet,” Mike murmured.
I released the cables. I played the beast imagined. I let him run, swinging the winch to simulate his sweep.
I had the air conditioner on and my shirt off and it was still uncomfortably hot, which is how I knew that morning had gone over into noon. I was dimly aware of the arrivals and departures of the hoppers. Some of the crew sat in the “shade” of the doors I had left open, watching the operation. I didn’t see Jean arrive or I would have ended the session and gotten below.
She broke my concentration by slamming the door hard enough to shake the bond.
“Mind telling me who authorized you to bring up the Slider?” she asked.
“No one,” I replied. “I’ll take it below now.”
“Just move aside.”
I did, and she took my seat. She was wearing brown slacks and a baggy shirt and she had her hair pulled back in a practical manner. Her cheeks were flushed, but not necessarily from the heat. She attacked the panel with a nearly amusing intensity that I found disquieting.
“Status Blue,” she snapped, breaking a violet fingernail on the toggle.
I forced a yawn and buttoned my shirt slowly. She threw a side glance my way, checked the registers, and fired a cast.
I monitored the lead on the screen. She turned to me for a second.
“Status Red,” she said levelly.
I nodded my agreement.
She worked the winch sideways to show she knew how. I didn’t doubt she knew how and she didn’t doubt that I didn’t doubt, but then—
“In case you’re wondering,” she said, “you’re not going to be anywhere near this thing. You were hired as a baitman, remember? Not a Slider operator! A baitman! Your duties consist of swimming out and setting the table for our friend the monster. It’s dangerous, but you’re getting well paid for it. Any questions?”
She squashed the Inject button and I rubbed my throat.
“Nope,” I smiled, “but I am qualified to run that thingamajigger—and if you need me I’ll be available, at union rates.”
“Mister Davits,” she said, “I don’t want a loser operating this panel.”
“Miss Luharich, there has never been a winner at this game.”
She started reeling in the cable and broke the bond at the same time, so that the whole Slider shook as the big yo-yo returned. We skidded a couple of feet backward. She raised the laterals and we shot back along the groove. Slowing, she transferred rails and we jolted to a clanging halt, then shot off at a right angle. The crew scrambled away from the hatch as we skidded onto the elevator.
“In the future, Mister Davits, do not enter the Slider without being ordered,” she told me.
“Don’t worry. I won’t even step inside if I am ordered,” I answered. “I signed on as a baitman. Remember? If you want me in here, you’ll have to ask me.”
“That’ll be the day,” she smiled.
I agreed, as the doors closed above us. We dropped the subject and headed in our different directions after the Slider came to a halt in its berth. She did say “good day,” though, which I thought showed breeding as well as determination, in reply to my chuckle.
Later that night Mike and I stoked our pipes in Malvern’s cabin. The winds were shuffling waves, and a steady spattering of rain and hail overhead turned the deck into a tin roof.
“Nasty,” suggested Malvern.
I nodded. After two bourbons the room had become a familiar woodcut, with its mahogany furnishings (which I had transported from Earth long ago on a whim) and the dark walls, the seasoned face of Malvern, and the perpetually puzzled expression of Dabis set between the big pools of shadow that lay behind chairs and splashed in cornets, all cast by the tiny table light and seen through a glass, brownly.
“Glad I’m in here.”
“What’s it like underneath on a night like this?”
I puffed, thinking of my light cutting through the insides of a black diamond, shaken slightly. The meteor-dart of a suddenly illuminated fish, the swaying of grotesque ferns, like nebulae-shadow, then green, then gone—swam in a moment through my mind. I guess it’s like a spaceship would feel, if a spaceship could feel, crossing between worlds—and quiet, uncannily, preternaturally quiet; and peaceful as sleep.
“Dark,” I said, “and not real choppy below a few fathoms.”
“Another eight hours and we shove off,” commented Mike.
“Ten, twelve days, we should be there,” noted Malvern.
“What do you think Ikky’s doing?”
“Sleeping on the bottom with Mrs. Ikky if he has any brains.”
“He hasn’t. I’ve seen ANR’s skeletal extrapolation from the bones that have washed up—”
“Hasn’t everyone?”
“… Fully fleshed, he’d be over a hundred meters long. That right, Carl?”
I agreed.
“… Not much of a brain box, though, for his bulk.”
“Smart enough to stay out of our locker.”
Chuckles, because nothing exists but this room, really. The world outside is an empty, sleet drummed deck. We lean back and make clouds.
“Boss lady does not approve of unauthorized fly fishing.”
“Boss lady can walk north till her hat floats.”
“What did she say in there?”
“She told me that my place, with fish manure, is on the bottom.”
“You don’t Slide?”
“I bait.”
“We’ll see.”
“That’s all I do. If she wants a Slideman she’s going to have to ask nicely.”
“You think she’ll have to?”
“I think she’ll have to.”
“And if she does, can you do it?�
��
“A fair question,” I puffed. “I don’t know the answer, though.”
I’d incorporate my soul and trade forty percent of the stock for the answer. I’d give a couple years off my life for the answer. But there doesn’t seem to be a lineup of supernatural takers, because no one knows. Supposing when we get out there, luck being with us, we find ourselves an Ikky? Supposing we succeed in baiting him and get lines on him. What then? If we get him shipside, will she hold on or crack up? What if she’s made of sterner stuff than Davits, who used to hunt sharks with poison-darted air pistols? Supposing she lands him and Davits has to stand there like a video extra.
Worse yet, supposing she asks for Davits and he still stands there like a video extra or something else—say, some yellowbellied embodiment named Cringe?
It was when I got him up above the eight-foot horizon of steel and looked out at all that body, sloping on and on till it dropped out of sight like a green mountain range… And that head. Small for the body, but still immense. Fat, craggy, with lidless roulettes that had spun black and red since before my forefathers decided to try the New Continent. And swaying.
Fresh narco-tanks had been connected. It needed another shot, fast. But I was paralyzed.
It had made a noise like God playing a Hammond organ…
I don’t know if seeing is even the same process in eyes like those. I doubt it. Maybe I was just a gray blur behind a black rock, with the plexi-reflected sky hurting its pupils. But it fixed on me. Perhaps the snake doesn’t really paralyze the rabbit, perhaps it’s just that rabbits are cowards by constitution. But it began to struggle and I still couldn’t move, fascinated.
Fascinated by all that power, by those eyes, they found me there fifteen minutes later, a little broken about the head and shoulders, the Inject still unpushed.
And I dream about those eyes. I want to face them once more, even if their finding takes forever. I’ve got to know if there’s something inside me that sets me apart from a rabbit, from notched plates of reflexes and instincts that always fall apart in exactly the same way whenever the proper combination is spun.
Looking down, I noticed that my hand was shaking. Glancing up, I noticed that no one else was noticing.
I finished my drink and emptied my pipe. It was late and no songbirds were singing.
I sat whittling, my legs hanging over the aft edge, the chips spinning down into the furrow of our wake. Three days out. No action.
“You!”
“Me?”
“You.”
Hair like the end of the rainbow, eyes like nothing in nature, fine teeth. “Hello.”
“There’s a safety rule against what you’re doing, you know.”
“I know. I’ve been worrying about it all morning.” A delicate curl climbed my knife then drifted out behind us. It settled into the foam and was plowed under. I watched her reflection in my blade, taking a secret pleasure in its distortion.
“Are you baiting me?” she finally asked.
I heard her laugh then, and turned, knowing it had been intentional.
“What, me?”
“I could push you off from here, very easily.”
“I’d make it back.”
“Would you push me off, then—some dark night, perhaps?”
“They’re all dark, Miss Luharich. No, I’d rather make you a gift of my carving.”
She seated herself beside me then, and I couldn’t help but notice the dimples in her knees. She wore white shorts and a halter and still had an offworld tan to her which was awfully appealing. I almost felt a twinge of guilt at having planned the whole scene, but my right hand still blocked her view of the wooden animal. “Okay, I’ll bite. What have you got for me?” “Just a second. It’s almost finished.”
Solemnly, I passed her the wooden jackass I had been carving. I felt a little sorry and slightly jackass-ish myself, but I had to follow through. I always do. The mouth was split into a braying grin. The ears were upright.
She didn’t smile and she didn’t frown. She just studied it.
“It’s very good,” she finally said, “like most things you do—and appropriate, perhaps.”
“Give it to me.” I extended a palm.
She handed it back and I tossed it out over the water. It missed the white water and bobbed for awhile like a pigmy seahorse.
“Why did you do that?”
“It was a poor joke. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe you are right, though. Perhaps this time I’ve bitten off a little too much.”
I snorted.
“Then why not do something safer, like another race?”
She shook her end of the rainbow.
“No. It has to be an Ikky.”
“Why?”
“Why did you want one so badly that you threw away a fortune?”
“Man reasons,” I said. “An unfrocked analyst who held black therapy sessions in his basement once told me, ‘Mister Davits, you need to reinforce the image of your masculinity by catching one of every kind of fish in existence.’ Fish are a very ancient masculinity symbol, you know. So I set out to do it. I have one more to go. Why do you want to reinforce your masculinity?”
“I don’t,” she said. “I don’t want to reinforce anything but Luharich Enterprises. My chief statistician once said, ‘Miss Luharich, sell all the cold cream and face powder in the System and you’ll be a happy girl. Rich, too.’ And he was right. I am the proof. I can look the way I do and do anything, and I sell most of the lipstick and face powder in the System—but I have to be able to do anything.”
“You do look cool and efficient,” I observed.
“I don’t feel cool,” she said, rising. “Let’s go for a swim.”
“May I point out that we are making pretty good time?”
“If you want to indicate the obvious, you may. You said you could make it back to the ship, unassisted. Change your mind?”
“No.”
“Then get us two scuba outfits and I’ll race you under Tensquare.
“I’ll win, too,” she added.
I stood and looked down at her, because that usually makes me feel superior to women.
“Daughter of Lir, eyes of Picasso,” I said, “you’ve got yourself a race. Meet me at the forward Rook, starboard, in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” she agreed.
And ten minutes it was. From the center blister to the Rook took maybe two of them, with the load I was carrying. My sandals grew very hot and I was glad to shuck them for flippers when I reached the comparative cool of the corner.
We slid into harnesses and adjusted our gear. She had changed into a trim one-piece green job that made me shade my eyes and look away, then look back again.
I fastened a rope ladder and kicked it over the side. Then I pounded on the wall of the Rook.
“Yeah?”
“You talk to the port Rook, aft?” I called.
“They’re all set up,” came the answer. “There’s ladders and draglines all over that end.”
“You sure you want to do this?” asked the sunburnt little gink who was her publicity man, Anderson Yclept.
He sat beside the Rook in a deckchair, sipping lemonade through a straw.
“It might be dangerous,” he observed, sunken-mouthed. (His teeth were beside him, in another glass. )
“That’s right,” she smiled. “It will be dangerous. Not overly, though.”
“Then why don’t you let me get some pictures? We’d have them back to Lifeline in an hour. They’d be in New York by tonight. Good copy.”
“No,” she said, and turned away from both of us.
She raised her hands to her eyes.
“Here, keep these for me.”
She passed him a box full of her unseeing, and when she turned back to me they were the same brown that I remembered.
“Ready?”
“No,” I said, tautly. “Listen carefully, Jean. If you’re going to play this game there are a few rules. First
,” I counted, “we’re going to be directly beneath the hull, so we have to start low and keep moving. If we bump the bottom, we could rupture an air tank… “
She began to protest that any moron knew that and I cut her down.
“Second,” I went on, “there won’t be much light, so we’ll stay close together, and we will both carry torches.”
Her wet eyes flashed.
“I dragged you out of Govino without—”
Then she stopped and turned away. She picked up a lamp.
“Okay. Torches. Sorry.”
“… And watch out for the drive-screws,” I finished. “There’ll be strong currents for at least fifty meters behind them.”
She wiped her eyes again and adjusted the mask.
“All right, let’s go.”
We went.
She led the way, at my insistence. The surface layer was pleasantly warm. At two fathoms the water was bracing; at five it was nice and cold. At eight we let go the swinging stairway and struck out. Tensquare sped forward and we raced in the opposite direction, tattooing the hull yellow at ten-second intervals.
The hull stayed where it belonged, but we raced on like two darkside satellites. Periodically, I tickled her frog feet with my Light and traced her antennae of bubbles. About a five meter lead was fine; I’d beat her in the home stretch, but I couldn’t let her drop behind yet.
Beneath us, black. Immense. Deep. The Mindanao of Venus, where eternity might eventually pass the dead to a rest in cities of unnamed fishes. I twisted my head away and touched the hull with a feeler of light; it told me we were about a quarter of the way along.
I increased my beat to match her stepped-up stroke, and narrowed the distance which she had suddenly opened by a couple meters. She sped up again and I did, too. I spotted her with my beam.
She turned and it caught on her mask. I never knew whether she’d been smiling. Probably. She raised two fingers in a V-for-Victory and then cut ahead at full speed.
I should have known. I should have felt it coming. It was just a race to her, something else to win. Damn the torpedoes!
The Doors Of His Face, The Lamps Of His Mouth Page 2