The Ghost from the Grand Banks

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “What do you know about cryonics?”

  “Not much. I know a lot of people have been frozen, but it’s never been proved that they can be—Oh! I see what you’re driving at! What a fantastic idea!”

  “But not a ridiculous one?”

  “Well, your million-to-one odds may be optimistic. But for such a payoff—no, I wouldn’t say it was ridiculous. And if you’re worried that I’ll ask Dolores to put you on the first plane back to the clinic, you needn’t be. Even if your project doesn’t succeed, it could be the best possible therapy.”

  But only if, Jafferjee thought, you aren’t overwhelmed by the almost inevitable failure. Still, that would be years ahead…

  “I’m so glad you feel that way. As soon as I heard that they were going to keep Colleen in the hope of identifying her, I knew what I had to do. I don’t believe in destiny—or fate—but how could I possibly turn down the chance?”

  How could you, indeed? thought Jafferjee. You have lost one daughter; you hope to gain another. A Sleeping Beauty, to be awakened not by a young prince, but an aging princess. No—a witch—a good one, this time!—possessing powers utterly beyond the dreams of any Irish lass born in the nineteenth century.

  If—if !—it works, what a strange new world Colleen will face! She would be the one to need careful psychological counseling. But this was all the wildest extrapolation.

  “I don’t wish to pour cold water on the idea,” Jafferjee said. “But surely, even if you can revive the body—won’t there be irreversible brain damage after a hundred years?”

  “That’s exactly what I was afraid of, when I started thinking about it. But there’s a great deal of research that makes it very plausible—I’ve been quite surprised. More than that—impressed. Have you ever heard of Professor Ralph Merkle?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “More than thirty years ago, he and a couple of other young mathematicians revolutionized cryptography by inventing the public-key system—I won’t bother to explain that, but it made every cipher machine in the world, and a lot of spy networks, obsolete overnight.

  “Then, in 1990—sorry, 1989—he published a classic paper called ‘Molecular Repair of the Brain’—”

  “Oh, that fellow!”

  “Good—I was sure you must have heard of his work. He pointed out that even if there had been gross damage to the brain, it could be repaired by the molecule-sized machines he was quite certain would be invented in the next century. Now.”

  “And have they been?”

  “Many of them. Look at the computer-controlled microsubs the surgeons are using now, to ream out the arteries of stroke victims. You can’t watch a science channel these days without seeing the latest achievements of nanotechnology.”

  “But to repair a whole brain, molecule by molecule! Think of the sheer numbers involved!”

  “About ten to the twenty-third. A trivial number.”

  “Indeed.” Jafferjee was not quite sure whether Edith was joking; no—she was perfectly serious.

  “Very well. Suppose you do repair a brain, right down to the last detail. Would that bring the person back to life? Complete with memories? Emotions? And everything else—whatever it is—that makes a specific, self-conscious individual?”

  “Can you give me a good reason why it wouldn’t? I don’t believe the brain is any more mysterious than the rest of the body—and we know how that works, in principle if not in detail. Anyway, there’s only one way to find out—and we’ll learn a lot in the process.”

  “How long do you think it will take?”

  “Ask me in five years. Then I may know if we’ll need another decade—or a century. Or forever.”

  “I can only wish you luck. It’s a fascinating project—and you’re going to have lots of problems beside the purely technical ones. Her relations, for example, if they’re ever located.”

  “It doesn’t seem likely. The latest theory is that she was a stowaway, and so not on the passenger list.”

  “Well, the church. The media. Thousands of sponsors. Ghost writers who want to do her autobiography. I’m beginning to feel sorry for that poor girl already.”

  And he could not help thinking, though he did not say it aloud: I hope Dolores won’t be jealous.

  Donald, of course, had been both astonished and indignant: husbands (and wives) always were on such occasions.

  “She didn’t even leave any message?” he said unbelievingly.

  Dr. Jafferjee shook his head.

  “There’s no need to worry. She’ll contact you as soon as she’s settled down. It will take her a while to adjust. Give her a few weeks.”

  “Do you know where she’s gone?”

  The doctor did not answer, which was answer enough.

  “Well, are you quite sure she’s safe?”

  “No doubt of it; she’s in extremely good hands.” The psychiatrist made one of those lengthy pauses which were part of his stock-in-trade.

  “You know, Mr. Craig, I should be quite annoyed with you.”

  “Why?” asked Donald, frankly astonished.

  “You’ve cost me the best member of my staff—my right-hand woman.”

  “Nurse Dolores? I wondered why I’d not seen her—I wanted to thank her for all she’d done.”

  Another of those calculated pauses; then Dr. Jafferjee said: “She’s helped Edith more than you imagine. Obviously, you’ve never guessed, and this may be a shock to you. But I owe you the truth—it will help you with your own adjustment.

  “Edith’s prime orientation isn’t toward men—and Dolores actively disliked them, though she was sometimes kind enough to make an exception in my case…

  “She was able to contact Edith on the physical level even before we connected on the mental one. They will be very good for each other. But I’ll miss her, dammit.”

  Donald Craig was speechless for a moment. Then he blurted out: “You mean—they were having an affair? And you knew it?”

  “Of course I did; my job as a physician is to help my patients in any way I can. You’re an intelligent man, Mr. Craig—I’m surprised that seems to shock you.”

  “Surely it’s… unprofessional conduct!”

  “What nonsense! Just the reverse—it’s highly professional. Oh, back in the barbarous twentieth century many people would have agreed with you. Can you believe it was a crime in those days for the staff of institutions to have any kind of sex with patients under their care, even though that would often have been the best possible therapy for them?

  “One good thing did come out of the AIDS epidemic—it forced people to be honest: it wiped out the last remnants of the Puritan aberration. My Hindu colleagues—with their temple prostitutes and erotic sculpture—had the right idea all the time. Too bad it took the West three thousand years of misery to catch up with them.”

  Dr. Jafferjee paused for breath, giving Donald Craig time to marshal his own thoughts. He could not help feeling that the doctor had lost some of his professional detachment. Had he been erotically interested in the inaccessible Nurse Dolores? Or did he have deeper problems?

  But, of course, everyone knew just why people became psychiatrists in the first place…

  With luck, you could cure yourself. And even if you failed, the work was interesting—and the pay was excellent.

  FINALE

  38. RICHTER EIGHT

  Jason Bradley was on the bridge of Glomar Explorer, monitoring J.J.’s progress on the seabed, when he felt the sudden sharp hammerblow. The two electronics technicians watching the displays never even noticed; they probably thought it was some change in the incessant rhythm of the ship’s machinery. Yet for a chilling instant Jason was reminded of a moment almost a century ago, equally unnoticed by most of the passengers…

  But, of course, Explorer was at anchor (in four kilometers of water, and how that would have astonished Captain Smith!) and no iceberg could possibly creep undetected through her radar. Nor, at drifting speed, would it do much worse than scrape o
ff a little paint.

  Before Jason could even call the communications center, a red star began to flash on the satfax screen. In addition, a piercing audio alarm, guaranteed to set teeth on edge as it warbled up and down through a kilocycle range, sounded on the unit’s seldom-used speaker. Jason punched the audio cutoff, and concentrated on the message. Even the two landlubbers beside him now realized that something was wrong.

  “What is it?” one of them asked anxiously.

  “Earthquake—and a big one. Must have been close.”

  “Any danger?”

  “Not to us. I wonder where the epicenter is…”

  Bradley had to wait a few minutes for the seismograph-computer networks to do their calculations. Then a message appeared on the fax screen:

  SUBSEA EARTHQUAKE ESTIMATED RICHTER 7

  EPICENTER APPROX 55 W 44 N.

  ALERT ALL ISLANDS AND COASTAL AREAS NORTH ATLANTIC

  Nothing else happened for a few seconds; then another line appeared:

  CORRECTION: UPDATE TO RICHTER 8

  Four kilometers below, J.J. was patiently and efficiently going about its business, gliding over the seabed at an altitude of ten meters and a speed of a comfortable eight knots. (Some nautical traditions refused to die; knots and fathoms still survived into the metric age.) Its navigation program had been set so that it scanned overlapping swaths, like a plowman driving back and forth across a field being prepared for the next harvest.

  The first shock wave bothered J.J. no more than it had the Explorer. Even the two nuclear submarines had been completely unaffected; they had been designed to withstand far worse—though their commanders had spent a few anxious seconds speculating about depth charges.

  J.J. continued its automatic quest, collecting and recording megabytes of information every second. Ninety-nine percent of this would never be of the slightest interest to anyone—and it might be centuries before scientific gold was found in the residue.

  To eye or video camera, the seabed here appeared almost completely featureless, but it had been chosen with care. The original “debris field” around the severed stern section had long ago been cleared of all interesting items; even the lumps of coal spilled from the bunkers had been salvaged and made into souvenirs. However, only two years ago a magnetometer search had revealed anomalies near the bow which might be worth investigating. J.J. was just the entity for the job; in another few hours it would have completed the survey, and would return to its floating base.

  “It looks like 1929 all over again,” said Bradley.

  Back in the ISA lab, Dr. Zwicker shook his head.

  “No—much worse, I’m afraid.”

  In Tokyo, at another node of the hastily arranged conference, Kato asked: “What happened in 1929?”

  “The Grand Banks earthquake. It triggered a turbidity current—call it an underwater avalanche. Snapped the telegraph cables one after the other, like cotton, as it raced across the seabed. That’s how its speed was calculated—sixty kilometers an hour. Perhaps more.”

  “Then it could reach us in—my God—three or four hours. What’s the likelihood of damage?”

  “Impossible to say at this stage. Best case—very little. The 1929 quake didn’t touch Titanic, though many people thought she’d been buried; luckily, it was a couple of hundred kilometers to the west. Most of the sediment was diverted into a canyon, and missed the wreck completely.”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted Rupert Parkinson, from his London office. “We’ve just heard that one of our flotation modules has surfaced. Jumped twenty meters out of the water. And we’ve lost telemetry to the wreck. How about you, Kato?”

  Kato hesitated only a moment; then he called out something in Japanese to an associate off-screen.

  “I’ll check with Peter and Maury. Dr. Zwicker—what’s your worst-case analysis?”

  “Our first quick look suggests a few meters of sediment. We’ll have a better computer modeling within the hour.”

  “A meter wouldn’t be too bad.”

  “It could wreck our schedule, dammit.”

  “A report from Maury, gentlemen,” said Kato. “No problem—everything normal.”

  “But for how long? If that… avalanche… really is racing toward us, we should pull up whatever equipment we can. What do you advise, Dr. Zwicker?”

  The scientist was just about to speak when Bradley whispered urgently in his ear. Zwicker looked startled, then glum—then nodded in reluctant agreement.

  “I don’t think I should say any more, gentlemen. Mr. Bradley is more experienced in this area than I am. Before I give any specific advice, I should consult our legal department.”

  There was a shocked silence; then Rupert Parkinson said quickly: “We’re all men of the world; we can understand that ISA doesn’t want to get involved in lawsuits. So let’s not waste time. We’re pulling up what we can. And I advise you to do the same, Kato—just in case Dr. Zwicker’s worst case is merely the bad one.”

  That was precisely what the scientist had feared. A submarine seaquake was impressive enough; but—as a fission bomb serves as detonator for a fusion one—it might merely act as a trigger to release even greater forces.

  Millions of years of solar energy had been stored in the petrochemicals beneath the bed of the Atlantic; barely a century’s worth had been tapped by man.

  The rest was still waiting.

  39. PRODIGAL SON

  On the bed of the Atlantic, a billion dollars” worth of robots downed tools and started to float up to the surface. There was no great hurry; no lives were at stake, even though fortunes were. Titanic shares were already plunging on the world’s stock exchanges, giving media humorists an opportunity for all-too-obvious jokes.

  The great offshore oil fields were also playing it safe. Although Hibernia and Avalon, in relatively shallow water, had little to fear from turbidity currents, they had suspended all operations, and were doubly and triply checking their emergency and backup systems. Now there was nothing to do but to wait—and to admire the superb auroral displays that had already made this sunspot cycle the most spectacular ever recorded.

  Just before midnight—no one was getting much sleep—Bradley was standing on Explorer’s helicopter pad, watching the great curtains of ruby and emerald fire being drawn across the northern sky. He was not a member of the crew; if the skipper or anyone else wanted him, he would be available in seconds. Busy people, especially in emergencies, did not care to have observers standing behind their backs—however well intentioned or highly qualified they might be.

  And the summons, when it did come, was not from the bridge, but the operations center.

  “Jason? Ops here. We have a problem. J.J. won’t acknowledge our recall signal.”

  Bradley felt a curious mix of emotions. First there was concern at losing one of the lab’s most promising—and expensive—pieces of equipment. Then there was the inevitable mental question mark—’What could have gone wrong?’—followed immediately by: “What can we do about it?”

  But there was also something deeper. J.J. represented an enormous personal investment of time, effort, thought…even devotion. He recalled all those jokes about the robot’s paternity; there was some truth in them. Creating a real son (what had happened to the flesh-and-blood J.J.?) had required very much less energy…

  Hell, Jason told himself, it’s only a machine! It could be rebuilt; we still have all the programs. Nothing would be lost except the information collected on the present mission.

  No—a great deal would be lost. It was even possible that the whole project might be abandoned; developing J.J. had stretched ISA’s funding and resources to the limit. At the very least, Operation NEPTUNE would be delayed for years—probably beyond Zwicker’s lifetime. The scientist was a prickly old S.O.B., but Jason liked and admired him. Losing J.J. would break his heart…

  Even as he hurried toward the ops center, Bradley was collecting and analyzing reports over his wristcom.

  “You’
re sure J.J.’s operating normally?”

  “Yes—beacon’s working fine—last housekeeping report fifteen minutes ago said all systems nominal—continuing with search pattern. But it just won’t respond to the recall signal.”

  “Damn! The lab told me that algorithm had been fixed. Just keep trying… Boost your power as much as you can. What’s the latest on the quake?”

  “Bad—Mount Pelée is rumbling—they’re evacuating Martinique. And tsunami warnings have been sent out all over, of course.”

  “But what about the Grand Banks? Any sign of that avalanche starting yet?”

  “The seismographs are all jangling—no one’s quite sure what the hell’s happening. Just a minute while I get an update—

  “—ah, here’s something. The Navy antisubmarine network—didn’t know it was still running!—is getting chopped up. So are the Atlantic cables—just like ’29… Yes—it’s heading this way.”

  “How long before it hits us?”

  “If it doesn’t run out of steam, a good three hours. Maybe four.”

  Time enough, thought Bradley. He knew exactly what he had to do.

  “Moon pool?” he called. “Open up Deep Jeep. I’m going down.”

  I’m really enjoying this, Bradley told himself. For the first time, I have an ironclad excuse to take Deep Jeep down to the wreck, without having to make application through channels, in triplicate. There’ll be plenty of time later to do the paperwork—or to input the electronic memos…

  To speed the descent, Deep Jeep was heavily overweighted; this was no time to worry about littering the seabed with discarded ballast. Only twenty minutes after the brilliant auroral glow had faded in the waters above him, Bradley saw the first phosphorescent nimbus around Titanic’s prow. He did not need it, of course, because he knew his exact location, and the wreck was not even his target; but he was glad that the lights had been switched on again for his exclusive benefit.