Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51

by Humans (v1. 1)

Carson, brow corrugated with doubt, turned to Tony. “What do you think, Tony?”

  “At first blush,” Tony answered, flashing Schlurn a forgive-me smile, “the idea sounds absolutely bloody bonkers. But if it’s possible to make the lab at all safe, then why not at Green Meadow? And our Marlon would be in a congenial atmosphere there, among like-minded chaps.”

  “Exactly,” Schlurn said, as though he’d thought of that argument himself, which he hadn’t.

  Hope smoothed Carson’s brow. “Tony? You think it’s possible?”

  “Let me make a few phone calls,” Tony answered. “Bruit the idea around a bit. Having our chief researcher actually inside one of our own operations... Yes, let me see what may be done.”

  Carson smiled at his guests. “I feel calmer already,” he said.

  Ananayel

  Here is a thing I’ve learned about the humans. Everything they do is motivated by a crazy quilt of reasons. Almost never do they perform an act merely because it’s the most sensible thing to do at that moment. There are always political reasons as well, or social reasons, or emotional reasons, or religious reasons, or financial reasons, or reasons of prejudice...

  Oh, who knows? They wind up doing the wrong thing, usually, is the point, even though that small rational part inside them will briefly have shown the right road to take. A human who can’t ignore common sense to leap firmly into the saddle of the wrong horse is a pretty poor example of the species, all in all.

  Me? I was the voice on the phone. I wanted Congressman Schlurn to have Green Meadow in his mind, so I put it in his pocket. To help his reason find, as usual, the wrong action.

  11

  Kitchen staff were not wanted up on deck. The Europeans paying for this ocean experience in the great world were not supposed to have their vacation interludes spoiled by the sight of Oriental riffraff.

  So that was yet another way in which Kwan was wrong for the job. He was middle class, educated, intelligent, gregarious. Down in the kitchens, in what was almost literally the bowels of the ship, surrounded by uneducated illiterate rural peasants with whom he shared absolutely nothing but race, Kwan was bored, frustrated, silenced, imprisoned in his own persona. He had nothing to say to his co-workers and they, God knows, had nothing to say to him.

  The kitchens were beneath the dining rooms, one deck below. All food was brought up to the passengers by waiters riding escalators, and for the first few weeks, until he found his own private route, Kwan had often lifted his head from his potscrubbing to gaze toward that moving staircase, rising endlessly from this steamy hell to the heaven of easy laughter, good food, intelligent conversation, and beautiful women. Beautiful women: that was probably the hardest deprivation of all.

  Kitchen staff were housed in small four-man interior cabins on the same deck as the kitchens. From his room, Kwan could go forward along the narrow long corridor—yellow-painted metal, glaring light bulbs overhead in screened enclosures like catchers’ masks—to the kitchen and the deep sink where he spent his working hours six days a week, or he could go aft an even longer way and eventually out through a heavy metal bulkhead door to a small oval deck.

  This was the kitchen staff’s outside exercise area, but few of them ever came out here. Not that very much concern had gone into making the place either useful or attractive. It was an empty space, ringed by a rusty railing. The bumpy metal deck was thickly painted in dark green with rust showing through. Out here, there was a great rush of engine noise and spray- drenched wind, a smell of oil mixed with the clean tang of sea, and the great empty horizon slowly seesawing miles and miles away over the indifferent hungry ocean.

  And a ladder.

  Afterward, it seemed to Kwan it had taken him far too long, weeks, to notice that ladder, those metal rungs bolted to the skin of the Star Voyager, leading upward to the next setback two decks above. Placed at the farthest starboard edge of this lower deck, the rungs marched up past the picture window of a sternward bar, and then to some unimaginable area reserved for passengers. Kwan saw it, at last, and knew he would have to go up.

  Not the escalators; only the waiters were permitted on the escalators, and only while at work. Not the elevators; kitchen staff were forbidden to use them at any time, except for medical emergency, and even then to be accompanied by a ship’s officer. But this ladder; this was Kwan’s route out of hell.

  The first time he climbed, frightened, his tense fingers clutching the cold rough metal of the rungs, was a blustery morning when few passengers would be outside and when the bar with the picture window was not yet open. That climb had merely been exploratory, informational. Once he had climbed high enough to see what was beyond the ladder, once he could peek over the level of that upper deck, he stopped, the ship’s vibrations running through his body, and drank it in.

  A passenger promenade, one that made a great oval all around the ship. Kwan was startled to see joggers pounding by, even in weather like this. The first of them to thud past, a trim thirtyish man with a fierce inward expression, had scared Kwan mightily, but then he realized the joggers were so thoroughly involved with the interior of their own bodies and minds that they were hardly aware of the outside world at all. A tiny face at the lower right of their peripheral vision made no impact on them.

  They won’t jog at night, Kwan told himself, and climbed back down.

  His day off was Tuesday. The other six days he worked from eight till eleven in the morning, from one till four in the afternoon, and again from seven till eleven at night, sometimes later. So Tuesday was the only time he’d be able to use his sudden access to what he thought of as the real world.

  He still had the clothing he’d worn when he’d come aboard the ship: decent tan slacks, maroon polo shirt, brown loafers. If he shaved more carefully than he usually did these days, if he spoke English, if he kept his nerve, there was no reason why he couldn’t pass as a passenger; there were a few Asiatics sprinkled among the mosdy Europeans up there, along with some Americans and even the occasional black. If only the weather would be good next Tuesday; in high seas or driving rain, he wouldn’t be able to make the ascent.

  Tuesday was beautiful all day, though Kwan had no way to know that without going out onto that aft deck. By nine at night, the deep black sky showed a million pinholes of stars, with a half-moon low in the east, forward of the ship, where its light would not touch a man climbing the stern ladder. The only truly tricky part was to edge past that picture window, but the crowded bar was filled with people in boisterous conversation, who had long since learned that what they mosdy saw at night in that window was their own reflections, and so no longer looked over there.

  Hugging the metal wall, Kwan climbed past the window, past the laughing, chattering, drinking people inside, and went on up and up. To stop, and wait, at the very top, while a loving couple with their arms around one another strolled with infuriating slowness past the spot where he crouched. At one moment, he could have reached out and clawed the woman’s ankle.

  Gone by at last. Using the rail for support, slipping beneath its lowest crosspiece, he rolled out onto the deck, stood, brushed himself off, and went for his first stroll in the free air.

  There were still at this hour people in the dining room, but they had also spread into the lounges and the half dozen bars and the two casinos. Passing through one bar, Kwan picked up an unattended drink and carried it off with him, more for protective coloration than anything else. He was not a drinker, never had been, didn’t believe in it.

  But it was impossible to carry the glass around like that without finally at least sipping from it. The taste was sharp, not very pleasant, but as he strolled he continued to sip the drink, and in a surprisingly short time there was almost none of it left.

  He was in one of the casinos when he realized he had to either stop drinking or walk around foolishly with an empty glass in his hand. The trouble was, he’d been concentrating on the passengers and on the simple pleasure of walking among ordinary people, and had
been paying too litde attention to himself.

  The passengers. Those in the bars were mostly European, tanned, rich looking, young to middle-aged. Those playing cards in the lounges were mostly American, older and not so prosperous looking. And the casinos seemed to attract a generally older crowd.

  Though not entirely. Here and there in the casinos, too, were attractive younger people, like the deeply tanned blonde he now found himself standing next to, watching the action at the craps table. She looked to be in her late twenties, tall and slender and bored, observing the dice and the players with a jaundiced eye. Kwan became aware of her, covertly watched her a while, and then said, “Excuse me.”

  She turned her head, raising a skeptical eyebrow: “Yes?”

  He gestured at the table: “Do you understand the rules of that game?”

  She had known, of course, that he was somebody trying to pick her up, but she hadn’t expected this. She gave a surprised snort of laugher, and then said, “I’m afraid I do, yes.”

  “Afraid you do?” Kwan echoed, and vaguely moved the glass: “I’m sorry, my English—”

  “Is as good as mine,” she informed him. “Where are you from?”

  “Hong Kong.”

  “I am from Frankfurt,” she told him, and nodded toward the table. “That is my husband with the dice. You see? There he throws. He’s trying to match a certain number. Sometimes he wins, sometimes he loses.”

  Kwan said, “Do you play?”

  “Oh, no.” She shrugged. “I could, but Pm not interested. It is Kurt’s vacation to play, and my vacation to watch.”

  “Well, at least it’s a vacation,” Kwan said.

  Again she looked at him, with more curiosity. “Aren’t you on vacation? Or are you with the ship?”

  “Oh, no, not with the ship,” he said, and went into the spiel he’d worked out while waiting for Tuesday. “I am a maritime student, I am doing my thesis on these ships, the company very kindly permitted me to come aboard.”

  “Your thesis? About the ships?”

  “Well, they have no real transportation purpose,” Kwan told her. “No one is here to travel to a destination.”

  “No, of course not,” she agreed. “It’s a vacation.”

  “So the competition,” Kwan pointed out, “is not airplanes, but islands.”

  She laughed. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”

  “So the thesis,” Kwan went on, beginning to half believe his own story, “is about why people choose this sort of vacation.”

  She pointed at the craps table. “That’s your answer, right there. The casinos. No law against gambling on the high seas.”

  Smiling, he said, “I’ll need to fill my paper with more words than that.”

  “Yes, I suppose you will. I am Helga.”

  “Kwan.”

  “How do you do?”

  Her hand was dry, cool, strong. With a knowing look at him, she said, “Isn’t this when you invite me for a drink?”

  In honest confusion, not at all feigning, Kwan said, “Oh, I wish I could, I’m sorry, I—”

  “An impoverished student? Really?”

  “That’s so.” There was something about being in the presence of a beautiful woman that always turned Kwan into the most supple and glib of liars. Showing her his glass, he said, “I only permit myself one an evening.”

  “In that case,” she said, “let me buy you a drink. Is that Scotch?”

  He looked at the dregs in the glass. “Yes,” he hazarded.

  * * *

  He’d been wrong. When they settled at a tiny booth in one of the quieter bars—but still lively—and he tasted the tall Scotch and soda the red-jacketed waiter placed before him, it was a very different taste. No telling what that first drink had been.

  And no matter. He was seated at a comfortable banquette in a happily humming bar, beside a good-looking woman who kept smiling around her drink and eying him with speculation, he was speaking English, flirting, happy, pretending to be himself at last (much more himself than that kitchen slavey he counterfeited daily down below), and even drinking a second Scotch though he never drank and his head had already begun to swim. But what release was this!

  She leaned closer to him, lowering her voice but making sure he could still hear her. “The casino closes at two. Kurt never leaves before it closes, and I can’t possibly stay here that long. Walk me to my cabin, will you?”

  “I will,” he said.

  * * *

  She woke him with sharp fingers and sharp shakings: “We fell asleep!”

  At a loss, he stared up at this naked woman bending over him in the amber light, narrow strong breasts presenting themselves but angular face filled with urgency and rejection. “You have to go, it’s nearly two o’clock!”

  He remembered. He remembered that body from before, when he’d first seen it, slender and muscular with its bathing suit bands, when all of that beauty and strength had been only for him, to enclose and engulf him. He had been away from women so long that the first look of her had been like the jolt of a drug, a sudden hollowness in his stomach as though the sight of Helga had burned him empty, seared him, and left him trembling but pure. Touching her, smelling her, pushing into her...

  But not now: “Wake up! Don’t spoil it all!”

  “I’m awake, I’m awake.” He struggled upward, mind reeling, and looked around the small cabin in the amber light for his clothes.

  She stood over him, washing her hands. “I’m sorry, Kwan,” she said. “I don’t blame you, we both fell asleep, but you have to hurry.”

  “Yes. Yes.” He’d had yet another drink with her in this room, and then perhaps an hour’s sleep; brain and hands were equally numb, thick, uncertain. But he got into his clothes, and she peeked out the slightly open door at the corridor, and said, “It’s all right.”

  They pressed together for just a moment in the doorway, she still naked, his left hand sliding down the wonderful slope of her spine. This body...

  She saw it in his eyes, and responded, her own eyes gleaming, mouth softening. But then she shook her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she murmured.

  “Till then,” he whispered, knowing he would never see her again, and had to bite the inside of his cheeks to force back the tears. He had never felt so cheated, so depressed, so sorry for himself in his life. This was what he was supposed to have. An easy life, lovely women, the rewards of his class and education and looks and brains. She gently pushed him out, and shut the door.

  What have I sacrificed, to become a creature of politics? But at the same time he knew, he knew even now, that all the rest of it could never be more than joy for the moment, that he was a creature of politics, that his devotion to the democratic cause was as intense as his craving for Helga’s body but more lasting, that a sacrifice wasn’t something you did to prove your worthiness but something that was done to you as an inevitable result of your commitment. There would be Helgas and Helgas, there would always be Helgas. Would there ever again be a chance for him to help break the stranglehold of the ancient murderers?

  Stumbling along the endless corridors—but wider up here and better illuminated—Kwan realized he was drunk and lost and probably in a great deal of trouble. If he didn’t find his way back, if he wasn’t in his position at that deep sink by eight in the morning, he would have done the worst thing he could do: he would have attracted their attention. The ship’s officers would have cause to study his papers, to study him, to learn about him, to decide whether to turn him over to the regime of the ancient murderers or merely boot him off the ship in some other hellhole, nearly as bad.

  “Outside,” he told himself. If he could find the deck, the clear air should clear his head, and then he would find the right deck, the promenade, and the ladder. That it was the ladder down to hell wasn’t important; what was important was that he find it and use it.

  He did soon stumble across a bulkhead door leading to the deck, but he was wrong about the outside air m
aking him less drunk; in fact, it seemed to make him drunker than before. He reeled to the railing and clung there a few moments while the world looped and swung around him, wondering if he would throw up.

  No; not quite. At last he could lift himself and look around and decide which way was aft. He went that way, staggering, alone on the deck, the moon now high above him to the left and ahead, throwing his shadow back at a long narrow angle diagonally across the deck behind him.

  He was already on the promenade deck, which he discovered when he came finally to the rounded stern, and there below him, gleaming palely in the moonlight, was his own empty oval deck. And between here and there, shimmering and seeming to move in the moon’s bright but uncertain light, were the ladder rungs.

  He had to go over the rail. Somehow, he had to attach himself, first his feet and then his hands, to those wet metal rungs, and then descend them, as they swayed back and forth with the ship’s progress, in the deceptive moonlight, with his head full of cotton batting and his arms and legs as uncertain as stuffed toys. But he had to do it; no choice.

  He began. Eyesight in and out of focus, fingers made of wood, he bent to duck beneath the railing, and a voice in perfect Mandarin said, with some shock, ccWait a minute! What do you think you’re doing there!1”

  So startled he nearly fell overboard, Kwan managed to fall the other way instead, landed painfully on his hipbone on the deck, and stared up at a short, skinny, bald Chinese man dressed as a room steward, who pointed over the side and severely said, “Are you trying to get down there? You’ll never do it.” Amazed to hear Mandarin at this time in this place, but drunk enough to answer literally, Kwan said, “I have to.” ccWhere are you from, the kitchen? Snuck up here, did you?” The steward smirked, letting Kwan know he was a naughty boy but the steward didn’t really mind. ccWell, you’ll never get down there,” he said. “Believe me, you’ll miss a rung, you’ll go overboard, you’ll drown out in the sea, nobody will even see you go.”