by Damon Knight
“What an unusual idea,” said Mrs. Pappakouras, a handsome Greek lady in a flowered Paris caftan. “A pickle in a Gibson, do you call it, or a martini?”
“I call it a Bliss, actually; it’s my own invention.”
“Really! May I try a sip?”
“You may, certainly, but you’ll be disappointed—it’s plain water.”
Her eyes narrowed with amusement. “Oh, you bad man! Then you are not really drinking at all?”
He told her the story about Gibson—“a government official in Washington, I believe. Funny that he should have been immortalized in this particular way. The Gibson as we know it is more or less neat gin.”
William Firestein, the former senator from Colorado, who was standing beside Mrs. Pappakouras with a tall glass of Scotch in his hand, said gravely, “I’ve known several people in Washington who used the same device—not with a pickle, though, Mr. Bliss. And I’ve known several hundred who should have done it.”
“Well, you know,” said Bliss, “if I didn’t, I’d be pickled myself.”
This was about as far as Bliss went in the line of humor, it drew a polite laugh, as always. Maurice Malaval, the French industrialist, remarked with a smile, “It is very interesting how some people become immortalized, as you say. You know of course Monsieur Guillotin, who gave his name to the instrument by which he lost his head. And you know perhaps Monsieur Daguerre, who invented the daguerreotype. But perhaps you do not know Monsieur Poubelle?”
“No, who was he?” asked Firestein.
“He was the inventor of the dustbin—you would say in America, the garbage can.”
“Really!”
“Yes, and in France, his name lives again every time we say, ‘The garbage can is full.’”
Across the room, the beer tycoon Howard Manning was talking to Eddie Greaves. “Eddie, you’re getting off at Guam, is that right?”
“Yeah, man, they’re going to fly me from there to Tokyo for a concert on the fifteenth. I took this trip so I could get away from the phone and, you know, work on some songs, but that phone rings all day and all night.”
Manning smiled. “You can always take it off the hook.”
“Yeah, and I could of done that in L.A., too. But it’s a change of scene. What about you, how long you staying on?”
“I’m getting off at Guam, too; I have a conference scheduled in Manila—same date as your concert. I’ll be sorry to miss it.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t all get lucky.”
When she had had a few days to get over her nervousness, Emily began to feel almost at home in Sea Venture. A little newspaper, the CV Journal, was waiting for them in the printer tray every morning, and several times there were letters as well. As Jim said, the size of the room didn’t matter, after all they only used it to sleep, and there were so many other places to go, so many things to do. They met a very congenial couple, the Prescotts, in the lounge one day and afterward spent a good deal of time with them.
After a week or so Jim found some card-playing companions, and then they did not see so much of him. Emily went to the health spa and to several lectures, which she found very interesting. She began to take lessons in origami and flower arrangement from Mrs. Oruma, who owned the Oriental Shoppe—“the gook nook,” as Jim called it.
There was only one more really bad time before the horror began: the morning when the newspaper had an announcement on the first page about a temporary submersion. “In order to move into a more favorable current, Sea Venture will submerge to a depth of approximately three hundred feet at 1:00 A.M. tomorrow morning and will remain submerged for approximately seven hours. The submersion will be carried out during the night in order to cause the least inconvenience, but passengers who are up at that hour will be able to watch the procedure in lounge, Promenade Deck and stateroom screens.”
“Jim, I don’t want it to submerge,” she said.
“It has to, to get into a favorable current. It says so right here. Besides, you knew all about that before you came.”
“Yes, but I thought it wouldn’t be until we got to those islands.”
“Well, what’s the difference, now or later? Pull yourself together, Emily.”
But she couldn’t do it. She went to bed early that night, and turned off the window: even that dreadful blackness was better than watching the ocean come up over their heads. She took two pills instead of one, but they did not make her sleep, they only turned her head fuzzy.
In the Control Center, Captain Hartman sat beside Bliss just before one o’clock, watching Deputy Womack at the console. The radioman—the Communications Coordinator they called him—was at the other end of the console, watching a bank of screens and occasionally talking quietly into a mouthpiece.
“I’m really interested to see this,” said Hartman. “To me, that’s the most amazing thing about Sea Venture—submerging a thing this size. It’s never been done before, I know. To tell the truth, I’m not certain why it’s necessary.”
“Well, it’s a good thing in storms, you know, but the real reason is for steering. All we’ve got is wind and currents, and that’s enough if you don’t mind taking ten months to go round the Pacific. But the currents change from one season to another, and they’re always tricky east of the Marianas. If we want to get to Manila and not wind up somewhere in the Carolines, we’ve got to make some northing.”
“Can you really do that, just by adjusting your depth?”
“Oh, absolutely. It’s the Coriolis force. Whatever current you’re in, in this hemisphere, there’s always another one underneath going off to starboard.”
“So if you ran too far to the north, you’d be out of luck?” “That’s about it. That’s why they pay us our money, eh, Womack?”
The young deputy turned and smiled. “Yes, sir.”
“Here we go, then. All secure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Take her to minus three hundred.”
Womack tapped keys on the console. “Watch the Boat Deck screens,” said Bliss. For a minute or two nothing seemed to be happening; then Hartman saw that the floodlit waves were rising a little higher, and higher still; finally, with an accelerating motion, they broke over the lenses of the cameras on the hull. The screens blurred for a few moments, then cleared, and they were looking at a cloudy-green underwater world. A shoal of little fish darted away.
One by one the banks of television cameras were submerged: “E” Deck, “D,” “C,” “B,” “A,” then the Main Deck, Promenade Deck, Upper Deck, Quarter Deck, Sports Deck, and finally the Signal Deck itself, and through the thick quartz deadlights Hartman could see with his own eyes that the water was surging up over them.
Risen again, her decks hosed down, Sea Venture moved week after week alone over the abyss. There were days of mild breezes, when the sea was a pale sun-wrinkled blue, and flying fish hurled themselves ahead in liquid arcs. Even when the seas rose higher, crashing against Sea Venture’s hull with massive force, the vessel plowed ahead, steady as a table top. As the weather grew warmer, more and more bathers appeared in Sea Venture’s four open-air pools, and the Sports Deck was crowded with tennis players, volleyball players, shuffleboard players.
On their television screens every day the passengers watched, with mingled shock and pleasure, the gray blizzards that were sweeping over the East and Midwest. Baltimore was immobilized under three feet of snow; there were thirteen feet in Minneapolis–St. Paul.
Christmas came when they were a month out of Honolulu; there was a huge tree in the Upper Deck lobby; Christmas carols chimed in the crowded corridors, and all the restaurants served a traditional dinner of roast turkey, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce, mince and pumpkin pie.
Bliss called home on a video circuit at nine o’clock that evening; it was ten in the morning Liverpool time, halfway around the world. His wife’s image cleared; her hair was a new color, in tight curls around her ears. “Hallo, dear, Merry Christmas!”
�
�Merry Christmas,” said Bliss. “How are you getting on?”
“Oh, we’re very well. How is your voyage going?”
“The usual,” said Bliss. “Is everyone all right?”
“Oh, yes, we’re all very well. Where are you now, dear?”
“We’re just a day’s voyage east of the date line—you can look that up on your globe. Very calm seas, good weather. Is Tommy there?”
“Yes, he is, dear, he wants to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
Her image retired and was replaced by the callow visage of his son. “Hallo, Dad. Merry Christmas and so forth.”
“Same to you. Son. Doing all right on the job, are you?”
“Oh, the job. Well, I quit that job, Dad. But I’m getting another very soon. A pal of mine has promised me it. There’s an opening coming up right after the first of the year.”
“Yes, I see. Did my parcels come all right?”
“Yes, they did, Dad, thank you very much. We’re opening gifts tonight, I can’t wait to see what they are. Did ours come, did you get them?”
“No, not yet, but I expect they’ll be waiting in Guam or Manila. You know what the mails are.”
“Yes, they’re awful. That’s too bad, I did want you to have my gift on Christmas day. Well, here’s Mum.”
His wife’s face reappeared. “Well, dear, no good running up the bill for nothing. Have a happy Christmas.”
“You, too. Good-bye, dear,” said Bliss.
8
Marcia sent a fax of a statement for the press, as she had promised, and Newland approved it with a few minor changes. Bronson would not like it.
His troubles with Bronson, and perhaps with the whole L-5 movement, went back about five years, when he had first begun to suspect that Bronson’s ties to the aerospace industry and the Pentagon were more far-reaching than he had supposed. It bothered him to know that there were people pushing L-5, not for the advancement of the human spirit, but for a share of the mind-boggling profits to be made from any large construction in space. And he knew that was naive, but once he began questioning other people’s motives, it was inevitable that he should question his own. For the last year or so, whenever he was interviewed about L-5, there had been a small inner voice in his head saying, Are you telling the whole truth?
After the newspaper stories had appeared, of course, there was no point anymore in trying to conceal his presence on Sea Venture. He stayed out of public places as much as he could, anyhow; he disliked the way people carefully did not look at him in his wheelchair, and he disliked crowds. Even Hal was a distraction to him sometimes. He needed to be alone; he needed to think.
The human race had to do something. There were almost six billion people in the world, and five hundred million of them were starving. There was famine in India, Africa, South America. Acid rains were killing forests all over the Northern Hemisphere. A dozen armed and angry nations were poised with LOW systems to retaliate against any nuclear aggression. It was true that the ocean was an enormous unused resource, vaster than the land. Could it feed and house the billions more to come? Could it relieve the pressures long enough for humanity to solve its problems and survive?
The day after Christmas there was another celebration when they crossed the international date line and Sunday turned into Monday. Higpen called Newland on the phone. “They’ll do some kind of King Neptune performance in the theater, but if you want to see the real thing, come over here about three o’clock.”
“Thank you, Ben,” he said.
In the town square they found what looked to be the whole perm population of Sea Venture. The square itself was packed except for one open lane marked off by ropes; people were sitting on metal bleachers, and others were looking out of windows on the upper level.
“You know you’re one of the stars of the show,” Higpen said in his ear. “You don’t mind, do you? If you’re worried about anything, we can call it off.”
“No, that’s all right,” Newland said with some misgivings.
Higpen left him in a roped-off area with six other people who greeted him shyly. “We’re the greenhorns,” one of them told him. “Our first time over the line—yours too? Well, don’t worry—they say it isn’t too bad.”
Then a brass band struck up a lively tune. Down the open lane came a curious procession: first the band, high-school students by the look of them, in green and gold uniforms; then a goat in a cart, dressed in a gray jacket and trousers and wearing a hat; then two strikingly handsome people, a man and a woman, dressed in not very much, with pale-green makeup on their bodies and masks on their faces. With a flourish of trumpets, they mounted a platform in front of the fountain.
“Know all ye who are subjects newly come to our realm,” cried the man, “that your fishy king and queen require and demand your fealty. If there be any here who refuse to submit, let them be taken and thrown into our briny deep.”
Another blast of trumpets, and the procession came around again. This time Newland and the rest of his group, Hal included, were ushered to the head of the parade, two by two. When they reached the space below the platform, the green man waved his trident over Newland and Hal, crying, “I baptize you in the name of Father Ocean!” The woman beside him showered them both with green confetti, and then they were being kissed by a number of young women who hung garlands of seaweed around their necks.
After that there was a good deal of shouting and singing; somebody was putting on a skit, apparently, and there was prize-giving, but Newland could not make out much of it. Eventually the meeting began to break up, and Higpen came to rescue them.
“Now you’re citizens of the sea,” he said happily. “That means you belong to our family forever, whether you like it or not.”
“Ben, I like it,” said Newland.
9
The next day Chief of Operations Bliss showed him around the Control Center—it was not called the bridge—a comfortable, brightly lighted place lined with consoles and cabinets. There were four small, very thick quartz windows, the first he had seen in Sea Venture, two looking forward, one port, one starboard. For the rest, they relied on television screens.
Afterward Deputy Ferguson, who was going off shift, took him and Hal down to see the marine lab. Ferguson opened a door marked NO ADMITTANCE and held it for Newland’s chair to pass through. Beyond was a tiled corridor with doors opening off either side. “This is our marine section,” he said. “We’re quite proud of it—a lot of very valuable work has been done here.”
“Justifying the appropriations,” said Newland with a smile. “What exactly do you do here?”
“Ocean charting, currents, bottom sampling, salinity and temperature measurements, pollutants, that kind of thing.”
Through the open doors Newland glimpsed office desks, filing cabinets, banks of instruments. They crossed a room lined with tanks in which large, bright-colored fish lazily swam. At the end of the corridor was a heavy door, open; beyond it was a room with a large window in the far wall.
“This sill may be a little problem.” said Ferguson.
“No, it’s all right,” Hal answered, and boosted the chair across.
“Is this a watertight door?” Newland asked.
“Yes. We’re right down at the bottom of the hull here, and that section beyond the window is open to the sea. Here’s Randy Geller, he can tell you more about it.”
Geller came forward, a tall, pale young man with a reddish beard. He smiled politely when Ferguson introduced him. “I was just about to take a bottom sample,” he said. “Maybe you’d like to watch?”
“Yes, very much.”
Geller led him over to the window, through which Newland could see a gray-walled chamber. Overhead were tracks with traveling cranes, hoists and cables; below was green water that surged slowly from left to right, slapped against the wall, and surged again.
“The pressure is equalized, I suppose,” said Newland; “that’s why you have to have the window.”
“Tha
t’s right,” Geller said with a surprised lift of his eyebrow. “People usually ask, ‘Why doesn’t the water come in and sink the ship?’ We could pressurize this whole section, the way they do in the fishery, but that would mean decompressing every time we leave, and it would be a nuisance. We can also watch what goes on in there through TV cameras, but their lenses keep getting wet; it’s a convenience to have the window.” He pointed to a bank of television screens, only one of which was turned on: it showed a vague greenish background against which yellow motes drifted. “This is the dredge camera; it ought to be just about at the bottom by now. It’s a thousand meters here.”
They watched in silence until something began to show up on the screen: a pebbled floor, gray-green at first, then brown, then purple-brown as it came nearer. Geller touched a control. “This is an anomaly,” he said. “Manganese nodules. Most of them are farther southwest.”
Newland was watching attentively. “How big are the nodules?”
“I’d say these are about ten centimeters. We’ll see when we get the sample up.” He touched the controls again; the view in the screen rotated downward slightly until they could see the leading edge of a complex metal object, greenish-yellow in the light. “Here we go.” The metal edge bit into the bottom; a cloud of sediment rose. Geller threw a switch. “Now we just have to wait for it to come up.” In the screen, the cloudy water slowly receded; they saw the dredge again, with tiny particles streaming downward at an angle.