CV

by Damon Knight

  42

  The makeup was Rodney’s idea. With pale powder on their faces, and old-man wigs stolen from the costume shop behind the theater, wearing their father’s suits, they could hobble along like two old crippos, and nobody would think twice about their canes.

  One night they had a bit of bad luck. They had just tripped an old woman, and Rodney had given her a whack on the head to keep her quiet, when someone appeared around the corner and came toward them. There were two of them, men with nightsticks in their hands and white brassards on their sleeves.

  Phil and Rodney looked at each other. “Sweet, play it sweet,” Rodney muttered.

  “What happened here?” said one of the men. “Who did this?” He went down on one knee to look at the unconscious woman.

  “Officers, it was horrible,” said Rodney in his old-man voice. “These two boys came up, and, and just hit her with a stick.”

  “Which way did they go?” said the other man, moving closer. He was looking at them in a way Phil did not like.

  “Down the corridor,” said Rodney, pointing. He bent over, clutching his chest. “Oh, I don’t feel well at all. It’s my heart.”

  “May I see some ID?” asked the second man. The first one was standing up, talking into his phone. The second one was coming too close.

  “Geronimo!” yelled Rodney, and swung his stick at the man with the phone. Phil brought his cane up hard between the other one’s legs. The man hit him on the cheek with his nightstick, but Phil was dodging, and he hooked the man’s leg and brought him down. Then Rodney was hitting him too, and the man was sprawling beside the other with blood coming out of his mouth. Then they ran. It wasn’t till later that Phil began to feel the pain of his broken cheekbone.

  Early in the morning Stevens was awakened by the buzz of the phone.

  “John, I’m sorry to trouble you, but Hal hasn’t come back, and I can’t raise him on the telephone. They don’t seem to know anything about it at security. I wonder if—”

  “Of course. I’ll find out what I can and call you in a few minutes.”

  Stevens put the phone down, then thumbed it on again, punched the hospital. After a moment a tired female voice answered.

  “Can you tell me if you’ve admitted a patient named Harold Winter in the last few hours?”

  “Let me check.” Stevens waited. “Yes, he was admitted at four AM.”

  “May I ask his condition?”

  “He’s stable. It’s a concussion. We’ll know more in five or six hours.”

  “Thank you.”

  Stevens got up and began to dress. His actions were automatic; he was in no doubt of what he was going to do. He put a sap in one pocket, the flat leather case in another.

  Ever since his recovery he had been in a half-pleasurable state of suspension. He had told Newland that he didn’t believe in accidents, but that was not true. Now that he no longer valued his past, he felt that his future was exquisitely, weightlessly in balance, that any puff of air might topple him one way or the other. He had been waiting with curiosity to see if fate would send him a message. Now here it was.

  He knocked on Newland’s door. “Paul, it’s John.”

  “Just a moment.”

  Newland opened the door. He was in his wheelchair, still dressed in pajamas. “What is it, is he hurt?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. They want me to bring you down—he’s conscious, but they can’t move him.”

  “Oh, God,” said Newland. His voice broke. “How did it happen?”

  “They’re not sure. Somebody attacked him, down on the Boat Deck.” He closed the door behind Newland and walked beside his chair to the elevator.

  “The Boat Deck?” said Newland.

  “Yes, they changed his section this morning.” The elevator took them down; the door sighed open.

  Stevens led him to the lifeboat bay. It was dark there; one of the ceiling lights had been broken.

  “Here?” Newland asked, peering in, just before Stevens hit him with the sap. The old man slumped over; there was no blood.

  Stevens wheeled him into the alcove. He took the flat plastic strip out of its case, slid it into the lock. The door opened; he pushed the chair through, closed the door behind him, then opened the second door, the one to the boat itself. The lights and air conditioning came on as they entered.

  Stevens left the chair in the aisle and went forward to the pilot’s console while he pulled on his gloves. Through the thick portholes he could see wind-driven spray dashing against the hull. In his mind’s eye he saw the boat slide out of its tube, plunge into the water, bob up, then slowly drift astern. Not bad: a Viking’s funeral.

  Newland was breathing slowly and shallowly. He was not dead yet, but soon.

  Stevens returned to the access panel beside the door, removed it, and examined the controls. He flipped the switch marked SIGNAL OFF. He set the timer for two minutes and turned the AUTO LAUNCH control to the ON position. He left the access panel on the floor. With a last glance at Newland’s gray head, he went out the way he had come.

  For two minutes nothing happened in the lifeboat. Then the timer clicked. The umbilicals were uncoupled and withdrawn. The hydraulic ram on the far side of the boat slid back, releasing the boat; compressed air blew it out of the tube. The engine fired automatically, propelling the boat to windward, away from Sea Venture.

  43

  There was a blinking red light on the console. Ferguson said to Bliss, “We have a door signal from Lifeboat Fifty-three.”

  “Another malfunction?”

  “Probably.”

  “Send a person down to check it out.”

  A few minutes later Ferguson exclaimed, “Now we’ve got a launch signal from the same boat!” He pressed buttons rapidly. “No status signal,” he said after a moment. “I think it’s really launched, although how that could happen—”

  Nothing but rain and spray was visible in the windows or the television screens. “See if you can pick up anything on radar.”

  “Too much chop,” said Ferguson. “There could be a dozen lifeboats out there and we’d never see them.”

  Without waiting for orders, Stuart was speaking into her microphone. “Sea Venture calling Lifeboat Fifty-three, do you read? Come in, Lifeboat.” After a while she turned and shook her head.

  Bliss stood where he was, trying to look as if he were thinking. Good God, what was he going to do? What would Nelson have done? If the lifeboat had actually been launched, either it was a malfunction, meaning there was nobody aboard, or someone had managed to launch it deliberately. In that case there was a small but measurable possibility that the passenger was carrying the parasite.

  What next? There was no drill for Sea Venture to retrieve a lifeboat; the designers had assumed that if the boats were launched, it meant that Sea Venture was foundering. The only thing he could do was to launch a second lifeboat, but that meant doubling the chance that the parasite would get away. It would be a dicey thing for anyone to get from one lifeboat into another in this weather; if the first boat turned out to be empty, he might have drowned a man for nothing.

  Stuart said, “Chief, Quinn reporting from Lifeboat Bay Fifty-three. The boat’s gone.”

  “Get me the hospital annex.”

  “Annex, Fenwick,” said a woman’s voice.

  “This is Chief Bliss. Have you had a new epidemic patient in the last half hour?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Call me the moment you do.”

  An hour went by before Stuart said, “Call for you, Chief. It’s Fenwick at the hospital annex.”

  Bliss thumbed over the phone. “Yes, Ms. Fenwick?”

  “Chief, you asked me to call you as soon as we had another epidemic patient. One just came in. Her name is Gearhart.”

  “No mistake about the symptoms?”

  “No, sir.” Her voice sounded offended.

  “Thank you.” Bliss turned to Stuart. “Send this on the emergency channel. ‘Lifeboat accidentally
launched from Sea Venture at’—give the position and time. ‘May have passengers aboard.’ Keep sending that until you get a reply.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Newland awoke, dizzy and in pain. At first he did not know where he was or how he had got there. He was sitting in his wheelchair, wearing nothing but pajamas, and he was cold, and being rocked back and forth, and there was a throbbing pain at the side of his head: when he put his hand there, he could feel a huge, tender swelling.

  Then he saw the yellow ceiling and the blue seats, and he thought, I’m in a lifeboat. But he did not know why. Hal had been hurt, that was it—the thought came back with a pain sharper than the one in his head. And he had called John Stevens. And that was all; the rest was gone. Had something happened to Sea Venture? Then why was he in a lifeboat by himself?

  He drove his chair up to the console and looked out at the gray sea. The boat was rocking in the waves, throwing him from side to side with each motion. Newland managed to lever his body out of the wheelchair and into the pilot’s seat; the effort left him weak and dizzy.

  When he turned the wheel, the blunt nose of the lifeboat came around into the waves. Now the rocking motion was from bow to stern, and the gray water slapped up over the portholes. He peered through the flying spray, hoping to catch sight of Sea Venture, but saw nothing. He continued turning the wheel until he had made a circle. The gray ocean was empty.

  It occurred to him to look at the clock. It was ten after twelve. It had been about seven in the morning, he remembered, when he had called John. So he could not have been in the boat more than five hours. How far could he have drifted in that time?

  He found the radio controls, switched on the receiver and tuned it up and down the band. Nothing but static. Which were the emergency channels? He could not remember. He turned on the transmitter and said, “Mayday, Mayday. This is Paul Newland in a lifeboat from Sea Venture. I don’t know where I am. I left Sea Venture about seven-thirty this morning. Please help me. Mayday, Mayday.”

  The boat rocked and plunged as it crossed the waves. Newland strapped himself in. His legs were hurting him very much.

  44

  Carl Nohrenberg went through the metal detector and the explosives sniffer, showed his ID to the Marine guard, and entered the Oval Office at precisely eight-fifteen. The President, as usual, was sitting behind the Mickey Mouse figures at his desk, impeccably dressed, ruddy, cheerful, and smiling.

  “Well, what have you got for me this morning, Carl?”

  Nohrenberg opened his folder. “Mr. President, we have a very strong statement in support of your Zaire policy from President Lamartain.”

  “That’s good. What else?”

  Nohrenberg turned over a page. The President always liked a couple of pieces of good news to start off with. “We have an advance copy of the Walter Commission report. They’re going to exonerate Rickard.”

  “Fine, fine. Send him a fax of congratulations—no, never mind, I’ll call him myself. And nowww,” he drawled, with a grin, “what’s the bad news?”

  Nohrenberg smiled in return. “Not exactly bad news, Mr. President, but we’re getting some more pressure on behalf of the people on Sea Venture.”

  “Firestein, Greaves, and about fifteen others?”

  “Yes, sir, and our thinking is that it would be a good idea to accommodate them. I have Admiral Penrose penciled in to talk to you about it at ten-thirty. If you agree, he could have a helicopter carrier there in five to six hours.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to him. Say, that reminds me of the one about the captain whose ship went down in a storm, and the next morning he found himself floating on a raft with this parrot…”

  “What happened to you, lad?” said Hartman.

  Winter tried to smile. His head was wrapped in bandages, and there was a deep discoloration under one eye. “I don’t remember. I must have forgotten your advice. What about Ned Mulhauser—my partner? They won’t tell me anything.”

  Winter hesitated. “He’s a bit worse than you, but he’ll be all right,” he lied. In fact, Mulhauser had serious internal injuries and was not expected to live.

  “That’s good,” said Winter. “Will you call Professor Newland and let him know where I am?”

  “Yes, I’ll do that. And I’ll be back to see you soon.”

  Hartman tried to call Newland’s suite; there was no answer. That seemed odd. He went up to the Signal Deck and knocked on the door, waited, then tried the knob. The door was unlocked. The room was empty.

  Oh-seven-hundred was when the home office generally liked to call, for its own inscrutable reasons. Colford, the General Manager, was very polite and helpful, but Bliss had a feeling that he did not understand the situation. “Mr. Bliss,” he said this morning, “I think I’d better tell you that we’ve had representations from the White House on behalf of eighteen of your passengers. They would like to be assured that you’ll find some way to contain this epidemic before you reach Guam.”

  “I can’t promise that, Mr. Colford.”

  “Or,” said Colford, “that in any event you’ll allow certain passengers to debark, including those eighteen whose names I’ve already mentioned. Now I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. Do you think it’s unreasonable, Mr. Bliss?”

  The trouble was that he couldn’t tell Colford the whole truth, because he would not be believed. If he started to babble about intelligent parasites and so on, he was perfectly sure that Colford would give him the sack. Then Bliss would have to refuse to surrender command, and there would be the devil to pay. “No, that’s not unreasonable,” he said.

  “Now, I’m told that the Navy is going to dispatch a helicopter carrier to rendezvous with you and take on your eighteen passengers, or thirty or forty, whatever it may be—I leave that up to you, Mr. Bliss. And they’ll keep those people in quarantine until they’re sure there’s no problem, and then land them ashore. Your ETA at Guam is what?”

  “Thirteen February,” said Bliss.

  “All right, then, will you make the arrangements, please? And, by the way, the helicopter will also bring you some medical people; that ought to relieve your mind.”

  “Yes,” said Bliss.

  Stevens’ attitude toward Julie was undergoing a change which puzzled and disturbed him. He was discovering an absurd beauty in certain aspects of her face and body which had seemed quite ordinary before. Apart from that, he found himself thinking with fondness of her as a person; he wished her well, and wanted to preserve her from harm.

  That afternoon, in his bed, she murmured, “What do you want?”

  “This.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “No. What do you want, Julie?”

  She was silent a moment. “I think I’d like you to tell me the truth.”

  “About myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suppose I were to tell you that I’m a criminal?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. What kind of criminal?”

  Stevens looked at her. “You really do want to know? Well, then, I am an assassin. That is my profession. I was paid to come on this voyage and kill someone. Does that satisfy you?”

  “I don’t believe it,” she said. Then, looking at his eyes, “Yes, I do. Who were you supposed to kill?”

  “That I don’t have to tell you.”

  She nodded. “When are you going to do it?”

  “It is already done.”

  She said, “Now I don’t know what to believe. Nobody has been killed on Sea Venture.” But he saw that she knew it was true.

  “How do you feel about it?”

  “About being an assassin? I feel that it is a foolish way to spend one’s life.”

  “Only that?”

  “What do you want me to say, that I repent my misdeeds? I don’t. I think the world is much better without certain people, but that’s not the point. The only thing I am sorry for is that my life has been senseless.”

  “Mine too,” she said after a momen
t.

  At sunset they were standing on the Signal Deck near the bow, looking out at the darkening sea and the rim of orange fire.

  “Is that a ship?” she said.

  He shaded his eyes with his hand. “Where? Oh, I think I see it. That little speck.” His heart had jumped, just for a moment, when he thought it might be the lifeboat. “They are looking at us too, I suppose, and congratulating themselves not to be here. When they get home, they’ll tell their friends, ‘We passed within ten miles of Sea Venture.’” It couldn’t be the lifeboat, of course; they wouldn’t even be able to see it from this distance. He wondered if the old man was dead by now; he must be. Why hadn’t he made sure? Probably, he thought, because he didn’t want to be sure. He had wanted Newland to have a chance, even if only one in a hundred. If Newland had won, if he had been found alive, that would have been another signal, the one he was waiting for now.

  They turned and began to walk around the pool. “Do you think we’re going to make it?” Julie asked conversationally.

  “The human race? I would say that depends on whether we deserve to survive.”

  “That’s pretty cynical.”

  “No, it is very idealistic. There is a way in which someone here on Sea Venture can save humanity very simply, if he chooses; the only question is, will he do it?”

  “And what might that be?”

  “There are occasions when someone knows he is the carrier of the parasite, because no one else is near enough to the last victim. At that moment, that one person has the option of saying, ‘Please clear a path for me to the passenger entrance and open the door.’”

  “I see. And step out? Very simple.”

  “Yes, very simple.”

  “Would you do it yourself?”

  He shrugged. “If I answered yes, it would be braggadocio. Since I have already had the disease, I am not likely to be called upon. Nor are you. So we can theorize in perfect safety, and turn our backs on the problem like everybody else. Shall we go now and have some dinner?”