Passage. Part 31

PART 2.

"Do you think death could possibly be a boat?"

-Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

19.

"Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"

-Last radio message from vulcanologist Dave Johnston on Mount St. Helens.

"You know what it is?" Richard said blankly, thinking, Joanna can't possibly know.

Temporal-lobe feelings of recognition were just that, feelings, with no content behind them. But she clearly thought she knew. Her voice was full of suppressed excitement.

"It all fits," she said, "the floor and the cold and the blanket, even the feeling that I shouldn't have shut off my pager, that something terrible had happened I should have known about. It all fits." She looked up at Richard with a radiant expression. "I told you I recognized it but had never been there, and I was right. I told you I knew what it was."

He was almost afraid to say, "Well, what is it?" When he did, she would look bewildered or angry, or both, the way she had for the last two weeks whenever he'd asked her. It was amazing how strong the conviction of knowledge was with temporal-lobe stimulation, even in someone like Joanna who understood what was causing it, who knew it was artificially induced.

"I told you the sound wasn't a sound," she said, "that it was something shutting off, and it was.

That was what woke them up, the engines shutting off. Hardly anyone heard the collision. And they went outside on deck to see what had happened-""On deck?"

"Yes, and it was bitterly cold. Most of them had just thrown a coat or a blanket on over their nightclothes. It was after midnight and they'd already gone to bed. But not the woman with the piled-up hair. She and her husband must still have been up. They were wearing evening clothes," she said thoughtfully, as if she were puzzling all this out as she spoke. "That's why she was wearing white gloves."

"Joanna-"

"The third-floor walkway is recessed, with a step at the end that makes it look like it's curving up," she said. "And your lab coat."

"Joanna, you're not making any sense-"

"But it does make sense," she said. "A stoker came up behind Jack Phillips and tried to steal his lifejacket right off him, and he didn't notice. He was so intent on sending the SOSs, and-"

"SOS? Lifejackets?" Richard said. "What are you talking about, Joanna?"

"What it is," she said. "I told you I knew what it was, and I did."

"And what was it?"

"I knew the word palace had something to do with it. That's what they called it, a floating palace."

"What they called what?"

"The t.i.tanic."

He was so surprised by the answer, by any answer, that he simply gaped at her for a moment.

"I told you it was someplace I recognized but had never been," she said.

"The t.i.tanic"

"Yes. It's not a hall, it's a pa.s.sageway, and the door's the door that opens out onto the deck.

After the t.i.tanic hit the iceberg, they stopped the engines to see how much damage had been done, and the pa.s.sengers went out on deck to see what had happened. The cold should have been a clue.

The temperature had dropped nearly twelve degrees during the evening because of the ice. I should have realized what it was when the woman in the nightgown said, 'It's so cold.' "

The t.i.tanic. And he had called her an island of sanity. He had told Davis there was no way she would ever turn into R. John Foxx.

"It all fits," she said eagerly. "The feeling I had in the walkway of being oblivious while something terrible was happening. That was the Californian. It turned its wireless off for the night five minutes before the t.i.tanic sent its first SOS, and then sat there, fifteen miles away all night, completelyunaware that the t.i.tanic was sinking."

Davis had said that everybody who studied NDEs went wacko sooner or later. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was some sort of infectious insanity. But surely not Joanna, who saw right through Mandrake and his manipulations, who knew the NDE was a physical process. There must be some mistake. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You're saying you were there? On board the t.i.tanic!"

"Yes," Joanna said eagerly. "In one of the stateroom pa.s.sages. I don't know which one. I think it may have been in second cla.s.s because of the wooden floor-it was the curve of the deck that made the pa.s.sage look longer than it was. First cla.s.s would have been carpeted, but the people outside on the deck looked like first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers, so it might have been in first cla.s.s. The woman with the piled-up hair was wearing jewels, and white gloves. I wonder who she was," she murmured. "She might have been Mrs. Allison."

"And who were you?" Richard asked angrily. "Lady Astor?"

"What?" Joanna said blankly.

"Who exactly were you in this previous life?" Richard said. "The Unsinkable Molly Brown?"

"Previous life?" Joanna said as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

"Were you s.h.i.+rley MacLaine? Wait, don't tell me," he said, holding up a warning hand. "You were Bridey Murphy, and she came over from Ireland on the t.i.tanic."

"Bridey Murphy?" Joanna said, and her chin went up defiantly. "You think I'm making this up?"

"I don't know what you're doing. You said you were on the t.i.tanic."

"I was."

"Who else was on board? Harry Houdini? Elvis?"

She stared at him. "I can't believe this-"

"You can't believe this? I can't believe that you're sitting here telling me you had some past-life regression!"

"Past-life-"

" 'You should send me under,' you said. 'I'll be an impartial scientific observer. I won't fall prey to thinking I see Angels of Light.' Oh, no, you saw something even better! Do you have any idea what Mandrake will do when he gets hold of this, not to mention the tabloids? I can see the headlines now."

He swept his hand across the air. " 'Near-Death Scientist Says She Went Down on t.i.tanic.' "

"If you'd just listen-I didn't say it was a past-life regression."

"Oh? What was it?" he said nastily. "A time machine? Or were you teleported there by aliens? I believe that first day I met you, you said that fourteen percent of all NDEers also believed they'd beenabducted by UFOs. What you should have told me was that you were part of that fourteen percent."

"I don't have to listen to this," she said and flung herself off the examining table, clutching at the back of her hospital gown, and stomped, stocking-footed, over to the dressing room.

He started after her. "I should have stuck with Mr. Wojakowski, the compulsive liar," he said.

"At least the only s.h.i.+p he was on was the Yorktown."

"Fine," she said, and slammed the door in his face.

She opened it again immediately and came out, b.u.t.toning her blouse, yanking on her cardigan.

"Mr. Mandrake's the one you should have asked to be your partner," she said, pus.h.i.+ng past him.

"You two would make a perfect couple. You both want to hear what fits your preconceived theories and nothing else."

She halted at the door. "For your information, it wasn't time travel or a past-life regression. It wasn't the t.i.tanic. It was-oh, what's the use? You won't listen anyway." She yanked the door open. "I'll tell Mr. Mandrake you're looking for a new partner."

It wasn't the t.i.tanic? "Wait-" he said, but the door had already slammed behind her.

He wrenched it open. She was already at the elevators. "Joanna, wait!" he shouted and sprinted down the hall after her.

The elevator dinged. "Wait!" he shouted. "Joanna!"

She didn't so much as glance at him. The doors slid apart, and she stepped on. She must have pushed the "door close" b.u.t.ton because the doors immediately began to slide shut.

"Joanna, wait!" He forced the doors apart and shoved onto the elevator. The doors closed behind him. "I want to talk to you."

"Well, I don't want to talk to you," she said. She reached for the "door open" b.u.t.ton.

He blocked her from reaching it. The elevator started down. "What did you mean, it wasn't a past-life regression?"

"Why are you asking me? I'm Bridey Murphy, remember?" She made another try for the b.u.t.tons, and he grabbed the red emergency b.u.t.ton and turned it. An unbelievably loud alarm went off, and the elevator lurched to a stop.

Joanna looked at him disbelievingly. "You're crazy, you know that?" she shouted over the alarm.

"And you accuse me of being a nutcase!"

"I'm sorry," he shouted back. "I jumped to conclusions, but what am I supposed to do when you tell me you've been on board the t.i.tanic?"

"You're supposed to let me at least finish my sentence," she shouted. "Turn that off.""Will you come back to the lab with me?"

She glared at him. The alarm seemed to be getting louder by the minute. "I promise I won't jump to conclusions," he bellowed over it. "Please."

She nodded reluctantly. "Just stop that thing!" she yelled, her hands over her ears.

He nodded and pushed the emergency b.u.t.ton. It kept ringing. He pushed "door open." Nothing.

He twisted the emergency b.u.t.ton again, and then the floor b.u.t.tons, one after the other. Nothing. He tried turning the emergency b.u.t.ton the other way, but that only seemed to make the alarm louder. If that were possible.

Joanna reached past him to press the "door open" b.u.t.ton again, and the elevator moved upward, though the ringing still didn't stop. Richard yanked at the emergency b.u.t.ton again, and the noise abruptly shut off, leaving an echoing ringing in his ears.

"Whoa, was it a ringing or a buzzing?" he said, hoping she'd smile.

She didn't. She pressed "six," and the doors slid open. Richard had half-expected a crowd of anxious rescuers, or at least someone who'd come out to see what all the noise was, but the hall was empty. Joanna stalked off the elevator and down to the lab ahead of him, her chin in the air. Inside, she turned to face him, her arms folded across her chest.

"Do you realize we could have been trapped in there forever," Richard said, trying to break the ice, "and n.o.body would ever have come to rescue us?"

Nothing.

"Look," he said. "I'm sorry I flew off the handle like that. It's just that-"

"-you thought I'd turned into one of Mr. Mandrake's nutcases," she said. "How could you think that?"

"Because people do it all the time. Perfectly rational people who suddenly announce they've seen the light and start spouting nonsense. Look at Seagal. Look at Foxx."

"But you knew me," she said.

"Like you knew Mr. Wojakowski?"

"Touche," she said quietly. "But when he told me about being on the Yorktown during Pearl Harbor, I didn't just accuse him. I checked my facts first. I got outside confirmation. You didn't even listen to what I was trying to tell you."

"I'm listening now," he said.

Her chin shot up again. "Are you?"

"Yes," he said seriously. He indicated a chair, and she sat down, looking wary. He sat down,too, and bent forward, his hands between his knees. "Shoot."

"All right." She pushed her gla.s.ses up on her nose. "It was the t.i.tanic..." He must have tensed involuntarily, because she said, "I thought you said you were going to listen."

"I am. It was the t.i.tanic."

"But it didn't feel like I was in 1912, or like I was seeing the s.h.i.+p that night. It wasn't like that."

"What was it like?"

She got the thoughtful, inward look she had had when she was trying to identify the noise. "It was the t.i.tanic, but not the t.i.tanic. I knew I wasn't on board the actual s.h.i.+p, that what I was seeing wasn't an event from that night. But, at the same time, it was the t.i.tanic."

"It didn't feel real?" Richard asked. "Was it a superimposed vision?"

"No," she said. "The vision was substantial and three-dimensional, just like the other times. The illusion that you're really in that place is complete. I was really there in the pa.s.sage and standing on the deck, only..." She seemed to draw into herself. "It was as if there was something else behind it, some deeper reality..." She looked curiously at him. "But why would I see the t.i.tanic?"

"I don't think you did," he said. "I think you confabulated it. You didn't recognize it as the t.i.tanic during the NDE. You concluded that afterward while you were giving your account. You're familiar with the process. Your conscious mind..."