Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea Part 9

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w A B B YY.com "It doesn't matter, if he can do both at once."

"It matters if you're interested, as Dr. Hiller and I both are, in the clockworks inside a man's head." He paused to seal down the end of the pressure-bandage, then said thoughtfully, "I suppose the ideal way to handle it is to do the man a favor in such a way that the rest of the crew thinks it's a punishment."

"Like, eat that ice cream or I'll knock your block off."

IN THE CONTROL ROOM, ADMIRAL NELSON and the Captain stood by the control, where the oblivious...o...b..ien was coaxing the big craft along inches above the channel floor. Dr. Hiller stood back by the main corridor, watching-waiting and watching.

Berkowitz appeared. He held his stocky young figure erect. His smooth face was pale.

"Torpedoman Berkowitz reporting, sir."

The Admiral reached out a foot and touched a heavy, compact rubber package with his foot.

"Hang that on you."

Berkowitz, swallowing his surprise and joy, picked up the package, a folded one-man inflatable dinghy, oars, and inflator, and hung it by its strap over his shoulder. "Take your gear," said the Admiral coldly, looking down at the immaculate seabag as if it were something a dog had left there.

Berkowitz shouldered the bag. The Admiral pointed to the main control console, where one of the TV repeaters showed a periscope view of the famous lower harbor of New York. The view swung to point out a nearby sh.o.r.eline, crowned with granite walls over which poked old 105-mm. cannon. "Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island. You could make that without a boat."

He signaled with a finger, and the Captain moved a control, swinging the view aft. It showed the prow of a harbor police boat, its bow-chaser like the admiral's grim pointing finger, the wings of spray it threw up turned pink, light diluted blood, by the glare of the fire-belt. "The metropolitan police,"

said the Admiral. "They have no jurisdiction, of course, but they're hanging on anyway. Whether they will let you go is something I neither know nor care. Up you go."

Berkowitz stood at tight attention. His eyes glinted, and just once, and fractionally, his face twisted: the Captain knew as clearly as if the man had made a speech that sudden tears had long been an affliction with him, and that he hated them and himself for showing them. He said hoa.r.s.ely, "Thank you, sir."

"That," said the Admiral, "is just like a gangrenous foot saying thank you when you cut it off.

Get out of here."

"Yes, sir," Berkowitz whispered, and, clumsy with his burdens, he began inching up the ladder.

It seemed to take forever. When he reached the top, the amazing O'Brien, apparently unaware all this time of what was going on in the chamber, made one efficient motion and hauled back the hatch control. Pink light spilled down, patterning the floor and the inkblot of Berkowitz's shadow, which humped itself to one side and then was gone. O'Brien's hand struck again, snakelike, at the control and the hatch boomed down, blacking out the patch of light and thumbing their eardrums. Admiral Nelson found himself, quite by accident, glaring at Dr. Hiller's face.

"Surgery," said Dr. Hiller.

"An emetic," said the Admiral. "What are you doing here?"

"Dr. Hiller volunteered her services," said the Captain, "which I-my G.o.d! G.o.d! " "

They followed his shocked stare, and saw, on the periscope repeater, which was still trained aft, the curved, whale-like back of the Seaview Seaview, mostly awash, and behind it, the police launch. On the deck, Berkowitz could be seen standing, up to his s.h.i.+ns in water, wrestling with the rubber dinghy, which had just begun to inflate, while with one hand he clutched his shouldered se to inflate, while with one hand he clutched his shouldered seabag. And from the police boat came a little flickering of light, a mist of thin smoke, and suddenly the long cruel threads of tracer bullets. There was a sudden clatter on the hull.

Berkowitz was facing away from them as he dropped bag and boat both and stood watching the boat; and though they could not see his face, his whole stance and bearing spoke volumes of all the varieties of most intense astonishment. The bag rolled unnoticed into the water and astern; the boat, hung up for a moment on a stanchion-fitting (though the stanchions themselves were stowed away), bobbed like a bubble of tar for a moment, then rolled over, showing a jagged line of punctures, collapsed and sank. Berkowitz turned slowly until he faced the conning tower. They could now clearly see his face. It contained nothing but amazement. He opened his mouth and, effortless as an overfed dog, he vomited. The vomit mingled with the widening soaking stain of blood on the front of his white uniform. Berkowitz' face then made whatever minuscule change a face needs to go from astonishment to a full, calm, accusing comprehension. He looked as if he understood all mankind, all motives, the reasons for everything and the natures of all. He raised his right hand and waved it; it was in no sense a salute; it was an acknowledgement. Then he let his eyes close and pitched forward into the water was.h.i.+ng the deck. It cleansed him away like a flyspeck and left the hull stainless and gleaming.

The launch cut its motors and swung broadside. A man with a boathook appeared on its deck, peering into the water for the body.

"Trigger... happy... sons... of... b.i.t.c.hes." It came in an under-the-breath monotone, probably from O'Brien, who nevertheless kept his deft fingertip movements going on the controls; yet it came clearly into the deafening silence.

"Stop all," said the Captain.

"Aye, sir," said O'Brien; but before even he could move the Admiral rapped, "As you were."

"Aye, sir," said O'Brien.

"What did you have in mind, mister?" demanded the Admiral.

"Ready the deck gun, sir," said Crane.

"The man is dead," said the Admiral. "Sinking the launch won't bring him back. What are your engines, Mr. O'Brien?"

"Half ahead all, sir."

"Make it three-quarters." He reached for the mike, pressed a stud. "Bow lookouts."

"Yes, sir!" chorused two voices on the intercom.

"Take another layer off your eyeb.a.l.l.s. We're increasing speed."

"Aye-aye, sir."

Nelson, his big face impenetrable, fixed Crane with his sharp gaze, then Dr. Hiller. Without speaking, he wheeled and went forward toward his suite.

Crane found himself, as the Admiral had a moment before, staring fixedly at the psychiatrist. She held his gaze, then looked away from him and after the Admiral. He saw her nod. There was something chillingly impersonal about the tiny gesture. It was like the flick of a statistician's pen, putting a checkmark beside something significant in a long column of figures. He stood immobile watching her as she turned and walked to the corridor and down it out of sight.

The Captain took off his hat and slammed it down on the deck, and said the most famous of all four-letter words.

"Yes, sir," said O'Brien.

ON AUGUST 8TH THE AVERAGE AIR TEMPERATURE was 139. On the 12th it was 141.3.

The sea was sluggish, s.h.i.+ny-surfaced but heaving. The sky was cloudless but hazy, and the firebelt hung across the high southern sky like the bridge to h.e.l.l.

Captain Lee Crane stopped outside the Admiral's suite and tapped on the door. "Come in!" said a voice, and he entered.

"You wanted me, Ad-oh! Hi."

Commander Emery took one of his feet off the Admiral's desk, swung around in the Admiral's swivel chair, and put both his feet up on the opposite corner. The Captain grinned at him. Emery was, in Crane's mind's eye, the original s.h.a.ggy Man. There was an indefinable quality about the man that always called the word up. It had nothing to do with his appearance, really. Starched, smoothed, pressed (none of which he was at the moment) he would still seem s.h.a.ggy. Perhaps it was the big-dog friendliness of the man, perhaps his utterly confident lack of respect for formality. He was a man who did not need straight ruled lines and sharp creases to comfort himself in an uncertain world. "Hi, Lee.

The O.O.M.'s brus.h.i.+ng his teeth or something. Sit you down some."

Crane sat on the edge of the settle. "What's the occasion?"

"Ways and means. You know Harriman Nelson. He likes to have things all nice and tidy. He never did get permission from anybody to make this trip and shoot this bird."

"Looks like permission is first-place, hard to come by and second-place, sort of an empty gesture."

"Not to the O.O.M. He didn't mind spitting in the eye of those UN characters nor the New York police. d.a.m.n them," he intoned pa.s.sionately, then dropped the pa.s.sion and went on in his easy-going rumble. "Question of jurisdiction. This isn't Navy, this pigboat, or even Government, if it comes down to that; the Bureau of Marine Exploration, you might say, directs it, but when you come right down to it it was created as a land tool of Harriman Nelson. This tail wags that dog."

"So really, what's the problem? In fact and actuality, Nelson's the big wheel. He bought it, built it, paid for it and he bosses it. Why doesn't he just look in the mirror and say 'Hm?' 'Hm?' and then nod his head and say, and then nod his head and say, 'Uh-huh.' 'Uh-huh.' " "

Emery laughed. "He would, Lee, he would, if it were any kind of an operation but this. Also if he were any other kind of a man than what he is. But he's Navy-retired Navy, sure: an out-and-out civilian, when you come right down to it, but Navy for all that; it's the way he thinks, the way he feels, the way he is. And if you could define the indefinable 'real Navy', or at least find the lowest common denominator for the whole sea-going soldier-boy business, you'd find that from the three-day Annapolis boot with hay in his hair, clear on up the layers of legend where live ninety-year-old retired five-star admirals, you'd find that they had one thing in common-they worked for somebody. Now that's so self-evident up through the ranks that it seems silly to mention it, and so overlooked at the very top that most people wouldn't even realize what you were talking about." Emery acrobatically fumbled a hopelessly beat-up pipe out of his right pants pocket, and a tattered oilskin pouch out of his left rear pocket, and a jet lighter out of his left pants pocket, and a knife out of his watch pocket, all without disturbing the feet, ankle upon ankle, which one heel-point supported on the extreme corner of the Admiral's desk. "And yet the fact that a high admiral is a subordinate is a thing that means a great deal-more, perhaps, than anything else-to such a man. Two reasons: one, conditioning. An admiral is by definition a long-term bedfellow of the naval att.i.tude, and I say bedfellow advisedly; he lives with it, sleeps with it. Two: As he climbs the long hill, there are a lot of guys up there ahead of him-from the bottom it looks like that mob we saw on the plaza in front of St. Peter's. But the higher they go, the fewer there are, and when he's spent most of a lifetime getting absolutely as high as he can go, n.o.body can be surprised that in seeing only one man between himself and the sky that he preoccupies himself pretty completely with that man's importance."

"By G.o.d, Emery, you do paint a picture. I got as far as four stripes and never thought of it that way before. So he's got to get the permission of the President of the United States."

"Got to, must, sine qua non sine qua non and absolutely." and absolutely."

"And if the President refuses?"

"I think," said Emery, stabbing his thumb into the bowl of his disreputable pipe, "that every man has within him valuations which override what he knows to be the truth, or what he knows is right.

Most of us unfortunately have many such valuations. Harriman Nelson, a professional seeker after truth, a career-man, you might say, in that holy search every bit as much as a career man in the Navy, has very few such valuations. In the support of what he knows to be right, he will kick over anybody or anything-and you saw that happen at the UN. But the one thing-maybe his only thing-weightier than the truth to him is his loyalty to his superior. I pray G.o.d the President does say yes, because if he doesn't, he will obey and that obedience will destroy him." Emery laughed suddenly; it was shocking. "Of course," he added, nursing the three-inch flame of his jet lighter into action, "That obedience would destroy all of the rest of us, including the President of the United States, and after that, I guess it wouldn't matter."

Crane looked at his hands and, as if they did not please him, shoved them hastily into his jacket pockets. "And what about if he can't contact the President to ask him?"

"Now that," said Emery jovially-and then paused to puff and puff, and stare at, and puff again his pipe alight, "-that presents a clear alternative and what the Navy loves to call an implement situation. If an officer reports for orders and is unable to get them-and mind you, he has to exhaust his every resource in trying to get those orders-then, and only then, is he on his own discretion. I mean, to put it in the simplest possible terms, he is not on his own discretion if he wants to do something and is ordered not to. Even if it's the right thing to do and he can prove it. On the other hand, inability to make contact is never an excuse for inaction- never. Enough men have been court-martialed on this point to make it painfully clear. No, he must take action on his own discretion. That is written in the Code, in so many words. What is not written, but is there all the same, is that he'd better be right in what his discretion leads him to. If it all turns out well, fine. If it doesn't, G.o.d help him because n.o.body else will, most especially the Navy. So what we have to pray for, Cap'n, is that he doesn't make contact."

"You sound as if one, there were some hope of making contact and two, it would be nice if we personally could do something about it."

Emery slowly took down his feet and even more slowly straightened his spine. s.h.a.ggy old Emery was grave and serious so seldom that when it happened, it hit like a depth bomb. "Crane," he murmured, and he sounded like far-off thunder, "I'd like to be able to wash out your mouth with sand-and-canvas for that. On the first point, yes, he does have a plan. On the second point, Harriman Nelson plays by the rules, and as long as I'm around to watch, everybody in his command does likewise."

"Even if it destroys him and all of us-all the world?"

"Even that. Are you arguing the point with me, mister, or just running a test?"

"Just running a test," nodded the Captain, at which Emery suddenly and warmly smiled. "And here's the great man himself, to tell you how to chat with the President when all communications are down."

" 'Way down," said Nelson from the door. "Sit, Lee. Emery, get the h.e.l.l out of my chair."

"Just keeping it warm for you, sir," said Emery. He shambled up and went to sit by Crane.

"Do you believe in G.o.d?" asked the Admiral surprisingly, dropping into his chair.

The Captain and the Commander looked at each other and at the admiral. "Well, sure," said Emery, and "I guess so," said Crane.

"Been talking to that Alvarez," said Nelson. He chuckled suddenly and rubbed the side of his neck hard. "You know, if a fellow had nothing else to do, he'd be tempted to listen a whole lot to that man. Ever drop in on him?"

"Never did," said the Captain. "What have I got to say to him?"

"I did," said Emery.

"Oh, you would. Bet you had a ball with him."

"In a way, yes. But then I'm nuts. Everybody knows that. The secret of my success: I'm nuts. I never run out of things to get interested in. One of those movies that puts you to sleep, now: as soon as the plot gets a little soporific, I kind of tune it out. I get to looking at the lighting and figure how they placed it, how big, what kind. Or the costumes: I remember one night it hit me like a ton of bricks, something I'd known all along but never thought about before: cloth is threads lying side by side."

"Well, what else?"

"h.e.l.l, nothing else: it just hit me, that's all." He interlaced his fingers and pulled at them hard without pulling them apart. "By the hundreds and the thousands and the hundreds of thousands-all interacting. You ever stop to think of the distribution of force when you tug at one side of a piece of cloth? It all yields, it all holds. It moves without moving. You hang it out in a hurricane or give it the kind of almighty bas.h.i.+ng around it gets in a was.h.i.+ng machine, and when you're done none of the relations.h.i.+ps in the fabric are changed."

"You talk too much," said the Admiral, "but I know you well enough to know you haven't changed the subject. We were talking about Alvarez."

"Sure we were. Alvarez sees the universe like a piece of cloth. He envisions-and baby [he was the only man on earth who would dream of addressing Admiral Nelson as "baby" and, further, not notice that he was doing it]-Alvarez is the boy to go to for visions, he really has visions; well, he sees the base of it all as simple as warp and woof; these simple things he calls G.o.d's laws. And where the Age of Faith was secure until disrupted by the Age of Reason, and the Age of Existentialism, or it's-all-meaningless, came along and bombed the Age of Reason in its turn; all that complication and chaos and upsettings of whole schools of mathematics, all that revolution and a.s.sa.s.sination and negation and organized, purposeful destruction-all that, to Alvarez, isn't chaos and never was. It's cloth in a williwaw, that's all, twisted up on itself and maybe even ragged at the edges-but, by G.o.d (and you can take those two words literally)-by G.o.d, they're there, the warp and the woof, the simple lines of the laws of G.o.d. It's a credo that can handle anything-anything at all-one step further than the all-is-nothing existentialists, because Alvarez believes all is something and feels he can prove it. And I guess, if you really believed it, you could get more comfort out of believing that you were an on-purpose man put in an on-purpose world for a reason, rather than floundering around for a meaningless cosmic second in a purposeless universe."

"But that sounds like a whole lot I've heard before!" said the Captain.

"You haven't heard anything quite like this before. Because just when you are convinced that this character is strictly pa.s.sive and the h.e.l.l with him, he says something or does something about as pa.s.sive as a weasel with an eel in his throat. He's actually a very dynamic guy."

"Then what's with all this will-of-G.o.d megilla of his?"

"That's simply the conclusion he has come to. It's G.o.d's time to wipe us out, and that fire up there is going to do it. Alvarez doesn't argue with or about G.o.d, and most especially he doesn't waste any time trying to understand G.o.d-which is where he parts company from most of the reverend gentleman I've met so far, who not only claim to understand G.o.d, but are prepared to explain G.o.d."

"Then what about this dynamic thing? Is that how he falls from grace-gets off his keyster and uses his own will instead of lying p.r.o.ne under G.o.d's? What does he do then-repent and apologize and get on his back again?"

"Oh no. He does nothing most of the time, unless he's strongly moved to do something. In other words, he doesn't operate from moral pressures, duty and all that. He moves when he fells a strong inward compulsion. And to him, that's G.o.d. G.o.d acts through him whenever G.o.d feels like it. Alvarez just lolls around awaiting the call, and brother, when it hits him, he jumps. Oh, there's no use trying to describe him to the uninitiate-right, Nelse?"

"Right," said the Admiral, who had been following the conversation like a tennis spectator, swinging his big head from side to side. "All I'll offer is that he believes in something, he makes you wish you believed in something-anything-as much; and finally, he... fears... nothing."

"Natch," said Emery. "He has bowed to the will of G.o.d as he sees it. It's acceptance, that's what it is, not pa.s.sivity. Since he's sure the firebelt is G.o.d's ultimate punishment, visited on mankind for his sins; since he is certain that judgment can't be changed; and finally, since he is convinced that his own every act and thought-and non-act, I might add-is a manifestation of G.o.d's will; why, he is not anxious." Emery raised his finger, his eyes alight. "That's it! He's not anxious! He's the only man I ever met who's free of modern man's epidemic sickness, anxiety. You know what's so irrational, so wasting, about anxiety? It's the worrying about all the things that might happen, and the inability to realize that of all the infinity of things that might happen in each instance, only one will. Alvarez sees in this firebelt the one thing that is going to happen. This one thing he totally accepts. Everything else has ceased to matter. Ergo: no worry."

"And he's the Lord's anointed, and fears no punishment."

"Oh no! Lee, you talk to him once; he doesn't think of himself as a saint. He knows he will be punished, too. He doesn't fear it because he isn't anxious... don't you know that the prime worry of anxious people is that they won't get a suitable punishment?" Emery grinned his s.h.a.ggy grin and waved a hand at the overhead. "And that thing up there will do till the real thing comes along."

Crane turned to the Admiral. "And do you find this castaway's theories uh-what was the word you used-tempting, sir?"

"If I do, it's like the pa.s.sing envy for a guy who has a softer pillow than I do. Sure, I'd like to live in a universe as simple and certain as he does. But I don't. I'll tell you where he and I part company. I believe as strongly as he does in a superior power; you can call it G.o.d if you want to. And I believe that it is in essence unknowable, the proof of which is that the more we learn, the more things we find that need learning. Now if you want it in simple terms of G.o.d, I believe that G.o.d put the unknown in the universe for us to know about. (We never will, we never can, but it's there to work on.) And I believe that we were put here to do that learning. Finally-and here's the point-I think the knowledge we get should direct our actions. I mean if we don't use the knowledge we get, we're spitting right in G.o.d's eye. It isn't enough just to know what that firebelt is. I have to do something about it. Sure, it's G.o.d's firebelt. It's a natural phenomenon-they're all G.o.d's. But just because G.o.d decreed that rivers must flow downhill that doesn't mean I'm a sinner if I stop one up and build me a power station."

"Eternal dam-ation," murmured Emery. Crane shouted and the Admiral groaned. "But anyway,"