Pohlstars (9 page)

"And we won't for a while longer, because we're competing with the heart of the oaty-boat fleet. We're cooling the surface water and sucking up the best lenses of cold. So most of the time we're dealing with top water that's as much as three degrees cooler than it should be, and bottom water sometimes three degrees warmer. Delta-T, twenty. Cubed figure of merit, eight thousand. Which means just about half the energy we should be getting.

"As bad as that!

"And going to get worse, he said, but cheerfully, so that I asked irritably:

"All right, come on! Tell me what you've got up your sleeve.

"We go deeper! he said triumphantly. He shook his head when I started to object, and keyed the map back. This time it was featureless. "Here are unexploited areas with a surface temperature of thirty or more- He displayed areas hatched in red lines, and as I peered at them I began to object again- "Wait a minute, Jason! And here are huge lenses of three-degree deep water. Three degrees, you understand me? And look-there's a patch five hundred kilometers across where we've got both. Thirty- three degrees on the surface, three degrees at depth- delta-T, thirty-cube that for a figure of merit, Jason!

I didn't have to. It was an oaty-boater's dream. "Shit, Des, I said contemptuously, "you're talking about
bottom
water.

"Damn near. Ten kilometers down, most of it.

"And I know those charts. What you don't show there is that there are mid-depth warm currents. You try to drop a suction intake down through them, and they'll curve into spaghetti!

He grinned smugly. "Right, he said, "and wrong. I'm not talking about a rubber hose. I'm talking about steel tubing, bouyed along it's length to keep it neutral, dynamically positioned by its own engines. Of course, those figures of merit aren't all profit. A hell of a lot goes into energy to keep the currents from tying the tubes in knots, and a hell of a lot of capital into building them in the first place. But I did the feasibility studies myself! With a figure of merit of twenty-seven thousand you can afford a lot.

I only had one question left. "When? I begged.

"It's already started, Jason! The contracts have been let out for the new gear, deliveries will start in sixty days. Mr. d'Agasto has started hiring construction crews and they'll be coming aboard next month-

"Aboard? Here?

There was a shadow on Desmond's happy face as he said, "Well, yes. The conversion's going to be done at sea. That's Mr. d'Agasto's plan. I really think, he said wistfully, "that we'd do better taking the boats in one at a time to some nice deep harbor, maybe in the Sunda straits, and refit there. I showed him the figures. It'd be cheaper and faster. . . but he's the boss, Jason.

I nodded. He was. He was showing it. He hadn't said a word to me-hadn't even allowed Desmond MacLean to whisper it to me until now, when the work was already begun and the secret would be no secret anymore. He was the boss. And I-was superfluous.

Prophecies fulfill themselves; a man who thinks himself useless becomes so. The best estimate I could make of myself was that I was an old fool who was in the way.

So I got out of the way. I took myself off to New Zealand.

It could just as easily have been Okinawa or Iceland. There was no place on the Earth where I was particularly needed, or had any particular reason to be. I thought I might like to see geysers before I died, so New Zealand won the toss. There were one or two people there I had some sort of friendly relations with-shipping agents and freight forwarders, and a banker named Sam Abramowitz whom I had known for forty years. I was shy of meeting Sam, for I had known him first while I was a scared kid in the accounting department of the bank, and he was one of the few people in the world who knew I had juggled the books to give the Commodore his start. But he made me at ease when I hinted at the subject. "Ah, Jason, he said, "that was a hundred years ago in another world. That was back in America, and we've both gone a long way away from what we were then. For he'd been personal banker for a lot of Mob money, until his stomach wouldn't take it anymore and he emigrated. "Forget it. Have a drink. And in the morning I'll take you to see all the damn geysers you want. .

So I dawdled away a month, and then half of another. The geysers didn't keep me interested that long. Neither did New Zealand, for when all was said and done it was still land, though only a fairly small piece of it and remote. I longed to be back on the sea, but more than I wanted that I wanted to be wanted there. And so when at last May phoned me, it was all I could do to keep my voice calm and my face bland. "A party'? I said. "Well, I'm not much of a one for parties, my dear.

"Oh, please. Jason! The Mays are going to be here, and a lot of our other friends-it'll be the biggest party we ever gave.

"I would like to see the Mays, I admitted.

"Not as much as they want to see you! I don't know if they'll even come if I can't tell them you'll be here. And, Jason- there was real sweetness in her voice and in her half-fearful smile- I've missed you
so.

Well, of course I went! I was getting pretty sick of sheep, anyway-and even sicker of being on the land.

May had kept my rooms for me, but there was going to be a crush of guests. I gladly vacated them for May Bancroft and Tse-ling Mei to share, and I moved in with the crew. There was not much more room there. The work crews were coming aboard for the refit. When I looked them over, they were the sorriest, meanest bunch of roughnecks I have ever seen. If I had not been told they were deep water construction workers, I would have guessed them to be knee breakers for the Mob. Every one of them was allowed a hundred and fifty kilos of personal luggage, and I did not believe that any of it was musical instruments or books.

They did not help morale on the boat. Dougie cleared six hundred of our own people out of their quarters and put the new ones in one whole section together. They ate together, they talked together, they kept together. The rest of us were doubled up and excluded. In the first day the boat's security staff arrested a couple for hard drugs, but Dougie was having none of that. He ordered the charges dropped, and then ordered the security forces to stay out of the construction workers' area entirely. Not just the security forces. All of us were told to stay away, and hard-nosed types that had come aboard with the new work crews stood guard at the passages to keep the rest of us out. The new ones all wore a new kind of uniform- scarlet sea jackets and crash helmets-and they looked as much like an invading army as anything else.

They felt that way, too. There was a meanness in the air on our boat that I had never felt before, not even when bastard Ben was king triumphant. I tried to talk myself out of it. Old man Jason, I said to me, although I was still not yet sixty and not really old at all, old man, you are seeing ghosts and worrying without cause, for how can things get worse than they are already? They can't, I said, to reassure myself. But at sixty I had a lot still to learn.

I went to May and told her I didn't like the new people. She was trying on her new party dresses, with two of her maids fluttering around and admiring her and them, and indeed she was as beautiful as she had ever been-a little thinner, a little sadder, but the most beautiful woman in the world-and the dresses nearly did her justice. "These people are only for a little while, Jason, dear, she said. "As soon as the new intakes are installed, they'll be gone.

"I'd hate to be the one that had to throw them off the ship, I grumbled. She didn't look at me for a moment.

She stood there, staring out over the gardens towards the sea, as she used to stare when she was two years old.

Then she said, "Perhaps you ought to talk to Dougie about them instead of me. She had made up her mind not to interfere with her chosen love's way of running the empire she had given him. I had to respect her wishes.

So I did talk to Dougie. He laughed at me and told me to get lost. He was busy, he said.

That was what he said, and that, in fact, he was, for the refit was a huge task, and there was the party coming up. The party was to celebrate the public announcement of what everyone in the trade had known for weeks, that we were going deeper and finding more. He had invited people from the Russian and Japanese fleets. He had invited a few of our principal customers from even the land. And of course he had invited Betsy. Because May asked me to be, I was polite to her-as polite as to Captain Tsusnehshov or to old Baron Akagana when they came aboard. I greeted her politely and offered her a drink and helped her get settled in her rooms; and I did the same for the Japanese and the Russians, and then went off to see the Mays. If they were a little older than the last time I saw them, they were at least that much more charming and beautiful, too. Tse-ling Mei was one of the world's most loved movie stars. Maisie Gerstyn, who had once been Maisie Richardson, had brought her handsome husband and her two fair, bright twin boys. We all sat around the lanai that was part of my suite-theirs now-gossiping and enjoying one another's company until the sun was low and it was time for them to dress for the party.

I was in no hurry to dress, or to go to the party at all, for that matter. I was ambling slowly toward my room when the pager called my name. Desmond MacLean wanted me to join him in the high bridge, and his voice sounded strange.

The principal reason his voice sounded that way was that he was half drunk. He wasn't alone, either. He was sitting there with his face flushed and his tongue tripping over the hard words, and there with him, matching him drink for drink, was Betsy Zoll. "You idiot, I snarled at him, you re out of your class! Can't you see she's pumping you for information?

He shook his head stubbornly. "Other way, he mumbled. "Y'unnerstan me? It's the other way. She's doing the talking.

I had no patience with the man-or with Betsy, either, who sat there serene and smiling. I called for a medic with a tank of oxygen and some black coffee. "You'd better stay away from the party, I said bitterly, "for you'll disgrace the boat. He shrugged hopelessly. "Damn it, I cried, "what's the matter with you? Don't you see what a fool you are? And what did you call me for, anyway?

He pointed to Betsy. "Tell'm, he mumbled, and submitted himself to the attentions of the medic, who had just arrived.

While MacLean was choking down coffee and inhaling as much of the 02 as the medic could force into him, Betsy stood up. I'm sure she'd had as much to drink as Desmond, but the only sign was that she moved very carefully, as though the floor were rocking. There was nothing wrong with her speech. "What I told him, old man, she said, "was nothing you couldn't have seen for yourself. Just look around you.

"At what? I demanded. She pointed out the window.

But there was nothing to be seen that I didn't already know was there. True, Betsy's own flagship was hull down on the horizon, and two others of our own fleet and one of hers in sight-but I'd known that, for some reason or other, we'd been steaming closer and closer to other boats for the past few days. The only other thing that was in any way unusual was the flotilla of stiltboats and fast hovers in the water just outside the lip. And that was easily understood. It was to ferry our guests back and forth, of course-though it was, I thought as I looked closer, a touch strange that the crews manning them all owre the scarlet seas jackets of the new construction crews.

"I don't know what I'm looking at, I admitted stiffly.

Betsy laughed and turned to the medic. "Out, she ordered. The woman glanced at me, then left, her expression resentful. "Have you looked at the landing strip? Betsy demanded.

"Why should I? But I did, and then I looked again. There were a dozen aircraft parked at the side of the strip, and instead of bringing them down to the hangar deck, more were coming up on the elevator.

"Old man, she said contemptuously, "what you won't see, you can't see. I knew this was happening weeks ago. I only came to make sure.

"Sure of what'?

"Ah, Jason, what a fool you are! Can't you recognize an invasion force when you see one?

"There's no need, I said, misunderstanding her, "for Dougie to invade the boat, since May has given him the whole fleet.

"Not her fleet, you old fool! Mine! He wants to steal my ships!

"You stole them yourself in the first place, I said stubbornly, not quite taking it in, "or your bastard father did.

She stared at me with scorn. "Everybody steals everything; how else can anybody ever get rich? How did the Commodore get them in the first place, but with you to help him in the stealing? God help you, old man, you've blinded yourself. If you won't believe me, ask your drunken friend, she cried, grinning, and left the bridge.

By then Des was nearly coherent. Still, it took him a long time to get the story out. Betsy had plied him with drink and got him babbling, and what he had babbled was what I should have known for myself. He had poked among the incoming stores for the new "work crews and found that there were pumps and engines and tubing, all right, but there were also rifles and grenades and bigger, worser weapons than that. It was true. The reconstruction was a ruse to import his storm troopers; the party was a ruse, too, to get Betsy aboard as hostage.

God knows how long Dougie had planned this madness. God knows how many of Betsy's people he had offered bribes or how many fortunes he had squandered to buy arms and hire his battalions. God knew-but I should have known, too! If I hadn't let myself fling off to New Zealand in a fit of pique, I might have seen it happening in time to prevent it. But even so, I should have known. I should have realized months earlier that Dougie would never settle for half of anything. He wanted all of the Fleet, not just May's boats.

And he wound up with nothing. For God knew, and I should have known-but Betsy did know. People who take a bribe will take a bigger one. As I was scrambling down the ladder to Dougie's command bridge I heard the distant scream of a stiltboat and saw Betsy's boat rising on its skis. She was on her way back to her own ship, and Dougie was caught with egg on his face. For by the time I got past his uglies to confront him, she was home free and talking to him on the intercom. "Give it up, sonny! she taunted. "You missed your chance!