In the Ocean of Night (13 page)

“I thought you—”

“The Snark was outward bound, away from Mars. I got two shots, spaced hours apart. The data was from seven days ago. I looked again today, when I finally read that week-old readout, but it’s gone, out of resolving range.”

Lubkin seemed dazed. “Already left,” he said slowly. “Even with only two points, the flight path is pretty clear. I think it must’ve done a gravitational rebound, looping in for a quick look and picking up momentum from the encounter.”

Nigel was standing now, and he walked leisurely over to Lubkin’s blackboard. He leaned against it, hands behind his back and resting on the chalk tray, elbows cocked out. He stood in the dim light, where Lubkin could not quite make out the expression of wry superiority on his face. He brushed away drifting swirls of yellow chalk dust and studied the other man. He was glad for once to have Lubkin on the defensive, in a way. Perhaps the Snark riddle could deflect the man from his fascination with generals and presidents.

Lubkin looked puzzled. “Where is it going next?” “I think…Venus,” Nigel said.

The ship knew, even before leaving the banded giant planet, that the next world inward was barren, a place where reddish dust stirred under the touch of cold, thin winds. Absence of a natural life system did not rule out inhabitants, however. The craft recalled several other such worlds, encountered in the distant past, which supported advanced cultures.

It elected to fly past the planet without orbiting. This would subtract more angular momentum during the gravitational “collision,” readying the ship for the venture further inward.

This loomed all-important now, for the blue and white world demanded most of the craft’s attention. Many overlapping radio signals chorused out from it, a babble of voices.

A debate ensued within the ship.

Matters of judgment were decided by vote between three equally able computers, until intelligent signals could be deciphered. Only a short while remained until a preliminary breakdown of the incoming transmissions was complete. Then, still higher elements of the craft would be warmed into life.

One of the computers held out for an immediate change of orbit, to skip the dry pink world and drive on, burning more fuel, toward the blue world.

Another felt that the bewildering torrent of radio voices, weak but all different, bespoke chaos on the third planet. Best to allow ample time for deciphering these confusing signals. The minimal energy course involved yet another flyby, looping by the second planet, the world which was shrouded in thick, creamy clouds. This path would trade time for fuel, a clever bargain.

The third computer wavered for a moment and then cast its lot with the second.

They hurried; the parched disk ahead swelled quickly. The craft swept by this world of drifting dust and icy poles, storing the collected data on tiny magnetic grains deep within itself; one more entry in a vast array of astronomical lore.

The craft damped the rumble of its fusion torch and began the long glide toward the wreathed second planet. Intricate steps began in the final revival of its full mental capacity. Meanwhile, electromagnetic ears cupped toward the blue world, catching whispers of many tongues. Understanding a single language without knowing any common referents would require immense labor. Indeed, the attempt might fail. The craft had failed before, in other systems, and been forced to leave in the face of hostility and misunderstanding. But perhaps here…

The machines set to work eagerly.

He and Shirley sat on the hard-packed sand and watched Alexandria gingerly wade into the foaming white waves. She held her forearms up with each successive wash of cold water in a curious gesture, as though the lifting motion would pull her, loft her up and away from the chilling prick of the ocean. Her breasts swayed and jounced.

“It’s good to see her getting in,” Nigel said conversationally. He and Shirley had spent a good ten minutes coaxing Alexandria into activity.

“It
is
cold,” Shirley said. “You suppose there’s some runoff from…?” She waved a lazy finger at the blue-white mountain that peaked above the rippling surface of blue. The iceberg floated a few kilometers offshore, slightly south of Malibu.

“No, they ring it pretty tight. Float most of the fresh water in on top of the ocean water.” A slight cooling wind stirred the sand around them. “That breeze might be coming over the berg, though,” he added.

Alexandria was now bouncing in the scalloping waves. A spray of surf burst over her. She emerged, hair stringy and now a darker brown, shook her head, blinked and resolutely dove into the deepening trough of the next wave. She breast-stroked out with sudden energy.

“This was a good idea, Shirley,” he said. “She’s responding to it.”

“I knew she would. Getting her
away,
out of that deal with the Brazilians, is the only thing that’ll work.”

“Is that what you learned during these nightly jaunts of yours?”

“Ah
ha,
” she said with a slowly drawn smile. “You’re wondering where we go.”

“Well, I did…”

Nearby, an old man, barrel chest supported by wiry tanned legs, pointed offshore. “Hey. Ya,” he said.

Nigel followed the man’s trembling index finger. Alexandria was floundering in the undertow. An arm appeared, grasping. She rolled in the soapy white. Her head jerked up, jaws agape to suck in more air. She paddled aimlessly, arms loose.

Nigel felt his heels digging into the gritty sand. From the dunes to the hissing water’s edge was downhill and he covered it in a few strides. He leaped high and ran through the first few breaking waves. He tumbled over the next wave, regained his feet and blinked back stinging salt.

He could not see Alexandria. A curving wall of water rose up, sucking at his feet. He dove into it.

As he surfaced something brushed his leg, soft and warm. He reached down into the frothing white suds and pulled up. Alexandria’s leg poked out of the surf.

He set his feet solidly and heaved upward. She came up slowly, as though an immense weight pinned her. He stumbled in the riptide, blue currents rushing around his legs.

He got her face clear. Awkwardly he manhandled her body until she was facing down. He swatted her on the back and a jet of water spurted from her throat.

She gasped. Choked. Breathed.

He and Shirley stood just inside the ring of strangers. Their blunt stares fixed on the young man who was talking to Alexandria calmly, filling out spaces in his clipboarded form. Afternoon sunlight bleached the scene and Nigel turned away, his muscles jumping nervously from residual adrenalin.

Shirley glanced at him with a mingled look of fear and relief. “She, she said there was a feeling of weakness that came over her,” Shirley said. “She couldn’t swim any more. A wave picked her up and slammed her into the bottom.”

Nigel put an arm around her, nodding. His body felt jittery, urging him to action. He looked at the clotted gathering of beachgoers, abuzz with speculations, eyeing the two of them with unasked inquiry. A ring of naked primates. Far down the rectilinear beach a huge restaurant sign promised
ERNIE
’
S SUDDEN SERVICE
. Shirley huddled closer to him. Her hand clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed. Absurdly, he noticed that this gesture occurred scarcely centimeters from his penis. At the thought it swelled, thickened, swayed, throwing him into a confusion of emotions.

He hired a cab to drive them from Malibu to Pasadena. It was immensely expensive but Alexandria’s wan and drained expression told him the bus would be intolerable.

On the long drive Alexandria told the story over and over again. The wave. Choking on the salt water. Struggling at the bottom. The pressing, churning weight of water.

In the midst of the fifth telling she fell asleep, head sagging to the side. When they reached home she woke in a fumbling daze and allowed herself to be led upstairs. He and Shirley stripped and bathed her and then tucked her into bed.

They made a meal and ate silently.

“After this, I …” Shirley began. She put down her fork. “Nigel, you should know that she and I have been going to the New Sons in the evenings.”

He looked at her, stunned. “Your… jaunts?”

“She needs it. I’m beginning to think
I
need it.”

“I think you need …” But he let it fade away, the sharp edge left his voice. He reached across the table and touched the sheen of her cheek, where a tear was slowly rolling down.

“God knows what we need. God knows,” he said hollowly.

Dr. Hufman looked at him blankly. “Of course I can put her into the hospital for a longer time, but there is no need, I assure you, Mr. Walmsley.”

He reached out for one of the stubby African dolls grouped at the corner of his desk. Nigel said nothing for a moment and the other man turned the doll over in his hands, studying it as though he had never seen it before. He wore a black suit that wrinkled under the arms.

“More time wouldn’t help? A few more tests in hospital—”

“The complete battery is finished. True, we shall have to monitor these symptoms more frequently now, but there’s nothing to be gained—”

“Damn it!” Nigel leaned over and swept the collection of dolls off the mahogany desk. “She doesn’t
eat.
Barely makes it to and from work. She’s, she’s got no
zest.
And
you
tell me there’s nothing for it—”

“Until the disease equilibrates, that is so.”

“Suppose it doesn’t?”

“We’re giving her everything we can now. Hospitalization would only—”

Nigel waved him silent with a hand. Abruptly he heard the distant swishing of traffic on Thalia outside, as though suddenly the volume control had been turned up somewhere.

He stared at Hufman. The man was a technician, doing his job, not responsible for the reddening and swelling attacking Alexandria. Nigel saw that, had never doubted that, but now in the compressed airless space of this office the facts smothered him and he sought a way out. There had to be a release from the arrowing of events.

Hufman was gazing steadily at him. In the man’s constricted face he read the truth: that Hufman had seen this reaction before, knew it as a stage in the process, something to be passed through as surely as the aches and spasms and clenching tremors. Knew that this, too, was one of the converging lines. Knew that there was no release.

SEVEN

Lubkin did not react well when Nigel requested an extended leave.

He appealed to Nigel’s duty to the project, loyalty to the President (forgetting his British origins), to JPL. Nigel shook his head wearily. He needed time to be with Alexandria, he said. She wanted to travel. And—casually, not quite looking into Lubkin’s eyes—he was behind in his flight simulations. To maintain his astronaut status he needed a solid week at NASA Ames, splicing it up so that he was never gone from Alexandria more than a few hours.

Lubkin agreed. Nigel promised to call in at least every two days. They were bringing in new men, Ichino and Williams, to supplement the survey program. If Nigel wanted to interview them now—

Nigel didn’t.

The three of them went to the beach again, partly to exorcise the experience, partly because it was October and the crowds were gone. They lounged, they waded. The women were doing their meditations regularly now. They would face each other, draw the annular circle in the sand between them, link hands and go off into their own mesmerized world. Nigel closed his eyes, back pressed to the sand, and dreamed. Of Alexandria, of the past. Of the years after Icarus.

What put off The
New York Times
attracted women. They would drift his way at a party, lips pursed, seemingly inspecting Cezanne prints, and abruptly come upon him, round doe eyes widening in polite surprise at his mumbled identity (yes, he was the one), hand unconsciously going to the throat to caress a necklace or scarf, an oddly sensual gesture to be read if he cared.

Often, he did. They were electric women, he thought, yet they sensed in the Icarus even something basic and feral, some mysterious male rite performed beyond the horn-rimmed gaze of pundits and, most importantly, away from women.

They were of many kinds, many types. (
How mascu-

line,
one of them said, patting blue hair into place,
to think of women as types.
Embarrassed—this was in New York, where differences were unfashionable that year— he laughed and threw some chablis at the back of his throat and left her soon thereafter, reasoning that, after all, he did not quite like her type.) He sampled them: the Junoesque; the wiry and intense; the darkly almond sensual; the Rubens maiden; the others. How not to call them types? The urge to classify washed over him, to analyze and inspect. At last he came to look upon himself as from a distance, pacing his responses, never moving wholly with the moment. There, he quit. The NASA flack who hovered ever-present at his elbow tried to keep him “alive” on the 3D, circling through the talk shows, to retain his “saturated image,” but Nigel dropped out. And after a while, found Alexandria.

He went for long runs on the beach between La Jolla and Del Mar, keeping in training, churning doggedly by forests of firm young thighs, sun shimmering through a thin haze of sweat that ran into his eyes from bushy eyebrows. Cantilevered breasts—or, more stylishly, bare ones, brown painted nipples pouting in the stinging sun— swung to follow his progress. He loped along the ocean’s foaming margin, feet slapping in water, arms and legs growing leaden, his throat awash in dry pinpricks. He diverted himself by studying the faces that wheeled by, moving stride by stride into his past. Small families, leathery men, dogs and children: he picked roles for them all, ran small plays in his head. He glimpsed them frozen in laughter, boredom, lazy sleep.