Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

Zhang nodded. He understands, Curtis decided.

Curtis patted the man on the shoulder and headed to the door. “You will do your job, I know,” Curtis told him.

Curtis and the three money people would copter back to the mainland tomorrow. For tonight there was a celebratory dinner in the Mallory ’s glass-roofed dining room aft on the top deck. Outside, the black sea breathed in slow respirations, illuminated with gentle brushstrokes from a quarter moon. Above, the thousand thousand stars formed incomprehensible but calming patterns in the black sky. Within, in subdued lighting, Curtis and Manville and the money people sat around the oval table covered with white cloth, and ate off gold-rimmed china with one entwined red RC interrupting the gold ring circling each plate.

Stewards in white served the meal, and nobody talked business. They mostly discussed politics, some economics, and at one point Bill Hardy described at length and with gusto the story of a movie he’d recently seen on tape, about a Concorde in flight threatened by terrorists.

Over the crème brûlée, Madame deCastro said, “I’m told you found that poor diver. He was dead, was he?”

“A girl,” Curtis said, “Yes, a surprise to me, too. An attractive thing, a pity.”

Bill Hardy said, “So she is dead.”

“Oh, yes,” Curtis said. “Surprisingly unbattered, but... No one was going to survive out there.”

“I take it,” Abdullah Wayarabo said, “she’s somewhere in cold storage.”

“No, not cold storage, we’re not really equipped for that,” Curtis told him, and smiled around at the table. “We’re certainly not going to take all our own food out of our only freezer to put a dead body in it.”

Manville said, “Where is she, then?”

Carelessly, Curtis said, “In an unused cabin.”

Madame deCastro said, “Isn’t that — I don’t know how to phrase this delicately, over dinner. Isn’t that a little warm , for a corpse?”

“We turned the air-conditioning on full,” Curtis assured her. “And the ship will make dock at Brisbane some time tomorrow night. It won’t be a problem.” He raised his Château d’Yquem and smiled around at them all. “In the morning,” he told them, effectively ending that conversation, “when we board the helicopter, I’ll have the pilot take us over Kanowit, so we can all see how our island’s coming along.”

After dinner, after the others had retired to their cabins, George Manville found himself restless, dissatisfied. And yet, today had been a triumph for him. A comfortable future, even a wealthy future, was now assured for him at RC Structural.

He was an engineer, not a scientist, but he had read the papers the scientists had published, he’d understood the principles, and he’d gone them one better. They had created the soliton in their laboratories; he had created the soliton in the real world, in an island in the ocean. He had seen it work, and he knew it was all his.

And he knew Richard Curtis appreciated him. Curtis had stayed with him every step of the way, showing a genuine interest, asking questions, even taking notes, following what Manville did, until by now Curtis could probably create the same effect himself. They’d been that closely tied together, the last few months.

George Manville was a stolid engineer, 34 years old, more comfortable in a construction trailer on a building site than anywhere else in the world. He’d been married once, just out of college. Jeanne was artistic, without being arty or phony; she acted in amateur theater groups, without convincing herself that Broadway had lost a great star when she’d married young; she was interested in classical music concerts and in opera, and would never find a blueprint fascinating, or want to hear the details of how a problem in stress-weight materials had been elegantly resolved.

Since the fairly amicable divorce, nine years ago, Manville had been lonely but content, and sometimes even happy. And tonight he should be the happiest of all. He had today’s success. He had the confidence and respect of one of the major builders in the world. And yet, after midnight, the stars still fixed across the black sky, the sleeping Mallory running with the minimum of lights, Manville still paced, discontented, troubled. He wasn’t an introspective man, but now he had to be: What’s wrong tonight? Why can’t I just go to sleep, like everybody else?

It was the diver. He knew it was the diver, he’d known it all along, but there was nothing he could do about the diver, not anymore, so he’d been avoiding the thought. But it was the diver, and there was no getting away from it.

From the instant, this afternoon, when that orange-suited figure had gone over the rail of the other ship, disappearing into the sea, Manville had been tense, frightened, hoping against hope. Because if the diver died, he was the one who had done it. He was responsible.

There should have been a fail-safe mechanism, a way to abort the experiment if something unexpected happened. Of course there should have been some way out, as the people on the other ship had insisted, but it had never occurred to him that such a thing might be needed. The experiment seemed so simple, so clear-cut; why would there be a need to abort?

He should have thought about it. His job was not to foresee the unforeseeable, but it was to guard against the unforeseeable, and he hadn’t done so. He hadn’t done his job. And now a human being was dead.

Somehow, it being a girl made it worse. It shouldn’t have, he knew that, a human being is a human being, but nevertheless it did. She’s young, and now she’s dead, through George Manville’s failure. Her life won’t happen, because of him.

And nothing to be done, not anymore. Nothing except roam the empty rooms and decks, waiting to be tired enough to sleep.

He wanted to see her. Was that morbid? He didn’t know why, maybe just to say the words I’m sorry in her presence, but he wanted to see her.

Curtis had said the body was in an unused cabin. The five on the upper level were all occupied, so it had to be one of the two below. So Manville at last decided he would go see her, he would tell her he was sorry, and then he would, no arguments, go to bed.

The interior corridors were dimly lit at night. Manville made his way to the lower deck, along the corridor, and opened the door to cabin 6. The light switch was just inside the door; flicking it on, he saw an empty room, an unmade bed. He clicked the light off again and turned to cabin 7, across the way.

The door was locked. Curtis must have locked it, to keep anybody from stumbling in there unawares. But it only stymied Manville for a second, until he thought, This door isn’t locked against me. I already know what’s in there.

I’m not violating anything if I ignore the lock.

In one pocket, Manville kept a card that gave, in black letters and numbers on white, equivalences: pounds to kilos, quarts to liters, that sort of thing. It was about the size of a credit card, but thinner, more supple. Manville took it from his pocket, slipped it into the crack between door and jamb, and slid back the striker on the lock.

The door eased open, darkness within. Manville stepped inside, switching on the light, leaving the door open. And there she was, in the bed, on her back, covered to her chin.

That was the first oddity that struck him, that her face wasn’t covered. Then he realized the room wasn’t at all cool, it was warm; the air conditioner hadn’t been turned higher at all.

Somebody’s mistake, obviously. Somebody on the crew had misunderstood Curtis’s orders. So it was a good thing Manville had come down here, or things might have got very unpleasant.