Connie Willis - Passage

“And inhibiting the endorphins would kick her out?”

“I don’t know yet. I asked him about theta-asparcine, too, but it’s not an inhibitor. His specialty’s inhibitors, so he didn’t know much about it. He said he thought it had a regulatory function and that an artificial surrogate’s been produced. I need to do some more research, but not till I’ve checked Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDEs to see if cortisol’s been present in all of them. If it has, there are a number of ways to counteract the cortisol and keep her under. So I’ll see you tomorrow at four o’clock.”

Four o’clock. And by that time, she should know one way or the other. Or maybe sooner, if she could reach Kit. She called her again, and as soon as she got home, slightly worried, and at fifteen-minute intervals till she finally got through.

“Oh, I’m so glad you called,” Kit said. “I wanted to apologize for leaving the book where Uncle Pat could find it. I don’t blame you for walking out like that.”

“That wasn’t the reason—” Joanna said, but Kit wasn’t listening.

“It was an unbelievably stupid thing to do,” she said. “I mean, he’d hidden it once. He’d obviously try to hide it again. I don’t blame you for being mad.”

“I’m not mad—” Joanna said.

“Well, you should be,” Kit said. “I still haven’t found it, and I’ve looked absolutely everywhere. Down behind the radiators, inside—”

“Actually, I didn’t call about the textbook,” Joanna said.

“Oh, of course, you want to know about the questions you asked. There was no library as such, but there was a Reading and Writing Room on the Promenade Deck that had bookshelves and writing tables, and it was right next to the First-Class Lounge, which did have a bar. And, yes, Scotland Road was a crew passage on E Deck that ran nearly the whole length of the ship. It—”

“I need to know something else. Do you know if it was foggy that night?”

“No,” Kit said promptly. “It was perfectly clear. And very still. One of the survivors described the water as being like a lake. That’s why they didn’t see the waves hitting the iceberg.”

“And there couldn’t have been fog later on? After they hit?”

“I don’t think so,” she said just as promptly. “All the survivors said it was the clearest night they’d ever seen. It was so clear the stars came right down to the horizon. Do you want me to find out?”

“No, that’s okay. Thanks,” Joanna said. “You told me what I wanted to know.” What I already knew, she thought after she hung up, and that, combined with the frequent image of the garden, meant that Mr. Briarley was wrong.

No, not wrong about why she’d seen the Titanic. He was right, it was the mirror image of death. Wrong only in that everyone, thank God, was not doomed to see it, and maybe Kit was right, and Greg Menotti had been talking about something completely different from the Carpathia.

I hope so, she thought, going up to her office the next morning. I hope so.

Her answering machine was blinking hysterically. She took off her coat and hit “play.” Richard, saying, “Tish had a conflict at four. I’ve moved Mrs. Troudtheim up to two. Call me if that won’t work.”

Leonard Fanshawe. Mr. Mandrake. “I’ve just heard from a very reliable source that you are now a subject in Dr. Wright’s project.”

Oh, no, Joanna thought. That’s all I need.

“I am eager to discuss your experience with you to determine whether in fact it is an authentic NDE. I doubt whether it is.”

I hope you’re right, Joanna thought, deleting the rest of his message. The phone rang. And if you think I’m going to pick it up, Mr. Mandrake, you’re crazy, she thought.

The answering machine clicked on. “You need to come right away,” Maisie’s breathless voice said. “I need you to see something.”

Joanna picked up the phone. “I’m here, Maisie. What do you need me to come see?”

“I looked in the… Titanic Picture Book,” she said and paused to take another breath, “and—”

“Are you still in A-fib?” Joanna demanded.

“Yes, but… I’m feeling lots better,” she said.

“I told you you weren’t supposed to look anything up till you were out of A-fib.”

“I only looked in one book,” she protested, “but I don’t know if it’s really… a garden, so you need to come.”

“If what isn’t a garden?”

“The Verandah Café,” Maisie said. “It’s got flowers and trees and vines on… these things I don’t know the name of, they’re white and they crisscross—”

Trellises, Joanna thought. “Tell me what the chairs look like,” she said, calling up Gladys Meers’s file.

“They’re white and made of little tiny… I don’t know,” Maisie said, frustrated. “You need to come look.”

“I can’t come right now,” Joanna said. “Little tiny what?”

“Long, round things. Like a basket.”

Wicker. The word was right there on the screen. “There were trees all around, and white trellises with vines growing up on them. I sat down in a white wicker chair, the kind they have on patios.”

“Are there trees?” Joanna asked, calling up Mrs. Woollam’s file.

“Yes,” Maisie said, and Joanna already knew what she was going to say. “Palm trees, but you need to come see it.”

Not a heavenly garden. The Verandah Café. On the Titanic.

“Can you come this morning?” Maisie was asking.

No, Mrs. Troudtheim’s coming at two. I have to find out for sure there wasn’t any fog. “I’m too busy to come this morning,” she said.

“You have to come right after lunch then. I found out all the wireless messages. You said to tell you when I had the whole list done, and you’d come.”

“I’ll come this afternoon.”

“Right after lunch?”

“Right after lunch.”

“You promise? Cross your heart?”

“Cross my heart,” Joanna said and hung up. She called up the list of fog references again, looking for clues. “I was up on the ceiling, looking down at the operating table, and I saw the doctor put these flat things on my chest, like Ping-Pong paddles, and then I couldn’t see more, because it got foggy,” Mr. James had reported, and Mrs. Katzenbaum had said, “The tunnel was dark, but at the end of it was this golden light, all fuzzy like there was smoke or fog or something in the way.”

Smoke. Coma Carl had said something about smoke, too. What if it wasn’t fog, but smoke? Or steam? The Titanic had been a steamship. “Sinking. Cannot hear for noise of steam,” the telegram Maisie had written down said.

But that steam would have gone up out of the funnels. It wouldn’t have been on the decks. What about smoke? Could fires have broken out on board as the ship tilted? Burning coal from the boilers sliding out onto the floor of the boiler room, or a candle toppling over onto a tablecloth in the First-Class Dining Saloon?

She called Kit, but the line was still busy. Maisie would know if there’d been a fire, especially in light of her interest in the Hartford circus fire, and it wasn’t as if she were asking about fog. Who are you kidding? Joanna thought. She’ll see the connection instantly.

She tried Kit again. Mr. Briarley answered. “Mr. Briarley, I need to speak to Kit,” Joanna told him.

“She’s not here,” he said. “She’s at the church. They’re all over at the church. Except for Kevin. I don’t know where he is.”

This is what Kit meant when she said he said terrible things, Joanna thought. I thought she was talking about obscenities.

“ ‘All alone, so Heav’n has willed, we die,’ ” he said. “Kevin went to pick up film. Kit sent him. I don’t know why she didn’t think of it earlier.”