Connie Willis - Passage

“You have to tell me,” Maisie said, but that wasn’t true. The heart monitor was setting off alarms in the nurses’ station. In a minute a nurse would be down here to shoo them out, to quiet her down, and he wouldn’t have to be the one to tell her. “Please,” Maisie said, and Kit nodded at him.

“Joanna didn’t move away, Maisie,” he said gently. “She died.”

Maisie gaped at him, her mouth open, her eyes wide with shock, not even moving. Behind her on the screen of the monitor, the green line spiked, and then collapsed. I’ve done it, Richard thought. I’ve killed her.

“I knew it,” Maisie said. “That’s why she didn’t come to see me after I coded.” She smiled, a radiant smile. “I knew she wouldn’t just move away and not come and tell me good-bye,” she said happily. “I knew it.”

Joanna tore back along the Promenade Deck. Let the wireless operator still be there, she prayed as she ran. Let him still be sending.

The slant of the deck had gotten worse while she was in the smoking room, and the ship had begun to list. She had to put her hand out to keep from falling against the windows as she ran. Don’t let the stairs be underwater, she thought, and then, There was a crew stairway near the aft staircase, and began trying doors.

Locked. The second one opened on a tangle of ropes that fell forward onto the deck. The next was locked. Where is it? she thought, yanking on the doorknob, and the door came abruptly open on a metal stairway.

It wasn’t the one she’d seen before. It was narrower, steeper, and the stairs were open, the rungs made of metal latticework. The other stairway had had doors on each deck, but this one was open. She could see, looking below her through the latticed steps, that it went all the way down. What if he’s down there? Joanna thought, her hand still gripping the doorknob.

Joanna looked back down the Promenade Deck. Greg Menotti was halfway down the deck, running hard, his arms and legs pumping. “You have to show me where the collapsibles are,” he shouted, and Joanna darted inside the stairway. The door swung shut with a click, and she fled up the steps, her feet clattering loudly on the metal stairs.

They tilted forward, so that her feet kept sliding backward off them. She needed to hang on to the metal railing, but she couldn’t. She looked down at her hands. She was carrying a cafeteria tray. You’ve carried it all the way up to Peds without even knowing it, she thought, and tried to give it to the nurse with no hips, but she wasn’t in Peds, she was on the stairs, and Greg was coming. You have to let go of it, she thought, and dropped the tray, and it fell through the stairs, hitting the stairs below and falling again, down and down, deck after deck after deck.

Joanna grabbed on to the metal side railing with both hands. It was sharp, so sharp it cut into her palms, and wet. She looked up. Water was trickling down from somewhere above. It’s too late, Joanna thought, the railing cutting into her hands like a knife. It’s going down.

But Jack Phillips had continued sending to the very end, even after the bow was underwater, even after the captain had told him it was every man for himself. Joanna released her left hand from the railing and began climbing again, staggering a little with the awkward angle of the steps, hitting her hips against the table, knocking her Kool-Aid over, her mother saying, “Oh, Joanna,” and reaching for the glass and a towel at the same time, soaking up the Kool-Aid, the towel turning red, redder, soaking through, and Vielle saying, “Hurry! The movie’s starting,” handing her the tub of popcorn, and Joanna feeling her way along the dark passage, unable to see anything, afraid the movie had already started, hoping it was only the coming attractions, seeing light ahead, flickering, golden, like a fire… she was on her knees, her fingers tangled in the metal latticework of the step above her. No, she thought, not yet, I have to send the message, and pulled herself to her feet. She started up the steps.

There was a sound, and she braced herself against going into the darkness, into the tunnel again. The sound came again from below, echoing, metallic. He’s on the stairs, Joanna thought. He’s coming up them. She looked down through the open steps, but it wasn’t him, it was Greg Menotti starting up the stairs.

Hurry, she thought, and scrambled up the last of the steps, through the door, and was out on the Boat Deck, running, past the air shaft, past the raised roof of the Grand Staircase. Behind her, a door slammed. Hurry, hurry, she thought, and raced past the empty lifeboat davits. The light was still on in the wireless room. She could see it under the door up ahead. The wireless operator kept sending till the power failed, she thought, he kept—

The tail of her cardigan caught, yanking her backward. She fell awkwardly onto one knee. “Where are the—?” Greg demanded, and there was a sudden, deafening roar of steam. Smoke swirled around them, and she thought, Maybe I can escape in the fog, but when she tried, he grabbed for her wrist, his other hand clutching a fold of her cardigan.

He yanked her to her feet. “The collapsibles,” he shouted over the roar of the steam. “Where are they?”

“On top of the officers’ quarters,” Joanna said. She pointed with her pinioned hand in the direction of the bow. “Down there.”

He pushed her ahead of him, her wrist twisted behind her back. “Show me,” he said. He half-walked, half-shoved her past the funnel, past the wireless shack.

“I have to send a message,” Joanna said, her eyes on the light under the door of the wireless shack. “It’s important.”

“The important thing is getting off this ship before it goes down,” he said, pushing her forward.

He’s not real, Joanna thought, willing him to disappear. He’s a confabulation, a metaphor, a misfiring. I’ve invented him out of my own desperation to make sense of what’s happening, out of my own panic and denial. He isn’t really here. He died six weeks ago. He can’t do anything to anybody. But even though she squeezed her eyes shut and tried to see his lifeless body in the ER, his fingers still dug into her wrist, his hand still propelled her roughly forward, past the chart room to the officers’ quarters.

“They would have been there,” Joanna said, pointing with her chin at the flat roof above them.

“Where?” he said, looking up. “It’s too dark. I can’t see.”

“These are the officers’ quarters. They were stored on top,” she said. “But they aren’t there. This isn’t the Titanic, it’s—”

He climbed onto a deck chair, still grasping her wrist, pulling her up after him onto the chair, onto a windlass. He reached across to a stanchion, stretching, and let go of her wrist. Joanna didn’t wait. She jumped down off the windlass, off the deck chair, and ran for the wireless shack.

The door was shut, and on it was a large poster. “Do you know someone at risk?” it read. “You can save a life.”

She pushed the door open, praying, Please let him still be there, please let him still be sending.

He was. He sat bent over the wireless key, his coat off, his headphones on over his blond hair, his finger jabbing fiercely at the telegraph key. The blue spark leaped between the poles of the dynamo. It’s still working, she thought, a wave of relief washing over her. “I have to send a message,” she said breathlessly. “It’s important.”