Connie Willis - Passage

“On deck?”

“Yes, and it was bitterly cold. Most of them had just thrown a coat or a blanket on over their nightclothes. It was after midnight and they’d already gone to bed. But not the woman with the piled-up hair. She and her husband must still have been up. They were wearing evening clothes,” she said thoughtfully, as if she were puzzling all this out as she spoke. “That’s why she was wearing white gloves.”

“Joanna—”

“The third-floor walkway is recessed, with a step at the end that makes it look like it’s curving up,” she said. “And your lab coat.”

“Joanna, you’re not making any sense—”

“But it does make sense,” she said. “A stoker came up behind Jack Phillips and tried to steal his lifejacket right off him, and he didn’t notice. He was so intent on sending the SOSs, and—”

“SOS? Lifejackets?” Richard said. “What are you talking about, Joanna?”

“What it is,” she said. “I told you I knew what it was, and I did.”

“And what was it?”

“I knew the word palace had something to do with it. That’s what they called it, a floating palace.”

“What they called what?”

“The Titanic.”

He was so surprised by the answer, by any answer, that he simply gaped at her for a moment.

“I told you it was someplace I recognized but had never been,” she said.

“The Titanic .”

“Yes. It’s not a hall, it’s a passageway, and the door’s the door that opens out onto the deck. After the Titanic hit the iceberg, they stopped the engines to see how much damage had been done, and the passengers went out on deck to see what had happened. The cold should have been a clue. The temperature had dropped nearly twelve degrees during the evening because of the ice. I should have realized what it was when the woman in the nightgown said, ‘It’s so cold.’ ”

The Titanic. And he had called her an island of sanity. He had told Davis there was no way she would ever turn into R. John Foxx.

“It all fits,” she said eagerly. “The feeling I had in the walkway of being oblivious while something terrible was happening. That was the Californian. It turned its wireless off for the night five minutes before the Titanic sent its first SOS, and then sat there, fifteen miles away all night, completely unaware that the Titanic was sinking.”

Davis had said that everybody who studied NDEs went wacko sooner or later. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was some sort of infectious insanity. But surely not Joanna, who saw right through Mandrake and his manipulations, who knew the NDE was a physical process. There must be some mistake. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re saying you were there? On board the Titanic!”

“Yes,” Joanna said eagerly. “In one of the stateroom passages. I don’t know which one. I think it may have been in second class because of the wooden floor—it was the curve of the deck that made the passage look longer than it was. First class would have been carpeted, but the people outside on the deck looked like first-class passengers, so it might have been in first class. The woman with the piled-up hair was wearing jewels, and white gloves. I wonder who she was,” she murmured. “She might have been Mrs. Allison.”

“And who were you?” Richard asked angrily. “Lady Astor?”

“What?” Joanna said blankly.

“Who exactly were you in this previous life?” Richard said. “The Unsinkable Molly Brown?”

“Previous life?” Joanna said as if she had no idea what he was talking about.

“Were you Shirley MacLaine? Wait, don’t tell me,” he said, holding up a warning hand. “You were Bridey Murphy, and she came over from Ireland on the Titanic.”

“Bridey Murphy?” Joanna said, and her chin went up defiantly. “You think I’m making this up?”

“I don’t know what you’re doing. You said you were on the Titanic.”

“I was.”

“Who else was on board? Harry Houdini? Elvis?”

She stared at him. “I can’t believe this—”

“You can’t believe this? I can’t believe that you’re sitting here telling me you had some past-life regression!”

“Past-life—”

“ ‘You should send me under,’ you said. ‘I’ll be an impartial scientific observer. I won’t fall prey to thinking I see Angels of Light.’ Oh, no, you saw something even better! Do you have any idea what Mandrake will do when he gets hold of this, not to mention the tabloids? I can see the headlines now.” He swept his hand across the air. “ ‘Near-Death Scientist Says She Went Down on Titanic.’ ”

“If you’d just listen—I didn’t say it was a past-life regression.”

“Oh? What was it?” he said nastily. “A time machine? Or were you teleported there by aliens? I believe that first day I met you, you said that fourteen percent of all NDEers also believed they’d been abducted by UFOs. What you should have told me was that you were part of that fourteen percent.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” she said and flung herself off the examining table, clutching at the back of her hospital gown, and stomped, stocking-footed, over to the dressing room.

He started after her. “I should have stuck with Mr. Wojakowski, the compulsive liar,” he said. “At least the only ship he was on was the Yorktown.”

“Fine,” she said, and slammed the door in his face.

She opened it again immediately and came out, buttoning her blouse, yanking on her cardigan. “Mr. Mandrake’s the one you should have asked to be your partner,” she said, pushing past him. “You two would make a perfect couple. You both want to hear what fits your preconceived theories and nothing else.”

She halted at the door. “For your information, it wasn’t time travel or a past-life regression. It wasn’t the Titanic. It was—oh, what’s the use? You won’t listen anyway.” She yanked the door open. “I’ll tell Mr. Mandrake you’re looking for a new partner.”

It wasn’t the Titanic? “Wait—” he said, but the door had already slammed behind her.

He wrenched it open. She was already at the elevators. “Joanna, wait!” he shouted and sprinted down the hall after her.

The elevator dinged. “Wait!” he shouted. “Joanna!”

She didn’t so much as glance at him. The doors slid apart, and she stepped on. She must have pushed the “door close” button because the doors immediately began to slide shut.

“Joanna, wait!” He forced the doors apart and shoved onto the elevator. The doors closed behind him. “I want to talk to you.”

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. She reached for the “door open” button.

He blocked her from reaching it. The elevator started down. “What did you mean, it wasn’t a past-life regression?”

“Why are you asking me? I’m Bridey Murphy, remember?” She made another try for the buttons, and he grabbed the red emergency button and turned it. An unbelievably loud alarm went off, and the elevator lurched to a stop.

Joanna looked at him disbelievingly. “You’re crazy, you know that?” she shouted over the alarm. “And you accuse me of being a nutcase!”

“I’m sorry,” he shouted back. “I jumped to conclusions, but what am I supposed to do when you tell me you’ve been on board the Titanic?”

“You’re supposed to let me at least finish my sentence,” she shouted. “Turn that off.”

“Will you come back to the lab with me?”

She glared at him. The alarm seemed to be getting louder by the minute. “I promise I won’t jump to conclusions,” he bellowed over it. “Please.”