Connie Willis - Passage

“But the young woman in the nightgown heard it,” Joanna said.

Richard shook his head. “She heard a sound like a cloth tearing. That could be any number of things.”

“Like what?”

“A collision, an explosion, the mechanical problem the steward described. Did you see anything that identified the Titanic by name? Something with SS Titanic written on it?”

“RMS,” Joanna corrected. “She was a royal mail ship.”

“All right, with RMS Titanic on it.” He flipped through the stapled pages of her account. She could see that a number of lines had been marked with yellow highlighter. “You said you saw the lifeboats. Was there a name on the side of them?”

“They had canvas covers over them,” Joanna said, trying to remember if she’d seen the Titanic’s name anywhere. Had the steward’s white jacket had an insignia on it? Or the officer’s cap? She couldn’t remember. What else would have had an insignia on it, or the Titanic’s name?

The life preservers, she thought, trying to remember if she’d seen one on the Boat Deck. No, but it seemed like one had been on the inside wall of the deck just outside the passage next to the deck light, with RMS Titanic stenciled on it in red.

You’re confabulating, she told herself sharply. That’s an image from the movie, and if it was next to the deck light, you wouldn’t have been able to see it for the glare. “No,” she said, “I didn’t see anything with Titanic on it.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said. “I’m not sure it is the Titanic. I’ve been going over your transcript.” He turned to a page halfway through, heavily marked in yellow, and read, “ ‘Isn’t anyone coming?’ ‘The Baltic, but she’s over two hundred miles away.’ ‘What about the Frankfurt?’ ” He looked at her. “It was the Carpathia who came to her aid. And, as you say yourself in your account,” he said, looking back through the pages, “the Californian was the ship that didn’t answer, not the Frankfurt.”

“But they would have radioed more than one ship,” Joanna said. “They said both ships were too far away to help. They might have been two out of a dozen they tried to reach.”

“There’s also the staircase. I know,” he said, putting up his hands defensively, “you said the memory didn’t come from the movie, but one thing the movie did show was the staircase outside the dining room, with the fancy winding stairs and the big skylight—”

“The Grand Staircase,” Joanna murmured. He was right. The stairs leading down to the First-Class Dining Saloon had been marble, with filigreed gold and wrought-iron balustrades and a bronze cherub on the newel post, holding an electric torch, and at the head of the stairs a huge clock, with two bronze figures placing a laurel wreath atop the clock face. Honour and Glory Crowning Time.

I must have been on another staircase, she thought, but there wouldn’t have been two stairways next to the First-Class Dining Saloon, would there? And there was the empty deck and the deserted bridge. “So, what do you think?” Joanna asked. “That I’m seeing some other ship?”

“I think it’s possible. Nothing you’ve described would eliminate it from being the Lusitania, for instance.”

“Except that the Lusitania sank in broad daylight. And nobody stands around calmly asking what’s happened when a torpedo hits them.”

“Or some other ship you’ve heard about from Maisie,” he continued imperturbably. “Or from Mr. Wojakowski.”

“The Yorktown was an aircraft carrier,” Joanna said. “This was an ocean liner. I saw the funnels.”

“Correction,” he said, consulting the account again. “You saw a large black looming shape. The central island of an aircraft carrier would be a large black looming shape, wouldn’t—” and looked up at the kid from behind the counter, who was standing over them.

“We’re closin’,” he said and continued to stand there, his tattooed arms folded across his chest while Richard disposed of his coffee cup, and Joanna put on her coat.

They went out into the freezing darkness. It had started to snow while they were inside, a wet, sleety snow. “How long did Vielle say the passengers could survive before they got hypothermia?” Richard asked, blowing on his hands.

“It wasn’t an aircraft carrier,” Joanna said, starting the car and heading back to the hospital. “Aircraft carriers have flat decks, and they don’t have dining saloons with crystal chandeliers and grand pianos.”

“And this ship doesn’t have a Grand Staircase,” he said, “which makes me think it’s an amalgam of ships and ship imagery stored in your long-term memory. You said yourself it might be the Mary Celeste.”

“The Mary Celeste was a sailing ship,” she said, but he was right. There were discrepancies. The deck had been empty and deserted, and there had been no one on the bridge.

She pulled into the parking lot. “Where’s your car parked? Oh, wait, you’ve got to go get your coat.”

“Yeah, and I want to look at your scans again.”

Joanna pulled around by the north entrance and stopped. “Thanks for rescuing me from the clutches of the Evil One,” she said.

“I hope he isn’t still crouched outside the lab, waiting.”

“I hope Mrs. Davenport isn’t really telepathic.”

Richard laughed and got out, and then leaned back in. “You said before you know it’s the Titanic. Is this sense of conviction you have the same as the one you had when you first recognized the passage as being on the Titanic?”

I know where this is going, Joanna thought wearily. “Yes.”

He nodded. “That could be it. The temporal lobe rather than a memory out of long-term is what’s producing the spurious feeling that it’s the Titanic.” He slapped the roof of the car. “I’m freezing. Good night. See you in the morning.” He shut the car door.

I hope you succumb to hypothermia, Joanna thought as she drove away. It isn’t a spurious feeling. It’s the Titanic.

The phone was ringing when she got home. It’s probably Mr. Mandrake, she thought, leaving his fourteenth message. She let the answering machine pick up. “Hi, this is Kit Gardiner—”

Joanna snatched up the phone. “I’m here, Kit, sorry, I just walked in the door.”

“I know it’s late,” Kit said, “but I found something. Not the textbook,” she hastened to add. “You said you were trying to remember something Uncle Pat said about the Titanic. Well, this afternoon I found all his Titanic books, and I thought what you were trying to remember might be in one of them and I wondered if you were interested in looking at them. Or I could look it up for you, if you like. You said it was something about the engines stopping and passengers being out on deck in their nightclothes.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Listen, Kit, could you look up something else for me, too? I need to know what the First-Class Dining Saloon on the Titanic looked like.”

“Sure, I’ll be glad to look it up. Anything else?”

“Yes,” Joanna said, trying to think what would prove the ship was the Titanic. “I need you to find out if they used a Morse lamp to signal the Californian that night. And the names of the ships they contacted by wireless. If that’s not too much.”

“It’s not,” Kit said cheerfully. “When do you need it? Would tomorrow night be soon enough? If your invitation to Dish Night still holds. I decided I’d like to try to come, after all. You were right about the Eldercare program. They are willing to come on short notice.”