The Year's Best Science Fiction 10

It was amusing to see how Karpukhin took charge of the situation. From that moment, Joe had “permanently attached to him as guide, philosopher and drinking companion a smooth young public-relations type named Sergei Markov. Despite all Joe’s efforts, the two were inseparable. In the middle of the afternoon, weary after a long conference in Shapiro’s office, I caught up with them for a belated lunch at the government resthouse.

“What’s going on here, Klaus?” Joe asked pathetically. “I smell trouble, but no one will admit anything.”

I toyed with my curry, trying to separate the bits that were safe from those that would take off the top of my head.

“You can’t expect me to discuss a client’s affairs,” I answered.

“You were talkative enough,” Joe reminded me, “when you were doing the survey for the Gibraltar Dam.”

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “And I appreciate the write-up you gave me. But this time there are trade secrets involved. I’m—ah—making some last-minute adjustments to improve the efficiency of the system.”

And that, of course, was the truth; for I was indeed hoping to raise the efficiency of the system from its present value of exactly zero.

“Hmm,” said Joe sarcastically. “Thank you very much.”

“Anyway,” I said, trying to head him off, “what’s your latest crackbrained theory?”

For a highly competent science writer, Joe has an odd liking for the bizarre and the improbable. Perhaps it’s a form of escapism; I happen to know that he also writes science fiction pseudonymously, though this is a secret well kept from his employers. He has a sneaking fondness for poltergeists and ESP and flying saucers, but lost continents are his real specialty.

“I am working on a couple of ideas,” he admitted. “They cropped up when I was doing the research on this story.”

“Go on,” I said, not daring to look up from the analysis of my curry.

“The other day I came across a very old map—Ptolemy’s, if you’re interested—of Ceylon. It reminded me of another old map in my collection, and I turned it up. There was the same central mountain, the same arrangement of rivers flowing to the sea. But this was a map of Atlantis.”

“Oh, no!” I groaned. “Last time we met, you convinced me that Atlantis was the western Mediterranean basin.”

Joe gave his engaging grin.

“I could’ve been wrong, couldn’t I? Anyway, I have a much more striking piece of evidence. What’s the old national name for Ceylon—and the modem Singhalese one, for that matter?”

I thought for a second, then exclaimed: “Why, Lanka, of course. Lanka—Atlantis.” I rolled the names off my tongue.

“Precisely,” said Joe. “But two clues, however striking, don’t make a full-fledged theory; and that’s as far as I’ve got at the moment.”

“Too bad,” I said, genuinely disappointed. “And your other project?”

“This will really make you sit up,” Joe answered smugly. He reached into the battered briefcase he always carried and pulled out a bundle of papers.

“This happened only one hundred and eighty miles from here and just over a century ago. The source of my information, you’ll note, is about the best there is.”

He handed me a photostat, and I saw that it was a page of the London Times for July 4, 1874. I started to read without much enthusiasm, for Joe was always producing bits of ancient newspapers, but my apathy did not last long.

Briefly—I’d like to give the whole thing, but if you want more details your local library can dial you a facsimile in ten seconds—the clipping described how the 150-ton schooner Pearl left Ceylon in early May, 1874, and then fell becalmed in the Bay of Bengal. On May 10, just before nightfall, an incredibly enormous squid surfaced half a mile from the schooner, whose captain foolishly opened fire on it with his rifle.

The squid swam straight for the Pearl, grabbed the masts with its gigantic arms and pulled the vessel over on her side. She sank within seconds, taking two of her crew with her; the others were rescued only because the steamer Strathowen was in sight and had witnessed the incident herself.

“Well,” said Joe, when I’d read through it for the second time, “what do you think?”

“I don’t believe in sea monsters.”

“The London Times,” Joe answered, “is not prone to sensational journalism. And giant squids exist, though the biggest we know about are feeble, flabby beasts and don’t weigh more than a ton, even when they have arms forty feet long.”

“So? An animal like that couldn’t capsize a one-hundred-and-fifty-ton schooner.”

“True—but there’s a lot of evidence that the so-called giant squid is merely a large squid. There may be decapods in the sea that really are giants. Why, only a year after the Pearl incident, a sperm whale off the coast of Brazil was seen struggling inside gigantic coils which finally dragged it down into the sea; you’ll find the incident described in the Illustrated London News for November 20, 1875. And then, of course, there’s that chapter in Moby Dick . . .”

“What chapter?”

“Why, the one called ‘Squid.’ We know that Melville was a very careful observer, but here he really lets himself go. He describes a calm day when a great white mass rose out of the sea ‘like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills.’ And this happened here in the Indian Ocean, perhaps a thousand miles south of the Pearl incident. Weather conditions were identical, please note.

“What the men of the Pequod saw floating on the water —I know this passage by heart, I’ve studied it so carefully —was ‘a vast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing cream color . . . innumerable long arms radiating from its center, and curling and twisting like a nest of anacondas.’”

“Just a minute,” said Sergei, who had been listening to all this with rapt attention. “What’s a furlong?”

Joe looked slightly embarrassed.

“Actually, it’s an eighth of a mile—660 feet.” He raised his hand to stop our incredulous laughter. “Oh, I’m sure Melville didn’t mean that literally. But here was a man who met sperm whales every day, groping for a unit of length to describe something a lot bigger. So he automatically jumped from fathoms to furlongs. That’s my theory, anyway.”

I pushed away the remaining untouchable portions of my curry.

“If you think you’ve scared me out of my job,” I said, “you’ve failed miserably. But I promise you this—when I do meet a giant squid, I’ll snip off a tentacle and bring it back as a souvenir.”

Twenty-four hours later I was out there in the lobster, sinking slowly down toward the damaged grid. There was no way in which the operation could be kept secret, and Joe was an interested spectator from a nearby launch. That was the Russians’ problem, not mine; I had suggested to Shapiro that they take him into their confidence, but this, of course, was vetoed by Karpukhin’s suspicious mind. One could almost see him thinking: “Just why should an American reporter turn up at this moment?”—and ignoring the obvious answer that Trincomalee was now big news.

There is nothing in the least exciting or glamorous about deep-water operations if they’re done properly. Excitement means lack of foresight, and that means incompetence. The incompetent do not last long in my business, nor do those who crave excitement. I went about my job with all the pent-up emotion of a plumber dealing with a leaking faucet.

The grids had been designed for easy maintenance, since sooner or later they would have to be replaced. Luckily, none of the threads had been damaged and the securing nuts came off easily when gripped with the power wrench. Then I switched control to the heavy-duty claws and lifted out the damaged grid without the slightest difficulty.