Гарднер Дозуа - The Good Old Stuff

I fastened a rope ladder and kicked it over the side. Then I pounded on the wall of the Rook.

“Yeah?”

“You talk to the port Rook, aft?” I called.

“They’re all set up,” came the answer. “There’s ladders and drag-lines all over that end.”

“You sure you want to do this?” asked the sunburnt little gink who was her publicity man, Anderson yclept.

He sat beside the Rook in a deckchair, sipping lemonade through a straw.

“It might be dangerous,” he observed, sunken-mouthed. (His teeth were beside him, in another glass.) “That’s right,” she smiled. “It will be dangerous. Not overly, though.”

“Then why don’t you let me get some pictures? We’d have them back to Lifeline in an hour. They’d be in New York by tonight. Good copy.”

“No,” she said, and turned away from both of us. She raised her hands to her eyes. “Here, keep these for me.”

She passed him a box full of her unseeing, and when she turned back to me they were the same brown that I remembered.

“Ready?”

“No,” I said, tautly. “Listen carefully, Jean. If you’re going to play this game there are a few rules. First,” I counted, “we’re going to be directly beneath the hull, so we have to start low and keep moving. If we bump the bottom, we could rupture an air tank .... “ She began to protest that any moron knew that and I cut her down.

“Second,” I went on, “there won’t be much light, so we’ll stay close together, and we will both carry torches.”

Her wet eyes flashed.

“I dragged you out of Govino without—” Then she stopped and turned away. She picked up a lamp.

“Okay. Torches. Sorry.”

“... And watch out for the drive-screws,” I finished. “There’ll be strong currents for at least fifty meters behind them.”

She wiped her eyes again and adjusted the mask. “All right, let’s go.”

We went.

She led the way, at my insistence. The surface layer was pleasantly warm. At two fathoms the water was bracing; at five it was nice and cold. At eight we let go the swinging stairway and struck out.

Tensquare sped forward and we raced in the opposite direction, tattooing the hull yellow at ten-second intervals.

The hull stayed where it belonged, but we raced on like two darkside satellites. Periodically, I tickled her frog feet with my light and traced her antennae of bubbles. About a five meter lead was fine; I’d beat her in the home stretch, but I couldn’t let her drop behind yet.

Beneath us, black. Immense. Deep. The Mindanao of Venus, where eternity might eventually pass the dead to a rest in cities of unnamed fishes. I twisted my head away and touched the hull with a feeler of light; it told me we were about a quarter of the way along.

I increased my beat to match her stepped-up stroke, and narrowed the distance which she had suddenly opened by a couple meters. She sped up again and I did, too. I spotted her with my beam.

She turned and it caught on her mask. I never knew whether she’d been smiling. Probably. She raised two fingers in a V-for-Victory and then cut ahead at full speed.

I should have known. I should have felt it coming. It was just a race to her, something else to win. Damn the torpedoes!

So I leaned into it, hard. I don’t shake in the water. Or, if I do it doesn’t matter and I don’t notice it. I began to close the gap again.

She looked back, sped on, looked back. Each time she looked it was nearer, until I’d narrowed it down to the original five meters.

Then she hit the jatoes.

That’s what I had been fearing. We were about half-way under and she shouldn’t have done it. The powerful jets of compressed air could easily rocket her upward into the hull, or tear something loose if she allowed her body to twist. Their main use is in tearing free from marine plants or fighting bad currents. I had wanted them along as a safety measure, because of the big suck-and-pull windmills behind.

She shot ahead like a meteorite, and I could feel a sudden tingle of perspiration leaping to meet and mix with the churning waters.

I swept ahead, not wanting to use my own guns, and she tripled, quadrupled the margin.

The jets died and she was still on course. Okay, I was an old fuddyduddy. She could have messed up and headed toward the top.

I plowed the sea and began to gather back my yardage, a foot at a time.

I wouldn’t be able to catch her or beat her now, but I’d be on the ropes before she hit deck.

Then the spinning magnets began their insistence and she wavered. It was an awfully powerful drag, even at this distance. The call of the meat grinder.

I’d been scratched up by one once, under the Dolphin, a fishing boat of the middle-class. I had been drinking, but it was also a rough day, and the thing had been turned on prematurely. Fortunately, it was turned off in time, also, and a tendon-stapler in made everything good as new, except in the log, where it only mentioned that I’d been drinking.

Nothing about it being off-hours when I had a right to do as I damn well pleased.

She had slowed to half her speed, but she was still moving crosswise, toward the port, aft corner. I began to feel the pull myself and had to slow down. She’d made it past the main one, but she seemed too far back. It’s hard to gauge distances under water, but each red beat of time told me I was right. She was out of danger from the main one, but the smaller port screw, located about eighty meters in, was no longer a threat but a certainty.

She had turned and was pulling away from it now. Twenty meters separated us. She was standing still. Fifteen.

Slowly, she began a backward drifting. I hit my jatoes, aiming two meters behind her and about twenty back of the blades.

Straightline! Thankgod! Catching, softbelly, lead pipe on shoulder swim-like HELL! maskcracked, not broke though X*eD UP!

We caught a line and I remember brandy.

Into the cradle endlessly rocking I spit, pacing. Insomnia tonight and left shoulder sore again, so let it rain on me—they can cure rheumatism. Stupid as hell. What I said. In blankets and shivering.

She: “Carl, I can’t say it.”

Me: “Then call it square for that night in Govino, Miss Luharich. Huh?”

She: nothing.

Me: “Any more of that brandy?”

She: “Give me another, too.”

Me: sounds of sipping. It had only lasted three months. No alimony. Many $ on both sides. Not sure whether they were happy or not. Wine-dark Aegean. Good fishing.

Maybe he should have spent more time on shore. Or perhaps she shouldn’t have. Good swimmer, though. Dragged him all the way to Vido to wring out his lungs. Young. Both. Strong. Both. Rich and spoiled as hell. Ditto. Corfu should have brought them closer.

Didn’t. I think that mental cruelty was a trout. He wanted to go to Canada. She: “Go to hell if you want!” He: “Will you go along?” She: “No.” But she did, anyhow. Many hells. Expensive. He lost a monster or two. She inlier ited a couple. Lot of lightning tonight. Stupid as hell. Civility’s the coffin of a conned soul. By whom?—Sounds like a bloody neo-ex But I hate you, Anderson, with your glass full of teeth and her new eyes Can’t keep this pipe lit, keep sucking tobacco.

Spit again!

Seven days out and the scope showed Ikky.

Bells jangled, feet pounded, and some optimist set the thermostat in the Hopkins. Malvern wanted me to sit out, but I slipped into my harness and waited for whatever came. The bruise looked worse than it felt. I had exercised every day and the shoulder hadn stiffened on me.

A thousand meters ahead and thirty fathoms deep, it tunneled our path.

Nothing showed on the surface.

“Will we chase him?” asked an excited crewman.