CV

19

The messages flowed from Sea Venture’s communications center through the antenna on the superstructure to the com-sat overhead and back again:

“. . . at fifteen and put it into Police Industries . . . tell Mother I’m perfectly all right, not to worry at all . . . and if we have to cancel, there’s going to be big bucks going down the tube, so why don’t you . . . Larry, I want this favor. I want it. Do you understand what I’m telling you? . . . Conditions here are absolutely outrageous . . . not even a real doctor, just some kind of G.P., and this guy Bliss is . . . dying and she needs you ... if he thinks he can get away with this just because I’m out of touch . . . talked to Jim Farbam on the Hill today, and he says ... be sure to take your pills. ...”

And the newspapers, faxed in every day, were full of excited headlines: CV RAVAGED BY DISEASE ... PLAGUE MAY FORCE CANCELATION OF CONCERT . . . DOOMED PASSENGERS RIOT IN PANIC . . . FARBARN URGES PROBE OF CV. . . .

Eddie Greaves was saying to his agent in New York, “If we have to cancel Tokyo I’m going to be in deep shit, Marty.”

“I know that, Eddie. I’m working on it, believe me.”

“You talk to Byers yet?”

“Yes, and he’s going to take it to the White House as soon as the President gets back from Monterey. I think we have a good shot.”

“Good shot isn’t good enough. I’m talking deep shit, Marty.”

“I know that, Eddie.”

“All right, who else can we get? You talk to Greg?”

“He’s in Vegas.”

“So talk to him in Vegas.”

“He’s either on, or he’s at the crap table, or he’s rolling some broad, Eddie. You know how Greg is. The minute he heads back for Hollywood, I’ll have him on the phone, I give you my solemn promise. Meanwhile, look, aren’t there some folks with clout on CV? They’re probably just as antsy to get off as you are. Go talk to them, Eddie, tell them what we’re doing, find out what they can do. If we start putting pressure on from six different directions—”

“Okay. Good idea. Okay.”

“And keep your ass sweet, kid.”

The waiter approached the nice young couple with his carafe. “More coffee?”

“Yes, please,” the man said. The waiter poured hers first, then the man’s. As he turned away, something about the woman’s expression remained in his mind, and he slipped out across the cold fuzzy void in the slow motion of that place toward the starflake pattern that was hers, and as he slipped in again, the colors and scents crashed against her more strongly than ever, and she raised her head, seeing the waiter’s body sprawled on the floor, the carafe rolling, coffee in a long steaming splatter almost to the next table. People were standing up to look. Her husband leaned toward her.

“Are you all right?” she said.

“Yes, are you?”

“Yes.” But she knew better. In spite of the shock, she had realized instantly what had happened, and had known what she must do.

“Thank heaven,” said Malcolm. “Let’s get out of here.”

“I want to go to the ladies’ room first.” She got up and walked out. Her perceptions were blurred; she felt choked inside with sorrow for herself, for Malcolm, for the relationship they had had together. She was thinking that it was probably the second or third time in their married life that she had told him an untruth; also that it was a good thing that she had been able to turn away quickly so that he could not see the expression on her face.

She took the first elevator going down and rode it to E Deck, where she had never been before. She was interested to notice that the corridors were narrower here, the walls and carpets plainer. The people she saw were wearing clothing which she recognized as ready-made, and they were a little younger than the passengers on the upper levels; the restaurants had plain white tablecloths, and there were snack bars with plastic chairs. It was all part of the monetary system, apparently; the people here had paid less for their passage, and therefore the furnishings were less expensive; the people were younger because younger people had less money. Was it because they were younger that they also appeared less cheerful?

She came to a movie theater, paid and went in without noticing what the film was, but the observer inside her was able to read part of the sign over the entrance: . . . IDE OF THE ROOKIES, LANCE MAHONEY. She had never seen a film in a theater before, although she had experienced many on the television screens in passengers’ rooms, and deeply appreciated them as an art form as well as a wonderful source of information.

It was interesting that people would go to a theater to see films when they could see them as well in the privacy of their rooms: that was their contradictory gregariousness; they valued privacy so much that they were willing to pay high prices for the rooms whose smallness they complained of, and yet at every opportunity they sought the company of their own kind.

On the screen, a man in a checkered red jacket was paddling a canoe down a river. Her attention was not on it: she was looking at the people who sat in the darkness in couples and small groups far removed from each other—another illustration of the paradox, for she was aware that this was customary behavior even when there was no threat of infection. That was fascinating, and so was the almost uncontrollable emotion she was feeling as she sat down behind two men, one of whom had his arm around the other.

The woman knew that she was infected, although she mistakenly believed her illness was bacterial in nature; from the first moment, her concern had been that she should not pass on the infection to her husband. She believed she was going to die without seeing him again, and this was the cause of the sorrow that made her whole body tremble, an emotion as pure and intense as any she had so far experienced; and yet—another paradox—it did not occur to her to gratify her wish by staying with him for the time she had left. She had not encountered this particular response before, and it struck her as beautiful as well as mysterious.

She was able to follow the plot of the movie, more or less, since her eyes remained fixed on the screen although unfocused and blurred by warm moisture: the man in the checkered shirt, who had now abandoned his canoe and was walking through the forest, was escaping from pursuers in red uniforms, “the Mounties,” evidently law-enforcement officers; it was not clear what crime he was suspected of, or whether or not he was guilty. There was an encounter with some Indians and a beautiful blond girl; the man in the checkered shirt rode with them in their vehicle until some tension developed between him and their leader; then there was a fight, and the checkered-shirt man defeated all the Indians by striking them with his hands and feet, and rode away in the vehicle with the girl.

Then, by a transition she could not follow, the man and the girl were seated at a camp fire in the wilderness. Presently they got into a tent and appeared to perform a reproductive act. By the expression on the girl’s face, which was shown highly enlarged, she was able to determine that the actress was attempting to counterfeit sexual emotion. It was surprising, she thought, that in the interest of realism as well as for the intense pleasure it gave the participants, the actor and actress had not engaged in a genuine act of copulation. Possibly, by convention, the act was performed only in private, in which case it was curious that it should be even simulated in public; or, perhaps, different circumstances were required.

After the film ended, with the man and the girl driving down a dusty road toward an incandescent sunset, the theater lights came up and the audience filed out. She went with them, thinking that she must find another place that offered concealment as well as the company of other people. She was feeling a dull disappointment that she had not collapsed in the theater. It would have been easy to grant her wish, but the situation was so novel that she was unwilling to leave her host until she saw how it would turn out.

In the corridor, she started when she heard a voice from the loudspeakers: “Paging Mrs. Malcolm Claiborne. Please come to the nearest courtesy phone. Paging Mrs. Malcolm Claiborne.”

She was thinking how frantic Malcolm must be, of his relief if he found her. She went into a women’s room and sat for a long time in a booth. “Honey, is anything the matter?” said a large woman with brass-colored hair as she came out.

“No, I’m okay. Thanks.” She made herself smile.

She went into a coffee shop and ordered a sandwich, which she did not eat. She was thinking that it must happen soon now. It would be most interesting, the observer thought, to see what she did when night came.