CV

53

As the great vessel rose, waves fell over her like mountains. She dipped and shuddered, and her massive fabric groaned. Cups fell off tables, then vases from stands. Throughout Sea Venture, people sat up in bed, gasped questions at each other. The motion of the vessel around them was like a betrayal, like an earthquake. The sounds were like nothing they had ever heard. Then the loudspeakers in the corridors came to life.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chief Bliss. We are experiencing some turbulence as a result of surfacing to avoid a submerged obstacle. We will be descending to a safe depth shortly. There is no cause for alarm, and the lifeboats will not be used. I repeat, the lifeboats will not be used. Thank you and good night.”

Malcolm got up and began to dress.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“If I have to drown, I don’t want to do it in bed.”

After a moment she laughed. “Come here a minute first,” she said. “You know, I never realized before how much I love you.”

Emily and Jim sat looking at each other. Jim’s face was pale; there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Em,” he said, “I’m sorry, you know—for everything.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said. “Maybe—”

“What?”

“Maybe this is a good time to forgive each other.”

McNulty woke up with a feeling of panic. At first he did not know where he was. The room was dark except for a night-light; the bed was lurching under him, and a deep tortured sound came from the walls.

He got up, stumbled to the light switch, and found his pants in the closet. In the corridor he met Hal Winter, his head still bandaged. “Dr. McNulty, what’s happening?”

“Don't know,” said McNulty. “Get me a chair, will you—I’m not sure I can walk.”

Winter brought a powered wheelchair and helped him into it. “Where are you going?”

“Control.”

“I’m coming with you.”

In the anteroom they found two deputies, Ferguson and Davis, Walter Taggart, the head of engineering, several security guards, and a swarm of other people. Ben Higpen, Yetta Bernstein, and Captain Hartman entered a few moments later.

Ferguson was talking on a telephone. After a moment he put it down and turned to McNulty. “He won’t listen,” he said.

“Who?”

“The Chief. He’s in there with the door locked.”

“Let me talk to him.”

Ferguson got up and moved his chair to make room. “Just press the button—I’ve got the speaker on.”

McNulty rolled his wheelchair up. “Chief, this is McNulty. Mind telling me what you’re up to?”

“I’m sorry about this, Doctor,” said a voice, “but there’s no other way to do it. If we keep on, they’ll float us, or disable us, and take the passengers off. We haven’t a prayer of getting rid of that thing: you know it and I know it. The only way is to take it to the bottom with us. I’m really sorry. Please tell the others not to try to break in; I’m armed, and I’ll shoot if they do.”

At Ferguson’s gesture, McNulty turned off the phone. The deputy said, “Mr. Taggart, can you get down into the controls and cut them?”

“Not in time to do any good. I’d say force the door and take our chances. He may be bluffing about the gun.”

“What if he isn’t? Suppose he fires a couple of shots into the control panel?” Ferguson turned on the phone again. “Chief, we’d appreciate a chance to talk about this. Will you open the door, please?”

“Not likely. You know I’m right, all of you.”

McNulty put his head in his hands. “He is right,” he muttered. Watery images were going through his head: the cold, and the Fish lips nuzzling against his dead face. . . .

Suddenly he sat up. “Oh, God,” he said. “The fish!”

“Take it easy, Doctor,” said Ferguson, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“No, no, you don’t understand— Let me talk to him.” He grabbed the phone and said, “Mr. Bliss, there’s something you don’t know.”

“There’s a great deal I don’t know, but I expect I’ll find out shortly.”

McNulty kept talking. “You remember, after Randy Geller collapsed, there was a three-hour period before the next person felt faint?”

There was a pause. “No, I don’t recall. What about it?”

“He was found beside an aquarium in the marine lab. The fish, don’t you understand—the fish!”

There was a silence. “Are you suggesting—?”

“That’s where it spent those three hours, it’s got to be. It doesn’t have to live in human beings. If you sink us, you won’t be killing the thing, you’ll be letting it loose.”

After a long pause Bliss’s voice said, “Descending to one hundred feet.”

Slowly the motion of the vessel steadied; the groaning died away. The door opened and Bliss emerged. His face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. “Mr. Ferguson, take over,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Ferguson passed him with a sympathetic look, as if he wanted to say more but could not find the words. The comm person followed him in.

Bliss sat down heavily and put his hands between his knees. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve made a mess of it. I knew I would.” He looked at McNulty. “We’re done for, aren’t we? There’s no way to get rid of the thing.”

McNulty felt that it was an intolerable effort to speak. "This man needs to lie down awhile, and so do I,” he said. He turned to the nearest face. “Will you call the annex and get somebody to give him a Dalmane?”

After that someone trundled him into the elevator and back down to the hospital bed, and in no time at all he was awake again. Janice was saying, “Doctor, how about a little breakfast?” The idea disgusted him, but he drank the orange juice, managed to get down a few spoonsful of oatmeal. Janice started to help him to the bathroom, but “I can walk,” he said gruffly, and he could.

“Any more patients?” he asked when he got back.

“Two last night, a broken leg and a heart attack.”

“Where are they?”

“Down the hall, but you’re not going there. The heart patient is recovering, I set the leg and it’s okay. You’re a patient, Doctor, and everything is under control.”

McNulty wished it were true. “How is Bliss?” he asked.

“All right. He called this morning to see how you were.” She went away. A few minutes later she was back, followed by Higpen and Bernstein. “Ten minutes,” she said firmly, and disappeared again.

Higpen looked as if he had not slept, and so did Bernstein. “Doctor,” she said, “we want to talk to you about an idea, if you’re feeling strong enough.”

“Sure,” said McNulty.

“Maybe you remember I said this before. There is a way to get rid of this thing, if one of us is willing to die.”

McNulty started to shake his head.

“I'm not talking about murder, I’m talking about somebody to be a sacrifice, a scapegoat. Suppose we get a few people to agree. There wouldn’t have to be many. We’d go wherever the last victim collapsed and stay there until the parasite takes one of us.”

“And then what?” McNulty asked.

“Get a crate ready. A metal crate, ten feet on a side. The person, whoever it is, gets into the crate and you give them an injection.”

“I won’t—” McNulty started to say.

“Wait a minute, let me finish. We put some kind of a framework inside the crate to hold the person in the middle. And then we lower the crate to the bottom of the ocean. The person dies painlessly; the parasite can’t get out, and the fish can’t get in. Now tell me what’s wrong with it.”

“It won’t work,” said McNulty wearily. “If these folks know what they’re going to do, the parasite will know too, and it’ll get away like it did before.”

“Could you hypnotize them, so they wouldn’t know?”

“Are you kidding?”

Bernstein took a deep breath. Her eyes filled suddenly, and tears began to trickle down her cheeks. “Well, if we have to kill somebody who isn't a volunteer—” she said in a tight, high voice.

“Scapegoat,” said Higpen suddenly. “Yetta, remember the goat in the King Neptune ceremony?”

“Sure I do. What about it?”

“Dressed in a suit, riding in a cart? What if we could get the thing to go into a goat!”

They looked at each other, then at McNulty. “Might work,” he said, and felt a trickle of excitement. “The thing has never seen a goat, is that right?”

“Yes, because we kept it out of perm. Do you think, if we dressed it up in a suit again—?”

“My gosh, I just remembered something.” McNulty sat up straight. “When this thing first started, we were getting a run of patients that looked unusual some way—dress, or skin color. That might have been just because the thing noticed the difference, and was curious.”

After a moment Bernstein said, “Come on.” Her jaw was set. Higpen followed her out the door.

They went to look at the goats, then talked to Miriam Schofelt, who had been the chairperson of the King Neptune Committee this year. She still had the suit they had used, a paper one made by Mrs. Omura, jacket, collar and tie all in one piece. They called Dan Taggart in engineering and explained what they wanted.

“I don’t know about a metal crate,” Taggart said. “Even aluminum, that’ll corrode away after a while. I’d say the best thing would be to use a wooden crate and fill it with concrete, if we had any.”

“I’ve got about a hundred bags of mix in the store,” Higpen said. “Is that enough?”

“Guess so. What mix?”

“Some of it’s one-two-four, some one-one-two.”

“Sounds good to me. How big a crate, did you say?”