CV

7

One of Bliss’s time-consuming duties was to preside at frequent cocktail and dinner parties whose guests were chosen by the purser from among the rich and powerful aboard Sea Venture. These necessary entertainments would certainly have ruined his liver had he not adopted the stratagem of the famous Mr. Gibson, a teetotaler who had bribed bartenders to serve him chilled water in a martini glass, with a cocktail onion to distinguish the ersatz from the genuine. Since the Gibson was now a popular drink, however, Bliss had replaced the onion by a slice of sweet pickle, and this sometimes caused comment. When that happened, as it had just done. Bliss always confessed.

“What an unusual idea,” said Mrs. Pappakouras, a handsome Greek lady in a flowered Paris caftan. “A pickle in a Gibson, do you call it, or a martini?”

“I call it a Bliss, actually; it’s my own invention.”

“Really! May I try a sip?”

“You may, certainly, but you’ll be disappointed—it’s plain water.

Her eyes narrowed with amusement. “Oh, you bad man! Then you are not really drinking at all?”

He told her the story about Gibson—“a government official in Washington, I believe. Funny that he should have been immortalized in this particular way. The Gibson as we know it is more or less neat gin.”

William Firestein, the former senator from Colorado, who was standing beside Mrs. Pappakouras with a tall glass of Scotch in his hand, said gravely, “I’ve known several people in Washington who used the same device—not with a pickle, though, Mr. Bliss. And I’ve known several hundred who should have done it.”

“Well, you know,” said Bliss, “if I didn’t, I’d be pickled myself.”

This was about as far as Bliss went in the line of humor; it drew a polite laugh, as always. Maurice Malaval, the French industrialist, remarked with a smile, “It is very interesting how some people become immortalized, as you say. You know of course Monsieur Guillotin, who gave his name to the instrument by which he lost his head. And you know perhaps Monsieur Daguerre, who invented the daguerreotype. But perhaps you do not know Monsieur Poubelle?”

“No, who was he?” asked Firestein.

“He was the inventor of the dustbin—you would say in America, the garbage can.”

“Really!”

“Yes, and in France, his name lives again every time we say, ‘The garbage can is full.’ ”

Across the room, the beer tycoon Howard Manning was talking to Eddie Greaves. “Eddie, you’re getting off at Guam, is that right?”

“Yeah, man, they’re going to fly me from there to Tokyo for a concert on the fifteenth. I took this trip so I could get away from the phone and, you know, work on some songs, but that phone rings all day and all night.”

Manning smiled. “You can always take it off the hook.”

“Yeah, and I could of done that in L.A., too. But it’s a change of scene. What about you, how long you staying on?”

“I’m getting off at Guam, too; I have a conference scheduled in Manila—same date as your concert. I’ll be sorry to miss it.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t all get lucky.”

When she had had a few days to get over her nervousness, Emily began to feel almost at home in Sea Venture. A little newspaper, the CV Journal, was waiting for them in the printer tray every morning, and several times there were letters as well. As Jim said, the size of the room didn’t matter, after all they only used it to sleep, and there were so many other places to go, so many things to do. They met a very congenial couple, the Prescotts, in the lounge one day and afterward spent a good deal of time with them.

After a week or so Jim found some card-playing companions, and then they did not see so much of him. Emily went to the health spa and to several lectures, which she found very interesting. She began to take lessons in origami and flower arrangement from Mrs. Oruma, who owned the Oriental Shoppe—“the gook nook,” as Jim called it.

There was only one more really bad time before the horror began: the morning when the newspaper had an announcement on the first page about a temporary submersion. “In order to move into a more favorable current. Sea Venture will submerge to a depth of approximately three hundred feet at 1:00 a m. tomorrow morning and will remain submerged for approximately seven hours. The submersion will be carried out during the night in order to cause the least inconvenience, but passengers who are up at that hour will be able to watch the procedure in lounge, Promenade Deck and stateroom screens.”

“Jim, I don’t want it to submerge,” she said.

“It has to, to get into a favorable current. It says so right here. Besides, you knew all about that before you came.”

“Yes, but I thought it wouldn’t be until we got to those islands.”

“Well, what’s the difference, now or later? Pull yourself together, Emily.”

But she couldn’t do it. She went to bed early that night, and turned off the window: even that dreadful blackness was better than watching the ocean come up over their heads. She took two pills instead of one, but they did not make her sleep, they only turned her head fuzzy.

In the Control Center, Captain Hartman sat beside Bliss just before one o’clock, watching Deputy Womack at the console. The radioman—the Communications Coordinator they called him—was at the other end of the console, watching a bank of screens and occasionally talking quietly into a mouthpiece.

“I’m really interested to see this,” said Hartman. “To me, that’s the most amazing thing about Sea Venture—submerging a thing this size. It’s never been done before, I know. To tell the truth, I’m not certain why it’s necessary.”

“Well, it’s a good thing in storms, you know, but the real reason is for steering. All we’ve got is wind and currents, and that’s enough if you don’t mind taking ten months to go round the Pacific. But the currents change from one season to another, and they’re always tricky east of the Marianas. If we want to get to Manila and not wind up somewhere in the Carolines, we’ve got to make some northing.”

“Can you really do that, just by adjusting your depth?”

“Oh, absolutely. It’s the Coriolis force. Whatever current you’re in, in this hemisphere, there’s always another one underneath going off to starboard.”

“So if you ran too far to the north, you’d be out of luck?”

“That’s about it. That’s why they pay us our money, eh, Womack?”

The young deputy turned and smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“Here we go, then. All secure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take her to minus three hundred.”

Womack tapped keys on the console. “Watch the Boat Deck screens,” said Bliss. For a minute or two nothing seemed to be happening; then Hartman saw that the floodlit waves were rising a little higher, and higher still; finally, with an accelerating motion, they broke over the lenses of the cameras on the hull. The screens blurred for a few moments, then cleared, and they were looking at a cloudy-green underwater world. A shoal of little fish darted away.

One by one the banks of television cameras were submerged: “E” Deck, “D,” “C,” “B,” “A,” then the Main Deck, Promenade Deck, Upper Deck, Quarter Deck, Sports Deck, and finally the Signal Deck itself, and through the thick quartz deadlights Hartman could see with his own eyes that the water was surging up over them.

Risen again, her decks hosed down, Sea Venture moved week after week alone over the abyss. There were days of mild breezes, when the sea was a pale sun-wrinkled blue, and flying fish hurled themselves ahead in liquid arcs. Even when the seas rose higher, crashing against Sea Venture’s hull with massive force, the vessel plowed ahead, steady as a table top. As the weather grew warmer, more and more bathers appeared in Sea Venture’s four open-air pools, and the Sports Deck was crowded with tennis players, volleyball players, shuffleboard players.

On their television screens every day the passengers watched, with mingled shock and pleasure, the gray blizzards that were sweeping over the East and Midwest. Baltimore was immobilized under three feet of snow; there were thirteen feet in Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Christmas came when they were a month out of Honolulu; there was a huge tree in the Upper Deck lobby; Christmas carols chimed in the crowded corridors, and all the restaurants served a traditional dinner of roast turkey, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberry sauce, mince and pumpkin pie.

Bliss called home on a video circuit at nine o'clock that evening; it was ten in the morning Liverpool time, halfway around the world. His wife’s image cleared; her hair was a new color, in tight curls around her ears. “Hallo, dear. Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas,” said Bliss. “How are you getting on?”

“Oh, we’re very well. How is your voyage going?”

“The usual,” said Bliss. “Is everyone all right?”

“Oh, yes, we’re all very well. Where are you now, dear?”

“We're just a day’s voyage east of the date line—you can look that up on your globe. Very calm seas, good weather. Is Tommy there?”

“Yes, he is, dear, he wants to wish you a Merry Christmas.”

Her image retired and was replaced by the callow visage of his son. “Hallo, Dad. Merry Christmas and so forth.”

"Same to you. Son. Doing all right on the job, are you?”

“Oh, the job. Well, I quit that job. Dad. But I’m getting another very soon. A pal of mine has promised me it. There’s an opening coming up right after the first of the year.”

“Yes, I see. Did my parcels come all right?”

“Yes. they did. Dad, thank you very much. We’re opening gifts tonight. I can’t wait to see what they are. Did ours come, did you get them?”

“No, not yet, but I expect they’ll be waiting in Guam or Manila. You know what the mails are.”

"Yes, they’re awful. That’s too bad, I did want you to have my gift on Christmas day. Well, here’s Mum."

His wife’s face reappeared. “Well, dear, no good running up the bill for nothing. Have a happy Christmas.”

“You. too. Good-bye, dear,” said Bliss.