Ocean on Top

Chapter Twenty-three

I also had to admit that we should have foreseen it. Joey should never have been told of the departure plans until Marie and Bert were safely away.

Nothing was more likely than that he would think of some final questions he wanted to ask Bert, and he would certainly know where to meet him. Evidently Bert was no better a schemer than I was, but that was very little comfort at the moment.

Marie saw him before either Bert or I could think of anything to do; the sub suddenly left its swimming guide behind. Seconds later its water jets sent us spinning as it came to halt in front of our group. Yes, Marie had seen Joey. Her politeness with the savages had evaporated.

I had been hearing my own heartbeat and those of people near me for some time now, but I hadn’t realized until this moment how loud that beat could be.

Marie’s voice, though, turned out to be louder. Her first words weren’t just the ones I would have expected, but I’ve already admitted that she thinks a good deal faster than I do. Not always in the same direction, or even in the right one, but faster.

“Joey!” It ought to have been a howl of surprised welcome, but even the peculiar acoustical situation left me pretty sure it wasn’t. It’s hard to believe that a girl known to have gone so completely overboard for someone could address him in the tone of a stern aunt, but the resemblance was there. “Joey, how long have you known that I was here?”

Joey looked around for the writing pad; I was delighted to hand it to him and in no hurry to get it back.

“I didn’t know until this moment,” he wrote.

“How long have you known that Bert was here?”

“A few weeks. I don’t remember exactly. Within a day or two of the time I got here myself.”

I could guess what was coming next, but fortunately for me I was wrong.

Marie was not a technician. She can run a sub in the ordinary course of duty, naturally, but she is not really familiar with all the handling and operating gear carried by a work sub. For that reason, I’m still completely mystified how she managed to coordinate her next move so perfectly. One of the smaller handling tongs popped out of its recess and caught Bert neatly around the neck, and only when he was firmly gripped did she follow the action with words.

“You dirty liar! You slimy piece of trepang! I ought to twist the head off your crooked neck! If it were possible I’d throttle you here and now! You knew why I came and who I was looking for. You knew he was here. You didn’t tell him I’d come, and you lied to me about having seen him. You twisted poor Tummy so that he followed your own crooked line!”

I somewhat resented the implication that I hadn’t brains or initiative enough to be held responsible for my own actions, but I was able to resist the temptation to break in and insist that part of the plan was mine. I didn’t even object to her use of one of my more odious nicknames. I just let her words run on.

I won’t quote any more of them; as I’ve said already, I promised her not to. I was a little sorry for Bert, since the grip on his neck must be hurting, but as Marie herself had said she couldn’t very well strangle him under the circumstances. I was sure she wouldn’t if she could have. Not Marie. The others seemed rather concerned, though. The girl and her regular companion flung themselves at the extension arm and wrenched at it uselessly. The doctor tried with equal lack of success to pry the tongs from around Bert’s neck. Joey knew better than to do either, but he was clearly bothered; he waved and shook his head at Marie in an effort to convince her that she should stop. It was the sort of scene which should have been accompanied by lively music, screams, the thump of fists, and the crash of broken glass; but it all went on in ghostly silence.

No screams, which were impossible; no fists, which couldn’t move fast enough in this medium to make much of a thump anyway; no apparatus within reach which was fragile enough to be damaged by the gracefully thrashing bodies.

It was Joey who managed to bring it to an end. He was still holding the writing pad, and he hastily printed on it in the largest letters that would fit, “YOU’RE KILLING HIM!”

He held this against the conning part so Marie could see practically nothing else.

It took a few more seconds, but she suddenly got her senses back and released the tongs. Bert’s face was purplish, and he had lost consciousness; the doctor grabbed his wrist, I thought to check pulse, but in fact simply for a tow bar. The two of them disappeared into the operating room.

I hesitated for a few seconds, unsure what was most important, and then went after them. The girl and her friend followed me; Marie’s guide stayed outside with the sub. Joey, after looking as though he would come along, changed his mind.

In the operating room Bert was quickly fastened to the table, and the doctor got to work.

Strictly speaking he wasn’t a doctor, as even I realized; there can be no doctors in a population of a few thousand people which has been separated from the mainstream of human knowledge for three or four generations. He was a darned good technician, though, and fortunately was working right in his own field. He did know that heart-lung machine cold, and he knew the general run of troubles involving the human breathing and circulatory systems. Interfering with the coughing reflex, as these people had had to do for their pressure-survival system, had produced some fallout along those lines. There were controls for the machine and its auxiliary gear inside the room, presumably in parallel with the remote ones. Quite evidently depressurization wasn’t the only purpose of the apparatus.

In something under sixty seconds the tech had Bert plugged into the gadget, and his color was coming back to normal. Then, in more leisurely fashion, other instruments began looking and prying down his throat.

Apparently very little real damage had been done there, though the outside of his neck was starting to discolor into one huge bruise. In less than five minutes the doc — I’m going to call him one, under the circumstances — withdrew his equipment and used a hypodermic on his patient’s upper arm. The needle must have contained a stimulant, for Bert opened his eyes almost at once.

It took him only a few seconds to get oriented. Then he fixed his eyes on me and actually blushed. He was still a little confused, because he started to speak. The pain in his chest as he put pressure on his liquid-filled lungs brought him back to reality. He looked around and made writing motions. The doctor didn’t seem to mind, so I went back for the writing pad, which Joey still had.

I didn’t have to interrupt a conversation to take it. Joey wasn’t writing, and Marie wasn’t talking.

Apparently nothing at all had been said during the crisis in the operating room — we’d have heard Marie’s voice even there, and Joey’s three words of a few minutes before were still on the pad. Marie was looking at him through the port, and he was looking everywhere but at her. I didn’t pause to do any analysis. I just took the pad from Joey and swam back to the table.

The doctor called Bert’s attention to the blood connections between him and the machine, but made no real effort to stop him from writing. Bert nodded an acknowledgment of the warning and went ahead with the stylus. He wrote briefly, and handed the pad to me.

“I’m sorry, but I can see when I’m checkmated. I hope your luck is better, though now that she knows Joey is alive I wouldn’t bet on it. Tell her she didn’t kill me, if you think the possibility is bothering her. I’d better not see her again myself.”

That was an eye-opening paragraph. Suddenly I saw just why Bert had been trifling with the truth, why he had concealed Joey’s presence from Marie, why he had decided to go back to the surface on such short notice, why he had been so far from completely frank with me — and even why the local Council had been so reluctant to let us both leave.

I also saw that I was in no position to criticize him for any of it. There was not a word to be said against him which didn’t apply with equal force to me. The only reason I hadn’t done as much, under exactly the same motivation, was that I’d been in no position to.

I couldn’t blame him, or even criticize him. I have failings, but I’m not that much of a hypocrite. I could be sorry for him; as he’d said, his chances were gone.

Marie might conceivably come to realize that Joey was a hopeless case as far as she was concerned, even after this discovery that he was alive after all. She might possibly settle for me if that happened. But after the last few weeks and the discoveries of the last few minutes she’d never, never have any use for Bert.

I gave him as sympathetic a look as I could as all this dawned on me, but I could think of nothing to write. He answered with a bitter grin and waved me toward the door. I went. The others, except the doctor, followed me.