The Deep Range

CHAPTER X

‘You realize, of course,” said Myers, “that I’m only the station doctor, not a high-powered psychiatrist. So I’ll have to send you back to Professor Stevens and his merry men.”

“Is that really necessary?” asked Franklin.

“I don’t think it is, but I can’t accept the responsibility. If I was a gambler like Don, I’d take very long odds that you’ll never play this trick again. But doctors can’t afford to gamble, and anyway I think it would be a good idea to get you off Heron for a few days.”

“I’ll finish the course in a couple of weeks. Can’t it wait until then?”

“Don’t argue with doctors, Walt — you can’t win. And if my arithmetic is correct, a month and a half is not a couple of weeks. The course can wait for a few days; I don’t think Prof. Stevens will keep you very long. He’ll probably give you a good dressing-down and will send you straight back. Meanwhile, if you’re interested in my views, I’d like to get “em off my chest.”

“Go ahead.”

“First of all, we know why you had that attack when you did. Smell is the most evocative of all the senses, and now that you’ve told me that a spaceship air lock always smells of synthene the whole business makes sense. It was hard luck that you got a whiff of the stuff just when you were looking at the Space Station: The damn thing’s nearly hypnotized me sometimes when I’ve watched it scuttling across the sky like some mad meteor.

“But that isn’t the whole explanation, Walter. You had to be, let’s say, emotionally sensitized to make you susceptible. Tell me — have you got a photograph of your wife here?”

Franklin seemed more puzzled than disturbed by the unexpected, indeed apparently incongruous, question.

“Yes,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

“Never mind. May I have a look at it?”

After a good deal of searching, which Myers was quite sure was unnecessary, Franklin produced a leather wallet and handed it over. He did not look at Myers as the doctor studied the woman who was now parted from her husband by laws more inviolable than any that man could make.

She was small and dark, with lustrous brown eyes. A single glance told Myers all that he wanted to know, yet he continued to gaze at the photograph with an unanalyzable mixture of compassion and curiosity. How, he wondered, was Franklin’s wife meeting her problem? Was she, too, rebuilding her life on that far world to which she was forever bound by genetics and gravity? No, forever was not quite accurate. She could safely journey to the Moon, which had only the gravity of her native world. But there would be no purpose in doing so, for Franklin could never face even the trifling voyage from Earth to Moon.

With a sigh, Dr. Myers closed the wallet. Even in the most perfect of social systems, the most peaceful and contented of worlds, there would still be heartbreak and tragedy. And as man extended his powers over the universe, he would inevitably create new evils and new problems to plague him. Yet, apart from its details, there was nothing really novel about this case. All down the ages, men had been separated — often forever — from those they loved by the accident of geography or the malice of their fellows.

“Listen, Walt,” said Myers as he handed back the wallet. “I know a few things about you that even Prof. Stevens doesn’t, so here’s my contribution.

“Whether you realize it consciously or not, Indra is like your wife. That, of course, is why you were attracted to her in the first place. At the same time, that attraction has set up a conflict in your mind. You don’t want to be unfaithful even to someone — please excuse me for speaking so bluntly — who might as well be dead as far as you are concerned. Well — do you agree with my analysis?”

Franklin took a long time to answer. Then he said at last: “I think there may be something in that. But what am I to do?”

“This may sound cynical, but there is an old saying which applies in this case. “Cooperate with the inevitable.” Once you admit that certain aspects of your life are fixed and have to be accepted, you will stop fighting against them. It won’t be a surrender; it will give you the energy you need for the battles that still have to be won.”

“What does Indra really think about me?”

“The silly girl’s in love with you, if that’s what you want to know. So the least you can do is make it up to her for all the trouble you’ve caused.”

“Then do you think I should marry again?”

“The fact that you can ask that question is a good sign, but I can’t answer it with a simple “yes” or “no.” We’ve done our best to rebuild your professional life; we can’t give you so much help with your emotional one. Obviously, it’s highly desirable for you to establish a firm and stable relationship to replace the one you have lost. As for Indra — well, she’s a charming and intelligent girl, but no one can say how much of her present feelings are due to sympathy. So don’t rush matters; let them take their time. You can’t afford to make any mistakes.

“Well, that finishes the sermon — except for one item. Part of the trouble with you, Walter Franklin, is that you’ve always been too independent and self-reliant. You refused to admit that you had limitations, that you needed help from anyone else. So when you came up against something that was too big for you, you really went to pieces, and you’ve been hating yourself for it ever since.

“Now that’s all over and done with; even if the old Walt Franklin was a bit of a stinker, we can make a better job of the Mark II. Don’t you agree?”

Franklin gave a wry smile; he felt emotionally exhausted, yet at the same time most of the remaining shadows had lifted from his mind. Hard though it had been for him to accept help, he had surrendered at last and he felt better for it.

“Thanks for the treatment, Doc,” he said. “I don’t believe the specialists could do any better, and I’m quite sure now that this trip back to Prof. Stevens isn’t necessary.”

“So am I — but you’re going just the same. Now clear out and let me get on with my proper work of putting sticking plaster on coral cuts.”

Franklin was halfway through the door when he paused with a sudden, anxious query.

“I almost forgot — Don particularly wants to take me out tomorrow in the sub. Will that be O.K.?”

“Oh, sure — Don’s big enough to look after you. Just get back in time for the noon plane, that’s all I ask.”

As Franklin walked away from the office and two rooms grandly called “Medical Center” he felt no resentment at having been ordered off the island. He had received far more tolerance and consideration than he had expected — perhaps more than he deserved. All the mild hostility that had been focused upon him by the less-privileged trainees had vanished at a stroke, but it would be best for him to escape for a few days from an atmosphere that had become embarrassingly sympathetic. In particular, he found it hard to talk without a sense of strain with Don and Indra.

He thought again of Dr. Myers’ advice, and remembered the jolting leap his heart had given at the words “the silly girl’s in love with you.” Yet it would be unfair, he knew, to take advantage of the present emotional situation; they could only know what they meant to each other when they had both had time for careful and mature thought. Put that way, it seemed a little cold-blooded and calculating. If one was really in love, did one stop to weigh the pros and cons?

He knew the answer to that. As Myers had said, he could not afford any more mistakes. It was far better to take his time and be certain than to risk the happiness of two lives.

The Sun had barely lifted above the miles of reef extending to the east when Don Burley hauled Franklin out of bed. Don’s attitude toward him had undergone a change which it was not easy to define. He had been shocked and distressed by what had occurred and had tried, in his somewhat boisterous manner, to express sympathy and understanding. At the same time, his amour propre had been hurt; he could not quite believe, even now, that Indra had never been seriously interested in him but only in Franklin, whom he had never thought of as a rival. It was not that he was jealous of Franklin; jealousy was an emotion beyond him. He was worried — as most men are occasionally throughout their lives — by his discovery that he did not understand women as well as he had believed.

Franklin had already packed, and his room looked bleak and bare. Even though he might be gone for only a few days, the accommodation was needed too badly for it to be left vacant just to suit his convenience. It served him right, he told himself philosophically.

Don was in a hurry, which was not unusual, but there was also a conspiratorial air about him, as if he had planned some big surprise for Franklin and was almost childishly anxious that everything should come off as intended. In any other circumstances, Franklin would have suspected some practical joke, but that could hardly be the explanation now.

By this time, the little training sub had become practically an extension of his own body, and he followed the courses Don gave him until he knew, by mental dead reckoning, that they were somewhere out in the thirty-mile-wide channel between Wistari Reef and the mainland. For some reason of his own, which he refused to explain, Don had switched off the pilot’s main sonar screen, so that Franklin was navigating blind. Don himself could see everything that was in the vicinity by looking at the repeater set at the rear of the cabin, and though Franklin was occasionally tempted to glance back at it he managed to resist the impulse. This was, after all, a legitimate part of his training; one day he might have to navigate a sub that had been blinded by a breakdown of its underwater senses.

“You can surface now,” said Don at last. He was trying to be casual, but the undercurrent of excitement in his voice could not be concealed. Franklin blew the tanks, and even without looking at the depth gauge knew when he broke surface by the unmistakable rolling of the sub. It was not a comfortable sensation, and he hoped that they would not stay here for long.

Don gave one more glance at his private sonar screen, then gestured to the hatch overhead.

“Open up,” he said. “Let’s have a look at the scenery.”

“We may ship some water,” protested Franklin. “It feels pretty rough.”

“With the two of us in that hatch, not much is going to leak past. Here — put on this cape. That’ll keep the spray out of the works.”

It seemed a crazy idea, but Don must have a good reason. Overhead, a tiny elliptical patch of sky appeared as the outer seal of the conning tower opened. Don scrambled up the ladder first; then Franklin followed, blinking his eyes against the windswept spray.

Yes, Don had known what he was doing. There was little wonder that he had been so anxious to make this trip before Franklin left the island. In his own way, Don was a good psychologist, and Franklin felt an inexpressible gratitude toward him. For this was one of the great moments of his life; he could think of only one other to match it: the moment when he had first seen Earth, in all its heart-stopping beauty, floating against the infinitely distant background of the stars. This scene, also, filled his soul with the same awe, the same sense of being in the presence of cosmic forces.

The whales were moving north, and he was among them. During the night, the leaders must have passed through the Queensland Gate, on the way to the warm seas in which their young could be safely born. A living armada was all around him, plowing steadfastly through the waves with effortless power. The great dark bodies emerged streaming from the water, then sank with scarcely a ripple back into the sea. As Franklin watched, too fascinated to feel any sense of danger, one of the enormous beasts surfaced less than forty feet away. There was a roaring whistle of air as it emptied its lungs, and he caught a mercifully weakened breath of the fetid air. A ridiculously tiny eye stared at him — an eye that seemed lost in the monstrous, misshapen head. For a moment the two mammals — the biped who had abandoned the sea, the quadruped who had returned to it — regarded each other across the evolutionary gulf that separated them. What did a man look like to a whale? Franklin asked himself, and wondered if there was any way of finding the answer. Then the titanic bulk tilted down into the sea, the great flukes lifted themselves into the air, and the waters flowed back to fill the sudden void.

A distant clap of thunder made him look toward the mainland. Half a mile away, the giants were playing. As he watched, a shape so strange that it was hard to relate it to any of the films and pictures he had seen emerged from the waves with breathtaking slowness, and hung poised for a moment completely out of the water. As a ballet dancer seems at the climax of his leap to defy gravity, so for an instant the whale appeared to hang upon the horizon. Then, with that same unhurried grace, it tumbled back into the sea, and seconds later the crash of the impact came echoing over the waves.

The sheer slowness of that huge leap gave it a dreamlike quality, as if the sense of time had been distorted. Nothing else conveyed so clearly to Franklin the immense size of the beasts that now surrounded him like moving islands. Rather belatedly, he wondered what would happen if one of the whales surfaced beneath the sub, or decided to take too close an interest in it…

“No need to worry,” Don reassured him. “They know who we are. Sometimes they’ll come and rub against us to remove parasites, and then it gets a bit uncomfortable. As for bumping into us accidentally — they can see where they’re going a good deal better than we can.”

As if to refute this statement, a streamlined mountain emerged dripping from the sea and showered water down upon them. The sub rocked crazily, and for a moment Franklin feared it was going to overturn; then it righted itself, and he realized that he could, quite literally, reach out and touch the barnacle-encrusted head now lying on the waves. The weirdly shaped mouth opened in a prodigious yawn, the hundreds of strips of whalebone fluttering like a Venetian blind in a breeze.

Had he been alone, Franklin would have been scared stiff, but Don seemed the complete master of the situation. He leaned out of the hatch and yelled in the direction of the whale’s invisible ear: “Move over momma! We’re not your baby!”

The great mouth with its hanging draperies of bone snapped shut, the beady little eye — strangely like a cow’s and seemingly not much larger — looked at them with what might have been a hurt expression. Then the sub rocked once more, and the whale was gone.

“It’s quite safe, you see,” Don explained. “They’re peaceful, good-natured beasts, except when they have their calves with them. Just like any other cattle.”

“But would you get this close to any of the toothed whales — the sperm whale, for instance?”

“That depends. If it was an old rogue male — a real Moby Dick — I wouldn’t care to try it. Same with killer whales; they might think I was good eating, though I could scare them off easily enough by turning on the hooter. I once got into a harem of about a dozen sperm whales, and the ladies didn’t seem to mind, even though some of them had calves with them. Nor did the old man, oddly enough. I suppose he knew I wasn’t a rival.” He paused thoughtfully, then continued. “That was the only time I’ve actually seen whales mating. It was pretty awe-inspiring — gave me such an inferiority complex it put me off my stroke for a week.”

“How many would you say there are in this school?” asked Franklin.

“Oh, about a hundred. The recorders at the gate will give the exact figure. So you can say there are at least five thousand tons of the best meal and oil swimming around us — a couple of million dollars, if it’s worth a penny. Doesn’t all that cash make you feel good?”

“No,” said Franklin. “And I’m damn sure it doesn’t make any difference to you. Now I know why you like this job, and there’s no need to put on an act about it.”

Don made no attempt to answer. They stood together in the cramped hatchway, not feeling the spray upon their faces, sharing the same thoughts and emotions, as the mightiest animals the world had ever seen drove purposefully past them to the north. It was then that Franklin knew, with a final certainty, that his life was firmly set upon its new course. Though much had been taken from him which he would never cease to regret, he had passed the stage of futile grief and solitary brooding. He had lost the freedom of space, but he had won the freedom of the seas.

That was enough for any man.