World Enough (And Time)

by Edmund Jorgensen

  * * *

  “Is it safe to come in?” Mr. Chapin asked after the rest had all cleared out.

  “As safe as it’s going to be,” said Jeremiah.

  “Are you going to tell me what Sara wants from you?” said Mr. Chapin as he sat down.

  “I haven’t told her what you want from me,” said Jeremiah. “Would you like me to?”

  “No,” Mr. Chapin said.

  “That’s settled, then. Coffee? Tea?”

  “After the dinner I endured with Roof last night, I might need something a stronger. It was as if the man had spent the last two years secretly spoiling for someone, anyone, to mention iguanas.”

  “So he’s interested in them?” said Jeremiah.

  “Interested? Obsessed. And not just with the zoological aspects—though God knows he went plenty deep into those. Southern, northern, red-throated vs. ruby-throated vs. scarlet-throated, green and blue and albino and God knows what else. He has some very strong political ideas about iguanas, and he’s not afraid to make them known at dinner.”

  “What kind of political ideas can you have about iguanas?”

  “About whether or not they should be kept in captivity, for starters. Mr. Roof believes that they should not. He believes this very, very strongly. He practically attacked me when I suggested that the odd iguana in a zoo here and there might serve as a kind of ambassador for the whole genus, getting children interested in their welfare at an impressionable age and so on. Any news on your end?” Mr. Chapin asked.

  “Apparently Mr. Roof suffers from allergies, acid reflux, sinus pressure, dry eyes, and mild insomnia. Oh, and he boosts his health with a ginkgo leaf supplement.”

  “If he’s not on the cruise because he’s sick,” said Mr. Chapin, “then why is he here? No one comes on Golden Worldlines for recreation. What is his secret?”

  “He keeps a safe deposit box,” Jeremiah said.

  Mr. Chapin perked up.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I saw the keycard in his room.”

  “Can you get inside that box?” Mr. Chapin asked. “I know I’m asking a lot, Jeremiah. But it’s important. Can you do it?”

  Jeremiah liked Henry Chapin—he liked both Chapins, even though one of them had put him up to breaking and entering and the other to fomenting a revolution, and recently—though under stress, it was true—threatened to express her lack of satisfaction to Grubel. They’d offered to pay for his ticket, after all, and as far as Jeremiah could tell, in earnest. Of all Jeremiah’s clients, it was easiest to believe that Mr. Chapin had sound, moral, non-insane reasons for the insane things he was asking.

  Then there was the matter of Mr. Roof and his strong political views on iguanas. It was just possible that Mr. Roof had somehow discovered Carolus’s existence and captivity and chosen to liberate him, and that inside that safe deposit box Jeremiah would find some clue to his whereabouts—or some leverage that might inspire Mr. Roof to reveal them.

  Even with all these pros, Old Jeremiah might have been on the fence. New Jeremiah, on the other hand, thought about things differently.

  “What the hell,” he said, “if I’m going to break into one safe deposit box, I might as well break into two.”

  “Two?” said Mr. Chapin. “Do I want to know?”

  “I doubt it,” said Jeremiah. “I wish I didn’t know myself.”

  * * *

  After a grateful Mr. Chapin left, Jeremiah continued his streak of New Jeremiah thinking. Rather than hang around and see what troublesome visitor might pop up next, he hung a sign on the office door that said “Closed (back tomorrow 9 a.m.)” and headed back to the suite. He needed to find Katherine.

  Upon arriving there, however, Old Jeremiah enjoyed a bit of an “I told you so” moment, as a troublesome visitor was already waiting outside the door to the suite. She was in a state of extreme excitement, swaying back and forth with high color in her cheeks.

  “Hello, Kimberly,” said Jeremiah. Being the New Jeremiah, he did not attempt to hide his weariness at seeing her, but she—being the only Kimberly—did not seem to notice. She was too engaged in searching for words adequate to express the depths of what she was feeling, until the search ended in the perfect turn of phrase.

  “He gave you CPR!” she said.

  “What happened to ‘discreet’?”

  “That was discreet!”

  “We were in the middle of the entire cafeteria—hundreds of people saw.”

  “When you said ‘discreet’ I thought you were worried about the passengers,” said Kimberly.

  This was so unassailably absurd that even the New Jeremiah could only try another tack.

  “You also said you’d let me know the plan ahead of time.”

  “I asked you if you were ready!”

  “Right before you kicked my legs out from under me.”

  “Don’t exaggerate. If I had kicked your legs out from under you, you would have fallen over. I kicked one leg out, to help you kneel—you looked terrible, and I wasn’t sure you were going to be able to handle it yourself.”

  “You also ground your heel into my foot. I can still feel it every time I take a step.”

  “Jeremiah,” said Kimberly, “I came here to thank you, and you’re ruining it. I got you the information about Mr. Roof’s pills, like I promised, and you proposed to me in front of Bradley, like you promised. We both fulfilled our promises, in accordance with the Categorical Imperative. Now I’m about to go tell Bradley that I’m breaking off our engagement because I’m still in love with him and want to go back to Earth with him—I’m finally going to fly in the face of the Categorical Imperative and risk my heart, and I’d like to feel confident and centered when I do.”

  Jeremiah realized that, purely for reasons of self-preservation, he would like that too.

  “All right,” he said, “Good luck talking to Bradley.”

  Kimberly smiled.

  “By the way,” she said, “I’ve decided I’ll name our second child Jeremiah. I don’t like the name much, but after what you’ve done for me I should like it, so I will.”

  “What are you going to name the first?”

  “Bradley, of course. What else would I name him?”

  “What if it’s a girl? For that matter, what if the second one is a girl?”

  “Oh Jeremiah,” she said, “you really are too silly.”

  “Speaking of silly,” said the New Jeremiah, who was not above employing the occasional non sequitur when expedient, “can I get that necklace back?”

  As if it had a mind of its own, Kimberly’s hand went right to her neck.

  “I thought it was a gift for our engagement,” she said.

  “More like a prop,” said Jeremiah, “for our fake engagement—and an accidental one at that. It doesn’t belong to me, and I need it back.”

  “Oh. All right, if you really need it back,” Kimberly said.

  She paused, in case Jeremiah had changed his mind, but then she changed hers.

  “Would you mind terribly if I kept it for an hour or two longer? Just while I tell Bradley? I think it would be such a dramatic touch if I take it off as I tell him I’m breaking our engagement. It will show just how much I’m giving up to be with him. I really want this to go perfectly.”

  Jeremiah imagined his two possible futures—one in which Kimberly’s reconciliation with Bradley went perfectly, and one in which it did not. There was no question which of those futures he would rather be living in. By this point he was supremely invested in this venture’s success, and the loan of a necklace for a few more hours was a small price to improve the odds of such.

  “All right,” he said, “but bring it back the minute you’re done.”

  The end of this sentence was muffled by Kimberly’s grateful embrace and overwhelmed by her squealing.

  * * *

  After he had shipped Kimberly off to her joyous reunion with Bradley, Jeremiah sat alone in the suite, holding the bandora in his lap. He
had picked it up for the ostensible purpose of gluing it once again, but as he had cradled the ugly little instrument in his hands, turning it over and inspecting the break, the bandora had taken on the aspect of a skull in a vanitas, and the function.

  All his desperate hustle, it seemed to imply—the fevered meddling with PEDs and Relaxation Stations and iguanas and human hearts—was just as pointless as gluing together a musical instrument he knew would not hold. These were acts of farce taking place under a dark sentence that was neither in a hurry nor negotiable, and would eventually fall on him.

  The Jeremiah of even a few days ago would have turned away from these thoughts, in some manner that was probably too cowardly even to earn the name “despair.” But the new, reborn Jeremiah of today was almost grateful to the broken bandora—its memento mori was neither mocking nor sinister, but a tough truth told straight by a courageous friend.

  What Jeremiah felt now wasn’t even the can-do must-do will-do never-say-die of his inner grizzled veteran—which, admirable as it was in some sense, was also somehow so uniform and stoic as to be detached from life, completely on this side of the glass.

  New Jeremiah felt poised at a precise understanding: that having the courage to live under a sentence of death was precisely the same as having the courage to live at all. Bandoras broke and could not be put back together, parents left and didn’t come back. Bad decisions were made and tickets bought that cost you years with the man who was the closest thing to a father you would ever have. Real and permanent losses were always around the corner. Hunting for AWOL iguanas in the meantime, negotiating the return of priceless necklaces, working to improve the love lives of Canadian doctors and mimes—as well as one’s own—all that was what life was.

  And the realization seemed so fragile, so vulnerable to expression, so likely to transform into something trite or sloppy or sentimental, that he hardly wanted to move his head for fear of shaking it loose.

  * * *

  Hours later, after her dinner shift had finished, Katherine discovered Jeremiah still engaged in such meditations.

  “I guess congratulations are in order,” she said.

  “That wasn’t real,” said Jeremiah. “I was doing her an idiotic favor, that’s all.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You should.”

  “Oh really?” Katherine said. “Why?”

  “Break into the safe deposit boxes of two passengers with me.”

  From Jeremiah’s tone a listener who didn’t speak English would have suspected that he had just asked Katherine to run away with him, and her reaction—all wide eyes and confusion—would have clinched it. In a sense, he supposed, he had.

  “Jeremiah, this isn’t going to work.”

  “Which ‘this’ do you mean, the safe deposit boxes or—”

  “No, this. You and me.”

  “You can’t deny there’s a spark between us, Katherine.”

  “I’m not denying it—I’m saying it’s not going to work.”

  “But you and The Specimen are going to work?”

  “You don’t think much of him, but—”

  “I think a perfectly reasonable amount of him. He’s a fit, competent, handsome man who takes his job very seriously. I just don’t think he’s right for you.”

  “Because you’re such an expert on me?”

  “Because he smothers you. Or he will. Whereas I—”

  “Whereas you’ve proven perfectly comfortable putting me in harm’s way.”

  “Now that you mention it,” said Jeremiah, “yes. I mean, I’m not pushing you into harm’s way, but if there’s danger about and you’re willing to take my hand and run through it with me, or vice versa, then what’s wrong with that? In a dangerous world, isn’t that what people do when they want to be together?”

  “You do understand that if I decide not to be with John, I’m not somehow going to be with you by default? I’ve been fine on my own for quite some time.”

  “Then let’s leave Battle out of this. Why not me? If there is a spark between us, why not give it some air and see what happens?”

  As Katherine considered the question, her face took on the look of a debater who is struggling to condense a dump truck of overwhelming evidence into a single, pithy argument.

  “You’re not serious,” she said.

  “About you? I sure am.”

  “About life. You never dig in. You, I don’t know, skate on top of it with jokes and irony. You break things, you lose things, misunderstanding follows you around like a cloud, because you secretly like it. You get involved in fake public engagements and then pretend you had no choice. I want a serious life.”

  “Life isn’t serious!” Jeremiah said. “It’s insane in every way, whether you want it to be or not. You know the only thing I actually like about being on this ship? It’s so much harder to pretend that life isn’t absurd out here. On Earth you have sunsets and the occasional forest and oceans and clouds and all those things that feel like promises of some deeper meaning. Here we’re in the middle of the void, of millions and millions of miles of literal nothing, threading our way through nuclear explosions on a scale we can’t even conceive, which could vaporize us before we knew what was happening—and by the way Golden Worldlines encourages but does not require period dress. That’s not absurd? And Earth is no different—it’s just a bigger ship taking a longer path to the same place.”

  “How can you be such a pessimist?” said Katherine.

  “That’s not a pessimistic view! What I’m talking about is beautiful, in its way. It’s beyond us, it’s absurd and also transcendent. It’s adventure. It’s life.”

  “Stop talking to me about life,” said Katherine. “You’ve never even lived life.”

  Jeremiah felt his forehead smack into the glass so hard that he reached up involuntarily to touch it.

  Katherine continued.

  “Your biggest problem is that you might have lost a bunch of credit you never earned in the first place. You got to cruise on this ship without a care in the world for almost two years, and now maybe you’ll have to work—work!—for two more to pay it off. There are people on this boat who have worked shit jobs their whole lives, and have no hope of anything better, and have never complained once. And half of your fellow passengers are dying, and all their riches can’t help them. But everyone is supposed to feel sorry for you?”

  They were both silent for a moment as they caught their breath.

  “You’re right,” said Jeremiah quietly. “To a point. But that was the Old Jeremiah. I’ve changed.”

  “Since when have you changed?”

  “Since today.”

  “Just like that?”

  “How else do people change, Katherine?”

  “Generally, Jeremiah, they don’t. Good night.”

  * * *

  Jeremiah sat and listened to the muffled music coming from Katherine’s bedroom until it stopped some time later. Then he glued and clamped the bandora one last time and went to bed himself—but not to sleep.

  24

  Not Why But Why Now

  Still Friday (2 days until arrival)

  A few hours later, having slept not a wink, Jeremiah stood up from the sofa, turned on the light, and tapped on Katherine’s door.

  “Katherine,” he said. Nothing. “Katherine. Katherine!”

  He tried the door—it opened.

  “Katherine!”

  In the crack of light through the door he could see her now, or the shape of her at least, under the blanket, lying on her side, knees drawn up most of the way to her chest. The shape of Katherine stirred.

  “Jeremiah? What time is it?”

  She sat up, so splendid with her pajamas and tousled hair that he had to look away.

  “It’s really late. Or really early.”

  “I told you I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Jeremiah.”

  “This isn’t about us. I had an idea about Boyle—about how to figure out who killed hi
m.”

  Katherine groaned and flopped back on the bed.

  “Can’t this wait until morning?”

  “I can’t sleep, I’m too excited.”

  “Go away, Jeremiah.”

  “Don’t you want to know the idea?”

  “Tomorrow morning? Maybe. Right now? No.”

  “All right,” Jeremiah whispered, “I’ll let you get back to sleep.” He closed the door gently, turned the light off again, and went back to toss and turn on the sofa.

  He had been tossing and turning for some five minutes when Katherine’s door opened and she emerged. She switched on the light.

  “You’re a real jerk, you know that?” she said, rubbing her eyes. “What’s this big idea?”

  “We’ve been trying to figure out why someone would want to kill Boyle,” said Jeremiah, sitting up as she sat down next to him on the sofa, “and we got nowhere. But what if we asked why now? Why just over a week from the end of a two-year cruise? If you’re killing him because you hated him, why wouldn’t you do it earlier?”

  “All right, why do you kill him with a week to go?” said Katherine.

  “Because you weren’t sure you wanted to kill him until you got some crucial piece of information from Earth.”

  “And the Einstein IV—”

  “Came into communication with Earth just before he died. So maybe if we could sneak a peek at the passenger’s waves from the day or two before Boyle was killed, we could—why are you standing up?”

  “Get dressed,” said Katherine. “We’re going to the IT department.”

  “It’s 2:30 in the morning.”

  “I hope Sean’s not on his lunch break.”

  They dressed and departed, though Jeremiah doubled back quickly to fetch something—just in case.

  * * *

  Sean was not on his lunch break, but he was about to be, and did not seem eager to stick around the IT office chatting with Jeremiah and Katherine one minute longer than he absolutely had to—a reluctance that Jeremiah could understand. If a spaceship could be said to have a basement, the IT office was in the E4’s sub-sub-basement—a designation that had nothing to do with the strict vertical location of the office (after the twisty maze of passages down which Katherine had led him, Jeremiah had no idea how many metric tons of ship lay above the IT office as opposed to below it), and everything to do with the feeling that here in these cracked hallways with their terrible lights and damp atmosphere, Morlocks toiled away at tasks that simply could not have been understood by the beautiful people above.