I'd been scratched up by one once, under the _Dolphin_, a fishing boat of the middle-class. I _had_ been drinking, but it was also a rough day, and the thing had been turned on prematurely. Fortunately, it was turned off in time, also, and a tendon-stapler made everything good as new, except in the log, where it only mentioned that I'd been drinking. Nothing about it being off-hours when I had the right to do as I damn well pleased.
She had slowed to half her speed, but she was still moving cross-wise, toward the port, aft corner. I began to feel the pull myself and had to slow down. She'd made it past the main one, but she seemed too far back. It's hard to gauge distances under water, but each red beat of time told me I was right. She was out of danger from the main one, but the smaller port screw, located about eighty meters in, was no longer a threat but a certainty.
She had turned and was pulling away from it now. Twenty meters separated us. She was standing still. Fifteen.
Slowly, she began a backward drifting. I hit my jatoes, aiming two meters behind her and about twenty back of the blades.
Straightline! Thankgod! Catching, softbelly, leadpipe on shoulder SWIMLIKEHELL! maskcracked, not broke though AND UP!
We caught a line and I remember brandy.
Into the cradle endlessly rocking I spit, pacing. Insomnia tonight and left shoulder sore again, so let it rain on me--they can cure rheumatism. Stupid as hell. What I said. In blankets and shivering. She: "Carl, I can't say it." Me: "Then call it square for that night in Govino, Miss Luharich. Huh?" She: nothing. Me: "Any more of that brandy?" She: "Give me another, too." Me: sounds of sipping. It had only lasted three months. No alimony. Many $ on both sides. Not sure whether they were happy or not. Wine-dark Aegean. Good fishing. Maybe he should have spent more time on shore. Or perhaps she shouldn't have. Good swimmer, though. Dragged him all the way to Vido to wring out his lungs. Corfu should have brought them closer. Didn't. I think that mental cruelty was a trout. He wanted to go to Canada. She: "Go to hell if you want!" He: "Will you go along?" She: "No." But she did, anyhow. Many hells. Expensive. He lost a monster or two. She inherited a couple. Lot of lightning tonight. Stupid as hell. Civility's the coffin of a conned soul. By whom? --Sounds like a bloody neo-ex....But I hate you, Anderson, with your glass full of teeth and her new eyes....Can't keep this pipe lit, keep sucking tobacco. Spit again!
Seven days out and the scope showed Ikky.
Bells jangled, feet pounded, and some optimist set the thermostat in the Hopkins. Malvern wanted me to sit it out, but I slipped into my harness and waited for whatever came. The bruise looked worse than it felt. I had exercised every day and the shoulder hadn't stiffened on me.
A thousand meters ahead and thirty fathoms deep, it tunneled our path. Nothing showed on the surface.
"Will we chase him?" asked an excited crewman.
"Not unless she feels like using money for fuel." I shrugged.
Soon the scope was clear, and it stayed that way. We remained on alert and held our course.
I hadn't said over a dozen words to my boss since the last time we went drowning together, so I decided to raise the score.
"Good afternoon," I approached. "What's new?"
"He's going north-northeast. We'll have to let this one go. A few more days and we can afford some chasing. Not yet."
_Sleek head..._
I nodded. "No telling where this one's headed."
"How's your shoulder?"
"All right. How about you?"
_Daughter of Lir..._
"Fine. By the way, you're down for a nice bonus."
_Eyes of perdition!_
"Don't mention it," I told her back.
Later that afternoon, and appropriately, a storm shattered. (I prefer "shattered" to "broke." It gives a more accurate idea of the behavior of tropical storms on Venus and saves a lot of words.) Remember that inkwell I mentioned earlier? Now take it between thumb and forefinger and hit its side with a hammer. Watch yourself! Don't get splashed or cut--
Dry, then drenched. The sky one million bright fractures as the hammer falls. And sounds of breaking.
"Everyone below?" suggested the loudspeakers to the already scurrying crew.
Where was I? Who do you think was doing the loudspeaking?
Everything loose went overboard when the water got to walking, but by then no people were loose. The Slider was the first thing below decks. Then the big lifts lowered their shacks.
I had hit it for the nearest Rook with a yell the moment I recognized the pre-brightening of the holocaust. From there I cut in the speakers and spent half a minute coaching the track team.
Minor injuries had occurred, Mike told me over the radio, but nothing serious. I, however, was marooned for the duration. The Rooks do not lead anywhere; they're set too far out over the hull to provide entry downwards, what with the extensor shelves below.
So I undressed myself of the tanks which I had worn for the past several hours, crossed my flippers on the table, and leaned back to watch the hurricane. The top was black as the bottom and we were in between, and somewhat illuminated because of all that flat, shiny space. The waters didn't rain down--they just sort of got together and dropped.
The Rooks were secure enough--they'd weathered any number of these onslaughts--it's just that their positions gave them a greater arc of rise and descent when Tensquare makes like the rocker of a very nervous grandma. I had used the belts form my rig to strap myself into the bolted-down chair, and I removed several years in purgatory from the soul of whoever left a pack of cigarettes in the table drawer.
I watched the water make teepees and mountains and hands and trees until I started seeing faces and people. So I called Mike.
"What are you doing down there?"
"Wondering what you're doing up there," he replied. "What's it like?"
"You're from the Midwest, aren't you?"
"Yeah."
"Get bad storms out there?"
"Sometimes."
"Try to think of the worst one you were ever in. Got a slide rule handy?"
"Right here."
"Then put a one under it, imagine a zero or two following after, and multiply the thing out."
"I can't imagine the zeros."
"Then retain the multiplicand--that's all you can do."
"So what are you doing up there?"
"I've strapped myself in the chair. I'm watching things roll around the floor right now."
I looked up and out again. I saw one darker shadow in the forest.
"Are you praying or swearing?"
"Damned if I know. But if this were the Slider--if only this were the Slider!"
"_He's out there?_"
I nodded, forgetting that he couldn't see me.
Big, as I remembered him. He'd only broken surface for a few moments, to look around. _There is no power on Earth that can be compared with him who was made to fear no one._ I dropped my cigarette. It was the same as before. Paralysis and an unborn scream.
"You all right, Carl?"
He had looked at me again. Or seemed to. Perhaps that mindless brute had been waiting half a millennium to ruin the life of a member of the most highly developed species in business....
"You okay?"
...Or perhaps it had been ruined already, long before their encounter, and theirs was just a meeting of beasts, the stronger bumping the weaker aside, body to psyche....
"Carl, dammit! Say something!"
He broke again, this time nearer. Did you ever see the trunk of a tornado? It seems like something alive, moving around in all that dark. Nothing has a right to be so big, so strong, and moving. It's a sickening sensation.
"Please answer me."
He was gone and did not come back that day. I finally made a couple of wisecracks at Mike, but I held my next cigarette in my right hand.
The next seventy or eighty thousand waves broke by with a monotonous similarity. The five days that held them were also without distinction. The morning of the thirteenth day
out, though, our luck began to rise. The bells broke our coffee-drenched lethargy into small pieces, and we dashed from the gallery without hearing what might have been Mike's finest punchline.
"Aft!" cried someone. "Five hundred meters!"
I stripped to my trunks and started buckling. My stuff is always within grabbing distance.
I flipflopped across the deck, girding myself with a deflated squiggler.
"Five hundred meters, twenty fathoms!" boomed the speakers.
The big traps banged upward and the Slider grew to its full height, m'lady at the console. It rattled past me and took root ahead. Its one arm rose and lengthened.
I breasted the Slider as the speakers called, "Four-eight, twenty!"
"Status Red!"
A belch like an emerging champagne cork and the line arced high over the waters.
"Four-eight, twenty!" it repeated, all Malvern and static. "Baitman, attend!"
I adjusted my mask and hand-over-handed it down the side. Then warm, then cool, then away.
Green, vast, down. Fast. This is the place where I am equal to a squiggler. If something big decides a baitman looks tastier than what he's carrying, then irony colors his title as well as the water about it.
I caught sight of the drifting cables and followed them down. Green to dark green to black. It had been a long cast, too long. I'd never had to follow one this far down before. I didn't want to switch on my torch.
But I had to.
Bad! I still had a long way to go. I clenched my teeth and stuffed my imagination into a straightjacket.
Finally the line came to an end.
I wrapped one arm about it and unfastened the squiggler. I attached it, working as fast as I could, and plugged in the little insulated connections which are the reason it can't be fired with the line. Ikky could break them, but by then it wouldn't matter.
My mechanical eel hooked up, I pulled its section plugs and watched it grow. I had been dragged deeper during this operation, which took about a minute and a half. I was near--too near--to where I never wanted to be.
Loathe as I had been to turn on my light, I was suddenly afraid to turn it off. Panic gripped me and I seized the cable with both hands. The squiggler began to glow, pinkly. It started to twist. It was twice as big as I am and doubtless twice as attractive to pink squiggler-eaters. I told myself this until I believed it, then I switched off my light and started up.
If I bumped into something enormous and steel-hided my heart had orders to stop beating immediately and release me--to dart fitfully forever along Acheron, and gibbering.
Ungibbering, I made it to green water and fled back to the nest.
As soon as they hauled me aboard I made my mask a necklace, shaded my eyes, and monitored for surface turbulence. My first question, of course, was "Where is he?"
"Nowhere," said a crewman; "we lost him right after you went over. Can't pick him up on the scope now. Musta dived."
"Too bad."
The squiggler stayed down, enjoying its bath. My job ended for the time being, I headed back to warm my coffee with rum.
From behind me, a whisper: "Could you laugh like that afterwards?"
Perceptive Answer: "Depends on what he's laughing at."
Still chuckling, I made my way into the center blister with two cupfuls.
"Still hell and gone?"
Mike nodded. His big hands were shaking, and mine were steady as a surgeon's when I set down the cups.
He jumped as I shrugged off the tanks and looked for a bench.
"Don't drip on that panel! You want to kill yourself and blow expensive fuses?"
I toweled down, then settled down to watching the unfilled eye on the wall. I yawned happily; my shoulder seemed good as new.
The little box that people talk through wanted to say something, so Mike lifted the switch and told it to go ahead.
"Is Carl there, Mister Dabis?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Then let me talk to him."
Mike motioned and I moved.
"Talk," I said.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, thanks. Shouldn't I be?"
"That was a long swim. I--I guess I overshot my cast."
"I'm happy," I said. "More triple-time for me. I really clean up on that hazardous duty clause."
"I'll be more careful next time," she apologized. "I guess I was too eager. Sorry--" Something happened to the sentence, so she ended it there, leaving me with half a bagful of replies I'd been saving.
I lifted the cigarette from behind Mike's ear and got a light from the one in the ashtray.
"Carl, she was being nice," he said, after turning to study the panels.
"I know," I told him. "I wasn't."
"I mean, she's an awfully pretty kid, pleasant. Headstrong and all that. But what's she done to you?"
"Lately?" I asked.
He looked at me, then dropped his eyes to his cup.
"I know it's none of my bus--" he began.
"Cream and sugar?"
Ikky didn't return that day, or that night. We picked up some Dixieland out of Lifeline and let the muskrat ramble while Jean had her supper sent to the Slider. Later she had a bunk assembled inside. I piped in "Deep Water Blues" when it came over the air and waited for her to call up and cuss us out. She didn't though, so I decided she was sleeping.
Then I got Mike interested in a game of chess that went on until daylight. It limited conversation to several "checks," one "checkmate," and a "damn!" Since he's a poor loser it also effectively sabotaged subsequent talk, which was fine with me. I had a steak and fried potatoes for breakfast and went to bed.
Ten hours later someone shook me awake and I propped myself on one elbow, refusing to open my eyes.
"Whassamadder?"
"I'm sorry to get you up," said one of the younger crewmen, "but Miss Luharich wants you to disconnect the squiggler so we can move on."
I knuckled open one eye, still deciding whether I should be amused.
"Have it hauled to the side. Anyone can disconnect it."
"It's at the side now, sir. But she said it's in your contract and we'd better do things right."
"That's very considerate of her. I'm sure my Local appreciates her remembering."
"Uh, she also said to tell you to change your trunks and comb your hair, and shave, too. Mister Anderson's going to film it."
"Okay. Run along; tell her I'm on my way--and ask if she has some toenail polish I can borrow."
I'll save on details. It took three minutes in all, and I played it properly, even pardoning myself when I slipped and bumped into Anderson's white tropicals with the wet squiggler. He smiled, brushed it off; she smiled, even though Luharich Complectacolor couldn't completely mask the dark circles under her eyes; and I smiled, waving to all our fans out there in videoland. --Remember, Mrs. Universe, you, too, can look like a monster-catcher. Just use Luharich face cream.
I went below and made myself a tuna sandwich, with mayonnaise.
Two days like icebergs--bleak, blank, half-melting, all frigid, mainly out of sight, and definitely a threat to peace of mind--drifted by and were good to put behind. I experienced some old guilt feelings and had a few disturbing dreams. Then I called Lifeline and checked my bank balance.
"Going shopping?" asked Mike, who had put the call through for me.
"Going home," I answered.
"Huh?"
"I'm out of the baiting business after this one, Mike. The Devil with Ikky! The Devil with Venus and Luharich Enterprises! And the Devil with you!"
Up eyebrows.
"What brought that on?"
"I waited over a year for this job. Now that I'm here, I've decided the whole thing stinks."
"You knew what it was when you signed on. No matter what else you're doing, you're selling face cream when you work for face cream sellers."
"Oh, that's not what's biting me. I admit the commercial angle irritates me, but Tensquare has always been a publicity spot, ev
er since the first time it sailed."
"What, then?"
"Five or six things, all added up. The main one being that I don't care any more. Once it meant more to me than anything else to hook that critter, and now it doesn't. I went broke on what started out as a lark and I wanted blood for what it had cost me. Now I realize that maybe I had it coming. I'm beginning to feel sorry for Ikky."
"And you don't want him now?"
"I'll take him if he comes peacefully, but I don't feel like sticking out my neck to make him crawl into the Hopkins."
"I'm inclined to think it's one of the four or five other things you said you added."
"Such as?"
He scrutinized the ceiling.
I growled.
"Okay, but I won't say it, not just to make you happy you guessed right."
He, smirking: "That look she wears isn't just for Ikky."
"No good, no good." I shook my head. "We're both fission chambers by nature. You can't have jets on both ends of the rocket and expect to go anywhere--what's in the middle just gets smashed."
"That's how it _was_. None of my business, of course--"
"Say that again and you'll say it without teeth."
"Any day, big man"--he looked up--"any place..."
"So go ahead. Get it said!"
"She doesn't care about that bloody reptile, she came here to drag you back where you belong. You're not the baitman this trip."
"Five years is too long."
"There must be something under that cruddy hide of yours that people like," he muttered, "or I wouldn't be talking like this. Maybe you remind us humans of some really ugly dog we felt sorry for when we were kids. Anyhow, someone wants to take you home and raise you--also, something about beggars not getting menus."
"Buddy," I chuckled, "do you know what I'm going to do when I hit Lifeline?"
"I can guess."
"You're wrong. I'm torching it to Mars, and then I'll cruise back home, first class. Venus bankruptcy provisions do not apply to Martian trust funds, and I've still got a wad tucked away where moth and corruption enter not. I'm going to pick up a big old mansion on the Gulf and if you're ever looking for a job you can stop around and open bottles for me."
The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth and Other Stories Page 3
