Declan joined Thomas on Deck C.
“Please, lads, be reasonable; there’s no hope of getting off the ship after Queenstown when it’ll be open sea.”
“True, we’ll be in the North Atlantic by time we convince that stubborn captain up there,” said Thomas, pointing in the general direction of the overhead decks.
“We came on board as a team, we remain to fight as a team, sir,” Declan insisted.
“Thomas, is Declan speaking for you, too?”
Thomas grimaced. “He is and he’s bloody right.”
“Ah!” gasped a lady passenger stepping by. “There are children aboard, sir!”
Thomas started to apologize but the lady had rushed on.
Alastair placed both hands on Thomas’ shoulders. “Are you bloody sure?”
“I am committed, sir, completely.”
Ransom shook his head over the two and smiled, surprised at the level of dedication these two young men had shown. Declan then sent the lift straight back down the way they had come. “So lads,” Ransom then said, “how do we proceed from here?”
“First things first,” replied Declan. “Smell that?”
Thomas took in a deep breath of sea air; they’d been in what amounted to a huge coffin below the waterline where no amount of pumped in air from above could compete with the smoke and haze, and where the smell of it clung like a fetid animal.
Ransom realized what the lads most wanted at the moment, so he followed them to the rail to look out at the sea from portholes, and then he followed them out onto the aft deck amid the second-class crowds here. After finding seats about a stationary table in what amounted to a café on deck, they planned their strategy which all hinged on discovering either Burney’s or Davenport’s body, for surely the men were dead at this point. “Two bodies aboard might well be the clear and present evidence of danger required to move Captain Smith to action,” Declan firmly said.
“Yes,” agreed Thomas, his eyes going to the Queenstown docks off the port side where he and the others saw a lifeboat with what appeared to be Charles Lightoller and two other officers escorting that unhappy passenger off Titanic. They could not make out her words, but the woman in the boat, alongside a silent husband, was ranting about something. “Yes, well, this would be the time and place to stop Titanic—at safe harbor—and one by one, under careful scrutiny and quarantine conditions—get as many of the over two thousand passengers and crew off the ship until only the final carrier remained.”
“At which time a bullet to the head might be in order,” added Ransom. “Short of that, if Smith continues on from here… I have no clue what we will do or be forced to do. Have you, lads?”
Only shakes of the head responded to Ransom regarding this future possible circumstance.
“Perhaps Titanic must be scuttled and sent to the bottom,” muttered Ransom, hardly above a whisper.
“What?” asked Thomas.
“What did you say?” Declan echoed.
The young interns stared at Alastair as if he were mad.
Ransom shrugged. “What else can we do? We are on the high seas on a ship riddled with this disease organism. Do you prefer this plague to reach New York?”
“There has to be another way,” replied Thomas through clenched teeth, “Some other recourse!”
“Perhaps if we could get the bloody creature off and onto an iceberg, maybe?” Declan timidly suggested.
Ransom shook his head. “Suppose this thing’s already spread from stem to stern, lads, from top to bottom of the ship by time we hit the ice floes in the North Atlantic. What then, lads? What then?”
Declan pictured the fearful circumstances if they got too far from any port. “What’re you suggesting? That we become anarchists and bomb the boilers?”
“Shhh… keep such talk down,” Ransom cautioned, looking around them.
“We already sound like anarchists, for Christ’s sake.” Declan leapt to his feet and went to the port side, staring after the lifeboat that had promised to set them ashore. Thomas joined him there, Ransom holding back.
“We’re fools to have not gotten away to dry land, Declan, you know this, don’t you?”
“I do. I do… but there are lives at stake, Thomas, and I can’t just walk away from this. You go! You turn yourself in. I am sure Mr. Ransom and I can do what we must to keep this thing from reaching New York without… without blowing up the ship.”
Ransom joined them at the railing. “We’re exposed here, lads. If you want to be discovered and put ashore, this is the way to do it. I won’t hold it against you. We’ve come a long way together; perhaps it’s time we called it quits as a team. Hell you could get below, find a porthole large enough and swim ashore but I wouldn’t recommend diving from this height. You’ll knock yourselves out.”
“Shut up! Mr. Ransom, Constable, Inspector… whatever you are,” said Declan, losing his temper. “Look here, we must—you and I—locate those bodies; we must provide Smith with evidence that no man can ignore. And as for you, Thomas, you should truly get off this bloody ship now!”
Thomas slapped Declan on the arm. “With three of us seeking evidence, we have a far greater chance of success, and successful early enough, soon enough, Smith will turn back and hold anchor in Queenstown harbor. We find Davenport or Burns and splay ’em the hell open, and Smith and his surgeon will pay heed.”
“Else boys, it’s sending Titanic to the deep by hook or by crook.” Ransom looked his sternest when saying this.
“The idea of it alone makes me weak,” admitted Declan. “I’m not-tat-all sure I could go through with such an action. I’d likely lose my legs.”
“Hell, I almost did when Ransom proposed it,” said Thomas, the breeze lifting his blonde hair.
“At the same,” continued Declan, “Mr. Ransom has a point if this alien creature spreads this killing disease exponentially. Just imagine its strength, Tommie.”
Thomas swallowed hard, looked about and nodded. “What then indeed if this thing has reproduced aboard Titanic? If it should multiply exponentially? But we’re just theorizing here, Declan. We haven’t had any word from Dr. Bellingham about the nature of the beast.”
“What’s that about Bellingham in Belfast?” asked Alastair, who had stepped to the rail to join them.
“We need to get to the Wireless Room, see if there’s a message that’s been sent for us from Dr. B. He said he’d do his best to get word after his tests were completed on the egg sacs.”
“We must find that wireless, then!” said Thomas.
Ransom nodded. “Know thy enemy.”
They soon found the door marked Wireless Room, which was open with a long line of passengers vying to get a message out—notices to friends on shore either back in England or ahead of them in New York. Most were here to try out Mr. Marconi’s amazing invention. It was a gamble and hardly a way to lie low, but Alastair put on his most forthright authorial voice and manner, excused himself and the young doctors to make a path straight for the wireless operator. He flashed his Belfast badge at eye-level for all to see and announced, “Official business, please! Out of the way.”
Declan asked the wireless operator, a young man his own age, “Has any message from Belfast been sent for me? Declan Irvin. It’s rather important.”
“Irvin… Declan Irvin,” the operator repeated the name. “I seem to recall the fellow from second shift said something about it, but it was sent round only no one on board by the name of Declan Irvin could be found, so the steward brought it back here. Jimmy said he’d put it with others that couldn’t be delivered; said it was a lot of jibberish.” The operator scurried about searching for the message as he spoke. “Ahhh, here it is.” He glanced at it—“from Belfast, a Dr. Bellingham.”
“That’s it.” Declan snatched if from the operator’s outstretched hand. Ransom dropped a coin in the man’s palm, Thomas backed from the bathroom-sized room, and the three made a hasty departure for the safety of the lower decks.
&nb
sp; When they found a relatively safe place to read and decipher what Bellingham had sent, Declan was the one to read the message aloud: ‘Unfortunate news. It is not a single macro parasite, nor a colony of cells, but rather each cell is out for its own survival—they cannibalize one another unless there are other sources of nourishment. However, they begin life in their sacs as an encysted grouping of dormant infected cells just waiting to rupture and spread contagion like a mushroom’s fruiting spore bodies when under the right conditions. Cold does not kill them but it holds them in check. Fire may be the answer.”
“Doesn’t sound good,” muttered Alastair.
They had returned to the relative safety of the crowd now at the aft deck where they’d earlier been, no one speaking for some time now until Thomas asked, “What then happens if this thing is reproducing itself aboard Titanic? If it should multiply exponentially, Declan?”
“What exactly do you mean exponentially?” asked Alastair, not quite sure of the notion in a medical sense.
“Like rabbits,” said Thomas.
“Imagine it this way, Constable,” began Declan, staring out at the sea on this pristine day, the North Atlantic’s surface like glass ahead of them. “Take this table cloth here.” He had turned to another of the cafe tables on this deck where some second class passengers sat drinking and smoking. Their own table had already been claimed by others. “May I use your table cloth for a scientific demonstration?” he asked the amused couples at the table he’d selected.
“By all means,” replied the man who’d huddled with the others, looking the leader of the family group.
“I will need everything off the table, sir.”
The people at the table lifted their drinks and ashtrays, leaving the table free of any plates or other items. “I thought you were going to do the magic trick of snatching the cloth away and leaving all glasses and such in position,” said one of the women at the table.
“Oh no, I can’t do such tricks as that; this is to demonstrate what happens when disease organisms spread exponentially—once reproduction starts.”
Thomas stood back, obviously having seen Declan make this explanation before, while Alastair inched forward, looking on with the interested people at the table and some joining from around them to hear this. Declan said little but rather folded the cloth over once, twice, three times, saying, “You see how each fold makes the cloth thicker and thicker. Measuring now two, maybe three inches.”
“This is common sense,” said Alastair, “but what’s it to do with the spread of disease?”
“I fold it again, and as you see it has gone from doubling to quadrupling… becoming more difficult to fold with each successive fold. But imagine now folding it indefinitely, it grows larger—four inches, eight, on and on. Imagine if it were foldable without limit, that it would continue getting taller and taller, reaching to the deck overhead, and then beyond this ship, reaching to the sky, to the stars even. Each fold represents how a thing multiplies not simply but exponentially. Imagine this with cancerous cells in the human body and you have some notion of how these cells so quickly destroy a tissue, the organs, and then the whole body.”
“Alastair, imagine the table cloth folded to the moon and the stars,” said Declan, while one lady at the table gaped, obviously curious. A second seated lady erupted with, “My god, I see what you mean.”
“I see it too,” added one of the men at the table who had turned pale at the thought. “My mother died of a cancerous condition. It’s why I became a doctor.” He then introduced himself as Dr. Washington Dodge and wife. He pointed toward three children at play with spinning toys on deck that he proudly announced as his own. “The reason we must travel second class,” he finished with a joke.
“Now if your demonstration is through, Declan,” said Thomas in his ear, “where do we start to search for Davenport’s ahhh… remains?”
Just then the sound of children at play with a yelping dog seeped into Alastair’s consciousness. He looked down the length of the deck to see a golden Retriever bounding about and barking, the sound grasped by the wind and hurled out to sea. The children were attempting a game of ball and jacks, while the dog kept stealing the ball.
“The dog,” said Ransom.
“What of him?” asked Thomas.
“He’s a bloody Retriever.”
“You don’t expect him to retrieve a body, do you?”
“I have seen dogs of his breed sniff out decay in Chicago. There was a doctor there, a friend of mine, Christian Fenger, a pathologist and surgeon at Cook County Hospital. The man is genius personified, and he’d begun experiments with this and other breeds to locate missing persons—often cadavers by the time they were found—in a confined area.”
“We certainly have that below!” said Declan. “Confined spaces, that is.”
“I’ve seen dogs sniff out bodies in Lake Michigan from a boat. Their sense of smell is altogether preternatural, defies even watery depths.”
Thomas, who’d bummed a cigarette from a passerby was puffing when he shrugged and conceded, “Perhaps the dog may then be of service.”
“I suspect it depends on his nose,” suggested Ransom.
“We will have to engage the dog’s owner then,” said Declan. “Do you have any coins on you to use in order to ahh… borrow the animal?”
“I’m surprised they managed to get a dog on board,” remarked Thomas between puffs.
“We certainly heard enough barking when we were in that damned cell,” replied Declan.
“Yeah, but they were caged below like us. Seeing one running free like this… well it’s like that dog is… well, like us—breaking with ship’s law.”
“You know people, especially hard-bitten folks; they find a way. If the owner wants his dog to have some air… then the dog gets air,” replied Alastair. “So best let me commandeer the dog in the name of the Chica—I mean the Royal Irish Constabulary.”
“The Royal Irish Constabulary, truly?” came a lady’s voice, someone who’d overheard as voices carried much farther, it seemed on a sea breeze.
Ransom turned to see that it was Mrs. Dodge, the lady entranced by Declan’s demonstration of exponential growth. He hooked his cane over his left wrist and took her hand in his right, kissing it. “Belfast Constabulary, madam, at your service,” he replied.
She made a slight gasp. “Whatever ghastly thing might it be, Constable, to bring you aboard Titanic?”
“My associates and I are… well we are in pursuit of a felonious ahhh… felon er-ah fellow,” Ransom told her, “but please, Mrs. Dodge, we are incognito. Tell no one you encountered us.”
The lady nodded vigorously, obviously excited and intrigued at this turn of events. “I so love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales. They are so very intriguing.”
“You must promise now to tell no one, my dear.”
She nodded vigorously and indicated her lips were sealed before she rejoined her party. Ransom told the boys, “I’d hoped to do this quietly, but now it’ll be all over the ship; who we are that is. We must work fast, boys. As for the dog, shouldn’t cost us a dime—besides, Captain McEachern got all our cash.”
Ransom then flashed his badge at the mob about the dog. One man with a horrid wooden leg that looked gray from age with its unvarnished surface immediately looked for an escape route. This gray-bearded fellow’s expression was the embodiment of fear at the sight of Ransom’s badge. His wooden leg looked unfinished as if stolen from a woodshop and in need of a good finishing and sanding, and as Ransom decided these things, the man grabbed the dog, and in an instant got a leash on the animal, and they were about to make a run for it when Alastair’s cane hooked the wooden ankle to drop the man unceremoniously onto the deck. The errant leg rattled toward the children who’d been at play with the dog, and Dr. and Mrs. Dodge raced for their boys, scooping them up and into their protective arms. All the while the dog barked and brayed in agitation.
The dog stood over his fallen m
aster now, snarling at Alastair. At the same time, a pair of ship’s officers in white were rushing toward the melee, either after the dog to put him safely away, or after the doctors and Ransom to put them safely away.
Either way, Ransom turned and ran, the young interns racing after him, seeking the safety of the interior, going for the stairwell and the deck below, madly in search of a place to hide. “My God,” bellowed Thomas as they went, “we’re like roaches seeking the darkest corner.”
“Which way?” asked Ransom. “Where do we go, lads?”
“This ship’s filled with places to hide; it’s why that damnable creature is so elusive!” shouted Declan over their clatter.
“Yes, we go to the bottom again,” shouted Ransom. “Find a stokehold or a cargo hold.”
“Trading one cell for another?” complained Thomas.
“It’s only temporary until we can get hold of that Retriever.”
“And how do you propose that?” asked Thomas.
“That old man and his dog’re going to be escorted back down to the dog kennel, and his dog locked away. We’ll get the dog then.”
“But Alastair, that dog’s liable to bite your hand off if it sees you again,” warned Declan as they continued down one stairwell and then the next.
Near out of breath, Alastair said, “Either of you boys good with dogs?”
Above decks, everyone had gasped at the policeman’s sudden, vicious ‘attack’ against a helpless old man, but no one had stepped in or had dared say anything against the man waving the badge. The big man calling himself a constable had been too intimidating for that, but one porter at a distance saw the commotion and had rushed off for help. At the same time, Dr. Dodge had set his son with his wife to retrieve the injured man’s leg and to hand it to him, thankful it had not been splintered. Others stood about with a mix of emotions filling them.
“We are in need of your dog, sir—temporarily,” they’d recounted what Ransom had said to the crippled fellow. “As an officer of the law, I am commandeering the animal,” one man repeated word for word.
Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom) Page 36
