The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  So Bud would have to explain it to her, clearly, so she couldn't mistake it. Maybe this time, after Schoenick roughed her up a little, maybe this time she'd get the message. "Look, the guy's operating on his own. He's cut off from his chain of command. He's showing signs of pressure-induced psychosis. And he's got a nuclear weapon. So, as a personal favor to me, will you put your tongue in neutral for a while?"

  Hippy chimed in. "I can tell you, I give this whole thing a sphincter-factor of about nine-point-five." He'd never sounded more excited in the whole time Bud had known him. It finally dawned on him. Hippy wasn't paranoid because he was paranoid. He actually loved being scared. That's why he was always looking for reasons to frighten himself.

  Only now that it was over did Lindsey realize what had happened. She found out about the warhead, it was like finding out there was some malfunction in the electrical system. The second you know about it, you go fix it. But this wasn't that simple. She didn't have a wiring diagram for people. But Virgil did. He had warned her, he practically begged her not to get into it. But she didn't listen. She didn't trust him to know better than she did.

  Why should she feel bad about it? It was just what he did to her, not believing her about the NTIs.

  Except that he'd taken her off in private, he'd listened to her, he really wanted to believe her. While she flouted him right in front of everybody. Not just this time, but over and over again. He'd tell her, Do it this way, it'll work out better. And then she'd do the opposite because what business did he have telling her what to do?

  I'll tell you what business he had, Lindsey said to herself. He was right. Things really would have worked out better if I'd just stopped when he said to. Thought about it for a few seconds. Figured out something intelligent to do. If somebody acted around my rig the impetuous, arrogant way I act around Bud's people, I'd throw them off the rig, I'd want to kill them.

  One time he lets me down, one time he doesn't believe me, and I feel so betrayed I want to die. I've done it to him a dozen times, a hundred times in the years we've been together. How does he feel? Why the hell did he ever love me?

  Right then, right at the moment when she was about to reach for a real understanding of what Bud was about, the emotions were so strong inside her that she couldn't handle it. She didn't know what to do with feelings like that.

  So she stopped. Right on the verge of losing her self-control she just - stopped. Didn't feel anything. Like all the times her schoolmates froze her out, all the times her sisters or her mother sniped at her. I don't have to deal with this. This is nothing to me. It's stupid to get emotional about this. Bud wasn't going to do anything about the warhead, so I had to, it's that simple. He's always weak, always conciliatory. Well, I'm not. I act. That's why it never worked between us, why it could never have worked. Bud and I are completely different people, that's all. At least I was trying to do something. All he did when he took over in there was give in to Coffey, give in completely. Virgil Brigman is a weak man.

  How many times had she said that to herself? Especially after she filed for divorce. Every time she noticed he wasn't there, every time she looked for him or thought about him, she went through the litany of reasons why he just didn't measure up.

  This time, though, it didn't make her feel better. Just made her feel bitter. Toward Bud? No. Just bitter. What are you, Lindsey?

  You're bullshit, that's what you are.

  Only she didn't want to believe that. She refused to believe it. Bud knew she wasn't bullshit. After all that had happened, after all the times she'd stung him with a word, all the times she'd humiliated him in front of his friends, his crew he still loved her. He still wore the ring she gave him. What about that? If she was bullshit, why would somebody like Bud Brigman feel like that about her?

  Coffey leaned into the conical well leading to the round window of the maintenance room. His reflection was in the window at first, but the farther he leaned in, the more his shadow blocked out the light, and then he could see past the glass, out into the void.

  There was something out there, an enemy. And now he was surrounded by enemies inside, too. He had originally planned to plant the warhead with the timer set for several days. It'd give them time for the Explorer to come back, hook up a new umbilical, rig a towline and drag them away from here. They could keep watch here until the Explorer returned, drive off the intruder whenever it came back. Then, when ships got through the storm, the Navy could clear the area, keep it safe until the warhead went off.

  But there was no time for that now. He couldn't use any of the civilians now - they'd never cooperate. They'd probably sabotage the operation if they had a chance. The Brigman woman certainly would, probably One Night, too. And Catfish was bound to get belligerent, start a fight. Hippy was certifiable. Sonny was on the edge of hysteria. Bud was his enemy now. They were all dangerous. All of them.

  Even me.

  Stuck to the acrylic bubble beside him was one of those suction-cup Garfields. Somebody's idea of a joke. Pressed up against the window, spread-eagled, naked, hanging on. Any second he could lose his grip and fall screaming into the abyss. Any second.

  Chapter 12

  Friends and Enemies

  Sonny and Catfish were in the galley. Catfish was having a bite to eat before he crashed; Sonny was having a cup of coffee before he went on duty in the sonar shack. Since the eating area was now the sleeping quarters as well, Monk lay on one of the tables in the galley, so wrapped up in blankets it was hard to see a man-shape under them.

  "Damn cold," said Catfish.

  Sonny nodded and sucked down a deep draught of coffee. "This stuff don't stay hot long enough." His arm also hurt like hell and he wanted so bad to be home that he could taste it. Sonny'd got control of himself in the last few hours, so he didn't feel like crying all the time, but he was still scared, he still figured he was probably going to die and never see his family again. It was safer, though, to complain about the coffee.

  Catfish hummed something, staring off into space. Sonny knew the song but couldn't remember what it was. Then Catfish broke into words right at the end. "Jesus, Savior, pilot me."

  It was a hymn. Sonny never figured Catfish for the religious type.

  Which he wasn't, as Catfish proved with the next thing he said. "The way I figure it, partner, if God loved me I'd be home in Houston right now."

  "How do you know something worse wouldn't've happened to you in Houston if you was there?" asked Sonny.

  "You tell me one thing that could happen to me in Houston that's worse than this. I'm twenty-one hundred feet under the ocean with a hurricane over my head, cut off from the world, we got maybe ten more hours of oxygen, our rig is crippled and can't move under its own power anymore, we got one member of our crew seeing UFOs whenever she's alone, and there's a crazy man with an atom bomb giving orders and seeing Commies everywhere." Catfish took another bite of his peanut-butter-and-cracker sandwich. "Only thing worse'd be if you cut my dick off and put me in a room full of whores."

  Sonny laughed. Best thing about Catfish, even when he was pissed off and scared shitless, he could find a way to make it funny.

  "Lieutenant Coffey is a good man."

  Sonny looked around, surprised. Who said that? Monk. Forgot he was here. "Thought you were asleep," said Sonny.

  "We've been through hell with Lieutenant Coffey a lot of times." Monk didn't sound angry. Just telling them stuff they didn't know. "He always brought us back. Every one of us."

  "Well, not this time," said Catfish.

  "He's never lost a man before," said Monk.

  Sonny hadn't thought of that. It explained part of why Coffey was so jittery, so upset-looking.

  "Well, isn't that what soldiers get paid for?" asked Catfish. He was joking again, but this time, thought Sonny, it wasn't time for a joke.

  "No sir," said Monk. "That's what soldiers get honored for."

  Sonny got to thinking then, about what soldiers do, and about how he hadn't thought
of why Coffey might be so upset right now, and so he told them a story. "When my daddy was in the Navy, back in forty-nine, his ship put in at Havana and he got shore leave. This was before Castro. Well, they acted like sailors on leave, getting drunk and having enough fun to kill a normal man, and they're walking through Central Park in Havana and my dad has to take a leak. There's this statue right in the middle of the park, on top of a big stone whatever, like a wall, and so my dad whips it out and hoses down the stone. And while he's doing that, one of the other guys thinks he's a mountain climber and he goes right up to the top of the statue and sits on its head."

  "Is this going somewhere, Sonny?" asked Catfish.

  "Well, see, it doesn't sound like a big deal to you guys, does it? Just a bunch of drunk sailors, right?"

  Right.

  "Only it was a statue of a guy named Marti, and to the Cubans it's like he's George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Nathan Hale all rolled up in one, and this is the most sacred shrine to his memory. I mean, what if a bunch of Cubans came into the Lincoln Memorial and climbed up and took a dump in Lincoln's lap and then wiped their asses with the flag?"

  "They'd be licking it off with their tongues in about ten seconds," said Catfish.

  "If the police hadn't been right there," said Sonny, "the crowd in the park would've torn my daddy and the other sailors into pieces. Little teeny pieces so small the ants would've carried them off before they could collect enough to fill one coffin. That's how my daddy always said it. It was the most scared he ever was in his life."

  "What happened to him?"

  "Back in those days the Cuban government was just a bunch of suck-ups to the U.S., so they turned my daddy and his buddies over to the fleet. The Cuban people hated that. They were screaming for blood. Their honor was besmirched, my daddy said. That's the worst thing that can happen to a Cuban. They still fight duels, you know. Anyway they had demonstrations in the streets, and when the U.S. Ambassador went out and tried to make a speech to the demonstrators, the police show up and start beating people up. So the only ones that got punished was Cubans."

  "I bet your daddy caught hell," said Catfish.

  "They didn't say a damn thing to him about it. If the Navy'd punished the sailors, then maybe the Cubans could have forgiven what happened, because that would be saying, Our boys did wrong and we're sorry. But when nothing happened, it was like the United States was saying, Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. My daddy always told that story. Every time one of us kids got in a fight with somebody, my daddy'd say, What did you do? And we'd say, I didn't do anything. And he'd say, What did you do? And we'd say, All I did was this one little harmless thing. And then he'd say, What do you think that looked like to the other guy? And most of the time we'd end up saying, It looked like I was as low as a rat's asshole. And Daddy'd tell us that story again and then he'd beat the shit out of us."

  Catfish laughed.

  Monk didn't.

  "You're a philosopher, partner, and I never knowed it," said Catfish.

  "I'm just saying that we don't know what Coffey means by what he's doing, and he sure as hell don't know what we mean by what we're doing. Nobody ever understands anybody in this world."

  Catfish's smile faded and he leaned in close, looking as serious as Sonny ever saw. "You're probably right, partner, but I'll tell you something else. Right now Coffey's crazy with HPNS. He's shaking, he's paranoid, and he's sweating so much he probably doesn't have to piss anymore. So we're not talking here about simple little misunderstandings or guys who got drunk and peed in the wrong place. We're talking about a guy who knows how to kill people with his bare hands who thinks the ocean's full of Russians and we're dangerous Commie sympathizers, and on top of all that, he's got him a bomb that could make a tidal wave that'd wash up pieces of Deepcore on the beaches of Nebraska."

  "It's not that powerful a device," said Monk softly.

  "Now don't tell me that," said Catfish. "If I'm gonna get my ass blowed off by your lieutenant, I want to think it's a first-rate bomb that did it, OK?" He turned to Sonny. "And you know what else? I'm not even gonna brush my teeth after eating." With that he swung himself around on the table, dragged a couple of blankets up around his neck, and curled up to sleep. Sonny reached over to a pile on another table and came back with a pillow, which he tucked under Catfish's head.

  "Thanks, Mom," said Catfish.

  "Just don't have any dirty dreams while you're sleeping," said Sonny. He remembered tucking his kids into bed and felt the forbidden emotions swell up inside him again. Keep control of yourself, Sonny. What happens, happens. He rinsed off his cup and headed off for the sonar shack, so he could keep watch for possible intruders.

  Lindsey couldn't do anything about Coffey, but that didn't mean she had to do nothing at all. Nobody else believed her about the NTI. Except Coffey, and he only believed her enough to be convinced that it was a Russian submersible. And Hippy - he believed her. It really annoyed her that he of all people was the only one, but he was somebody, wasn't he? He could help.

  She found Hippy doing maintenance on Big Geek. The camera in Big Geek's nose was on; from time to time Hippy made it go through a series of test movements. She watched him work for a minute or so. She tried to think of some easy way of starting up this conversation. How would Bud start up? Hey, Hippy, I been thinking, why don't we -

  Why the hell am I trying to be Bud? I'm me, and if they can't deal with that, too bad.

  "Hippy," she said, "I can't just sit up here in Deepcore hoping for one of them to come back."

  He stopped working and looked at her for a moment. Then he realized what she was talking about. "The NTIs?'

  "I want to go down and see if we can find them."

  Hippy looked at her like she was crazy. "You can't go down there," he said. "It's very deep."

  "Not me," she said. She patted the nose of the ROV. "Big Geek."

  He laid a protective hand on his ROV. "Big Geek is on a tether." That was a bad sign, him touching Big Geek. Hippy had a way of thinking that the machines he worked with were people. Friends. He didn't like them taking risks.

  "Does he have to be?" asked Lindsey. "Look, you can just punch into his primary guidance chip where you want him to go, and he goes, right?"

  Hippy waved his hands in the air like he was trying to wash the idea right out of the air. "No, no. Bad idea, Lindsey. Bad."

  "Why, Hip? Come on." Hippy always had reasons why things wouldn't work. That was one of the things that made him valuable. It was also one of the things that drove Lindsey crazy.

  "Because even if he can take the pressure at that depth - which I don't think he can. Without the tether, you know what happens down there? It would just sit like a - please?"

  She had been fiddling with the joystick controls lying there on the workbench. She didn't realize it until he told her to stop. She drew her hand back.

  Hippy went on. "It would just sit like a dumbshit. Something would have to pass in front of the camera for you to see anything."

  He was right. It was a farfetched chance. But it was something, wasn't it? "I know, but we could get lucky, right? We should go for it."

  "I really ought to talk to Bud about this."

  "No, this is between you and me. We get proof, then we tell the others. Hippy, look. If we can prove to Coffey that there aren't Russians down there, maybe he'll ease off the button a little bit."

  That set him off in a different direction. "I gotta tell you, that guy scares me. More than anything we're gonna find down there. He's a goddam A.J. Squared Away jarhead robot." Just talking about Coffey had moved Hippy squarely to being on Lindsey's side. Nothing like having a common enemy to make Hippy into your loyal friend. "OK, give me a couple hours," he said. "I'll see what I can do."

  Coffey looked into the control room to see if the civilians were still keeping watch. They were, sort of. Sonny was there in the sonar shack, headphones on, the sonar equipment working fine. Only thing wrong was that Sonny was asleep, ho
lding onto his broken arm like he was afraid even in his sleep that the thing was going to fall off.

  Coffey wandered around the control room a little. He snapped on the monitors. About half of them were dead - the ones on the flooded side of Deepcore. The others showed empty rooms, or guys sleeping. Except the observation camera in the sub bay. Hippy was down there, working on the ROV with a big toothy shark's grin painted on its face. Big Geek. And in comes the Brigman woman, and so Coffey sat down and listened to every word they said.

  Jarhead robot.

  Coffey refused to take any of the things they said personally. Little weasely rat boy thinks I'm crazy? Fine. But the crazy one is you, boy. Letting her talk you into acting out her plan for you. You start letting a woman give you your instructions in life, you never know where it's going to lead. It'll turn you into something you never meant to be. Because women don't think of men as people. I finally caught on to that. They think of us as particularly useful machines. You and that ROV, rat boy, you're both the same to her, she can't tell where one leaves off and the other begins. You watch a woman with a machine, boy. They'll act the same way they do with you. They'll try to make the machine do what they want, and when it doesn't, they'll yell at it, they'll turn their backs and pout, they'll cry, they'll do all the same shit they do with you. Only the machines are smarter than us. They just sit there and let it all roll off their backs. Machines don't have to pay attention to women because machines don't want to fuck 'em. And machines don't have no mamas. So Big Geek doesn't give a shit if that bitch walks off and leaves him and starts using Little Geek instead. A machine can't be betrayed.

  Coffey suddenly broke off his train of thought. What am I doing, sitting here thinking about stupid shit like this? I have a mission to think about. Enemy vehicle in the area. Hostile civilian crew in this rig. Only Schoenick and Monk left on my team, a man and a half. God, I lost Wilhite. I never lost anybody before. Things were out of control, completely out of control down here. But it was my fault. I went off on Flatbed and the rig didn't get unhooked and so Wilhite died. Bad judgment, Coffey. No shit. No shit. Very bad judgment. But it's the only judgment I got down here. Act in the best interest of your country, Coffey. Maybe you should've backed off right at first, when you saw your hand shaking. Only what would've happened different? Who would've taken over? When DeMarco said Phase Two they would've done the same thing I did because that was the order, proceed at once to missile, remove warhead, carry it to a safe place and arm it. Same result. Not my fault. Did what I was told.