Nine Rarities (7 page)

Alita knew what he was yelling. She spoke little German; she heard nothing; but faintly the waves of his mind impinged on hers, a screaming insanity: "God! Oh God! She's outside. And she is swimming! And alive!"

THE sub captain saw him coming.

He dragged out a revolver and fired, point-blank. The shot missed and the two grappled.

"God! Oh God! I can't stand it longer! Months of sleeping under the sea! Let me out of this god-damned nightmare! Let me out!"

"Stop! Stop it, Schmidt! Stop!" The captain fell under a blow. The younger man wrested the gun from him, shot him three times. Then he jumped up the rungs to the conning tower, and twisted at mechanisms.

Alita warned the others. "Be ready! One is coming out! He's coming out! He's opening the inner door!" Instantly, breathlessly, passionately, Helene's voice rang: "To hell with the inner door! It's the outer door we want open!"

"God in heaven, let me out! I can't stay below!"

"Stop him!"

The crew scrambled. Ringing down, the inner door peeled open. Three Germanic faces betrayed the biting fear in their bellies. They grabbed instruments and threw them at Schmidt's vanishing legs jumping up the rungs!

Conda's voice clashed like a thrust gong in the deep sunlit waters. "Ready, everyone? If he gets the outer door open, we must force in to stop the others from ever closing it!"

Helene laughed her knifing laughter. "I'm ready!"

The submarine stirred and rolled to a strange gurgling sound. Young Schmidt was babbling and crying. To Alita, he was now out of sight. The other men were pouring pistol shots up into the conning tower where he'd vanished, to no effect. They climbed after him, shouting.

A gout of water hammered down, crushed them!

"It's open!" Helene exulted. "It's open! The outer seal is free!"

"Don't let them slam it again!" roared Conda. White bodies shot by, flashing green in the sunlight. Thoughts darkened, veiling like unsettled mud.

Inside the machine-room, the crew staggered in a sloshing, belching nightmare of thrusting water. There was churning and thrashing and shaking like the interior of a gigantic washing machine. Two or three crew-men struggled up the rungs to the inner lock and beat at the closing mechanism.

"I'm inside!" Helene's voice was high, excited. "I've got him—the German boy! Oh, this is a new kind of love, this is!"

There was a terrific mental scream from the German, and then silence. A moment later his dangling legs appeared half in, half out the lock as the door started to seal! Now it couldn't seal. Yanking desperately, the crew beneath tried to free him of the lock, but Helene laughed dimly and said, "Oh, no, I've got him and I'm keeping him here where he'll do the most good! He's mine. Very much mine. You can't have him back!"

Water thundered, spewed. The Germans floundered. Schmidt's limbs kicked wildly, with no life, in the steadily descending torrent. Something happened to release him. The lock rapped open and he fell face down into the rising waters.

Something came with him. Something white and quick and naked. Helene.

ALITA watched in a numbed sort of feeling that was too weary to be horror.

She watched until there were three Germans left, swimming about, keeping their heads over water, yelling to God to save them. And Helene was in among them, invisible and stroking and moving quickly. Her white hands flickered up, grasped one officer by the shoulders and pulled him steadily under.

"This is a different kind of love! Make love to me! Make love! Don't you like my cold lips?"

Alita swam off, shuddering, away from the fury and yelling and corruption. The submarine was dying, shaking its prehistoric bulk with metal agony. In another moment it would be drowned and the job done. Silence would come down again and sunlight would strike on the dead, quiet U-boat and another attack would be successful.

Sobbing, Alita swam up toward the sun in the green silence. It was late afternoon, and the water became warmer as she neared the surface. Late afternoon. Back in Forest Hills they'd be playing tennis now on the hot courts, drinking cool cocktails, talking about dancing tonight at the Indigo Club. Back in Forest Hills they'd be deciding what formal to wear tonight to that dance, what show to see. Oh, that was so long ago in the sanity of living, in the time before torpedoes crushed the hull of the USS
Atlantic
and took her down.

Richard, where are you now? Will you be here in a few minutes, Richard, with the convoy? Will you be thinking of us and the day we kissed goodbye in New York at the harbor, when I was on my way to nursing service in London? Will you remember how we kissed and held tight, and how you never saw me again?

I saw
you,
Richard. Three weeks ago. When you passed by on Destroyer 242, oblivious to me floating a few feet under the water!

If only we could be together. But I wouldn't want you to be like this, white and sodden and not alive. I want to keep you from all this, darling. And I shall. That's why I stay moving, I guess. Because I know I can help keep you living. We just killed a submarine, Richard. It won't have a chance to harm you. You'll have a chance to go to Britain, to do the things
we
wanted to do
together.

There was a gentle movement in the water, and the old woman was at her side.

Alita's white shoulders jerked. "It —it was awful."

The old woman looked at the sun caught in the liquid. "It always is— this kind of death. It always has been —always will be as long as men are at war. We had to do it. We didn't take lives, we saved lives — hundreds of them."

Alita closed her eyes and opened them again. "I've been wondering about us. Why is it that just you and I and Conda and Helene and a few others survived the sinking. Why didn't some of the hundreds of others join us? What are we?"

The old woman moved her feet slowly, rippling currents.

"We're Guardians, that's what you'd call us. A thousand people drowned when the USS
Atlantic
went down, but twenty of us came out, half-dead, because we have somebody to guard. You have a lover on the convoy routes. I have four sons in the Navy. The others have similar obligations. Conda has sons too. And Helene—well, her lover was drowned inside the USS
Atlantic
and never came half-alive like us, so she's vindictive, motivated by a great vengeance. She can't ever really be killed.

"We all have a stake in the convoys that cross and recross the ocean. We're not the only ones. Maybe there are thousands of others who cannot and will not rest between here and England, breaking seams in German cargo boats, darkening Nazi periscopes and frightening German crewmen, sinking their gun-boats when the chance comes.

"But we're all the same. Our love for our husbands and sons and daughters and fathers makes us go on when we should be meat for fish, makes us go on being Guardians of the Convoy, gives us the ability to swim faster than any human ever swam while living, as fast as any fish ever swam. Invisible guardians nobody'll ever know about or appreciate. Our urge to do our bit was so great we wouldn't let dying put us out of action. . .

"I'm so tired, though," said Alita. "So very tired."

"When the war is over—we'll rest. In the meanwhile—"

"The convoy is coming!"

IT WAS Conda's deep, voice of authority. Used to giving captain's orders for years aboard the USS
Atlantic
,
he appeared below them now, about a hundred yards away, striving up in the watered sunlight, his red hair aflame around his big-nosed, thick-lipped face. His beard was like so many living tentacles, writhing.

The convoy!

The Guardians stopped whatever they were doing and hung suspended like insects in some green primordial amber, listening to the deeps.

From far, far off it came: the voice of the convoy. First a dim note, a lazy drifting of sound, like trumpets blown into eternity and lost in the wind. A dim vibration of propellers beating water, a bulking of much weight on the sun-sparkled Atlantic tides.

The convoy!

Destroyers, cruisers, corvettes, and cargo ships. The great bulking convoy!

Richard! Richard! Are
you
with them?

Alita breathed water in her nostrils, down her throat, in her lungs. She hung like a pearl against a green velvet gown that rose and fell under the breathing of the sea.

Richard!

The echo of ships became more than a suggestion. The water began to hum and dance and tremble with the advancing armada. Bearing munitions and food and planes, bearing hopes and prayers and people, the convoy churned for England.

Richard Jameson!

The ships would come by like so many heavy blue shadows over their heads and pass on and be lost soon in the night-time, and tomorrow there would be another and another stream of them.

Alita would swim with them for a way. Until she was tired of swimming, perhaps, and then she'd drop down, come floating back here to this spot on a deep water tide she knew and utilized for the purpose.

Now, excitedly, she shot upward.

She went as near to the surface as she could, hearing Conda's thunder-voice giving commands:

"Spread out! One of you to each major ship! Report any hostile activity to me instantly! We'll trail with them until after sunset! Spread!"

The others obeyed, rising to position, ready. Not near enough to the surface so the sun could get at their flesh.

They waited. The hammer-hammer churn-churn of ships folded and grew upon itself. The sea brimmed with its bellow going down to kick the sand and striking up in reflected quivers of sound. Hammer-hammer-churn!

Richard Jameson!

Alita dared raise her head above water. The sun hit her like a dull hammer. Her eyes flicked, searching, and as she sank down again she cried, "Richard. It's his ship. The first destroyer. I recognize the number. He's here again!"

"Alita, please," cautioned the old woman. "Control yourself.
My
boy, too. He's on one of the cargo ships. I know its propeller voice well. I recognize the sound. One of my boys is here, near me. And it feels so very good."

The whole score of them swam to meet the convoy. Only Helene stayed behind. Swimming around and around the German U-boat, swimming swiftly and laughing her strange high laughter that wasn't sane.

Alita felt something like elation rising in her. It was good, just to be this close to Richard, even if she couldn't speak or show herself or kiss him ever again. She'd watch him every time he came by this way. Perhaps she'd swim all night, now, and part of the next day, until she couldn't keep up with him any longer, and then she'd whisper goodbye and let him sail on alone.

THE destroyer cut close to her. She saw its number on the prow in the sun. And the sea sprang aside as the destroyer cut it like a glittering knife.

There was a moment of exhilaration, and then Conda shouted it deep and loud and excited:

"SUBMARINE!"

"Submarine coming from north, cutting across convoy! German!"

Richard!

Alita's body twisted fearfully as she heard the under-water vibration that meant a submarine was coming in toward them, fast. A dark long shadow pulsed underwater.