Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (364 page)

Stephen and Esme were again standing by the rail of the Promenade Deck. Both were dressed in the early-twentieth-century accouterments provided by the ship: he in woolen trousers, jacket, motoring cap, and caped overcoat with a long scarf; she in a fur coat, a stylish Merry Widow hat, high-button shoes, and a black velvet, two-piece suit edged with white silk. She looked ravishing, and very young, despite the clothes.

“Throw it away,” Stephen said in an authoritative voice. “Now!”

Esme brought the cedar box containing Poppa to her chest, as if she were about to throw it forward, then slowly placed it atop the rail again. “I
can’t.
”

“Do you want me to do it?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t see why I must throw him away.”

“Because we’re starting a new life together. We want to live, not—”

Just then someone shouted and, as if in the distance, a bell rang three times.

“Could there be another ship nearby?” Esme asked.

“Esme, throw the box away!” Stephen snapped; and then he saw it. He pulled Esme backward, away from the rail. An iceberg as high as the forecastle deck scraped against the side of the ship; it almost seemed that the bluish, glistening mountain of ice was another ship passing, that the ice rather than the ship was moving. Pieces of ice rained upon the deck, slid across the varnished wood, and then the iceberg was lost in the darkness astern. It must have been at least one hundred feet high.

“Omygod!” Esme screamed, rushing to the rail and leaning over it.

“What it is?”

“Poppa, I dropped him, when you pulled me away from the iceberg. I didn’t mean to…”

Stephen put his arms around her, but she pulled away. “If you didn’t mean to throw it away—”

“Him, not it!”

“—him away, then why did you bring him up here?”

“To satisfy you, to…I don’t know, Stephen. I suppose I was going to
try
to do it.”

“Well, it’s done, and you’re going to feel better, I promise. I love you, Esme.”

“I love
you
, Stephen,” she said distractedly. A noisy crowd gathered on the deck around them. Some were quite drunk and were kicking large chunks of ice about, as if they were playing soccer.

“Come on, then,” Stephen said, “let’s get heavy coats and blankets, and we’ll wait on deck for a lifeboat. We’ll take the first one out and watch the ship sink together.”

“No, I’ll meet you right here in an hour.”

“Esme, it’s too dangerous, I don’t think we should separate.” Stephen glimpsed the woman from
Interfax
standing alone on the elevated sun deck, recording this event for her millions of viewers.

“We’ve got time before
anything
is going to happen.”

“We don’t know that,” Stephen insisted. “Don’t you realize that we’re off schedule? We are supposed to hit that iceberg
tomorrow
.”

But Esme had disappeared into the crowd.

* * * *

It was bitter cold, and the Boat Deck was filled with people, all rushing about, shouting, scrambling for the lifeboats, and inevitably, those who had changed their minds at the last moment about going down with the ship were shouting the loudest, trying the hardest to be permitted into the boats, not one of which had been lowered yet. There were sixteen wooden lifeboats and four canvas Englehardts, the collapsibles. But they could not be lowered away until the davits were cleared of the two forward boats. The crew was quiet, each man busy with the boats and davits. All the boats were now swinging free of the ship, hanging just beside the Boat Deck.

“We’ll let you know when it’s time to board,” shouted an officer to the families crowding around him.

The floor was listing. Esme was late, and Stephen wasn’t going to wait. At this rate, the ship would be bow-down in the water in no time.

She must be with Michael, he thought. The little bastard must have talked her into dying.

* * * *

Michael had a stateroom on C Deck.

Stephen knocked, called to Michael and Esme, tried to open the door, and finally kicked the lock free.

Michael was sitting on the bed, which was a Pullman berth. His sister lay beside him, dead.

“Where’s Esme?” Stephen demanded, repelled by the sight of Michael sitting so calmly beside his dead sister.

“Not here. Obviously.” Michael smiled, then made the rubber-lips face at Stephen.

“Jesus,” Stephen said. “Put your coat on, you’re coming with me.”

Michael laughed and patted his hair down. “I’m already dead, just like my sister, almost. I took a pill too, see?” and he held up a small brown bottle. “Anyway, they wouldn’t let me on a lifeboat. I didn’t sign up for one, remember?”

“You’re a baby, they—”

“I thought Poppa explained that to you,” Michael lay down beside his sister and watched Stephen like a puppy with its head cocked at an odd angle.

“You do know where Esme is, now tell me.”

“You never understood her. She came here to die.”

“That’s all changed,” Stephen said, wanting to wring the boy’s neck.

“Nothing’s changed. Esme loves me, too. And everything else.”

“Tell me where she is.”

“It’s too late for me to teach
you
how to meditate. In a way, you’re
already
dead. No memory, or maybe you’ve just been born. No past lives. A baby.” Again, Michael made the rubber-lips face. Then he closed his eyes. He whispered, “She’s doing what I’m doing.”

An instant later, he stopped breathing.

* * * *

Stephen searched the ship, level by level, broke in on the parties, where those who had opted for death were having a last fling, looked into the lounges where many old couples sat, waiting for the end. He made his way down to F Deck, where he had made love to Esme in the Turkish bath. The water was up to his knees; it was green and soapy. He was afraid, for the list was becoming worse minute by minute; everything was happening so fast.

The water rose, even as he walked.

He had to get to the stairs, had to get up and out, onto a lifeboat, away from the ship, but on he walked, looking for Esme, unable to stop. He had to find her. She might even be on the Boat Deck right now, he thought, wading as best he could through a corridor.

But he had to satisfy himself that she wasn’t down there.

The Turkish bath was filling with water, and the lights were still on, giving the room a ghostly illumination. Oddments floated in the room: blue slippers, a comb, scraps of paper, cigarettes, and several seamless plastic packages.

On the farthest couch, Esme sat meditating, her eyes closed and hands folded on her lap. She wore a simple white dress. Relieved and overjoyed, he shouted to her. She jerked awake, looking disoriented, shocked to see him. She stood up and, without a word, waded toward the other exit, dipping her hands into the water, as if to speed her on her way.

“Esme, where are you going?” Stephen called, following. “Don’t run away from
me.
”

Just then an explosion pitched them both into the water, and a wall gave way. A solid sheet of water seemed to be crashing into the room, smashing Stephen, pulling him under and sweeping him away. He fought to reach the surface and tried to swim back, to find Esme. A lamp broke away from the ceiling, just missing him. “Esme!” he shouted, but he couldn’t see her, and then he found himself choking, swimming, as the water carried him though a corridor and away from her.

Finally, Stephen was able to grab the iron curl of a railing and pull himself onto a dry step. There was another explosion, the floor pitched, yet still the lights glowed. He looked down at the water that filled the corridor, the Turkish bath, the entire deck, and he screamed for Esme.

The ship shuddered, then everything was dead quiet. In the great rooms, chandeliers hung at angles; tables and chairs had skidded across the floors and seemed to squat against the walls like wooden beasts. Still the lights burned, as if all were quite correct, except gravity, which was misbehaving.

Stephen walked and climbed, followed by the sea, as if in a dream.

Numbed, he found himself back on the Boat Deck. But part of the deck was already submerged. Almost everyone had moved aft, climbing uphill as the bow dipped farther into the water.

The lifeboats were gone, as were the crew. Even now he looked for Esme, still hoping that she had somehow survived. Men and women were screaming “I don’t want to die,” while others clung together in small groups, some crying, others praying, while there were those who were very calm, enjoying the disaster. They stood by the rail, looking out toward the lifeboats or at the dirigible, which floated above. Many had changed their clothes and looked resplendent in their early twentieth-century costumes. One man, dressed in pajama bottoms and a blue and gold smoking jacket, climbed over the rail and just stepped into the frigid water.

But there were a few men and women atop the officers’ quarters. They were working hard, trying to launch collapsible lifeboats C and D, their only chance of getting safely away from the ship.

“Hey!” Stephen called to them, just now coming to his senses. “Do you need any help up there?” He realized that he was really going to die unless he did something.

He was ignored by those who were pushing one of the freed collapsibles off the port side of the roof. Someone shouted, “Damn!” The boat had landed upside down in the water.

“It’s better than nothing,” shouted a woman, and she and her friends jumped after the boat.

Stephen shivered; he was not yet ready to leap into the twenty-eight-degree water, although he knew there wasn’t much time left, and he had to get away from the ship before it went down. Everyone on or close to the ship would be sucked under. He crossed to the starboard side, where some other men were trying to push the boat “up” to the edge of the deck. The great ship was listing heavily to port.

This time Stephen didn’t ask; he just joined the work. No one complained. They were trying to slide the boat over the edge on planks. All these people looked to be in top physical shape; Stephen noticed that about half of them were women wearing the same warm coats as the men. This was a game to all of them, he suspected, and they were enjoying it. Each one was going to beat the odds, one way or another; the very thrill was to outwit fate, opt to die and yet survive.

But then the bridge was underwater.

There was a terrible crashing, and Stephen slid along the float as everything tilted.

Everyone was shouting; Stephen saw more people than he thought possible to be left on the ship. People were jumping overboard. They ran before a great wave that washed along the deck. Water swirled around Stephen and the others nearby.

“She’s going down,” someone shouted. Indeed, the stern of the ship was swinging upward. The lights flickered. There was a roar as the entrails of the ship broke loose: anchor chains, the huge engines and boilers. One of the huge black funnels fell, smashing into the water amid sparks. But still the ship was brilliantly lit, every porthole afire.

The crow’s nest before him was almost submerged, but Stephen swam for it nevertheless. Then he caught himself and tried to swim away from the ship, but it was too late. He felt himself being sucked back, pulled under. He was being sucked into the ventilator, which was in front of the forward funnel.

Down into sudden darkness…

He gasped, swallowed water, and felt the wire mesh, the airshaft grating that prevented him from being sucked under. He held his breath until he thought his lungs would burst; he called in his mind to Esme and his dead mother. Water was surging all around him, and then there was another explosion. Stephen felt warmth on his back, as a blast of hot air pushed him upward. Then he broke out into the freezing air. He swam for his life, away from the ship, away from the crashing and thudding of glass and wood, away from the debris of deck chairs, planking, and ropes, and especially away from the other people who were moaning, screaming at him, and trying to grab him as buoy, trying to pull him down.

Still, he felt the suction of the ship, and he swam, even though his arms were numb and his head was aching as if it were about to break. He took a last look behind him, and saw the
Titanic
slide into the water, into its own eerie pool of light. Then he swam harder. In the distance were other lifeboats, for he could see lights flashing. But none of the boats would come in to rescue him; that he knew.

He heard voices nearby and saw a dark shape. For a moment it didn’t register, then he realized that he was swimming toward an overturned lifeboat, the collapsible he had seen pushed into the water. There were almost thirty men and women standing on it. Stephen tried to climb aboard and someone shouted, “You’ll sink us, we’ve too many already.”

“Find somewhere else.”

A woman tried to hit Stephen with an oar, just missing his head. Stephen swam around to the other side of the boat. He grabbed hold again, found someone’s foot, and was kicked back into the water.

“Come on,” a man said, his voice gravelly. “Take my arm and I’ll pull you up.”

“There’s no
room!”
someone else said.

“There’s enough room for one more.”

“No, there’s not.”

A fight threatened, and the boat began to rock.

“We’ll all be in the water if we don’t stop this,” shouted the man who was holding Stephen afloat. Then he pulled Stephen aboard.

“But no more, he’s the last one!”

Stephen stood with the others; there was barely enough room. Everyone had formed a double line now, facing the bow, and leaned in the opposite direction of the swells. Slowly the boat inched away from the site where the ship had gone down, away from the people in the water, all begging for life, for one last chance. As he looked back to where the ship had once been, Stephen thought of Esme. He couldn’t bear to think of her as dead, floating through the corridors of the ship. Desperately he wanted her, wanted to take her in his arms.