Titanic 2020 t2-1 (8 page)

N
ow that he was safe, and alive, Jimmy was confused on several different levels. He wasn't entirely sure now that Pedroza
had
intentionally locked them in the freezer. His explanation that he was merely closing the door and switching it on in preparation for use made sense. Scoop assured him that he'd seen it written on the day's rota. Who knew what the evil smile he'd displayed while closing the door really meant? Perhaps that was just his smile. Perhaps he had just been thinking happy thoughts and really hadn't noticed them in the darkened interior.

What then of Claire's story? What about the family she claimed to have seen? Why would she make it up? To get attention? Because she was evil to the core?

That evening, while Jimmy rested in bed, Captain Smith visited. He assured him that a thorough search of the ship had been carried out and that no group of stowaways had been found.

Jimmy maintained that
he'd
managed to stay hidden for a couple of days, so why not this lot?

'Claire was talking about nine or ten individuals, with children — young children. Jimmy — it's simply not possible that he could keep them hidden.'

'We found a hand-print, a child's. . .'

'Perhaps you did. But we had a dozen different school tours over the past few months and they all came through the kitchens. Do you not think it more likely that some mucky schoolkid has left his mark?'

Jimmy sighed.

He didn't know what to make of Claire at all. They'd gotten off on the wrong foot, without a doubt, but their relationship had thawed somewhat — even while they were freezing. But maybe they'd gotten on in the freezer because they had to. Now that they were free again . . . well, she hadn't come to see him yet. Captain Smith, in his own way, was warning him off her, and Scoop certainly hadn't pulled any punches. Jimmy was pretty expert at getting
himself
into trouble. Did he really need to hang about with someone who was clearly much,
much
better at it? Despite all his high jinks in Belfast, he'd never come even close to getting seriously injured. A few hours working alongside Claire and he'd almost frozen to death.

What he did feel good about — and he'd positively glowed when the Captain himself had praised it — was his work for the newspaper. He knew it was only a little paper, but there was something special about seeing his name in print. There were only two days left until their arrival in Miami, and the plan was to produce a paper for each of those days. Jimmy was determined to get right back to work.

***

Dr Hill twice caught him trying to sneak out of the
Titanic's
hospital. Jimmy finally accepted that he would have to spend the night there and settled into a fitful sleep. Next morning he was up bright and early, and as there was no one around to stop him he hurried straight along to the
Times
office. But as he was going in, Dr Hill was coming out. They were both surprised to see each other. Dr Hill immediately blocked his way.

'I'm better,' said Jimmy. 'Really, I'm fine.'

'It's not you, Jimmy. Scoop's not well. . .'

'Oh.'

'You'd better run along.'

'But I've work to do.'

'That may be, but he's not up to it. Now . . .'

'I know what I have to do, I don't need any help.'

Dr Hill blew air out of his cheeks. 'Jimmy — do you know what's wrong with Scoop?'

'Apart from the legs?' The doctor nodded patiently. 'Well — his eyes and his blood pressure and his balance and . . . well, no, not exactly.'

Dr Hill looked up and down the corridor, then ushered Jimmy back into the newspaper office and closed the door. 'Listen Jimmy, this is his last cruise. Do you know that?'

Jimmy nodded. 'Yeah, he said. But if you report he's sick then he won't get—'

'His pension. Yes. And I've been covering for him as best I can. But I have other duties. Do you know what they call what he has, Jimmy?'

Jimmy shrugged.

'Scoop is an alcoholic, son.'

'Oh. I thought it was like his heart or cancer or some other kind of disease.'

'Jimmy, son, that's exactly what it is — a disease. Just you don't get much sympathy if you have it. If you really do know how to put the newspaper together, then do it. Because he's in no state. The Captain is expecting tomorrow's paper to be ready this evening. Is that too much to ask?'

Jimmy shook his head, although he really didn't know. He'd written a news story for the front page of the
Times
and a feature for inside, but there were at least ten other pages to fill.

Dr Hill glanced towards the bedroom. 'He'll sleep now — hopefully right through — but if you really can do this for him, well, it would be marvellous. Can I depend on you?'

Nobody had ever depended on Jimmy to do anything in his life, or if they had, they had invariably been disappointed. With the best will in the world, and being perfectly honest with himself, the best Jimmy could muster in response was, 'Probably.'

***

In fact, his response should have been, 'No.'

It was just too big a job for one person. It wasn't that he couldn't do the work — he could write the stories, he could design the pages, he could even print the thing, but he simply couldn't do them all at the same time. Just to add to his problem, he deleted two stories by mistake and then he lost the Internet connection for an hour (although that wasn't his fault).

He needed help.

There was only one place to go.

He found her on the top deck, sunbathing. She was wearing a red bikini. They were getting close to America now and the temperature had warmed considerably in the past few days. The grey water of the Atlantic was gradually giving way to the turquoise hues of the Caribbean.

Jimmy sat down beside her. She didn't acknowledge him. 'I need your help.'

'Is that like
support
?' Claire snapped. 'Because I got none from you!'

'Claire . . .'

'You
know
it was Pedroza! You
know
there were people in there! You
know
I'm not making this up!'

'I never said you were.'

'They think I'm a liar, they think I'm just looking for attention, that's all they've ever said about me!' She jabbed an accusing finger at him. 'So why didn't you back me up?'

'I was still defrosting!'

'After!'

'Because!'

'Because why?'

'I don't know!'

'I told you what happened!'

'I know you did!'

'And I showed you the hand-print!'

'I know!'

'And we both saw him laughing!'

'I know that!'

'So?'

'It's not enough!'

'It's enough for me!'

She turned her face away. Jimmy stood and stared out across the water. He was a pale and freckled Irish boy who only saw the sun for a few days each year and he could already feel it starting to burn. He turned back to her. 'Look Claire — it doesn't matter if I believe you. It's what
they
think, it always is. I know what it's like, I've been up to my neck in trouble all my life, but I don't do half the things they think I do and I still get blamed. So unless we can absolutely prove that Pedroza's responsible, then they're never going to believe us. So if you want to try and do that, then let's do it.'

She thought about that.

'But in the meantime, I need your help.'

'Huh.'

'I'm serious. Scoop is sick.' He told her about the urgency of getting the paper out, and the chance of the old reporter losing his pension. He didn't mention that Scoop was an alcoholic. It was something he did instinctively. He had spent a lot of time at home apologizing on behalf of his dad, who was always getting into drunken scrapes. 'He needs your help. I need you help. Please.'

Her eyes flitted up. 'And we can investigate Pedroza as we go?'

'Yes, of course.'

She thought about it some more.

'Another hour's sunbathing, then I'll come down.'

Jimmy folded his arms. 'No.'

'What do you mean,
no?'

'There isn't time. We need to start
now.'

'God.
You are such hard work.'

Claire rolled off her bed, picked up her towel and marched off. Then she stopped and looked back at him. 'Well? Are you coming or not?'

Jimmy smiled and immediately started after her.

As she started walking again she glanced back. 'One comment about my bum,' she warned, 'and you're
dead.'

W
hile Scoop's snoring reverberated gently through from next door, Jimmy and Claire read in silence the worrying reports coming in from around the world. The 'Red Death' was mutating. People were dying in their thousands. Yet no two reports were the same. In London people were dead within hours of contracting the virus. In one village in China an entire school came down with it within an hour, but by the next day all of the children were back in class, apparently perfectly healthy. New York was going to work as usual. Contact had been lost with Oklahoma City: the telephones were no longer working and all of its television and radio stations had fallen silent. In Kentucky the town of Hopkirk was reported to have lost eighty-five per cent of its population. But in Rawlings, three miles away, there wasn't a single reported case. Scientists had believed it was passed on by human contact. Yet there were villages in parts of Russia that were so remote that they had had no visitors in weeks, but people were dying there as well. Scientists were now saying that it was carried on the air, and that your life might depend on which way the wind blew.

The American President addressed the nation and assured them that a cure was on the way, which was quite close to what he had promised last time. Leaders of China and India and Great Britain had also placed their faith in the great abilities of scientists to develop a cure, a vaccine or a pill.

America remained the worst-affected country. Understandably, people were starting to panic. As workers fell ill, food supplies were becoming erratic. There were reports of riots and looting. The National Guard — at least those members well enough to report for duty — had been called on to the streets of several cities.

'This is horrible,' said Claire.

'And we're sailing right into it.'

The only good thing that could possibly be said about all this was that it focussed their minds away from Pedroza. Suddenly the fact that he might be trying to smuggle a few people across the Atlantic seemed unimportant.

Jimmy remembered Scoop's advice about noting where the passengers would be coming from, and to be sure to give them information about their home states — but not so much that they panicked. To this end they made sure to include good news stories too. People being cured of the virus. A beached whale being successfully towed back to sea. A hundred-year-old woman who'd just gained her pilot's licence. Plenty of sports results (while not dwelling on the fact that many football and baseball matches had been cancelled).

In the early afternoon Jimmy and Claire travelled down to the vast engine room to meet the Chief Engineer, a heavily-muscled Welsh man called Jonas Jones.

'Should we call you JJ?' Claire asked.

'No, Jonas Jones is my name. When I was growing up it was always "give me your pocket money, Jonas Jones; what are you looking at, Jonas Jones; do you want a thick ear, Jonas Jones?" I was a skinny little thing, see. That's why I have all these muscles now, I went out and growed them. Now when I go home, it's all "hello, Mr Jones; how are you, Mr Jones?" And I say, my name is Jonas Jones, and I'm right proud of it.'

Jimmy thought Jonas Jones was all right, only he rattled on a bit. It was clear that he loved his ship. He enthusiastically described his responsibilities — looking after the massive engines, the air conditioning, the heating, plumbing, refrigeration, ventilation, the water de-salinization systems, the electrics and every aspect of technical repair.

'You see, each propeller is driven by a double- wound three-phase synchronous motor with four-bladed bronze propellers. The motors are mounted directly on the propeller shaft inside the pod, arranged so that the centre propeller is . . .' He waved his arms across the vast engine room as he excitedly explained the
Titanic's
capabilities, but as he glanced back at the young reporters and saw their dumbfounded looks he hesitated and said, 'Do you follow?'

They both shook their heads.

'Once more,' said Jimmy, 'but this time in English.'

Jonas smiled. 'Well, this isn't only the most powerful
cruise
ship in the world, it's the most powerful ship. If only we had some big guns upstairs we could . . . Well, what I'm saying is . . .' and he smiled down at Claire, '. . . your daddy didn't waste any money here. We have the best of everything. Did I mention the fuel? We go through four thousand gallons an hour . . .'

He went on for ages. Jimmy was frankly worried that his article would end up reading more like an engineering manual than a chatty piece about the life of a chief engineer. When it came time to take the photos Jonas insisted on gathering his crew around him.

'We're a team,' he said. 'Can't do anything without my team.'

Claire posed them in half a dozen different ways, but it was difficult to take in the huge size of the engine room without making the engineers themselves look the size of ants.

Jonas watched his team disperse, then pointed to the epaulets on his white shirt. There were four gold stripes sewn on to a burgundy-coloured patch. 'It's the colour of blood,' he said, 'in memory of the engineers who went down with the first
Titanic
.' He shook his head sadly. 'No lifeboats for them. Battled the freezing water down below right to the end.'

The memory of that disaster quietened him for a moment.

'Mr Jones?' Jimmy asked.

'Jonas, please.'

'Is this
Titanic
unsinkable?'

Jonas shook his head. 'No ship is unsinkable. The sea is the mightiest power on this planet, if it wants to sink you, well, it damn well will. But I'll tell you this, it's not the sea that sinks most ships, it's men. Men sank the
Titanic,
men who thought they were smarter than the sea, men who tried to go too fast, who tried to cut corners. This
Titanic ought
to be unsinkable, the way it's built; but I never underestimate the capacity of human beings to make stupid decisions.'

'So can I put in the paper that the ship's great but the Captain might run us into a big rock?'

Jonas burst into laughter. 'Be the last voyage I ever make if you do!'

***

Jimmy and Claire hurried back to the
Times
office, doing poor impressions of the Welshman's accent. Now Jimmy had to turn all those facts and figures into something interesting and Claire had to work on her photos. There was only space for one picture — but a single shot of the engineering crew wouldn't convey the power and majesty of the ship they ran, while just a picture of the engines would be rather boring. However, there was a software program on Scoop's computer that might allow her to merge two different shots so that the engines remained impressive while the crew could still provide the human interest without looking either like ants or giants.

Jimmy entered the office first and surprised Claire, following in behind, by swearing out loud. But then she saw what he was upset about: the computers had been overturned and lay on their sides on the floor, which was covered in reams of torn and crumpled paper.

'Jimmy — it's him, it's Pedroza, he's . . .' and then they heard a groan, and then a cough, and they hurried across the office and there was Scoop, lying face down but trying to get up on to his knees. He pulled himself halfway up, then collapsed down again and threw up.

'He's been attacked!' Claire cried. 'Pedroza's. . .'

But Jimmy had spotted something — what Scoop had been trying to get hold of. A bottle of vodka.

'He hasn't been attacked, Claire.'

Claire stared at Scoop. Her hands went to her face. 'The Red Death.' She took a step back.

'Nope,' said Jimmy. He picked up the bottle and turned the label to show her. Her eyes widened.

'Vodka . . .?'

'Yup.'

'You mean he's drunk?'

'Yes he is . . . and most of the time, apparently. He's an alcoholic. Dr Hill told me.'

Claire looked sadly down at the old reporter. He was snoring gently now. But her sympathy only lasted for a few moments. 'He's wrecked the place! All our work!'

Jimmy stood beside her, nodding. 'If we tell on him, your dad will sack him.'

'My dad wouldn't . . .' But then she stopped. 'Yes he would.'

'So what do we do?'

Claire thought for a moment.'OK. You clean up the sick, I'll check the computers.'

'I don't think so.'

'OK. I'll get him back into his room, you clean up the sick.'

'I think not.'

'Well, someone has to do it. We'll call the cleaners.'

'And make them promise not to tell anyone? I don't think so.'

'Well what then?'

'We do it between us.'

'We . . .' She looked truly horrified. 'But. . .'

'Come
on,'
said Jimmy.

***

Through a combination of dragging, pushing, prodding and shouting — mostly at each other, because Scoop remained out for the count — they managed to get him back into bed.

Then they cleaned up the sick.

They were nearly sick themselves.

They righted the computers and tried to switch them on, convinced that Scoop's frenzied assault on his own office — a crazy attempt to locate a hidden supply of alcohol — had sunk their attempt to produce the
Titanic Times
all by themselves.

And yet, amazingly, everything was working perfectly. The stories they had painstakingly written were just as they'd left them, saved, unharmed, on the computers. Claire's photos were still on file.

They got right back to work.

Jimmy wrote at speed, picking out the letters on the keyboard with increasing speed and occasional accuracy. Luckily there was a good spell check. Claire tried a dozen different variations of her merged engine-room photos before finally settling on one. When they were both finished they designed the feature page together before checking the rest of the pages one last time.

'It's a good read,' said Jimmy.

'And it looks good.'

'You couldn't tell the difference between our
Times
and Scoop's.'

'And that's the whole point. Let's print it.'

When the ship was fully functioning, three thousand copies would be required first thing every morning, seven days a week. But that wasn't their problem. They had done their job. Whoever came on board in Miami would inherit a fully functioning newspaper production office. And it would only smell slightly of vomit.

***

They had been given an eight p.m. deadline for providing finished copies of the
Titanic Times
for Captain Smith's approval. Once he gave the go-ahead the paper would be distributed to the skeleton crew. By the time they had finished printing it out they had just ten minutes to spare, and what with the size of the ship it took most of that time to get to the bridge. Claire, a regular visitor to this and many other bridges, was more than familiar with it, but it blew Jimmy's mind. He had always thought of ships' bridges as featuring — well, basically a big wheel, maybe a bell, with waves crashing against the window. And bluff men saying things like 'Ahoy there, Captain!' Perhaps, as a concession to the twenty-first century, there might be some electronic equipment. Like radar. Or a toaster for midnight snacks.

This was like mission control.

The place bristled with computer monitors.

Crewmen in short-sleeved shirts studied electronic charts and forecasts and maps and . . . well, he hadn't a clue what they were all doing or what half of the equipment was for. It was just incredibly impressive.

Captain Smith was seated behind a desk to the rear, examining a monitor with First Officer Jeffers on his left shoulder and Claire's father on his right. They were all looking very grave.

'We've brought the papers,' Claire said proudly. She wasn't supposed to say it proudly. It was, after all, supposed to be Scoop's paper, but she could hardly help herself.

Captain Smith barely looked up. 'Just leave them there.'

Claire set them down, but then took off the top copy and opened it to the centre pages. 'Look, Daddy,' she beamed. 'My photo.'

Mr Stanford sighed and took hold of the paper. He glanced at the photo, then quickly closed it over. 'Yes, very good.' He handed it back. 'Now run along, there's a good girl.'

But Claire stood her ground. 'You hardly even looked at it!'

'Yes I did, and I'm sure it's very good. Now if you don't mind—'

'No!' Claire exploded. 'You order me to do something useful and then when I do it you're not the slightest bit interested! I nearly froze to death and you hardly raised an eyebrow!'

'Claire, come on,' said Jimmy. He caught hold of her arm and tried to pull her away. He'd been arguing with his parents for years and knew how pointless it was. But she wasn't for moving.

'Claire, that's quite enough,' her father barked. 'We have more important things on our minds right now.'

'You always have!'

Captain Smith clasped his hands before him and said, 'Claire.'

She glared at him. 'It's not fair, I do my best and all—'

'Claire.'

She took a deep breath. 'What?'

'We've had some very bad news.'

Jimmy had thought the bridge was quiet for . . . well, a bridge. But now he realized it was more than that. It was as if a dank chill had settled over it.

Captain Smith gave a little shake of his head, as if he couldn't quite believe what he was about to say. 'Claire . . . Jimmy. The President of the United States — they were taking him to a safe location. But his plane has disappeared. They think he's dead. This damned virus is going to get us all.'