Vitals (36 page)

"Right on time," he said. We watched them weave beside the ziggurat towers like mosquitoes around Madonna.

"Am I a bloody monster, Ben?" I asked, kneeling beside him.

He folded his pointing fingers and lifted them to his upper lip, making Dracula fangs.

My laugh turned into a lone hiccup and fled. "Was Rob a monster? Would we both have ended up like Golokhov, slaves to the Stalins and Berias?"

"Listen to Orwell, Grasshopper," Ben said sententiously.

"What about Orwell?"

"The true and authentic voice of the twentieth century." Ben drew quote marks in the air. " "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.""

"You too, huh?" I said.

"I'm just an aging son of a bitch who's done questionable things," Ben said. "I don't want to live forever, not without Janie. Being with her took away the bad memories. Now, I'll spend the next few years climbing in and out of a box filled with fewer and fewer bottles of Jim Beam. Or I can die sometime in the next couple of hours. I prefer the latter. History's a joke, and it was the last passion I had left."

"I cannot feel that way," I said, my throat tight. "There's too much left to see and learn. History does not repeat itself."

"It can't," Ben said. "It stutters too badly. Truth is, history can't even remember its lines."

"Goddammit, I'm serious."

"Was that you cackling a few minutes ago? There's, the true spirit. Smoke a goddamned reefer and sling your rifle. Suck up some ganja fortitude and get ready to meet the Man." He swung out his arm, wagons ho, and imitated John Wayne. "Laugh in their faces, pilgrim."

I fell back on my butt beside him, letting my breath out in a whoosh. My thoughts were like a skim of oil blown around a puddle.

Ben took off his cap and ran his hand through his thin gray hair.

"Fuck it. It's all war talk. I hung out with Rob--I swear, Hal, it was not much different from hanging out with you. I watched him work. I admired his brains and how he stood up to going nuts. Christ, he was a brave, crazy bastard, and maybe he was just the type to deserve another fifty or a hundred years, or a thousand, to think things through."

This left me even more confused.

Ben leaned forward. "Life is for those who still have illusions. Fix up your clinic and watch them beat a path to your door. Maybe I'll join them. We're all hypocrites about dying, and old age is scary, too."

"It's not for sissies," I said.

It scares the hell out of me. My father had been as strong as a goddamned tree, an eternal fixture in my little boy mind, profane and often angry, but liable to turn around when he was sober and buy you a bicycle (which Rob and I had fought over) or haul us around on his shoulders.

Dad. Poppa. Man fere. Not a tree, but a vegetable, rotting away from the inside and turning into a blood-soaked clump of God's potting soil.

"I think after this is over we should compare notes," Ben said. "I have a hunch we've got something all wrong here."

For a moment I felt defensive and did not know why. Then I put on a reasonable face. "What makes you say that?"

"We've been trying not to think about Rudy Banning, haven't we?"

So true. Too much else to worry about. Screw that enigmatic picture. It was a mistake.

Ben focused on the ship. The helicopters had landed and disembarked their teams. Lemuria slowed. We watched it glide over the sea, coasting for a couple of miles before coming to a dead stop.

The cabin cruiser zagged east a quarter mile or so. A ribbon of smoke rose from a louvered vent on Lemuria, just above the main deck and forward of the second tower. It might have been a kitchen grease fire. Alarms sounded thin and frantic over the choppy water.

"I do not like this," Ben said with a doggish shake of his head.

"We're going in without coordination at the top and with damn few resources. I don't think we have any idea what we're in for. It's going to be like squeezing a huge zit."

Our cabin cruiser put on a burst of speed, her twin diesels growling like huge lions. The ship loomed, shining white and jade green, her thousands of ports and windows glinting in the fresh yellow light of the new morning, a steel-and-glass mountain plowing a nervous sea.

"Looks like Purgatory," Ben said. "Let's go join the others."

Breaker got off the radio in the main cabin and told us we were next. "Doesn't sound like everything's optimal," he said, walking past me with a frown. "But we've been told to board and move forward to the first tower."

We climbed out of the cabin and arranged ourselves as if for a group photo shoot, on and below the bridge. Delbarco handed each of us an orange arm band and gave the civilians a pistol. We had all been issued a bulletproof vest and holster earlier. "Keep it on safety. Don't shoot without orders, unless you're away from your team and in imminent danger." Breaker grabbed a walkie-talkie from Delbarco and stepped away to talk in a low voice. His frown deepened.

I took little comfort from the gun.

Lemurias stern cut off the blue sky above. Inside, between the walls of the split hull, the dock had been lowered like the jaw of a prehistoric fish. The space between the hulls, now a gigantic portable marina, was quiet, an iron mouth waiting patiently to swallow.

Breaker handed the walkie-talkie to Delbarco. Delbarco spoke rapidly behind a cupped hand. The cabin cruiser churned water just aft of a barricade of wide-weave, Day-Glo orange canvas strips, blocking the entrance. Voices shouted in several languages inside the cavern, and were finally dominated by a husky male speaking American with a Texas accent.

Lights burned brightly within the marina, like orange and blue stars in a Cyclops's cave. Through my binoculars I could make out four yachts winched out of the water on slings. They rocked gently in the westerly breeze blowing between the hulls, waiting for their owners should they wish to escape the humdrum world of the biggest luxury liner on Earth. Excursion launches clung to the inner hulls like larvae in a hive.

A horn sounded and bells rang as the canvas barricade rolled back on a motorized pole. Our boat grumbled out of the daylight and into the banked blue glow of mercury vapor lamps. The marina appeared even bigger from the inside. Two of Lemuria's emergency rescue Zodiacs, manned by men in wet suits--probably not part of the ship's crew--helped guide us to a mooring about a hundred feet inside the starboard pier.

Marines in fatigues greeted us on the dock. In French, Spanish, Portuguese, and broken English, a surrounded mob of uncooperative deckhands promised us new orifices for what I loosely translated, using my high-school Spanish, as piracy on the high seas. They were afraid for their jobs, the money they sent their families back in Jamaica, Tobago, Acapulco, Miami, Corpus Christi, Port au Prince.

Breaker grimly pushed us through, our Marine escort acting as a wedge. They were now fully decked out in lightweight armor, combat helmets, and the requisite orange armbands.

"It's going to get better," Breaker told us, as we entered a wide glass elevator. "C Team is moving aft to join us. They're carrying our isolation suits. B Team has gone to the bridge. Lemuria's captain thinks we're conducting a Coast Guard drug search. He says he has instructions from the ship's owners in Florida to cooperate. But he also claims there are about a thousand guests onboard, rich investors and potential buyers."

Candle caught my eye but said nothing.

"That's contrary to our intelligence. We'll have to watch out for them," Breaker said. "No weapons fire without a direct command."

Ben stayed close. Carson and Candle clutched their aluminum cases close to their chests and stared straight ahead, toward the elevator door, despite the view opening behind them as the elevator rose out of its black well and climbed the side of the ship.

We got out on the first deck of Tower Four and walked through a carpeted but unfurnished lobby--real marble and fake gold, very Las Vegas--to the glassed-in promenade. Escalators rose and fell all around us. Our camouflaged Marines stood out like muddy smears in a Greek temple.

Going to the rail and looking forward, I surveyed the curved glass along most of the starboard length of Lemuria, protecting five levels of walkways, cafes, and lounges.

"Looks like South Coast Plaza," Ben told me in a low voice. "But I think this is bigger."

Workmen gave us puzzled and partisan glances but continued bolting down tables, laying out massive rolls of precut carpet, and hauling stacks of cushiony chairs draped in streaming sheets of plastic. The room smelled of glue and fresh carpet and fabric. Large fans, like those used on movie sound stages vented the odors through open segments in the promenade cover.

Breaker fidgeted with his folding map. "C Team should be here to escort us forward," he said. Delbarco pointed.

A tall woman in a clinging blue gown stalked through a wide door and pushed ahead of four Coast Guard officers and two Marines. Her voice carried out over the unfinished lobby and echoed from the far walls like a harsh bell. Fortyish, tanned a coppery chocolate, eyes large and with prominent gleaming whites, adorned in plum lipstick and blue eye shadow, she looked ready to spit.

"I don't believe I have any reason to cooperate. I don't care what Captain Moustakis says. The passengers are upset, nobody's said anything that makes a lick of sense, and--"

The woman clapped her mouth shut as the two groups squared off. She scanned the new invaders with leonine annoyance.

"Lieutenant," Breaker said to a young Coast Guard officer. "Where are our suits?"

"They didn't arrive, sir," the lieutenant said. "Commander thought they were superfluous."

"How in hell was that his call to make?" "Don't know, sir."

"Shit," Delbarco said. "Was he tagged?"

"Don't know, ma'am."

For the first time, Delbarco seemed on the edge of losing it. She stared at the floor, clenching her jaw muscles spasmodically. Breaker watched her closely. She shook her head. "I'm all right."

"We can't stop now," Breaker said, but his shoulders dropped, and he looked for a moment like a whipped kid.

"You," the woman said, focusing on Breaker. "What in hell are we supposed to do, hand over all the passports and green cards and stand aside? This is a privately owned and funded ship ..."

"Registered in Liberia and full of sin," Breaker said, his patience coming to an end. "Just show us the way forward to Aristos Tower."

"I have better things to do, believe me. We have a thousand guests who are unwell, in the banquet hall--"

"Unwell?" Candle asked, raising her head as if at some stage cue.

"I'll say. There was a fire alarm and the sprinklers soaked everything. An awful smell. Now they're throwing up and fainting and blaming it on bad food and seasickness. That's utterly ridiculous-this ship has the world's best chefs, seventy-eight stabilizers, and premium steel-and-aluminum construction. It's the strongest and steadiest ship ever built. I need to get back there and do my job!"

Delbarco moved in, with Breaker's tacit permission: woman to woman. "Ma'am, we have maybe an hour to finish what we came here to do," the Secret Service agent said. "You haven't a bat's chance in a bonfire of understanding why we're here, and we couldn't tell you anyway. Enough to say that unless you want a lot of death and destruction, you will shut your fucking trap and take us forward."

The woman absorbed this outburst with some resilience, obviously used to playing the lightning rod for tough customers. "I have a name? she said. "I hope you will use it and treat me with respect. I am Mrs. Holloway."

Delbarco rolled her eyes. "Fine. Mrs. Holloway. Please take us forward."

Ben looked over the small crowd like a lighthouse keeper judging the weather, his face painted with a stiff, clownish grin. "Is that your war face?" I asked in an undertone.

"No suits. We're fucked," Ben said. "It's a regular Phillips head screw up."

"Why?"

"Food poisoning, Hal?" he asked.

"Anything you'd like to contribute?" Delbarco shouted. Breaker jumped at her voice, as did Mrs. Holloway in her tight blue gown. "Tell us how to get there!" Delbarco ordered her.

"The trains are in working order," Mrs. Holloway said, blinking rapidly. "They follow the inside gallery. It runs the length of the ship, dividing the first seven floors of each tower. The Executive Express is the quickest way to travel on Lemuria. Are there others ... of your party, expecting you?"

If she couldn't make us go away, perhaps it was time to treat us like difficult guests.

"There are," Delbarco said.

"Then I will help you get in touch with them." Mrs. Holloway tugged at the waist of her gown, drawing it down over a disciplined Nancy Reagan figure. She shivered for an instant, throwing off her pique, and adjusted her hair with patting hands as she led us up an escalator. "If there's anything else you need to know about Lemuria, please ask."

We boarded the express, a full-fledged airport-style train running on a single track and rubber wheels. It rolled with absolute smoothness through the central gallery.

3 I 6

Even to someone who has been to Las Vegas, the gallery of Lemuria was stunning, over fifteen hundred feet long, a straight shot down the centerline of the ship. I could almost feel the overarching weight of the four huge towers interrupting long stretches of skylight. The express whisked us through blue grottos of layered decks, glass walls shot through with mosaics lit by neon and fiber optics, escalators made of what looked like crystal and studded with sea-glow lanterns. As we passed signs announcing we had arrived at the base of Aristos Tower, we rolled through a sunny golden Cretan palace that would have made Minos faint with envy. A giant robot Minotaur straddled the train platform, raising and lowering a golden double bladed ax.

We were now about a thousand feet closer to the bow.

As the train's doors slid wide, we heard shouting and gunshots echo from above. A clutch of workmen in denim overalls frantically hauled red tool chests and a compressor down a spacious marbled hall, babbling in German, getting out of the way as fast as they could.