Текст книги "A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!"

Автор книги: Harry Harrison

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“Waterline weight 198,000 pounds, Mr. Washington, 240 feet from stem to stern, 72 feet from the bottom of the step to the lookout’s position top of the central tail fin. An exercise in superlatives, and all of them truthful I must admit. We have a 2,000 horsepower turbine in the tail that does nothing more than pump air for the boundary layer control and deflected, slipstream, increases our lift to triple that of an ordinary wing. Why we’ll be airborne at 50 miles an hour and inside 400 feet. Spray-suppressor grooves on both sides of the hull keep down the flying scud and smooth the sea for us. Now, if you will excuse me.”

The tugs cast off, the helmsman spun the wheel to line the ship up for the takeoff, then disengaged his controls so the captain had command. Hooting police boats had cleared the harbor of small craft. Steadying the airborne tiller with his left hand the captain rang for full ahead with his right. A faint vibration in the deck could be felt as the turbines howled up to top speed and the Queen Elizabeth slipped forward over the water, faster and faster. The transition was so smooth that there was no distinction between being waterborne and airborne. In fact the very presence of this juggernaut of the airways was so solid and reassuring that it appeared as though instead of the ship rising the city outside had dropped away from them, shrinking at the same time to the size of a model, then tipping on its side as the ship began a slow turn to the west. Below them now the Isle of Wight slipped by, an unimportant green scrap of flotsam in the sparkling ocean, then they were out over the Channel with England contracting and vanishing under their starboard wing. Gus picked up his case and slipped below, happy to have shared this moment of triumph with these furrowers of a new and dimensionless sea.

A short corridor led aft to the Grand Saloon where the passengers were seeing and being seen. They sat at the tables, admired the view from the great circular ports, and gave the bar a brisk business. The room was not as spacious as its title indicated but the dark, curved ceiling gave an illusion of size with its twinkling stars and drifting clouds projected there by some hidden device.

Gus worked his way through the crowd until he caught the eye of a porter who led him to his cabin. It was tiny but complete and he dropped into the armchair with relief and rested, looking out of the porthole for a while. His bags that were labeled cabin were there and he knew that there were other papers in them that he should attend to. But for the moment he sat quietly, admiring the simplicity and beauty of the cabin’s construction—it was an original Picasso lithograph on the wall—and the way the chair and desk would fold and vanish at night so the bunk could be opened. Eventually he yawned, stretched, opened his collar, opened his case and set to work.

When the gong sounded for luncheon he ignored it but sent instead for a pint of draught Guinness and a plowman’s lunch of bread, cheese, and pickles. On this simple fare he labored well and by the time the gong sounded again, this time for dinner, he was more than willing to put his work away and join his fellow man. Even though it was a fellow woman who shared his table at the first seating, a lady of advanced years, very rich though of lowly antecedents. Both of these could be read easily into her jewelry and her vowels so that, eating swiftly, Gus returned to his cabin.

During his absence his bed had been opened and turned back, an electric hotwater bottle slipped between the sheets since the cabins were cooled to a refreshing sleeping temperature, and his pajamas lain across the pillow. Ten o’clock by his watch but—he spun it ahead five hours to New York time—they would be roused deucedly early. Three hundred miles an hour, a fifteen-hour flight—it might be a ten a.m. arrival local time but it would be five a.m. to his metabolism so he determined to get as much rest as possible. It was going to be a hectic day, week, month, year—hectic forever. Not that he minded. The tunnel was worth it, worth anything. He yawned, slipped between the covers and turned off the light. He left the portable curtains open so he could watch the stars moving by in stately splendor before he went to sleep.

The next sensation was one of struggling, drowning, not being able to breathe, dying, pinned down. He thrashed wildly, fighting against the unbreakable bands that bound him, trying to call out but finding his nose and mouth were covered.

It was not a dream. He had never smelled anything in a dream before, never had his nose assaulted in this manner, never had it been clogged with the cloying sweetness of ether.

In that instant he was wide awake, completely awake, and catching his breath, holding it, not breathing. In the Far West he had helped the surgeon many times, poured the ether into the cone on a wounded man’s face, and had learned to hold his breath against the escaping, dizzying fumes. He did that now, not knowing what was happening but knowing that if he breathed in as much as one breath more he would lose consciousness.

There was no light but as he struggled he became aware that at least two men were leaning their full weight on him, holding him down. Something cold was being fastened on his wrists while something else prisoned his ankles at the same time. Now the heavy figures simply held him while he writhed, keeping the ether rag to his face, waiting for him to subside.

It was torture. He fought on as long as he could before letting his struggles cease, went past the time where he wanted to breathe to the point where he needed to breathe to the excruciating, horrifying moment where he thought if he did not breathe he would die. With an almost self-destroying effort he passed this point as well and was sinking into a darker blackness when he felt the cloth being removed from his face at last.

First he breathed out the residual fouled air in his lungs, clearing his nostrils, and then, ever so slowly, despite the crying needs of his demanding body, he let a quiet trickle of air back into his lungs. Even as he did this he felt strong hands seize and lift him and carry him to the door which was opened a crack, then thrown wide so they could carry him through. There were dim night lights in the corridor and he slitted his eyes so they would appear closed and let his body remain completely limp despite the battering of the doorjamb as they rushed him through.

There was no one else in sight, no one to cry out to if that might have done any good. Just two men dressed completely in black with black gloves and black goggled masks over their faces that bulged out below. Two men, two rough strangers, hurrying him where?

To a waiting lift that streamed bright light when the door opened so that he closed his eyes at once. But he had recognized it, the lift from the hold up to the engine rooms that he had been in with the first engineer. What did this mean? He was jammed in, prevented from falling by the two assailants who pushed in with him so they rose silently in close, hoarse-breathing contact—while not a word was spoken. In a matter of less than a minute these two savage men had seized and bound him, theoretically rendered him unconscious and were now taking him some place with surely no good purpose.

The answer was quick in coming. The port engine room; they were retracing his visit of that morning. Into the air lock, close the one door while the other opened—to the accompanying snakelike hissing of an exhaust valve.

There was still nothing that Washington could do. If he struggled he would be rendered unconscious, for good this time. Though his nerves cried out for action, something to break this silence and captivity, he did nothing. His head was light by the time the inner door opened because he had breathed as deeply as he could, hyperventilating his blood, getting as much oxygen into his bloodstream as he could. Because beyond the door was the unpressurized part of the flying ship where the air was just as thin as the 12,000 foot high atmosphere outside. Where a man simply breathed himself into gray unconsciousness and death. Was that what they had in mind? Would they leave him here to die? But why, who were they, what did they want?

They wanted to kill him. He knew that as soon as they dropped him to the cold metal of the deck and wrestled with the handles of the doorway beside him, the same one that Alec Durell had gone through in Southampton. But there he had a fall of twenty-five feet to an unwanted bath. Here there were 12,000 feet of fall to brutal death.

With a heave the door was thrown open and the three-hundred mile an hour slipstream tore through the opening, drowning out even the roar of the four great engines. It was then that Washington did what he knew he had to do.

He straightened his bent legs so they caught the nearest man behind the knees. For a brief instant the dark stranger hung there, arms flailing wildly before vanishing through the opening into the frigid night outside.

Gus did not wait until the other had gone but was wriggling across the floor to the alarm of a fire box, struggling to his feet and butting at it with his head until he felt the glass break and slice into his skin. Turning to face the remaining man, swaying as he did so.

There is no warning to anoxia, simply a slide into unconsciousness then death. He had the single thought that the bulbous mask must contain an oxygen tank or his assailant would be falling, too. He must stay awake. Fight. Unconscious, he would be dragged to the opening and dispatched into the night like the other man.

His eyes closed and he slid slowly down and sprawled, oblivious, on the deck.

V. A PAID ASSASSIN

“A fine sunny morning, sir, bit of cloud about but nothing to really speak of.”

The steward flicked back the curtain so that a beam of molten sunlight struck into the cabin. With professional skill he pulled open the drawer on the night table and put the tray with the cup of tea upon it. At the same time he dropped the ship’s newspaper onto Washington’s chest so that he awoke and blinked his eyes open just as the door closed silently behind the man. He yawned as the paper drew his attention so that he glanced through the headlines. HUNDREDS FEARED DEAD IN PERUVIAN EARTHQUAKE. SHELLING REPORTED AGAIN ALONG THE RHINE. NEW YORK CITY WELCOMES CAESAR CHAVEZ.

The paper was prepared at the line’s offices in New York, he knew that, then sent by radiocopy to the airship. The tea was strong and good and he had slept well. Yet there was a sensation of something amiss, a stiffness on the side of his face and he had just touched it and found a bandage there when the door was thrown open and a short, round man dressed in black and wearing a dog collar was projected through the doorway like a human cannonball, with Wing Commander Mason close behind him.

“Oh my goodness, goodness gracious,” said the spherical man, clasping and unclasping his fingers, touching the heavy crucifix he wore about his neck, then tapping the stethoscope he wore over it as though unsure whether God or Aesculapius would be of most help. “Goodness! I meant to tell the steward, dozed off, thousand pardons. Best you rest, sure of that, sleep the mender—for you not me, of course. May I?” Even as he spoke the last he touched Gus’s lower eyelid with a gentle finger and pulled it down, peering inside with no less concern and awe than he would have if the owner’s eternal soul had rested there.

From confusion Gus’s thoughts skipped instantly to dismay, followed thereafter by a sensation of fear that sent his heart bounding and brought an instant beading of perspiration to his brow. “Then it was no dream, no nightmare,” he breathed aloud. “It really happened.”

The ship’s commander closed the door behind him and, once secrecy was assured, he nodded gravely.

“It did indeed, Captain Washington. Though as to what happened we cannot be sure and it is my fondest wish that you enlighten me, if you can, as soon as possible. I can tell you only that the fire alarm sounded in the port engine room at 0011 hours Greenwich Mean Time. The first engineer, who was attending an engine in the starboard engine room at the time, responded instantly. He reports he found you alone and unconscious on the deck, dressed as you are now, with lacerations on your face, lying directly below the fire alarm. Pieces of glass in your wounds indicate you set off the alarm with your head and this was necessitated by the fact that your ankles and wrists were secured by handcuffs. An access door in the deck nearby was open. That is all we know. The engineer, who was wearing breathing equipment, gave you his oxygen and pulled you from the room. The Bishop of Botswana, this gentleman here, who is a physician, was called and he treated you. The manacles were cut from you and, under the bishop’s direction, you were permitted to sleep. That is all we know. I hope that you will be able to tell us more.”

“I can,” Gus said, and his voice was hoarse. The two intent men then saw his calm, almost uncomprehending expression change to one that appeared to be that of utter despair, so profound that the priestly physician sprang forward with a cry only to be restrained by the raised hand of his patient who waved him back, at the same time drawing in a deep breath that had the hollow quality of a moan of pain, then exhaling it in what could only be a shuddering sigh.

“I remember now,” he said. “I remember everything. I have killed a man.”

There was absolute silence as he spoke, haltingly at first as he attempted to describe his confusion upon awakening in distress, faster and faster as he remembered the struggle in the dark, the capture, the last awful moments when another had vanished into eternity and the possibility of his own death had overwhelmed him. When he had done there were tears in the bishop’s eyes, for he was a gentle man who had led a sheltered life and was a stranger to violence, while next to him the captain’s eyes held no tears but instead a look of grim understanding.

“You should not blame yourself, there should be no remorse,” Wing Commander Mason said, almost in the tones of a command. “The attempted crime is unspeakable. That you fought against it in self-defense is to be commended not condemned. Had I been in the same place I hope my strength of endeavor and courage would have permitted me to do the same.”

“But it was I, not you, Captain. It is something I shall never forget, it is a scar I shall always carry.”

“You cannot blame yourself,” said the bishop, at the same time fumbling for his watch and Gus’s wrist in sudden memory of his medical capacity.

“It is not a matter of blame but rather one of realization. I have done a terrible thing and the fact that it appears to be justified makes it none the less terrible.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Wing Commander Mason, a little gruffly, tugging at his beard at the same time. “But I am afraid we must carry this investigation somewhat further. Do you know who the men were—and what their possible motive might be?”

“I am as mystified as you. I have no enemies I know of.”

“Did you note any distinguishing characteristics of either of them? Some tone of voice or color of hair?”

“Nothing. They were dressed in black, masked, wore gloves, did not speak but went about this business in complete silence.”

“Fiends!” the bishop cried, so carried away in his emotions that he crossed himself with his stethoscope.

“But, wait, wait, the memory is there if I can only grasp it. Something, yes—a mark, blue, perhaps a tattoo of some kind. One of the men, it was on his wrist, almost under my nose where he held me, revealed when his glove moved away from his jacket, on the inner side of his wrist. I can remember no details, just blue of some kind.”

“Which man?” asked the captain. “The survivor or the other?”

“That I don’t know. You can understand this was not my first concern.”

“Indeed. Then there is a fifty-fifty chance that the man is still aboard—if he did not follow his accomplice through the opening. But by what excuse can we examine the wrists of the passengers? The crew members are well known to us but—” He was silent on the instant, struck by some thought that darkened his face and brought upon it a certain grimness unremarked before. When he spoke again it was in the tones of absolute command.

“Captain Washington, please remain here quietly. The doctor will tend your needs and I ask you to do as he directs. I will be back quite soon.”

He was gone without any more explanation and before they could request one. The bishop examined Washington more thoroughly, pronounced him fit, though exhausted, and recommended a soothing draught which was refused kindly but firmly. Washington for his part lay quietly, his face set, thinking of what he had done and of what his future life might be like with a crime of this magnitude in his memory. He would have to accept it, he realized that, and learn to live with it. In the minutes that he lay there, before the door opened again, he had matured and grown measurably older so that it was almost a new individual who looked up when the captain entered for the second time. There was a bustle behind him as the first engineer, Alec, and the second officer came in, each holding firmly to the white-clad arm of a cook.

He could be nothing else, a tall and solid man all in white, chef’s hat rising high on his head, sallow skinned and neat moustachioed with a look of perplexity on his features. As soon as the door had been closed, the tiny cabin was crowded to suffocation with this mixed company, the captain spoke.

“This is Jacques, our cook, who has served with this ship since her commissioning and has been with the Cunard ten years or more. He knows nothing of the events of last night and is concerned now only with the croissants he left to burn in the oven. But he has served me many times at table and I do recall one thing.”

In a single swift motion the captain seized the cook’s right arm, turning it outwards and pulling back his coat. There, on the inside of his forearm and startlingly clear against the paleness of his skin, was a blue tattoo of anchors and ropes, trellised flowers and recumbent mermaids. Washington saw it and saw more as memory clothed the man with black instead of white, felt the strength of gloved hands again and heard the hoarseness of his breathing. Despite the bishop’s attempt to prevent him he rose from the bed and stood facing the man, his face mere inches away from the other’s.

“This is the one. This is the man who attempted to kill me.”

For long seconds the shocked expression remained on the cook’s features, a study in alarm, confusion, searching his accuser’s face for meaning while Washington stared grimly and unswervingly into the other’s eyes as though he were probing his soul. Then the two officers who held the man felt his arms tremble, felt his entire body begin to shake as despair seized him and replaced all else, so that instead of restraining him they found they had to support him, and when the first words broke from his lips they released a torrent of others that could not be stopped.

“Yes, I… I was there, but I was forced, not by choice, dear God as a witness not by choice. Sucre Dieu! And remember, you fell unconscious, I could have done as I had been bid, you could not have resisted, I saved your life, left you there. Do not let them take mine, I beg of you, it was not by choice that I did any of this—”

In his release it all came out, the wretched man’s history since he had first set foot in England twenty years previously, as well as what his fate had been since. An illegal emigre, helped by friends to escape the grinding unemployment of Paris, friends who eventually turned out to be less than friends, none other than secret agents of the French crown. It was a simple device, commonly used, and it never failed. A request for aid that could not be refused—or he would be revealed to the English authorities and jailed, deported. Then more and more things to do while a record was kept of each, and they were illegal for the most part, until he was bound securely in a web of blackmail. Once trapped in the net he was rarely used after that, a sleeper as it is called in the filthy trade, resting like an inactivated bomb in the bosom of the country that had given him a home, ready to be sparked into ignition at any time. And then the flame.

An order, a meeting, a passenger on this ship, threats and humiliations as well as the revelation that his family remaining in France would be in jeopardy if he dared refuse. He could not. The midnight meeting and the horrible events that followed. Then the final terrible moment when the agent had gone and he knew that he could not commit this crime by himself.

Washington listened and understood, and it was at his instruction that the broken man was taken away—because he understood only too well. It was later, scant minutes before the flying ship began her final approach to the Narrows and a landing in New York Harbor that the captain brought Washington the final report.

“The other man is the real mystery, though it appears he was not French. A professional at this sort of thing, no papers in his luggage, no makers’ marks on his clothes, an absolute blank. But he was British, everyone who spoke to him is sure of that, and had great influence or he would not be aboard this flight. All the details have been sent to Scotland Yard and the New York Police are standing by now at the dock. It is indeed a mystery. You have no idea who your enemies might be?”

Washington sealed his last bag and dropped wearily into the chair.

“I give you my word, Captain, that until last night I had no idea I had any enemies, certainly none who could work in liaison with the French secret service and hire underground operatives.” He smiled wryly. “But I know it now. I certainly know it now.”