“They call these things biscuits,” he told Elizalde defiantly.
“Call it a muffin if you like,” she said, “today I’m not arguing.”
He picked up one end of the cable and separated the inch-thick wires protruding from the end of it. The red one he shoved into the positive hole, in the biscuit, and the black one he shoved into the negative hole. They fit tightly enough to support the weight of the cable. He would be getting direct current from the batteries, so he let the white wire hang unconnected.
The Moab station had in its time produced more than fifty billion kilowatt hours, enough power to light half a million homes for a quarter of a century. But he had stood in the control room and watched the dials as the power had fallen from fifty to twenty to three percent of capacity, and then a voice on the intercom had said, “Turbine trip,” and Sullivan's gaze had snapped to the green lights on the control panel in the instant before they flashed on, their sudden glow indicating that the circuit breakers were open and no electricity was being produced.
And as the superintendent reached for the switch that would drive the cadmium rods into the reactor core, killing the uranium fission, Sullivan alone among the technicians in the control room had heard the chorus of wails as the resident ghosts had faded into nothing.
He was setting up the same devastation now. The current he would shortly be sending through the degaussing coils in the length of the hull would wake up all the dormant, undisturbed ghosts aboard the ship; focused, they would venture timidly out of their housekeeping-tended graves, only to evaporate into nothingness when the drain on the batteries outstripped the ability of the recharger to counter it, and the magnetic field collapsed.
Perhaps sensing his unhappiness, Kootie and Elizalde wordlessly stepped aside as he dragged the other end of the cable across the painted steel deck to the stepped ranks of batteries against the left bulkhead.
Steel bars connected the terminals of each battery in a row to the next, and he wedged the inch-thick end of the red wire under the bar on the first battery in the top row, then did the same with the black wire to the first battery on the bottom row. He had now hooked up the degaussing panel, at the expense of the diesel engine’s starter motor.
As he straightened up, he softly whistled, in slow time, the first notes of reveille.
He walked back across the deck to the panel and, with a sigh, pushed the master switch up into the on position. There was a muffled internal click.
The needle of the first DC voltmeter on the face of the panel jumped to 30, but that one was only indicating full power from the batteries. Then he took hold of the rubber-cased rheostat wheel and started turning it clockwise; the second voltmeter’s needle began to climb across me dial toward 30, as the needle on the ammeter next to it moved more slowly up toward 150. For the first time in more than forty years, current was coursing through the wartime degaussing cables that ribbed the hull all the way from back here by the rudder to the bow a thousand feet north of him.
The deck had begun to vibrate under his feet, and a droning roar was getting louder; when he had cranked the wheel all the way over as far as it would go clockwise, the noise was so loud that Elizalde had to shout to be heard.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. “You’ve turned something on!”
“My God,” said Kootie, loudly but reverently, “that’s the noise of the screws. You’ve waked up the ghost of the ship herself!”
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
“What matters it how jar we go?” his scaly friend replied. “There is another shore, you know, upon the other side”
—Lewis Carroll,
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
OH,” Elizalde moaned, “let’s get out of here!” Sullivan backed away from the panel, and even Houdini’s hands were trembling. “Yes,” he said.
Sullivan led the way out of the after steering compartment and back down the corridor toward the elevator. The hallway reeked of sweaty bodies now, and he could hear a scratchy recording of Kitty Kallen singing “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” echoing from somewhere ahead of them.
Bony figures were shifting among the blankets on the bulkhead-hung bunks as Sullivan and Elizalde and Kootie hurried past; hands still translucent groped at Elizalde, and voices blurred by unformed mouths mumbled amorously at her.
The elevator motor was buzzing and rattling when they rounded the corner, but the car was coming down to this deck—and through the bars Sullivan saw the burlap sack with the black Raiders baseball cap on it slumped on the elevator floor, shifting furiously and yowling as if it were filled with cats.
Before he could grab Kootie and Elizalde and run, the cat noises stopped and the front flap of the bag fell away, and as the car clanked down to the deck a naked young woman, slim and dark-haired, stood up in it and blinked through the bars at Sullivan and beyond him. Her body wasn’t solidified yet—ribs showed faintly through the white softness of her breasts, and her loins were a wash of shadow.
Her eyes were bewildered brown depths, and already solid enough for Sullivan to see tears on the lashes. “Es esto infierno?” she asked.
Elizalde pulled back the gate. “Esto es ninguna parte,” she said. “Y esto pasara pronto.”
Is this hell? the ghost-woman had asked; and Elizalde had told her that this was nowhere, and would soon pass. Sullivan stared at the woman nervously, remembering the thing that had flown over the grass at the cemetery yesterday, laughing and clanking metal wings—and she stared back at him without any recognition, her imprinted malice having fallen away with the burlap sack under her bare feet.
The woman stumbled out of the elevator car, looked blankly around, and then walked uncertainly back toward where the bunks were hanging, and Sullivan paused as if to stop her or warn her; but Elizalde grabbed his arm and pulled him into the car.
‘Tumble a bunch of old books together,” she said. “Books so old and fragile that nobody can read them anymore. The pages will break off and get mixed up. Does it matter?”
Sullivan was sweating as he stepped into the car, crowding the wall to make room for Elizalde and Kootie. These limitless dim lower decks, with all their forgotten alcoves and doors and passageways, were suddenly potent, and darkly inviting, and he pushed the up button hard. “Let’s go all the way to the top,” he said hoarsely.
“Amen,” said Elizalde.
J. FRANCIS Strube had found a carpeted hallway and he had started running downhill along it, past silent doors recessed in the wood-paneled walls. The hallway curved up ahead of him to disappear behind the gentle bulge of the glossy ivory ceiling, as if he were sprinting around the perimeter ring of a very elegant space station, and he had assured himself that somewhere between here and the eventual bow he must run across someone who could help him.
But a grinding roar had started up under the carpet and the whole ship had moved slightly, as if flexing itself, arid he had lost his footing and fallen headlong; his hands had still been cuffed behind him, and though he had managed to take the first hard impact on his shoulder, his chin and cheekbone had bounced solidly off the carpeted floor.
Now he was up again, and walking, but he had to step carefully. Perhaps it was some Coriolis effect that made walking so difficult; he had to plant his feet flat, with the toes pointed outward, to keep from rolling against the close walls.