I understood at last what Dougie wanted: Everything. He wanted it all. He had grown up as a very junior poor relation in his mob family. Now he was almost the richest of them-but that "almost was the iron in his soul. He wanted Betsy's half of the Fleet back to add to May's. If he had twenty thermal engineers on the payroll, he had ten times as many lawyers-but so did Betsy. When they met, which at one ball or race meet or another was often, they joked with each other about their lawsuits, and both would have pointed the jests with steel if they had dared.
"Mr. d'Agasto, said Desmond MacLean, "says I can tell you now. Come up on the weather bridge. And he only grinned at me without a word as we rode the hoist up to the snug cabin on top of everything. He punched in his present location to the ship's circuits and waved an arm in a half circle. "What do you see, Jason? he asked.
What I saw was what I had seen every day. The great mass of the vessel stretched out for hundreds of meters in every direction, and beyond our decks was the sea with its dozen vessels steaming slowly through the sooty air.
1 see stink, I said.
"So you'll be glad to see us making more hydrogen and cheaper, won't you? he asked cheerfully.
I shrugged. "Where are you going to get the delta-Ts'?
"That's the problem, right. He punched in the commands and displayed on his intercom console a map of the Pacific Ocean. "Here's where we are- pointing- "in the middle of this shaded green oval here, stretching from New Guinea to Hawaii. There are now four hundred oaty-boats grazing it, and each one pumps nearly a hundred tons a second average. That's- he punched out the calculations- "eighty billion liters a day, thirty trillion a year. Every year we move thirty cubic kilometers of water from the deeps to the surface!
"There are plenty of cubic kilometers in the Pacific, I said, unwilling to believe that our puny pipes could change anything in the majestic mass of the ocean.
"But not plenty that we need at the five-kilometer depth, he said.
"Well, of course. That's why we stay out of each other s wakes-or try to.
"We do, he agreed, "as long as we can. But either we settle for coming close to another boat or we work lenses that aren't quite as cold as we'd like. Look at the arithmetic. When we have deep water at six degrees and surface water at thirty-two, which is what our turbines are designed for, we've got a delta-T of twenty-six. The efficiency goes up with the cube of the temperature difference. So the figure of merit for those temperatures is twenty-six cubed- 17,576.
"We've not had a twenty-six degree delta-T for some time, I admitted.
"And we won't for a while longer, because we're competing with the heart of the oaty-boat fleet. We're cooling the surface water and sucking up the best lenses of cold. So most of the time we're dealing with top water that's as much as three degrees cooler than it should be, and bottom water sometimes three degrees warmer. Delta-T, twenty. Cubed figure of merit, eight thousand. Which means just about half the energy we should be getting.
"As bad as that!
"And going to get worse, he said, but cheerfully, so that I asked irritably:
"All right, come on! Tell me what you've got up your sleeve.
"We go deeper! he said triumphantly. He shook his head when I started to object, and keyed the map back. This time it was featureless. "Here are unexploited areas with a surface temperature of thirty or more- He displayed areas hatched in red lines, and as I peered at them I began to object again- "Wait a minute, Jason! And here are huge lenses of three-degree deep water. Three degrees, you understand me? And look-there's a patch five hundred kilometers across where we've got both. Thirty- three degrees on the surface, three degrees at depth- delta-T, thirty-cube that for a figure of merit, Jason!
I didn't have to. It was an oaty-boater's dream. "Shit, Des, I said contemptuously, "you're talking about bottom water.
"Damn near. Ten kilometers down, most of it.
"And I know those charts. What you don't show there is that there are mid-depth warm currents. You try to drop a suction intake down through them, and they'll curve into spaghetti!
He grinned smugly. "Right, he said, "and wrong. I'm not talking about a rubber hose. I'm talking about steel tubing, bouyed along it's length to keep it neutral, dynamically positioned by its own engines. Of course, those figures of merit aren't all profit. A hell of a lot goes into energy to keep the currents from tying the tubes in knots, and a hell of a lot of capital into building them in the first place. But I did the feasibility studies myself! With a figure of merit of twenty-seven thousand you can afford a lot.
I only had one question left. "When? I begged.
"It's already started, Jason! The contracts have been let out for the new gear, deliveries will start in sixty days. Mr. d'Agasto has started hiring construction crews and they'll be coming aboard next month-
"Aboard? Here?
There was a shadow on Desmond's happy face as he said, "Well, yes. The conversion's going to be done at sea. That's Mr. d'Agasto's plan. I really think, he said wistfully, "that we'd do better taking the boats in one at a time to some nice deep harbor, maybe in the Sunda straits, and refit there. I showed him the figures. It'd be cheaper and faster. . . but he's the boss, Jason.
I nodded. He was. He was showing it. He hadn't said a word to me-hadn't even allowed Desmond MacLean to whisper it to me until now, when the work was already begun and the secret would be no secret anymore. He was the boss. And I-was superfluous.
Prophecies fulfill themselves; a man who thinks himself useless becomes so. The best estimate I could make of myself was that I was an old fool who was in the way.
So I got out of the way. I took myself off to New Zealand.
It could just as easily have been Okinawa or Iceland. There was no place on the Earth where I was particularly needed, or had any particular reason to be. I thought I might like to see geysers before I died, so New Zealand won the toss. There were one or two people there I had some sort of friendly relations with-shipping agents and freight forwarders, and a banker named Sam Abramowitz whom I had known for forty years. I was shy of meeting Sam, for I had known him first while I was a scared kid in the accounting department of the bank, and he was one of the few people in the world who knew I had juggled the books to give the Commodore his start. But he made me at ease when I hinted at the subject. "Ah, Jason, he said, "that was a hundred years ago in another world. That was back in America, and we've both gone a long way away from what we were then. For he'd been personal banker for a lot of Mob money, until his stomach wouldn't take it anymore and he emigrated. "Forget it. Have a drink. And in the morning I'll take you to see all the damn geysers you want. .
So I dawdled away a month, and then half of another. The geysers didn't keep me interested that long. Neither did New Zealand, for when all was said and done it was still land, though only a fairly small piece of it and remote. I longed to be back on the sea, but more than I wanted that I wanted to be wanted there. And so when at last May phoned me, it was all I could do to keep my voice calm and my face bland. "A party'? I said. "Well, I'm not much of a one for parties, my dear.
"Oh, please. Jason! The Mays are going to be here, and a lot of our other friends-it'll be the biggest party we ever gave.
"I would like to see the Mays, I admitted.
"Not as much as they want to see you! I don't know if they'll even come if I can't tell them you'll be here. And, Jason- there was real sweetness in her voice and in her half-fearful smile- I've missed you so.
Well, of course I went! I was getting pretty sick of sheep, anyway-and even sicker of being on the land.