May had kept my rooms for me, but there was going to be a crush of guests. I gladly vacated them for May Bancroft and Tse-ling Mei to share, and I moved in with the crew. There was not much more room there. The work crews were coming aboard for the refit. When I looked them over, they were the sorriest, meanest bunch of roughnecks I have ever seen. If I had not been told they were deep water construction workers, I would have guessed them to be knee breakers for the Mob. Every one of them was allowed a hundred and fifty kilos of personal luggage, and I did not believe that any of it was musical instruments or books.
They did not help morale on the boat. Dougie cleared six hundred of our own people out of their quarters and put the new ones in one whole section together. They ate together, they talked together, they kept together. The rest of us were doubled up and excluded. In the first day the boat's security staff arrested a couple for hard drugs, but Dougie was having none of that. He ordered the charges dropped, and then ordered the security forces to stay out of the construction workers' area entirely. Not just the security forces. All of us were told to stay away, and hard-nosed types that had come aboard with the new work crews stood guard at the passages to keep the rest of us out. The new ones all wore a new kind of uniform- scarlet sea jackets and crash helmets-and they looked as much like an invading army as anything else.
They felt that way, too. There was a meanness in the air on our boat that I had never felt before, not even when bastard Ben was king triumphant. I tried to talk myself out of it. Old man Jason, I said to me, although I was still not yet sixty and not really old at all, old man, you are seeing ghosts and worrying without cause, for how can things get worse than they are already? They can't, I said, to reassure myself. But at sixty I had a lot still to learn.
I went to May and told her I didn't like the new people. She was trying on her new party dresses, with two of her maids fluttering around and admiring her and them, and indeed she was as beautiful as she had ever been-a little thinner, a little sadder, but the most beautiful woman in the world-and the dresses nearly did her justice. "These people are only for a little while, Jason, dear, she said. "As soon as the new intakes are installed, they'll be gone.
"I'd hate to be the one that had to throw them off the ship, I grumbled. She didn't look at me for a moment.
She stood there, staring out over the gardens towards the sea, as she used to stare when she was two years old.
Then she said, "Perhaps you ought to talk to Dougie about them instead of me. She had made up her mind not to interfere with her chosen love's way of running the empire she had given him. I had to respect her wishes.
So I did talk to Dougie. He laughed at me and told me to get lost. He was busy, he said.
That was what he said, and that, in fact, he was, for the refit was a huge task, and there was the party coming up. The party was to celebrate the public announcement of what everyone in the trade had known for weeks, that we were going deeper and finding more. He had invited people from the Russian and Japanese fleets. He had invited a few of our principal customers from even the land. And of course he had invited Betsy. Because May asked me to be, I was polite to her-as polite as to Captain Tsusnehshov or to old Baron Akagana when they came aboard. I greeted her politely and offered her a drink and helped her get settled in her rooms; and I did the same for the Japanese and the Russians, and then went off to see the Mays. If they were a little older than the last time I saw them, they were at least that much more charming and beautiful, too. Tse-ling Mei was one of the world's most loved movie stars. Maisie Gerstyn, who had once been Maisie Richardson, had brought her handsome husband and her two fair, bright twin boys. We all sat around the lanai that was part of my suite-theirs now-gossiping and enjoying one another's company until the sun was low and it was time for them to dress for the party.
I was in no hurry to dress, or to go to the party at all, for that matter. I was ambling slowly toward my room when the pager called my name. Desmond MacLean wanted me to join him in the high bridge, and his voice sounded strange.
The principal reason his voice sounded that way was that he was half drunk. He wasn't alone, either. He was sitting there with his face flushed and his tongue tripping over the hard words, and there with him, matching him drink for drink, was Betsy Zoll. "You idiot, I snarled at him, you re out of your class! Can't you see she's pumping you for information?
He shook his head stubbornly. "Other way, he mumbled. "Y'unnerstan me? It's the other way. She's doing the talking.
I had no patience with the man-or with Betsy, either, who sat there serene and smiling. I called for a medic with a tank of oxygen and some black coffee. "You'd better stay away from the party, I said bitterly, "for you'll disgrace the boat. He shrugged hopelessly. "Damn it, I cried, "what's the matter with you? Don't you see what a fool you are? And what did you call me for, anyway?
He pointed to Betsy. "Tell'm, he mumbled, and submitted himself to the attentions of the medic, who had just arrived.
While MacLean was choking down coffee and inhaling as much of the 02 as the medic could force into him, Betsy stood up. I'm sure she'd had as much to drink as Desmond, but the only sign was that she moved very carefully, as though the floor were rocking. There was nothing wrong with her speech. "What I told him, old man, she said, "was nothing you couldn't have seen for yourself. Just look around you.
"At what? I demanded. She pointed out the window.
But there was nothing to be seen that I didn't already know was there. True, Betsy's own flagship was hull down on the horizon, and two others of our own fleet and one of hers in sight-but I'd known that, for some reason or other, we'd been steaming closer and closer to other boats for the past few days. The only other thing that was in any way unusual was the flotilla of stiltboats and fast hovers in the water just outside the lip. And that was easily understood. It was to ferry our guests back and forth, of course-though it was, I thought as I looked closer, a touch strange that the crews manning them all owre the scarlet seas jackets of the new construction crews.
"I don't know what I'm looking at, I admitted stiffly.
Betsy laughed and turned to the medic. "Out, she ordered. The woman glanced at me, then left, her expression resentful. "Have you looked at the landing strip? Betsy demanded.
"Why should I? But I did, and then I looked again. There were a dozen aircraft parked at the side of the strip, and instead of bringing them down to the hangar deck, more were coming up on the elevator.
"Old man, she said contemptuously, "what you won't see, you can't see. I knew this was happening weeks ago. I only came to make sure.
"Sure of what'?
"Ah, Jason, what a fool you are! Can't you recognize an invasion force when you see one?
"There's no need, I said, misunderstanding her, "for Dougie to invade the boat, since May has given him the whole fleet.
"Not her fleet, you old fool! Mine! He wants to steal my ships!
"You stole them yourself in the first place, I said stubbornly, not quite taking it in, "or your bastard father did.
She stared at me with scorn. "Everybody steals everything; how else can anybody ever get rich? How did the Commodore get them in the first place, but with you to help him in the stealing? God help you, old man, you've blinded yourself. If you won't believe me, ask your drunken friend, she cried, grinning, and left the bridge.
By then Des was nearly coherent. Still, it took him a long time to get the story out. Betsy had plied him with drink and got him babbling, and what he had babbled was what I should have known for myself. He had poked among the incoming stores for the new "work crews and found that there were pumps and engines and tubing, all right, but there were also rifles and grenades and bigger, worser weapons than that. It was true. The reconstruction was a ruse to import his storm troopers; the party was a ruse, too, to get Betsy aboard as hostage.