"That's impossible, I said-with my voice, but I know that what my face was saying was, That's unfair, May, to try such a thing without me! And she answered my face.
"Jason, dear, it's no secret from you. I can't do it without you.
"The best lawyers in Reykjavik say you can't do it at all, I told her, "for the will is in proper form.
"But what if it is forged, Jason?
I goggled at her.
"Forged, she said, nodding. "Not all of it. Just the matter of dates. The guardianship was supposed to stop when I was twenty, and Ben had someone get into the datastores and add ten years to the time.
Now, that was getting close to a line of conversation I did not want to pursue. I didn't know-I have never known-if the Commodore ever told his daughter about the favor I had done him. She did not say anything then, or ever, to give me an answer one way or another, but hurried on: "And that is fraud, Jason, and somebody may well go to jail. But proving it! It's so hard. And Ben has everything on the boats bugged, of course. I couldn't speak to you there-and besides, she said, sitting beside me and touching my arm, "he knows you're smarter than I am, so he watches you twice as hard.
I said, "You don't have to explain anything to me, May. But I wanted explanations all the same. I got them. The plump little bald-headed man, Ormondo, worked for the bank that held Ben's stocks, and it had seemed to him that there was something funny about the records. For one thing, the will should have existed in several data- stores, not just the bank's. But the Commodore's own bank had been swallowed up by another and its records were unavailable, and in the hall of records where the will had been filed the system had crashed, all the data lost.
Ormondo came to believe that there was a forgery. He could not prove it, but it made him curious to look further. There was plenty to find.
Ben had been milking the fleet. He had set up corporations of his own to buy the hydrogen from the oatyboats and to sell the ammonia on land, and to lease to us the pilot cutters that prospected for cold, deep water, and even the aircraft that carried us to shore. Everything the Fleet bought cost a little more than it should, and everything we sold went for a little less, and the difference went to Ben.
And then Ormondo had met May at a party, not by chance, and whispered in her ear.
And ever since then, for the best part of a year, the two of them had been searching out records and interviewing people who might know things. Whispers had got back to Ben, surely. But Ormondo was a careful man.
And they had the pattern almost complete.
"The next step, Jason, she said, "was going to be to talk to you. I almost asked you to come with me this time. I'm glad you didn't wait to be asked.
"Of course I'll do everything you want, I assured her.
She smiled sweetly and touched my arm. "Of course you will, dear Jason. There's one other thing.
She looked embarrassed. She pursed the pretty lips, hesitating, her eyes gazing at the chipped paint on the ugly wall as though she were staring over the wide sea. Then she said, "I need a husband, Jason.
She had caught me unaware. "A husband?
"I need a husband for me, and for help in this fight, because it will be a terrible one. And most of all I need one because of Jimmy Rex. He must have a father, Jason. Not a silly boy. A grown man, wise and kind and sensible. It doesn't matter if he's older than I am. It only matters that he be someone I can trust and love with all my heart.
These were the words I had been dreaming of hearing for all the long years. I could hardly speak. "Of course, my dearest, I said, and reached out for her, and was puzzled by the astonishment that sprang into her eyes.
It was a terrible fight, indeed. For months we were more on Iceland than in our proper home, all of us. That was a high enough price to pay in itself, for me. Iceland is where the Law of the Sea is administered, and indeed it is land that has come from the sea, bubbling up in roaring steam, some of it within the memory of living men. But it is still the land, and all the geothermal steam and hot swimming pools do not make up for losing the warm breezes of the southern seas.
But we won. Or mostly we won. Bastard Ben might well have gone to jail indeed, if he had not gone to the hospital instead and did not come out alive.
So it was Betsy who lost the suit, not Ben, and she did not lose it all. We could not prove the falsification of the will. The litigation was long-drawn and savage, and three of our witnesses disappeared, but the records of the dummy corporations did not. So May settled at last for a division. The guardianship was annulled. All Ben's contracts to buy and sell were voided. The Fleet was divided in two. Half the oaty-boats went to Betsy, the rest, with half the money from Ben's loot, to May. And Betsy began at once to build more.. . but we were at ease at last, back at home on that first old boat, steaming slowly through the Strait of Malacca, and the Commodore's daughter was at last the undisputed queen of the grazing isles. She ruled us happily, along with her child.
And with her husband. Who was not me.
She was the kindest of women, my May, but she could not be kind enough to allow me to forget how foolishly I had missed her meaning when she was trying to tell me that she meant to marry Jefferson Ormondo.
For the sake of her son and to claim her due, At four and twenty she wed number two. They battled and won in the struggle to keep Her fair-owned gifts from the generous deep. Blest was the respite from worries and trials In this short happy time for the queen of the isles.
Although I had lost her again, it was a good time. May was happy. Jefferson Ormondo had the good sense to be happy-well, what else could he be? Even little Jimmy Rex became more tractable, since he was away from Betsy's constant need to spur on his own born-in meanness.
We even made a sort of peace with Betsy herself. It was not easy or comfortable. Yet she came to pay a visit to our quaint old thermal grazer, and then there was nothing to do but for us to visit her great new flagship. Though I took no joy in seeing Betsy, I was glad enough of the trip. Her Works Captain was a decent enough man-we'd sailed together under the Commodore-and besides, I wanted to see some of their engineering.
What we want for the heat exchangers is the hottest surface water we can get, the top meter if we can get it, for that's where the sun's heat is strongest. But when you pump a hundred tons a second, the suction tubes are not fastidious about what they take. So when Captain Havrila took me up on his bridge, beaming with pride, I knew what he was going to show me. I'd seen it from the air. The boat was surrounded with a screen that lay thirty meters away from the hull in all directions; I'd seen it, and realized at once that there was a shallow lip all around. "You pump direct from the hull, I guessed, ~ and you've trapped surface water in a moat. The screen's to keep out fish?
He grinned ruefully. "I knew once you laid eyes on it, Jason, I wouldn't have to say a word. We pump from a reservoir ten meters deep, but all that comes in to replenish it is the very top of the sea.
"It's a nice solution. I complimented him. "But doesn't it cut down your maneuvering, with all that drag?
"It destroys it, he said happily, "but we're not going anywhere very fast anyway. And we've been getting delta-Ts of twenty and up -well, most days, he corrected himself. "Tell me, Jason, what are you doing about organic fouling? "Same as you, I guess. Reverse fluse every ten days with little plastic marbles. We lose nearly half of them every time, though. The sea is full of little living things that want something to cling to-unfortunately, they don't care what. The lining of our intake tubes is as good a place as any. There's not too much trouble with the deep- water intakes, because the water down there is too cold for them to be very active. But the surface intakes are another story.