“Thank you, Al.” Desanto stood up and gave a curious little bow. “I apologize for wasting everybody’s valuable time.” He pushed his chair back, walked to the companionway and climbed up it to the sleeping quarters, nodding thoughtfully to himself.
“Somebody should go after him,” Mossbake said nervously.
“There’s no need,” Gillespie countermanded. “Wilbur couldn’t commit suicide to save his life. I know him– he’s gone a bit huffy ’cause I told him off.”
The meeting resumed with a distinctly different atmosphere from that which had been prevalent in the initial stages, even the mulish Schilling going along with its general resolutions. Surgenor, in spite of his unvoiced reservations, had to admit that Gillespie’s bluff organizational approach had provided a steadying influence. He was doing what Surgenor had so often done in the past– stepping into the command vacuum, making himself into a tangible and identifiable target for the negative emotions human beings always experienced when things were going wrong.
It was a courageous thing to do under the circumstances, Surgenor decided. The ship was a tiny bubble of light and heat, surrounded by black infinities of emptiness, and there were no prospects other than that things would continue to go further and further wrong until the captain and all his jolly sailor boys were dead. A lot of negative emotions were going to be generated before the end…
“I think we’ve done enough for one day,” Gillespie said an hour later, glancing at his watch. “It’s past one o’clock, and we could do with a break.”
“Too right,” Kessler grumbled as the members of the group stood up and looked at each other uncertainly.
Gillespie gave an artificial-sounding cough. “There’s just one more thing– the liquor rationing scheme we agreed on only applies to the ship’s official stores, not to private supplies. Enough said?”
There was an immediate flurry of excitement as men who had just been browbeaten into accepting austerity got the unexpected scent of a final mind-erasing, peace-bringing alcoholic feast. Those who had little or no personal reserves of intoxicants looked hopefully at the known stockists and began crowding round them with offers of cigars and home-baked cakes without which, they claimed, no party would be a success. The easing of tension, coupled with the knowledge that their respite would be brief, precipitated the younger men like Rizno and Mossbake into noisy horseplay.
“Nice touch,” Surgenor murmured to Gillespie. “There’s nothing like a Mardi Gras hangover to make Lent seem like a good idea.”
Gillespie nodded looking gratified. “I’ve got a bottle of cognac in my room. What do you say the two of us go up there and split it?”
Surgenor nodded, his gaze drawn to Christine Holmes, who had separated from the others and was making her way upstairs. Suddenly realizing where she was going, he excused himself and hurried after her. He went up the steps two at a time, entered the corridor and found Christine standing hesitantly outside No. 4, Wilbur Desanto’s room. She was listening intently.
“I knocked a couple of times,” she said as Surgenor halted beside her. “He doesn’t answer.”
Surgenor reached past her and threw the door open. The room was almost in darkness, the only light coming from a printed page which was projected on to the ceiling from a micro-reader beside the bed. Desanto was stretched out on the bed, unmoving, his face turned towards the wall. Surgenor switched on the main light, and Desanto raised himself on one elbow, smiling his lop-sided smile.
“What do you guys want?” he said. “Is the meeting over?”
“Why didn’t you answer when I knocked?” Christine demanded over Surgenor’s shoulder.
“Guess I must have dozed off. What’s all the fuss about anyway?”
“There’s a bottle party starting downstairs– thought you’d like to know.” Surgenor closed the door and stood looking down at Christine, whose face had hardened with anger.
“I swear he did that on purpose,” she said in a taut whisper, “and I fell for it.”
“There’s no need to put it that way– you didn’t fall for anything.” Surgenor felt he was taking a risk, but he pressed ahead. “You thought he might be trying to kill himself, and you were worried about it even though you hardly know him. That’s good, Chris. It shows…’
“That I’m still human? In spite of everything?” Christine almost smiled as she reached for her cigarettes. “Do me a favour, big Dave– forget that I went to your room. Deathbed recantations aren’t worth a damn.”
Surgenor glanced to his left as he heard Gillespie ascending the steps. “Al and I are going to open a bottle of his fancy brandy. Would…’
“There’ll be more fun downstairs.” She walked away from him, brushed past Gillespie and clattered down the companionway, expertly transferring most of her weight to the handrail by way of her forearms to make a sliding descent.
“You trying to get something going there?” Gillespie said, giving Surgenor a quizzical look.
“What are you talking about?” Surgenor was reminded of the meaningful stare Billy Narvik had directed at him after their tussle a few paces along the same corridor, and he became indignant. “What are you saying, Al? Does she look my type?”
“She doesn’t look anybody’s type, but there’s nothing else available around here.”
“Chris puts on a show, you know. She’s been churned up a few times and she doesn’t want to risk it happening again, so she…’ Surgenor abandoned what he had been going to say as he saw Gillespie’s eyebrows creeping up. “Why are we standing around here? Are we aging the booze?”
They went into Gillespie’s room, which was next to Desanto’s, and Gillespie produced two glasses and a resplendent bottle of pot-distilled brandy. “This was supposed to give me one shot a night for a thirty-day mission, but I’m ready to see it off tonight and forget the gracious living bit.”
“You’ll forget everything.”
“So?”
“So…’ Surgenor held out his glass and watched its transformation into an orb of sunlight. “Here’s to amnesia.”
“Long may she reign.”
The two men sat in companionable quietness, drinking slowly but steadily, savouring the escape from reality. Surgenor’s warmest memories of life in the Service were of lengthy bull sessions, which sometimes went on all night, while the ship was circling an alien star and its crew were drawn together by enhanced awareness of their humanity. Here the effect was greater. Having been buffeted by the tides and maelstroms of space, the ship was now becalmed in a boundless black sea. An infinity of emptiness pressed inwards on its shell, and all those on board knew the adventuring was over, because in a continuum where nothing existed nothing could happen. No surprises lay in store, except for those unexpected discoveries a human being may make about himself, and therefore the only logical thing to do was to concentrate on being human, extra-human, more than human. Tomorrow that would be difficult because the countdown to death would have begun, but for the time being…
“Albert Gillespie and David Surgenor!” Aesop’s voice jolted Surgenor out of his drowsiness. “Please acknowledge that you can hear me.”
Taking his cue from the fact that his name had been mentioned first, Gillespie said, “Hear these words, Aesop– we’re listening to you.” His eyes were wide with speculation as he set down his glass and glanced at Surgenor.
“The unusual circumstances in which we find ourselves have brought about some changes in my relationship with crew members,” Aesop said. “As Michael Targett had already observed, I am simply a computer and my areas of competence are necessarily limited by the characteristics of my programmes. This is an in-built limitation brought about– as we have discovered– by the programmers’ inability to foresee every possible type of situation. Do you understand what I am saying?”