“Wrong?” said Rainsford.
“Yes. Wrong.”
“That’s a rather extreme word,” said Barclay.
“It’s probably time to amend our charter,” said Taylor Scott, puffing on a Turkish cigarette, “but we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. The theistic world was a nightmare, Sylvia. Have you forgotten the Renaissance witch hunts?”
“But we’re not being honest.”
“The trial of Galileo? The massacre of the Incas?”
“I haven’t forgotten those things, nor have I forgotten the scientific curiosity that is the sine qua non of this organization.” Sylvia tightened her woolen shawl, her primary protection against the ersatz winter raging through Montesquieu Hall. “We should be studying this corpse, not sweeping it under the rug.”
“Let’s look at it from another angle,” said Winston. “Yes, some sort of large entity is currently being hauled toward the Arctic, and for all we know this entity hung the stars, spun the earth, and molded Adam out of clay. But does that mean it’s God? The unmoved mover? The first and final cause? The be-all and end-all? It’s dead, for Christ’s sake. What kind of Supreme Being goes belly up like that?”
“A fake Supreme Being,” said Rainsford.
“Exactly,” said Winston. “A fake, a fraud, a phony. The problem, of course, is that such logic will never impress the credulous masses. A relic like this becomes yet another confirmation of their faith. Ergo, for the good of all, in the name of reason, this God-who-isn’t-God must be removed.”
“Winston, you appall me.” Arms akimbo, Sylvia aimed her blighted corneas directly at the Marxist. “Reason, you said? ‘The name of reason’? This isn’t reason you’re doling out — it’s atheist fundamentalism!”
“Let’s not play with words.”
Sylvia tore off the shawl, hobbled into the foyer, and yanked open the front door. “Ladies and gentlemen, you leave me no other choice!” she foamed as the July heat wafted into the frigid lounge. “Honor dictates but one course for me — I must resign from the Central Park West Enlightenment League!”
“Lighten up, Sylvia,” said Pamela.
The old woman stepped into the steamy night. “Got that, you intellectual pharisees?” she called over her shoulder. “I’m quitting — forever!”
Oliver’s innards contracted. His throat grew dry. Sylvia, goddamn it, had a point.
“The sack of Jerusalem!” wailed Winston as the door slammed shut.
“The siege of Belfast!” howled Rainsford.
“The slaughter of the Huguenots!” screamed Meredith.
A point — but that was all Sylvia had, Oliver decided, a mere rational argument, and meanwhile the woods were burning.
“Let’s hear about that ray of hope,” said Pamela.
Barclay strode to the hearth, warming his hands over the roiling flames. “You’ve probably never heard of Pembroke and Flume’s World War Two Reenactment Society, but it’s pretty much what the name implies — a couple of ambitious young impresarios who buy up mothballed B-17s and battleships and such. They hire hungry actors, unemployed merchant sailors, and discharged Navy fliers, then travel around simulating the major encounters between the Axis and the Allies.”
“Last summer, Pembroke and Flume put on their version of Rommel’s Africa campaign, substituting the Arizona desert for Tunisia,” said Winston, joining Barclay by the fire. “The winter before, they did the Ardennes counteroffensive in the Catskills. This year, as it happens, is the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Midway, so they’ve got a Hollywood crew working up on Martha’s Vineyard, reconstructing the entire base out of Styro-foam and plywood. On August first, dozens of classic Japanese warplanes will take off from three-quarter-scale fiberglass facsimiles of the carriers Akagi, Soryu, Hiryu, and Kaga, then bomb the base to smithereens. The next day, all four Jap flattops will be sunk by a squadron of dive bombers from the vintage American carrier Enterprise — the pride of Pembroke and Flume’s collection.”
“Which is actually something of a cheat,” said Barclay. “The Yorktown and the Hornet also sent planes, but Pembroke and Flume are operating on a budget. On the other hand, they do use live bombs. The audience gets its money’s worth.”
“Bread and circuses,” said Winston, sneering. “Only in late-capitalist America, eh?”
“The relevant fact is this: once they’re done with Midway, Pembroke and Flume have no immediate prospects,” said Barclay. “They’ll be eager to let us hire ’em.”
“Hire ’em to do what?” asked Meredith.
“Restage the battle all over again — with fresh ammunition. Between their dive bombers and their torpedo planes, we’re pretty sure they can deliver enough TNT to scuttle Van Horne’s cargo.”
A quick, delicious thrill shot through Oliver as, rising from his meridienne daybed, he marched across the Aubusson carpet to the bust of Darwin. He liked this Midway business. He liked it very much. “What’ll they charge us?”
“They quoted a few rough figures at lunch,” said Winston, scanning a ragged 3X5 card. “Salaries, food, gasoline, bombs, lawyers, insurance riders…”
“And the bottom line?”
“Gimme a minute.” Winston’s index finger danced along the keyboard of his pocket calculator. “Sixteen million, two hundred and twenty thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Think we can get ’em down to fifteen?” asked Oliver, sliding his thumb across the marble furrows of Darwin’s frown. Not that it mattered. If his sister could squander her trust fund collecting Abraham Lincoln memorabilia and his brother could piss away his making cornball biographical movies about major-league baseball stars, Oliver was not about to balk at financing so worthy a project as this.
“Damn good chance of it,” Winston replied. “I mean, these clowns really need us. They practically lost their shirts on Pearl Harbor.”
July 28.
Midnight. Latitude: 30°6'N. Longitude: 22°12'W. Course: 015. Speed: 6 knots. Wind: 4 on the Beaufort. Heading north across the Cape Verde Abyssal Plain, the Canaries to starboard, the Azores dead ahead, Ursa Minor directly above.
This afternoon, in preparation for the blood transfer, we tried piercing His right carotid artery with a series of interconnected chicksans — “the world’s biggest hypodermic needle,” as Crock O’Connor put it. A disaster. Ten feet below the epidermis, He becomes hard as iron. Easier to rupture a football with a banana.
Assuming there’s no mutiny in the meantime, we’ll try again tomorrow.
You think I’m kidding about a mutiny, Popeye? I’m not.
Something strange is happening aboard the Carpco Valparaíso. Every time Bud Ramsey organizes a poker game, one of the players cheats and the whole affair turns into a bloody brawl. Graffiti’s been appearing on the bulkheads faster than I can order it sandblasted away: JESUS IS COMING IN HIS PANTS, and worse.
(I’m not a religious man, but I won’t have that kind of crap on my ship.) The deckies are constantly smoking near the cargo bays, thus breaking the first rule of oil-tanker safety.
Marbles Rafferty informs me that not an hour goes by without somebody pounding on his door to report a theft. Wallets, cameras, radios, knives.
I told our bos’n, Eddie Wheatstone, he’d either learn to hold his liquor or I’d clap him in irons. So this morning, what does the idiot do? Gets roaring drunk and smashes up the rec-room pinball machine, thereby obliging me to jam his ass in the brig.