“I will say this,” Santisillia was saying. “I’ve enjoyed our conversation. And now, if you’ll come out on deck with me—” He got to his feet.
Mr. Goodman leaned forward obediently, but Peter Wagner put his arm in front of him, blocking him. “Why?” he said.
“We must send you on your way, I’m afraid,” Santisillia said. He smiled, apologetic. “To dispose of you here, if we mean to use the boat afterward—” He shrugged.
“Do it later,” Peter Wagner said. His mind raced, obedient to his chest. “You’re right about our problem, our technological inertia, our generic traditionalism. I do want to know if the boat will run.”
Santisillia smiled and shook his head. “I don’t believe you,” he said, “but needless to say, you don’t expect me to.” He put on his dark glasses, withdrawing from humanity like a visiting god. Softly, as if talking to himself, moving helplessly through old and familiar arguments, yet detached and indifferent, in a part of his mind—a professional killer with a deadly flaw, a weakness for language—he said, “How the foolish heart flails to live one moment longer! Mine too, you understand. But here we are, caught in these absurdities, creature against creature, victims of the world’s most ancient rule. It would be pleasant, God knows, to be locked away safe from reality, like a doll in a toychest, a philosopher with his book. But here we are, for whatever reasons, guilty volunteers in the universal slaughter. What use to whine?” He brushed his hand across his forehead and compressed his lips. He continued: “I might have fled away to human goodness like the Eskimo, living in bare wastes where aggression has no use. So might you, of course. I might have crouched like an orphan in the safety of, for instance, a comfortable professorship. But for better or worse, as you see, I’ve made my choice. Not that I mean to defend myself. The bullet hole is no less red for my remorse. But we’re familiar with the cunning of your Captain. Any slip we make will turn the tables in an instant. He’s established the rules; we obey them.” He was silent a moment, as if interested in an answer from the audience. At last he said, “Get up.”
Peter Wagner closed his fingers on Jane’s hand, pulling his arm free.
Perhaps it frightened her. “Please,” she cried out, helping Peter Wagner’s plan without knowing it, “what’s the difference, just a few more minutes?”
“What the hell,” Dancer said, weakening.
After a moment, Santisillia nodded. “All right. As you wish.” He smiled as if slightly amused by his own sententiousness, and the smile was the most charming, the most boyish he’d given them yet. He patted the tiger-striped scarf at his neck, then lifted his left foot, preparing to stamp, the signal to Mr. Nit. He was still smiling, but again suspicion crossed his face, some sixth sense that, however absurdly, Peter Wagner half wished the man would pay attention to. Santisillia was one of the artistocrats, a beautiful creature whom it seemed bestial to waste. He would be a king if this were Africa, or the world were sane. Peter Wagner tensed, balanced like a cat.
The foot went down. Boom. A split second later Peter Wagner threw out both his arms and slammed them into the bellies of the Indomitable’s crew, throwing them off balance on the wooden bunk. Their feet came up off the metal floor, and the same instant Santisillia raised the machine gun to fire, but too late. His face brightened like a dark cloud with lightning behind it.
“Aw, shit!” Dancer said, like a frustrated child, and fell.
Captain Fist, working from some script of his own, had found a pistol somewhere and—suddenly tipped onto his back—was shooting straight up.
Jane stared, mouth wide open, at the blacks, then screamed.
~ ~ ~
Sally Abbott put the book down, indignant, then on second thought picked it up again, staring crossly at the next words, “Chapter 9,” not yet persuaded to read on. It was ridiculous, killing those blacks like that, when they’d only a minute ago been introduced. It was probably more or less true to life—“Them that has gets,” as the saying goes, even them that has relatively little, like the horrible Captain or her James. Nevertheless, she resented this turn for the worse things had taken—resented it partly, she would readily admit, because her own position in the scheme of things was like that of the people on the Militant. It was wrong for books to make fun of the oppressed, or to show them being beaten without a struggle. Of course it was mainly Peter Wagner’s story, the age-old story of the man who in his heart of hearts takes no side. But even so …
She was extremely tired, though not sleepy. There was a barely perceptible ringing in her ears, and she had a curious sense of being terribly alone, as if hovering far out in space. It was long after midnight, and except for the dim lights glowing in her room, there was probably not a light on for miles and miles. Again her nephew Richard came into her mind, it was difficult to say why, except for this: at some point in her reading—she had no idea when—she had begun to give Peter Wagner her nephew’s features. There was really no similarity between them, unless, perhaps, it was the fact that both of them were victims, and tragically weak.
If it hadn’t been for his suicide, you might hardly have known it, in Richard’s case. She, Sally Abbott, was probably the only relative who knew the whole story. She remembered his standing in her dining room one night, three or four years after Horace had died. Richard was in his twenties. She’d been toying at the time with the idea of starting her antique business, and on the dining-room table she had silver things laid out—a friend of Estelle’s had sent her a small box of odds and ends from London: a silver teapot with a carved ivory handle, cut-glass salt shakers with silver tops, knives and forks, little spoons, a pen set, an ornate silver dish. She’d just finished polishing them when Richard arrived. She was planning a kind of experiment: see how much mark-up the trade would bear, then decide on whether or not to go into the business. She’d offered him a drink—he always accepted—and invited him to come in and see.
He stood bent at the waist, looking excitedly from object to object, his eyes lighted up as if she’d shown him a pirate’s treasure. “Aunt Sally,” he’d said, “this is fantastic. Look! Is this really right?” He picked up a fork and the tag that had come with it. £1. “You can sell it for ten dollars easy—maybe twenty!”
She’d laughed. “We’ll see,” she said.
He shook his head in disbelief, and the light from the chandelier flickered in his hair. “Boy,” he said, “I’d buy it myself!”
“How much?” she said.
He grinned. “Two pounds?”
“No siree!” she said, and laughed, “but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fill your glass.”
“Done!” he said, and held it out to her. His hand was large, like James’.
Richard had been drinking too much in those days, and no wonder: the Flynn girl had thrown him over; and Sally had not fully approved of herself for offering him more. But she had no real choice. He was her guest, after all, and he was a grown man with a house of his own—he’d been living for some while in the house across the road and down the mountain from his father’s. Even when he’d had a bit too much, he was never unpleasant or a careless driver. In the kitchen, fixing his Canadian Club and one for herself, she’d thought (it was bitterly ironic, as things turned out) how happy they all were, in spite of everything. She was used to her life as a widow now, in some ways even enjoying it, though the weight was always there. She was looking forward to this new adventure. Who could say? She might do well at it! She’d been annoyed that Richard had refused to go to college, but it seemed it had all been for the best, really. He was making good money at his stables job, and he was working for his father less and less. That was what mattered most to him, independence from his father, and heaven knew she couldn’t blame him. Selfishly speaking, she’d been glad to have him near, able to drop in on her—and able to keep an eye on Ginny, who was then in her teens. She put away the ice-tray, closed the refrig, picked up the glasses, and started for the dining room. In the doorway, she stopped in her tracks.
He was holding a long-playing record she’d left on the buffet when she was straightening up. It had been Horace’s favorite, The Afternoon of a Faun, and a pang of memory had made her leave it out, here in the dining room where she’d see it and remember to play it. Richard stood motionless, drained of all color—it was as if someone had slapped him—and she remembered only now that it was the record she too, the Flynn girl, had always chosen first. “Oh, Richard!” she said, heart shaking with pity, and she rushed to him, spilling the drinks as she went, and caught him in her arms, still holding the drinks, and pressed her head to his chest. “Oh Richard, I’m so sorry!” They clung to each other like children and wept. How she’d loved that boy! There was nothing in this world …
It lasted only a few minutes. He gave a little laugh, drawing away from her, shaking his head and wiping his eyes, embarrassed. Head tipped, full of sorrow, she watched him compose himself, then handed him his drink.
“Richard, whatever happened between you two?” she said.
He smiled as if in panic, and for an instant it seemed he might cry again. Then he said, falsely brave, “I guess she found out about my faults.” He smiled.
“Fiddlesticks,” she said. “You have no faults.”
“Ah, Aunt Sally,” he said, “do I have faults!”
She’d pressed him no further, then or at any other time. She knew well enough what his fault was: cowardice. Or perhaps she should say half-legitimate fear of his father. He should have run away with the girl, of course. But no. “Soon,” he kept saying. Even Horace had hinted that he was stalling too long; James was already half onto them, suspicious as a hen. “In the spring,” Richard said, and seemed to mean it.
Looking around her bedroom now, the only light still on for miles, she had a sudden sense of how it must have been for him that final night, drinking in his kitchen, the Flynn girl married to another man, his Uncle Horace dead, Richard utterly alone in the only lighted room (or so it must have seemed) on the mountain. And now, abruptly, she saw in her mind’s eye James’ twelve gauge shotgun aimed at her door, and her heart, for a moment, beat more fiercely. “You’ll pay for this, James,” she said aloud. “All of it.”
She closed her eyes to see if she was sleepy, felt fear shoot through her, a sensation like falling. Though she’d lost all faith in it, she decided again on her novel.
9
CHAINS
The east was pink.
It was only as Mr. Nit turned the crank that he realized he had perhaps made a slight miscalculation. He had wired the eels to the starter box, not to some solid metal bulkhead. It was too late now: the stage was set; the thump had come, his cue. The wooden paddle banged the eels on the nose and with a terrible hiss the charge went up the wire, burning it away like a lightning-fast fuse, and into the angle of starter wires—they went up like tissue-paper Chinese fireworks, though only the Indian was in the engine room to see it, standing in bilgewater nearly to his knees, so that if he saw it he never got to think about it. Mr. Nit scrambled down from his wooden stool quickly and ran to the engine room to see what his work had done. The Indian was floating, head down. There was nothing left in the starter box but melted plastic and ashes. On some odd impulse, an inclination toward neatness, he pulled the Indian up out of the water and draped him over the engine frame, then started up the ladder and met Peter Wagner coming down, face white as snow.
“Did we get them?” he said at the same time Peter Wagner said, “Where’s the Indian?” They started over, and again both spoke at once, like clowns in some old-as-the-dinosaurs routine, so Peter Wagner jumped past him and looked through the engine room door. “He’s dead all right,” he said, a sort of croak. He would come to see later that he’d judged too quickly, they’d all judged too quickly; but
Sally Abbott widened her eyes in disbelief, and read the lines again:
“He’s dead all right,” he said, a sort of croak. He would come to see later that he’d judged too quickly, they’d all judged too quickly; but he believed it for the moment and started back away from the door, then stopped. He had seen the remains of the starter box. His whole face twitched. Mr. Nit, on the chance that Peter Wagner had gone mad, clambered through the hatch.
In the Captain’s cabin the black called Dancer was motionless on his knees, like a Muslim praying. His toes pointed inward, his heels outward, his arms were flung out, and the right side of his face lay flat on the floor, one earring glittering. Santisillia sat where he’d fallen, in the Captain’s chair, the machine gun on the floor beside him. His eyes were open, just slits.
“Whooey!” Mr. Nit said excitedly. He squatted down and gingerly picked the still burning cigarette from between Dancer’s fingers.
Captain Fist stood over Santisillia, watching him as men of experience watch dead snakes. “Get ’em out of here,” Captain Fist said hoarsely. “Throw ’em overboard, and then get those engines running.”
Mr. Nit paid no attention, marveling at his work, walking slowly around and around it, so the old man waved at Jane and Mr. Goodman, sitting as if in suspended animation on the bunk.
“You hear me?” Captain Fist bellowed.
“Let them be,” Peter Wagner said, leaning on the doorframe. “It’s impossible to get the engines running. The wires are burned out.”
Captain Fist twisted up his horrible face to look at Peter Wagner. “Then we’re ruined?” he said.
“There’s still the Militant,” Peter Wagner said.
Captain Fist nodded, stroking his chin, then smiled, showing his tooth-cracks. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He beckoned Mr. Goodman and Jane. They stared through him. He bent down, waved his hands in front of their faces. “What’s the matter with you people?” he said. He glanced at Peter Wagner, full of holy indignation. “What’s the matter with these people?”
Peter Wagner sighed. He was limp, drained of feeling.
The Captain’s fingers began clawing the air and he felt around him for his cane. It lay on the floor. He saw it at last and stooped for it. Then he felt better. “Stupidity,” he said. “Stupid sentimentality. It was us or them.”
“They know that,” Peter Wagner said.
“But they don’t accept it. Hah!” He was so outraged his voice became a hiss. “They defy nature. They deny reality. It’s stupidity! I won’t have it!” He raised his cane as if to hit them.
Peter Wagner shrugged. He wanted to sit down, but the chair was occupied and he was very tired, too tired to cross to the bunk. “They’re unhappy,” he said. “They don’t want to live. Why should they?”
The Captain was angrier than ever, red as a volcano-top. “They should try to be more philosophical. Did I make the world? Did I create injustice? Did I ask these people to come steal my ship and get their fat black asses electrified?” He raised one arm and shook his finger, like a preacher. “‘For we are here as on a darkling plain, swept by confused alarums of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.’ Matthew Arnold. You see? I know about these things.” He spit as he spoke, and Peter Wagner wiped his hand across his cheek indifferently. “Now let’s get out of here,” Captain Fist said. “The sooner we’re rid of these dead people the better.” He snatched up Santisillia’s machine gun and pushed past Peter Wagner and out onto the bridge. “To the Militant!” he said, and pointed, like Washington in the boat, but hunched over. He limped to the rail, climbed over it, and dropped awkwardly to the Militant’s deck. He landed loud as a box of bolts, and swore. Mr. Nit followed. “What about my eels?” he said. Fist ignored him. “Dusky,” Fist called. “Come on out! I know you’re here! You haven’t got a chance!”
No answer.
Peter Wagner strained to take some action, but it was as if his mind had lost contact with his muscles. I’m sorry, he thought, too tired to speak. He had meant to be no one’s enemy. But that was the structure of the universe: waves, particles in random collision, Platonists and Bergsonians, alphas and omegas. The lesson of what’s-his-name??
?s guppies. “All life is struggle,” someone had told him so many suicides ago that it seemed by now some earlier incarnation. He had not fully understood it at the time; even in his misery he’d taken the mildly optimistic view. But he knew now about Time and Space; understood now the hideous implications of the fact that matter is motion, and God just an atom with a question. Stasis is nothingness; refuse an atom the time to establish its atomic rhythm, its molecule, and the universe would vanish, click, like that. But on the other hand all motion is pain, the ball striking out at the violent bat, and all rhythmical motion is tedium. (There were certain women to whom he had made certain promises, not in so many words; there were certain bills he had allowed to mount up, and certain violent mechanisms …) At the Captain’s party, Jane had put her hand very gently on his leg. He’d been stoned. So was she. Two brute mechanisms, yes yes, yes.
He was startled awake by a clicking sound, and when he looked around the cabin in alarm he discovered he was snapping his fingers. Jane sat as before, hugging herself, staring. Mr. Goodman, beside her, had his hands up, covering his face. The dead—or rather what he thought were the dead—were as before. And then the engine of the Militant started up.
With the growing rumble, he rose to something approaching full consciousness. The old bastard would strand all three of them without a second thought if he didn’t get Jane and Mr. Goodman to the Militant. He pulled at Mr. Goodman’s arms, and when the man neither came nor resisted, Peter Wagner turned around, crouched, and pulled him up onto his back. He squeezed through the cabin door with him and staggered down the bridge to the rail, then dropped him like a sandbag to the Militant’s deck.