The Ghost From the Grand Banks and the Deep Range

  “Something very simple; we’ll use a really hi-tech approach.

  “Don’t tell anyone yet—but we’re going to bring the Titanic up with rockets.”

  25

  JASON JUNIOR

  There were times when the International Seabed Authority’s deputy director (Atlantic) had no official duties, because both halves of the Titanic operation were proceeding smoothly. But Jason Bradley was not the sort of man who enjoyed inaction.

  Because he did not have to worry about tenure—the income on his investments was several times his ISA salary—he regarded himself as very much a free agent. Others might be trapped in their little boxes on the authority’s organization chart; Jason Bradley roved at will, visiting any departments that looked interesting. Sometimes he informed the D.G., sometimes not. And usually he was welcomed, because his fame had spread before him, and other department heads regarded him more as an exotic visitor than a rival.

  The other four deputy directors (Pacific, Indian, Antarctic, Arctic) all seemed willing enough to show him what was happening in their respective ocean empires. They were, of course, now united against a common enemy—the global rise in the sea level. After more than a decade of often acrimonious argument, it was now agreed that this rise was between one and two centimeters a year.

  Bluepeace and other environmental groups put the blame on man; the scientists were not so sure. It was true that the billions of tons of CO2 from thermal power plants and automobiles made some contribution to the notorious “Greenhouse Effect,” but Mother Nature might still be the principal culprit; mankind’s most heroic efforts could not match the pollution produced by one large volcano. All these arguments sounded very academic to peoples whose homes might cease to exist within their own lifetimes.

  ISA chief scientist Franz Zwicker was widely regarded as the world’s leading oceanographer—an opinion he made little effort to discourage. The first item most visitors noticed when entering his office was the Time magazine cover, with its caption “Admiral of the Ocean Sea.” And no visitor escaped without a lecture, or at least a commercial, for Operation NEPTUNE.

  “It’s a scandal,” Zwicker was fond of saying. “We have photo coverage of the Moon and Mars showing everything down to the size of a small house—but most of our planet is still completely unknown! They’re spending billions to map the human genome, in the hope of triggering advances in medicine—someday. I don’t doubt it; but mapping the seabed down to one-meter resolution would pay off immediately. Why, with camera and magnetometer we’d locate all the wrecks that have ever happened, since men started to build ships!”

  To those who accused him of being a monomaniac, he was fond of giving Edward Teller’s famous reply: “That’s simply not true. I have several monomanias.”

  There was no doubt, however, that Operation NEPTUNE was the dominant one, and after some months’ exposure to Zwicker, Bradley had begun to share it—at least when he was not preoccupied with Titanic.

  The result, after months of brainstorming and gigabytes of CADCAMing, was Experimental Long-Range Autonomous Surveyor Mark I. The official acronym ELRAS survived only about a week; then, overnight, it was superseded. . . .

  • • •

  “He doesn’t look much like his father,” said Roy Emerson.

  Bradley was getting rather tired of the joke, though for reasons which none of his colleagues—except the director-general—could have known. But he usually managed a sickly grin when displaying the lab’s latest wonder to VVIPs. Mere VIPs were handled by the deputy director, Public Relations.

  “No one will believe he’s not named after me, but it’s true. By pure coincidence, the U.S. Navy robot that made the first reconnaissance inside Titanic was called Jason Junior. So I’m afraid the name’s stuck.

  “But ISA’s J.J. is very much more sophisticated—and completely independent. It can operate by itself, for days—or weeks—without any human intervention. Not like the first J.J., which was controlled through a cable; someone described it as a puppy on a leash. Well, we’ve slipped the leash; this J.J. can go hunting over all the world’s ocean beds, sniffing at anything that looks interesting.”

  Jason Junior was not much larger than a man, and was shaped like a fat torpedo, with forward- and downward-viewing cameras. Main propulsion was provided by a single multibladed fan, and several small swivel jets gave attitude control. There were various streamlined bulges housing instruments, but none of the external manipulators found on most ROVs.

  “What, no hands?” said Emerson.

  “Doesn’t need them—so we have a much cleaner design, with more speed and range. J.J.’s purely a surveyor; we can always go back later and look at anything interesting he finds on the seabed. Or under it, with his magnetometer and sonar.”

  Emerson was impressed; this was the sort of machine that appealed to his gadgeteering instincts. The short-lived fame that the Wave Wiper had brought him had long ago evaporated—though not, fortunately, the wealth that came with it.

  He was, it seemed, a one-idea man; later inventions had all proved failures, and his well-publicized experiment to drop microspheres down to the Titanic in a hollow, air-filled tube had been an embarrassing debacle. Emerson’s “hole in the sea” stubbornly refused to stay open; the descending spheres clogged it halfway, unless the flow was so small as to be useless.

  The Parkinsons were quite upset, and had made poor Emerson feel uncomfortable at the last board meetings in ways that the English upper class had long perfected; for a few weeks, even his good friend Rupert had been distinctly cool.

  But much worse was to come. A satirical Washington cartoonist had created a crazy “Thomas Alva Emerson” whose zany inventions would have put Rube Goldberg to shame. They had begun with the motorized zipper and proceeded via the digital toothbrush to the solar-powered pacemaker. By the time it had reached Braille speedometers for blind motorists, Roy Emerson had consulted his lawyer.

  “Winning a libel action against a network,” said Joe Wickram, “is about as easy as writing the Lord’s Prayer on a rice grain with a felt pen. The defendant will plead fair comment, public interest, and quote at great length from the Bill of Rights. Of course,” he added hopefully, “I’ll be very happy to have a crack at it. I’ve always wanted to argue a case before the Supreme Court.”

  Very sensibly, Emerson had declined the offer, and at least something good had come out of the attack. The Parkinsons, to a man—and woman—felt it was unfair, and had rallied around him. Though they no longer took his engineering suggestions very seriously, they encouraged him to go on fact-finding missions like this one.

  The authority’s modest research and development center in Jamaica had no secrets, and was open to everybody. It was—in theory, at least—an impartial advisor to all who had dealings with the sea. The Parkinson and Nippon-Turner groups were now far and away the most publicly visible of these, and paid frequent visits to get advice on their own operations—and if possible, to check on the competition. They were careful to avoid scheduling conflicts, but sometimes there were slip-ups and polite “Fancy meeting you here!” exchanges. If Roy Emerson was not mistaken, he had noticed one of Kato’s people in the departure lounge of Kingston Airport, just as he was arriving.

  ISA, of course, was perfectly well aware of these undercurrents, and did its best to exploit them. Franz Zwicker was particularly adept at plugging his own projects—and getting other people to pay for them. Bradley was glad to cooperate, especially where J.J. was concerned, and was equally adept at giving little pep talks and handing out glossy brochures on Operation NEPTUNE.

  “. . . Once the software’s been perfected,” Bradley told Emerson, “so that he can avoid obstacles and deal with emergency situations, we’ll let him loose. He’ll be able to map the seabed in greater detail than anyone’s ever done before. When the job’s finished, he’ll surface and we’ll pick him up, recharge his batteries, and download his data. Then off he’ll go again.”

  “Suppose
he meets the great white shark?”

  “We’ve even looked into that. Sharks seldom attack anything unfamiliar, and J.J. certainly doesn’t look very appetizing. And his sonar and electromagnetic emissions will scare away most predators.”

  “Where do you plan to test him—and when?”

  “Starting next month, on some well-mapped local sites. Then out to the Continental Shelf. And then—up to the Grand Banks.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find much new around Titanic. Both sections have been photographed down to the square millimeter.”

  “That’s true; we’re not really interested in them. But J.J. can probe at least twenty meters below the seabed—and no one’s ever done that for the debris field. God knows what’s still buried there. Even if we don’t find anything exciting, it will show J.J.’s capabilities—and give a big boost to the project. I’m going up to Explorer next week to make arrangements. It’s ages since I was aboard her—and Parky—Rupert—says he has something to show me.”

  “He has indeed,” said Emerson with a grin. “I shouldn’t tell you this—but we’ve found the real treasure of the Titanic. Exactly where it was supposed to be.”

  26

  THE MEDICI GOBLET

  I wonder if you realize,” Bradley shouted, to make himself heard above the roar and rattle of machinery, “what a bargain you’ve got. She cost almost a quarter billion to build—and that was back when a billion dollars was real money.”

  Rupert Parkinson was wearing an immaculate yachtsman’s outfit which, especially when crowned by a hard hat, seemed a little out of place down here beside Glomar Explorer’s moon pool. The oily rectangle of water—larger than a tennis court—was surrounded by heavy salvage and handling equipment, much of it showing its age. Everywhere there were signs of hasty repairs, dabs of anticorrosion paint, and ominous notices saying OUT OF ORDER. Yet enough seemed to be working; Parkinson claimed they were actually ahead of schedule.

  It’s hard to believe, Bradley told himself, that it’s almost thirty-five years since I stood here, looking down into this same black rectangle of water. I don’t feel thirty-five years older . . . but I don’t remember much about the callow youngster who’d just signed up for his first big job. Certainly he could never have dreamed of the one I’m holding down now.

  It had turned out better than he had expected. After decades of battling with U.N. lawyers and a whole alphabet stew of government departments and environmental authorities, Bradley was learning that they were a necessary evil.

  The Wild West days of the sea were over. There had been a brief time when there was very little law below a hundred fathoms; now he was sheriff, and, rather to his surprise, he was beginning to enjoy it.

  One sign of his new status—some of his old colleagues called it “conversion”—was the framed certificate from Bluepeace he now had hanging on the office wall. It was right beside the photo presented to him years ago by the famous extinguisher of oil-rig fires, “Red” Adair. That bore the inscription: “Jason—isn’t it great not to be bothered by life-insurance salesmen? Best wishes—Red.”

  The Bluepeace citation was somewhat more dignified:

  TO JASON BRADLEY—IN RECOGNITION OF YOUR HUMANE TREATMENT OF A UNIQUE CREATURE, OCTOPUS GIGANTEUS VERRILL

  At least once a month Bradley would leave his office and fly to Newfoundland—a province that was once more living up to its name. Since operations had started, more and more of world attention had been turned toward the drama being played out on the Grand Banks. The countdown to 2012 had begun, and bets were already being placed on the winner of “The Race for the Titanic.”

  And there was another focus of interest, this time a morbid one. . . .

  “What annoys me,” said Parkinson, as they left the noisy and clamorous chaos of the moon pool, “are the ghouls who keep asking: ‘Have you found any bodies yet?’ ”

  “I’m always getting the same question. One day I’ll answer: ‘Yes—you’re the first.’ ”

  Parkinson laughed.

  “Must try that myself. But here’s the answer I give. You know that we’re still finding boots and shoes lying on the seabed—in pairs, a few centimeters apart? Usually they’re cheap and well worn, but last month we came across a beautiful example of the best English leatherwork. Looks as if they’re straight from the cobbler—you can still read the label that says ‘By Appointment to His Majesty.’ Obviously one of the first-class passengers. . . .

  “I’ve put them in a glass case in my office, and when I’m asked about bodies I point to them and say: ‘Look—not even a scrap of bone left inside. It’s a hungry world down there. The leather would have gone too, if it wasn’t for the tannic acid.’ That shuts them up very quickly.”

  Glomar Explorer had not been designed for gracious living, but Rupert Parkinson had managed to transform one of the aft staterooms, just below the helipad, into a fair imitation of a luxury hotel suite. It reminded Bradley of their first meeting, back in Piccadilly—ages ago, it now seemed. The room contained one item, however, which was more than a little out of place in such surroundings.

  It was a wooden chest, about a meter high, and it appeared almost new. But as he approached, Bradley recognized a familiar and unmistakable odor—the metallic tang of iodine, proof of long immersion in the sea. Some diver—was it Cousteau?—had once used the phrase “The scent of treasure.” Here it was, hanging in the air—and setting the blood pounding in his veins.

  “Congratulations, Rupert. So you’ve got into Great Grandfather’s suite.”

  “Yes. Two of the Deep ROVs entered a week ago and did a preliminary survey. This is the first item they brought out.”

  The chest still displayed, in stenciled lettering unfaded after a century in the abyss, a somewhat baffling inscription:

  BROKEN ORANGE PEKOE

  UPPER GLENCAIRN ESTATE

  MATAKELLE

  Parkinson raised the lid, almost reverently, and then drew aside the sheet of metal foil beneath it.

  “Standard eighty-pound Ceylon tea chest,” he said. “It happened to be the right size, so they simply repacked it. And I’d no idea they used aluminum foil, back in 1912! Of course, the B.O.P. wouldn’t fetch a very good price at Colombo auction now—but it did its job. Admirably.”

  With a piece of stiff cardboard, Parkinson delicately cleared away the top layer of the soggy black mess; he looked, Bradley thought, exactly like an underwater archaeologist extracting a fragment of pottery from the seabed. This, however, was not twenty-five-century-old Greek amphora, but something far more sophisticated.

  “The Medici Goblet,” Parkinson whispered almost reverently. “No one has seen it for a hundred years; no one ever expected to see it again.”

  He exposed only the upper few inches, but that was enough to show a circle of glass inside which multicolored threads were embedded in a complex design.

  “We won’t remove it until we’re on land,” said Parkinson, “but this is what it looks like.”

  He opened a typical coffee-table art book, bearing the title Glories of Venetian Glass. The full-page photo showed what at first sight looked like a glittering fountain, frozen in midair.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Bradley, after a few seconds of wide-eyed astonishment. “How could anyone actually drink from it? More to the point, how could anyone make it?”

  “Good questions. First of all, it’s purely ornamental—intended to be looked at, not used. A perfect example of Wilde’s dictum: ‘All art is quite useless.’

  “And I wish I could answer your second question. We just don’t know. Oh, of course we can guess at some of the techniques used—but how did the glassblower make those curlicues intertwine? And look at the way those little spheres are nested one inside the other! If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I’d have sworn that some of these pieces could only have been assembled in zero gravity.”

  “So that’s why Parkinson’s booked space on Skylab 3.”

  “What a ridiculous
rumor; not worth contradicting.”

  “Roy Emerson told me he was looking forward to his first trip into space . . . and setting up a weightless lab.”

  “I’ll fax Roy a polite note, telling him to keep his bloody mouth shut. But since you’ve raised the subject—yes, we think there are possibilities for zero-gee glassblowing. It may not start a revolution in the industry, like float glass back in the last century—but it’s worth a try.”

  “This probably isn’t a polite question, but how much is this goblet worth?”

  “I assume you’re not asking in your official capacity, so I won’t give a figure I’d care to put in a company report. Anyway, you know how crazy the art business is—more ups and downs than the stock market! Look at those late twentieth-century megadollar daubs you can’t give away now. And in this case there’s the history of the piece—how can you put a value on that?”

  “Make a guess.”

  “I’d be very disappointed at anything less than fifty M.”

  Bradley whistled.

  “And how much more is down there?”

  “Lots. Here’s the complete listing, prepared for the exhibition the Smithsonian had planned. Is planning—just a hundred years late.”

  There were more than forty items on the list, all with highly technical Italianate descriptions. About half had question marks beside them.

  “Bit of a mystery here,” said Parkinson. “Twenty-two of the pieces are missing—but we know they were aboard, and we’re sure G.G. had them in his suite, because he complained about the space they were taking up—he couldn’t throw a party.”

  “So—going to blame the French again?”

  It was an old joke, and rather a bitter one. Some of the French expeditions to the wreck, in the years following its 1985 discovery, had done considerable damage while attempting to recover artifacts. Ballard and his associates had never forgiven them.

  “No. I guess they’ve a pretty good alibi; we’re definitely the first inside. My theory is that G.G. had them moved out into an adjoining suite or corridor—I’m sure they’re not far away—we’ll find them sooner or later.”