Imperial Earth

  After the lake, there came a beautiful expanse of grass, smooth and flat as a billiard table. Though there were no warning signs, not a single person was walking on it, and all the animals avoided it with scrupulous care. Duncan's fellow passenger twisted around in his seat and called over his shoulder: "They say the New Yorkers are getting more tolerant. Last man to walk on that wasn't lynched on the spot — they gave him a choice between gas and electrocution." Duncan presumed he was joking, but didn't pursue the matter; this back-to-back seating was not good for conversation.

  From time to time Bill van Hyatt, who was riding — quite expertly — a beautiful cream-colored pony, came up to him to deliver snippets of information. Most of these were welcome, even though not always necessary. Of all Man's cities, New York was still the most famous — the only one where all exiles, everywhere in the Solar System, would feel at home. Now that they were clear of the smaller trees, it was possible to see many of the midtown landmarks — not only the dominating finger of the Empire State Building, but the slowly orbiting Grand Central Mobile, the shining slab of the Old United Nations, the great terraced pyramid of Mount Rockefeller spanning half the island from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River... Duncan had no difficulty recognizing and naming these, but the more distant structures to the east and west were strange to him. That big golden dome over in — was it New Jersey? — was most peculiar, but Duncan had grown a little tired of exposing his ignorance and was determined to ask no more nonessential questions. He could always look up the guidebooks later.

  They reached Columbus Circle and started climbing the ramp up to the bridge over the Grand Canal that now bisected Manhattan. On the level below, bikes, trikes, and passenger capsules were racing silently back and forth; and on the level below them, the famous Checker Gondolas were shuttling between the East River and the Hudson. Duncan was surprised to see such heavy traffic so far north of the city area, but guessed it was almost all recreational or tourist.

  There was a brief pause at an Eighth Avenue comfort station for the benefit of the horses and miniphants — which, like all herbivores, had low-efficiency, rapid-turnover conversion systems. Some of the passengers also took advantage of the stop, even though the facilities were not intended for them. Remembering his contretemps at Mount Vernon, Duncan tried to imagine what the New York streets must have been like in the days when horses provided the only transportation, but failed and thankfully abandoned the attempt.

  Now they were skirting the northern flank of Mount Rockefeller, which towered two hundred and fifty meters above them —challenging the Empire State Building in altitude and completely eclipsing it in bulk. With the exception of a few dams and the Great Wall of China — hardly a fair comparison — it was the largest single structure on Earth. Here had gone all the rubble and debris, all the bricks and concrete, the steel girders and ceramic tiles and bathtubs and TV sets and refrigerators and air conditioners and abandoned automobiles, when the decayed uptown area was finally bulldozed flat in the early twenty-second century. The clean-up had, perhaps, been a little too comprehensive; now the industrial archaeologists were happily mining the mountain for the lost treasures of the past.

  The straggling line of men and animals continued south along the wide, grassy sward of Eighth Avenue, skirting the western face of the huge pyramid. Unlike the southern façade, which was entirely covered by the celebrated hanging gardens of Manhattan, this side was a montage of frescoes, murals, and mosaics. It would never be completed. As fast as one work of art was finished, another would be demolished, not always with the consent of the artist. The west side of Mount Rockefeller was an aesthetic battlefield; it had even been bombed — with cans of red paint. The terraces and stairways of the man-made hill were crowded with sightseers, and on many of the vertical surfaces craftsmen were at work in swinging chairs suspended by cables. Morbidly conscious as he was of terrestrial gravity, Duncan could only look on these courageous artists with awe-struck admiration.

  Nearer ground level, there were hundreds of more informal attempts at expression. Once section of wall, four meters high and fifty long, had been set aside for graffiti, and the public had taken full advantage of the opportunity with crayons, chalk, and spray guns. There was a good deal of cheerful obscenity, but most of the messages were totally meaningless to Duncan. Why, he wondered, should he SUPPORT THE MINIMALIST MANIFESTO? Was it true the KILROY WAS HERE, and if so, why? Did the announcement that COUNCILMAN WILBUR ERICKSON IS A YENTOR convey praise or censure? He brooded over these and similar world-shattering problems all the way south to 44th Street.

  Here, in a small plaza between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, they said good-bye to the horses and miniphants. Duncan's mount gently collapsed in slow motion, so that its riders could step off onto terra firma; then, with equal solemnity, it rose to its feet, gravely saluted them with upraised trunk, and headed back toward its home in the Central Park Zoo. The ride had been an enjoyable experience, and Duncan could imagine few nicer ways of sightseeing, in perfect weather such as this. Nevertheless, he was glad to be back on his own feet again. That gentle swaying had been growing a little monotonous. And although he had been in no real danger, he now knew what the first intimations of seasickness must be like.

  They were now only a few hundred meters from the elevated ribbon of the West Side Highway and the impressive expanse of the Hudson River, blue and flat in the morning sunlight. Never before had Duncan seen so large a body of water at such close quarters. Though it looked calm and peaceful, he found it slightly ominous — even menacing. He was more familiar with the ocean of space than the realm of water, with all its mysteries and monsters; and because of that ignorance, he felt fear.

  There were numerous small villas and cafés and shops along the riverfront, as well as dozens of little docks containing pleasure boats. Although marine transport had been virtually extinct for more than two centuries, water still had an irresistible fascination for a large part of the human race. Even now, a garishly painted paddleboat, loaded with sightseers, was skirting the New Jersey shore. Duncan wondered if it was a genuine antique, or a modern reconstruction.

  The three-masted man-of-war with the gilded figurehead could not possibly be the real thing — it was much too new and had obviously never gone to sea. But moored at a dock close to it was the scarred yet still beautifully streamlined hull of a sailing ship which, Duncan guessed, might have been launched in the early twentieth century. He looked at it with awe, savoring the knowledge that it had already finished its career before the first ships of space lifted from Earth.

  Boss did not give them an opportunity to linger over these relics; he was heading toward an enormous, translucent half-cylinder lying along more than three hundred meters of the shoreline. It appeared to be a makeshift, temporary structure, quite out of keeping — in scale and appearance — with the careful good taste of everything around it.

  And now, as they approached this peculiar building, Duncan became aware of a sudden change in the behavior of his companions. All the way from the park they had been chattering and laughing, completely relaxed and enjoying themselves on this beautiful summer day. Quite abruptly, it seemed as if a cloud had passed across the face of the sun; all laughter, and almost all talking, had suddenly ceased. Very obviously, they knew something that he did not, yet he was reluctant to disturb the mood of solemn silence by asking naïve questions.

  They entered a small auxiliary building, so much like an airlock that it was easy to imagine that they were going into space. Indeed, it was a kind of airlock, holding rows of protective clothing: oilskins, rubber boots, and — at last! — the hard hats that had been exercising Bill van Hyatt's imagination. Still in that curious expectant hush, with only a few fleeting smile at each other's transformed appearance, they passed through the inner airlock.

  Duncan had expected to see a ship. In this, at least, he was not surprised. But he was completely taken aback by its sheer size; it almost filled the huge structure that surrounded i
t. He knew that, toward the end, oil tankers had become gigantic — but he had no idea that passenger liners had ever grown so huge. And it was obvious from its many portholes and decks that this ship had been build to transport people, not bulk cargo.

  The viewing platform on which they stood was level with the main deck and just ahead of the bridge. To his right, Duncan could see one huge but truncated mast and a businesslike maze of cranes, winches, ventilators, and hatches, all the way up to the prow. Stretching away on the left, toward the ship's hidden stern, was an apparently endless wall of steel, punctuated by hundreds of portholes. Looming high above everything were three huge funnels, almost touching the curved roof of the enclosure. From their spacing, it was obvious that a fourth one was now missing.

  There were many other signs of damage. Windows were shattered, parts of the decking had been torn up, and when he looked down toward the keel, Duncan could see an enormous metal patch, at least a hundred meters long, running just below the waterline.

  Only then did all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Now he understood the awed silence of his companions, and was able to share their emotions of wonder and pity.

  On that day, he had been a boy on a distant world; but he could still remember when, after her three-hundred-and-fifty-year maiden voyage, the Titanic had at last reached New York.

  27

  Ghost From The Grand Banks

  "They never built another one like her; she marked the end of an age — an age of wealth and elegance which was swept away, only two years later, by the first of the World Wars. Oh, they built faster and bigger, in the half century before air travel closed that chapter for all time. But no ship ever again matched the luxury you see around you now. It broke too many hearts when she was lost."

  Duncan could not believe it; he was still in a dream. The magnificent Grand Saloon, with its vast mirrors, gilded columns, and ankle-deep carpet, was opulent beyond anything he had ever imagined, and the sofa into which he was sinking made him almost forget the gravity of Earth. Yet the most incredible fact of all was that everything he saw and touched had been lying for three and a half centuries on the bed of the Atlantic.

  He had not realized that the deep sea was almost as timeless as space. "All the damage," the speaker had explained, "was done on that first morning. When she sake, two and a half hours after the spur of ice ripped open the starboard hull, she went down bow first, almost vertically. Everything loose tumbled forward until it was either stopped by the bulkheads, or else smashed through them. By miraculous good luck — and this tells you how superbly she was built — all three engines remained in place. If they had gone, the hull would have been so badly damaged that we could never have salvaged her..."

  "But once she reached the bottom, three kilometers down, she was safe for centuries. The water there is only two degrees above freezing point; the combination of cold and pressure quenches all decay, inhibits all rust. We've found meat in the refrigerators as fresh as when it left Southampton on April 10, 1912, and everything that was canned or bottled is still in perfect condition."

  "When we'd patched her up — a straightforward job, though it took a year to plug all the holes and reinforce the weak spots — we blasted out the water with the zero-thrust cold rockets the deep-sea salvage people have developed. Naturally, weather conditions were critical; by good luck, there was an ideal forecast for April 15, 2262, so she broke surface three hundred and fifty years to the very day after she sank. Conditions were identical — dead calm, freezing temperature — and you won't believe this, but we had to avoid an iceberg when we started towing!"

  "So we brought her to New York, pumped her full of nitrogen to stop rusting, and slowly dried her out. No problems here — the underwater archaeologists have preserved ships ten times older than Titanic. It's the sheer scale of the job that's taken us fourteen years, and will take us at least ten more. Thousands of pieces of smashed furniture had to be sorted out, hundreds of tons of coal to be moved —almost every lump by hand."

  "And the dead... 158 so far. Only a few people were trapped in the ship. Those in sealed compartments looked as if they had been drowned yesterday. In the sections the fish could reach, there were only bones. We were able to identify several, from the cabin numbers and the White Star Line's records. And that story you've heard is quite true: we found one couple still in each other's arms. They were married — but each to someone else. And the two other partners survived; I wonder if they ever guessed? After three and a half centuries, it doesn't much matter..."

  "Sometimes we're asked — why are you doing this, devoting years of time and millions of solars to salvaging the past? Well, I can give you some down-to-earth, practical reasons. This ship is a part of our history. We can better understand ourselves, and our civilization, when we study her. Someone said that a sunken ship is a time capsule, because it preserves all the artifacts of everyday life, exactly as they were at their last instant of use. And the Titanic was a cross-section of an entire society, at the unique moment before it started to dissolve."

  "We have the stateroom of John Jacob Astor, with all the valuables and personal effects that the richest man of his age was taking to New York. He could have bought the Titanic — a dozen times over. And we have the tool kit that Pat O'Connor carried when he came aboard at Queenstown, hoping to find a better living in a land he was never to see. We even have the five sovereigns he managed to save, after more years of hardship than we can ever imagine."

  "These are the two extremes; between them we have every walk of life — a priceless treasure trove for the historian, the economist, the artist, the engineer. But beyond that there's a magic about this ship which has kept its name fresh through all the centuries. The story of the Titanic 's first and last voyage is one that has to be told anew in every generation, lest men forget the workings of fate and chance."

  "I have talked longer than I intended, and pictures speak louder than words. There have been ten movies about the Titanic — and the most ambitious will start production shortly, using the actual location for the first time. But the extracts we want to show you now are from a film made three hundred and twenty years ago. Of course it will look old-fashioned, and it's in black and white, but it was the last film to be made while survivors were still alive and could check its details. For this reason, it remains the most authentic treatment; I think you will discover that A Night To Remember lives up to its name."

  The lights in the Grand Saloon dimmed, as they had dimmed at two-eighteen in the morning of April 15, 1912. Time rolled back three and half centuries as the grainy, flickering real-life footage merged into the impeccable studio reconstruction. Titanic sailed again, to make her last appointment with destiny, off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland.

  Duncan did not cry easily, but presently he was weeping.

  * * * * *

  When the lights came on again, he understood why men had spent so much of toil and treasure to win back what the sea had stolen from them so long ago. His eyes were still so misty, and his vision so uncertain, that for a moment he did not recognize the woman who had just entered the Grand Saloon and was standing by one of the ornate doors.

  Even carrying a hard hat, and with shapeless plastic waterproof covering her from neck to knees, Calindy still looked poised and elegant. Duncan rose to his feet and walked toward her, ignoring the stares of companions. Silently, he put out his arms, embraced her, and kissed her full on the lips. She was not as tall as he had remembered — or he had grown — because he had to stoop.

  "Well!" she exclaimed, when she had disentangled herself. "After fifteen years!"

  "You haven't changed in the least."

  "Liar. I hope I have. At twenty-one I was an irresponsible brat."

  "At twenty-one you should be. It's the last chance you'll have."

  This scintillating conversation then ground to a halt, while they looked at each other and everyone in the Grand Saloon looked at them. I'm quite sure, Duncan told himself wryly,
that they think we're old lovers; would that it were true...

  "Duncan, darhling — sorry — I always start talking early twentieth century when I'm in here: Mr. D. Makenzie, please excuse me for a few minutes while I speak to my other guests — then we'll tour the ship together."

  He watched her dart purposefully from one group to another, the very embodiment of the efficient administrator, confirming that everything was going as planned. Was she playing another of her roles, or was this the real Calindy, if such a creature existed?

  She came back to him five minutes later, with all her associates trotting dutifully behind.

  "Duncan — I don't think you've met Commander Innes — he knows more about this ship than the people who built her. He'll be showing us around."

  As they shook hands, Duncan said: "I enjoyed your presentation very much. It's always stimulating to meet a real enthusiast."

  His words were not idle flattery. While he had been listening to that talk, Duncan had recognized something that he had not met before on Earth.

  Commander Innes was slightly larger than life, and seemed to be inclined at a small angle to his fellow Terrans. A world which had put a premium on tolerance and security and safe, well-organized excitements like those provided by Enigma had no place for zealots. Though enthusiasm was not actually illegal, it was in somewhat bad taste; one should not take one's hobbies and recreations too seriously. Commander Innes, Duncan suspected, lived and dreamed Titanic. In an earlier age, he might have been a missionary, spreading the doctrines of Mohammed or Jesus with fire and sword. Today he was a harmless and indeed refreshing anomaly, and perhaps just a trifle mad.

  For the next hour, they explored the bowels of the ship — and Duncan was thankful for his protective clothing. There was still mud and oil sloshing around on G deck, and several times he banged his head against unexpected ladders and ventilating ducts. But the effort and discomfort were well worth it, for only in this manner could he really appreciate all the skill and genius that had gone into this floating city. Most moving of all was to touch the inward-curling petals of steel far below the starboard bow, and to imagine the icy waters that had poured through them on that tragic night.