Cindy nodded, returning Susan’s smile. “If you want to, I can’t stop you.”
Susan headed for the door, leaving Cindy straightening up the library In an easy chair right next to the door, she saw an elderly woman, sitting in the shadows. As Susan approached, the woman stood up.
“Such an interesting story,” she said.
“I’m glad you liked it,” Susan said, smiling.
The woman in the shadows was very old. Her hair appeared to be naturally gray, a contrast to the bleached blue-white hairdos that seemed to be favored by many of the older women on the Odyssey. She wore no makeup and when she smiled at Susan, her face creased into a labyrinth of laugh lines and wrinkles. She wore a loose silk tunic over baggy silk trousers. On the front of the tunic was a spiral, painted in gold.
The tunic and pants could be a sort of cruise wear, Susan sup posed. Gold paint seemed to be popular on cruise wear. But the old woman’s outfit looked far more comfortable than any of the cruise wear in the Odyssey boutiques. The golden spiral had been beautifully painted with a single stroke of a brush.
Susan thought the spiral on the woman’s tunic was a lovely coincidence. The pataphysicians, a fascinating group of philosophers featured in There and Back Again, used the spiral as their symbol.
“I thought the story you were reading did an admirable job of describing Pataphysics,” the woman said. “The College of ‘Pataphysics is so frequently misunderstood.”
Susan was startled. “Wait,” Susan said. “I thought ‘Pataphysics was something Max made up.”
“Max?” the woman asked.
“Max Merriwell, the author of the book I was reading.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the man. But Pataphysics has been around for years and years. And Max did a lovely job of talking about it. So few people understand our philosophy.”
“I see,” Susan said, a little confused.
“So many people think it’s a kind of joke.” The old woman shook her head. “But that’s not it at all. In fact, only a pataphysician is capable of complete seriousness. Pataphysicians take everything seriously. Absolutely everything. According to the Pataphysical Principle of Universal Equivalence, everything is just as serious as everything else. A battle to the death, a game of Scrabble, a love affair—all are equally serious.”
Susan nodded. A character in There and Back Again had said something similar. “People confuse playing with not being serious,” Susan said slowly, quoting from There and Back Again. “But pataphysicians are very serious about their play.”
“Exactly,” said the old woman, beaming at Susan. “We are playing the infinite game—where one plays simply in order to continue to play.”
“That sounds like the way my friend Pat Murphy thinks about life,” Susan said.
The old woman’s smile grew even broader. “Your friend is named Pat Murphy. How lovely. That’s my name, too. And she’s quite right. Everyone is playing the infinite game. The pataphysical privilege is being aware of the infinite game that we are all playing. Perhaps your friend is a pataphysician.”
Susan shrugged. “She’s a physicist,” Susan said. “She studies quantum mechanics.”
“That’s just a short step from Pataphysics,” Ms. Murphy said. “Pataphysics is the science of imaginary solutions. Members of the college have noted that every event arises from an infinite number of causes. When scientists attribute cause and effect to a situation, they are basing that attribution on an arbitrary choice. That is where the imagination comes in. Scientists exercise their imaginations to choose a solution that fits the facts as they see them, valiantly trying to pin down one point of view as ‘real.’” Ms. Murphy shrugged. “We feel that attempt is both heroic and misguided. In the College of Pataphysics, we welcome all scientific theories. They are all quite lovely and equally valid. We take all theories equally seriously.”
“Well, I don’t know if Pat would go along with that,” Susan said. The old woman smiled. “As a physicist, she has accepted that light is sometimes a particle and sometimes a wave. She can accept that an electron investigates many possible realities. It’s not so far from that to understanding that the idea of truth is the most imaginary of all solutions.”
Susan laughed. “You sound like you understand a bit about quantum mechanics,” she said.
“Yes—it’s an area of study that members of the College find quite interesting. Quantum mechanics, philosophy, and the overlapping areas between them.”
“I haven’t read much philosophy,” Susan admitted.
“You really must,” Ms. Murphy said. “It can be wonderfully enlightening, in a ponderous sort of way. Take, for example, the nineteenth century philosopher Hans Valhinger, who extrapolated from Kant’s epistemology the notion that all of our concepts—including those involved in both science and morality—are nothing more than useful fictions. I’m quite fond of that one.”
Susan smiled politely, not wanting to be drawn into a discussion of German philosophers. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” she told Ms. Murphy. “I’ll suggest to Pat that she investigate the possibilities of Pataphysics.”
“I think that would be a fine idea,” the old woman said.
EIGHTEEN
“Every now and then, I find it very useful to get lost,” Gyro said. “I find out the most interesting things that way.”
—from The Twisted Band
by Max Merriwell
At the entry to the dining room, Susan and Pat stopped to admire the latest fruit sculpture.
“It’s an edible Solar System,” Pat said.
The sun was a cluster of candles, burning brightly in the center of the bed of ice. The planets were suspended on wires in a line that extended from the sun to the center of the dining room. Mercury was a hazelnut; Venus, a green plum. Earth had been carved from a turnip, with its oceans painted on in blueberry juice. Mars was a dusty red, ripe peach, and the asteroids were raisins. Jupiter was carved from a watermelon; Saturn was a cantaloupe, with rings formed of thin golden slices of melon, attached to the planet with skewers. Neptune was a honeydew melon, cool and green in the distance. Beyond Nep tune was Pluto. Susan could see that distant planet, but could not make out details of its composition. The shadows of the fruit planets spun majestically on the distant wall, wavering in the candlelight.
While they were admiring the planets, Ian came up behind them. “How are you ladies this evening?” he asked.
“This is magnificent,” Pat said.
Ian nodded. “Antonio is quite an artist. He did it in honor of the new show in the Singing Sirens Theater.”
“What’s the show?” Susan asked.
“It’s called Space Odyssey,” he said. “I haven’t seen it myself. But I’ve heard that it includes a very impressive flying saucer.”
The others were already at the dinner table, except for Tom, whose seat was empty. Ian informed the group that Tom had a nasty cold, and wouldn’t be joining them that evening. Susan felt a little guilty about that. She figured Tom must have caught cold when they were out on the observation deck, talking about UFOs.
Dinner was dull without him. Alberta went on at some length about the day’s Scrabble tournament. “Bill and I won quite handily,” she said. She very proudly described her strategy for arranging for a triple word score for a word that used an “X.”
Then she started in on the new show in the Singing Sirens Theater. “As a science fiction writer, you really should see it,” she told Max. “It has a wonderful flying saucer.” As near as Susan could tell from Alberta’s description, the show was a bunch of variety acts cobbled together around a love story between a spaceship captain and a beautiful alien woman. It included singing, dancing, a magician, a juggler, and a flying saucer that landed in the middle of the stage.
After dinner, Pat talked Susan into attending the show with her.
“It sounds kind of lame,” Susan said.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s completely lame,” Pat agreed. “So
lame that it has to be entertaining. We’ve got to see the flying saucer.”
When Susan said nothing, Pat went on. “I figure we can sit through just about anything for an hour and a half. How bad could it be?”
Half an hour later, when women wearing silver-sequined bikinis, silver tap shoes, and bobbling antennae were dancing in front of a painted backdrop of glow-in-the-dark stars, Pat leaned over and whispered to Susan. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
Susan squirmed in her seat. The theater was too warm and the stuffy air reeked of perfume. She had been trying to imagine a dance number in which bobbling antennae might be an asset, rather than a liability. She had not succeeded. “I don’t know how much more I can take,” Susan whispered back. “Have you had enough yet?”
“I’ve got to stay until the flying saucer lands.”
Susan considered this, weighing the possible excitement of the flying saucer against the known tedium of the dancing and singing. “If you have to escape, go ahead,” Pat continued. “I’ll meet you back at the room.”
The woman just ahead of them turned and gave them a dirty look. Apparently their whispering was interfering with her enjoyment of the antennaed dancers. Susan touched Pat’s arm and pointed to the exit, indicating that she intended to make her escape.
Outside the theater, Susan breathed a sigh of relief and considered the best route to take back to her stateroom. It was three decks up, directly above her. She could walk half the length of the ship to reach the centrally located elevators, then retrace her steps. Or maybe she could find a shortcut. She was walking down the corridor toward the elevators when she noticed a door marked “emergency exit.”
Remembering Mary Maxwell’s observation that doors marked “emergency exit” opened into companionways for the crew, Susan pushed the door open. Sure enough, it led to a landing, from which painted steel stairs led upward and downward. A shortcut.
She headed up without hesitation. Her shoes clanged on the metal stairs, and the sound echoed off the bare walls. The hum of the ships engines was louder in the companionway; there was no carpeting to muffle it.
The landing where she had entered had been brightly lit by an overhead fixture. One flight up, a similar fixture was overhead, but the fluorescent bulb was flickering, providing a dim, intermittent illumination.
Just as she reached the landing, the light went out. Suddenly, it was dark. Not pitch-black—a little bit of light filtered down from the landing above, but only a little. She could barely make out the stairs in the darkness.
Good thing she was on a landing, she thought. A door let off the landing and she opened it, assuming it would take her into a passenger area. But it didn’t. Rather than opening into a carpeted corridor, the door led into a service corridor, with painted metal walls and painted metal underfoot. It was lit by an overhead fluorescent light that flickered and buzzed. There was a service cart stacked with cleaning equipment parked by one wall, a few boxes of toilet paper on the floor beside the cart.
She hesitated for a moment, then decided to see where the corridor led. How wrong could she go? At worst, she would have to retrace her steps. She stepped through the door and started down the corridor.
The overhead light fixture hummed on a high note that was audible even through the rumble of the engines. The light was dim, and the corridor was even darker ahead. The air was stale, as if this corridor had been closed off for a long time.
Susan hesitated, peering into the darkness, then decided that perhaps she should go back. Nothing wrong with a little adventure, but she didn’t like the look of this place. No point in being stupid.
She returned to the door that led back to the landing and tried to turn the knob. It didn’t turn. She tried again. No luck. The door had locked behind her.
She’d have to find another way out. No problem, she thought, though her heart was pounding faster. It might take her a little longer, that was all. But when she turned to face the dark corridor, the light fixture made a crackling noise and went out, leaving her in complete darkness.
The corridor was silent, except for the sound of her own breathing. In the sudden darkness, she heard a sound—the rasp of metal scraping against metal—coming from somewhere in the corridor. She shivered in the darkness.
There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. She was just letting her imagination get the best of her. But she couldn’t help remembering her account of the monster in the darkness, sharpening a knife. It was silly to think about that.
But even as she tried to reassure herself, she was blaming herself for being there. She shouldn’t have come this way, she thought. She knew better than to try to take a shortcut. She always got lost. And getting lost could be dangerous, no matter what Mary said.
She could hear her own breathing, feel her heart pounding. This is ridiculous, she thought. She was scaring herself. It was just her imagination. But she smelled something rotten in the darkness. She swore she could hear stealthy movements coming closer.
“Is someone there?” she asked. She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but her voice trembled.
No answer. She fumbled in her pocket and found the squeeze light that she had purchased in Bermuda when she was concerned that there might be another blackout. Just luck she had it in her pocket. The bulb glowed, creating a tiny pool of bright light.
She saw a flicker of movement outside the circle of light. She shone the light around, but saw nothing but dark walls, dark floors. “Who’s there?”
No answer. She faced the darkness, holding the light in front of her, but she reached behind herself to rattle the door knob again. It would not open. “Help!” Susan called. She pounded on the door with the hand that wasn’t holding the flashlight. “Open the door!” she shouted, hoping that someone might be on the stairs, someone might hear her. “Help!”
She tried the knob again and it turned suddenly in her hand. The door opened. She almost fell onto the landing, but clung to the doorknob for support. Regaining her footing, she turned and slammed the door behind her, leaning against it and waiting for the sound of someone on the other side of the door.
All was quiet. After a moment, she turned to face the person who had opened the door. “Thank you,” she began. “I got locked out …” Her words died. In the dim light that filtered down from the landing above them, she recognized the man who was studying her.
Weldon Merrimax. She stared at him in disbelief. “You sounded like you needed a hand,” he said.
“Yes,” Susan said, her voice weak. “Yes, I suppose I did.” She straightened up, standing with her back to the door.
“So what’s in there?” he asked, glancing at the door behind her. “What had you so scared?” He studied her, his eyes cold and appraising.
“The light went out,” she said. “That’s all.” She shook her head, not knowing what else to say. She didn’t want to talk to this man. She was afraid of him.
“Scared of the dark?” he asked, smiling as if he liked the idea. Susan shrugged.
“Nothing wrong with being scared of the dark,” he said. “It’s a sensible attitude, if you ask me. I think that’s the first big lie that parents tell their kids. ‘Don’t be afraid of the dark,’ they say. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of.’ What bullshit. There are lots of things to fear.” He raised his eyebrows, still smiling at her. He looked like a rattlesnake, contemplating a mouse. “You step into the darkness and you don’t know what might happen,” he said, his voice still soft. “Anything could be out there.”
“My imagination got the best of me,” she said. “That’s all.”
“That’s all?” His smile broadened. It wasn’t a nice smile. “I wouldn’t discount your imagination. The imagination is a very powerful thing.”
“I’ve got to be going,” she said, starting up the stairs.
“Oh, don’t rush off,” he said, walking alongside her. “I’m glad I ran into you. I think we got off on the wrong foot the other day. I have a bone to pick with Max, and
I took that out on you. I just don’t like Max taking credit for my work.”
She kept walking.
“All those books you think are so bleak. Those are mine, not Max’s. You understand that?”
She didn’t answer. She reached the landing and pushed open the door. She breathed a sigh of relief as she stepped out into a carpeted corridor. She was in a public area one deck below the Calypso Deck and her stateroom. She could hear the music from the Lotus Eaters’ Bar.
The man was still beside her. She stared at him, feeling more confident now that she was in a well-lit passenger area. She was trying to think of a way to contact Tom. “What do you want?” she asked him. “Why don’t you leave me alone?”
“How well do you know your Bible?” the man asked her.
She blinked, startled. She hadn’t read the Bible since she stopped going to Sunday school in sixth grade.
The man went on without waiting for an answer. “Do you remember where Satan came from. You know that story?”
She frowned. “He used to be an angel, then he was cast out,” she said slowly.
“He was called Lucifer, the light-bearer. He was cast out because he had the balls to challenge the Creator by setting up a throne for himself, for thinking he was as good as the Creator. That was something God couldn’t take. So God cast Lucifer into the pit.” The man studied Susan with a level stare. “It’s a question of who is going to be the Creator, that’s all.”
“I don’t understand …”
“You don’t want to understand,” the man said, his voice laced with contempt. “And I’m afraid I don’t have time to explain it all to you. I’m rearranging things a bit, so that they’re more to my liking—that’s all.” He turned away, heading back into the companionway. He glanced over his shoulder. “By the way, when you see Max, tell him I’d like to talk to him.” The door swung closed behind him.
Susan ran to the bar and asked the bartender to call security. “Hurry,” she said. “Tell them I just saw Weldon Merrimax.”