Pohlstars Read online

  It was easy to know what Betsy wanted. Whatever May had, that was it. She had even wanted that sorry, spasmed Frank Appermoy-and had got him, at least long enough for a tumble in his water bed, and made sure I knew she had. Now she wanted Appermoy's child. At first I thought all she wanted was a child. She could have had one easily enough, with all those young studs sniffing after her; I thought what stopped her was, a little, the bother of marrying one of them or, most of all, the unpleasantness and pain of actually giving birth. In that I was wrong. What she wanted was James Reginald Appermoy, with all his tantrums and colics, and only because he was May's.

  So for half a year May was the perfect young mother bereft, with the imperfect wretch of a babe. Then the brat was weaned, and she seemed to come back to the world. Perhaps she realized at last that she was lonely. She had no friend but me on the oaty-boat. If anyone in the huge seven-thousand-man crew showed signs of becoming a friend, Betsy told Ben, and Ben transferred him away. Even the four other Mays could come on board only for a day or two at a time, with all the long flight to get there and the other to leave again, for we were mostly far from any land. So it was no wonder that my sweet girl began to look elsewhere for pleasure. It was a house party here, and a fox hunt there, and Switzerland for the skiing, and Tokyo to see the shows. If she was to be away for just a few days, she would leave Jimmy Rex with me, nasty child whom I tried with all my heart to love. If it was a matter of weeks they would both be gone, and I had nothing to do and no one to do it with, for my friends were suddenly needed badly on another boat as well. I wished for another Elsie Van Dorn, but Elsie herself was now a second engineer on the old boat, and I did not want to involve her in Ben's anger. So I had a succession of cooks' assistants and young things from the typing pool. None lasted more than a few weeks. The ones who were not kind enough and strong enough to put up with the brat I had to send back to their regular work, and the others Ben transferred away.

  And the unsigned messages came in. One a month. Some came from Australia and some from Seoul, and one from Capetown, but they all said much the same thing:

  "If you value your life, help her now."

  But how was I to do that?

  I did not need the unknown assassin's reminder to want to help my May. I made an excuse to slip away again and this time found a better lawyer, or at least a- more high- priced one. He did not simply tell me the Commodore's will could not be broken. He gave me two days of his time, quoting the Law of the Sea and citing precedents. He charged accordingly, and it all came out to much the same. Ben had the law on his side until May was thirty.

  It was the only time I was on land that year. I thought of following May to her parties, to see if she would talk freely off the boat, or more truthfully just for the pleasure of being near her. I could have done it. I would have, I surely would have, if she had said a word or given a look to say she wanted me. The word never came. The look, maybe.

  She was off to New York City this time, May and the child. I carried Jimmy Rex to the airplane and handed him over to her at the door. "New York for the opera season'? I didn't know you loved opera that well, I said, and May smiled at me.

  "A little culture would do neither of us any harm, Jason, dear," she said, and paused, and thought for a moment, looking out over the wide, warm sea. I knew that look. I almost expected to see her with her thumb in her mouth and her hip-huggers sagging to the ground, for it was a lost and thoughtful look. The pilot was flipping his control surfaces back and forth and glancing back over his shoulder at us, for he had a schedule to keep, but May stared at the sea for some time. Then she turned back to me as though she were about to speak.

  She did not. She looked past me, over my shoulder, and changed her mind. "Good-by, then, dear Jason, she said, and kissed me. She took the baby from my arms and was gone.

  As I stepped back to get out of the way of the VTO jets, I bumped into what had changed her. It was brother Ben. He was looking worn and fretful, for all he was only a dozen years older than May, and sullen Betsy was scowling at his side.

  The hydrogen flame screamed and licked against the baffles, and the plane lifted in a blue-white burn too bright to look at. Betsy turned to me. "We came to say good- by, she said nastily, "but I guess May doesn't want to waste good manners on the family.

  The plane was a kilometer up now, and moving away. Ben shaded his eyes to squint after it. "Jason, he said without looking at me, "let's talk business. I'll buy your stock."

  "You will not", I said, "for I don't want to sell to you."

  He gave me a hooded look. It was the look of a man who has some pieces to a puzzle, but not enough to make the pattern clear. "Have you been enjoying your trips to Iceland? he asked.

  I had never doubted that he was spying on me. I didn't bother to answer. He said, "I'll pay you more than your shares are worth."

  "They're worth more to me than they are to you, Ben, I said, and turned my back on him. As I walked to the lift I could hear him coughing behind me. He was a sick man.

  I went to my desk and began to study my reports, but I did not have my mind on them. Part was on May, as part of my mind was always. But part was on Ben. I wished the bastard no good at all, but I did not wish him dead. I knew who would inherit his stock when he died. And the Reykjavik lawyer had told me that Ben could name his successor as May's guardian and, for all that she was years younger and the guardianship a mockery, I knew who he would name.

  I could not get out of my head that May had been about to say something to me before she left, and so I decided to hear what it was. Three days after she was gone, I called in my assistant and told him he was on his own for a week, and took the same plane.

  We were cruising in the Philippine sea at the time, so it was VTO jet to Manila, then orbital craft to the great floating terminal off Sandy Hook, and a helicopter to the roof of my hotel.

  I do not like the land. I do not like the crowds and the roar and the stink of the land, and especially I do not like a city. I had taken rooms in the same hotel where May was staying, and I did not intend to leave it except to see her. So as soon as I was settled in my suite I walked out into the hall and took the elevator a dozen flights and knocked on the door. Tse-ling Mei opened it. "Uncle Jason! she cried, with pleasure and surprise in her voice, and maybe a little worry, too. "Oh, come in, please!

  All four of the other Mays were there. So was little Jimmy Rex, bawling at the walls of his room because he was being made to take a nap, but my May was not.

  The young beauties sat me down and clustered around me like meadow flowers in the spring. "Some tea? asked Mei, and, "Have you eaten? from Maisie, and "What Jason probably needs most is a drink, from May Bancroft, and from May Holliston-Peirce, "Oh, tell us what's new on the boats!

  So we chattered for a while and I felt almost at ease, though concerned that they seemed to have no idea when May would be back. Then May Bancroft sighed and said, "Oh, hell. We all turned and looked. Jimmy Rex was standing in the doorway, glowering at us, escaped from his crib and come to make us unhappy. In one hand he waved the perfectly dry diaper he had managed to squeeze out of. With the other he guided himself as he pissed deliberately on the Auhusson rug. Do you see what a foolish lottery we gamble in when we make a child? He could have taken after his mother, May. Even after his father, and been nothing worse than a fool. But in the random lottery of the DNA exchanges he had caught the very soul of May's bitch mother-in-law, and how heavily that has cost me since.

  It cost me then, too, because it broke the mood of the party. I got up to go. Tse-ling Mei was holding the brat down while Maisie tried to pin the diaper back on him, and May Holliston-Peirce was bringing towels from a bathroom to mop up the rug. May Bancroft said, "I'll walk you to your taxi, Uncle Jason. I had no intention of a taxi, but the look on her face stopped me from saying so.

  So we walked through the hall with her hand in mine, and dropped like stones in the elevator-my heart in my mouth, for there are no such high-speed lifts o
n the oatyboats-and she walked me through the lobby to a back entrance, and around a corner and another until she found a taxi that suited her. I was dressed for the Philippine sea, not New York in November, and May not much more warmly, not to mention the crush, and the stink, and the noise. But I let her keep up her chatter all the way without interrupting. Tse-ling Mei had been given a marvelous new part, and one May was to be married and another to run a hospital somewhere in New Jersey or Indiana, and May Bancroft herself was back in school for a law degree. And then she peered inside a parked cab and nodded her head and leaned forward to kiss my ear. She did not give me just a kiss. She gave me an address and a room number, and then turned and hurried off without looking back. I had wit enough to change cabs and walk a bit before I hailed the second one, although I nearly froze while I was doing it, but in five minutes I was there.

  The address was the seediest of old hotels. The room number was on the seediest floor. The air in the hall was choked with marijuana fumes and the smell of human sweat, and the door was opened by a man of forty or more. He was wearing pants that he had zipped but not belted, no shoes, and a shirt that he had left unbuttoned. He was a sober-looking, serious sort of a man, not what you would expect to find in a whore's hangout like this, far from good-looking but solid.

  And behind him, lying on an unmade bed, wearing a thin muumuu, was my May. Her expression was filled with fear.

  "It's not what you think, Uncle Jason, she said to me at once, and to the man, "Hurry! Let him in!

  The man moved quickly to do it. He pulled me in by the elbow, showing surprising strength for a pudgy little man not much younger than myself. He stuck his head out into the hall, and looked both ways before he closed the door. Then he turned to me.

  "I'm Jefferson Ormondo, he said, "and I'm an investment banker. I apologize for this place and the way we look, but the windows don't open and the heat won't turn off. And Ben Zoll has willing ears in too many places. He was buttoning his shirt while he spoke. He sat to put on his shoes and said, "I'll take a look around the lobby to make sure it's all right. May will tell you what's going on. And he was gone, and there I was in a sweaty halfhour room with my sweet May gazing up at me out of a rumpled bed.

  "We're going to get Ben's guardianship set aside, she said.

  "That's impossible, I said-with my voice, but I know that what my face was saying was, That's unfair, May, to try such a thing without me! And she answered my face.

  "Jason, dear, it's no secret from you. I can't do it without you."

  "The best lawyers in Reykjavik say you can't do it at all", I told her, "for the will is in proper form."

  "But what if it is forged, Jason?"

  I goggled at her.

  "Forged", she said, nodding. "Not all of it. Just the matter of dates. The guardianship was supposed to stop when I was twenty, and Ben had someone get into the datastores and add ten years to the time.

  Now, that was getting close to a line of conversation I did not want to pursue. I didn't know-I have never known-if the Commodore ever told his daughter about the favor I had done him. She did not say anything then, or ever, to give me an answer one way or another, but hurried on: "And that is fraud, Jason, and somebody may well go to jail. But proving it! It's so hard. And Ben has everything on the boats bugged, of course. I couldn't speak to you there-and besides, she said, sitting beside me and touching my arm, "he knows you're smarter than I am, so he watches you twice as hard.

  I said, "You don't have to explain anything to me, May. But I wanted explanations all the same. I got them. The plump little bald-headed man, Ormondo, worked for the bank that held Ben's stocks, and it had seemed to him that there was something funny about the records. For one thing, the will should have existed in several data- stores, not just the bank's. But the Commodore's own bank had been swallowed up by another and its records were unavailable, and in the hall of records where the will had been filed the system had crashed, all the data lost.

  Ormondo came to believe that there was a forgery. He could not prove it, but it made him curious to look further. There was plenty to find.

  Ben had been milking the fleet. He had set up corporations of his own to buy the hydrogen from the oatyboats and to sell the ammonia on land, and to lease to us the pilot cutters that prospected for cold, deep water, and even the aircraft that carried us to shore. Everything the Fleet bought cost a little more than it should, and everything we sold went for a little less, and the difference went to Ben.

  And then Ormondo had met May at a party, not by chance, and whispered in her ear.

  And ever since then, for the best part of a year, the two of them had been searching out records and interviewing people who might know things. Whispers had got back to Ben, surely. But Ormondo was a careful man.

  And they had the pattern almost complete.

  "The next step, Jason, she said, "was going to be to talk to you. I almost asked you to come with me this time. I'm glad you didn't wait to be asked.

  "Of course I'll do everything you want, I assured her.

  She smiled sweetly and touched my arm. "Of course you will, dear Jason. There's one other thing.

  She looked embarrassed. She pursed the pretty lips, hesitating, her eyes gazing at the chipped paint on the ugly wall as though she were staring over the wide sea. Then she said, "I need a husband, Jason.

  She had caught me unaware. "A husband?

  "I need a husband for me, and for help in this fight, because it will be a terrible one. And most of all I need one because of Jimmy Rex. He must have a father, Jason. Not a silly boy. A grown man, wise and kind and sensible. It doesn't matter if he's older than I am. It only matters that he be someone I can trust and love with all my heart.

  These were the words I had been dreaming of hearing for all the long years. I could hardly speak. "Of course, my dearest, I said, and reached out for her, and was puzzled by the astonishment that sprang into her eyes.

  It was a terrible fight, indeed. For months we were more on Iceland than in our propper home, all of us. That was a high enough price to pay in itself, for me. Iceland is where the Law of the Sea is administered, and indeed it is land that has come from the sea, bubbling up in roaring steam, some of it within the memory of living men. But it is still the land, and all the geothermal steam and hot swimming pools do not make up for losing the warm breezes of the southern seas.

  But we won. Or mostly we won. Bastard Ben might well have gone to jail indeed, if he had not gone to the hospital instead and did not come out alive.

  So it was Betsy who lost the suit, not Ben, and she did not lose it all. We could not prove the falsification of the will. The litigation was long-drawn and savage, and three of our witnesses disappeared, but the records of the dummy corporations did not. So May settled at last for a division. The guardianship was annulled. All Ben's contracts to buy and sell were voided. The Fleet was divided in two. Half the oaty-boats went to Betsy, the rest, with half the money from Ben's loot, to May. And Betsy began at once to build more.. . but we were at ease at last, back at home on that first old boat, steaming slowly through the Strait of Malacca, and the Commodore's daughter was at last the undisputed queen of the grazing isles. She ruled us happily, along with her child.

  And with her husband. Who was not me.

  She was the kindest of women, my May, but she could not be kind enough to allow me to forget how foolishly I had missed her meaning when she was trying to tell me that she meant to marry Jefferson Ormondo.

  * * *

  For the sake of her son and to claim her due, At four and twenty she wed number two. They battled and won in the struggle to keep Her fair-owned gifts from the generous deep. Blest was the respite from worries and trials In this short happy time for the queen of the isles.

  Although I had lost her again, it was a good time. May was happy. Jefferson Ormondo had the good sense to be happy-well, what else could he be? Even little Jimmy Rex became more tractable, since he was away from Betsy's constant need
to spur on his own born-in meanness.

  We even made a sort of peace with Betsy herself. It was not easy or comfortable. Yet she came to pay a visit to our quaint old thermal grazer, and then there was nothing to do but for us to visit her great new flagship. Though I took no joy in seeing Betsy, I was glad enough of the trip. Her Works Captain was a decent enough man-we'd sailed together under the Commodore-and besides, I wanted to see some of their engineering.

  What we want for the heat exchangers is the hottest surface water we can get, the top meter if we can get it, for that's where the sun's heat is strongest. But when you pump a hundred tons a second, the suction tubes are not fastidious about what they take. So when Captain Havrila took me up on his bridge, beaming with pride, I knew what he was going to show me. I'd seen it from the air. The boat was surrounded with a screen that lay thirty meters away from the hull in all directions; I'd seen it, and realized at once that there was a shallow lip all around. "You pump direct from the hull, I guessed, ~ and you've trapped surface water in a moat. The screen's to keep out fish?

  He grinned ruefully. "I knew once you laid eyes on it, Jason, I wouldn't have to say a word. We pump from a reservoir ten meters deep, but all that comes in to replenish it is the very top of the sea.

  "It's a nice solution. I complimented him. "But doesn't it cut down your maneuvering, with all that drag?

  "It destroys it, he said happily, "but we're not going anywhere very fast anyway. And we've been getting delta-Ts of twenty and up -well, most days, he corrected himself. "Tell me, Jason, what are you doing about organic fouling? "Same as you, I guess. Reverse fluse every ten days with little plastic marbles. We lose nearly half of them every time, though. The sea is full of little living things that want something to cling to-unfortunately, they don't care what. The lining of our intake tubes is as good a place as any. There's not too much trouble with the deep- water intakes, because the water down there is too cold for them to be very active. But the surface intakes are another story.