13

After dinner, after the others had retired to their cabins, George Manville found himself restless, dissatisfied. And yet, today had been a triumph for him. A comfortable future, even a wealthy future, was now assured for him at RC Structural.

He was an engineer, not a scientist, but he had read the papers the scientists had published, he’d understood the principles, and he’d gone them one better. They had created the soliton in their laboratories; he had created the soliton in the real world, in an island in the ocean. He had seen it work, and he knew it was all his.

And he knew Richard Curtis appreciated him. Curtis had stayed with him every step of the way, showing a genuine interest, asking questions, even taking notes, following what Manville did, until by now Curtis could probably create the same effect himself. They’d been that closely tied together, the last few months.

George Manville was a stolid engineer, 34 years old, more comfortable in a construction trailer on a building site than anywhere else in the world. He’d been married once, just out of college. Jeanne was artistic, without being arty or phony; she acted in amateur theater groups, without convincing herself that Broadway had lost a great star when she’d married young; she was interested in classical music concerts and in opera, and would never find a blueprint fascinating, or want to hear the details of how a problem in stress-weight materials had been elegantly resolved.

Since the fairly amicable divorce, nine years ago, Manville had been lonely but content, and sometimes even happy. And tonight he should be the happiest of all. He had today’s success. He had the confidence and respect of one of the major builders in the world. And yet, after midnight, the stars still fixed across the black sky, the sleeping Mallory running with the minimum of lights, Manville still paced, discontented, troubled. He wasn’t an introspective man, but now he had to be: What’s wrong tonight? Why can’t I just go to sleep, like everybody else?

It was the diver. He knew it was the diver, he’d known it all along, but there was nothing he could do about the diver, not anymore, so he’d been avoiding the thought. But it was the diver, and there was no getting away from it.

From the instant, this afternoon, when that orange-suited figure had gone over the rail of the other ship, disappearing into the sea, Manville had been tense, frightened, hoping against hope. Because if the diver died, he was the one who had done it. He was responsible.

There should have been a fail-safe mechanism, a way to abort the experiment if something unexpected happened. Of course there should have been some way out, as the people on the other ship had insisted, but it had never occurred to him that such a thing might be needed. The experiment seemed so simple, so clear-cut; why would there be a need to abort?

He should have thought about it. His job was not to foresee the unforeseeable, but it was to guard against the unforeseeable, and he hadn’t done so. He hadn’t done his job. And now a human being was dead.

Somehow, it being a girl made it worse. It shouldn’t have, he knew that, a human being is a human being, but nevertheless it did. She’s young, and now she’s dead, through George Manville’s failure. Her life won’t happen, because of him.

And nothing to be done, not anymore. Nothing except roam the empty rooms and decks, waiting to be tired enough to sleep.

He wanted to see her. Was that morbid? He didn’t know why, maybe just to say the words I’m sorry in her presence, but he wanted to see her.

Curtis had said the body was in an unused cabin. The five on the upper level were all occupied, so it had to be one of the two below. So Manville at last decided he would go see her, he would tell her he was sorry, and then he would, no arguments, go to bed.

The interior corridors were dimly lit at night. Manville made his way to the lower deck, along the corridor, and opened the door to cabin 6. The light switch was just inside the door; flicking it on, he saw an empty room, an unmade bed. He clicked the light off again and turned to cabin 7, across the way.

The door was locked. Curtis must have locked it, to keep anybody from stumbling in there unawares. But it only stymied Manville for a second, until he thought, This door isn’t locked against me. I already know what’s in there.

I’m not violating anything if I ignore the lock.

In one pocket, Manville kept a card that gave, in black letters and numbers on white, equivalences: pounds to kilos, quarts to liters, that sort of thing. It was about the size of a credit card, but thinner, more supple. Manville took it from his pocket, slipped it into the crack between door and jamb, and slid back the striker on the lock.

The door eased open, darkness within. Manville stepped inside, switching on the light, leaving the door open. And there she was, in the bed, on her back, covered to her chin.

That was the first oddity that struck him, that her face wasn’t covered. Then he realized the room wasn’t at all cool, it was warm; the air conditioner hadn’t been turned higher at all.

Somebody’s mistake, obviously. Somebody on the crew had misunderstood Curtis’s orders. So it was a good thing Manville had come down here, or things might have got very unpleasant.

He was going to turn the air-conditioning up, but before that, he thought he should cover her face. And look at her, and offer his belated and useless apology.

He stepped closer to the bunk, and looked at her, and she was really very good-looking. And young. Twenty?

There was even, somehow, faint color in her cheeks.

No. That made no sense at all. Manville, not wanting to, reached out to touch that cold stiff cheek and it was warm and yielding.

He pulled his hand back as though he’d been burned. She was alive, not dead.

How could Curtis have made such a mistake? Or Captain Zhang, he was the one who handled medical duties aboard the ship. Couldn’t they tell the difference between her being alive and her being dead? It made no sense, no sense at all.

Unwillingly, Manville found his methodical mind giving him the answer. Richard Curtis had several times in the last months told Manville that he had a nemesis in the ranks of the environmentalists, a fellow named Jerry Diedrich. Why Diedrich had that special hatred or rage toward him, Curtis professed not to know; he only knew, with certainty, that it was there. He’d told Manville a week ago that he half-expected Diedrich would try to make trouble at today’s experiment, and in fact Diedrich had.

And then the diver had happened, and Diedrich was on the defensive. The diver had happened, and Curtis had immediately made it clear he would use the incident to defuse the problem of Diedrich. He’d left no doubt that he had no sympathy to waste for the diver, that the diver’s dead body would be the centerpiece of a legal action to get Diedrich out of his way forever. Because…

Because there was something else coming, something larger. “We’ll be using this soliton thing again,” Curtis had told him, “and in a much more significant way, you wait and see.” And that was the project Curtis wanted to keep Diedrich away from, for some reason desperately needed to keep Diedrich away from.

Desperate enough for him to make certain he had a dead body to deliver to the authorities in Australia? Manville knew Curtis was a hard man, in business he was famously ruthless and cold, famously hard. But was he that hard?

Could he be?

Manville looked at the girl. Her breaths were shallow, but regular. She was not dying, but mending.

He didn’t know what to believe, or he was afraid to know what to believe. It was better now, at least for now, that nothing made sense.

He turned away at last, switched off the light, and left the cabin, letting the door snick locked again behind him. As he’d promised himself, he went straight from there to bed, but it was hours before he got to sleep.