CV

42

The makeup was Rodney’s idea. With pale powder on their faces, and old-man wigs stolen from the costume shop behind the theater, wearing their father’s suits, they could hobble along like two old crippos, and nobody would think twice about their canes.

One night they had a bit of bad luck. They had just tripped an old woman, and Rodney had given her a whack on the head to keep her quiet, when someone appeared around the comer and came toward them. There were two of them, men with nightsticks in their hands and white brassards on their sleeves.

Phil and Rodney looked at each other. “Sweet, play it sweet,” Rodney muttered.

“What happened here?” said one of the men. “Who did this?” He went down on one knee to look at the unconscious woman.

“Officers, it was horrible,” said Rodney in his old-man voice. "These two boys came up, and, and just hit her with a stick.”

“Which way did they go?” said the other man, moving closer. He was looking at them in a way Phil did not like.

“Down the corridor,” said Rodney, pointing. He bent over, clutching his chest. “Oh, I don’t feel well at all. It’s my heart.”

“May I see some ID?” asked the second man. The first one was standing up, talking into his phone. The second one was coming too close.

“Geronimo!” yelled Rodney, and swung his stick at the man with the phone. Phil brought his cane up hard between the other one’s legs. The man hit him on the cheek with his nightstick, but Phil was dodging, and he hooked the man’s leg and brought him down. Then Rodney was hitting him too, and the man was sprawling beside the other with blood coming out of his mouth. Then they ran. It wasn’t till later that Phil began to feel the pain of his broken cheekbone.

Early in the morning Stevens was awakened by the buzz of the phone.

“John, I’m sorry to trouble you, but Hal hasn’t come back, and I can’t raise him on the telephone. They don’t seem to know anything about it at security. I wonder if—”

“Of course. I’ll find out what I can and call you in a few minutes.”

Stevens put the phone down, then thumbed it on again, punched the hospital. After a moment a tired female voice answered.

“Can you tell me if you’ve admitted a patient named Harold Winter in the last few hours?”

“Let me check.” Stevens waited. “Yes, he was admitted at four am.”

“May I ask his condition?”

“He’s stable. It’s a concussion. We’ll know more in five or six hours.”

“Thank you.”

Stevens got up and began to dress. His actions were automatic; he was in no doubt of what he was going to do. He put a sap in one pocket, the flat leather case in another.

Ever since his recovery he had been in a half-pleasurable state of suspension. He had told Newland that he didn’t believe in accidents, but that was not true. Now that he no longer valued his past, he felt that his future was exquisitely, weightlessly in balance, that any puff of air might topple him one way or the other. He had been waiting with curiosity to see if fate would send him a message. Now here it was.

He knocked on Newland’s door. “Paul, it’s John.”

“Just a moment.”

Newland opened the door. He was in his wheelchair, still dressed in pajamas. “What is it, is he hurt?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. They want me to bring you down— he’s conscious, but they can’t move him.”

“Oh, God,” said Newland. His voice broke. “How did it happen?”

“They’re not sure. Somebody attacked him, down on the Boat Deck.” He closed the door behind Newland and walked beside his chair to the elevator.

“The Boat Deck?” said Newland.

"Yes, they changed his section this morning.” The elevator took them down; the door sighed open.

Stevens led him to the lifeboat bay. It was dark there; one of the ceiling lights had been broken.

“Here?” Newland asked, peering in, just before Stevens hit him with the sap. The old man slumped over; there was no blood.

Stevens wheeled him into the alcove. He took the flat plastic strip out of its case, slid it into the lock. The door opened; he pushed the chair through, closed the door behind him, then opened the second door, the one to the boat itself. The lights and air conditioning came on as they entered.

Stevens left the chair in the aisle and went forward to the pilot’s console while he pulled on his gloves. Through the thick portholes he could see wind-driven spray dashing against the hull. In his mind’s eye he saw the boat slide out of its tube, plunge into the water, bob up, then slowly drift astern. Not bad: a Viking’s funeral.

Newland was breathing slowly and shallowly. He was not dead yet, but soon.

Stevens returned to the access panel beside the door, removed it, and examined the controls. He flipped the switch marked SIGNAL OFF. He set the timer for two minutes and turned the AUTO LAUNCH control to the ON position. He left the access panel on the floor. With a last glance at Newland’s gray head, he went out the way he had come.

For two minutes nothing happened in the lifeboat. Then the timer clicked. The umbilicals were uncoupled and withdrawn. The hydraulic ram on the far side of the boat slid back, releasing the boat; compressed air blew it out of the tube. The engine fired automatically, propelling the boat to windward, away from Sea Venture.