CV

11

Captain Hartman prowled the corridors of Sea Venture, sensing a whiff of wrongness. In the days before his retirement, when he was captain of the Queen, he had begun every day like this, taking each section in turn except the engineering section, the Chief Engineer’s exclusive domain. He had carried a flashlight to shine under tables and counters, looking for dirt. He had looked for the obvious things, equipment not put away or not in good order, brass work dull, spoiled food in the refrigerators, but that was only a part of it; he had always been alert with some sixth sense for the wrongness that was not obvious, and more than once he had found it.

In a way he felt guilty about inspecting another man’s vessel, but the compulsion would not let him rest. He had nothing to say against Bliss. Sea Venture was too big; Bliss had to delegate the inspections to his deputies; Hartman understood that. He walked the ship every day, nevertheless.

He listened to the roar of New Rock in the cabaret and saw the old folks in their dance hall, swaying to the strains of “Louie, Louie.” He went down into the working alleys where the butchers and bakers plied their trades; he watched the maids coming and going with mounds of linen. He walked the Promenade Deck, with its tall angled television screens that almost perfectly counterfeited windows looking out on the ocean; he made the circuit of the Sports Deck, overseeing the cheerful tennis players and bathers, watching the oldsters at their shuffleboards. Through Deputy Ferguson he managed an invitation to visit the perm section, saw the fishery and the hydroponics farm, watched the children playing.

It would have been easy to say that it was only the difference of Sea Venture to any ship he had known that disturbed him. Bliss was quite right, it was not a ship. The Queen had been a floating hotel in name, but this was one in fact. Bar Bliss and himself, there was not a sailor aboard. There were no engines, only a generator for electricity; the cylindrical things that passed for sails were opened and shut by computer-operated mechanisms. The vessel had three independent inertial-guidance systems, and it got its position by satellite signal. A raft was what Bliss called it, and there was some justice in that. But he himself, aboard the Queen, had been nine-tenths manager and one-tenth sailor; it was not the passing of the old days that was on his mind. There was something else. He felt it; he smelled it; sometimes it was near.

Luis Padilla accepted the dishes from the sous-chef, placed them on his cart, lifted the covers to verify the contents— artichoke hearts, jellied consommé, caviar, crackers. Correct.

He stopped at the wine steward’s for a half-bottle of Tio Pepe, then wheeled the silent cart out through the service doors, along the corridor to the elevator, up to the Sports Deck. He tapped on the door of Number 18.

“Come in!” That voice, like an overripe apricot. He entered.

She was there, in a frilly garment of no substance, very large, larger than ever, quaking as she moved. The Mrs. Emerton, almost two meters tall and weighing surely seventy kilos, her hair in ringlets. The Mr. Emerton was not there.

"Put it down, Luis dear. I’ll sign later, all right? I'm just about to take my shower.” She looked at him coquettishiy as she disappeared into the bathroom.

On the dressing table, half-obscured by the evening gown draped over the chair, was an open jewel case. Pearls, gold chains hung over the edge of it like pirate treasure. At the end of one of the chains lay a pendant, an emerald the size of a thumbnail, winking green.

Padilla transferred the covered dishes to the table, arranged the silverware, whipped out his corkscrew and opened the bottle, sniffed the cork and set it down. He verified that everything was properly arranged before he left, with a last glance at the emerald.

It was not the first time she had allowed him such a glimpse. Mrs. Emerton was very careless, or else she was hoping to tempt him into an indiscretion. But he would never succumb. Once, when he was ten, his American teacher had come to class in a drunken condition and had sung to them a song his grandfather had taught him. It was a song that the American soldiers had sung during the Occupation. Damn, damn, damn the Filipino, lazy, cowardly ladrón. Underneath the starry flag, civilize him with a Krag, and return us to our own beloved home. He had thought that a crag was part of a mountain, and that the American soldiers wanted to crush the Filipinos by dropping a mountain on them. He had found out since that it was Krag, a kind of rifle.

The song accompanied his steps as he wheeled the empty cart back to the elevator. When he was much younger, maybe six or seven, his father had beaten him for stealing a toy in the drugstore. “We are not thieves, do you understand?” Whack. "No somos ladrones. Do you understand?” Whack. “Do you understand?” It was the best lesson he had ever had. Mrs. Emerton could expose her jewels, or her body if she liked: they were both safe from the staff of Sea Venture. Padilla was whistling as he entered the kitchen.

Later, in the stewards’ lounge, he sat with his friend Manuel Obregon and drank a little wine. Obregon and he were employed in different parts of Sea Venture, but they had joined at the same time and had kept up their acquaintance. They talked in a mixture of Pilipino, Spanish, and English, with many jokes and much laughter. Suddenly Padilla felt a little dizzy; his elbow slipped off the table, and he almost fell forward before he caught himself. To his horror, when he straightened up, he saw that his friend had slumped off his chair and was lying like a dead man, with a bloated face and eyes turned up.