Saint Vidicon to the Rescue

Chapter 15

Nancy loved the Merchant Marine—the long watches where a person had time to think, away from the noise and crowding of the cities and the prying and gossiping of the small towns. And it wasn’t lonely; there were three other people on the crew, so she always had two others for company at dinner and, if she wanted, a chat over the intercom during her shift. Since they rotated watches, it wasn’t always the same two, either—one week it would be Bruno and Sylvie for her companions, the next it would be Sylvie and Aubrey, the third it would be Aubrey and Alice. Of course, if there had been a larger crew, the way there had been back at the beginning of the Twenty-first century, rivalries might have cropped up, maybe even that old superstition against having women on board—but in the year 2052, automation was so advanced that one person alone could supervise the day-to-day running of a factory and a crew of four could navigate a tanker the size of three football fields.

Of course, if those four hadn’t gotten along with each other, it could have been a minor hell—but in 2052, the company psychologists did a good job matching people, and since they all had sex-drive suppressant shots before they boarded ship, the ugly possibilities of jealousies and rivalries never arose. All in all, it was a very good life—as long as all the equipment was working.

Truth to tell, Nancy would have vastly preferred to be aboard a ship that was hauling bananas, or cargo containers, or virtually anything but oil. Fortunately, biofuels had reduced the need to ship the stuff, but some countries who didn’t have their own oil still did booming business manufacturing plastics, so here she was steering a million barrels of petroleum from the Persian Gulf across the Atlantic Ocean.

Tonight, though, the satellite navigation system had gone out.

Nightmares of the horrendous oil-tanker wrecks and petroleum spills of the last century haunted Nancy as she ran the diagnostic program on her navigation computer.

“Is it something we can fix?” the intercom asked in Bruno’s anxious voice.

“Doesn’t seem to be.” Nancy bit her lip. “The computer says it’s working fine. Must be the antenna coming in, or the satellite itself.”

“We can check the antenna, anyway,” Sylvie’s voice said.

“Not at night, please,” Nancy said firmly. She went around in back of the console. “I’d just as soon not lose one of you and have to blame myself . . . No, the antenna connection’s in and solid.” She didn’t tell them her nasty sneaking suspicion—that if the computer could malfunction, so could its diagnostic program. Admittedly, the chances of that happening had to be a million to one, but she was beginning to feel that somebody in there had it in for her.

And her shipmates.

“So what do we do?” Sylvie asked, dread echoing in her voice. “Drop sea-anchors and call for help?”

“The calling for help part sounds good,” Nancy agreed. “Bruno, drop anchor.”

“Right,” Bruno said.

The “anchor” was only metaphorical, this far out at sea; in 2052 it was really a program that adjusted the ship’s screws to hold the massive tanker more or less in one place, as much as you could measure “place” in the middle of a trackless expanse of water.

“Uh-oh,” Bruno said.

Nancy’s stomach dropped. “I know what the ‘uh’ was, but what’s the ‘oh’?”

“The sea-anchor isn’t holding.”

Nancy’s stomach hollowed. “Run the diagnostic program.”

“Will do.”

Nancy waited, biting her lip and hoping—but her stomach was so hollow that a cuttlefish was thinking of taking up residency.

“The diagnostic program is hanging,”

“Hanging?” Sylvie cried. “That computer’s guaranteed against hanging or locking up!”

“I think the warranty just ran out,” Bruno told her. “Okay, Nancy, you’re the navigator—what do we do?”

“We’ll have to steer by the stars.”

“Do you know the stars that well?” Bruno asked, voice heavy with doubt.

“Second thing they made us learn in navigator school,” Nancy assured him.

“What was the first?”

“How to use the old tools—sextant, compass, clock, even cross-staff.”

“Oh.” Bruno packed massive relief into one word. “So as long as you can see the stars, we’re okay.”

“Okay,” Nancy agreed, “but I want to stay well away from the coast until daylight.” She looked up at the stars through the transparent ceiling. “We’re headed west southwest.” She glanced at the wall clock that said “GREENWICH” under it in big letters. “Sixty-three degrees east longitude.” Back up at the stars, guessing Polaris’s angle above the horizon, at 2:00 A.M. local time . . . “Can’t be sure of the latitude, but we should be about twenty degrees northward.”

“That puts us out in the middle of the ocean, doesn’t it?” Sylvie asked, relieved.

“Far enough out that there shouldn’t be a problem,” Nancy agreed. “Bruno, I’ll have to call you course corrections to hold us in place.”

“Will do.”

Nancy felt the throbbing of the great engines slacken, almost die. “Maintaining headway?”

“Screws turning over just enough,” Bruno assured her. “I’ll cut in the nose screws just a little to make sure our bearing doesn’t drift.”

Nancy felt the high-pitched vibration begin, though she didn’t hear anything, of course—the insulation was too good for that.

“Uh, Nancy,” Sylvie said, her voice full of foreboding.

“What is it, Sylvie?”

“You’re not gonna like the weather.”

Nancy looked up just in time to see Polaris disappear. The cuttlefish in her stomach wrapped its tentacles around her spine. “I’ll get out the compass.”

“Maybe it’s just overcast.” Bruno was forcing the optimism.

“I don’t like the odds,” Sylvie said.

“Me neither,” Bruno agreed. “What are the chances of a storm blowing up just when our GPS system goes out?”

“We can still hope those clouds aren’t bringing a storm,” Sylvie answered.

Nancy did more than hope—she knew what improbable coincidences meant. As she opened the emergency closet and hauled out the compass, she muttered, “St. Vidicon, protect us from Finagle!”

The sensation of being sucked down a drain was familiar to Tony now. What wasn’t, was where he would end up. As the location stabilized, he looked around him and discovered he was in his element—silicon. “Inside a computer again,” he breathed, and relaxed.

But the silicon turned translucent and he saw tentacles waving. As they came closer, the silicon turned transparent, and he saw two huge baleful eyes follow the tentacles. Tony stared—what was a squid doing inside a computer?

Of course—more hands to twist potentials wrong.

“Who are you?” Tony demanded.

“I am the scuttlefish,” the squid answered in hollow tones.

Tony began to develop a very bad feeling. “Scuttle” meant sinking a ship. “I take it we’re all at sea.”

“You surely are,” the scuttlefish answered. “What do you here, small and soft one?”

Yes, definitely a very bad feeling. “I’m going to keep this tanker from driving ashore and being wrecked on a rock.”

“Oh no, you must not do that,” the scuttlefish chided. “The tanker must crash and the oil must spill—worse than any oil spill your kind have wrought. Only then will the people of the world rise in protest; only then will governments band together to outlaw the shipping of rock-oil. No, this ship must lose its way and shiver upon the rocks.”

Tony shuddered. “What a horrible thought!”

“I find it delightful,” the scuttlefish returned.

“But the death! The misery! The birds who won’t be able to fly because the oil will glue their feathers to their bodies! The otters and other sea animals who will die slicked with slime!”

“Indeed,” the scuttlefish agreed. “It is for their sakes that the governments will unite.”

“But all the fish who will be poisoned, the fishermen who will starve from empty nets!”

“Oh, not starve, surely,” the scuttlefish said. “Your kind is adept at keeping their own from starvation when they want to. No, they may lose their boats, may lose their houses, but they shall not starve.”

“They won’t lose anything if I can help it!” Tony pushed himself upward, swimming through silicon, twisting and turning through the trails of circuits.

Something caught his ankle and pulled him back. “You shall not go. The rocks must wreck the ship.”

Looking down, Tony saw a tentacle wrap around his ankle and another arrowing toward his other ankle. “Let go!”

“Begone,” the scuttlefish retorted. “You have the power to disappear, to go back whence you came. If you do not, I shall hold you here—or draw you in.”

Other tentacles lifted, and for the first time Tony saw the glistening beak at their center—but the squid had given him an idea. “The disappearing part makes sense, at least.” And he did.

He reappeared on the surface of the chip. Here, there was no illumination of electrons rushing through conductors—but Tony seemed to be emitting a glow of his own. By it, he searched the circuit board. The first thing to check, of course, was the antenna dish’s connection. He oriented himself by the glimmer of microwave radiation and went toward it.

“Forfend, foolish mortal!”

Looking back, Tony saw tentacles slap onto the edge of the chip and the arrow-shape of the scuttlefish’s top rise. He didn’t wait to see the eyes but ran toward the antenna signal’s glimmer.

“I have ten legs! I can move more quickly than you!”

“They’re arms.” Tony came to the edge of the board and looked over. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t walk on my hands too well.”

“I can! Disappear while you may!”

“Got to finish my job first.” Tony saw that the connection from the dish’s lead seemed solidly connected. He dived into it to investigate—and heard a bellow of anger behind him.

He swam through silicon, following the glow of electron flow, knowing he would have to be quick, because once it was back inside the chip, the scuttlefish would be able to move faster than he—at least, if its jet worked the way its real cousins’ did, in water.

Suddenly he was in darkness.

Tony could have shouted “Eureka!” because found it he had—the source of the malfunction, or rather its site. He traced the circuit flow backward until he saw light again, and saw that it stopped where another chip was plugged into the board. He ran from chip to chip, figuring out the logic of the circuit board, and realized that the darkened chip was the one that converted the incoming signal from microwave frequency in gigahertz, down to something the rest of the circuit could handle more easily—megahertz, the frequency range of FM radio. He knelt to peer at the base—and saw that the chip was halfway out of its socket. Something had jarred the GPS receiver hard enough to loosen this component.

Or something wedge-shaped had driven in and pried it loose—something very slender at the tip but that thickened amazingly, something that was very strong—or both.

“Foolish mortal, I come!”

Turning, Tony saw the squid slithering along the surface of the board. Sure enough, if it couldn’t swim, it couldn’t move very fast.

Fast enough, though. Tony would have to think of some way to jar this chip back into place, and he’d have to do it quickly.

Very quickly.

“Nancy, do you hear a moaning?”

Nancy looked up in alarm, then ran to look at the night-vision screen. She cranked up the gain, zoomed in to the limit—and saw spray rising into the air. “It’s waves crashing on a reef! Bruno, what’s the report on the sea-anchor?”

“It’s doing the best it can.” Bruno was silent a moment, checking his screen, then said, “No, we’re holding steady. Sure, the current’s been carrying us north-northeast at six knots, but we’re holding our place in it.”

“We must have been a lot closer to shore than I thought.”

“What shore?” Sylvie’s voice asked.

“I don’t know!” Nancy cried. “I thought it was the Canaries, but they shouldn’t have been this close! Bruno, turn the helm seaward one hundred eighty degrees—south-southwestward! And give us full power!”

“Will do.” But Bruno’s voice was strained. “Don’t know if we can counter this current, though—it’s pretty strong.”

Nancy felt the whole ship come alive with the throbbing of the huge engines, and the spray stopped growing larger in the scope.

Well, it almost stopped.

“That’s good, Bruno, that’s a lot better, but we’re still drifting shoreward!”

“That’s all the power I’ve got, Nancy.”

Nancy felt as though she were shrivelling. At least it would take them a lot longer before the tanker broke open on the rocks.

Maybe until daybreak. If there were light, a rescue tow could find them—if she could tell their position to the Coast Guard of whatever country they were approaching. And she could, if only the GPS would kick back in.

“St. Vidicon, protect us from Finagle!”

Tony reminded himself that at a quarter of an inch in height but with ordinary human proportions, he had a lot more strength than he was used to—probably even stronger than an ant, proportionately. He gathered himself and leaped.

The scuttlefish cried out in anger as Tony soared through the air and landed on top of the wayward chip—not that it did any good; his disembodied self was a spirit, after all, and might have had a great deal of energy but also had absolutely no mass.

All right, use energy. Tony ran to the higher edge of the chip, the one whose pins were actually out of their sockets, and jumped. He couldn’t leap very high, of course—the cover of the unit was only half an inch above his head—but he landed sitting on the edge.

No result—nothing—as far as he could tell, his energy hadn’t done anything, not without mass to give it downward force.

Something made a slapping sound.

Tony leaped up, turning, and saw a tentacle tip hooked over the far end of the chip. Another slap and another, and five tentacle tips had lined up beside it. The fleshy arrowhead of the scuttlefish’s end rose into view—and Tony realized what he was going to do.

The scuttlefish’s eyes came into view. “Foolish fellow! Do you not know you are spirit only and can do nothing here?”

“Maybe,” Tony said, “but if I really believe I have a form, maybe I can have the characteristics of that form—such as strength and weight!”

“Ridiculous!” the scuttlefish snapped, but perhaps too quickly, too angrily. “You are nothing but an idea and a small one at that, not a bonfire but a candle flame, and as such can be quickly snuffed!” It lowered its arrowhead and launched itself at Tony.

The surf moaned on the rocks, and Nancy glanced quickly over her shoulder. In the predawn half-light, she could see the spray shooting high as the waves crashed on the reef, now only a quarter of a mile away. In minutes the surf would lift the tanker high, then drop it on the reef; it would break open, spilling a million barrels of oil into the sea, killing fish, killing kelp, slicking marine mammals with oil . . .

And probably killing herself and her shipmates with it. “St. Vidicon,” she cried, “if you’re going to do anything, please do it fast!”

“Who’s St. Vidicon?” Sylvie’s voice asked, but Nancy didn’t have time to tell her. A huge wave rose under the tanker’s bow, lifting it high, bearing it toward the reef.

Tony stood tall, a clear target for the scuttlefish, waiting as the fleshy arrowhead shot toward him. At the last second, he leaped high. The scuttlefish hissed in anger and swerved up toward him.

Tony shot through the casing and emerged into the darkness of the bridge but didn’t have time to notice; he heard a faint but distinct “bong” and dived right back into the receiver. He shot past the slanting bulk of the scuttlefish, jammed between chip and casing, on down to its tentacles. One great circular eye stared at him as the scuttlefish thrashed its tentacles, trying to reach him—and in the process, started to straighten. Tony thumbed his nose at the monster; the scuttlefish roared in anger and thrashed its tentacles in an effort to grab the insolent mortal who dared defy it—and jammed its length more and more solidly between casing and chip. As it thrashed, its body pushed the chip downward ever so slightly. The scuttlefish was so intent on its prize that it didn’t notice, but Tony did—noticed the glowing trails of electron flow, and knew the GPS system was working again.

“Mayday, mayday!” Nancy called into the radio. “USS oil tanker Fortune is stranded without navigation!”

”Coast Guard here,” answered an accented voice. “Can you see any landmarks, Fortune?”

Nancy couldn’t restrain a shout of joy. It almost drowned out the mellow tone of the GPS system coming back on-line. She whirled to stare, then grinned, and said to her screen, “Correction—we have our navigation system back.” Then, remembering that the fix might not last, she read the Coast Guard her position, reading off the GPS screen, then added, “We have our engines at full power, but we seem to be caught in a rip tide that’s driving us onto . . .”

“Onto Fortress Reef!” the radio answered her. “Do the best you can to hold your position, Fortune—we’ll have a tug to you as quickly as we can.”

Nancy went limp with relief. “Thank Heaven—and thank you, Coast Guard.”

“You’re welcome. We want your oil in our refineries, not on our beaches.”

Slowly, bit by bit, the current pushed the fighting tanker toward the reef. Nancy held her breath and hoped the Coast Guard would be there in time.

The chip jolted into place, creating just enough room for the scuttlefish to free itself. Realizing it had been tricked, it plunged toward Tony with a shriek of rage.

Tony leaped high, hands joined above his head to dive out of the GPS receiver. The scuttlefish was right behind him, both of them diminutive, both of them pure energy. Neither would have been visible in daylight, but the bridge was darkened, only a pool of light on Nancy’s console, so out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a mite shooting past her and swung at it irritably, her attention on the receiver. Her palm missed Tony but swatted the scuttlefish, and it gave a high, thin shriek as it passed through her skin into the muscles of her palm.

Nancy frowned, wondering what the tiny noise had been, but she had other things to worry about—worry a lot. What if the tug didn’t get there in time? Maybe she should just get it over with quickly, turn the ship’s bow toward the reef and let the engines drive them onto the rocks . . .

She gave herself a shake; what was she thinking of? The tug would get there in time, they would live, and so would the fish that swam off this coast. Relief gave rise to joy, and joy drowned out the momentary urge to self-defeat. She frowned, thinking she heard a high, thin sound again, then decided that it must have been the wind past the corner of the bridge.

Tony, however, heard the scuttlefish’s wail of anger as it drowned in a rising tide of optimism, and knew that its last attempt to scuttle the ship, by shooting a suicidal impulse into the navigator’s brain, had failed. He grinned, wishing Nancy well even as the darkened bridge seem to turn red, deep red. A floor of sorts pressed up against the soles of his feet, and he found himself walking on the yielding surface next to Father Vidicon.

“Well done, Tony!” The priest clapped him on the shoulder. “You saved a great many lives that time!”

“Yes, but only four of them human.” Tony savored the taste of triumph.

“A life is a life,” Father Vidicon said. “You also saved Nancy from her own private purgatory of self-blame, which she did not deserve.”

“She didn’t,” Tony agreed, “but I’m afraid she’ll have a small pessimistic streak running through her for the rest of her life.”

“Nothing that her natural common sense can’t overcome,” St. Vidicon said, “something you might want to remember yourself, Tony. After all, it is time for you to wake up and rejoin the world of the living.”

“Yes,” Tony said, “the living, and Sandy! Good night, Father Vidicon.”

“Good morning, Tony.”

Tony woke up, feeling amazingly rested, considering what his spirit had been doing that night. He swung out of bed, debating how best to renew contact with Sandy. After all, a week and a half had gone by without seeing her, and Tony decided it was do-or-die time. He’d try once more to renew the relationship, but if she didn’t want to, he’d have to stop and get used to life without her again. There was, after all, a very thin line between devotion and harassment. What was the worst that could happen?

Well, the worst was that she might tell him to get out of her life and stay out, but the way he was feeling now, even that would be an improvement. At least it would be something definite, even if it was only a definite ending.

He would just have to tell her that this would be his last attempt to get in contact, if she didn’t want him to—but how best to say that?

Clear the way, Tony.

Tony frowned; the voice inside his head sounded suspiciously familiar—and it was also suspicious that, calm though it was, he could hear it over the city traffic as he walked the block from the subway to the office.

Still, the voice had a point—and Tony suddenly realized he could check and see how to phrase his next contact. He stopped into a florist’s and ordered a dozen red roses. It helped knowing where Sandy worked.