The apartment had been carefully designed not to look like a hospital suite, and only a few unusual fittings would have betrayed its purpose. The bed was scarcely knee-high, so that the danger of falls was minimized: it could, however, be raised and tilted for the convenience of the nurses. The bathroom tub was sunk into the floor, and had a built-in seat as well as handrails, so that even the elderly or infirm could get in and out of it easily. The floor was thickly carpeted, but there were no rugs over which one could trip, or sharp corners that might cause injuries. Other details were less obvious – and the TV camera was so well concealed that no one would have suspected its presence.
There were few personal touches – a pile of old books in one corner, and a framed front page of one of the last printed issues of the New York Times proclaiming: US SPACESHIP LEAVES FOR JUPITER. Close to this were two photographs, one showing a boy in his late teens; the other, a considerably older man wearing astronaut’s uniform.
Though the frail, grey-haired woman watching the domestic comedy unfolding on the TV panel was not yet seventy, she looked much older. From time to time she chuckled appreciatively at some joke from the screen, but she kept glancing at the door as if expecting a visitor. And when she did so, she took a firmer grasp on the walking stick propped against her chair.
Yet she was distracted by a moment of TV drama when the door finally opened, and she looked around with a guilty start as the little service trolley rolled into the room, followed closely by a uniformed nurse.
‘Time for lunch, Jessie,’ called the nurse: ‘We’ve got something very nice for you today.’
‘Don’t want any lunch.’
‘It will make you feel a lot better.’
‘I won’t eat until you tell me what it is.’
‘Why won’t you eat it?’
‘I’m not hungry. Are you ever hungry?’ she added slyly.
The robot food trolley came to a halt beside the chair, and the transport covers opened up to reveal the dishes. Throughout, the nurse never touched anything, not even the controls on the trolley. She now stood motionless, with a rather fixed smile, looking at her difficult patient.
In the monitor room fifty metres away, the medical technician said to the doctor: ‘Now watch this.’
Jessie’s gnarled hand lifted the walking stick; then, with surprising speed, she swept it in a short arc toward the nurse’s legs.
The nurse took no notice whatsoever, even when the stick sliced right through her. Instead, she remarked soothingly, ‘Now, doesn’t that look nice? Eat it up, dear.’
A cunning smile spread across Jessie’s face, but she obeyed instructions. In a moment, she was eating heartily.
‘You see?’ said the technician. ‘She knows perfectly well what’s going on. She’s a lot brighter than she pretends to be, most of the time.’
‘And she’s the first?’
‘Yes. All the others believe that really is Nurse Williams, bringing their meals.’
‘Well, I don’t think it matters. Look how pleased she is, just because she’s outsmarted us. She’s eating her food, which is the purpose of the exercise. But we must warn the nurses – all of them, not just Williams.’
‘Why – oh, of course. The next time it may not be a hologram – and then think of the lawsuits we’ll be facing from our battered staff.’
32
Crystal Spring
The Indians, and the Cajun settlers who had moved here from Louisiana, said that Crystal Spring was bottomless. That, of course, was nonsense, and surely even they could not believe it. One had only to put on a face mask and swim out a few strokes – and there, clearly visible, was the little cave from which the incredibly pure water flowed with the slender green weeds undulating around it. And peering up through them, the eyes of the Monster.
Two dark circles, side by side – even though they never moved, what else could they be? That lurking presence gave an added excitement to every swim; one day the Monster would come rushing up from its lair, scattering the fish in its hunt for larger prey. Never would Bobby or David admit that nothing more dangerous than an abandoned, and doubtless stolen, bicycle lay half buried among the water weeds, a hundred metres down.
That depth was hard to believe, even after line and sinker had established it beyond argument. Bobby, the older and better diver, had been perhaps a tenth of the way down, and had reported that the bottom looked just as far away as ever.
But now the Crystal Spring was about to reveal its secrets; perhaps the legend of the Confederate treasure was true, despite the scorn of all the local historians. At the very least, they might endear themselves to the chief of police – always excellent policy – by recovering a few handguns deposited after recent crimes.
The little air compressor that Bobby had found in the garage junk heap was now chugging healthily away, after their initial problems of starting it. Every few seconds it would cough and emit a cloud of blue smoke, but it showed no sign of stopping. ‘And even if it does,’ said Bobby, ‘so what? If the girls in the Underwater Theatre can swim up from fifty metres without their air hoses, so can we. It’s perfectly safe.’
In that case, thought Dave fleetingly, why didn’t we tell Ma what we were doing, and why did we wait until Dad had gone back to the Cape for the next shuttle launch? But he did not have any real qualms: Bobby always knew best. It must be wonderful to be seventeen, and to know everything. Though he wished he wouldn’t spend quite so much time now with that stupid Betty Schultz. True, she was very pretty – but, dammit, she was a girl! It was only with the greatest difficulty that they had been able to get rid of her this morning.
Dave was used to being a guinea pig; that was what younger brothers were for. He adjusted his face mask, put on his flippers, and slid into the crystalline water.
Bobby handed him the air hose with the old scuba mouthpiece they had taped to it. Dave took a breath, and grimaced.
‘It tastes horrible.’
‘You’ll get used to it. In you go – no deeper than that ledge. That’s where I’ll start adjusting the pressure valve so we don’t waste too much air. Come up when I tug the hose.’
Dave slid gently beneath the surface, and into wonderland. It was a peaceful, monochrome world, so different from the coral reefs of the Keys. There were none of the garish colours of the marine environment, where life – animal and vegetable – flaunted itself with all the hues of the rainbow. Here were only delicate shades of blue and green, and fish that looked like fish, not like butterflies.
He flippered slowly down, dragging the hose behind him, pausing to drink from its stream of bubbles whenever he felt the need. The sensation of freedom was so wonderful that he almost forgot the horrible oily taste in his mouth. When he reached the ledge – actually an ancient, waterlogged tree trunk, so overgrown with weeds that it was unrecognizable – he sat down and looked around him.
He could see right across the spring, to the green slopes at the far side of the flooded crater, at least a hundred metres away. There were not many fish around, but a small school went twinkling past like a shower of silver coins in the sunlight streaming down from above.
There was also an old friend stationed, as usual, at the gap where the waters of the spring began their journey to the sea. A small alligator (‘but large enough,’ Bobby had once said cheerfully. ‘He’s bigger than I am.’) was hanging vertically, without visible means of support, only his nose above the surface. They had never bothered him, and he had never bothered them.
The air hose gave an impatient tug. Dave was happy to go; he had not realized how cold it could get at that hitherto unattainable depth – and he was also feeling distinctly sick. But the hot sunlight soon revived his spirits.
‘No problems,’ said Bobby expansively. ‘Just keep unscrewing the valve so the pressure gauge doesn’t drop below the red line.’
‘How deep are you going?’
‘All the way, if I feel like it.’
Dave did not take that seriously; they both knew about rapture of the depths and nitrogen narcosis. And in any case, the old garden hose was only thirty metres long. That would be plenty for this first experiment.
As he had done so many times before, he watched with envious admiration as his beloved elder brother accepted a new challenge. Swimming as effortlessly as the fish around him, Bobby glided downward into that blue, mysterious universe. He turned once and pointed vigorously to the air hose, making it unmistakably clear that he needed an increased air flow.