After Ada’s funeral — which Bradley had flown halfway around the world to attend — they had an even closer link. Both had lost a wife and child; though the circumstances were different, the effects were much the same. They became even more intimate, sharing secrets and vulnerabilities that neither had revealed to any other person.
Later, Donald wondered why he did not think of the idea himself; perhaps he was so close to it that he couldn’t see the picture for the scan lines.
The fallen cypresses had been cleared away, and the two men were walking by the side of Lake Mandelbrot — for the last time, as it turned out, for both of them — when Bradley outlined the scenario. ‘It’s not my idea,’ he explained, rather apologetically. ‘I got it from a psychologist friend.’
It was a long time before Donald discovered who the ‘friend’ was, but he saw the possibilities at once.
‘Do you really think it will work?’ he asked.
‘That’s something you’ll have to discuss with Edith’s psychiatrist. Even if it is a good idea, he may not be willing to go along with it. The NIH syndrome, you know.’
‘National Institutes of Health?’
‘No — Not Invented Here.’
Donald laughed, without much humor.
‘You’re right. But first, I must see if I can do my part. It won’t be easy.’
That had been an understatement; it was the most difficult task he had ever undertaken in his life. Often he had to stop work, blinded by tears.
And then, in their own mysterious way, the buried circuits of his subconscious triggered a memory that enabled him to continue. Somewhere, years ago, he had come across the story of a surgeon in a third world country who ran an eye-bank which restored sight to poor people. To make a graft possible corneas had to be removed from the donor within minutes of death.
That surgeon must have had a steady hand, as he sliced into his own mother’s eyes. I can do no less, Donald told himself grimly, as he went back to the editing table where he and Edith had spent so many hours together.
Dr. Jafferjee had proved surprisingly receptive. He had asked in a mildly ironic but quite sympathetic manner: ‘Where did you get the idea? Some pop-psych video-drama?’
‘I know it sounds like it. But it seems worth a try — if you approve.’
‘You’ve already made the disk?’
‘Capsule. I’d like to run it now — I see you’ve got a hybrid viewer in your outer office.’
‘Yes. It will even show VHS tapes! I’ll call Dolores — I rely on her a good deal.’ He hesitated, and looked thoughtfully at Donald as if he was going to add something. Instead, he pressed a switch and said softly into the clinic’s paging system: ‘Nurse Dolores — will you please come to my office? Thank you.’
Edith Craig is still somewhere inside that skull, thought Donald as he sat with Dr. Jafferjee and Nurse Dolores, watching the figure sitting stiffly at the big monitor. Can I smash the invisible yet unyielding barrier that grief has erected, and bring her back to the world of reality?
The familiar black, beetle-shaped image floated on the screen, radiating tendrils that connected it to the rest of the Mandelbrot universe. There was no way of even guessing at the scale, but Donald had already noted the coordinates that defined the size of this particular version. If one could imagine the whole set, stretching out beyond this monitor, it was already larger than the Cosmos that even the Hubble Space Telescope had yet revealed.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Dr. Jafferjee.
Donald nodded. Nurse Dolores, sitting immediately behind Edith, glanced toward their camera to indicate that she had heard him.
‘Then go ahead.’
Donald pressed the EXECUTE key, and the subroutine took over.
The ebon surface of the stimulated Lake Mandelbrot seemed to tremble. Edith gave a sudden start of surprise.
‘Good!’ whispered Dr. Jafferjee. ‘She’s reacting!’
The waters parted. Donald turned away; he could not bear to watch again this latest triumph of his skills. Yet he could still see Ada’s image as her voice said gently: ‘I love you, mother — but you cannot find me here. I exist only in your memories — and I shall always be there. Goodbye. . . .’
Dolores caught Edith’s falling body, as the last syllable died away into the irrevocable past.
36 THE LAST LUNCH
It was a charming idea, though not everyone agreed that it really worked. The decor for the interior of the world’s only deep-diving tourist submarine had been borrowed straight from Disney’s classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Passengers who boarded the Piccard (port of registry, Geneva) found themselves in a plush, though rather oddly proportioned, mid-Victorian drawing room. This was supposed to provide instant reassurance, and divert all thoughts from the several hundred tons pressing on each of the little windows which gave a rather restricted view of the outside world.
The greatest problems that Piccard ‘s builders had had to face were not engineering, but legal ones. Only Lloyd’s of London would insure the hull; no one would insure the passengers, who tended to be VIPs with astronomical credit ratings. So before every dive, notarized waivers of liability were collected, as discreetly as possible.
The ritual was only slightly more unsettling than the cabin steward’s cheerful litany of possible disasters that passengers on transocean flights had endured for decades. NO SMOKING signs, of course, were no longer necessary; nor did Piccard have seat belts and life jackets — which would have been about as useful as parachutes on commercial airliners. Its numerous built-in safety features were unobtrusive and automatic. If worst came to worst, the independent two-man crew capsule would separate from the passenger unit, and each would make a free ascent to the surface, ultrasonic beacons pinging frantically.
This particular dive was the last one of the season: it was getting late in the year, and Piccard would soon be airlifted back to calmer seas in the southern hemisphere. Although at the depths the submarine operated, winter and summer made no more difference than day and night, bad weather on the surface could make passengers very, very unhappy.
During the thirty-minute free-fall to the wreck site, Piccard ‘s distinguished guests watched a short video showing the current status of operations, and a map of the planned dive. There was nothing else to see during the descent into darkness, except for the occasional luminous fish attracted to this strange invader of its domain.
Then, abruptly, it seemed that a ghostly dawn was spreading far below. All but the faint red emergency lights in Piccard were switched off, as Titanic’s prow loomed up ahead.
Almost everyone who saw her now was struck by the same thought: She must have looked much like this, in the Harland and Wolff Shipyard, a hundred years ago. Once again she was surrounded by an elaborate framework of steel scaffolding, while workers swarmed over her. The workers, however, were no longer human.
Visibility was excellent, and the pilot maneuvered Piccard so that the passengers on both sides of the cabin could get the best possible view through the narrow portholes. He was extemely careful to avoid the busy robots, who ignored the submarine completely. It was no part of the universe they had been trained to deal with.
‘If you look out on the right,’ said the tour guide — a young Woods Hole graduate, making a little money in his vacation — ‘you’ll see the ‘down’ cable, stretching up to Explorer. And there’s a module on the way right now, with its counterweight. Looks like a two-ton unit —
‘And there’s a robot going to meet it — now the module’s unhooked — you see it’s got neutral buoyancy, so it can be moved around easily. The robot will carry it over to its attachment point on the lifting cradle, and hook it on. Then the two-ton counterweight that brought it down will be shuttled over to the ‘up’ cable, and sent back to Explorer to be reused. After that’s been done ten thousand times, they can lift Titanic. This section of her, anyway.’
‘Sounds a very roundabout way of doing things,’ commented one of the VIPs. ‘Why can’t they just use compressed air?’
The guide had heard this a dozen times, but had learned to answer all such questions politely. (The pay was good, and so were the fringe benefits.)
‘It’s possible, ma’am, but much too expensive. The pressure here is enormous. I imagine you’re all familiar with the standard scuba bottles — they’re usually rated at two hundred atmospheres. Well, if you opened one of these down here, the air wouldn’t come out. The water would rush in — and fill half the bottle!’
Perhaps he’d overdone it; some of the passengers were looking a little worried. So he continued hastily, hoping to divert their thoughts.