‘What’s your phone cipher?’ was Rupert’s unexpected opening remark.
‘Why . . . normally I don’t bother. But I can switch to NSA 2 if it’s really important. Only problem, it tends to chop speech on long-distance circuits. So don’t talk too fast, and don’t overdo that Oxford accent.’
‘Cambridge, please — and Harvard. Here we go.’
There was a five-second pause, filled with strange beepings and twitterings. Then Rupert Parkinson, still recognizable though subtly distorted, was back on the line.
‘Can you hear me? Fine. Now, you remember that last board meeting, and the item about the glass microspheres?’
‘Of course,’ Emerson answered, a little nervously; he wondered again if he had made a fool of himself. ‘You were going to look into it. Was my guess correct?’
‘Bang on, old man — to coin an expression. Our lawyers had some expensive lunches with their lawyers, and we did a few sums together. They never told us who the client was, but we found out easily enough. A British video network — doesn’t matter which — thought it would make a splendid series — in real time, culminating with the actual raising. But they lost interest when they found what it would cost, and the deal’s off.’
‘Pity. What would it cost?’
‘Just to manufacture enough spheres to lift fifty kilotons, at least twenty million dollars. But that would be merely the beginning. You’ve got to get them down there, properly distributed. You can’t just squirt them into the hull; even if they’d stay put, they’d soon tear the ship apart. And I’m only talking about the forward section, of course — the smashed-up stern’s another problem.
‘Then you’ve got to get it unstuck from the seabed — it’s half buried in mud. That will mean a lot of work by submersibles, and there aren’t many that can operate four klicks down. I don’t think you could do the job for less than a hundred million. It might even be several times as much.’
‘So the deal’s off. Then why are you calling me?’
‘Never thought you’d ask. I’ve been doing a little private venturing of my own; after all, we Parkinsons have a vested interest. Great-Granddad’s down there — or at least his baggage, in suite three, starboard.’
‘A hundred megabucks worth?’
‘Quite possibly — but that’s unimportant; some things are beyond price. Have you ever heard of Andrea Bellini?’
‘Sounds like a baseball player.’
‘He was the greatest craftsman in glass that Venice ever produced. To this day, we don’t know how he made some of his — Anyway, back in the eighteen-seventies we managed to buy the cream of the Glass Museum’s collection; in its way it was as big a prize as the Elgin Marbles. For years, the Smithsonian had been begging us to arrange a loan, but we always refused — too risky to send such a priceless cargo across the Atlantic. Until, of course, someone built an unsinkable ship. Then we had no excuse.’
‘Fascinating — and now you’ve mentioned him, I remember seeing some of Bellini’s work the last time I was in Venice. But wouldn’t it all be smashed to pieces?’
‘Almost certainly not: it was expertly packed, as you can imagine. And anyway, masses of the ship’s crockery survived even though it was completely unprotected. Remember that White Star dining set they auctioned at Sotheby’s a couple of years ago?’
‘Okay — I’ll grant you that. But it seems a little extravagant to raise the whole ship, just for a few crates.’
‘Of course it is. But it’s one major reason why we Parkinsons should get involved.’
‘And the others?’
‘You’ve been on the board long enough to know that a little publicity doesn’t do any harm. The whole world would know whose product did the lifting.’
Still not good enough, Emerson said to himself. Parkinson’s was doing very nicely — and by no means all of the publicity would be favorable. To many people, the wreck was almost sacred; they branded those who tampered with it as graverobbers.
But he knew that men often concealed — even failed to recognize — their true motives. Since he had joined the board, he had grown to know and like Rupert, though he would hardly call him a close friend; it was not easy for an outsider to get close to the Parkinsons.
Rupert had his own account to settle with the sea. Five years ago, it had taken his beautiful twenty-five-meter yacht Aurora, when she had been dismasted by a freak squall off the Scillies, and smashed to pieces on the cruel rocks that had claimed so many victims through the centuries. By pure chance, he had not been aboard; it had been a routine trip — a ‘bus run’ — from Cowes to Bristol for a refit. All the crew had been lost — including the skipper. Rupert Parkinson had never quite recovered; at the same time he had lost both his ship and, as was well known, his lover. The playboy image he now wore in self-defense was only skin deep.
‘All very interesting, Rupert. But exactly what do you have in mind? Surely you don’t expect me to get involved!’
‘Yes and no. At the moment, it’s a — what do they call it? — thought experiment. I’d like to get a feasibility study done, and I’m prepared to finance that myself. Then, if the project makes any sense at all, I’ll present it to the board.’
‘But a hundred million! There’s no way the company would risk that much. The shareholders would have us behind bars in no time. Whether in a jail or a lunatic asylum, I’m not sure.’
‘It might cost more — but I’m not expecting Parkinson’s to put up all the capital. Maybe twenty or thirty M. I have some friends who’ll be able to match that.’
‘Still not enough.’
‘Exactly.’
There was a long silence, broken only by faintly querulous bleeps from the real-time decoding system as it searched in vain for something to unscramble.
‘Very well,’ said Emerson at last. ‘I’ll go fifty-fifty with you — on the feasibility report, at any rate. Who’s your expert? Will I know him?’
‘I think so. Jason Bradley.’
‘Oh — the giant octopus man.’
‘That was just a sideshow. But look what it did to his public image.’
‘And his fee, I’m sure. Have you sounded him out? Is he interested?’
‘Very — but then, so is every ocean engineering firm in the business. I’m sure some of them will be prepared to put up their own money — or at least work on a no-profit basis, just for the P.R.’
‘Okay — go ahead. But frankly, I think it’s a waste of money; we’ll just end up with some very expensive reading matter, when Mr. Bradley delivers his report. Anyway, I don’t see what you’ll do with fifty thousand tons, or whatever it is, of rusty scrap iron.’
‘Leave that to me — I’ve a few more ideas, but I don’t want to talk about them yet. If some of them work out, the project would pay for itself — eventually. You might even make a profit.’
Emerson doubted if that ‘you’ was a slip of the tongue. Rupert was a very smooth operator, and knew exactly what he was doing. And he certainly knew that his listener could easily underwrite the whole operation — if he wished.
‘Just one other thing,’ Parkinson continued. ‘Until I give the okay — which won’t be until I get Bradley’s report — not a word to anyone. Especially Sir Roger — he’ll think we’re crazy.’
‘You mean to say,’ Emerson retorted, ‘that there could be the slightest possible doubt?’
9 PROPHETS WITH SOME HONOR
To: The Editor, The London Times
From: Lord Aldiss of Brightfount, O.M.
President Emeritus, Science Fiction World Association
Dear Sir,
Your Third Leader (07 Apr 15) concerning plans to raise the Titanic again demonstrates what an impact this disaster — by no means the worst in maritime history — has had upon the imagination of mankind.
One extraordinary aspect of the tragedy is that it had been described, with uncanny precision, fourteen years in advance. According to Walter Lord’s classic account of the disaster, A Night to Remember, in 1898 a ‘struggling author named Morgan Robertson concocted a novel about a fabulous Atlantic liner, far larger than any that had ever been built. Robertson loaded it with rich and complacent people, and then wrecked it one cold April night on an iceberg.’
The fictional liner had almost exactly the Titanic’s size, speed, and displacement. It also carried 3,000 people, and lifeboats for only a fraction of them. . . .
Coincidence, of course. But there is one little detail that chills my blood. Robertson called his ship the Titan.
I would also like to draw attention to the fact that two members of the profession I am honoured to represent — that of writers of science fiction — went down with the Titanic. One, Jacques Futrelle, is now almost forgotten, and even his nationality is uncertain. But he had attained sufficient success at the age of thirty-seven with The Diamond Master and The Thinking Machine to travel first class with his wife (who, like 97% of first-class ladies, and only 55% of third-class ones, survived the sinking).