Ratner's Star (51 page)

Bolin poured the water.

“How's our young man doing?” Edna said.

“He promises to work. He'll do whatever you and Lester want. I suggest you begin with the latest notation.”

“What about the game?” Lester said.

“What game?”

“Expression of surprise.”

“Game, game, what game?”

“The game I'm holding your jacket for. The halfball game. When do we go back and finish?”

“There's no time,” Edna said. “Rob's got a lot to do if he really plans to get together with Chester Greylag Dent. Appointments secretary or not, the man's nearly impossible to contact.”

“Unlisted number?” Lester said.

Temperate by nature, ever serene in fact, Lester Bolin was not upset by the panting laughter with which Softly responded to his
question about an unlisted phone number. He simply dug his shoes into the dirt, glancing toward Edna for some sign of an explanation. His work on the computer-driven control system (known, like the language itself, as Logicon) had been going very slowly. He had constructed a frame to house the wiring and inner mechanisms. As a sort of joke, he had given the frame a box-shaped “head” and cylindrical “torso.” The next step was to build a formal language, void of content, into the circuitry. Concurrent with that he had to design an inbred body of statements about this symbolic language; this would be a second form of discourse, less stark, less empty than Logicon itself and therefore able to provide a basis for analysis and description. It would have to be a system that enabled the creators of Logicon to discuss their language in a context other than the language itself and that furthermore allowed the control system's mechanism to make meaningful statements both
in
Logicon and
about
Logicon.

Gamete sac gonad scrotum, Billy thought, recalling the sense of confusion he'd felt upon learning that the urethra functioned as the male genital duct, having always believed that organs, ducts, valves and canals ending in the letter
a
were exclusively female. He felt weak, sweaty and depressed. Once again he clasped his hands on top of his head, moving them forward and back, enjoying the tectonic sensation. After a while he slipped completely under the covers, alone with his own smell.

For this higher kind of calculation, Lester Bolin was using sheet metal, sponge rubber, various plastics; tubes, relays, a tape playback system; timing sources, transistors, a monitor system; any number of electronic components; box-shaped head and cylindrical torso. As a further joke of sorts, he was designing the model in such a way that it would operate only upon insertion of a coin.

Chester Greylag Dent lived quietly in his custom-made nuclear-powered submarine, endlessly circling the globe. Of late, however, he'd chosen to hover, first at one thousand feet, the normal test depth for conventional nuclear submarines; then at ten thousand feet, far below the zone of light, just idling there in the dark and cold among deep-lying
viperfish and giant eels; then at twenty thousand feet, below all plantlife, below the nodding work of winds and currents; and finally at an incredible thirty-five thousand feet, dead sea creatures drifting down, sponges, gouged-out shells, segmented worms feeding on detritus, fossil imprints in the sediment, the silt itself hundreds of millions of years old, never unsubmerged, the quietest place on earth.

The helicopter in which Robert Hopper Softly dozed was heading oceanward over a cluster of volcanic islands. The craft was equipped with four different submarine-detection systems but because the submarine in question was lying dead at such tremendous depth, the more powerful sonar equipment of a tracking ship had been called into play. After the helicopter set down on a pad at the bow of the tracking vessel, Softly went immediately to a restricted area of the ship for a look at the active acoustic detection monitor. Signals from a huge mass of submerged metal were being received and separated from the background of oceanic noise. Softly proceeded to the afterdeck and stepped into a reinforced deep-diving cylinder that was then lowered into the sea on cables. The cylinder's base was designed to match the shape and size of a submarine's escape hatch. Its descent, which took several hours, was electronically guided by the surface vessel, as were the final maneuvering and coupling. To Softly all motion appeared to be taking place in an aneroid medium, some kind of thick gel. Affixed at last he knocked on the submarine's hatch. It was opened by Jumulu Nobo, an abnormally large Negrito who served as Chester Greylag Dent's appointments secretary. Softly was led through the pantry and wardroom, not without noticing that the hatch was equipped with a long metal police lock and that the bulkheads were wallpapered in cheerful colors and patterns.

“Trouble finding us?”

“Minimal,” Softly said.

“Chet's asleep now but I'll be glad to answer any preliminary questions you may have.”

They eased into facing chairs in a small compartment outfitted in wicker and equipped with French doors. Nobo wore a maroon jogging suit with matching sneakers. He explained that several of his Malayan
forebears, all of exceedingly short stature, had migrated to Louisiana, settling in a town called Oslo, Norway, where, eventually, young Jumulu grew to adolescence and early manhood, the first of his people to exceed four feet in height.

“I wanted to study marine biology,” he said. “It sounded so clean, so virtuous. Who could ever claim that a marine biologist was wasting his life? At my disposal would be a mass of remarkably interesting facts about the matchless organisms that populate the oceans of the world. But then I heard a voice. It told me to keep searching. In places like Oslo, Norway, Louisiana, people tend to hear voices. Anyway I kept searching and in time I wandered into the multifaceted presence of the great man himself.”

“And here you are.”

“I manage with a crew of eleven, a housekeeper and a eunuch. We don't have an easy time of it. But the rewards far outweigh the sacrifices.”

“Gratitude for your hospitality obliges me at this point to express amazement at the very existence of a submarine able to reach such depths without breaking apart.”

“Chet outlined the basic design himself. I can tell you this much. One, this is not a spindle-hull design. The entire craft is delta-shaped—a pair of sweptback wings or fins without a body proper. Two, we have what we call a flooded outer hull. Sea water enters through small openings. This makes us more pressure-resistant than ordinary underwater craft. Three, the special metals we used for the inner hull make a thoroughly reliable weld.”

“I'm impressed.”

“We're all very happy with it. Of course, the hull groans from time to time.”

“So I notice,” Softly said.

“Perfectly normal. No cause for concern. Anticipated in the specifications.”

Despite his assurances Nobo himself seemed ill at ease. He kept brushing imaginary dandruff out of his hair and occasionally stuck a finger in his ear and shook it vigorously. He appeared in addition to be
a master of the darting glance. Sounds in the hull; the crossing of Softly's legs; static on an intercom nearby—all evoked the swiftest of flinching looks from the appointments secretary. Whether this was his natural manner or a result of being submerged for extended periods was a question that didn't interest Softly, who found himself distracted by the delay in seeing old Dent and therefore failed to take any more than the most casual notice of the details and intimations that weaved through the ensuing chat.

“Did you happen to see a freighter nearby when you were aboard the tracking ship?”

“Don't think so.”

“They've contacted us a number of times,” Nobo said. “We prefer to ignore them.”

“Who are they?”

“The freighter is Liberian. The people aboard apparently represent a Honduran cartel.”

“Consortium Hondurium,” Softly said. “They came to feel a consortium is more stylish than a cartel, at least in name. So they changed over. In fact they're still changing. Been through several corporate names, I believe. Elux Troxl. I know his work. Interested in abstract economic power.”

“Not any more.”

“How do you know?”

Nobo got up and began jogging in place, his glance darting to different areas of the compartment.

“According to their messages, they're interested in cornering the guano market. Bat guano as fertilizer. They've apparently located a rich source nearby and they want to lease this vessel and any other vessel in the area in order to help transport whatever they can haul out of the bat caves. They've not only moved their corporate headquarters to a freighter; they've changed their name again.”

“What is it?”

“ACRONYM.”

“What's it stand for?”

“We were wondering about that,” Nobo said.

“Knowing a little about Troxl, I would guess it's probably a combination of letters formed to represent the idea of a combination of letters. Nobody knows Troxl's real name so maybe there's a grubby logic to the whole thing. He excels at time-sharing. He also deals in mailing lists, chain letters, coupon analysis, subscription research, that sort of thing. Really huge companies sometimes hire people like that to undertake tedious but necessary projects. He's a notary public as well, which gives him a sheen of respectability in a fly-by-night sort of way. To my knowledge the only nonabstract professional activity he's ever been associated with involved the fire-bombing of zoos and animal hospitals. This was done to get people to contribute funds. Troxl's fund-raising organization handled the whole thing, of course. The vast outpouring of money went to rebuild the zoos and hospitals in question. The donors' names remained with Troxl. In this way he compiled enormous mailing lists, which he sold to other fund-raisers, to direct mail houses, to test-market organizations, to the subscription departments of various print media and to government agencies. With the money thus amassed he leased time on computers all over the world in order to control the fluctuations of the money curve.”

“On the surface,” Nobo said, “just another semi-treacherous entrepreneur.”

“With a rather unsavory associate.”

“Grbk.”

“You know about him?”

“He was mentioned in the latest communication from the freighter. I think they want to impress us with their pureness of heart.”

“Mentioned in what connection?”

“He's under house arrest aboard the ship.”

“On what charge?”

“Heinousness,” Nobo said.

A slight bland lad entered the compartment. This was Bö (boo). As the Negrito continued to run in place, the young man, head bobbing, whispered something in his ear.

“Chet will see you now,” Nobo said.

“Good.”

“He's in the west wing.”

“Very good.”

Bö took Softly toward the bow, where they went past the sonar sphere and then made a sharp turn into the other sweptback portion of the submarine. They walked through a series of compartments, all numbered in bright red paint, some resembling rooms in a country cottage.

“Don't you get depressed?” Softly said. “I mean being under so long.”

“I'd rather be down here than on the surface. Last time we were on the surface I fell overboard. I was surprised when nobody seemed to notice. First I yelled. Then I began to count. I screamed numbers at them. I got all the way to forty-three before Jumulu noticed. It was my instinct to die with a number on my lips rather than a boring plea for help. So tacky and dull. With my degree of heightened self-awareness, it was just about impossible to thrash around out there shouting help, help.”

“Did your life flash before your eyes?”

“My life constantly flashes before my eyes,” Bö said in a voice tenderly bereft of resonance. “I try to pick out interesting moments as they go by. But I can never find any.”

At ninety-two, Chester Greylag Dent was a dusty figure wrapped in an elegant shawl. Once tall and broad, he'd seemed to wear away, his physical presence now limited to a rather fragile central reality. He was nearly transparent, his upper and lower regions beginning to curl toward each other as though to assemble themselves about his navel, that passionate stamp of gestation. He sat in a sprawling deck chair, occupying only one fourth of it, his knees drawn up under the shawl. As Bö left, Softly sat in the other deck chair, this one not equipped with a leg rest. The compartment was otherwise unfurnished but there were books, manuscripts and correspondence scattered everywhere. Dent's hair was reddish brown with a blond streak through it.

“I think of myself as the Supreme Abstract Commander.”

“Nice to see you again,” Softly said. “It's been many years.”

“Bit of a lickspittle, that Bö. Still, there's no better way to fashion an element of depraved antiquity than to have a eunuch aboard.”

“When we first made radio contact with your appointments secretary, using, with special permission, the U.S. Defense Department's submarine communications system—an interesting setup, by the bye, that utilizes the earth itself as a reflector to bounce radio waves up to the ionosphere—he said you no longer received visitors. So I'm particularly gratified that we were able to arrange a get-together.”

“Besieged for decades,” Dent said. “We rarely surface now. Rarely even move. Jumulu screens all communications.”

“Then you personally have no contact with the outside world,” Softly said.

“I keep a post office box in Newfoundland. But we haven't surfaced there in a very great while. All these bits and pieces of mail lying about are from five to ten years old. If I haven't answered them by now, I don't expect I ever will. Will I?”

“What do you do to pass the time?”

“I think of myself as the Supreme Abstract Commander. That's what I do.”