Undersea City (9 page)

I knew my uncle; what Gideon said was true. My uncle was always a dreamer. Sometimes the magnificent sweep of his dreams got beyond the dictates of his practical judgment.

“I suppose Uncle Stewart has made mistakes,” I conceded. “I remember, Gideon, one of my instructors back at the Sub-Sea Academy. He used to say that Stewart Eden wasn’t even a scientist—in spite of the fact that he invented edenite! He said that a scientist wouldn’t have done it. A scientist would have known Newton’s Law—that every force had to be balanced by an equal and opposite force—and wouldn’t have bothered with any such crazy scheme as edenite, which doesn’t seem to obey (hat law! I think the instructor was annoyed about the whole thing, because Uncle Stewart was fool enough to go ahead and try it. But it works.”

“It works,” Gideon agreed. “But your uncle has backed a lot of things that haven’t worked.”

“What is he backing now?”

Gideon shook his head. “You know, Jim,” he said softly, “I’d tell you if I could.”

He shrugged. “You know how your uncle carries on his business. He keeps his books in his head. He never wants a signed agreement when he finances a man—a handshake is enough for Stewart Eden; he says that if a man’s honest, a handshake is enough. And if he isn’t honest—why, all the sea-lawyers in the deeps won’t be enough to make a thief turn honest! There are plenty of things your uncle doesn’t tell me, Jim. Not because he’s ashamed of them. But because that’s the way he has always lived.

“And the things that he does tell me—why, Jim, you know he wouldn’t want me repeating them. Not even to you.”

I apologized. There was no way out of it, for Gideon was right. My uncle had given Gideon his trust, and it wasn’t up to me to try to make him break it.

But all the time I was thinking, and not happily.

I was thinking about the promise I had made to Lt Tsuya—the promise that had resulted in his giving me this pass.

What it meant, in a word, was that I had promised to be a spy!

It hadn’t occured to me that it would be my Uncle Stewart that I was spying on, as well as my closest friend, Bob Eskow—but there were the facts.

“Jim, boy!” boomed a voice from behind me.

I turned.

The door was opening—and in came my uncle, Stewart Eden!

For a second I couldn’t say anything.

The change in my uncle stunned me. His broad shoulders were bent. He had lost weight. His skin had an unhealthy yellow color. His walk was an uncertain shuffle. His blue eyes were dull, and they blinked at me as though he hardly recognized me.

“Uncle Stewart!” I cried.

He gripped my hand with a kind of desperate strength. Then he turned unsteadily to the chair behind his forsaken derelict of a desk and weakly sat down.

He blew his nose and wiped his eyes. “Is something wrong, Jim?” he demanded anxiously. “I thought you were up in Bermuda.”

“I was, Uncle Stewart. We came down here to take a special training course.” I left it at that; security did not allow me to say more. But I had the uneasy feeling that my uncle knew without being told. I said quickly: “How are you Uncle Stewart?”

He sat up abruptly. “I’m better than I look, boy!” he boomed. “I’ve been through rough water. You can see that. But that’s all behind me now!”

I took a deep breath.

“So I’ve heard, Uncle Stewart,” I said. “In fact, I hear you made a million dollars out of the seaquake last night.”

Stewart Eden looked at me for a moment. His eyes were blank; I could not read what he was thinking.

Then he sighed.

“Yes, perhaps I did,” he said, almost indifferently. “There was a profit, and a big one. But I’m not solvent yet, Jim.”

He leaned forward suddenly in his creaking old chair. “But what’s the use of talking about money, boy?” he boomed. “Let me look at you! Why, you’re a man now, Jim. Almost an officer!” He chuckled fondly, inspecting the fit of my sea-red dress uniform. “Ah, Jim. Your father would be a proud man if he had lived to see you now!”

He sat back, nodding, his eyes alive again, looking almost well, almost the man he had been back in those exciting days in Marinia. “Never fear, Jim,” he boomed, “you and I will both get what we want out of this world! You’ll be an officer of the Sub-Sea Fleet, and I’ll recover what I’ve lost. Both in money and in health, Jim! I’ve been afloat before, and I’ll be afloat again.”

He turned and stared thoughtfully at the big new safe lettered
Eden Enterprises,
Unlimited.

I could only guess at what was in his mind.

But the safe looked very heavy to float!

Gideon coughed gently. “Stewart,” he said in his sweet, warm voice, “you haven’t forgotten your appointment, have you?”

“Appointment?” My uncle sat up straight and glanced at his wrist-dial. “I had no idea it was so late. Why, Jim, I—”

He stopped, and stared at me thoughtfully. All of a sudden he looked worried and worn again. When he spoke his voice had lost some of its warmth and timber.

He said hurriedly, “Jim, I want to spend some time with you, but just now, there’s a matter I must attend to. I have an—an engagement. For lunch, with someone I don’t believe you know. So if you’ll excuse me—”

I stood up.

“Certainly, Uncle Stewart,” I said. “I’ll go back to the base. I’ll phone you next time I can get a pass, and we’ll have dinner.”

But there was an interruption, just as I was about to leave.

It was my uncle’s luncheon companion, come to keep (heir engagement. And my uncle was wrong; I did know the man; I knew him rather well, in fact.

The man my uncle was to have lunch with—the man he appeared not to want me to meet—was Father Tide.

The neat little man with the seamed sea-coral cheeks kept up a stream of conversation all the way to the restaurant.

“You’re looking well, Jim,” he said in his clear, warm voice, nodding like a cheery little monk out of an old German woodcut. “Very well! It’s a pleasure to have you with us, and an unexpected pleasure, eh, Stewart?” He chuckled. It had been his suggestion that I come along for lunch, not my uncle’s.

I couldn’t help wondering what my uncle Stewart was up to, that he wanted me kept out of so thoroughly.

But whatever it was, I wasn’t destined to learn it that afternoon. Perhaps because I was there, there wasn’t a word said at that luncheon that told me anything of importance. Most of the talk was about the food—all of it from the sea, all of it prepared in the wonderful Oriental ways that were a feature of life in Krakatoa Dome.

Only at the very end was there anything at all said—and that inconclusive. Father Tidesley had made a remark about his seismic research, and my uncle said: “I’m sorry, Father. I’m in no position to contribute any more to your project.”

“It isn’t only money that’s important, Stewart,” Father Tide reminded him gently. “And seismic research may yet pay off. If one knew how to predict sub-seaquakes, one might make a considerable profit. Or so I hear. Just by predicting them…or even, let us say, by creating them.”

Scalding sea-coffee sloshed out of the cup in my uncle’s hand.

He wiped at his scalded fingers with a napkin and glared across the little table at Father Tidesley.

He said reproachfully: “Your trouble, Father, is that your training puts too much emphasis on sin. It leads you to suspect the worst. It makes you a pessimist about human beings.”

It was almost meant as a sort of a mild joke, but Father Tidesley considered it seriously. He said in his clear voice: “Perhaps so, Stewart—about human frailties. But at least I am optimistic about the possibilities of redemption.”

He neatly finished the last of his coffee and leaned back. “All my life,” he said, “ever since I began my novitiate, volcanic and seismic disturbances have fascinated me. Why? Because they appeared to me to be the direct expressions of the will of God. Even a long lifetime devoted to the study of their secular causes has not decreased that first awe.

“You must not think,” he said earnestly, “that I doubt that man can intervene in this. Of course not. Nor do I think that man’s intervention would be improper—you may call me a sin-hunter, Stewart, but you cannot think that. Forecasting seaquakes is precisely as proper as forecasting the weather. There is nothing wrong with it.”

He glanced at me, and I felt a sudden chill. Did
everyone
in Krakatoa Dome know what Lt. Tsuya thought was a closely guarded secret?

But Father Tide was hurrying on: “There is another domain than forecasting—one in which meddling is likely to be far more dangerous. Hazardous to the lives of men, as well as to their souls. You know what I mean, Stewart. I mean that I have reason to believe that someone—I do not know that person’s name, not for sure—can create seaquakes at will.

“If this power exists it must be used to save life and property.
Not
—” he cried—“
not
to enrich sinful men!”

And that was all that was said.

Well, perhaps it was enough, for there was no doubt that what Father Jonas Tidesley said had its effect on my uncle. He finished his meal in silence, glumly.

It was a collision between two strong men, and it left me shaken, I must admit. My uncle seemed quite as steadfast in his faith in himself—in his own brain and seaskills, and even in his failing physical vigor—as Father Tide was in his religion.

I could not doubt my uncle’s honesty. It was absolutely impossible to believe that he could have had anything to do with causing harm to a human being.

And yet—why hadn’t he denied what Father Tide had implied?

For that matter, there was another question, on the other side of the fence, for why did Father Tide continue to associate with my uncle if he believed him capable of such an act? It was completely out of character—for both of them!

Father Tide remained cheerful to the very end. He talked about the fine flavor of the sea-steaks, and the succulence of the new sea-fruits that were our dessert; but my uncle Stewart hardly answered.

I was glad when the meal was over.

Father Tide left us, and I walked with my uncle back through the clattering, cluttered streets toward his shabby office. He was still very quiet, and he walked painfully, like an invalid.

But as we came to the entrance to Number 88 he abruptly stopped and seized my arm.

His voice was vigorous; he said: “I’m sorry, Jim! I’d hoped you could come up to the office with me, but—Well, I’ve got an appointment. It’s very important to me; I know you’ll understand.”

“Yes, Uncle Stewart,” I said, and I said good-by to him right there on the street.

For I did understand.

There was a man who had peeped out of the shabby entrance to Number 88 just as we approached it. It was that man whom my uncle had seen a split second before he stopped me and suddenly “remembered” his appointment.

And I knew that man. I had seen him before. I had seen him, in fact, under circumstances very like the present ones.

The man was the withered old Chinese I had seen with Bob Eskow, in the barracks and again wandering the radials of Krakatoa Dome. And he was holding a heavy little parcel wrapped in sea-pulp.

I couldn’t help thinking that it was just about the right size to be the missing model of the ortholytic sonde.

I found myself back at the Base, hardly knowing how I had got there.

Bob Eskow and Harley Danthorpe looked at me queerly, enviously on the part of Harley Danthorpe—and with an emotion that I could hardly recognize from Bob, an emotion that seemed almost like fear.

“Lucky lubber!” exclaimed Harley. “What’ve you got on Lieutenant Tsuya, anyway? That’s the second pass!”

But Bob only said quietly: “The Lieutenant wants you to report to him at Station K.”

I hurried down the remaining few levels gratefully—for I did not want to stay and talk to Bob Eskow just then.

I found Lt. Tsuya busy at his desk in the damp, dead silence of the station, inking in the isobars and isogeotherms and isogals on a deep-level plutonic chart.

“Well, Eden?” Fatigue and strain showed in his voice. “Do you have anything to report?”

I hesitated only a second. “Nothing, sir!” For it was true that I had no
facts
…and whatever my uncle might be doing, I was not going to go to this lieutenant with mere suspicions.

Lt. Tsuya hesitated, his pumpkin face worried. “It is,” he said, “about what I expected.”

Absently he picked up a red pencil and mechanically began to shade in the zone of stress he had outlined on his plutonic chart. I noticed that the potential fracture-plane was almost directly beneath the site of Krakatoa Dome.

He looked up at me, blinking his swollen eyes. “I’ve given Cadet Eskow a pass,” he said abruptly. “He requested it, and I decided he should have it.”

It caught me off balance. “But I just saw him in the barracks,” I protested.

“That’s right. I held it up in Yeoman Harris’s office until you got back, Eden, because I want you to follow him.”

“Follow him?” I blazed. “But I can’t do that! He’s my best friend. Why, I wouldn’t—”

“At ease, Eden! the lieutenant barked. I stiffened and was quiet. More gently, he said: “I know he is your friend. That is the very reason why I want
you
to be the one to investigate. Do you know what the alternative is?”

“Why—why, no, sir. I mean, I haven’t given it much thought.”

“The alternative,” said Lt. Tsuya quietly, “is to turn the whole matter over to the Security Division of the Sub-Sea Fleet.”

He paused.

“Once I do that,” he reminded me, “the whole thing is out of my hands. If Cadet Eskow is guilty of a severe breach of regulations, of course, that is the place for it! For I can’t condone disobedience of orders, when the orders are as important as they are in this case.

“But if Cadet Eskow is guilty only of—shall we say—some error in judgment, then to turn the matter over to Security might be to do him a grave injustice.

“It’s up to you, Eden.”

The lieutenant looked at me silently, waiting for me to answer.

“I don’t see that I have any choice, sir,” I said at last.

He nodded heavily.