The Ghost from the Grand Banks (Arthur C. Clarke Collection) Read online

  “No one will believe he’s not named after me, but it’s true. By pure coincidence, the U.S. Navy robot that made the first reconnaissance inside Titanic was called Jason Junior. So I’m afraid the name’s stuck.

  “But ISA’s J.J. is very much more sophisticated—and completely independent. It can operate by itself, for days—or weeks—without any human intervention. Not like the first J.J., which was controlled through a cable; someone described it as a puppy on a leash. Well, we’ve slipped the leash; this J.J. can go hunting over all the world’s ocean beds, sniffing at anything that looks interesting.”

  Jason Junior was not much larger than a man, and was shaped like a fat torpedo, with forward- and downward-viewing cameras. Main propulsion was provided by a single multibladed fan, and several small swivel jets gave attitude control. There were various streamlined bulges housing instruments, but none of the external manipulators found on most ROVs.

  “What, no hands?” said Emerson.

  “Doesn’t need them—so we have a much cleaner design, with more speed and range. J.J.’s purely a surveyor; we can always go back later and look at anything interesting he finds on the seabed. Or under it, with his magnetometer and sonar.”

  Emerson was impressed; this was the sort of machine that appealed to his gadgeteering instincts. The short-lived fame that the Wave Wiper had brought him had long ago evaporated—though not, fortunately, the wealth that came with it.

  He was, it seemed, a one-idea man; later inventions had all proved failures, and his well-publicized experiment to drop microspheres down to the Titanic in a hollow, air-filled tube had been an embarrassing debacle. Emerson’s “hole in the sea” stubbornly refused to stay open; the descending spheres clogged it halfway, unless the flow was so small as to be useless.

  The Parkinsons were quite upset, and had made poor Emerson feel uncomfortable at the last board meetings in ways that the English upper class had long perfected; for a few weeks, even his good friend Rupert had been distinctly cool.

  But much worse was to come. A satirical Washington cartoonist had created a crazy “Thomas Alva Emerson” whose zany inventions would have put Rube Goldberg to shame. They had begun with the motorized zipper and proceeded via the digital toothbrush to the solar-powered pacemaker. By the time it had reached Braille speedometers for blind motorists, Roy Emerson had consulted his lawyer.

  “Winning a libel action against a network,” said Joe Wickram, “is about as easy as writing the Lord’s Prayer on a rice grain with a felt pen. The defendant will plead fair comment, public interest, and quote at great length from the Bill of Rights. Of course,” he added hopefully, “I’ll be very happy to have a crack at it. I’ve always wanted to argue a case before the Supreme Court.”

  Very sensibly, Emerson had declined the offer, and at least something good had come out of the attack. The Parkinsons, to a man—and woman—felt it was unfair, and had rallied around him. Though they no longer took his engineering suggestions very seriously, they encouraged him to go on fact-finding missions like this one.

  The authority’s modest research and development center in Jamaica had no secrets, and was open to everybody. It was—in theory, at least—an impartial advisor to all who had dealings with the sea. The Parkinson and Nippon-Turner groups were now far and away the most publicly visible of these, and paid frequent visits to get advice on their own operations—and if possible, to check on the competition. They were careful to avoid scheduling conflicts, but sometimes there were slip-ups and polite “Fancy meeting you here!” exchanges. If Roy Emerson was not mistaken, he had noticed one of Kato’s people in the departure lounge of Kingston Airport, just as he was arriving.

  ISA, of course, was perfectly well aware of these under-currents, and did its best to exploit them. Franz Zwicker was particularly adept at plugging his own projects—and getting other people to pay for them. Bradley was glad to cooperate, especially where J.J. was concerned, and was equally adept at giving little pep talks and handing out glossy brochures on Operation NEPTUNE.

  “…Once the software’s been perfected,” Bradley told Emerson, “so that he can avoid obstacles and deal with emergency situations, we’ll let him loose. He’ll be able to map the seabed in greater detail than anyone’s ever done before. When the job’s finished, he’ll surface and we’ll pick him up, recharge his batteries, and download his data. Then off he’ll go again.”

  “Suppose he meets the great white shark?”

  “We’ve even looked into that. Sharks seldom attack anything unfamiliar, and J.J. certainly doesn’t look very appetizing. And his sonar and electromagnetic emissions will scare away most predators.”

  “Where do you plan to test him—and when?”

  “Starting next month, on some well-mapped local sites. Then out to the Continental Shelf. And then—up to the Grand Banks.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find much new around Titanic. Both sections have been photographed down to the square millimeter.”

  “That’s true; we’re not really interested in them. But J.J. can probe at least twenty meters below the seabed—and no one’s ever done that for the debris field. God knows what’s still buried there. Even if we don’t find anything exciting, it will show J.J.’s capabilities—and give a big boost to the project. I’m going up to Explorer next week to make arrangements. It’s ages since I was aboard her—and Parky—Rupert—says he has something to show me.”

  “He has indeed,” said Emerson with a grin. “I shouldn’t tell you this—but we’ve found the real treasure of the Titanic. Exactly where it was supposed to be.”

  26.

  THE MEDICI GOBLET

  “I wonder if you realize,” Bradley shouted, to make himself heard above the roar and rattle of machinery, “what a bargain you’ve got. She cost almost a quarter billion to build—and that was back when a billion dollars was real money.”

  Rupert Parkinson was wearing an immaculate yachtsman’s outfit which, especially when crowned by a hard hat, seemed a little out of place down here beside Glomar Explorer’s moon pool. The oily rectangle of water—larger than a tennis court—was surrounded by heavy salvage and handling equipment, much of it showing its age. Everywhere there were signs of hasty repairs, dabs of anticorrosion paint, and ominous notices saying out of order. Yet enough seemed to be working; Parkinson claimed they were actually ahead of schedule.

  It’s hard to believe, Bradley told himself, that it’s almost thirty-five years since I stood here, looking down into this same black rectangle of water. I don’t feel thirty-five years older… but I don’t remember much about the callow youngster who’d just signed up for his first big job. Certainly he could never have dreamed of the one I’m holding down now.

  It had turned out better than he had expected. After decades of battling with U.N. lawyers and a whole alphabet stew of government departments and environmental authorities, Bradley was learning that they were a necessary evil.

  The Wild West days of the sea were over. There had been a brief time when there was very little law below a hundred fathoms; now he was sheriff, and, rather to his surprise, he was beginning to enjoy it.

  One sign of his new status—some of his old colleagues called it “conversion”—was the framed certificate from Bluepeace he now had hanging on the office wall. It was right beside the photo presented to him years ago by the famous extinguisher of oil-rig fires, “Red” Adair. That bore the inscription: “Jason—isn’t it great not to be bothered by life-insurance salesmen? Best wishes—Red.”

  The Bluepeace citation was somewhat more dignified:

  TO JASON BRADLEY—IN RECOGNITION OF YOUR HUMANE TREATMENT OF A UNIQUE CREATURE, OCTOPUS GIGANTEUS VERRILL

  At least once a month Bradley would leave his office and fly to Newfoundland—a province that was once more living up to its name. Since operations had started, more and more of world attention had been turned toward the drama being played out on the Grand Banks. The countdown to 2012 had begun, and bets were alrea
dy being placed on the winner of “The Race for the Titanic.”

  And there was another focus of interest, this time a morbid one….

  “What annoys me,” said Parkinson, as they left the noisy and clamorous chaos of the moon pool, “are the ghouls who keep asking: ‘Have you found any bodies yet?’”

  “I’m always getting the same question. One day I’ll answer: ‘Yes—you’re the first.’”

  Parkinson laughed.

  “Must try that myself. But here’s the answer I give. You know that we’re still finding boots and shoes lying on the seabed—in pairs, a few centimeters apart? Usually they’re cheap and well worn, but last month we came across a beautiful example of the best English leatherwork. Looks as if they’re straight from the cobbler—you can still read the label that says ‘By Appointment to His Majesty.’ Obviously one of the first-class passengers….

  “I’ve put them in a glass case in my office, and when I’m asked about bodies I point to them and say: ‘Look—not even a scrap of bone left inside. It’s a hungry world down there. The leather would have gone too, if it wasn’t for the tannic acid.’ That shuts them up very quickly.”

  Glomar Explorer had not been designed for gracious living, but Rupert Parkinson had managed to transform one of the aft staterooms, just below the helipad, into a fair imitation of a luxury hotel suite. It reminded Bradley of their first meeting, back in Picadilly—ages ago, it now seemed. The room contained one item, however, which was more than a little out of place in such surroundings.

  It was a wooden chest, about a meter high, and it appeared almost new. But as he approached, Bradley recognized a familiar and unmistakable odor—the metallic tang of iodine, proof of long immersion in the sea. Some diver—was it Cousteau?—had once used the phrase “The scent of treasure.” Here it was, hanging in the air—and setting the blood pounding in his veins.

  “Congratulations, Rupert. So you’ve got into Great-Grandfather’s suite.”

  “Yes. Two of the Deep ROVs entered a week ago and did a preliminary survey. This is the first item they brought out.”

  The chest still displayed, in stenciled lettering unfaded after a century in the abyss, a somewhat baffling inscription:

  BROKEN ORANGE PEKOE

  UPPER GLENCAIRN ESTATE

  MATAKELLE

  Parkinson raised the lid, almost reverently, and then drew aside the sheet of metal foil beneath it.

  “Standard eighty-pound Ceylon tea chest,” he said. “It happened to be the right size, so they simply repacked it. And I’d no idea they used aluminium foil, back in 1912! Of course, the B.O.P. wouldn’t fetch a very good price at Colombo auction now—but it did its job. Admirably.”

  With a piece of stiff cardboard, Parkinson delicately cleared away the top layer of the soggy black mess; he looked, Bradley thought, exactly like an underwater archaeologist extracting a fragment of pottery from the seabed. This, however, was no twenty-five-century-old Greek amphora, but something far more sophisticated.

  “The Medici Goblet,” Parkinson whispered almost reverently. “No one has seen it for a hundred years; no one ever expected to see it again.”

  He exposed only the upper few inches, but that was enough to show a circle of glass inside which multicolored threads were embedded in a complex design.

  “We won’t remove it until we’re on land,” said Parkinson, “but this is what it looks like.”

  He opened a typical coffee-table art book, bearing the title Glories of Venetian Glass. The full-page photo showed what at first sight looked like a glittering fountain, frozen in midair.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Bradley, after a few seconds of wide-eyed astonishment. “How could anyone actually drink from it? More to the point, how could anyone make it?”

  “Good questions. First of all, it’s purely ornamental—intended to be looked at, not used. A perfect example of Wilde’s dictum: ‘All art is quite useless.’

  “And I wish I could answer your second question. We just don’t know. Oh, of course we can guess at some of the techniques used—but how did the glassblower make those curlicues intertwine? And look at the way those little spheres are nested one inside the other! If I hadn’t seen them with my own eyes, I’d have sworn that some of these pieces could only have been assembled in zero gravity.”

  “So that’s why Parkinson’s booked space on Skyhab 3.”

  “What a ridiculous rumor; not worth contradicting.”

  “Roy Emerson told me he was looking forward to his first trip into space… and setting up a weightless lab.”

  “I’ll fax Roy a polite note, telling him to keep his bloody mouth shut. But since you’ve raised the subject—yes, we think there are possibilities for zero-gee glassblowing. It may not start a revolution in the industry, like float glass back in the last century—but it’s worth a try.”

  “This probably isn’t a polite question, but how much is this goblet worth?”

  “I assume you’re not asking in your official capacity, so I won’t give a figure I’d care to put in a company report. Anyway, you know how crazy the art business is—more ups and downs than the stock market! Look at those late Twentieth-Century megadollar daubs you can’t give away now. And in this case there’s the history of the piece—how can you put a value on that?”

  “Make a guess.”

  “I’d be very disappointed at anything less than fifty M.”

  Bradley whistled.

  “And how much more is down there?”

  “Lots. Here’s the complete listing, prepared for the exhibition the Smithsonian had planned. Is planning—just a hundred years late.”

  There were more than forty items on the list, all with highly technical Italianate descriptions. About half had question marks beside them.

  “Bit of a mystery here,” said Parkinson. “Twenty-two of the pieces are missing—but we know they were aboard, and we’re sure G.G. had them in his suite, because he complained about the space they were taking up—he couldn’t throw a party.”

  “So—going to blame the French again?”

  It was an old joke, and rather a bitter one. Some of the French expeditions to the wreck, in the years following its 1985 discovery, had done considerable damage while attempting to recover artifacts. Ballard and his associates had never forgiven them.

  “No. I guess they’ve a pretty good alibi; we’re definitely the first inside. My theory is that G.G. had them moved out into an adjoining suite or corridor—I’m sure they’re not far away—we’ll find them sooner or later.”

  “I hope so; if your estimate is right—and after all, you’re the expert—those boxes of glass will pay for this whole operation. And everything else will be a pure bonus. Nice work, Rupert.”

  “Thank you. We hope Phase Two goes equally well.”

  “The Mole? I noticed it down beside the moon pool. Anything since your last report—which was rather sketchy?”

  “I know. We were in the middle of urgent mods when your office started making rude noises about schedules and deadlines. But now we’re on top of the problem—I hope.”

  “Do you still plan to make a test first, on a stretch of open seabed?”

  “No. We’re going to go for broke; we’re confident that all systems are okay, so why wait? Do you remember what happened in the Apollo Program, back in ’68? One of the most daring technological gambles in history…. The big Saturn V had only flown twice—unmanned—and the second flight had been a partial failure. Yet NASA took a calculated risk; the next flight was not only manned—it went straight to the Moon!

  “Of course, we’re not playing for such high stakes, but if the Mole doesn’t work—or we lose it—we’re in real trouble; our whole operation depends on it. The sooner we know about any real problems, the better.

  “No one’s ever tried something quite like this before; but our first run will be the real thing—and we’d like you to watch.

  “Now, Jason—how about a nice cup of tea?”

&nb
sp; 27.

  INJUNCTION

  Article 1

  Use of terms and scope

  1. For the purposes of this Convention:

  (1) “Area” means the seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction;

  (2) “Authority” means the International Seabed Authority;

  Article 145

  Protection of the marine environment

  Necessary measures shall be taken in accordance with this Convention with respect to activities in the Area to ensure effective protection for the marine environment from harmful effects which may arise from such activities. To this end the Authority shall adopt appropriate rules, regulations and procedures for inter alia:

  (a) the prevention, reduction and control of pollution and other hazards to the marine environment… particular attention being paid to the need for protection from harmful effects of such activities as drilling, dredging, disposal of waste, construction and operation or maintenance of installations, pipelines, and other devices related to such activities.

  (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982)

  “We’re in deep trouble,” said Kato, from his Tokyo office, “and that’s not meant to be funny.”

  “What’s the problem?” asked Donald Craig, relaxing in the Castle garden. From time to time he liked to give his eyes a chance of focusing on something more than half a meter away, and this was an unusually warm and sunny afternoon for early spring.

  “Bluepeace. They’ve lodged another protest with ISA—and this time I’m afraid they’ve got a case.”

  “I thought we’d settled all this.”

  “So did we; heads are rolling in our legal department. We can do everything we’d planned—except actually raise the wreck.”

  “It’s a little late in the day to discover that, isn’t it? And you’ve never told me how you intended to get the extra lift. Of course, I never took that crack about rockets seriously.”