The Ghost from the Grand Banks Page 6

  On his leisurely way back to the surface, Bradley whispered softly to his dead friend: “Well, Ted, we did it again—but I don’t think we can take much credit.”

  Judging by the manner of his going, he did not believe that Oscar would return. He could see the animal’s point of view—even sympathize with it.

  There the peaceable mollusk was, quietly going about his business of preventing the North Atlantic from becoming a solid mass of cod. Suddenly, out of nowhere, appeared a monstrous apparition blazing with lights and waving ominous appendages. Oscar had done what any intelligent octopus would do. He had recognized that there was a creature in the sea much more ferocious than himself.

  “My congratulations, Mr. Bradley,” said H.R.H. as Jason slowly emerged from his armor. This was always a difficult and undignified operation, but it kept him in good shape. If he put on another couple of centimeters, he would never be able to squeeze through the O-ring of the helmet seal.

  “Thank you, sir,” he replied. “All part of the day’s work.”

  The Prince chuckled.

  “I thought we British had a monopoly on understatement. And I don’t suppose you’re prepared to reveal your secret ingredient?”

  Jason smiled and shook his head.

  “One day I may need to use it again.”

  “Whatever it was,” said Rawlings with a grin, “it cost us a pretty penny. When we tracked him on sonar—amazing what a feeble echo he gives—Oscar was certainly moving fast toward deep water. But suppose he comes back when he gets hungry again? There’s nowhere else in the North Atlantic where the fishing’s so good.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Jason answered, pointing to his battered cylinder. “If he does, I’ll rush you my magic bullet—and you can send down your own man to deal with him. It won’t cost you a cent.”

  “There’s a catch somewhere,” said Rawlings. “It can’t be that easy.”

  Jason smiled, but did not answer. Though he was playing strictly by the rules, he felt a slight—very slight—twinge of conscience. The “No cure, no pay” slogan also implied that you got paid when you effected a cure, no questions asked. He had earned his hundred K bucks, and if anyone ever asked him how it was done, he would answer: “Didn’t you know? An octopus is easy to hypnotize.”

  There was only one mild cause for dissatisfaction. He wished he’d had a chance of checking the household hint in the old Jacques Cousteau book that his encyclopedia had providentially quoted. It would be interesting to know if Octopus giganteus had the same aversion to concentrated copper sulphate as his midget ten-meter cousin, Octopus vulgaris.

  15. CONROY CASTLE

  The Mandelbrot Set—hereinafter referred to as the M-Set—is one of the most extraordinary discoveries in the entire history of mathematics. That is a rash claim, but we hope to justify it.

  The stunning beauty of the images it generates means that its appeal is both emotional and universal. Invariably these images bring gasps of astonishment from those who have never encountered them before; we have seen people almost hypnotized by the computer-produced films that explore its—quite literally—infinite ramifications.

  Thus it is hardly surprising that within a decade of Benoit Mandelbrot’s 1980 discovery it began to have an impact on the visual arts and crafts, such as the designs of fabrics, carpets, wallpaper, and even jewelry. And, of course, the Hollywood dream factories were soon using it (and its relatives) twenty-four hours a day…

  The psychological reasons for this appeal are still a mystery, and may always remain so; perhaps there is some structure, if one can use that term, in the human mind that resonates to the patterns in the M-Set. Carl Jung would have been surprised—and delighted—to know that thirty years after his death, the computer revolution whose beginnings he just lived to see would give new impetus to his theory of archetypes and his belief in the existence of a “collective unconscious.” Many patterns in the M-Set are strongly reminiscent of Islamic art; perhaps the best example is the familiar comma-shaped “Paisley” design. But there are other shapes that remind one of organic structures—tentacles, compound insect eyes, armies of seahorses, elephant trunks… then, abruptly, they become transformed into the crystals and snowflakes of a world before any life began.

  Yet perhaps the most astonishing feature of the M-Set is its basic simplicity. Unlike almost everything else in modern mathematics, any schoolchild can understand how it is produced. Its generation involves nothing more advanced than addition and multiplication; it does not even require subtraction or division, much less any higher functions…

  In principle—though not in practice!—it could have been discovered as soon as men learned to count. But even if they never grew tired, and never made a mistake, all the human beings who have ever existed would not have sufficed to do the elementary arithmetic required to produce an M-Set of quite modest magnification…

  (From “The Psychodynamics of the M-Set,” by Edith and Donald Craig, in Essays Presented to Professor Benoit Mandelbrot on his 80th Birthday: MIT Press, 2004.)

  “Are we paying for the dog, or the pedigree?” Donald Craig had asked in mock indignation when the impressive sheet of parchment had arrived. “She’s even got a coat of arms, for heaven’s sake!”

  It had been love at first sight between Lady Fiona McDonald of Glen Abercrombie—a fluffy half-kilogram of Cairn terrier—and the nine-year-old girl. To the surprise and disappointment of the neighbors, Ada had shown no interest in ponies. “Nasty, smelly things,” she told Patrick O’Brian, the head gardener, “with a bite at one end and a kick at the other.” The old man had been shocked at so unnatural a reaction from a young lady, especially one who was half Irish at that.

  Nor was he altogether happy with some of the new owners” projects for the estate on which his family had worked for five generations. Of course, it was wonderful to have real money flowing into Conroy Castle again, after decades of poverty—but converting the stables into computer rooms! It was enough to drive a man to drink, if he wasn’t there already.

  Patrick had managed to derail some of the Craigs” more eccentric ideas by a policy of constructive sabotage, but they—or rather Miz Edith—had been adamant about the remodeling of the lake. After it had been dredged and some hundreds of tons of water hyacinth removed, she had presented Patrick with an extraordinary map.

  “This is what I want the lake to look like,” she said, in a tone that Patrick had now come to recognize all too well.

  “What’s it supposed to be?” he asked, with obvious distaste. “Some kind of bug?”

  “You could call it that,” Donald had answered, in his don’t-blame-me-it’s-all-Edith’s-idea voice. “The Mandelbug. Get Ada to explain it to you someday.”

  A few months earlier, O’Brian would have resented that remark as patronizing, but now he knew better. Ada was a strange child, but she was some kind of genius. Patrick sensed that both her brilliant parents regarded her as much with awe as with admiration. And he liked Donald considerably more than Edith; for an Englishman, he wasn’t too bad.

  “The lake’s no problem. But moving all those grown cypress trees—I was only a boy when they were planted! It may kill them. I’ll have to talk it over with the Forestry Department in Dublin.”

  “How long will it take?” asked Edith, totally ignoring his objections.

  “Do you want it quick, cheap, or good? I can give you any two.”

  This was now an old joke between Patrick and Donald, and the answer was the one they both expected.

  “Fairly quick—and very good. The mathematician who discovered this is in his eighties, and we’d like him to see it as soon as possible.”

  “Nothing I’d be proud of discovering.”

  Donald laughed. “This is only a crude first approximation. Wait until Ada shows you the real thing on the computer; you’ll be surprised.”

  I very much doubt it, thought Patrick.

  The shrewd old Irishman was not often wrong. This was one of
the rare occasions.

  16. THE KIPLING SUITE

  Jason Bradley and Roy Emerson had a good deal in common, thought Rupert Parkinson. They were both members of an endangered, if not dying, species—the self-made American entrepreneur who had created a new industry or become the leader of an old one. He admired, but did not envy them; he was quite content, as he often put it, to have been “born in the business.”

  His choice of the Kipling Suite at Brown’s for this meeting had been quite deliberate, though he had no idea how much, or how little, his guests knew about the writer. In any event, both Emerson and Bradley seemed impressed by the ambience of the room, with the historic photographs around the wall, and the very desk on which the great man had once worked.

  “I never cared much for T. S. Eliot,” began Parkinson, “until I came across his Choice of Kipling’s Verse. I remember telling my Eng. Lit. tutor that a poet who liked Kipling couldn’t be all bad. He wasn’t amused.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Bradley, “I’ve never read much poetry. Only thing of Kipling’s I know is ‘If—’ ”

  “Pity: he’s just the man for you—the poet of the sea, and of engineering. You really must read ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’; even though its technology’s a hundred years obsolete, no one’s ever matched its tribute to machines. And he wrote a poem about the deep sea cables that you’ll appreciate. It goes:

  “The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops down from afar—

  Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the blind white sea-snakes are.

  There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts of the deep,

  Or the great grey level plains of ooze where the shell-burred cables creep.”

  “I like it,” said Bradley. “But he was wrong about ‘no echo of sound.’ The sea’s a very noisy place—if you have the right listening gear.”

  “Well, he could hardly have known that, back in the nineteenth century. He’d have been absolutely fascinated by our project—especially as he wrote a novel about the Grand Banks.”

  “He did?” both Emerson and Bradley exclaimed simultaneously.

  “Not a very good one—nowhere near Kim—but what is? Captains Courageous is about the Newfoundland fishermen and their hard lives; Hemingway did a much better job, half a century later and twenty degrees further south…”

  “I’ve read that,” said Emerson proudly. “The Old Man and the Sea.”

  “Top of the class, Roy. I’ve always thought it a tragedy that Kipling never wrote an epic poem about Titanic. Maybe he intended to, but Hardy beat him to it.”

  “Hardy?”

  “Never mind. Please excuse us, Rudyard, while we get down to business…”

  Three flat display panels (and how they would have fascinated Kipling!) flipped up simultaneously. Glancing at his, Rupert Parkinson began: “We have your report dated thirtieth April. I assume that you’ve no further inputs since then?”

  “Nothing important. My staff has rechecked all the figures. We think we could improve on them—but we prefer to be conservative. I’ve never known a major underwater operation that didn’t have some surprises.”

  “Even your famous encounter with Oscar?”

  “Biggest surprise of all. Went even better than I’d expected.”

  “What about the status of Explorer?”

  “No change, Rupe. She’s still mothballed in Suisun Bay.”

  Parkinson flinched slightly at the “Rupe.” At least it was better than “Parky”—permitted only to intimate friends.

  “It’s hard to believe,” said Emerson, “that such a valuable—such a unique—ship has only been used once.”

  “She’s too big to run economically, for any normal commercial project. Only the CIA could afford her—and it got its wrist slapped by Congress.”

  “I believe they once tried to hire her to the Russians.”

  Bradley looked at Parkinson, and grinned. “So you know about that?”

  “Of course. We did a lot of research before we came to you.”

  “I’m lost,” said Emerson. “Fill me in, please.”

  “Well, back in 1989 one of their newest Russian submarines—”

  “Only Mike class they ever built.”

  “—sank in the North Sea, and some bright chappie in the Pentagon said: “Hey—perhaps we can get some of our money back!” But nothing ever came of it. Or did it, Jason?”

  “Well, it wasn’t the Pentagon’s idea; no one there with that much imagination. But I can tell you that I spent a pleasant week in Geneva with the deputy director of the CIA and three admirals—one of ours, two of theirs. That was… ah, in the spring of 1990. Just when the Reformation was starting, so everyone lost interest. Igor and Alexei resigned to go into the export-import business; I still get Xmas cards every year from their office in Lenin—I mean Saint Pete. As you said, nothing ever came of the idea; but we all put on about ten kilos and took weeks to get back into shape.”

  “I know those Geneva restaurants. If you had to get Explorer shipshape, how long would it take?”

  “If I can pick the men, three to four months. That’s the only time estimate I can be sure of. Getting down to the wreck, checking its integrity, building any additional structural supports, getting your billions of glass balloons down to it—frankly, even those maximum figures I’ve put in brackets are only guesstimates. But I’ll be able to refine them after the initial survey.”

  “That seems very reasonable: I appreciate your frankness. At this stage, all we really want to know is whether the project is even feasible—in the time frame.”

  “Timewise—yes. Costwise—who knows? What’s your ceiling, anyway?”

  Rupert Parkinson pretended to wince at the bluntness of the question.

  “We’re still doing our sums—aren’t we, Roy?”

  Some signal passed between them that Bradley could not interpret, but Emerson gave a clue with his reply.

  “I’m still prepared to match anything the board puts up, Rupert. If the operation succeeds, I’ll get it all back on Plan B.”

  “And what, may I ask, is Plan B?” said Bradley. “For that matter, what’s Plan A? You still haven’t told me what you intend to do with the hull, when you’ve towed it to New York. Do a Vasa?”

  Parkinson threw up his hands in mock dismay. “He’s guessed Plan C,” he said with a groan. “Yes, we had thought of putting her on display, after we’d brought her into Manhattan—a hundred years behind schedule. But you know what happens to an iron ship when it’s brought to the surface after a few decades underwater—preserving a wooden one is bad enough. Pickling Titanic in the right chemicals would take decades—and probably cost more than raising her.”

  “So you’ll leave her in shallow water. Which means you’ll be taking her to Florida, just as that TV show suggested.”

  “Look, Jason—we’re still exploring all options: Disney World is only one of them. We won’t even be disappointed if we have to leave her on the bottom—as long as we can salvage what’s in Great-Grandfather’s suite. It’s lucky he refused to let all those chests be carried as cargo; his very last marconigram complained that he had no space for entertaining.”

  “And you’re confident that all that fragile glass will still be intact?”

  “Ninety percent of it. The Chinese discovered centuries ago that their wares could travel safely the length of the Silk Road—if they were packed in tea leaves. No one found anything better until polystyrene foam came along; and of course you can sell the tea, and make a nice profit on that as well.”

  “I doubt it, for this particular consignment.”

  “Afraid you’re right. Pity—it was a personal gift from Sir Thomas Lipton—the very best from his Ceylon estates.”

  “You’re quite sure it would have absorbed the impact?”

  “Easily. The ship plowed into soft mud at an angle, doing about thirty knots. Average deceleration two gee—maximum five.”

  Rupert Parkinson folded down the display pa
nel and clicked shut the miracle of electronic intelligence which was now as casually accepted as the telephone had been a lifetime earlier.

  “We’ll call you again before the end of the week, Jason,” continued Parkinson. “There’s a board meeting tomorrow, and I hope it will settle matters. Again, many thanks for your report; if we decide to go ahead, can we count on you?”

  “In what way?”

  “As O.i.C. operations, of course.”

  There was a long pause; a little too long, Parkinson thought.

  “I’m flattered, Rupe. I’d have to think it over—see how I could fit it into my schedule.”

  “Really, Jason—you wouldn’t have any ‘schedule’ if this goes ahead. It’s the biggest job you’ll ever be offered.” He almost added “Perhaps it’s too big,” but then thought better of it. Jason Bradley was not the sort of man one cared to annoy, especially if one hoped to do business with him.

  “I quite agree,” Bradley said, “and I’d like to take it on. Not just for the cash—which I’m sure will be okay—but the challenge. Win or lose. Very nice meeting you both—gotta run.”

  “Aren’t you seeing anything of London? I can get you tickets to the new Andrew Lloyd Webber-Stephen King show. There aren’t many people who can make that claim.”

  Bradley laughed. “Love to go—but they’ve managed to total a slugcatcher in the Orkneys field, and I’ve promised to be in Aberdeen by this afternoon.”

  “Very well. We’ll keep in touch…”

  “What do you think, Roy?” Parkinson asked, when the room was quiet again.

  “Tough little guy, isn’t he? Do you suppose he’s holding out for the highest bidder?”

  “That’s just what I was wondering. If he is, he’ll be out of luck.”

  “Oh—our legal eagles have done their thing?”