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

  Pat shook his head sadly, as he continued pulling on the cord that rotated the big lens five meters above their heads. On the matte-white table around which they were standing, the lawns and flowerbeds and gravel paths of Conroy Castle performed a stately pirouette. Everything was unnaturally bright and clear, and Bradley could well imagine that to a boy this beautiful old machine must have transformed the familiar outside world into an enchanted fairyland.

  “’Tis a shame, Mr. Bradley, that Master Donald doesn’t know the truth when he hears it. I could tell him stories of the old lord—but what’s the use?”

  “You tell them to Ada, anyway.”

  “Sure—and she believes me, sensible girl.”

  “So do I—sometimes. Like those about Lord Dunsany.”

  “Only after you’d checked up on me with Father Mc-Mullen.”

  “Dunsany? The author?” asked Bradley.

  “Yes. You’ve read him?”

  “Er—no. But he was a great friend of Dr. Beebe—the first man to go down half a mile. That’s how I know the name.”

  “Well, you should read his stories—especially the ones about the sea. Pat says he often came here, to play chess with Lord Conroy.”

  “Dunsany was grand master of Ireland,” Patrick added. “But he was also a very kind man. So he always let the old lord win—just. How he’d have loved to play against your computer! Especially as he wrote a story about a chess-playing machine.”

  “He did?”

  “Well, not exactly a machine; maybe an imp.”

  “What’s it called? I must look it up.”

  “The Three Sailors’ Gambit—ah, there she is! I might have guessed.”

  The old man’s voice had softened appreciably as the little boat came into the field of view. It was drifting in lazy circles at the center of a fair-sized lake, and its sole occupant appeared to be completely engrossed in a book.

  Donald Craig raised his wristcom and whispered: “Ada—we have a visitor—we’ll be down in a minute.” The distant figure waved a languid hand, and continued reading. Then it dwindled swiftly away as Donald zoomed the camera obscura lens.

  Now Bradley could see that the lake was approximately heart-shaped, connected to a smaller, circular pond where the point of the heart should have been. That in turn opened into a third and much smaller pond, also circular. It was a curious arrangement, and obviously a recent one; the lawn still bore the scars of earth-moving machines.

  “Welcome to Lake Mandelbrot,” said Patrick, with noticeable lack of enthusiasm. “And be careful, Mr. Bradley—don’t encourage her to explain it to you.”

  “I don’t think,” said Donald, “that any encouragement will be necessary. But let’s go down and find out.”

  As her father approached with his two companions, Ada started the motor of the tiny boat; it was powered by a small solar panel, and was barely able to match their leisurely walking pace. She did not head directly toward them, as Bradley had expected, but steered the boat along the central axis of the main lake, and through the narrow isthmus connecting it to its smaller satellite. This was quickly crossed, and the boat entered the third and smallest lake of all. Though it was now only a few meters away from them, Bradley could hear no sound from its motor. His engineer’s soul approved of such efficiency.

  “Ada,” said Donald, calling across the rapidly diminishing expanse of water. “This is the visitor I told you about—Mr. Bradley. He’s going to help us raise the Titanic.”

  Ada, now preparing to enter the harbor, merely acknowledged his presence with a brief nod. The final lake—really no more than a small pond that would be overcrowded by a dozen ducks—was connected to a boathouse by a long, narrow canal. It was perfectly straight, and Bradley realized that it lay precisely along the central axis of the three conjoined lakes. All this was obviously planned, though for what purpose he could not imagine. From the quizzical smile on Patrick’s face, he guessed that the old gardener was enjoying his perplexity.

  The canal was bordered on either side by beautiful cypress trees, more than twenty meters high; it was, Bradley thought, like a miniature version of the approach to the Taj Mahal. He had only seen that masterpiece briefly, years ago, but had never forgotten its splendid vista.

  “You see, Pat, they’re all doing fine—in spite of what you said,” Donald told the head gardener.

  Patrick pursed his lips and looked critically at the line of trees. He pointed to several which, to Bradley’s eyes, appeared indistinguishable from the rest.

  “Those may have to be replanted,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you—and the Missus.”

  They had now reached the boathouse at the end of the tree-lined canal, and waited for Ada to complete her leisurely approach. When she was only a meter away, there was a sudden hysterical yelp and something closely resembling a small floor mop leaped out of the boat and hurled itself at Bradley’s feet.

  “If you don’t move,” said Donald, “she may decide you’re harmless, and let you live.”

  While the tiny Cairn terrier was sniffing suspiciously at his shoes, Bradley examined her mistress. He noticed, with approval, the careful way that Ada tied up the boat, even though that was quite unnecessary; she was, he could already tell, an extremely well-organized young lady—quite a contrast to her hysterical little pet, who had switched instantly to fawning affection.

  Ada scooped up Lady with one hand, and hugged the puppy to her breast while she regarded Bradley with a look of frank curiosity.

  “Are you really going to help us raise the Titanic?” she asked.

  Bradley shifted uncomfortably and avoided returning that disconcerting stare.

  “I hope so,” he said evasively. “But there are lots of things we have to talk over first.” And this, he added silently, is neither the time nor the place. He would have to wait until they had joined Mrs. Craig, and he was not altogether looking forward to the encounter.

  “What were you reading in the boat, Ada?” he asked lightly, trying to change the subject.

  “Why do you want to know?” she asked. It was a perfectly polite question, with no hint of impertinence. Bradley was still struggling for a suitable reply when Donald Craig interjected hastily: “I’m afraid my daughter hasn’t much time for the social graces. She considers there are more important things in life. Like fractals and non-Euclidean geometry.”

  Bradley pointed to the puppy. “That doesn’t look very geometric to me.”

  To his surprise, Ada rewarded him with a charming smile. “You should see Lady when she’s been dried out after a bath, and her hair’s pointing in all directions. Then she makes a lovely three-D fractal.”

  The joke was right over Bradley’s head, but he joined in the general laughter. Ada had the saving grace of a sense of humor; he could get to like her—as long as he remembered to treat her as someone twice her age.

  Greatly daring, he ventured another question.

  “That number 1.999 painted on the boathouse,” he said. “I suppose that’s a reference to your mother’s famous end-of-century program.”

  Donald Craig chuckled.

  “Nice try, Jason; that’s what most people guess. Let him have it gently, Ada.”

  The formidable Ms. Craig deposited her puppy on the grass, and it scuttled away to investigate the base of the nearest cypress. Bradley had the uncomfortable impression that Ada was trying to calibrate his I.Q. before she replied.

  “If you look carefully, Mr. Bradley, you’ll see there’s a minus sign in front of the number, and a dot over the last nine.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s really minus 1.9999… forever and ever.”

  “Amen,” interjected Patrick.

  “Wouldn’t it have been easier to write minus two?”

  “Exactly what I said,” Donald said with a chuckle. “But don’t tell that to a real mathematician.”

  “I thought you were a pretty good one.”

  “God, no—I’m just a hairy-knuckled
byte-basher, compared to Edith.”

  “And this young lady here, I suspect. You know, I’m beginning to feel out of my depth. And in my profession, that’s not a good idea.”

  Ada’s laugh helped to lift the curious sense of unease that Bradley had felt for the last few minutes. There was something depressing about this place—something ominous that hovered just beyond the horizon of consciousness. It was no use trying to focus upon it by a deliberate act of will—the fugitive wisp of memory scuttled away as soon as he attempted to pin it down. He would have to wait; it would emerge when it was ready.

  “You asked me what book I was reading, Mr. Bradley—”

  “—please call me Jason—”

  “—so here it is.”

  “I might have guessed. He was a mathematician too, wasn’t he? But I’m ashamed to say I’ve never read Alice. The nearest American equivalent is The Wizard of Oz.”

  “I’ve read that too, but Dodgson—Carroll—is much better. How he would have loved this!”

  Ada waved toward the curiously shaped lakes, and the little boathouse with its enigmatic inscription.

  “You see, Mr. Brad—Mr. Jason—that’s the Utter West. Minus two is infinity for the M-Set—there’s absolutely nothing beyond that. What we’re walking along now is the Spike—and this little pond is the very last of the mini-sets on the negative side. One day we’ll plant a border of flowers—won’t we, Pat?—that will give some idea of the fantastic detail around the main lobes. And over there in the east—that cusp where the two bigger lakes meet—that’s Seahorse Valley, at minus .745. The origin—zero, zero, of course—is in the middle of the biggest lake. The set doesn’t extend so far to the east; the cusp at Elephant Crossing—over there, right in front of the castle—is around plus .273.”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Bradley answered, completely overwhelmed. “You know perfectly well I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  That was not perfectly true: it was obvious enough that the Craigs had used their wealth to carve this landscape into the shape of some bizarre mathematical function. It seemed a harmless enough obsession; there were many worse ways of spending money, and it must have provided a great deal of employment for the locals.

  “I think that’s enough, Ada,” said Donald, with much more firmness than he had shown hitherto. “Let’s give Mr. Jason some lunch—before we throw him head-over-heels into the M-Set.”

  They were leaving the tree-lined avenue, at the point where the narrow canal opened out into the smallest of the lakes, when Bradley’s brain unlocked its memory. Of course—the still expanse of water, the boat, the cypresses—all the key elements of Boecklin’s painting! Incredible that he hadn’t realized it before….

  Rachmaninoff’s haunting music welled up from the depths of his mind—soothing, familiar, reassuring. Now that he had identified the cause of his faint disquiet, the shadow lifted from his spirit.

  Even later, he never really believed it had been a premonition.

  19.

  “RAISE THE TITANIC!”

  Slowly, reluctantly, the thousands of tons of metal began to stir, like some marine monster awakening from its sleep. The explosive charges that were attempting to jolt it off the seabed blasted up great clouds of silt, which concealed the wreck in a swirling mist.

  The decades-long grip of the mud began to yield; the enormous propellers lifted from the ocean floor. Titanic began the ascent to the world she had left, a long lifetime ago.

  On the surface, the sea was already boiling from the disturbance far below. Out of the maelstrom of foam, a slender mast emerged—still carrying the crow’s nest from which Frederick Fleet had once telephoned the fatal words, “Iceberg right ahead.”

  And now the prow came knifing up—the ruined superstructure—the whole vast expanse of decking—the giant anchors which had taken a twenty-horse team to move—the three towering funnels, and the stump of the fourth—the great cliff of steel, studded with portholes—and, at last:

  TITANIC

  LIVERPOOL

  The monitor screen went blank; there was a momentary silence in the studio, induced by a mixture of awe, reverence, and sheer admiration for the movie’s special effects.

  Then Rupert Parkinson, never long at a loss for words, said ruefully: “I’m afraid it won’t be quite as dramatic as that. Of course, when that movie was made, they didn’t know she was in two pieces. Or that all the funnels had gone—though that should have been obvious.”

  “Is it true,” asked Channel Ten’s host Marcus Kilford—“Mucus” or “Killjoy” to his enemies, who were legion—“that the model they used in the movie cost more than the original ship?”

  “I’ve heard that story—could be true, allowing for inflation.”

  “And the joke—”

  “—that it would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic? Believe me, I’m tired of hearing that one!”

  “Then I won’t mention it, of course,” said Kilford, twirling the notorious monocle that was his trademark. It was widely believed that this ostentatious antique served only to hypnotize his guests, and had no optical properties whatsoever. The Physics Department of King’s College, London, had even run a computer analysis of the images reflected when it caught the studio lights, and claimed to have established this with ninety-five percent certainty. The matter would only be settled when someone actually captured the thing, but all attempts had so far failed. It appeared to be immovably attached to Marcus, and he had warned would-be hijackers that it was equipped with a miniaturized self-destruct device. If this was activated, he would not be responsible for the consequences. Of course, no one believed him.

  “In the film,” continued Kilford, “they talked glibly about pumping foam into the hull to lift the wreck. Would that have worked?”

  “Depends on how it was done. The pressure is so great—four hundred times atmospheric!—that all ordinary foams would collapse instantly. But we obtain essentially the same result with our microspheres—each holds its little bubble of air.”

  “They’re strong enough to resist that enormous pressure?”

  “Yes—just try and smash one!”

  Parkinson scattered a handful of glass marbles across the studio coffee table. Kilford picked one up, and whistled with unfeigned surprise.

  “It weighs hardly anything!”

  “State of the art,” Parkinson answered proudly. “And they’ve been tested all the way down to the bottom of the Marianas Trench—three times deeper than the Titanic.”

  Kilford turned to his other guest.

  “You could have done with these on the Mary Rose, back in 1982—couldn’t you, Dr. Thornley?”

  The marine archaeologist shook her head. “Not really. That was a totally different problem. Mary Rose was in shallow water, and our divers were able to place a cradle under her. Then the biggest floating crane in the world pulled her up.”

  “It was touch and go, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. A lot of people nearly had heart attacks when that metal strap gave way.”

  “I can believe it. Now, that hull has been sitting in Southampton Dock for a quarter century—and it still isn’t ready for public display. Will you do a quicker job on Titanic, Mr. Parkinson—assuming that you do get her up?”

  “Certainly; it’s the difference between wood and steel. The sea had four centuries to soak into Mary Rose’s timbers—no wonder it’s taking decades to get it out. All the wood in Titanic has gone—we don’t have to bother about it. Our problem is rust; and there’s very little at that depth, thanks to the cold and lack of oxygen. Most of the wreck is in one of two states: excellent—or terrible.”

  “How many of these little… microspheres… will you need?”

  “About fifty billion.”

  “Fifty billion! And how will you get them down there?”

  “Very simply. We’re going to drop them.”

  “With a little weight attached to each one—another fifty bil
lion?”

  Parkinson smiled, rather smugly.

  “Not quite. Our Mr. Emerson has invented a technique so simple that no one believes it will work. We’ll have a pipe leading down from the surface to the wreck. The water will be pumped out—and we’ll simply pour the microspheres in at the top, and collect them at the bottom. They’ll take only a few minutes to make the trip.”

  “But surely—”

  “Oh, we’ll have to use special air locks at both ends, but it will be essentially a continuous process. When they arrive, the microspheres will be packaged in bundles, each a cubic meter in volume. That will give a buoyancy of one ton per unit—a comfortable size for the robots to handle.”

  Marcus Kilford turned to the long-silent archaeologist.

  “Dr. Thornley,” he asked, “do you think it will work?”

  “I suppose so,” she said reluctantly, “but I’m not the expert on these matters. Won’t that tube have to be very strong, to stand the enormous pressure at the bottom?”

  “No problem; we’ll use the same material. As my company’s slogan says, ‘You can do anything with glass’—”

  “No more commercials, please!”

  Kilford turned toward the camera, and intoned solemnly, though with a twinkle in his eye: “May I take this opportunity of denying the malicious rumor that Mr. Parkinson was spotted in a BBC cloak room, handing me a shoe box stuffed with well-used bank notes.”

  Everyone laughed, though behind the thick glass of the control room the producer whispered to his assistant: “If he uses that joke once again, I’ll suspect it’s true.”

  “May I ask a question?” said Dr. Thornley unexpectedly. “What about your… shall I say, rivals? Do you think they’ll succeed first?”

  “Well, let’s call them friendly competitors.”

  “Indeed?” said Kilford skeptically. “Whoever brings their section up to the surface first will get all the publicity.”