Passage. Part 67

"Just let me-" she said to a woman carrying a Pekingese and a furled umbrella, and stepped toward the middle of the step, trying to get out of the woman's way. She raised her arm, trying to reach around- The umbrella caught her sharply in the ribs, and she gasped and grabbed for her side. She let go of the railing, and the crowd swept her up past the cherub, past the angels of Honour and Glory Crowning Time, through the etched-gla.s.s doors, and out onto the Boat Deck.

Joanna stood there a moment, holding her side, as they poured past her, and then started back through the crowd to the doors. "Excuse me," she said, squeezing past the uniformed man in the door, and saw it was the clerk from the mail room. He had a canvas mail sack over his shoulder, and it was dripping on the flowered carpet of the foyer. She stepped back, looking down at the carpet, at the dark drops.

"You'd better get into a boat, miss," the clerk said kindly.

"I can't. I have to go back the way I came," she said, trying to get past him without stepping in the damp spot, without touching the dripping sack. "I have to tell Richard what I found out."

He nodded solemnly. "The mail must go through. But you can't go down that way. It's blocked."

"Blocked?"

"Yes, miss. There are people coming up. You'll need to take the aft staircase, miss." He pointed up the Boat Deck. "Do you know where it is?"

"Yes," Joanna said, and ran toward the stern, past the band getting out its instruments, setting up its music stands. The violinist set his black case on top of the upright piano and snapped the latches open.

" 'Alexander's Ragtime Band,' " the conductor said, and the ba.s.s viol player sorted through a sheaf of sheet music, looking for it.

Past Lifeboat Number 9, where a young man was saying good-bye to a young woman in a white dress and a veil. "It's all right, little girl," he said. "You go, and I'll stay awhile." Past Number 11,where the mustached man she had seen in the writing room and in the lounge, dealing out hand after hand of cards, was lifting two children into the boat. Past Number 13, where an officer was calling, "Anyone else to go in this boat? Any more women and children?"

Joanna shook her head and hurried past. And into a man in a denim s.h.i.+rt and suspenders. "No need to panic, folks," he said, herding people toward the bow. "Just walk slowly. Don't run. Plenty of time."

Joanna backed away from him. And into the officer. He took her arm. "You need to get into a boat, miss," he said, leading her back toward Number 13. "There isn't much time."

"No," she said, but he was gripping her arm tightly, he was propelling her over to the davits.

"Wait for this young lady," he called to the crewman in the boat.

"No," Joanna said, "you don't understand. I have to-"

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he said, and his grip on her arm was like iron, it was cutting off her circulation. "It's perfectly safe."

"No!" She wrenched free of him and ran down the deck, past the officer, as if he were still chasing her, past the band and into the foyer of the Grand Staircase, thinking, The elevator. The elevator will be faster.

She pushed the gold-and-ivory b.u.t.ton. "Come on, come on," she said, and pushed it again, but the arrow above the door didn't move. She abandoned it and ran over to the head of the staircase, down the stairs to B Deck, C Deck, thinking, What if it's blocked like he said?

It wasn't. It was clear. "Again. Clear," the resident said, and Joanna was in the emergency room and Vielle was holding her hand.

"I've got a pulse."

"Vielle," Joanna said, but Vielle wasn't looking at her, she was looking at the aide who had come out in the hall that day they had the fight, she was telling her, "If he doesn't answer his page, go get him. He's in 602."

"Vielle, tell Richard the NDE's a distress call the dying brain sends out," Joanna tried to say, but there was something in her mouth, choking her.

"He's coming, Joanna," Vielle said, holding tight to her hand. "Just hang on."

"If Richard doesn't get here in time, tell him the NDE's a distress signal. It's important," Joanna tried to say around the choking thing in her throat. They've intubated me, she thought, panicked, and tried to pull it out, but it wasn't an airway, it was blood. She was coughing it up and out of her, gallons and gallons of blood. "Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" It was pouring out of her, and all over Vielle and the resident and the nurse, choking her, drowning her.

"Help," she cried, "I have to tell Richard. It's an SOS," but it wasn't Vielle, it was the man withthe mustache and she was back on the Boat Deck. The band was playing "Goodnight, Irene," and the officer was loading Number 4.

"I want you to do something for me when you reach New York," the mustached man was saying to Joanna, putting something in her hand.

She looked down at it. It was a note, written in a childish round cursive. "If saved," it read, "please inform my sister Mrs. F. J. Adams of Findlay, Ohio. Lost. J. H. Rogers."

"Please see that my sister gets this," he said, closing her fingers over the note. "Tell her it's from me."

"But I'm not going to-" Joanna said, but he had already melted into the crowd, and the officer was headed toward her, calling, "Miss! Miss!" She jammed the note into her pocket and ran down the deck toward the aft staircase, darting between couples, past a pair of cheerleaders in purple-and-gold pleated skirts, between families saying good-bye.

"But he's going to be all right, isn't he?" a woman in a white coat and white knitted cap said to an officer.

The officer looked pityingly at her. "We're doing everything we can."

Joanna pushed past the woman, but the way to the aft staircase was mobbed with people in kerchiefs and cloth caps, fighting to get into the boats, and sailors trying to free the boats, trying to lower them. "You can't get through this way!" the sailor who had worked the Morse lamp called to her. He jerked his thumb back toward the stern. "Try the second-cla.s.s stairway," and she turned and ran past the empty davits of the boats that had already been lowered, to the second-cla.s.s stairway.

The door to the second-cla.s.s stairway was standing open, her red tennis shoe lying on its side on the threshold. Joanna leaped over it and pelted down the stairs, past the A La Carte Restaurant, down the next flight, around the landing. And stopped.

Two steps below the landing, tied to the railings on either side, stretched a strip of yellow tape.

"Crime Scene," it said. "Do Not Cross." And below it, submerging the stairs, pale blue, s.h.i.+ny as paint, the water.

"It's underwater," Joanna said, and sat down, holding on to the railing for support. "The pa.s.sage is underwater."

Maybe it's just the stairway, she thought, maybe it hasn't reached the pa.s.sage, but of course it had. The second-cla.s.s stairway was all the way in the stern, and the s.h.i.+p was going down by the head. And below the tape water was pouring in everywhere, drowning the mail room and Scotland Road and the swimming pool, the squash court and the staterooms and the gla.s.s-enclosed deck. And the way out, the way back.

There has to be another way out, Joanna thought, staring blindly at the pale blue water. The Apaches cut the wires, but Carl was still able to get the mail through. There has to be another way out. The lifeboats! she thought, and scrambled to her feet, tore up the stairs and back along the Boat Deck.The boats were gone, the deck deserted except for the band, which had finished "Goodnight, Irene." They were searching through their music for the next piece, arranging the sheet music on their stands.

Joanna ran to the railing and leaned far over it, trying to see the lifeboat the sailor had been loading. It was miles below her, almost to the water. She couldn't make out anything in the darkness but the pale gleam of the sailor's white uniform. It was too far for her to jump, but maybe not too far for them to hear her. "h.e.l.lo!" she called down, cupping her hand around her mouth. "Ahoy! Can you hear me?"

There was no movement of the white uniform, no sound. "I need you to deliver a message for me," she shouted, but the band had struck up a waltz, and her voice was lost in the sound of the violin, of the piano.

They can't hear me, she thought. She needed to drop a message down to them. She fumbled in her pockets for a pen and paper. She came up with the mustached man's note, but no pen, not even a stub of pencil. "Just a minute!" she called down to the boat. "Hang on!" and ran down the deck to the aft staircase and down to the writing room on the Promenade Deck, praying, "Don't let it be flooded, don't let it be flooded."

It wasn't. The Reading and Writing Room sat empty, the yellow-shaded lamps still burning on the writing desks. Joanna grabbed a sheet of stationery out of the rack, dipped a pen in the inkwell, and scribbled, "Richard, the NDE is a distress signal the brain sends as it's dying-"

"What's going on?" a voice said. Joanna looked up. It was Greg Menotti. He was wearing jogging shorts and a Nike T-s.h.i.+rt. "Somebody told me the s.h.i.+p's sinking," he said, laughing.

"It is," Joanna said, writing, "-and you have to find out what neurotransmitter it's trying to activate." She scrawled her name at the bottom, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the sheet of paper, and ran out onto the deck.

"What do you mean?" Greg said, jogging up beside her. "It's unsinkable."

She leaned over the railing into the darkness. "Ahoy!" she called, waving the sheet of paper.

"Lifeboat!"

No answer. No gleam of white. Only the fathomless blackness.

She flung herself away from the railing and along the deck to the first-cla.s.s lounge.

"But it can't be sinking," Greg said, sprinting after her.

She yanked open the stained-gla.s.s door of the lounge. "If it's sinking," Greg said, "we'd better get in one of the boats."

She ran over to the mirrored mahogany bar. "The boats are all gone."

"They can't all be gone," he said, panting, holding his arm. "There has to be a way off this s.h.i.+p.""There isn't," she said, grabbing a bottle of wine off the bar.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed at the wrist of her hand holding the bottle. "I work out at the health club three times a week!"

"It doesn't matter. The t.i.tanic had sixteen watertight compartments, she had the latest safety features, and it didn't matter. An iceberg gashed her side and-" she said, and remembered her blouse and the little ooze of blood.

"It doesn't look like a very bad cut," Maisie had said, scrutinizing the diagram of the t.i.tanic.

And it wasn't, but belowdecks, inside, water was pouring into the watertight compartments, spilling over into the engine room and the chest cavity and the lungs. "How bad is it?" Captain Smith asked, and the architect shook his head. "It's nicked the aorta."

"What is it?" Greg asked, letting go of her wrist. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," she said, thinking, You have to get the message to Richard. "I need something to open the wine bottle with."

"There isn't time. We have to get up to the Boat Deck," he said, and his face was furious, frantic, like the face of the boy in the Avalanche jacket, whirling toward her...

"I have to do this first," Joanna said, and began opening drawers, digging through silverware.

"I found this," Greg said, and held out a knife to her. A knife. He had had a knife. But when she looked down, she hadn't been able to see it. Because it had already gone in. "We've got a stab wound here," the resident had said. "Get a cross match." But it was too late. Belowdecks it was roaring out, into the staterooms and staircases, putting out the boiler fires, flooding the pa.s.sages.

Flooding everything.

"Give it to me," Greg said and wrenched the wine bottle out of her hand. He pried the cork out with the point of the knife, clumsily. The wine spilled on the flowered carpet, dark red, soaking into the carpet and her cardigan and Vielle's scrubs.

"We've got a stab wound here," the resident had said to Vielle, but it wasn't Vielle's blood, it was hers. She sank against the bar, holding her side.

Greg was bending over her, holding the open bottle out. "Now can we go up to the Boat Deck?" he said.

The boats are all gone, she thought, staring dully at the bottle. There's no way off the s.h.i.+p. "I'm going," Greg said, and put the bottle in her helpless hand. "There have to be boats on the other side.

They can't all be gone."

But they are, Joanna thought, watching him run out. Because I'm the s.h.i.+p that's going down. I'm dying, she thought wonderingly, he killed me before I could tell Richard, and remembered why she had wanted the bottle.

She had wanted to send a message, but it was impossible. The dead couldn't send messagesfrom the Other Side, in spite of what Mr. Mandrake said, in spite of Mrs. Davenport's psychic telegrams. It was too far. But Joanna stood up and poured the wine out onto the carpet, looking steadily at the dark, spreading stain. She folded the sheet of White Star stationery into narrow pleats and put it in the bottle, tamping the cork down and then prying it out again and putting in the note to Mr. Rogers's sister, too.

She climbed back up the aft staircase to the Boat Deck, holding on to the railing with her free hand because the stairs had begun to slant, and walked over to the railing and threw the bottle in, flinging it far out so it wouldn't catch on one of the lower decks, straining to hear the splash. But none came, and though she stood on tiptoe and leaned far out over the rail, peering into the black void, she could not see the water below, or the light from the Californian, only darkness. "SOS," Joanna murmured. "SOS."

41.

"Oh, Christ, come quickly!"

-Last words of a Franciscan nun, drowned in the wreck of the Deutschland.

Richard called up the neurotransmitter a.n.a.lysis for Joanna's first session and scanned through the list. No theta-asparcine, and there hadn't been any in any of Mr. Sage's NDEs either.

He called up her second session. None there either. Theta-asparcine wasn't an endorphin inhibitor, but it might affect the L+R or the temporal-lobe stimulation. Dr. Jamison had said she had a paper on recent theta-asparcine research findings. He wondered if she was back from her errand, whatever it was.

He glanced at his watch. Nearly two. Unless Dr. Jamison called in the next fifteen minutes, he wouldn't be able to meet with her until after Mrs. Troudtheim's session, and he'd wanted to find out if there was a possibility that it was the theta-asparcine and not the dithetamine dosage that was interrupting Mrs. Troudtheim's NDEs.

He called up the third session and stared at the screen, frustrated. There it was, big as life, theta-asparcine, and Joanna had been in the NDE-state for-he checked the exact time-three minutes and eleven seconds.

Which puts me right back at square one, he thought, and there was no point in going through Joanna's other sessions. He called up her and Mrs. Troudtheim's a.n.a.lyses again, looking for some other difference he might have missed, but every other neurotransmitter was present in other scans, including the cortisol.

Could the cortisol alone be aborting the NDE-state? It was present in other sessions, but only Amelia Tanaka's had shown similar high levels, and if Mrs. Troudtheim's NDE-state threshold was lower, less cortisol might be needed to interfere with the endorphins. He'd ask Dr. Jamison.And where was she? And where was Joanna? Tish would be here any minute to set up, and he had hoped Joanna would come before Tish did, so he could ask her about her most recent account.

She'd said she'd experienced a feeling that Mr. Briarley was dead, which was obviously another manifestation of the sense of significance, but there had only been midlevel temporal-lobe activation in the area of the Sylvian fissures.

He looked at his watch again. Maybe he should call Dr. Jamison. She had said she'd page him when she got back to her office.

He thought, You turned your pager off so Mandrake couldn't page you, and no wonder you haven't heard from Dr. Jamison. He pulled the pager out of his lab coat pocket and switched it on. It immediately began to beep. He went over to the phone to call the switchboard.

"Dr. Wright!" a voice said from the door, and a young Hispanic woman in pink scrubs burst into the room. "Are you Dr. Wright?" she said, breathing hard and holding her side. There was blood on her scrubs.

"Yes," he said, slamming down the phone and hurrying over to her. "What is it? Are you hurt?"

She shook her head. "I ran-" she said, panting. "I'm Nina. Nurse Howard-there's an emergency. You've got to come down to the ER."

Vielle's been hurt, he thought. "Did Dr. Lander send you?"

She shook her head, still trying to catch her breath. "Dr. Lander, she-Nurse Howard sent me.

You need to come right away!"

Maisie, he thought. She's coded again. "Is this about Maisie Nellis?"

"No!" she said, frustrated. "It's Dr. Lander! Nurse Howard said to tell you it's an emergency."

He gripped her shoulders. "What about Dr. Lander? Is she hurt?" Nina gave a kind of whimper.

"You said the ER?" Richard said and was out the door and over to the elevator, punching and repunching the "down" b.u.t.ton.

"This guy came into the ER," Nina said, following him, "and he must have been on rogue because all of a sudden, he pulled a knife-"

Richard punched the elevator b.u.t.ton again, again. He glanced up at the floor lights above the door. It was on first. He took off running for the stairs with Nina on his heels, clutching her side.

"-and I don't know what happened then," she said, "it was all so fast."