“He retired after the Hunter incident. Went into seclusion, I guess. I haven’t done much research on him yet.”
“Aha.”
“What aha! What are you trying to say?”
“Research? So we are interested in this, are we?”
She rolled her eyes. “Just curiosity. He stayed in Severin Village until they evacuated. When they took down the dam. He moved to Terminal City after that, and then he headed out. Eventually landed on Earth. Canada. Lived on his retirement income, I guess.”
“Is he still alive?”
“He died a few years ago trying to rescue some kids. In a forest fire.” .
Solly pulled on his flippers. “And he always told the same story?”
“The conspiracy freaks were constantly after him. That appears to be the reason he left Greenway. But yes: He maintained that nothing unusual happened on the Hunter mission. They went out. They had an engine problem. They came back. Didn’t know what happened to the women. Thought Tripley died in the blast.”
“Mount Hope.”
“Yes.”
He lowered himself into the water, and his voice came in over her ‘phones. “There is someone you might try talking to.”
She watched him start down, and then followed him in. “Who’s that?”
“Benton Tripley. Kile’s son. His office is at Sky Harbor. When you go there next weekend, why don’t you stop by and see him? He might be able to tell you something.”
“I don’t know.” She slipped beneath the surface and filled her lungs several times to assure herself the converter was working properly. The air was sweet and cool. When she was satisfied, she started down. “I think I’ll settle for just looking at the woods and let it go at that.”
Bars of sunlight faded quickly. A long rainbow-colored fish darted past. The oceans of Greenway had filled rapidly with lobsters and tarpon and whales and algae and seaweed.
She dropped through alternating warm and cold currents. Solly, now trailing behind her, switched on his wristlamp.
The Caledonian had been running among the islands on its way out to the banks with nineteen passengers and a three-person crew when a freak storm blew up. It became a legendary event because there’d been some famous people on board, and because there’d been only two survivors. One had been the unfortunate captain, later held negligent by a board of inquiry, charging failure to train his crew, poor ship handling, failure to develop emergency procedures. His situation was exacerbated by the suspicion that on the night of the accident he’d been frolicking in his quarters with a married passenger.
The ship’s wheel was on display at the Marine Museum in Seabright. Other divers had gone over the wreck and taken whatever they could. Even Kim, who was usually inclined to respect such things, had removed a latch from a cabin door. The latch was now inside a block of crystal, which she kept hidden in her bedroom because visitors had made a point of showing their disapproval. Moves were currently afoot to declare the area a seapark, install monitoring equipment, and thereby protect it from future looters. Kim, with the quiet hypocrisy that seems wired into the human soul, favored the measure. She soothed her conscience by promising herself she’d donate the latch to the museum. When the time came.
She left her own lamp off, savoring the dark and the solitude and the moving water. The bottom came into view. A school of fish, drawn by Solly’s light, hurried past.
Ahead she could make out the wreck. It lay on its starboard side in the mud, half buried. Its rudder was gone, the spars were gone, planking was gone. Anything that could be carried off had been taken. Still it retained a kind of pathetic dignity.
The seabottoms of Greenway, unlike those of Earth, were not littered with the wrecks of thousands of years of seafaring and warmaking. It was in fact possible to count the number of sinkings along the eastern coast, during five centuries, on two hands. Only one, the Caledonian, had been a ship in the true sense of the word. The others had all been skimmers. The loss of a vessel was so rare an event that anything that went down became immediately a subject of folklore.
They were approaching bow-on. Kim switched on her light. “Spooky as ever,” said Solly.
It wasn’t the adjective Kim would have used. Forlorn, perhaps. Abandoned.
Yet maybe he was right.
They drifted down toward the foredeck.
The other survivor had testified that the ship’s captain had done what he could.
The unfortunate skipper’s name was Jon Halvert. He’d used a lantern to signal passengers to the lifeboats, and renderings of the incident invariably showed him holding the lantern high, helping men and women off the stricken ship. But it had all come too late and the Caledonian had turned over within seconds and plunged to the bottom. Historians believed that, the view of the board of inquiry notwithstanding, nothing the captain could have done would have made any significant difference. But there had been, as always, the need to establish responsibility. To lay blame.
Kim felt a special affection for him. Halvert seemed to represent the human condition: struggling under impossible circumstances, answerable for lack of perfection, holding the lantern nonetheless. But in the end it makes no difference.
Within a year of the event he died, and it became a popular legend that his spirit hovered in the vicinity of the wreck.
Divers only visit the Caledonian when the weather is good. But when the wind is stirring and rain is on the horizon, you can sail out to the spot and look down through the water, and you’ll see the glow of the captain’s lantern moving along the decks and ladders while he urges his passengers toward the boats.
Kim had read that in True Equatorian Specters. One version of the story had it that he was damned to continue the search until the last victim had been rescued.
Solly must have known what she was thinking. “There he is,” he said, directing her attention toward a luminous jellyfish over the port quarter.
They swam down to the pilothouse and passed before the empty frames. There was nothing left inside. Even the wheel mount was missing. But it was easy to conjure up the voyagers that night, lounging about the decks, looking forward to a week at sea, suddenly aware of a threatening sky.
They emerged on the starboard side and moved aft. Kim used her wristlamp to illuminate the interior. The cabins were, of course, stark and empty.
Forty minutes later they surfaced, climbed aboard the sloop, and changed. Then they broke out dinner: turkey and salad and cold beer. It was beginning to get dark. The sky was cloudless, the sea a sheet of glass.
“This place is a good example of what stage management does,” said Solly. “It feels as if the supernatural can happen down there. The stories are pure fantasy, but when I’m near the wreck I’m not so sure. That’s the way the Severin Woods will be.”
“Different sets of rules,” she agreed. “Take away the light, and werewolves are possible.” She touched a presspad and soft music came out of the speakers.
They sat in the cabin, the food spread out on a table. A couple of islands lay on the horizon. In the distance another sailboat was moving across their line of vision. Solly made a sandwich and took a bite. “Kim,” he said when he’d gotten enough down that he could talk again, “do you believe ghosts are possible?”
She studied him, and decided he was quite serious. “Running into a real ghost would change everything we believe about the way the universe works.”
“I’m not so sure about it,” he said.
“Why?”