JOB: A Comedy of Justice

She was slow in answering. 'Alec, if you wish, we will try it.'

'That wasn't quite what I asked.'

'That is true. In warm sea water I think I can swim as long as necessary. I did once swim the Great Belt, in water colder than this. But, Alec, in the Belt are no sharks. Here there are sharks. I have seen.'

I let out a sigh. 'I'm glad you said it; I didn't want to have to say it. Hon, I think we must stay right here and hold still. Not call attention to ourselves. I can skip breakfast - especially a shark's breakfast.'

'One does not starve quickly.'

'We won't starve. If you had your druthers, which would you pick? Starvation? Or death by sunburn? Sharks? Or dying of thirst? In all the lifeboat and Robinson Crusoe stories I've ever read our hero had something to work with. I don't have even a toothpick. Correction: I have you; that changes the odds. Margrethe, what do you think we ought to do?'

'I think we will be picked up.'

I thought so, too, but for a reason I did not want to discuss with Margrethe. 'I'm glad to hear you say that. But-why do you think so?'

'Alec, have you been to Mazatlán before?'

'No.

'It is an important fishing port, both commercial fishing and sport fishing. Since dawn hundreds of boats have put out to sea. The largest and fastest go many kilometers out. If we wait, they will find us.'

'May find us, you mean. There is a lot of ocean out here. But you're right; swimming for it is suicide; our best bet is to stay here and hold tight.'

'They will be looking for us, Alec.'

'They will? Why?'

'If Konge Knut did not sink, then the Captain knows when and where we were lost overboard; when he reaches port - about now - he will ask for a daylight search. But if she did sink, then they will be scouring the whole area for survivors.'

'Sounds logical.' (I had another idea, not at all logical.)

'Our problem is to stay alive till they find us, avoiding sharks and thirst and sunburn as best we can - and all of that means holding still. Quite still and all the time. Except that I think we should turn over now and then, after the sun is out, to spread the burn.'

'And pray for cloudy weather. Yes, all of that. And maybe we should not talk. Not get quite so thirsty

She kept silent so long that I thought she had started the discipline I had suggested. Then she said, 'Beloved, we may not live.'

'I know.'

'If we are to die, I would choose to hear your voice, and I would not wish to be deprived of telling. you that I love you - now that I may! - in a futile attempt to live a few. minutes longer.'

'Yes, my sweetheart. Yes.'

Despite that decision we talked very little. For me it was enough to touch her hand; it appeared to be enough for -her, too.

A long time later - three hours at a guess - I heard Margrethe gasp.

'Trouble?'

'Alec! Look there!' She pointed. I looked.

It should have been my turn to gasp, but I was somewhat braced for it: high up, a cruciform shape, somewhat like a bird gliding, but much larger and clearly artificial. A flying machine

I knew that flying machines were impossible; in engineering school I had studied Professor Simon Newcomb's well-known mathematical proof that the efforts of Professor Langley and others to build an aerodyne capable of carrying a man were doomed, useless, because scale theory proved that no such contraption large enough to carry a man could carry a heat-energy plant large enough to lift it off the ground - much less a passenger.

That was science's final word on a folly and it put a stop to wasting public monies on a will-o'-the-wisp. Research and development money went into airships, where it belonged, with enormous success.

However, in the past few days I had gained a new angle on the idea of 'impossible'. When a veritable flying machine showed up in our sky, I was not greatly surprised.

I think Margrethe held her breath until it passed over us and was far toward the horizon. I started to, then forced myself to breathe calmly - it was such a beautiful thing, silvery and sleek and fast. I could not judge its size, but if those dark spots in its side were windows, then it was enormous.

I could not see what pushed it along.

'Alec... is that an airship?'

'No. At least it is not what I meant when I told you about airships. This I would call a "flying machine ".'That's all I can say; I've never seen one before. But I can tell you -one thing, now - something very important.'

'Yes?'

'We are not going to die... and I now know why the ship was sunk.'

'Why, Alec?'

'To keep me from checking a thumbprint.'

Chapter 9

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat:

I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me in.

Matthew 25:35

'OR, TO put it more nearly exactly, the iceberg was there and the collision took place to keep me from checking my thumbprint against the thumbprint on Graham's driver's license. The ship may not have sunk; that may not have been necessary to the scheme.'

Margrethe did not say anything.

So I added gently, 'Go ahead, dear; say it. Get it off your chest; I won't mind. I'm crazy. Paranoid.'

'Alec, I did not say that. I did not think it. I would not.'

'No, you did not say it. But this time my aberration cannot be explained away as "loss of memory". That is, if we saw the same thing. What did you see?'

'I saw something strange in the sky. I heard it, too. You told me that it was a flying machine.'

'Well, I think that is what it should be called - but you can call it a, uh, a "gumpersaggle" for all of me. Something new and strange. What is this gumpersaggle? Describe it.'

'It was something moving in the sky. It came from back that way, then passed almost over us, and disappeared there.' (She pointed, a direction I had decided, was north.) 'It was shaped something like a cross, a crucifix. The crosspiece had bumps on it, four I think. The front end had eyes like a whale and the back end had flukes like a whale. A whale with wings - t hat's what it looked like, Alec; a whale flying through the sky!'

'You thought it was alive?'

'Uh, I don't know. I don't think so. I don't know what to think.'

'I don't think it was alive; I think it was a machine. A flying machine. A boat with wings on it. But, either way - a machine or a flying whale - have you- ever in your life seen anything like it?'

'Alec, it was so strange that I have trouble believing that I saw it.'

'I know. But you saw it first and pointed it out to me so I didn't trick you into thinking that you saw it.'

' You wouldn't do that.'

'No, I would not. But I'm glad you saw it first, dearest girl; that means it's real - not something dreamed up in my fevered brain. That thing did not come from the world you are used to... and I can promise you that it is not one of the airships I talked about; it is not from the world I grew up in. So we're now in still a third world.' I sighed. 'The first time it took a twenty-thousand-ton ocean liner to prove to me that I had changed worlds. This time just one sight of something that simply could not exist in my world is all I need to know that they are at it again. They shifted worlds when I was knocked out - I think that's when they did it. As may be, I think they did it to keep me from checking that thumbprint. Paranoia. The delusion that the whole world is a conspiracy. Only it's not a delusion.'

I watched her eyes. 'Well?'

'Alec ... could it possibly be that both of us imagined it? Delirious, perhaps? We've both had a rough experience - you hit your head; I may have hit mine when the iceberg struck.'