The ship’s radio operator, Stuart Frisch, returned from his break, still munching from a bag of Doritos. Hearing the timbre of his employer’s voice, he quietly turned on his heel and left.
“I appreciate the bind you’re in,” Szilard said, sounding only slightly less patronizing. “But we have to keep focused on the contracted statement of work. I’ll give you until the end of the week to revive the agreed-upon sampling schedule, but after that I’ll have to forward my recommendation to cancel your funding. That’s not a threat, it’s a promise.”
“Then I’ll go over your head. I’ll call Rutherford,” Carol said, dragging Szilard’s boss into the fracas. The floodgates of her desperation had sprung fully open.
“I’m not the one in over my head on this, Dr. Harmon,” Szilard said coldly. “It’s your decision how to proceed from here. You can do what we’ve agreed you’re to do, or you can go off on some wild goose chase far outside your jurisdiction. In the meantime, I’ll assume I can look forward to some data we can use and at least a draft of your report. Soon.”
Carol found Garner, Zubov, and Junko on the afterdeck. All three were dressed in radiation suits and were checking the latest modifications to Medusa.
The eerie similarity to the experience in Puget Sound was too strong to ignore.
“Deja vu,” she said.
“You can say that again,” Zubov said.
“I think she just did,” Garner agreed and gave Carol a wink.
“There’s something about giving you a hand — I just know I’ll end up needing full-body protection.”
“I think I’m the one who needs protection,” Carol said. She was still bristling from the exchange with Szilard.
“At least, I think I’ll pull the plug on our phone line. Frisch better start screening my calls or we’re going to end up with no money and a mutiny on our hands.”
“Sounds like working conditions you’re familiar with,” Junko said. “Sergei told me about what happened in Puget Sound.”
“Yes, these two do fine work,” Carol said. “If you don’t mind explosions, sunken vessels, and excessive collateral damage.”
“Surgical precision is overrated,” Zubov said, grinning sheepishly at Junko.
“Not among surgeons,” the doctor bantered back.
Garner shot Carol another knowing look — the notion of a May December attraction between Zubov and Junko was undeniably growing. Such a prospect, however improbable, reminded Carol of her own affair with Dex and she silently reprimanded herself for not contacting the hospital for an updated status report. Tomorrow for sure, with Junko listening in on the patients’ treatment and progress.
Garner turned his attention back to Medusa. An orderly design was no longer an issue for his marvelous but temperamental plankton sampler.
In order to add the extra weight and resistance of the gamma spectrometers and still have the device fly properly underwater, he and Zubov had to devise and install yet another ungainly collar and harness apparatus.
“There’s got to be a better way,” Garner complained. “My baby is getting uglier by the minute.” Part of him knew there was no better way to track the contamination, that was why Carol had called them; part of him knew that towing Medusa through a spill of hot water would mean rebuilding another prototype from scratch.
“Give us tonight to run another set of tests on the electronics,” he said to Carol. “If your crew is ready, we can load Medusa onto the A-frame and be ready for a fresh start at first light.”
“I’m ready to get going before that,” Carol said. “I’m getting sick of just sitting here, so I’ve asked the captain to take us off station tonight. If we’ve got two hundred miles to cover to the north, we can cross half of that by midmorning. You can deploy Medusa then, if it’s ready, or we can set up another temporary camp.”
The intercom next to the winch controls buzzed, making Carol jump. It was Frisch, the radio operator.
“Carol? Call for you,” he said.
Assuming that it was Szilard calling to either retract his threat or add to his list of demands, Carol said impatiently, “Not now. We’re a little busy here.”
“I think you should take it,” Frisch replied. His voice unnaturally even and calm.
She turned to look at the tiny intercom.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the I.C.U at Toronto General,” Frisch said. “Dexter and Ramsey both died this afternoon.”
After confirming the details of the deaths with the hospital, Carol Harmon called Dexter’s parents in Portland, Oregon, and Tony Ramsey’s wife in Tacoma, Washington. Carol was told by Ramsey’s sister-in-law that Joanna Ramsey wasn’t taking any calls from the Nolan Group.
Dexter’s parents simply referred to Carol as “you bitch” and told her to expect a call from the family’s legal counsel.
Garner caught up to Carol an hour later. He came down the narrow corridor below the Phoenix’s bridge and knocked on the door of her cabin.
Carol mumbled a semblance of invitation and Garner entered to see her sitting at the cabin’s small desk. She was trying hard to put on a neutral face for any visitors, but her eyes were rimmed red and her hands clutched a shredded tissue.
When she saw Garner, her tears welled up again and her entire body began to tremble.
“Oh, shit,” she whispered as Garner knelt beside her at the desk. “What have I done?”
“All you could do,” Garner said. “The best you can with the information you’ve got.”
“That’s not true,” Carol said. “I should have stopped them from diving. I was the one who was so adamant that we examine the blues.”
“No one comes on a venture like this with a stand-back attitude,” Garner said. “Everyone is on this ship because they want to be. Because they want to help you, regardless of the consequences. We all know what we’re in for. We’ve read the fine print. With this crew, I bet you could have charged admission to see those whales up close.”
“It should have been me on that dive,” Carol said in a small voice. “It should have been me.”
Garner wrapped his arms around Carol and guided her over to the cabin’s modest bunk.
“Since when did you start blaming yourself for every calamity?” he asked.
“Since I became the boss,” Carol said, staring at the tissue in her knitted fingers. “Since my name started going on the contracts and statements of work.”
“None of which include a massive spill of radioactive material,” Garner said.
For a moment, Carol seemed to warm to this showing of faith. But thinking of the events of the last few days, she lapsed into silence once more.
“Tell that to Don Szilard,” she said.
“Maybe you should,” Garner said. “Fly down to Toronto, do what you can at the hospital, then pay True North a visit in Ottawa.”
Carol shook her head.
“I can’t do that. I can’t just abandon the ship for some personal junket.”
“A highly necessary personal junket,” Garner corrected her. “Call it damage control. Call it peace of mind. Whatever it takes to get yourself back on track.”
Carol remained unconvinced as Garner pressed the issue.
“Junko’s our new resident expert. And Patrick and Sergei could run this ship without a wheelhouse if they had to. There’s an airlift coming for the others anyway — what’s one more passenger?”
“You make us sound like a bunch of deserting rats,” Carol said, then fell silent.
For a moment Garner hoped he had gotten through to Carol. It was a lie that she could simply leave the ship without compromising the expedition, but at the moment, her peace of mind mattered more to the success of their venture. If there was a time she could be absent, it was in the next few days while Medusa was playing bloodhound.