"We're recovering nearly a hundred percent on the surface, he boasted. "It's all trapped in the moat, you see, so we just scoop them up again.
"Good job. But what do you do when the perimeter screens begin to foul? And he laughed and offered to buy me a drink, for that was the weakness in the system.
I took his drink, and a lot more than one over the three days we were there. I had no quarrel with Betsy's captains or Betsy's crews, but I did not like Betsy's friends. I didn't like May's liking them, either. The women called themselves actresses or models-polite lies. The men lied less politely. They called themselves men. There was Simon Kellaway, Las Vegas-born, slim and quick and temporarily living at sea on Betsy's charity because there was a murder charge in Nevada that he couldn't hush up. There was Dougie d'Agasto from Miami Beach, tall and fair and a pimp's recruiter if I ever saw one. They came from Chicago and Los Angeles and New Orleans, and they all had money, or acted as though they did, and I did not believe that even one of them had got it inside the law.
The one I liked least was d'Agasto, the handsomest and emptiest of men. What I liked least of all was that May did not reject his company. They sat together at dinner the first night. I assumed he was Betsy's bedmate. I assumed that of every man I saw her with, for she was always, and after Ben died openly, available, accessible and even aggressive about it. Even, to my surprise, with me, for at two in the morning she knocked on my door to announce that she wasn't in the mood for sleep. When I told her that I was, she shrugged and said, "Well, you'd probably be no good to me anyway, old man, especially after you've starched your sheets already over May. She left without protest, and I-I wished we had never come there.
So I spent my time as far away from Betsy and Betsy's friends as I could. Captain Havrila fed me in the ship's officers' mess. We talked shop-openly-pretty openly, because there were things I did not mention to them, and I know there were a good many they didn't tell me. A lot of what we talked about, though, was no secret. I knew that Betsy was diversifying, because what she sold to the land became public knowledge the minute she sold it. I didn't know, but I would have found out shortly anyway, that she was planning to try total manufacture-refining steel, even. Electric refining, mostly. "The ships that come in are in ballast anyway, said their marketing chief, Jim Mordecai, "so they might as well carry ore-and we've got the electricity-and we've got a lot of extra oxygen, because if we keep on expanding L-H-2 production the way we're going, the extra oxygen's sure to depress the world market. And then there's pollution.
"Pollution? Out here? I asked.
"Here's the place for it, Jason, at sea, where it won't make the land worse than it is-although- he grinned- don't know if the folks in Tahiti are going to agree with me. He glanced at the captain before he went on, "We do have a kind of pollution problem, though. The captain must have signaled it was all right, because he completed his thought. "We're pumping so much deep water here that the dissolved CO2 doesn't dissipate right away. We're up to pretty nearly five hundred parts per million.
"Oh? I didn't notice anything.
"Well, you won't, boomed Captain Havrila. "As far as we can tell there's no health risk-and actually Miss Betsy says she kind of likes it. It does make the plants grow in her garden! Care for a brandy now, Jason?
I did. I had one. I even had two with them, but they all had work to do, and I couldn't keep them from it. So I volunteered to take Jimmy Rex for a walk, and we headed for the gardens so I could see for myself, and indeed it was true. Bougainvillea and orchids and flowering ginger-everything was lush and beautiful.
Jimmy Rex was being not particularly awful, for he liked picking flowers. He crushed them as soon as he picked them, threw them away and picked more, but there were plenty of flowers. I let him do pretty much as he pleased, following slowly after him and thinking the unpromising thoughts of an aging bachelor, till I heard voices and saw him dart into a cluster of dirty-boy shrubbery. "Come back, James Reginald, I shouted. For a wonder, he did, looking abashed. I heard someone moving away out of sight, and in a moment some other someone came around the shrubs to see who I was.
It was Dougie d'Agasto. He was partly dressed in shorts and unlaced tennis shoes, carrying a sports shirt slung over one bare shoulder. "Oh, it's you, Jason, he said, smiling-at least I give him the credit of saying that he probably meant it for a smile, though it had a lot of smirk in it. "I figured if Jimmy Rex was here you couldn't be far behind. I'm glad you two didn't get here ten minutes sooner!
Well, I had no interest in his tacky whoring in the bushes. I put my hand on Jimmy Rex's shoulder-he was behaving well enough to let me-and said, "We were just going.'
He nodded absently, stretching, yawning, pulling the shirt on over his head, but he kept his eyes on us. "You're smart to keep close to the kid. he said.
I said stiffly, "I don't let him near the rail. D'Agasto looked at me as though I were talking a foreign language.
"I'm not talking about accident, for God's sake. I'm talking about snatch. Kidnap, he amplified, and this time it definitely was a smirk. "Do you know what that kid's worth for ransom'?
Now, if you'd met d'Agasto on a tennis court, say, you might easily think he was just another bright and handsome young sportsman, because he had the wide-eyed good humor and the trim, strong body of healthy youth. I had never thought that. Not for a single second, because before I ever met him I knew he was some sort of second-rate kin to one of the lesser Mob families in Florida. Even if I had ever thought it, listening to him talk would have straightened me out in two sentences. The way his mind worked!
And went on working. "What is it you've got now, Jason? he ruminated. "Eighteen boats in May's fleet? There's probably construction loans against every one of them, but, say, ten million dollars apiece average net worth? And that's only pocket change, because when old lady Appermoy kicks off, there's no heir left but the kid. Why, you've got your hand on a billion dollars, pal! What say you just quietly sneak him on the plane when I leave and don't say anything until I'm in San Francisco-we'll split the ransom fifty-fifty!
He was watching my face, so he winked and turned away and left without waiting for an answer. Jimmy Rex stared after him with scared delight. "Was he just making a joke, Uncle Jay'? he asked.
"What a stupid question! Of course it was just a joke!
But it wasn't.
I was glad to be back on our own ship, and the first thing I did was have a talk with the security chief. From that moment on there was somebody near Jimmy Rex every minute he wasn't with me or his parents.
I didn't stop worrying, but after a while I didn't worry as much. For May and Jefferson Ormondo it was the best time of their lives. When they walked about the boat, they were hand in hand. He was a good husband to her, for all he was no beauty, and would have been a good father to Jimmy Rex if the boy had been capable of being a son.
The money grew and grew. The more fuel we made, the more hungrily the land people clamored to burn it. We could not fix nitrogen fast enough to meet the demand for fertilizer, and so the price went up and up. We weren't The only boats on the sea anymore - now and then we'd catch sight of Japanese ones, or Australian. We built more of our own, and bigger ones, and yet there was plenty for all.
When Jimmy Rex was three years old, we moved us all to the newest and hugest oaty-boat on the sea. Two million eight hundred thousand tons. We could have run a nation off the power we produced. It was well along in the shipyards before Jefferson Ormondo ever saw it, but he cherished it as his own, for the last of the fitting, and most of the owner's country, was his own design. May encouraged him to plan on a grand scale. And grand it surely was-but I had been happy enough on the old one. "You're a sentimental man, Jason, said May when I told her as much, "and a very dear one to me. But it's such an old boat. And little-why, it doesn't even have a decent bridle path!