“Yet in some paradoxical way always alive,” I add; that’s also what Levsky used to say.
“Now I am feeling champagne,” Collette says. “The freedom reminds me of the hologram.”
Werhner holds up his paper cup, swirls the last of the champagne. “The hologram, yes, but the hologram you can shut down. You don’t come back from the black hole. Well, one last toast. Reunion of the crew. And thank God we did get back. Theoretical ideas don’t get to drink even warm champagne.”
After we drink the tart, flat remains of the champagne, we sit in silence for a time, listening to the surf. The rollers far out in the surf line crest and fall into themselves, one after the other, the sets growing with the rising tide. As I swam the outside reef I rose and fell with the waves, the surge and drop still with me. I am on the mat, barely touching Collette, watching a seabird skimming just over the water, so near the surface he disappears behind each crest. Collette asks me where I’d like to be, free in time. I laugh, push my hand through the sand, and say, just where I am. She says she’ll file that information for the hologram.
Collette’s arms are spidered behind her back, she’s untying the scanty top she’s wearing. Her breasts jostle free, dark nipples erect. Now she’s slipping off her string bottom. “Join me?” she asks, motioning with her eyes toward the calm water inside the near reel.
“Later,” I say, watching her rise, run in her side-to-side woman way to the sea. I grip the sand in my hand to feel its presence. It runs through my fingers, filters through in fine streams to the sand below. I grip so hard the sand which remains, the pain shoots through my wrist; squeeze it so tightly it is as if I want to fuse it into glass.
“Some woman,” Werhner says.
“I agree.” I am thinking about Taylor, though, as I watch Collette laze in the shallow water past the rubber boat, floating on her back, arms straight out, legs spread-eagled, glistening brown in the sun. “God, it’s good to be alive. Do you think we’re actually through with SciCom?” I ask Werhner.
“That’s my guess,” he says. “I’ve seen my new orders, so… You’ll feel a little more convinced when you’re holding that paper in your hands in another two hours. If nothing happens after a few days… then what difference does it make? SciCom’s always watching flight crew, you know that, we’ll never be through with that part of it. But this crap we’ve been going through? The only thing that still has me on edge is the data on Cooper. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“They must know,” I say.
“Not according to Knuth. Knuth says if there was no transcript there was no interview, and what I pulled was probably a visit from a nurse,” Werhner shrugs. “A blind? Or a…” He sighs, then smiles, looking at the Zodiac, looking past it at Collette. “You know, this is some place, this whole arrangement.”
Handful by handful, I filter sand through my fingers. A woman, I think.
When I plug the electronics back together on the Zodiac, the message pager starts right in, almost as if on cue. It is the same traffic operator with a reminder from Taylor that I’m to meet him in Dome A at 1800 hours, he wants a confirmation.
“Tell him I’ll be there,” I say. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Tell him that.”
We have a small cocktail-hour snack, a party, at the Palace Garden Club; there are five of us; Collette and myself, Erica and Tonio, Werhner. I’m preoccupied with what I’d like to say to Taylor in an hour, but Werhner’s no help. He’s really taken by the place, the lush garden setting, the Balinese women dancing, the red snapper, which, he says, has never been frozen. I can see he’s also taken with Erica. I think she’s playing up to him, and she looks great, her blonde hair bleached by the sun, blown back. She looks as if she’s lost some weight; with the food set before us in the last two weeks I can’t figure out how, then I recall her bouts of flightsickness. Right now she doesn’t look as if she’s ever been flightsick: trim, smiling; the sun has given her a glow. She’s telling Werhner she spent the afternoon snorkeling, asking him if he’s ever been frightened by a shark.
“The only kind were SciCom sharks,” Werhner laughs, glancing at me. “I’ve seen some real sharks. They never bothered me.. Underwater, you have a different sense of danger, it’s less direct. I think that’s because the medium is heavier. Blue sharks, white tips—seen those, they’re pretty common. I expect they’re harmless.”
“Werhner lived in the water,” I tell Erica. “Look at his neck. Beginnings of gills.”
“Well, it happens to be very relaxing,” Erica says. “It eases your tensions. Your physical tensions.”
Tonio is distant, picking at a bright red lobster. There’s something as well between him and Erica. He did drag her over to the horseshoe bay at the west end of the island to watch the hydroplanes, but they only watched from a distance and went somewhere else, so that’s not it.
“I saw some eels once,” Collette says. “They gave me tensions. I’d like to try tanks someday, though.”
“Didn’t use tanks much on Guam,” Werhner tells her. “Body chemistry sets a three-hour limit—and, well, Rawley knows the swim off Utama Bay.”
“We’d always wonder if he’d come in at sundown.”
“It passed the time.” Werhner smiles. “The only advantage of tanks is that you can go deeper.”
I see Erica guzzle a full glass of champagne, set the glass down with decision. “Deeper. That’s something I’d like to try. Tonio didn’t even put on the fins I got for him. He was too busy chasing boys. That’s where we went. He said he wanted to tape the canoe racers, but he never left the beach. He barely left a certain beach blanket. Isn’t that right, Tonio?”
So that’s it, I think—Tonio barely looks up from his lobster, Collette is looking at me with wry, raised eyes. I am trying to stifle a smile, look at Werhner—he’s turned flush, hopelessly embarrassed. A kind of dead weight falls on the table. Poor Tonio clears his throat.
“So, ummm,” Collette begins. “Tell us more about, uh, Hong Kong.”
“Not much to tell,” Werhner says with relief. “Crowded, run-down. It’s not the same. And it smells like a sewer. I was sorry I went.”
“This is the place,” Erica says. “Hong Kong’s been out for years.”
“Sure, the women here, ahh…” Werhner begins. “I mean…”
Tonio has folded his napkin, he’s rising from his seat. He puts one palm up nervously, smiles, uses the other to smooth his white suit. “I do have to meet someone,” he says to us all. Erica rolls her eyes and he gives her a sharp look. “Bitch,” he mutters. “Bitch,” she answers back. He manages to smile at us all. “Good meeting you,” he tells Werhner. “See you again, perhaps.” Then Tonio, working his fingers, walks away.
Werhner smiles nervously at Erica, she smiles back. Then a long silence falls over the table as we eat. “How did you two meet?” Werhner finally says to me, nodding at Collette. “I don’t quite understand the, uh…”
“If a woman’s interested in you, she lets you know,” Erica says firmly, running her statement right into the middle of his sentence.
Werhner stops for a moment, grins weakly, clears his throat.
“I’d like to sleep with you tonight,” Erica says before he can say another word. “And see one of the shows.”
Werhner nods a little breathlessly, looks at me open-mouthed, looks at me as if to say, thank you, Rawley, you have somehow managed to set me up. I take the credit with a grin; of course, the credit isn’t mine.