“Male chauvinist,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?” His broad forehead wrinkled. Then it cleared. “No,” he said, in the same dispassionate voice. “It was not your sex, but your lack of intellectual capacity that guided my decision.”
A funny thing happened then. I looked at him sitting there, perfectly at home, with a daughter he hadn’t seen for almost twenty years-a daughter whom he had rejected because at the age of two she had failed to display sufficient intellectual capacity. He looked-no, not smug, that word is too strong-he looked self-satisfied. He had explained himself, and he expected me to understand, and to agree with his assessment. The notion that he might be wrong-that he might be irritating or cruel or unreasonable-had never entered his head.
Oddly enough, this didn’t anger me. You can’t feel anger with a blind man because he can’t see. For the first time in the insane interview I relaxed.
“How could you tell?” I asked curiously. “What tests do you administer to an infant to find out whether she has an aptitude for classical archaeology?”
He waved the question away with an impatient flick of his hand.
“That is beside the point, Ariadne. What does matter is that I was mistaken as to your usefulness. Not because my assessment was incorrect, but because circumstances have changed. The field of underwater archaeology has developed since then. Not that I had any reason to suppose that you would develop a talent for that sort of thing-”
“You should have tried throwing me into a pond,” I suggested.
Mother had once said my father was the only man she had ever known who had absolutely no sense of humor. My remark wasn’t all that funny, but it should have won a small social smile. The corners of my father’s long, thin lips remained straight.
“That would not have answered,” he replied, with complete seriousness. “And, as I have said, the field of underwater archaeology has developed since-”
“Okay, okay,” I interrupted. “I get the point. See here-uh-”
“You had better call me Frederick. A more intimate appellation would not only be out of place, considering our relationship, but it would prove an embarrassment in the situation I propose to outline.”
“ Frederick,” I said experimentally. “Fred?”
“I dislike nicknames.”
“Well, I don’t. Nobody ever calls me Ariadne. I hate the name. If I call you Frederick, you’ll have to call me Sandy.”
He considered the suggestion thoughtfully. Then he nodded.
“Although,” I added, “I don’t know why we should call each other anything. Is this supposed to be the beginning of a new and beautiful relationship? Because I don’t think-”
“You don’t think,” he interrupted. “If you did, you would understand what I am leading up to. I assure you, I should be more direct if you would stop distracting me with side issues.”
“Oh, I’m not that stupid. You saw the article in Geographic-what were you doing reading a pop mag like that? Anyhow, you decided that your stupid daughter might have a few talents you had not expected. Have you got a specific job in mind, or are you propositioning me generally?”
“I have a specific job in mind.”
It was the weirdest conversation. The most peculiar thing about it was that it didn’t seem weird, like the events of a bizarre dream that seem entirely reasonable in the context of the dream. The man’s self-confidence was so complete that it made his behavior seem right, somehow. I had never met anyone like him. Few people have, because most human beings suffer from self-doubt and insecurity, whether they express it openly or try to hide it under blankets of arrogance. Not this guy. Frederick. My father.
“…I could have obtained all the personnel I needed if those fools in the antiquities service hadn’t refused me permission to dive,” he was saying, as I came out of my reverie.
“Wait a minute,” I said dizzily. “You mean… Start at the beginning. Where is this dig of yours?”
“On Thera,” he said impatiently. “One of the islands in the Santorini group. They have assigned me an area where they do not expect me to find anything of importance. Fortunately Mistropolous has just been appointed head of the service and he has some respect for my ideas. But even he-”
He went on berating the Greek archaeological department, while I tried to sort things out. I suspected I would have to do a lot of sorting with him. He took so much for granted. I pitied his poor students, if he ever taught a class.
Thanks to the magazine article in the dentist’s office, I knew that Santorini was the volcanic island that had blown itself to pieces in the fifteenth century B.C. Several archaeological expeditions had worked on the main island of Thera; I gathered that Frederick ’s concession was not near any of the places that had produced juicy finds, but off in a corner where, it was fondly hoped, he wouldn’t cause any trouble. I already knew him well enough to suspect that was a vain hope.
Then another point hit me and I interrupted the tirade.
“What do you mean, you don’t have permission to dive?”
“The words seem plain enough to me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They seem plain to me, too. In other words-correct me if I’m wrong-you have permission to dig, but not to dive. You can’t hire divers-no pro would be fool enough to risk his career and his reputation by breaking the law-so you are suggesting that I do so. Thanks a lot.”
“You have no career and no reputation to lose,” said Frederick.
“How tactfully you put it,” I said. “What makes you so determined to risk your reputation? Why can’t you just dig, like a good little archaeologist is supposed to do? It just so happens that I know about Thera, about the Minoan houses that were dug up-out of the dirt that is, not out of the ocean floor. And if you’re thinking about my diving down into the caldera, where the middle of the island was, forget it. A diver couldn’t work down there with ordinary scuba gear, it’s hundreds of feet deep.”
“Three to four hundred meters, to be exact,” Frederick said. “Obviously I wouldn’t propose any such absurd idea. Water pressure would have destroyed any remains in that area. If you knew as much as you claim to know, you would realize that the outer portions of the island were also subjected to seismic action. Parts of the coastline have subsided since ancient times. Local divers have reported seeing ruins underwater. I want you to investigate a-a particular area. The situation is ideal. Even our names are different. No one will suspect you of being motivated to-”
“Break the law,” I said. “Won’t they get just a teeny bit suspicious when they see me diving?”
“The village is remote. We will take all possible precautions.”
“But it’s impossible! I’ll need gear. Tanks. Air. How do I get my tanks filled without some smart character suspecting that I just possibly might be diving? It’s crazy!”
The madman-my father, for God’s sake-looked vaguely around the room.
“I’d like some coffee,” he said. “We’ll discuss the details. They can be worked out.”
I made him some instant on my hot plate. I didn’t want to go out to the coffee shop with him. I didn’t want to be seen with him. But I knew what was going to happen. I even knew why it was going to happen.
Breaking the law didn’t bother me, although I had made a big point of it to Frederick. As he said, I had no reputation to lose, and I didn’t consider that I was planning to commit a crime, merely bend a minor regulation. I doubted that they would put me in a Greek jail even if they caught me. I could always claim my revered parent had ordered me to do wrong.
That danger I could dismiss, but the other dangers were more serious. Diving is the greatest fun on earth, but it is not a game. You have to know what you’re doing, and you have to know the terrain. Thanks to Jim’s super coaching, I felt competent to take care of myself in home waters, but I didn’t know anything about the Mediterranean. For all I knew, they had man-eating plants down there. And my father didn’t strike me as the greatest person to have around if you got into trouble. I had a feeling I could drown ten feet away from Frederick if he happened to be thinking about something else.