'It's not enough!'
'It's enough for me!'
She turned her face away. Jimmy stood and stared out across the water. He was a pale and freckled Irish boy who only saw the sun for a few days each year and he could already feel it starting to burn. He turned back to her. 'Look Claire — it doesn't matter if I believe you. It's what they think, it always is. I know what it's like, I've been up to my neck in trouble all my life, but I don't do half the things they think I do and I still get blamed. So unless we can absolutely prove that Pedroza's responsible, then they're never going to believe us. So if you want to try and do that, then let's do it.'
She thought about that.
'But in the meantime, I need your help.'
'Huh.'
'I'm serious. Scoop is sick.' He told her about the urgency of getting the paper out, and the chance of the old reporter losing his pension. He didn't mention that Scoop was an alcoholic. It was something he did instinctively. He had spent a lot of time at home apologizing on behalf of his dad, who was always getting into drunken scrapes. 'He needs your help. I need you help. Please.'
Her eyes flitted up. 'And we can investigate Pedroza as we go?'
'Yes, of course.'
She thought about it some more.
'Another hour's sunbathing, then I'll come down.'
Jimmy folded his arms. 'No.'
'What do you mean, no?'
'There isn't time. We need to start now.'
'God. You are such hard work.'
Claire rolled off her bed, picked up her towel and marched off. Then she stopped and looked back at him. 'Well? Are you coming or not?'
Jimmy smiled and immediately started after her.
As she started walking again she glanced back. 'One comment about my bum,' she warned, 'and you're dead.'
14
Jonas Jones
While Scoop's snoring reverberated gently through from next door, Jimmy and Claire read in silence the worrying reports coming in from around the world. The 'Red Death' was mutating. People were dying in their thousands. Yet no two reports were the same. In London people were dead within hours of contracting the virus. In one village in China an entire school came down with it within an hour, but by the next day all of the children were back in class, apparently perfectly healthy. New York was going to work as usual. Contact had been lost with Oklahoma City: the telephones were no longer working and all of its television and radio stations had fallen silent. In Kentucky the town of Hopkirk was reported to have lost eighty-five per cent of its population. But in Rawlings, three miles away, there wasn't a single reported case. Scientists had believed it was passed on by human contact. Yet there were villages in parts of Russia that were so remote that they had had no visitors in weeks, but people were dying there as well. Scientists were now saying that it was carried on the air, and that your life might depend on which way the wind blew.
The American President addressed the nation and assured them that a cure was on the way, which was quite close to what he had promised last time. Leaders of China and India and Great Britain had also placed their faith in the great abilities of scientists to develop a cure, a vaccine or a pill.
America remained the worst-affected country. Understandably, people were starting to panic. As workers fell ill, food supplies were becoming erratic. There were reports of riots and looting. The National Guard — at least those members well enough to report for duty — had been called on to the streets of several cities.
'This is horrible,' said Claire.
'And we're sailing right into it.'
The only good thing that could possibly be said about all this was that it focussed their minds away from Pedroza. Suddenly the fact that he might be trying to smuggle a few people across the Atlantic seemed unimportant.
Jimmy remembered Scoop's advice about noting where the passengers would be coming from, and to be sure to give them information about their home states — but not so much that they panicked. To this end they made sure to include good news stories too. People being cured of the virus. A beached whale being successfully towed back to sea. A hundred-year-old woman who'd just gained her pilot's licence. Plenty of sports results (while not dwelling on the fact that many football and baseball matches had been cancelled).
In the early afternoon Jimmy and Claire travelled down to the vast engine room to meet the Chief Engineer, a heavily-muscled Welsh man called Jonas Jones.
'Should we call you JJ?' Claire asked.
'No, Jonas Jones is my name. When I was growing up it was always "give me your pocket money, Jonas Jones; what are you looking at, Jonas Jones; do you want a thick ear, Jonas Jones?" I was a skinny little thing, see. That's why I have all these muscles now, I went out and growed them. Now when I go home, it's all "hello, Mr Jones; how are you, Mr Jones?" And I say, my name is Jonas Jones, and I'm right proud of it.'
Jimmy thought Jonas Jones was all right, only he rattled on a bit. It was clear that he loved his ship. He enthusiastically described his responsibilities — looking after the massive engines, the air conditioning, the heating, plumbing, refrigeration, ventilation, the water de-salinization systems, the electrics and every aspect of technical repair.
'You see, each propeller is driven by a double- wound three-phase synchronous motor with four-bladed bronze propellers. The motors are mounted directly on the propeller shaft inside the pod, arranged so that the centre propeller is . . .' He waved his arms across the vast engine room as he excitedly explained the Titanic's capabilities, but as he glanced back at the young reporters and saw their dumbfounded looks he hesitated and said, 'Do you follow?'
They both shook their heads.
'Once more,' said Jimmy, 'but this time in English.'
Jonas smiled. 'Well, this isn't only the most powerful cruise ship in the world, it's the most powerful ship. If only we had some big guns upstairs we could . . . Well, what I'm saying is . . .' and he smiled down at Claire, '. . . your daddy didn't waste any money here. We have the best of everything. Did I mention the fuel? We go through four thousand gallons an hour . . .'
He went on for ages. Jimmy was frankly worried that his article would end up reading more like an engineering manual than a chatty piece about the life of a chief engineer. When it came time to take the photos Jonas insisted on gathering his crew around him.
'We're a team,' he said. 'Can't do anything without my team.'
Claire posed them in half a dozen different ways, but it was difficult to take in the huge size of the engine room without making the engineers themselves look the size of ants.
Jonas watched his team disperse, then pointed to the epaulets on his white shirt. There were four gold stripes sewn on to a burgundy-coloured patch. 'It's the colour of blood,' he said, 'in memory of the engineers who went down with the first Titanic.' He shook his head sadly. 'No lifeboats for them. Battled the freezing water down below right to the end.'
The memory of that disaster quietened him for a moment.
'Mr Jones?' Jimmy asked.
'Jonas, please.'
'Is this Titanic unsinkable?'
Jonas shook his head. 'No ship is unsinkable. The sea is the mightiest power on this planet, if it wants to sink you, well, it damn well will. But I'll tell you this, it's not the sea that sinks most ships, it's men. Men sank the Titanic, men who thought they were smarter than the sea, men who tried to go too fast, who tried to cut corners. This Titanic ought to be unsinkable, the way it's built; but I never underestimate the capacity of human beings to make stupid decisions.'