Last Call: Expiration Date Part 41

"I think we'd better play along," he said quietly to Elizalde. "We're in good cover so far, and I doubt that Edison's field shows up at all in this chaos." He stepped out of the car onto a carpeted hallway.

After an agonized, tooth-baring whine, Elizalde followed him out, tugging Kootie along by the hand.

Behind them the gate slid closed, and the car began to sink away down the shaft.

The ship was alive with voices now, and Sullivan and his companions seemed to have left the rumble of the screws below them.

Many of the room doors were open, and laughter and excited shouting shook the tobacco-scented air, but when they peeked into the lighted staterooms they pa.s.sed, they could see only empty couches, and mirrored vanity tables, and paneled walls with motionless curtains over the portholes.

At the open, polished burl walnut stairway they could hear children's voices ascending from below; but the dining-room doors were ahead of them, and a steamy beef smell and a clatter of cutlery on china was accompanying the voices from beyond the closed doors, and Sullivan led the way around the stairs and pushed the doors open.

The noises were loud now, but the tables and chairs set across the ship's-width hardwood floor were empty; though a chair here and there did occasionally shift, as if invisible diners were turning their attentions from one companion to another.

Sullivan took Elizalde's cold hand, while she took Kootie's, and he led them between the noisy tables toward the service doors in the far bulkhead; and though there were no diners visible, Sullivan tried to thread his way exactly between the tables, and not violate the body s.p.a.ces of any ghosts.

They exited the dining room through the starboard service door, and now, among the kitchens, they saw people.

Nearly solid men in white chef's hats were pushing carts in and out of open kitchen doorways, apparently oblivious of the unauthorized intruders; the dishes on the carts were covered with steel domes, and, since the kitchen staff didn't seem able to see Sullivan and he hadn't eaten at all today, he reached out and touched one of the covers on a cart that had been momentarily left against the hallway bulkhead. The cover handle was warmly solid, and he lifted the dome away.

From a bed of baby carrots and asparagus, a woman's face was smiling up at him. Her eyes were looking directly into his, and when her lips opened to puff out a bourbon-scented whisper of "Hi, Pete," he recognized her as Sukie.

Elizalde tugged at his arm, but he pulled her back, feeling the relayed shake as Kootie was stopped too.

"Hi, Sukie," he said; his voice was level, but he was distantly surprised that his legs were still holding him up. He glanced sideways at Elizalde's face, but she was looking down at the plate, and then at him, in frowning puzzlement.

"I guess she can't see me," said Sukie's face. "You've spilled it all out onto the floor, haven't you? How long can this magnetic charge last? Who's your chick, anyway? She's the one who was on the phone last night, isn't she?"

"Yes." Sullivan squeezed Elizalde's hand. "The charge-I don't know. An hour?"

"When I consider how my light was spent! And then I'll be gone, and you'll probably be sorry, but not near sorry enough. You're in love with her, aren't you? How do I look in a halo of vegetables? I'll see if I can't wish you something besides misery with her; no promises, but I'll see what I can muster up. Haul your a.s.s-and hers, too, I guess-and you got a kid already?-up to the Moon Deck. We also serve who only stand and gaff."

Elizalde barked a quick scream and her hand tightened on Sullivan's, and then the face was gone, and all that was on the plate was steaming vegetables.

"You saw her, didn't you?" said Sullivan as he hurried on down the kitchen corridor, pulling Elizalde and Kootie along.

"Just for a second," said Elizalde, having to nearly shout to be heard over the feverish clatter of pots and pans, "I saw a woman's face on that plate! No, Kootie, we're not going back!" To Sullivan, she added, "You were ... speaking to her ...?"

"It was my sister." Sullivan saw a door in the white bulkhead at the end of the corridor, and he tugged Elizalde along more quickly. "She says I'm in love with you. And she says she'll try to wish us something besides misery."

"Well," said Elizalde with a bewildered and frightened grin, "this is your family, after all-I hope she tries hard."

"Yeah, me too, in spite of everything." They had reached the door. "Catch up, Kootie, I think we've got another dining room to pa.s.s through." He pushed open the door.

This dining room too was as wide as the ship, but the ornate rowed mahogany ceiling was fully three deck-heights overhead; ornate planters and huge, freestanding Art Deco lamps punctuated the middle height-and there were visible diners here.

All the men at the tables were wearing black ties and all the women were in off-the-shoulder evening dresses. The conversation was quieter in this vast hall, and the air was sharp with the effervescence of champagne. On the high wall facing them across the length of the dining room, a vast mural dominated the whole cathedral chamber; even from way over here Sullivan could see that it was a stylized map of the North Atlantic, with a clock in the top of it indicated by radiating gold bars surrounding the gold hands, which stood at five minutes to twelve.

"I'm not dressed for this," said Elizalde in a small voice.

Sullivan looked back at her, and grinned at how humble she looked, framed in the glossy elm burl doorway, in her jeans and grimy Graceland sweatshirt. Kootie, peering big-eyed from behind her, looked no better in his bloodstained polo shirt, and Sullivan found that he himself was sorry he hadn't found time to shave yesterday or today.

"Probably they can't see us," he told her. "Come on, it's not that far."

But as they strode out across the broad parquet floor, a white-haired gentleman at one of the nearer tables caught Sullivan's glance, and raised an eyebrow; and then the man was pushing back his chair and slowly standing up.

Sullivan looked away as he hurried past the table and pulled Elizalde along, glad to hear Kootie's footsteps scuffing right behind her.

Men were standing up at other tables, though, all looking gravely at Sullivan and his two companions as they trotted through the amber-lit vista of white tablecloths and crystal winegla.s.ses, and now the women were getting to their feet too, and anxiously eyeing the shabby intruders.

"Halfway there," gritted Sullivan between his teeth. He was staring doggedly at the mural above and ahead of them. Two nearly parallel tracks curved across the golden clouds that represented the Atlantic, but only one track had anything on it-one miniature crystal ship, all by itself out in the middle of the metallic sea.

How could there be a room this big in a ship? he thought as he strode between the tables, tugging Elizalde's hand. Polished wooden pillars, the vaulted ceiling so far away up there, and it must be a hundred tables spread out on every side across the floor to the distant dark walls recessed at the lowest level ...

Someone among the standing ghosts began clapping; and more of them took it up, and from somewhere the full-orchestra strains of "I'll Be Seeing You" began to play. All the elegantly dressed ghosts were standing and applauding now, and every face that Sullivan could see was smiling, though many were blinking back tears and many others openly let the tears run down their cheeks as they clapped their hands.

When he was close to the far doors, a crystal goblet of champagne was pressed into Sullivan's hand, and when he glanced back, his face chilly with sweat, he saw that Elizalde and Kootie each held a gla.s.s as well. The applause was growing louder, nearly drowning all the old familiar music.

Elizalde hurried up alongside Sullivan and turned her head to whisper in his ear: "Do you think it's poison?"

"No." Sullivan slowed to a walk, and he lifted the gla.s.s and sipped the icy, golden wine. He wished he were a connoisseur of champagnes, for this certainly seemed to be first-rate. He blinked, and realized that he had tears in his own eyes. "I think they're grateful at being released."

At the door, on an impulse, he turned back to the resplendent dining room and raised his gla.s.s. The applause ceased as every ghost raised a gla.s.s of its own; and then the rich tawny light faded as the lamps on the Art Deco pillars lost power, and the music ceased (with, he thought, a dying fall), and finally even the background rustle of breathing and the shifting of shoes on the parquet floor diminished away to silence.

The dining hall was dark and empty now. The tables were gone, and a lot of convention-hotel chairs were nested in stacks against the bulkheads.

Sullivan's lifted hand was empty, and he curled it slowly into a fist. "The field is beginning to fail already," he said to Elizalde. "We'd better get upstairs fast." He pushed open the door at his back.

Across a broad foyer was a semicircular bronze portal like the entry to a 1930s department store. Its two doors were open wide, and on the broad mother-of-pearl ceiling within Sullivan could see the rippling reflection of brightly lit water, and hear splashing and laughter; these doors apparently led to a balcony over the actual pool, which must have been one deck-level below. Sullivan thought the swimmers must be real people, and not ghosts.

Elizalde looked in the same direction and whispered, "Good Lord, stacked like a slave ship!"

An imposingly broad mahogany stairway opened onto the foyer to their left, and Sullivan waved Elizalde and Kootie up-the stairs were wide enough for all three of them to trot up abreast, though Kootie was stumbling.

"Did you see some bathing beauty in there?" Sullivan asked Elizalde as he hurried up the stairs, pulling Kootie along by the upper arm. " 'Stacked' I get, but 'like a slave ship'-is that good or bad?"

"I meant those bunks," she panted, "you pig. Stacked to the ceiling in there, with soldiers all crammed in, trying to sleep. I didn't notice any-d.a.m.n 'bathing beauty.' "

"Oh ...? What I saw was a balcony over a swimming pool," he told her. Apparently the field hadn't yet collapsed, but was out of phase. "What did you see, Kootie?"

"I'm looking nowhere but straight ahead," said the boy, and Sullivan wondered which of the personalities in Kootie's head had spoken.

Maybe one or more of the degaussing coils have been disconnected, Sullivan thought uneasily, at the substations along the length of the ship. I've got a big wheel spinning-is it missing some spokes? Is it going to fly apart?

"All we can do is get out of here," he said. "Come on."

They jogged wearily up two flights of the stairs, and then paused just below the last landing. Peering around the newel pillar, Sullivan a.s.sessed the remaining steps that ascended to the broad Promenade Deck lobby area known as Piccadilly Circus.

From down here he could see the inset electric lights glowing in the ceiling up there, and he could hear a couple of voices speaking quietly. Far up over his head on the other side, on the paneled back wall of the stairwell, hung a big gold medallion and a framed portrait of Queen Mary.

"Up the stairs," he whispered to Elizalde and the boy, "and then fast out the door to the left. That'll lead us straight off the ship onto the causeway bridge, across that and down the stairs to the parking lot. Ready? Go!"

They stepped crouchingly across the landing, then sprang up the last stairs and sprinted wildly across the open floor, hopping over loops of cable to the wide open doorway out onto the outdoor deck-and then all three of them just stopped, leaning on the rail.

The rail had no gap in it, and the causeway to the parking-lot stairs was gone. The stairs, the parking lot, all of Long Beach was gone, and they were looking out over an empty moonlit ocean that stretched away to the horizon under a black, star-needled sky.

CHAPTER 47.

"I wish I hadn't cried so much!" said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. "I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! ..."

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland FOR A LONG MOMENT the three of them just clung to the rail, and Sullivan, at least, was not even breathing. He was resisting the idea that he and Elizalde and Kootie had died at some point during the last few seconds, and that this lonely emptiness was the world ghosts lived in; and he wanted to go back inside, and cling to whoever it was whose voices they had heard.

He heard clumsy splashing far away below, and when he looked down he thought he could see the tiny heads and arms of two swimmers struggling through the moonlit water alongside the Queen Mary's hull. The sight of them didn't lessen the solitude, for he guessed who they must be.

Hopelessly, just in case the cycle might be breakable, he filled his lungs with the cold sea breeze and yelled down to the swimmers, "Get out of town tonight!"

He looked at Elizalde, who was half-kneeling next to him, stunned-looking and hanging her elbows over the rail. "Maybe," he said, "I'll listen to me this time."

She managed to shrug. "Neither of us did yesterday."

The spell broke when sharp, heavy footsteps that he knew were high heels on the interior deck approached from behind Sullivan, and he didn't need to smell a clove cigarette.

He grabbed Elizalde's shoulder and Kootie's collar and shoved them forward. "Wake up!" he shouted. "Run!"

They both blinked at him, then obediently began sprinting down the deck toward the lights of the bow, without looking back; he floundered along after them, his back chilly and twitching in antic.i.p.ation of a shot from deLarava's little automatic.

But the big silhouette of deLarava stepped out of a wide doorway ahead of Elizalde and Kootie, and deLarava negligently raised the pistol toward them.

They skidded to a halt on the worn deck planks, and Sullivan grabbed their shoulders again to stop himself. He looked behind desperately- And saw deLarava standing back there too.

"I'm not seeing a railing at all," called both the images of deLarava, in a single voice that was high-pitched with what might have been elation or fright. "To me, you're all standing straight out from the Promenade Deck doorway. From your point of view, you can walk here by coming forward or coming back. Either way, get over here right now or I'll start shooting you up."

Elizalde's hand brushed the untucked sweatshirt at her waist. The night sea breeze blew her long black hair back from her face, and the moonlight glancing in under the deck roof glazed the lean line of her jaw.

"No," whispered Sullivan urgently. "She'd empty her gun before you half drew clear. Save it." He looked at the forward image of deLarava and then back at the aft one. "Tell you what, you two walk forward, and I'll walk back."

"And I'll be in Scotland afore ye," whispered Kootie. Sullivan knew the remark was a bit of bravado from Edison.

As Elizalde and Kootie stepped away toward the bow, Sullivan turned and walked back the way they had run; and as he got to the open Piccadilly Circus doorway he saw that Elizalde and Kootie were stepping in right next to him, both blinking in exhausted surprise to see him suddenly beside them again. The soft ceiling lights and the glow of another freestanding Art Deco lamp kindled a warm glow in the windows of the little interior shops at the forward end of the lobby.

deLarava had stepped back across the broad inner deck, and she was still holding the gun on them; though Sullivan could see now that the muzzle was shaking.

"Do you know anything about all this, Pete?" deLarava asked in an animated voice. "There's some huge magnetic thing going on, and it's broken the ship up, psychically. Right here all the ghosts have waked up, with their own stepped-up charges, and they've curved their bogus s.p.a.ce all the way around us, and this lobby area of this deck is in a ... a closed loop-if you walk away from it, you find yourself walking right b-b-back into it." She sniffed and touched her scalp. "G.o.ddammit."

The only other person visible in the broad lobby was a white-haired little old fellow in a khaki jacket, though the area had at some time been set up for a shoot-a Sony Betacam SP sat on a tripod by the opposite doorway, and the unlit tic-tac-toe board of a Molepar lamp array was clamped on a sandbagged light stand in the corner next to a couple of disa.s.sembled Lowell light kits, and power and audio cables were looped across the deck, some connected to a dark TV monitor on a wheeled cart. Nothing seemed to be hot now, but Sullivan could faintly catch the old burnt-gel reek on the clovescented air.

It seemed to him that the ceiling lights had dimmed from yellow down toward orange, in the moments since he had stepped in from the outside deck.

With her free hand, deLarava snicked a Dunhill lighter and puffed another clove cigarette alight. "Is Apie here, Joey?" she asked.

Sullivan nervously touched the bra.s.s plaque under his shirt.

The old man in the khaki jacket was grimacing and rocking on his heels. "Yes," he said. "And he can no more get out of here than we two can. We toucans." He sang, "Precious and few are the mo-ments we toucans sha-a-are ..." Then he frowned and shook his head. "Even over the side-that's not the real ocean down there now. Jump off the port rail and you land on the starboard deck."

"I think he tried it," whispered Kootie bravely, "and landed on his head."

Sullivan nodded and tried to smile, but he was glancing around at the pillars and the stairwell and the dark inward-facing shop windows. Keep your head down, Dad, he thought.

The ceiling lamps were definitely fading and the lobby was going dark-but reflections of colored lights were now fanning above the wide throat of the open stairwell on the aft side of the lobby, gleaming on the tall paneled back wall and the big gold medallion and the framed portrait, and from some lower deck came the shivering cacophony of a big party going on.

deLarava stumped across the glossy cork deck to the top of the stairwell-a velvet rope was hung doubled at the top of one of the stair railings, and she unhooked one bra.s.s end, walked across to the other railing with it, and hooked the rope there, across the gap.

"n.o.body go near the well," she said, her voice sounding more pleading than threatening. "Joey-where is Apie?"

The Piccadilly Circus lobby was almost totally dark now, the lamps overhead glowing only a dull red, and Sullivan could see reflections of moonlight on the polished deck.

Then, with the echoing clank of a knife switch being thrown, the whitehot glare of an ungla.s.sed carbon-arc lamp punched across the lobby from the forward corridor between the shops, throwing deLarava's bulbous shadow like a torn hole onto the paneling of the stairwell's back wall.

The lamp was roaring because of working off alternating current, but from the darkness behind and beyond the cone of radiance, a strong, confident voice said, "I'm here, Kelley."

deLarava had flung her hand over her face, and now reeled away out of the glare, toward the doorway that led out onto the starboard deck, on the opposite side of the lobby from Sullivan.

He spun away from the glaring light toward Elizalde and Kootie-and stopped.

Angelica Elizalde was still standing where she'd been, her hair backlit now against the reflected glare from the stairwell wall, but a portly old man stood between her and Sullivan, where Kootie had been a moment before, and Kootie was nowhere to be seen. Sullivan blinked at the old man, wondering where he had appeared from, and who he was.

Sullivan opened his mouth to speak-then flinched into a crouch a moment before a hard bang shook the air, and he felt the hair twitch over his scalp.

He let his crouch become a tumble to the deck, and he reached for Elizalde's ankles but she was already dropping to her hands and knees. The old man who'd been standing between them had stepped forward into the glare, the tails of his black coat trailing out behind him as if he were walking through water.

Sullivan's father's voice boomed from the forward darkness behind the light. "Step forward, Kelley!"

"f.u.c.k you, Apie!" came deLarava's shrill reply. "I just killed your other precious stinking kid!"

Sullivan grabbed Elizalde's upper arm and pulled her into the deeper penumbra behind the cone of light. "Where's Kootie?" Sullivan hissed into her ear as they crawled toward the wall.

"That's him," Elizalde whispered back, waving out at the old man in the center of the deck. Sullivan looked up, and noticed two things: the old man's jowly, strong-jawed face, which in this stark light even looked like a figure in a black-and-white newsreel, was instantly recognizable from the photos he'd seen of Thomas Alva Edison; and the shadow the old man cast on the far aft wall above the stairs was the silhouette of a young boy.

This was the Edison ghost out and solid, and Sullivan knew deLarava would not want to damage it. "Give me the gun," he whispered to Elizalde.

The two of them had scrambled forward, to the wall below one of the little interior windows on the port side, and Elizalde sat down on the deck and pulled the .45 from the waist of her jeans and shoved it toward him.