Passage

“I mean, like the fires in the boilers and the fireplaces.”

“There were fireplaces on the Titanic?” Joanna said and then remembered the woman with the piled-up hair saying, “We’ll ask the steward to light a fire.”

“Yeah,” Kit said, “in the smoking room, I think, and some of the first-class cabins.” Started because the passengers had gotten cold out on deck, Joanna thought, and then left burning when they went up to the Boat Deck, and, when the deck began to list, the wood and ashes sliding out onto the carpet, catching the curtains, filling the cabin with smoke.

“Is that the kind of fire you meant?” Kit was asking.

“I don’t know what I mean,” Joanna said. “I’m looking for any kind of fire that might have produced a lot of smoke. Or steam.”

“I remember Uncle Pat talking about a fire in one of the boiler rooms,” Kit said, “in the coal bin. It had been smoldering since they left port, but I don’t think there was any smoke. Or steam, you said?”

“Yes.”

“I was just thinking of that scene in the movie where there’s that deafening blast, and steam swirls around everybody on the Boat Deck. I’ll see what I can find. Did you call before and get a busy signal?”

“Yes,” Joanna admitted.

“I was afraid of that. Uncle Pat’s started taking the phone off the hook. I keep checking it, but—”

“ ‘ “Oh, father, I hear the sound of guns,” ’ ” she heard Mr. Briarley say.

“I’ll call you as soon as I find anything,” Kit said.

“I need the information as soon as—”

“ ‘ “Oh, say, what may it be?” ’ ” Mr. Briarley said.

“—as soon as possible,” Joanna finished, and Kit said okay, but Joanna wasn’t sure she’d really heard her because of Mr. Briarley, declaiming in the background, “ ‘ “Some ship in distress that cannot live.” ’ They speak to us!”

Joanna hung up the phone and then stared at it, thinking about the possibility of the fog being steam. But none of the NDEers had said anything about the fog swirling, or moving at all, and Maisie had said she’d been inside, not out on the Boat Deck.

Or had she? She called up the first interview she’d had with Maisie. “I was inside this place, I think it was a tunnel, only I couldn’t see ’cause it was dark and all foggy,” she’d said, and she’d talked about walls that went up on either side of her. “They were really tall. The top was so high I couldn’t see it.”

No room had high ceilings on a ship, even a luxurious one like the Titanic. She must have been out on the Boat Deck, and the noise she’d heard was the funnels letting off steam. She had said a roar. But there was nothing on the Boat Deck that was narrow with high walls on either side. On the other hand, smoke had a distinctive smell. Steam didn’t.

Joanna typed in “steam” and “mist” and “swirling” and ran global searches on each of them, wishing Kit would call back. At eleven, she did. “Hi,” she said excitedly, “I’ve got it.”

Joanna gripped the phone. “There was a fire on the Titanic?”

“A fire?” Kit said blankly. “Oh, no, I haven’t found anything yet. The only reference in any of the indexes was to the fires in the boilers and the stokers working to put them out before the water reached them and caused an explosion. Nothing about smoke either, but I’m still looking. That isn’t why I called. I found the book!”

Now it was Joanna’s turn to answer blankly. “The book?”

“Mirrors and Mazes! Finally. I’ve been turning the house upside down. The kitchen looks as bad as it did when Uncle Pat dismantled it. You’ll never guess where it was. In the refrigerator. The crisper drawer, so it’s sort of damp and chilly, but at least I’ve got it, and I put it in a safe place, so Uncle Pat can’t hide it again. Can you come over? I can fix you lunch.”

“No, I’m busy. I…” I already know what the Titanic is. I don’t need the book anymore. I need proof.

“I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get over. Things are crazy around here.”

“I can bring it to the hospital,” Kit said. “Eldercare is supposed to come over this evening, but I could call and see if they can change to this afternoon.”

“No,” Joanna said, and tried to put more enthusiasm in her voice. “I’ll come get it.”

“Great,” Kit said. “I can’t wait for you to see if the connection’s in it. I’ll bake cookies.”

“Oh, don’t go to any trouble. I don’t know exactly when—”

“It’s no trouble. I’ve already got all the ingredients out anyway,” Kit said. “And the heat from the oven will help dry out the book. I’ll see you this afternoon,” she said, and hung up before Joanna could remind her to call her if she found any fires.

She won’t, Joanna thought, because there weren’t any. If there had been a fire, it would definitely have been in the movie with Hollywood’s penchant for special effects, and the one she had envisioned, the burning logs sliding out of the fireplace as the ship tilted, catching the carpet on fire, would have been put out almost immediately by the encroaching water. It has to have been steam, she thought, but Mrs. Katzenbaum had said smoke, and so had Coma Carl.

The phone rang. It’s Kit calling back, Joanna thought. She reached for it and then pulled her hand back and let the answering machine click on. And a good thing, too. It was Mr. Mandrake.

“I cannot understand why I haven’t heard from you. I have paged you and been by your office numerous times,” he said, his voice vibrating with irritation. “I have evidence…”

Evidence, Joanna thought contemptuously. What? Something else Mrs. Davenport’s remembered to order for you? Leading questions? Data twisted to fit your theory, with the facts that don’t fit left out?

And what do you call what you have? How is your evidence any different from Mr. Mandrake’s? So you’ve got dozens of references to the Titanic. It doesn’t prove anything except that you can find proof of anything you want if you look hard enough. Because it’s still all subjective, no matter what percent of the accounts are consistent. There isn’t any outside verification. I need a red tennis shoe, she thought, or a map of the South Pacific.

And how am I supposed to get that? Mr. Wojakowski’s a compulsive liar, Mr. Briarley can’t remember, Amelia Tanaka refuses to talk, Coma Carl—“Coma Carl,” she said out loud. She wasn’t the only one who had heard him. Guadalupe had, too, and his wife. If there was something in his ramblings that pointed clearly to the Titanic—

She called up his file again. He had said, “smoke” and “ohhh… grand,” but neither were definitive. She scrolled down the screen. “Water… have to…” Guadalupe had written, “…gone…” The boats are gone?

Someone knocked on the door. Mr. Mandrake, Joanna thought, and froze. “Joanna?” Richard called. “Are you in there?”

“Just a minute,” she said. She cleared the screen, laid Mr. Wojakowski’s file on top of the transcripts, and opened the door.

“Hi,” Richard said, “I just wanted to tell you I’m going to be out of the lab for a while. I’ll be up in Dr. Jamison’s office on eighth if you need me for anything. I’m hoping she’ll be able to look at Mrs. Troudtheim’s scans and see something I can’t.”

“Cortisol wasn’t present in Mrs. Troudtheim’s other NDEs?” Joanna said, leaning against the door so he wouldn’t come in.

“No, it was there in spades.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Unfortunately, it and DABA were also present in one of Amelia Tanaka’s, two of yours, and three of Mr. Sage’s, including his record-breaking twenty- eight-minute one.”

“So you’re not going to send Mrs. Troudtheim under?” Joanna asked hopefully.

“No, I’ve still got a couple of other ideas. One’s the theta-asparcine.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t an inhibitor?”

“It’s not, but it might abort the NDE some other way. And you kicked out when I lowered the dosage. That may mean Mrs. Troudtheim’s NDE threshold is higher than normal, so I’m going to raise the dosage and see if that keeps her in. That’s why I came down. I wanted to make sure two o’clock would work for you. I’m meeting with Dr. Jamison at one, but I’ll be back in plenty of time, and I told Tish to be here at one-thirty in case Mrs. Troudtheim shows up early. So,” he said, slapping the doorjamb with the flat of his hand. “See you at two o’clock.”

“Yes,” she said, “I should be finished by then,” and some of the regret in her voice must have come through