Hot Sky at Midnight

that catered to medium-grade business travelers who might have one night to spend in Oakland before going on to San Diego or Seattle.

The Company is behind you. Yes. But the Company was already beginning to reduce its overhead insofar as he was concerned, and he had not yet been found guilty of anything. Perhaps there was more to worry about here than he thought.

It was late afternoon by the time Carpenter was settled in the small, drab, dank room that apparently was going to be his home for a while. He put through a call to Nick Rhodes at Santachiara, and, to his surprise, it went through on the first try.

“Hey, now!” Rhodes cried. “Home is the sailor, home from the sea!”

“So it would seem,” Carpenter said, in a dull, flat tone. “As I remember the poem, that’s a line to be engraved on somebody’s tombstone.”

Instantly Rhodes looked alarmed. “Paul? What the hell’s the matter, Paul?”

“I don’t know yet. Possibly plenty. They’ve got me up on some kind of fucking court-martial.”

“For Christ’s sake. What did you do?”

Wearily Carpenter said, “There was this ship we met when we were out in the Pacific. There had been a mutiny on board, and—well, it’s a long story. I don’t feel like running through it all just now. Look, are you free tonight? You want to get together and do some serious drinking, Nick?”

“Of course. Where are you?”

“Dive called the Dunsmuir, near the airport.”

“Down by SFO, you mean?”

“No. Oakland Airport, not San Francisco. That’s the best the Company thinks I’m worthy of, right now. More convenient for you, anyway.” Then, belatedly: “How the hell are you, Nick?”

“I’m—fine.”

“And Isabelle?”

“She’s fine too. I’m still seeing her, you know.”

“Of course you are. I never expected otherwise. How’s her goofy friend with the lavish equipment?”

“Jolanda? She’s up in the habitats right now. Should be getting back in another couple of days. She’s been traveling with Enron.”

“The Israeli? I thought he was back in Tel Aviv.”

“Decided to stick around in San Francisco. Captivated by Jolanda’s lavish equipment, I gather. And then they suddenly went up to the satellites together. Don’t ask me any more, because I don’t know. Where do you want to meet tonight?”

“That restaurant we went to on the Berkeley waterfront?”

“Antonio’s, you mean? Sure. What time?”

“Any time. The sooner the better. I have to tell you, I feel pretty miserable, Nick. Especially in this rain. I could use some good company.”

“What about right now?” Rhodes asked. “I’m just about through for the day anyway. And I could use some good company too, if the truth be known.”

“Something wrong?”

“I’m not sure. A complication, anyway.”

“Involving Isabelle?”

“Nothing to do with women at all. I’ll tell you when I see you.”

“Isabelle won’t be coming with you tonight, will she?”

“God, no,” Rhodes said. “Antonio’s, in half an hour. All right? Be seeing you. Welcome back, you old sea- dog!”

“Yeah,” Carpenter said. “Home is the sailor. For better or for worse.”

The rain clattered against the Perspex domes of the shoreside restaurant like pebbles tossed by an angry giant. The bay was almost invisible, lost in the gray of twilight and the turbulent swirlings of the storm. There was practically no one in the restaurant but the two of them.

Nick Rhodes seemed stunned by Carpenter’s account of what had happened at sea. He listened to the entire story in a kind of numbed incredulity, barely saying a word, staring fixedly at Carpenter throughout the long recitation and breaking his rigid concentration only to bring his glass to his lips. Then when Carpenter was done Rhodes began to ask questions, peripheral ones at first, then more directly attacking the issue of whether there might really have been room for the warring factions of Captain Kovalcik and Captain Kohlberg aboard the Tonopah Maru, so that in effect Carpenter found himself telling the story all over again, piecemeal this time.

With each telling, Carpenter had more difficulty in accepting his own version of the events. It was beginning to seem to him as though it would not in any way have been a serious problem to take the castaways on board. Put five of them here, six over here, stick them in closets and heads and any other bit of available space, cut everybody’s Screen ration down so that there would have been enough to go around—

Or maybe just to have towed them in their three dinghies all the way to San Francisco—

No. No.

“It wasn’t doable, Nick. You just have to take my word for it. There were fifteen or twenty of them, and we had just barely enough living space on board for the five of us. Let alone supplies of food and Screen. Jesus Christ, do you think I wanted to maroon a bunch of people in the middle of the Pacific? Don’t you think I suffered like a son of a bitch over the decision?”

Rhodes nodded. Then he looked at Carpenter strangely and said, “Did you report to anybody that you had encountered a ship in distress?”

“It wasn’t necessary. They had a radio of their own,” Carpenter said sullenly.

“You didn’t say a word to the maritime authorities, then? You just turned away and left them there?”

“Yes. I just turned away and left them there.”

“Jesus, Paul,” Rhodes said quietly. He signaled for one more round of drinks. “Jesus. I don’t think that was a good idea at all.”

“No. It really wasn’t. It was like running away from the scene of an accident, wasn’t it?” Carpenter had trouble meeting Rhodes’ eyes. “But you weren’t there, Nick. You don’t know the pressures I was under. Our ship was tiny. I had this huge berg in tow and I wanted to clear out before it melted. The people on the squid ship had been at each other’s throats for weeks and seemed absolutely crazy and dangerous. And they were Kyocera people, besides, not that that was a deciding factor, but it was on my mind. Taking them on board was simply impossible. So I bolted and ran. I don’t expect any applause for that, but it’s what I did. As for calling for help for them, I figured that they had sent out their own SOS and there was no need for me to do it for them. As for filing an official report on the incident, I didn’t do that because— because—”

He fumbled a moment for words without finding any.

Then he said, into Rhodes’ suddenly unsparing gaze, “I suppose I figured that it would reflect badly on me if I told the authorities that I had encountered a ship in distress and hadn’t done anything about it. So I just tried to hush the whole thing up. Jesus, Nick, it was my first command.”

“You told your crew not to say anything about it.”

“Yes. But they did, anyway.”

“The survivors of the other ship probably reported you too, right?”

“What survivors? There couldn’t have been any survivors.”

“Oh, Paul—Paul—”

“It was my first command, Nick. I never asked to be a fucking sea captain.”

“You let them make you one, though.”

“Right. I let them. And so for the first time in my life I did something really shitheaded. Well, I’m sorry about that. But I couldn’t help myself, Nick. Do you see that?”

“Have another drink.”

“What good will that do?”

“It usually does me some good. Maybe it will for you, too.” Rhodes smiled. “I think it’ll work out all right for