Hot Sky at Midnight

“Hold it a second! I demand the right to a proper representative!”

O’Reilly gave Carpenter a long cool glance. “You have a proper representative, Captain Carpenter, and he will be given an opportunity to file an appropriate response in due course. I’d like no further outbursts, if you please. We enter into evidence the following exhibits—”

Leadenly Carpenter watched as Exhibit A appeared on a visor mounted at one end of the long tubular room. Exhibit A was the testimony of Maintenance/Operations Officer Rennett, describing her visit to the Calamari Maru in the company of Captain Carpenter. Crisply and efficiently Rennett outlined the conditions she had observed aboard the squid ship, the deposed and sedated officers, the statements of the mutinous Kovalcik. It all seemed accurate enough to Carpenter, and not in any way damaging to him. Then came Exhibit B, the statement of Navigator Hitchcock, telling how the movements of the hooked iceberg in the roughening sea had accidentally swamped the squid ship, and describing the way the three dinghies had come toward the Tonopah Maru seeking help, and how Captain Carpenter had ordered the crew of the Tonopah Maru to ignore the castaways and begin the return voyage to San Francisco. That part sounded pretty horrendous even to Carpenter; but he couldn’t say that Hitchcock had distorted anything, particularly. It was merely what had happened.

He assumed that the statements of Cassie and Nakata would now be played. And then, presumably, he would be given a chance to speak in his own defense—to explain the difficulty of the situation, the limited capacity of his ship and the inadequate supplies of provisions and Screen, and to show how in that instant of decision he had chosen to value the lives of his own crew over those of the strangers. Carpenter had already decided to declare that he felt contrite for having had to abandon the castaways, that he deeply regretted the necessity of it, that he hoped he would be forgiven for having made the choice he had and for having been too flustered afterward to file a proper report. Would Tedesco approve of his taking a repentant stance? Maybe not; maybe it was a weak legal position. Fuck Tedesco, though. Tedesco should have been here to advise him, and he wasn’t.

Carpenter allowed himself to feel a shred of confidence, even so. Rhodes’ words kept running through his mind.

—The Company will cover for you. Samurai isn’t going to want it to come out in public that one of its ships left a bunch of castaways to die—and so they’ll square the court in some way and get the charges dismissed, and shove the whole story out of sight, and transfer you back to the Weather Service, or something.

—They’re going to bury the whole event and make it seem as though nothing ever took place out there between your ship and that Kyocera one.

—I’m sure of it, Paul.

—I’m sure of it, Paul.

—I’m sure of it, Paul.

“Exhibit C,” O’Reilly announced. “The statement of Captain Kovalcik.”

What?

Yes, there she was on screen, stony-faced, icy-eyed, definitely Kovatak in the flesh. She hadn’t perished out there in her open boat after all. No, no, there she was, alive and staring grimly out of the visor, telling a terrible tale of survival at sea, of privation and torment, of eventual rescue by a patrol ship. Half of her people had died. All because the Samurai iceberg trawler’s captain had been unwilling to lift a finger to save them.

Even Carpenter had to admit it was a frightful indictment. Kovalcik said nothing about the mutiny she had led; she went completely around the fact that Calamari Maru had been swamped as a direct result of her own incompetent decision to remain in the vicinity of the huge captive iceberg; she utterly left out of the reckoning Carpenter’s own protests that his ship was incapable of taking on so big a load of passengers. She concentrated entirely on her request for succor and Carpenter’s heartless refusal to provide it. When Kovalcik had finished speaking her terrible image still glared out at him from the visor as though it had burned itself into the fabric of the visor.

“Captain Carpenter?” O’Reilly said.

So at last he was to have his day in court. He rose and spoke, running through the whole grimy tale one more time, the summons to Kovalcik’s ship, the signs of the mutiny, the sedated officers and the request to take them aboard, then the swamping of the other ship and the three dinghies bobbing in the sea. Listening to himself, Carpenter was struck by the hollowness of his own case. He should have taken them on board, he told himself, no matter what. Even if everyone starved on the way back to port. Even if they all ran out of Screen in a day and a half and burned right down through skin and flesh and muscle to the bone. Or else have called in for their rescue by others. But he pushed on through, limning the events, once more offering his self- justification, his arguments from efficiency and possibility, his statement of contrition and repentance for any errors committed.

Suddenly he was all out of words, standingjnute before the hearing officer and the bailiff.

There was a roaring silence. What was going to happen now? A verdict? A sentence?

O’Reilly banged the gavel. Then he turned away, as though to some other case that was before him on the desk.

“Am I supposed to wait?” Carpenter asked.

“The proceedings are adjourned,” the bailiff said. Picked up a sheaf of folders. Lost all interest in him, not that she had ever had much to begin with.

Nobody said a word to Carpenter as he left the building.

As soon as he reached the Dunsmuir, half an hour later, Carpenter put in a call to Tedesco at the Samurai number he had been given. He expected to get some kind of corporate runaround; but to his amazement Tedesco appeared almost at once.

“You weren’t there,” Carpenter said. “Why the hell not?”

“It wasn’t required of me. I’ve seen the transcript.”

“Already? That was goddamn fast. What are you going to do now?”

“Do? What’s there to do? A fine has been levied for your negligence. The Port has stripped you of your sea license. Very likely Kyocera will sue us now for letting their people die out there in the Pacific, and that might be quite expensive. We just have to wait and see.”

“Am I going to be demoted?” Carpenter asked.

“You? You’re going to be fired.”

“I—fired?” Carpenter felt as though he had been punched. He struggled to catch his breath. “The Company is behind me, you said at the first hearing. Fired? Is that how you’re behind me?”

“Things changed, Carpenter. We didn’t know then that there were survivors. Survivors alter the entire circumstance, don’t you see? Kyocera wants your head on a platter, and we’re going to give it to them. We would probably have kept you on if there hadn’t been any survivors, if this had simply been an internal matter involving Samurai and the Port of Oakland—your word against that of your own crew, a matter of officer judgment and nothing else—but now there are accusers rising up publicly in wrath. There’s going to be a stink. How can we keep you, Carpenter? We would have hushed this all up and you might have hung on with us, but now we can’t, not with survivors speaking up, making us all look like shit. You think we can give you a new assignment now? Your new assignment is to look for a job, Carpenter. You have thirty days’ notice, and you’re damned lucky to get that. A termination counselor will advise you of your rights. Okay, Carpenter? You see the picture?”

“I wasn’t expecting—”

“No. I guess you weren’t. I’m sorry, Carpenter.”

Dazed, his breath coming in heavy shocked gusts, Carpenter stared at the visor long after it had gone blank. His head was whirling. He had never felt such inner devastation. Suddenly there was a hole through the middle of the planet, and he was falling through it—falling, falling—

Gradually he calmed a little.

He sat quietly for a while, breathing deeply, trying not to think of anything at all. Then, automatically, he started to call Nick Rhodes.

No.

No, not now. Rhodes would be sympathetic, sure; but he had as much as already said that he thought Carpenter had brought all this on himself, hadn’t he? Carpenter didn’t need to hear more of that just now.