Hesse had felt that, and suddenly the vast stores of food on the ship seemed clearly limited. Fishing was organized. Hesse and Warrant decided not to use the lifeboats with their very limited fuel and the chance for more desertions. They fished from the lowest decks above the Festival’s waterline. Nets were sunk down below the oil slick, and dozens of weighted, hooked lines lowered.
Brenda White felt the weight of a week’s work, heavy thinking, heated arguments, full-body pain from the physicality of wiring. The ship was running. It was time for a break. This time she shared a quick beer with some of her co-workers, and returned to her family. Her husband was exhausted, having stayed up to care for their five-year-old through a short-lived stomach bug, so she let him rest while she took the kids off to the playroom.
Brenda had checked out the playroom when the family had first come aboard for the cruise in Florida. The kids had pleaded to stay and play, but she wanted to relax by the pool, so she’d promised they’d come back. Now they had their chance.
The room was lit only from the grey light through the windows. None of the video games worked, nor did the various electronic gimmicks around the room, but the kids didn’t notice. They ran from Brenda at the sight of the room, 1,500 square feet of colorful oversize toys, slides, and ball pits, all theirs. In the center was a kid-sized cruise ship, orbited by different international scenes: an ice island with fake ice blocks to play with, and huge seal and penguin stuffed toys. There was a strangely isolated Paris, with an Eiffel tower and play bakery, and an ancient Egypt with 8-foot pyramids, containing rising tunnels exiting by a slide.
The old noise of her kids being kids came to her, and she relaxed into a beanbag chair and smiled.
When Brenda thought it might be time to wrap it up, another kid arrived.
Corrina Adamson introduced herself and her little boy, Darren. It was their first visit to the playroom. Brenda introduced her kids to Darren, and they were off into a tunnel.
Corrina heard Darren’s laughter coming from the tunnel, and she laughed, but her eyes teared up.
“I know,” Brenda said. “I know, darling.”
Corrina sat in the beanbag chair next to Brenda.
“I can’t believe we never came here before,” Corrina said.
The kids came flying out of a tube, down a slide, running over to the next play structure.
“We could get rescued right now and the kids would cry for more time,” Brenda said.
They both laughed, and the kids’ laughter came from the play ship.
Brenda stayed another hour, and Corrina and Darren played themselves for another hour, until they rolled together, red-faced laughing on the polar ice floe.
That night in Vera’s room, they ate small deli sandwiches. Corrina and Claude played chess on his travel board in the zip-up leather pouch.
“Can you tell me an African story?” Darren asked.
Professor Claude gave Darren a quick look and a smile.
“There is a story the Ashante peoples told, of two princes and two magic spiders.”
His attention was back on the chess game, the story seeming to flow from him without his influence on it.
“The father of the princes was a wise king, much loved by the gods. When it was shown to him by the sky god that his time was coming to an end, he decided to share his kingdom between his two sons. And so he granted each prince a tribe over which to be chief. But the King was worried that his sons might grow jealous and slay each other. And so, on his death, the king gave up his place with his ancestors for a wish. His wish was for Nyame, the sky god, to come to each of his sons and promise them a paradise in the afterworld, should they remain each at peace with his brother, and his brother’s tribe. But Nyame was wise and knew that men live for today and forget what is to come. So the god came to the princes while they slept, and gave to each a magic spider, which could find its way to, and kill the other of the princes. So that each prince knew, if he were to overreach, and take that which belonged to his brother, that his brother had the spider with which to destroy him. The tribes were happy and prospered under their princes, but the princes were afraid. Each prince knew that his brother could release his spider to kill him at any time. The fear grew and grew in them, until the night of the feast of the ancestors. With ghosts in the air and the veil between life and death so thin, each prince sent their spider, and each was in turn killed.”
They all waited for the next words. Corrina looked up from the game. The Professor didn’t notice. He moved his castle, taking Corrina’s queen bishop. The story was done.
“For God’s sake, Claude,” Gerry said. “Darren has enough death already.”
“Oh,” Claude said, looking up from his meditation on the chessboard. “I’m sorry. I am so used to these stories I suppose I don’t think of them as happy or sad or scary.”
Claude returned his attention to the game. Corrina had his queen.
“Sorry, Claude,” she said. “You were distracted.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he said with a smile.
Travis was trapped in Claude’s story about the princes and the magic spiders.
“What will happen?” Darren said. “I mean, if no one finds us.”
“Someone will find us,” Gerry said. “Remember, Darren, if things get really bad, there’s always the lifeboats. Just remember that, if you ever really, really hate it here, we can always leave.”
They were quiet. When Darren went to pee off the balcony, Claude said to Gerry: “The lifeboats are suicide. But you’re right, it’s the only way off.”
25
With the coming of that second Sunday on the ship, nothing felt the same. A comet had fallen from the sky once. Then, comets had rained from the sky, and now each looked up for falling comets.
Lee had taken a backstage dressing room behind the Theater, where they slept with Jessica on the couch and Lee on the floor. They had a flashlight, but slept in total darkness.
“The whole Theater is rattled,” Jessica Golding’s voice came in the black space. “You’re the only rock for everyone. But you’re nervous because the Atrium controls the power and you can’t see what they’re doing. Imagine how they feel knowing you have the gun and they don’t know what you’re doing.”
“They got us the power,” Lee said. “They got the message I’m watching.”
“Do you think they did that out of pure kindness?” Jessica said. “Or does it suit them to keep us separate? They gave us light so they could keep us in the dark, Lee.”
He rolled onto his side and looked up at the space where she was.
Twelve years old, Lee Golding was in jail in Mobile, Alabama. He was a freakishly big kid, but only had a kid’s strength. The police treated him roughly. His cellmates treated him roughly. He’d only stolen a Coke, and only because Therese Blackburn had asked for it.
The police knew his father, and that was no help to him. He didn’t get scared overnight in jail. He got angry. He imagined someday he’d be in control, and they’d be scared of him. They could do their worst to him; he could take it. But he was just a kid. It wasn’t right to push around a kid. He wished they’d held him and charged him, so a judge would see, but they were scared, he knew that was why they’d let him go after two days. They shouldn’t have done that to a kid.
He got bigger and soon had a man’s strength, even at fourteen, starring in basketball and football as a freshman. He loved playing. He was in control. He imagined crowds that weren’t there, announcers beside themselves at this most poised and powerful force in sports. He won basketball championships and Super Bowls with his sisters and friends in his front yard.
He believed in his fantasies, and they soon came true. Still the kid, excited, unafraid, he bound down the alleys of countless stadiums and arenas. His theme song blaring; his gown trailing him. He reveled in the glorious physicality of wrestling. His body, his skills, his persona, at the heart of the game. Then there were the movies, three years in Hollywood, two hits, and best of all, the sensation of watching himself, thirty feet high on a screen. It was never strange to him to become a star. He’d imagined himself one for so long.