"The Sea King’s Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Michaels Barbara)

Chapter 2

I

I COULD HAVE RESPONDED TO THE APPARITION IN ONE of two ways. I might have said coolly, “Yes?” as if I didn’t know him. Or I might have come up with something coolly ironic-“Well, well, long time no see,” or some other equally witty remark. The key word is cool. I was not cool. I was thunder-struck; and my expression showed it.

I would have found him easier to deal with if he had been shabby and stooped and defeated. He was shabby, all right; his suit coat didn’t match his pants, and it was worn and spotted, but the impression was one of disinterest, not of poverty. And physically he looked impressive. He was taller than Jim and he didn’t have Jim’s little pot tummy. I couldn’t help making the comparison; it was disloyal, but I couldn’t help it. If you had seen the two of them side by side, you’d have picked this man as the athlete. He had hardly any gray in his thick brown hair. Even his face was young looking. His eyes were a funny, frosty gray; they studied me with detached interest from under heavy dark brows. He didn’t smile. His chin was square. It was my chin. I had never particularly liked the shape of my chin.

He looked me up and down, with that irritating, impersonal stare. I felt like a horse being appraised by a prospective buyer. Then he said,

“Ariadne. Yes, I would have recognized you, even without the photograph in National Geographic. Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Still speechless, I stepped back. He came in and closed the door. Then he sat down in the sole armchair the room boasted. Casually, quite at ease, he glanced around. The room was a mess. Papers, books, clothes, sports gear all over. The bed wasn’t made. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes lit on the photo on the dresser. It was my favorite picture of Mother and Dad, enlarged from a snapshot I had taken. They were in the front yard. It was a breezy day, and Mother’s hair was blowing. She was laughing, and she looked about twenty. Jim had his arm around her. He was laughing too, and he looked like the wonderful guy he is, bald head, pot, and all.

Something in my father’s expression made me angry. The warmth loosened my tongue.

“Mother is fine,” I said.

“I assumed she would be.”

“Oh, did you?” I sat down on the bed and glared at him. “You certainly never bothered to find out.”

“Why should I?”

If he had sounded angry or defensive, I would have had an answer. But he didn’t. He just sounded surprised. Before I could find sufficiently cutting words, he went on, in the same calm voice.

“It was obvious, even when you were an infant, that you would not be interested in pursuing a scholarly career. Perhaps if you had been a boy I might have communicated with you more regularly.”

“Male chauvinist,” I said.

“I beg your pardon?” His broad forehead wrinkled. Then it cleared. “No,” he said, in the same dispassionate voice. “It was not your sex, but your lack of intellectual capacity that guided my decision.”

A funny thing happened then. I looked at him sitting there, perfectly at home, with a daughter he hadn’t seen for almost twenty years-a daughter whom he had rejected because at the age of two she had failed to display sufficient intellectual capacity. He looked-no, not smug, that word is too strong-he looked self-satisfied. He had explained himself, and he expected me to understand, and to agree with his assessment. The notion that he might be wrong-that he might be irritating or cruel or unreasonable-had never entered his head.

Oddly enough, this didn’t anger me. You can’t feel anger with a blind man because he can’t see. For the first time in the insane interview I relaxed.

“How could you tell?” I asked curiously. “What tests do you administer to an infant to find out whether she has an aptitude for classical archaeology?”

He waved the question away with an impatient flick of his hand.

“That is beside the point, Ariadne. What does matter is that I was mistaken as to your usefulness. Not because my assessment was incorrect, but because circumstances have changed. The field of underwater archaeology has developed since then. Not that I had any reason to suppose that you would develop a talent for that sort of thing-”

“You should have tried throwing me into a pond,” I suggested.

Mother had once said my father was the only man she had ever known who had absolutely no sense of humor. My remark wasn’t all that funny, but it should have won a small social smile. The corners of my father’s long, thin lips remained straight.

“That would not have answered,” he replied, with complete seriousness. “And, as I have said, the field of underwater archaeology has developed since-”

“Okay, okay,” I interrupted. “I get the point. See here-uh-”

“You had better call me Frederick. A more intimate appellation would not only be out of place, considering our relationship, but it would prove an embarrassment in the situation I propose to outline.”

“ Frederick,” I said experimentally. “Fred?”

“I dislike nicknames.”

“Well, I don’t. Nobody ever calls me Ariadne. I hate the name. If I call you Frederick, you’ll have to call me Sandy.”

He considered the suggestion thoughtfully. Then he nodded.

“Although,” I added, “I don’t know why we should call each other anything. Is this supposed to be the beginning of a new and beautiful relationship? Because I don’t think-”

“You don’t think,” he interrupted. “If you did, you would understand what I am leading up to. I assure you, I should be more direct if you would stop distracting me with side issues.”

“Oh, I’m not that stupid. You saw the article in Geographic-what were you doing reading a pop mag like that? Anyhow, you decided that your stupid daughter might have a few talents you had not expected. Have you got a specific job in mind, or are you propositioning me generally?”

“I have a specific job in mind.”

It was the weirdest conversation. The most peculiar thing about it was that it didn’t seem weird, like the events of a bizarre dream that seem entirely reasonable in the context of the dream. The man’s self-confidence was so complete that it made his behavior seem right, somehow. I had never met anyone like him. Few people have, because most human beings suffer from self-doubt and insecurity, whether they express it openly or try to hide it under blankets of arrogance. Not this guy. Frederick. My father.

“…I could have obtained all the personnel I needed if those fools in the antiquities service hadn’t refused me permission to dive,” he was saying, as I came out of my reverie.

“Wait a minute,” I said dizzily. “You mean… Start at the beginning. Where is this dig of yours?”

“On Thera,” he said impatiently. “One of the islands in the Santorini group. They have assigned me an area where they do not expect me to find anything of importance. Fortunately Mistropolous has just been appointed head of the service and he has some respect for my ideas. But even he-”

He went on berating the Greek archaeological department, while I tried to sort things out. I suspected I would have to do a lot of sorting with him. He took so much for granted. I pitied his poor students, if he ever taught a class.

Thanks to the magazine article in the dentist’s office, I knew that Santorini was the volcanic island that had blown itself to pieces in the fifteenth century B.C. Several archaeological expeditions had worked on the main island of Thera; I gathered that Frederick ’s concession was not near any of the places that had produced juicy finds, but off in a corner where, it was fondly hoped, he wouldn’t cause any trouble. I already knew him well enough to suspect that was a vain hope.

Then another point hit me and I interrupted the tirade.

“What do you mean, you don’t have permission to dive?”

“The words seem plain enough to me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They seem plain to me, too. In other words-correct me if I’m wrong-you have permission to dig, but not to dive. You can’t hire divers-no pro would be fool enough to risk his career and his reputation by breaking the law-so you are suggesting that I do so. Thanks a lot.”

“You have no career and no reputation to lose,” said Frederick.

“How tactfully you put it,” I said. “What makes you so determined to risk your reputation? Why can’t you just dig, like a good little archaeologist is supposed to do? It just so happens that I know about Thera, about the Minoan houses that were dug up-out of the dirt that is, not out of the ocean floor. And if you’re thinking about my diving down into the caldera, where the middle of the island was, forget it. A diver couldn’t work down there with ordinary scuba gear, it’s hundreds of feet deep.”

“Three to four hundred meters, to be exact,” Frederick said. “Obviously I wouldn’t propose any such absurd idea. Water pressure would have destroyed any remains in that area. If you knew as much as you claim to know, you would realize that the outer portions of the island were also subjected to seismic action. Parts of the coastline have subsided since ancient times. Local divers have reported seeing ruins underwater. I want you to investigate a-a particular area. The situation is ideal. Even our names are different. No one will suspect you of being motivated to-”

“Break the law,” I said. “Won’t they get just a teeny bit suspicious when they see me diving?”

“The village is remote. We will take all possible precautions.”

“But it’s impossible! I’ll need gear. Tanks. Air. How do I get my tanks filled without some smart character suspecting that I just possibly might be diving? It’s crazy!”

The madman-my father, for God’s sake-looked vaguely around the room.

“I’d like some coffee,” he said. “We’ll discuss the details. They can be worked out.”

I made him some instant on my hot plate. I didn’t want to go out to the coffee shop with him. I didn’t want to be seen with him. But I knew what was going to happen. I even knew why it was going to happen.

Breaking the law didn’t bother me, although I had made a big point of it to Frederick. As he said, I had no reputation to lose, and I didn’t consider that I was planning to commit a crime, merely bend a minor regulation. I doubted that they would put me in a Greek jail even if they caught me. I could always claim my revered parent had ordered me to do wrong.

That danger I could dismiss, but the other dangers were more serious. Diving is the greatest fun on earth, but it is not a game. You have to know what you’re doing, and you have to know the terrain. Thanks to Jim’s super coaching, I felt competent to take care of myself in home waters, but I didn’t know anything about the Mediterranean. For all I knew, they had man-eating plants down there. And my father didn’t strike me as the greatest person to have around if you got into trouble. I had a feeling I could drown ten feet away from Frederick if he happened to be thinking about something else.

Money was no problem, apparently. Somehow or other Frederick had conned some nutty foundation into sponsoring the dig. There are more of them-nutty foundations-than you might suppose, supported by millionaires with more money than sense, or by groups of earnest fanatics. They want to find the Fountain of Youth, or the secret of the Great Pyramid, or-in this case-Atlantis. The Atlantis bit suited Frederick ’s plans; that’s what he was really looking for, although he put the problem in more pompous terms. So I could get my fare and expenses out of Frederick. I might not be earning any money, but at least I wouldn’t be a drag on Mother and Dad.

Which brought me to the main problem.

I had no intention of telling my parents-my real parents-about Frederick. Mother would flip, and I wouldn’t blame her. It had taken me only half an hour to realize that my begetter was ruthless, unreliable, and incapable of feeling responsibility toward another human being. Mother had better reasons than anyone in the world to know these things. For the first time in my life I allowed myself to contemplate that marriage. It had lasted for three years… I shivered. Cold. Cold-it must have been like embracing a block of ice.

So what I had to do was think up a convincing story. I considered lying about my whereabouts, writing a dozen letters and arranging to have incoming letters forwarded by a confederate in some safe neutral town, or one of the state parks, where I might reasonably be expected to find a summer job. The idea didn’t appeal to me. If I got caught, it would destroy a relationship that had taken me twenty years to build up. I hated to risk it. And yet it was because of that relationship of trust that I could get away with what I planned to do that summer. Mother and Jim would believe me when I told them…anything. They trusted me that much.

I was already starting to talk away the difficulties. The decision wasn’t hard to make. It was a choice between Joe’s Pizza Parlor, with a lot of beer-drinking high-school big shots making grabs at me, and…Thera. Brilliant sunlight and cobalt-blue waters, olive groves and white beaches and bronzed Greek sponge divers with dazzling smiles… My ideas of Greece were pretty vague. But underlying the hazy tourists’ picture, motivating the decision that altered my life was the prospect of what might be waiting for me in the blue waters off Thera. Sunken treasure, cities under the sea. The columned halls of the sea kings. Gold ingots, piled in stacks. Crowns and diadems, jewels spilling out of rotted chests bound with silver. Pretty Sandy Bishop, the discoverer of the treasure…

I’m not ashamed to admit I was a fool. Even now, after all that happened, I’d rather be foolish than too dull to respond to a lure like that.

After Frederick had left I tried to get back to my term paper, but it was a lost cause. His aggressive presence still pervaded the room. After a while I put on my raincoat and went to the library. Instead of looking up references for my paper, I took out three books about ancient Greece.

Things worked out about the way I had expected. Lying to Mother and Jim left me with a nasty feeling. I hated to do it. But there was no other way.

So I set up a deal with Betsy, a friend of mine who was planning to spend the summer backpacking around Europe with a couple of other guys. She agreed to forward mail, read telegrams or anything that looked urgent, and telephone me right away if something came up. (That was before I found out about telephone service in remote parts of eastern Europe.) She was also supposed to scribble an unintelligible postcard from time to time.

Mother and Dad accepted my plans with a readiness that made me squirm inside. I had about two hundred dollars in the bank. I told them it was more. They believed me. And I felt like the A-I heel of the universe on graduation day when Jim handed me a check. He had to borrow the money, I was sure of it. I almost told them the truth then, they were so teary-eyed and proud and gullible. But I didn’t. I promised myself I would pay Jim back at the end of the summer, with interest. I could get the money from Frederick, and believe me, I had no qualms about doing just that.

I had seen him a couple of times since his first visit. Finally I told him not to come to the campus. He made me nervous. It was okay with him. We communicated by letter after that, and I must admit he was relaxing to deal with. He wasn’t like a parent at all. I mean, with parents-parents you love-you have to go through all kinds of contortions to keep from worrying them or hurting their feelings. I didn’t have to pretend with Frederick. He treated me like an equal-no, not like an equal, he didn’t think he had any; he treated me like a functioning adult, no more incompetent than the other adults he knew. Like, in making the arrangements for the trip. He just sent me a check. No reservations, no “I’ll meet you at three thirty-four at the customs desk, and for heaven’s sake, don’t miss the plane.” Love is fine. But it is also confining, it ties you down. My parents were the greatest, but even with them there were times when I felt like Gulliver, pinioned by a million tiny strings, and I wanted to leap up and yell and throw my arms wide and break loose.

I wanted to be free. And if that sounds corny, adolescent, immature-it’s the truth, and I’ve made up my mind to be as honest as I can. I know. Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose. I had plenty to lose and no intention of losing it. I didn’t want to be free of Mother and Dad, not permanently. But for a while… WithFrederick I was free. I didn’t give a damn about him and he didn’t give a damn about me. If I ever came into conflict with his precious work, then heaven help me. He would sacrifice me as quickly-and with less regret-than Agamemnon had sacrificed his daughter to get favorable winds. (You see, I had been doing my homework on ancient Greece.)

I knew from the start I couldn’t live long in that arctic cold that was Frederick ’s emotional environment. But after twenty years of cozy warmth, it felt bracing. He was an interesting man. I was curious to find out more about him. And there were the sunken halls of the sea kings, waiting…

They weren’t such bad reasons. There was no way I could have anticipated what was going to happen.