Chapter Eleven
Eilish
The walk up the gangway into the bowels of the Titanic was one of the most memorable moments in Eilish’s long life. The noise and the chaos, the smell of the sea mixed with the acrid smell of coal smoke, unwashed bodies and fresh paint, all melded together to imprint itself indelibly onto her memory. She wished she could be sharing the moment with Max. It was an ache in the centre of her chest just knowing that he was somewhere nearby and yet she could not go to him. What would his first impressions be of this mighty liner?
They had not slept at all last night, desperate as they were to make the most of their time together. He was as passionate and greedy as any teenage boy. Her own reactions to their closeness continued to amaze her. She hoped to get an opportunity to talk to Jac or Julio about what was happening to her. It would have been better if it were Faith so she got the female perspective, but the men on this mission were the only ones here who knew what it was to fall in love after hundreds of years in a sexless, clone body. Getting Luke’s second-hand impression didn’t really help.
She glanced back at Luke, who was following her up the gangway. He looked so young! It was such a shock. And the worry lines that had been etched so deeply into his face were gone. Although, if he kept frowning as he was doing now, they’d be back fairly quickly. But for all the frowning, he seemed oddly light, as if the decision to change bodies had lifted a huge weight off his soul. Not only did he look younger, but he seemed younger now, too.
A child began to cry a few passengers ahead of her and she gritted her teeth, as the sound jarred her nerves. They were all tired and fed up with the delays of the process, and the children were having the hardest time with it; no wonder so many of them were whining and crying. The medical exam, or what passed for one, had been insulting and cursory. The most that they could say about their health was that they ran no fever and had no head lice.
It was even more insulting to know that the first and second class passengers didn't have to go through the health exam. Heaven forbid that anyone should suggest that the upper classes might be diseased. But, keeping in mind the times, they had all borne the poking, prodding and combing in patient silence and moved on to the next checkpoint.
Now, hours after reaching their designated area at dockside early that morning, they were finally getting their chance to board. Eilish took a quick smell of the flower she had been handed at the start of the gangway. Every person boarding was being given one, and though the carnation was wilted after hours out of water, its scent was still fresh. She couldn’t remember reading anywhere that flowers had been given out on this maiden voyage; it was a little detail that seemed like a glaring omission.
They stepped through the companionway and down off the wooden gangplank into the interior of E Deck. For some reason she noticed the new linoleum tiles under-foot. Not what the first class passengers would be walking on, she was certain of that.
Stewards in white coats were yelling instructions as they looked at tickets and pointed off in different directions.
‘Keep moving. Have your tickets ready. That’s right, keep going straight ahead…’ the closest one was yelling. His voice was already raspy from yelling over the chatter.
She, Luke, Bart and Pia were on the one ticket under the assumed names of Mary, Ryan and Michael O’Riley and their cousin Petra Yohansen. They were allocated a four-berth cabin in Area K, which Luke told her after studying the deck plans at home, was on E Deck. Cara, Jac, Jane and Julio were on the other ticket as Jan and Hilda Braun, and Jane and Peter Davenport. They had a four-berth cabin just near theirs. It was going to take some getting used to using their aliases and accounting for their odd mix of nationalities. Karl had been lucky. They’d found a Karl Langman listed on the second class passenger list who had no paper trail. It meant that he didn’t have to try to answer to any but his own Christian name.
The passenger list hadn’t included all cabin allocations, so she knew from planning discussions that they had decided to get cabins close together for ease of communication. It might have been better to be spread out so they could mix more readily with their neighbours, but someone had pointed out that mixing was much more likely in the recreational and dining areas than in the corridors outside their cabins.
Eilish was glad they were all close together. It was somewhat frightening to be surrounded by so many strangers, all intent on finding their berths. More than a few women were now crying too. Female stewards were hurrying into their midst and gently helping them find their way. It was all so confusing and overwhelming.
But for them the chaos was short lived once the stewards had shunted them off in the right direction. Cara’s cabin was down a small passage and had a porthole that let in streams of bright sunlight. Theirs, on the main passageway they colloquially called “Scotland Road” or the “alley,” had no such source of natural light. She was already envying Cara’s cabin, not only for the light, but for its potential quietness at night.
In all other ways, their cabins were identical. They had white walls and bunks and a sink with a holding container above it that she knew the steward would refill with fresh water daily. The bunks had mattresses, linen, pillows and blankets. There was no space for wardrobes, so bags had to be stowed under the bottom bunk and coats hung on hooks on the back of the door. What they lacked in size, they made up for in freshness. The smell of starched sheets, fresh paint and a slightly acrid scent she determined was the glue used to adhere the lino to the floor, all pointed to the virginal quality of their accommodation. All in all, considering the times, the cabin was remarkably comfortable.
Once they had checked out each other’s cabins, they retired to their own berths. Luke and Bart took the top bunks without asking and neither she nor Pia complained. She had no desire to scramble up to the top bunk in her long skirts, and she imagined Pia felt the same. They all slumped onto their new mattresses and relaxed for the first time since dawn.
‘I sure prefer our method of travel. It might be pure hell for a few seconds but then it’s over. I thought we‘d never get on board the way it was going down there,’ Luke said from the bunk above hers.
‘The future does have its distinct advantages.’ Eilish laughed and turned over on her wire-sprung mattress. It was worlds apart from the bed she’d slept in last night in the hotel. Well, sleep was not the right word for what they did in that bed, but it was certainly much more comfortable than what she had now. She wondered what Max’s bed on B Deck would be like.
Stop that! You have left that world behind for now. Focus on your job, not your creature comforts.
‘I’m starving! When's lunch again?’ Luke asked, after a comfortable silence had fallen between them for a few minutes.
‘After the ship leaves the dock at noon. What time is it now?’
She could hear Luke rummaging around in his pockets for his watch. ‘Hmm, it’s just gone eleven. So no food for another hour and half then. I wish I’d eaten more breakfast. But even so, it’s been more than five hours since we left.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, stop moaning.’ She sat up, rummaged through her own small satchel and produced leftovers from her early-morning breakfast feast. She handed out somewhat dented croissants to each of her cabin mates and settled back with her own. ‘You can thank Max for his foresight. He ordered a breakfast this morning that could have fed half a dozen lumberjacks. I would have brought the jam and butter, but I did not think they would travel well. I have four apples too, but I think I better see if the others want them.’
‘You’re a doll, Irish. Glad I had the good sense to make an honest woman out of ya!’
‘Yes, thank you Eilish,’ mumbled Bart between mouthfuls. He was turned on his side stuffing almost the whole pastry into his mouth at once. He looked so hungry that she tore off half of her own croissant and offered it to him as the last of his own disappeared.
For a moment, he hesitated, torn between hunger and politeness. Then when she nod
ded at him and smiled, he took it from her and gobbled the other half down. ‘You’re a growing boy, Bartholomew. You need to keep your carbs up.’
‘Here,’ Pia said, offering up half of hers too.
Eilish refused to take the pastry from the quiet girl in the bottom bunk. ‘No, you haven’t eaten for hours, either. Bart’s had enough to keep the wolf from the door for the moment and the boys can wait another hour or so for more.’
Eilish felt rude rejecting the offer. Pia seemed to take it as a personal rebuff and nodded with embarrassment, drawing back the food as if hers wasn’t good enough to share with the boy.
She had partnered with Pia on several missions over the last few years and worked closely with her during the planning for this one, but she’d never been able to break down the girl’s reserve. The only people she’d ever seen her relax with were the children and Jane. But then, few people could keep up their barriers around Jane.
It was almost like Pia felt unworthy to be there with them. As if she thought there’d been a bureaucratic error that had allowed her to participate, but that at any moment it would be corrected and she’d be out. Didn’t she realize how good at her job she was?
Collecting the four red apples from her valise, she made her way to the other cabin and sat down to catch up with the inhabitants for a few minutes.
‘Luke looks better,’ she said as she perched on the edge of the bottom bunk next to Jane.
‘Thanks to you,’ Cara replied from the bunk across from her as she took a bite of apple. ‘Oh, I needed this. I’m starving.’
‘Told you to eat more before we left,’ Jac said absently from above her, chomping into his own apple with relish.
‘The food was Max’s bright idea. He has them quite often.’
‘Luke says you have formed an attachment with your Target,’ Jac said, a note of concern in his voice.
‘Yes. I would never have thought it possible. I have never been romantically involved with anyone… ever. And then I met Max and I felt like I had been hit with a brick.’
Jane laughed and nearly choked on a piece of apple. Julio jumped down from his top bunk and was at her side in a second, pounding her on the back until she recovered. When she stopped coughing Julio wrapped his arm around Jane’s shoulder and drew her in close.
It was such a sweetly protective gesture that Eilish was left to wonder if Max would have been so quick to assist her in such a situation. Yes, came the answer immediately. She felt a warm glow of contentment at the thought.
‘That pretty much describes it,’ Jac said from his bunk. ‘I was the first to fall foul of irrational passion, and I thought it was because I hadn’t made the shift into my new clone properly. I went crazy in those early days.’
‘Hey, you make it sound like a bad thing!’ Cara quipped indignantly and kicked the springs above her with her foot. Jac laughed and leaned over the side of the bunk to blow a kiss to his mate.
‘Never, my love. But it was unsettling, to say the least, after three hundred years of emotional stability.’
‘I thought there was something wrong with me too. I remember you taking me aside, Jac, and telling me I was in love. I did not believe you,’ Julio said with a little laugh, as he gathered Jane closer.
‘I guess it has been easier for me, because I have been witness to the rest of you, but I never thought it would happen to me. I did not think it was possible because I was prepubescent at the LGP. I thought that the mental aspect of romantic attachment had never had the chance to develop. I was wrong.’ She sighed soulfully, and then blushed as the others smiled knowingly at her.
‘I was only ten at LGP and I still fell, so I do not think that is a factor,’ Julio added thoughtfully.
‘I’m glad for you, Eilish,’ Cara said softly. ‘Luke says that he’s a good man and a suitable Target.’
‘Yes. He came to it very quickly, once the two of us started on him. And of course, seeing the Portal in action was just the icing on the cake.’ She did a quick change of topic. ‘I am glad Luke went home. He was a mess.’
‘I had been worried about him on this mission for some time,’ Jac said, sprawling out so one leg hung over the side of the bunk and the other was bent up until it almost reached the riveted bulkhead above him. The bunk was not going to be a comfortable fit for his huge build. ‘But he was closed down. Even Faith could not reach him.’
‘I know. He had convinced himself that he would not be coming back from this mission I think.’
‘What did you say to convince him?’ Cara asked.
‘I do not know for sure. He was telling me how afraid he was that he would C and B, and yet how terrified he was that he might cause problems on this mission if he stayed in his Original. I just asked him what a brave man would do when faced with such fears… and he knew the answer immediately. I think he had always known the answer. He just needed to reach that point when he was ready to own it.’
‘Yeah, timing is everything with change. Until someone’s ready, words are wasted…’ Cara said.
‘Not wasted. I think they are remembered later when the time is right. And sometimes you have to hear a message several times before it gets through.’ Eilish played with the edge of her dark woollen skirt, wishing for the feel of the clothes she had worn with Max. Annoyed with herself, she forced the comparison away.
‘Yes, you’re right, of course. I saw it often enough with my kids back home and with the kids at our school. Anyway, Luke’s now in his first clone with no adverse effects. Faith is relieved and happy, and Luke’s able to concentrate on his mission again.’
‘He looks so young!’ Eilish chuckled. ‘Such a baby face. All those tension lines are gone. Although they’ll be back in a few years. ‘
‘Baby face! I will call him that the next time he tries the Arian Pinup Boy on me again,’ Jac declared with satisfaction.
‘I might have to use it on him myself if he keeps up the Irish thing. He is so annoying!’ But, she was smiling as she said it, and she realised with a start that she had become very fond of Luke in the time they’d been together in 1912.
'How did the Integration happen?' she asked, curious for details she knew she wouldn't get from Luke.
'We were all there waiting to come through when he stepped back out of the Portal,' Cara explained. 'He said everything on the other side was fine, but that we'd have to postpone for a month because he was going to get Integrated. Then he just walked out, with Bart following along like a puppy behind him. By the time someone notified Faith and she got to the medical centre, he'd already gone through the process and was in his clone. She was furious that he hadn't waited for her, but that passed quickly once she realised what it meant for them.
'He probably didn't need the full month to get control of the clone, but we waited that time just so he felt confident.'
It made sense to her, knowing Luke as she now felt she did, that he wouldn't want Faith there with him when he went through the process just in case he Crashed and Burned. And he would want to do it quickly, like peeling off a plaster. Feel the fear and do it anyway. It was definitely Luke's mantra.
They felt the thrum of engines start up beneath them. The whole cabin began to vibrate slightly.
‘Is it time?’ Jane asked as Julio took out his pocket watch.
‘Nearly. Shall we go up on deck and wave farewell with all the others? It is an historic moment, after all.’
Jane scrambled out from the bottom bunk and made a half-hearted attempt to straighten the pompadour on top of her head. It was leaning hazardously to one side and a long tendril had escaped it completely and now hung down her back like a thread of fine, copper wire.
‘Let’s go, guys. The Titanic’s maiden voyage starts now. We don’t want to miss it.’ Jane grinned at them and opened the cabin door.
Collecting the other three on their way, they went up onto the Poop Deck. Unlike the other passengers, they had studied the ship's blue prints and knew exactly how to navigate the conf
using labyrinth of passages. They simply followed what constituted the tail end of ‘Scotland Road,’ the main arterial passageway that ran the full length of the ship – almost a quarter of a mile in length – up the main staircase for third class until they reached C Deck. Here they stepped out onto the aft end of the open Well Deck. Then they took the ladder up onto the Poop Deck at the very stern of the ship.
The deck was thick with milling third class passengers, all trying to get a position on the rail from which to view the dock. In every hand there was a flower, and many passengers were throwing their blossoms overboard to the docks below, hoping those they left behind would catch them.
Rather than take up a space that belonged to the real passengers, the New Atlanteans stood back and looked around at the excited, tearful and joyful faces. There were no crying children now, and the level of noise was deafening, as people chattered elatedly to their companions on deck or yelled down to the dock below, trying to attract the attention of well-wishers.
Sea gulls arced, screeching, overhead as the ship’s horn blasted and the motion of the engines and spinning propellers vibrated through the decks and the railings. Eilish knew that there was now at least one of the three monstrous screw propellers churning up the silty water beneath them.
She wondered fleetingly how Jane felt about those propellers. She had been torn to pieces by a much smaller version of them. Some time she needed to ask Jane about that, if she didn’t find the memory too painful. To be sucked into one of those spinning blades must have been the worst kind of nightmare. At least when the Titanic sank there would be no knife edged propellers to catch victims unaware.
Eilish found her eyes turning up unconsciously to the higher decks. Here she could see the better class of passenger lining the rails, some in top hats and outrageous bonnets. Her eyes sought out a familiar figure on A Deck, and sure enough, there he was, searching the Well and Poop Decks with his keen eyes, rather than looking down at the crowds on the dock.
The minute Max caught sight of her, he grinned broadly and took off his bowler hat and waved it at her. More thrilled than she could have imagined at such an insignificant gesture, she grinned back and waved. Then, while they continued to stare at each other longingly, a man came up to Max’s side and spoke to him. He looked away for a second while he answered and then turned back to indicate in her direction.
It was Carter! Of course, Carter was with Hugo Vance, one of their other first class Targets. She should have recognised his tall, rangy physique and bright copper hair, even from this distance. He was one of the adult Retrievers and had therefore been allowed to stay with his Target, as had Finn who would be boarding with the art nouveau master craftsman, Jean Pierre Arceneau, at Cherbourg.
‘Look, its Carter,’ she said to Cara, who was standing next to her. With a smile and a wave, the blonde acknowledged the other Jumper.
‘So Carter is safely aboard. I wonder where Karl is.’ Cara said, searching the second class promenade on B Deck.
Sure enough, just coming around the corner and moving aft toward them was the very youthful-looking Karl Ontario, with a pretty, young woman on his arm. She was smiling up at him as if the sun shone out of him, and Karl was bending down toward her as if trying to catch every word she said.
‘Looks like Karl is angling for a shipboard romance. How very unlike him!’ Eilish said with a laugh.
‘What?’ Jac was now at her other side and scanning the B Deck. ‘Not another one. He has to keep his eye on the ball. He’s the only one of us in second.’
At that moment, Karl looked across at them and waved exuberantly. If you didn't know he was a 200-year-old man, you would take him for the youth he appeared to be in that moment. He seemed so vital and alive. Not like the quiet, sober and professional man she had known for so long. It was more than the youthful body he now inhabited. It was something else.
‘She looks rather plump around the middle, don’t ya think,’ Luke commented, following their line of vision. ‘Maybe she’s pregnant. That’d explain it. Can’t see the Doc lettin’ a pretty face side-track him.’
‘Wow, your eyes are good! How could you see that from here?’ Eilish asked.
‘I’m really keen on this clone. Everything runs like new. My hawk-like eyesight’s just the start.’ Luke looked like a cat that had just drunk the cream.
‘Not bad for a lump of dead meat, huh?’
Luke grinned down at her. ‘Nope, not bad at all.’
Eilish turned back to look at Max again. He was intently watching her and when he saw her turn to him, he smiled again. Oh, how she loved that man! She couldn’t credit the overwhelming feelings that coursed through her in that moment. Her man! That calm, intelligent and infinitely patient man was hers now, and she planned to never let him go.