Bad Grrlz' Guide to Reality: The Complete Novels Wild Angel and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell (43 page)

“Well …” Susan was reluctant to accept this assessment. She would like to have a better opinion of her fellow passengers than that. “That seems rather harsh. I’m sure she was trying to get to know me …”

Max interrupted. “Of course. She wanted to get to know you so she’d know where you fit into the scheme of things. You’d been very quiet and she wanted to know how to treat you. Should she patronize you, bully you, or treat you with respect? She knows you’re a librarian and you’re not currently married, so I think she’s inclined to patronize you at this point, but you could change that.”

Susan frowned, startled again. “You said I’m not currently married. What makes you think I was ever married?”

He smiled again, looking rather pleased with himself. “I told you, Susan. I watch people. When you told Alberta that you weren’t married, you touched your left hand, as if feeling for a wedding ring that wasn’t there. When I mentioned your marital status just now, you did it again. I would guess that you used to wear a ring, but gave it up quite recently.”

Susan looked down at her hands and caught herself in the act of feeling for her ring—her right hand was on top on her left, touching the ring finger. She carefully set her hands on the table on either side of her water glass.

“Don’t worry about it,” Max said. “Most people wouldn’t notice.

Its a matter of careful observation.”

She nodded, looking up from her hands. “So you figure Alberta is going to patronize me because I’m a divorced librarian. Well, if she thinks being a librarian is unimportant, I don’t see how …”

“Where are you a librarian? Wait don’t tell me!” He held up his hand. “This is an opportunity to reinvent yourself. You can be any number of different people, depending on how you answer.” He leaned closer. “Your answer determines your status. If you are a librarian at Stanford University, that’s one thing. Or if you manage the private law library for a wealthy attorney. Or perhaps …” He let his voice drop. “Perhaps you run the library for a government security agency—not the CIA, something much more secret. You can’t really talk about your work—that’s always useful.”

She realized the advantages of his line of thinking. “If I can’t talk about it, then I don’t have to lie,” she said.

“That’s true. But it’s important to realize that the way that you refuse to talk about it will be very different than if you were—oh, say—out of work. Keep in mind—it’s not that you won’t talk about it. You can’t talk about it. So you quickly redirect the conversation, and people will know you are not saying all you can. That creates a hint of mystery, a bit of intrigue.

She was smiling now. “You talk as if my life were a story.”

“It is, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s your story. You’re making it up as you go along. So tell me: where do you work?”

She pursed her lips, suppressing a grin, and tried to look serious. “I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.” She laughed. “Besides, why would anyone want to talk about work on such a beautiful day?”

S
OME PEOPLE ARE
surprised when I tell them I’m a physicist. They seem to think that being a physicist and being a Bad Grrl are somehow incompatible.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Physicists and Bad Grrlz have a great deal in common. They both ask many questions. Why not dye my hair blue? What’s wrong with eating chocolate cake for dinner? What is the basic nature of matter?

Oh, the questions may be different, but the impulse underlying them is the same. Bad Grrlz and physicists question things that other people take for granted For example, you’re probably sitting in a chair as you are reading this. You’re sitting in a chair and thinking nothing of it. Your butt presses against the chair and the chair supports your butt. So simple. So straightforward.

But it’s really not simple at all. That chair you’re sitting on is 99.9% empty space. For that matter, so is your butt. Your butt and that chair are both made of molecules which are made of protons and neutrons and electrons—with a whole lot of space between them. Why then doesn’t your butt slide right through that chair, with molecules of the chair sliding through the empty space in your butt and vice versa?

As a physicist, I can tell you the answer. You owe your comfort able seat to electromagnetic forces. All that empty space between the electrons and protons and neutrons of the chair is electrically charged. So is the empty space between the electrons and protons and neutrons of your butt. Electrical charge pushes on electrical charge and your butt rests on the chair, rather than falling through.

To be a physicist, you need to believe in forces that you can’t see and you don’t really understand—forces like electricity and magnetism. As a Bad Grrl, you often have to deal with people who would rather not see you and who certainly don’t understand you like the maître d’ at the Ithaca Dining Room, who was so very determined not to stare at my hair. Not the same thing, but strangely related. As a Bad Grrl, I figure I am like electricity and magnetism, an invisible force acting on society in mysterious ways.

And being a physicist has proven very useful to this Bad Grrl. After all, the game of pool is nothing more than applied physics and geometry. It’s all about angles and spin and momentum. Thanks to physics (and a bunch of ill-informed men who were willing to bet that a cute little lady could never beat them at pool) I made it through my undergraduate years without taking out a single student loan.

“In a just universe, I would never win at cards,” the man said. “Fortunately this is not a just universe.” He laid his cards on the table and smiled.

—from
Here Be Dragons

by Mary Maxwell

The
Odyssey,
the sole cruise ship of Odyssey Lines, was a temporary resting place for cruise industry workers who were on their way up or on their way down. Take Gene Culver, the cruise director. This man was pictured in every
Odyssey
brochure, wearing a smile that displayed far too many teeth. Gene Culver believed he was on his way up. Gene believed in himself with the confidence of a graduate from a Dale Carnegie course.

In the first issue of the
Ship’s
Log, the
Odyssey’s
daily newsletter, Gene’s “Welcome Aboard” letter explained that the
Odyssey
was on the cutting edge of cruise ship entertainment. On this cruise—on this very cruise! passengers would be treated to two “innovative concepts in cruise entertainment.” One was a Gold Rush-style melodrama, staged in honor of the convention of California historians that was on board. The other was the
Star Ship Odyssey,
an original work created just for the
Odyssey.
Gene’s letter promised that passengers would be amazed, would be astounded, would be delighted by the show.

Gene was frantic in his desire to be noticed by the Powers That Be at Celebrity, at Princess, oh, even at Carnival Cruises (known in the industry as Cannibal Cruises). To that end, Gene had brought aboard entertainers (“talent” as they say in show biz) that offered something other than run-of-the-mill cruise entertainment. That was why Max was on board—Gene thought that offering a writing work shop by a popular novelist would attract the attention of those who mattered.

But passengers wouldn’t miss out on more typical cruise fare: a magician who did card tricks, a hypnotist who told bad jokes; lounge singers and their backup bands, Vegas-style stage shows with more than their share of sequins and feathers. Gene was trying to strike a delicate balance, getting the attention of the Big Boys with his innovations while hiding any disasters that resulted from his experiments. Maintaining this balance made Gene very nervous.

At the other end of the spectrum was Antonio, the man in charge of fruit sculptures, ice sculptures, and the champagne fountain that was required on every luxury cruise. Antonio was on his way down. He had worked for Celebrity Cruises for many years, but he had quit after an altercation with a French chef.

For the final dinner on a two-week Celebrity Cruise, Antonio had planned an elaborate fruit sculpture of a dragon, complete with flaming breath. Antonio had planned to carve the flames from mango, a fruit with precisely the right color and consistency. He had personally selected a case of mangos, choosing fruit that would be ripe, but not overripe when the time came to carve them. He had checked to make sure that the case of mangos was on board and properly stored in the galley’s supply room.

But when Antonio went to get the fruit and begin work on the carving, the case of mangos was nowhere to be found. It seemed that the French chef had appropriated them for a special dessert sauce. When Antonio confronted the chef, the man dismissed Antonio’s concerns.

“But what about the flames,” Antonio protested.

“Carve them from cantaloupe,” the chef said with a Gallic shrug. His tone dripped with contempt. “What difference does it make?”

Antonio was an artist. Antonio would not substitute cantaloupe for mangos—carefully chosen mangos, his very own mangos. Antonio would not tolerate disrespect from a French pig of a chef who thought of food only as something to be eaten, not the substance of art.

They argued. Somehow, the argument, which began with mangos, delved into the role of Italy in the Second World War, into the cowardice of the French, into the personal habits of the Italians, into the sexual impotence of the French, into any number of subjects that might seem, on first examination, to have little to do with mangos or dessert sauce or fruit sculpture.

The galley of a cruise ship was no place for a such a heated argument. At some point, Antonio grabbed his carving knife. The chef snatched up a cleaver. There was much shouting and waving of blades and ship’s security intervened.

Though Antonio explained that the Frenchman was at fault, Antonio was blamed for the fight. A fruit sculptor, however talented, was more expendable than a French chef. Bitter and angry, Antonio left Celebrity Cruises and signed on with the
Odyssey.

People on their way up and people on their way down. And a few, just a few, people who liked it right where they were. Tom was one of the latter.

Being the security chief on a cruise ship was a bit like being the sheriff of a town with a population of just over two thousand people. Three quarters of the population were passengers; the other six hundred and some were crew members who were working hard to keep those passengers happy.

The
Odyssey
was an incredibly diverse small town. Tom had counted fifteen different nationalities among the crew, last time he had bothered to check. Most of the officers were British or Italian. Most of the passengers were American, as was the purser’s staff. Galley staff tended to be French and Italian. The dining room staff came from all over—Italians, Greeks, Arabs, a few Irish, a few Scots. The staff in the ships many bars were Irish and Scottish and English and Australian with one Norwegian and one Dane. The accommodation staff the stewards and butlers who tended to the staterooms and room service—were Filipino, for the most part, with a few Mexicans. The casino manager was American, the head of the beauty salon was Dutch, the manager of the boutiques was Swiss, and the ship’s doctor was German.

Occasionally, the diversity lead to trouble—an American woman became upset at the way an Italian man hit on her; a Greek and a Turk were unable to work in the same department; a French woman flirted a little much with an Australian man and had her intentions misunderstood. Many members of the crew were young, out to see the world and have a good time. There were cabin parties and drinking that sometimes got out of control.

But generally, Tom had little trouble dealing with the crew. Members of the crew respected him; when he shut down a cabin party, he rarely had to return and do it again.

The passengers were another story. They expected luxury. They expected the crew to cater to their every whim. To “pamper” them, to be exact—the advertising brochures promised that all the
Odyssey’s
passengers would be “pampered.” The passengers read these brochures and believed them. The crew did their best to meet passengers’ expectations of pampering.

Except for Tom. Tom was the one who had to intervene when the shouts of a squabbling couple disturbed passengers in the adjoining staterooms; when a drunken passenger insisted on picking a fight; when a party in a passenger’s stateroom got out of hand. Unlike the crew, the
Odyssey’s
passengers did not always accept Tom’s authority gracefully. They felt entitled to whatever they wanted—and Tom occasionally had to be the one to tell them that they couldn’t have it.

Fortunately, Tom was an even-tempered, easygoing sort of guy. He did his best to smooth over any minor difficulties, and there was rarely any real trouble.

When Tom woke on the second morning of the cruise, he was hoping for a quiet day at sea. Since they wouldn’t be landing in Bermuda until the next day, he had no port officials to deal with, no visitors and passengers coming and going, no new paperwork cluttering his desk.

He got to the security office before Ian arrived. He filed all the paperwork related to their departure from New York Harbor. He was checking to make sure that their forms were in order for entry to Bermuda when his phone rang.

It was the purser’s office, letting him know that a passenger complaint required security attention. The games room, a lovely, little, wood-paneled room that was occupied each afternoon by blue-haired ladies playing bridge, had apparently been the site of a poker game on the previous evening. A passenger was complaining that he had lost a lot of money and was demanding that the purser do something about it.

Tom went to the purser’s office and talked with the passenger, a square-jawed, white-haired man who seemed accustomed to getting his own way. “My wife was in the theater watching the show,” the man told Tom. “I was heading for the casino when I ran into this fellow. We had a drink at the Alehouse, then decided to play a friendly game or two.” The man frowned. “He took me for five hundred dollars.”