The Philosopher's Apprentice (39 page)

Londa took particular delight in publicizing the astonishing monetary harvest the Phyllistines had been reaping prior to their departure from Southampton. Third-class passenger Gary Pons, the whiz kid behind the Macro-Mart phenomenon, pulled down a cool five million a year, more than three hundred times the take-home pay of his average employee. Sheila Portman, CEO of several fast-food empires, enjoyed an annual salary equal to two hundred times the income of anyone who scrubbed the floors of her Grab-a-Crab restaurants. Morris Hampton, owner of the supernaturally profitable Prester Pharmaceutical Laboratory, had in recent years accumulated sufficient wealth to purchase private yachts for all four of his ne'er-do-well brothers.

“You wouldn't know it to look at him, since he's a physically diminutive chap,” Londa said, wrapping up an especially caustic installment of
The Last Shall Be First,
“but it turns out that Frank Diffring, the guiding light behind Blue Château hotels, is nine hundred times worthier than the women he hires to change the bedding in those exemplary inns.”

Thirty-five lucres a week—and if that wasn't pathetic enough, Londa soon arranged for inflation to plague our unhappy community, so that the plutocrats' newfound ability to budget judiciously for toothpaste and toilet paper suddenly stopped mattering. Now the big challenge was to get through the day on your meager allotment of plain tofu and rice, supplementing these rations with string beans gleaned from the Grand Saloon floor, bread crumbs scavenged from the parvenus' plates, and apple cores retrieved from the garbage pails. In short, a low-grade famine had come to the
Redux,
the second horseman of Londa's aquatic apocalypse, though whether that wasted rider would trample the Phyllistines or reunite them with their souls, I could not begin to say.

 

LIKE MANY BRILLIANT PHILOSOPHERS
—and, closer to home, like many middling philosophers who never managed to get their Ph.D.s—I've always been susceptible to insomnia. Throughout the voyage of the
Redux,
this condition visited me with alarming frequency. Typically I would awaken at 5:00
A.M
. and, knowing that my restlessness was certain to persist, make my way to the weather deck. For the next ninety minutes, I would pace in circles around the foremast, head tilted back, meditating on Orion, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, that whole glowing host. I shall never cease to marvel at the clarity of stars when viewed from midocean, each as sharp and bright as the laser pointer God uses when lecturing the angels on evolution. At length the constellations would fade, and I would greet the rising sun with an awe verging on adoration—I was no longer Sinuhe just then but another character from
The Egyptian,
the monotheistic pharaoh Amenhotep IV, prostrating himself before a graven image of his divine and shining Aton—after which a delicious drowsiness overcame me, and I would return to my cabin for a long nap before Londa's usual nine o'clock broadcast roused me from my dreams.

On the morning of my thirtieth day aboard the
Redux,
my post-devotional sleep was terminated by an especially distressing episode of
The Last Shall Be First.
Londa began by expressing her “profound disappointment” in the hostages' performance to date. Her office had received myriad complaints: spots on the crystal, stains on the tablecloths, socks inadequately mended, shoes not sufficiently shined, toilets neither spick nor span. But incompetence was not the primary reason that fifty percent of our G-deck passengers were about to lose their jobs. Sheer economic necessity had proved the deciding factor. The fewer superfluous workers we employed in
servicing the staterooms and the Grand Saloon, the more likely the voyage was to turn a profit.

“Downsizing is an imperative with which certain of my listeners are well acquainted—especially you, Corbin Thorndike, president of Aries Athletic Wear, and you, Barry Nelligan, founder of Beyond Style, and you, Wilbur Conant, CEO of Ultra Office, and you, Alexander Lerner, board chairman of General Heuristics. In your former careers as corporate heads, you collectively outsourced two hundred and thirty-four thousand manufacturing jobs to atrociously run factories in Asia and Latin America. But hear me now, masters of the universe. The
Redux
is a generous ship. Of the one hundred G-deck residents we're about to drop from the payroll, none will become destitute, for in our compassion we've decided to retire all our stokers and offer you their jobs at four lucres a day. True, the boiler rooms are an austere environment—quite similar, in fact, to the sweatshops that figure so crucially in your corporations' prosperity: long hours, foul air, hazardous working conditions, infrequent bathroom breaks. The temperature is one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. But at least you'll be gainfully employed.”

She went on to assure our former third-class passengers that those plutocrats not assigned to the boiler rooms would start working double shifts. To wit, the parvenus needn't fear a decline in the stateroom service, and the Grand Saloon would remain a place where one might enjoy a gracious dining experience along with the collateral satisfactions of treating the staff like dirt.

“For many of you, I imagine, the thought of your imminent demotion is distressing,” Londa said. “But here's a late-breaking story to cheer you. Despite frenzied efforts by well-funded lobbyists, we shall continue to bless all G-deck residents with free health insurance. In other words, your pill bottles will remain full, and should you perchance fall sick, the
Redux
will cover your medical bills.”

The new economic order was in place barely a week when a
combination of curiosity and boredom persuaded me to venture into the bowels of the ship and observe the situation in the boiler rooms. My Virgil for this Dantean descent was Lieutenant Kristowski, who gladly accepted my offer to assist in her daily task of bringing tepid water to the patrician stokers, along with cold beer for their guardian Valkyries. Prior to our departure, we loaded our backpacks with plastic pints of Poland Spring and crammed twelve thermoses of Tadcaster ale into a canvas duffel bag. We shouldered the water and set off, the bag swinging between us like a hammock as we clambered down a series of aft companionways reminiscent of a fire escape, though in this case we were seeking, not fleeing, an inferno. Throughout our journey we discussed that most fascinating and confounding of topics, Londa Sabacthani. In a tone more equivocal than she probably intended, Lieutenant Kristowski announced that she'd decided to give her employer the benefit of the doubt concerning the boiler-room scheme, and I replied that thus far I could discern no doubt on which to predicate a benefit.

As we reached the lowest deck, a stifling gust of heat blew toward us, and our conversation tapered into silence, as if the blistering air had melted our words away. A huge iron slab, embroidered with rivets, blocked our progress. The presiding sentry, a statuesque Valkyrie sergeant whose name patch read
SKEGGS
, thanked us so extravagantly for her gift thermos that if a video camera had caught her reaction, the result would've been a singularly persuasive commercial for Tadcaster ale.

“It's a real honor having you visit us, Mr. Ambrose,” said Sergeant Skeggs, draining the thermos. “May I ask you a question? My boyfriend could use some ethical fine-tuning himself, so I'm wondering—how did you make Dr. Sabacthani the way she is?”

“Londa was a blank slate when she became my student,” I said. “I doubt that her story is relevant to your problem.”

“You don't know Douglas.”

“He's not a tabula rasa—I can tell you that.”

“Maybe,” said Sergeant Skeggs. “In any case, what did you
do
?”

“We started with role-playing exercises,” I said. “Get your search engine to track down ‘Lawrence Kohlberg' and ‘moral dilemmas.' K-o-h-l-b-e-r-g.”

“I'll give it a try.”

“Eventually we did Jesus. Be careful with the Sermon on the Mount. It's not for amateurs.”

“I hear you. Thanks. It all sounds a lot easier than hijacking a fucking ocean liner.”

The guard threw a switch on the wall, whereupon the watertight door screeched and squealed its way upward like a portcullis. Lieutenant Kristowski and I crossed the threshold. Swathed in swirling tendrils of sallow steam, eight enormous horizontal cylinders dominated boiler room 1, each demanding ceaseless attention from a team of Phyllistines, the first member responsible for opening the furnace door and feeding the fire with shovelfuls of coal, the second for stirring the burning fuel with an iron lance inserted through the stokehole, the third for keeping the adjacent bin filled with wheelbarrow loads of anthracite drawn from a communal heap. The spectacle transfixed me. For a full minute, I simply stood and stared, my eyes dazzled by the glare, my ears throbbing with the roar of the furnaces, the billows of horrific scarlet heat casting my mind back to Themisopolis's fiery demise. Now the lieutenant and I started working the room, moving among the stokers like a couple of minor-league angels ministering to Ben-Hur and his fellow galley slaves. My first customer was chubby Wilbur Conant—so read the name on his sweat-soaked pajama top—his soft features and stern expression suggesting a teddy bear who'd gotten in touch with his dark side. Upon receiving his pint, the CEO of Ultra Office set down his shovel, removed the cap with a single twist of the wrist, and consumed the entire portion in a prolonged gulp.

“I remember you from that first night, when those dyke bitches gathered everybody together outside the Grand Saloon.” Conant ran
his tongue across his lips in search of stray drops. Medallions of soot and splotches of coal dust speckled his chest. “Tell me, Mr. Ethical Adviser, where's the goddamn
ethics
in condemning us to this stinking place?”

“Dr. Sabacthani wants you to start thinking about your life in new ways,” I replied.

“Yeah? Well, I'll tell you something. Most of the time, I'm exhausted, and hungry, too, and until you showed up, I was dying of thirst. Under conditions like that, how am I supposed to get any goddamn
thinking
done?”

“I can see your point.”

“I'm not a monster, Mr. Ambrose. I've sponsored orphans in India. I give to the United Way. You don't know me, and neither does Dr. Sabacthani.”

I assured Wilbur Conant that Dr. Sabacthani did not think him a monster, merely an avaricious miscreant who trafficked in the form of legal slavery called sweatshop labor. While this characterization obviously displeased him, he offered no rejoinder beyond ratcheting up his scowl and asserting that “sweatshop labor” was an exaggeration.

My next thirsty plutocrat was Beyond Style's dynamic manager, Barry Nelligan, whose face had on three occasions graced the cover of
Fortune.
A trim, athletic man who bore a startling resemblance to the young Robert Redford, he seemed to take a certain pride in artfully jabbing his lance through the stokehole. After thanking me for the water, Nelligan wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “I've got a message for Londa Sabacthani. Tell your client I forgive her, for she knows not what she does. You understand what I'm getting at?”

“I believe I grasp your allusion.”

“The crucifixion, right?”

“I'm afraid Dr. Sabacthani wants nothing to do with me these days.”

“Oh, really? Well, if you ever bury the hatchet, let her know she can torture me all she wants, and I'll still forgive her.”

For the next half-hour, Lieutenant Kristowski and I moistened dry mouths and cooled blistered brows, until at last we'd serviced all twenty-four amateur stokers. In most cases the Phyllistine's understandable bitterness was leavened by a less predictable reaction: a show of stoicism, a declaration of innocence, an outburst of contrition, a recitation of philanthropic acts, and in a few instances—the sentiment I'd first encountered in Barry Nelligan—a short speech absolving Londa of her sins. For better or worse, it appeared that Operation PG was an experiment of greater psychological complexity than I'd allowed.

Upon reaching the far end of the compartment, Lieutenant Kristowski approached a tall Valkyrie whose gray blouse matched the oiled metal of her rifle, making the weapon seem less a gun than a fashion accessory, and presented her with a thermos of ale. The guard swilled down half the contents, then opened the watertight door.

We crossed over and began bringing our charity to boiler room 2. Halfway through my toils, the formidable figure of Felix Pielmeister emerged from the steam, naked to the waist, huffing and grunting as he filled his wheelbarrow with coal. Sensing my presence, he leaned his shovel against the barrow and fixed me with a brutish stare, as if auditioning for the part of Yank, the gorilla-faced stoker in Eugene O'Neill's
The Hairy Ape.

“I knew we'd meet again one day,” I told him, “though I didn't think the location would be hell itself.”

“Your antics before the Harkness Commission were despicable,” Pielmeister rasped. Sweat sparkled on his chest. Burns and blisters peppered his skin: evidently he was slow to dodge the errant embers forever spewing from the furnaces. “How irresponsible of you to blame me and Reverend Anthem for that Sabacthani woman's death.”

“Irresponsible. Yes. Also reckless and rash. So tell me, what did you and Anthem say to the mackies when you gave them their marching orders? ‘Remember, my precious vigilantes, Themisopolis is the abortion capital of the world. The Sisters Sabacthani deserve to die.'”

Pielmeister glowered, grabbed his shovel, and added another measure of coal to the barrow. His thirst, I figured, must be intolerable, and I was not surprised when he gestured toward my backpack and said, “Got any more water in there?”

“Lots of water. Too proud to ask me for a drink?”