The Passenger (The Passenger, #1)(25)

In Scotland.

Yeah.

No. I havent.

Love the name. Anyway, you can run pipe with a lay barge around the world if you want to. You just keep welding new lengths topside as you go and lower them into the sea behind you. But you cant join two pipes. And that’s what we did. On the sea bottom.

Was that the first time it had ever been done?

We’d done test runs down here off Grande Isle a couple of years before that. That was the first time we’d used the spar units with the underwater habitat.

You’re welding the pipes in the dry.

In the dry. Those things weigh a hundred and forty-six tons. The spar units. The lay barge drops it down with a derrick. We were welding the ends of two pretty good runs of pipe together. I think they were twenty-seven and thirty-five miles long. The first thing you have to do is cut off the cement and line up the pipes and then cut them to length with a hydraulic saw. They haul up the two sections of excess pipe together with the pull-ends and then they let down the spar unit with the underwater habitat. There’s more to it, but basically you clamp the ends of the pipe into either end of the habitat where the waterproof clamps are built in and then you pump out the water and weld in your forty inch pup joint. Of course this is thirty-two inch pipe, so if nothing else it gets a bit crowded in there.

But you’re basically in an air chamber.

Sure. You can eat your lunch in there.

How deep were you?

Three hundred and eighty-two feet. We had ten divers on the job, two of us in saturation.

You liked it.

I knew I was cut out for this before I even knew what it was. Plus the money.

Sure.

I always had a feelin the money didnt mean all that much to you. Maybe that’s the problem.

I dont know. A lot of money would probably move me. I could do some things I wanted. But you’ll never get rich selling your time. Not even doing hyperbaric welding.

Probably right. There’s more brain surgeons than there are hyperbaric welders, but you’re probably right. About getting rich. Still I can tell you that I’ve been poor and this is better. Even if it aint rich. You want to go?

To Venezuela.

Yeah.

You got that kind of pull at Taylor’s?

I got a couple of favors out. What do you think?

I dont think so. How deep are we talking?

Five hundred and sixty feet.

Where do you fly into?

Caracas. We’re at a place called Puerto Cabello. About two hours up the coast.

You’ve been there before.

Oh yes. What do you think?

I dont think so.

We could go to Caracas.

Yeah.

You could go as my tender.

That’s just a fucking boondoggle.

What do you care? You could try a bellrun. Hell, Bobby. I wont let you drown.

I know.

Let me ask you this.

All right.

What do you think is down there?

That’s not the problem.

I know. It’s what’s up here.

He touched his temple.

Yeah. Well.

You think too much. Not sure I know about what. I dont know what goes on in that head of yours anyway. But if I had what you’ve got up there I wouldnt be doing this shit in the first place.

I thought you loved it.

Yeah, well. I know this is probably as good as it’s goin to get and I’m a pretty grateful motherfucker.

I cant answer your question, Oiler. I just know I’m not going. Saying that it’s just in your head doesnt change anything.

Yeah, well. I think that there are things that you’re afraid of that you just do it. You dont sit around and go over all the reasons not to. Suppose you’re in the airbell and you’ve got these reasons for being afraid to back through the sump. Maybe that’s one of your analogies. If you’re afraid then you’re stuck. You’re not nowhere. You’re always backing through the sump.

Western smiled.

You think that when there’s somethin that’s got you snakebit you can just walk off and forget it. The truth is it aint even following you. It’s waitin for you. It always will be.

I dont know. I think that fear sometimes transcends the problem. What if it’s about something else? Which means that solving it may or may not solve it.

You’re saying that whatever you’re afraid of may not really be what you’re afraid of.

I suppose.

All right. Well. It’s none of my business. Maybe that car wreck did a number on you. I guess you werent afraid of driving a racecar a hundred and eighty miles an hour.

Maybe I should have been.

He drained his beer and set the empty bottle on the table. Doesnt change anything though, does it?

You live a peculiar life, Bobby.

I’ve been told that.

I’m sure you have. Here’s something else you’ve been told. That doesnt change anything.

Okay.

The dead cant love you back.

Western rose. I’ll see you.

All right.

You take care.

You too Bobby.



* * *





When he got back to his apartment it had been gone over pretty thoroughly. His first thought was for the cat but the cat was under the bed again. It’s me, he said, patting the floor, but the cat wasnt coming out. He walked around, putting things back. The gear from his divebag was strewn about the floor and he gathered it up and repacked the bag and zipped it closed and put it back in the closet. He scooped up his clothes from where they’d been dumped in the floor and piled them onto the bed. Then he stopped. He sat on the edge of the bed.