*
They had lost count of how many chambers they had passed through. They knew only that they were near the half-way point – the 40th chamber. They now routinely passed through each plasma membrane, and did so again. They also knew they were at a depth of about 2600 feet. The ocean beyond the column wall was still inky black. From the beginning they had been able to look up a far greater distance on the inside of the column than outside it – maybe five chambers.
Mick saw a receding series of membranes above, and another one on the side in the next chamber, strangely located on the perimeter wall. After passing through and swimming higher, they looked into a small enclosed ledge, an extrusion in the surface of the column. They hung outside it, looking in. The room beyond only extended back about eight feet, and looked to be thirty feet in width. Turok nodded towards it, his eyes bulging a little behind the bubble that covered his nose and eyes.
Mick held up his hand, motioning him to wait, then turned and slowly reached his other hand beyond the membrane’s surface. They watched as water dripped off his fingers. Absent the water’s buoyancy his hand felt very heavy. He lowered it to the floor of the room. He then withdrew his hand, and backpedaled so his feet were pointing into the room – he then glided through. His legs fell gently to the floor as he slithered in, then his waist. He lifted his knees and pulled himself in, but left his head suspended still inside the chamber. Turok, still in the column, started laughing, which brought on a coughing spasm. He quickly removed his template and punched his head through the membrane. His coughs subsided. Mick smiled. ‘You can’t laugh underwater,’ he thought. As it occurred to him that Turok was breathing inside the room, his friend somersaulted the rest of his body through. Mick pushed forward, and his head passed through, thumping none too gently to the floor.
It was a huge relief to have their arms and legs out of the water, resting on a hard surface. The room’s ambient temperature felt cool. Mick thought it odd that the room’s heaviness should feel more relaxing than the easy buoyancy of the chamber, but it definitely was. He supposed it was the stress of being submerged for so long. He looked up at the low transparent ceiling.
Turok’s chest was heaving in air. He rolled to his side and slowly sat up. He looked across at Mick and gestured a thumbs up. Mick rolled over and lay gasping after removing his template. Turok had gingerly gotten to his feet, and stood swaying drunkenly. He staggered to the side, and stood leaning against the membrane’s rim. He looked around. It felt like standing on a ledge on the side of a mile-high cliff. He lowered himself back to the floor, and sat with his back to the rear wall. Mick just crawled across to the wall, and pulled himself up. The room had hollow, echoing noises – the sound of the column itself wafting lightly in the ocean current. The loudest sound was their own breathing.
They gazed through the membrane to the softly glowing blue water of the column. Mick wondered how it stayed so clear when the water had sat relatively motionless for so long. By contrast, they could feel the mild buffetings of the ocean through the wall behind them. He had to remind himself this was an artificial environment, a huge artifact of Kalaal technology.
They finally stood up. Looking up and down a distance of five chambers, with darkness outside, was like being suspended in a tunnel of light with no end. Turok tapped Mick’s shoulder. They were too tired to talk. Turok re-inserted his template and stepped smoothly through the window of water, did a scissor-kick and rose quickly away. Mick took a last look at the ledge, and followed.
3 | Stilled
On the ocean surface Thomas activated the dinghy’s upper panels, which rippled up and sealed shut. After adjusting several to transparent mode, he decreased the craft’s buoyancy and they slipped beneath the ocean’s surface. They had strapped in, and were all turned towards the bow panel as the water surged by in a cascade of bubbles. The outer dock of the seaport remained in view to one side as they descended.
Quickly dropping thirty feet opposite the startlingly distinct glacis, they approached the darker lower depths. They were back in normal refractive water; the illusion of being suspended in midair was gone. Ambient light had also diminished. They continued diving.
Carmen thought they had descended about a hundred feet when the bottom of the dock hove into view. Another twenty feet below that Thomas guided the submersible dinghy forward under the foundation of the ancillary mooring structure. The dock at this level was connected to lower levels of the facility. They moved forward under the seaport proper. It was like diving under the hull of a liquefied ruthenium tanker, the facility’s undersurface slowly passing by above them. A short distance in from its perimeter the undersurface rose in a shallow parabolic arc. Following along parallel, Thomas guided them gradually up.
“Like a surface satellite dish,” Carmen observed.
After several minutes they stared in amazement at the huge, transparent vertical shaft that extended down into the ocean depths as far as they could see. Following Marnie’s directions Thomas slowed and turned the dinghy, moving parallel to the wall. It was soon clear the wall formed a large, oblong, enclosed interior, a transparent tube the size of a small stadium across.
Marnie indicated they needed to dive deeper.
Thomas nodded and adjusted the dinghy’s pitch down, and they began descending in a gentle spiral slope, parallel to the wall. They slid down just outside the column, and didn’t notice when, perpendicular to the angle of their descent, the lower membrane of the topmost chamber slid past. They were moving down outside the next chamber when suddenly the wall directly beside them disappeared. Thomas leveled out and they peered into the column’s brighter interior. They could see that across on its other side the wall was still intact. More than half the circumference of the transparent wall was no longer there. The edges of the wall’s synthetic material, about two inches thick, waved slowly above them. The open, apparently damaged portion of the wall extended down about thirty feet, where the full circumference of the wall resumed.
Thomas asked Marnie how far down it went, and she explained that they hadn’t gone deeper than this. This was the way in. By agreement, he resumed their spiral dive, descending another 200 feet, passing by three more chambers, where he knew he was nearing the limits of the dinghy’s dive rating. On one side was the open ocean: at this depth it was as dark as a cave. On the other side was the gently glowing column. The contrast was startling. He tilted them up into a steep ascent; 200 feet later he banked the dinghy and they passed through the damaged part of the wall. They were inside.
For a brief moment Carmen could see down into the chambers below, inside the bright world of the column. She gasped at how the column dropped away such a huge distance.
They were in fact still passing through ocean water inside the damaged section of the column. The dinghy rose and breached the lower membrane of the chamber above – the highest, the eightieth. Looking up, they could see its surface emptied out inside the seaport.
_______________
Mick and Turok had been swimming for almost four hours. Their strokes had slowed since leaving the pocket ledge. They knew it was mid-afternoon – and wondered what they’d find at the surface, if the seaport would still be intact. At the start each chamber had taken about three minutes to swim through; now it was taking twice that. Mick thought they were in about the sixty-fifth chamber – just under a thousand feet to the surface. They had paused and were resting again on a membrane.
One chamber looked identical to the one below it, and the one above it. It felt to Mick like a linear storm ring, minus the storm. He grunted at the notion of swimming literally in circles. He breathed more deeply, flooding his aching leg muscles with oxygen. He decided they would just have to rest after each chamber.
Mick felt Turok tap him on the shoulder. He looked up and saw his friend swimming away above him. Mick rolled over and pulled himself up with several long arm-strokes. He followed Turok, who was powering ahead with strong scissor-kicks. His friend appa
rently didn’t share his doubts.
_______________
Carmen watched as the seaport’s parabolic undersurface out beyond the column wall slid by. Thomas guided the dinghy up to the pool surface inside, and sunlight flooded in. They broke surface, and saw Oscar waiting on the dock. They glided to a berth there as Thomas lowered the craft’s upper panels. Oscar reported that he had not seen Mick and Turok. They had hoped for different news, but not really expected it.
As he led the others away, peppering them with questions, Carmen and Marnie veered off to the stairs. As they climbed to an observation platform they looked down at the strangely isolated deck below. A permanent, opaque wall extended around one-third of the pool, reaching from the dock area to the ceiling not far above them. The remaining two-thirds had a retractable section of the same transparent synthetic material as formed the column wall. This movable wall was in the open, although about ten feet of it still projected out from the rear wall. It appeared there were additional lower decks that accessed tunnels to the seaport’s exterior docks.
They stood on the platform, a short distance beneath and outside little outside the the aperture in the ceiling that the interior column once connected to. For Carmen it was a relief to be moving across a solid surface again. The surreal clarity of the water during their crossing had brought on a nervous exhaustion in all of them, and simply walking about seemed to dissipate its effects. They paused to look over into the clear water of the column pool. Seamus had climbed up and gone ahead to the roof.
Marnie ran a finger along the railing. “They can still show up.” Carmen inhaled deeply.
Marnie held the railing and stretched back. “I thought we’d outrun the stilling.”
“The Boleyn brought us so far north,” Carmen said. “But not far enough.”
They heard another set of doors noisily closing higher up, so they turned and started up. Passing through two sets of fire-doors they stepped up into a stairwell bright with sunlight. A last flight of steps took them onto the roof itself. Carmen braced herself for the ocean’s transparent upper surface. Returning into the day’s brightness was momentarily blinding. Something seemed different.
There was a helipad on the opposite side, beyond the outline of the now-closed aperture. It reminded Carmen of holofield scenarios she had toured of Earthside carriers. Except this carrier was as wide as it was long. Most platforms out in space were of course much larger, but for an onworld, ocean platform, this was impressive. Carmen couldn’t shake the feeling something was off.
They saw Seamus near the roof’s perimeter, standing very still. They came up beside him and looked out over the low wall.
Carmen and Marnie staggered back, calling out involuntarily. They looked out over an upended sky, a cloudless circumambient sky spread out in all directions above and below the seaport. It seemed to Carmen as though the structure had transported itself to some zero-g skyworld – a world of sky all around. They leaned over, their hands on their knees. Carmen saw that Seamus had his eyes closed.
She understood that this could only be due to the accelerating stilling – the ocean’s smoothness had intensified to such a point that it now formed a perfect and uniform reflecting surface. The real sky above was flawlessly reflected in the water below.
_______________
Mick and Turok had been resting at the bottom of every second chamber. Mick’s worry over their exhaustion had receded. They both got their second wind. As his state of mind eased, his enthusiasm and interest revived. They were lying on a membrane from which they could just make out a slight difference in the distance above them. Mick felt sure it was only three, at most four, chambers to the surface. More importantly, the inky opacity of the ocean beyond the column wall had finally begun to lighten. They were at a depth of almost two hundred feet. Turok again swiveled his arms and hands, lifting his upper body away from the membrane, then kicked lightly and was off again. Mick sighed inwardly and followed.
The ambient light outside the column seemed to increase with each scissor-kick, a welcome change. Mick was puzzled by what then came into view. It was like walking along a path through a park lit by moonlight. Outside the column the ocean on all sides was visible for maybe a hundred feet, but in the next chamber comparable visibility doubled. The world beyond the column had suddenly broadened out with alarming speed. Moreover, directly above they could make out what looked like a bright terminus to their column. Surrounding that, however, was a much larger and perfectly circular, anti-corona of darkness. Outside that was the surface of the ocean itself, gradually increasing in brightness, though still dimmer than the top of their column. Mick suddenly realized they were looking at the undersurface of the seaport. Approaching the membrane they were surprised to see a large hole in the wall in the next chamber, opening up the column all along one side. As they passed through the water was suddenly much warmer, and the water pressure was almost unbearable. Ocean water had obviously filled the damaged chamber long before. Visibility was worse than in the column water. After rising about twenty feet the wall’s damaged section was within arm’s reach.
Turok paused in this opening in the column, and seemed ready to venture out into the ocean. Mick shook his head. Visibility and light outside the column was still much poorer – they were too tired to respond if anything went wrong. Turok shrugged and turned back. Mick looked at an angle up through the wall to the wide ring of the seaport’s dark undersurface. The dim radiance of the ocean outside increased with each lethargic kick. The top of the column appeared small compared to the ocean surrounding it. They kicked and rose, as if in slow motion, passing above the torn wall and then thankfully through the next membrane, back into a more bearable pressure.
They continued up, now fully inside the bowl-shaped undersurface. It hung over them, a lowering presence that cast its shadow over the column. As they moved up deeper inside, the column wall turned black around them, as it now abutted hard against the connecting seaport shaft. They could see the surface, at the end of a long black tunnel. Mick was sorely tempted to return to the wall breach, and then rise to the ocean surface outside. He wasn’t in the mood for surprises, and surfacing into the seaport’s core more than qualified. But the breach was two chambers down, and the outer perimeter of the seaport had looked even further away … and there was the pressure too. He was suddenly too tired even to contemplate it. They just needed to make a last push.
At that moment they breached the last membrane, and the pressure held them. They decided by mutual agreement to rest, just for a bit. The interior surface above seemed to recede.
_______________
Seamus sat hunched over, his bent legs up against his chest. His lolling head rested on his folded arms, which rested on his knees. Carmen walked slowly back out to the roof’s edge. If she looked straight down over the side, the ocean’s reflected sky turned back into water, although it no longer looked much like water. It looked like the gelatinous stream they had seen on the mainland. The sky, in a tight ring about the seaport, pressed down. Behind them Seamus groaned.
Marnie spoke in a low growl. “I have to admit, I’m with Seamus on this.”
Carmen was suddenly laughing, and once she’d started, couldn’t stop. Marnie looked at her friend, and caught herself giggling. They both fell back a step, leaned on each other, their laughter peeling out into the empty sky.
They looked up, and stepped apart wiping away the tears. They looked over the wall into the pristinely stilled ocean.
“It looks permanent, doesn’t it?” Marnie said, a hitch in her voice.
“Yeah.” Carmen turned and scanned the low dome of sky. “At least now we won’t easily miss Mick and Turok, if they show up out here.”
“They would rather stick out, wouldn’t they?” Marnie said, holding back another peal of laughter.
Carmen looked out towards the horizon.
Thomas’s voice suddenly called out from below. “It’s Mick and Turok! We can see them!”
r />
“See them where?” Carmen said, turning to Marnie and Seamus. She strode towards the stairs.
Moments later Carmen, as she walked down the length of dock where Thomas and Franklin stood, saw that the water there was as unnaturally stationary as the ocean outside. However, the conditions here, the angle and light, didn’t create the illusion of a perfect reflection.
They came up beside Franklin and Thomas and looked into the pool. Mick and Turok were about forty feet straight down, treading water. A splash nearby brought their heads up. Aleesha was swimming parallel to the side of the pool. She waved at them, took a deep breath, and dove.
Carmen laughed. “Great idea!”
She pulled off her tunic down to a T-shirt, tucked her hair back, removed the satchel from her belt, and dove cleanly into the pool.
She opened her eyes and saw Mick swimming up, a deep lethargy in his movements. Both he and Turok were barely treading water. Aleesha was moving down rapidly towards the nearer figure, Turok, who was slowly waving at them. Aleesha had stopped and hooked her arm under Turok’s. Carmen swam past, and pulled up beside Mick. His mouth widened in a close-mouthed grin, his eyes half-closed as his hands shunted vaguely towards hers. She grabbed hold, and paused a moment, feeling a welcome lightness at this reunion. She nodded to the surface, and he blinked both eyes slowly, once. He was about to pop the template from his mouth, but she motioned for him to relax, to breathe deep. Holding him loosely from behind, she kicked and they rose together through the transparent water. They broke surface about three yards away from the dock, to loud shouts of welcome.
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