*
They pivoted their attention to the seaport, which was now less than a mile away. And as with their dinghy, the seaport in all its parts perched as if in midair. It had a complex superstructure of airtight titanium tubes, each about two feet in diameter that served as beams and girders, holding up rank after rank of lightweight fiberalloy floors and walls. Parts of the it were open, other parts closed in, forming a complex patchwork of large hanger-like structures.
Marnie explained that the only way in was via an underwater entryway. Carmen smiled at her friend’s earlier reticence back on the mainland – Marnie had made this journey with Oscar only a couple days before, yet had barely mentioned it.
They looked up and saw Oscar walk out onto the structure’s roof. He waved and pointed down, and held his thumb up.
Marnie smiled. “Soon we’ll have to dive,” she said.
Being this near made the seaport seem enormous to Carmen, as though several city blocks had been airlifted in, then haphazardly rearranged. The lowest twenty percent of its height rose through the clear upper fathoms of the ocean – a circular, sloping surface, a marine glacis, as if the lower section of a gray hill was rising from the water. Every fifteen feet along its perimeter the glacis connected to large vertical, submerged titanium tubes. The understructure was clearly visible. Above the sloping surface perched the circular upper levels, which reached out about half-way to the perimeter of the hill. The submerged extremity of the seaport, deeper than thirty feet, was not visible at those opaque depths. They turned as they neared it, and started moving along parallel to its outer edge, Marnie guiding them in.
On the far side, away from the mainland, they came to the ruins of an elaborate docking assembly that joined three of the vertical tubes on the outermost perimeter, below the glacis. It was now canted up and out, and one end of the dock sloped away below. They approached to within a few yards of that and saw that the inside of the dock was hollow, and descended beneath the glacis.
“This is where we dive,” Marnie said.
2 | Eighty Chambers
On the bottom of the ocean, near Oceangate’s perimeter, at the end of Gate 14 stood Mick and Turok. They were inside the anteroom of a vertical column that reached up through a mile’s depth of ocean to the surface. The first elliptical chamber was above them. Biting on his breathing template and giving a quick thumbs up, Turok climbed the steps of the permanent platform, a platform submerged in the water above them. Mick watched as Turok stepped through the plasma membrane into the first chamber. Fully immersed in water and standing on the platform, Turok looked down at Mick and signaled again, pointing up. He pushed off, scissor-kicked, and slowly rose. Mick smiled and stepped up after his friend, rising through the membrane until he too stood, fully submerged, on the platform. The water was easily ten degrees cooler than the air. His spatial orientation had shifted, like crossing from weightless floor to ceiling of adjoining rooms in a space station. He imagined how strange it would feel if he turned upside down. He gently pushed off, kicked once, and found himself rising.
Mick saw that the sloping, enveloping walls were unchanged from the day before. His long scissor kicks were not strenuous, though he assumed he may feel differently after a few dozen of these chambers. They had decided to swim through ten of them before taking their first real rest stop. He looked down and saw the floor of the anteroom falling steadily away below. He looked up as he came nearer to Turok, who hovered below the membrane that separated it from the next chamber.
When Turok pointed sideways towards the wall, Mick nodded, and they swam slowly on a lateral curve. They reached the wall and paused. Mick reached out and touched it, then pulled his hand back quickly. It was like touching dry ice, at once warm and numbing cold. The tingling sensation in his fingertips dissipated after a moment. The wall, though transparent, emitted a soft phosphorescence. They could see about ten feet beyond into the ocean’s gloom. The wall neutralized within the column the ambient water pressure outside. Mick didn’t want to think about what it was like out past the wall.
Turok was gesturing back towards the center of the column. Mick pointed up with a questioning look. He preferred to stay near one side of the column’s ellipse, and proceed up through the chambers near this wall. Turok shrugged. They kicked and moved up smoothly towards the second chamber. Though the membranes neutralized what should have been the cumulative water pressure of eighty chambers, they had no effect on the pressure within a chamber. The plasma registered only as a slight tingling, but the pressure went instantly from an effective depth of zero, or sea level, at the top of one chamber, to a depth of sixty-five feet in the bottom of the next chamber up. They crossed into the second, and flinched. That was the worst of it, the repeated moment of transition. They blocked out their fear that the pressure might spike suddenly. Once they got used to it, the chambers passed in rapid succession.
Mick hoped they might come to some sort of ledge, anywhere to lie back, or just sit. After an hour they reached the nineteenth or twentieth chamber – Mick had lost count – and paused above the membrane for a longer rest. There was no ledge in the twentieth, just as there hadn’t been in any of the lower levels.
Mick was about to swim to the top of the twentieth when Turok stayed him. Turok proceeded to lie out flat, and his body nudged slowly down against the slightly denser surface of the membrane. He settled back about ½ inch, and didn’t fall through into the nineteenth. Mick mirrored Turok’s posture, and lay motionless. The slight resistance of the plasma made for a comfortable bed. The only dissonant element was the pressure, and the mild, tingling sensation the plasma left in his back and legs. Mick gradually let all his muscles relax, and he willed a sensation of repose into each of his limbs, all the way to his fingertips, then out to his toes. He breathed deeper and longer with each breath. Despite this, Mick felt a psychological need to take a deep breath from an atmosphere, to feel air on his skin. Beneath their apparent peace and repose was an echoing tension.
Mick felt a touch on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw Turok pointing up. Mick was surprised he had fallen asleep. He sheepishly pulled himself up, and immediately fell to mid-thigh into the chamber below. He felt again the strange pins and needles sensation as he kicked and rose through the membrane. They moved up with the accustomed, slow scissor-kicks. The chambers again passed in rapid succession. The darkness of the ocean only a few feet away, and everything about the column – all remained unchanged. It almost felt like being caught in a spatial loop, and they were passing through the same chamber over and over.