by Sage Walker
“The frigging switches aren’t where you’d think—gotcha,” Campbell said.
Twin beams of light stabbed into the dark hold, swaying against the walls as the sub swayed. The ship’s engines went silent, making the slap of water against the hull sound loud as gunshots. Jared pulled himself to his feet and grabbed a line that hung above the sub’s collar. He didn’t want Campbell to find him clinging to the catwalk like a terrified baby, and light and upright posture gave him back a semblance of self-control.
Campbell’s head emerged from the hatch. “We’ve stopped?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Jared said. “Campbell, if we’re picking up a sub and loading it, wouldn’t you think that some crew would be down here? Getting the berth ready, or something?”
“I’d think so.” Campbell swung a long leg out of the hatch and reached up to find a handhold.
“I’ll get the bay lights,” Jared said. His moonboots beneath him gave him no sensation of contact with the catwalk, and he wished he could take them off and feel the grip of metal on his feet. He reached the switch and the bay lights came on, reassuring and harsh.
“I’m going up on deck,” Jared said. “Maybe there’s some action.”
“Fine,” Campbell said. “I’ll close down the sub. No reason to run out the batteries, I guess.”
Jared climbed the stairs toward a glowing Exit sign. The wheel on the hatch was cold and he remembered, this time, to get his gloves on. He wanted a brief look around, and he knew Campbell would take a little while to finish up below. Campbell seemed interested in the tech, yeah, but that didn’t mean he’d sent a false alarm from anywhere. The whole interlude began to look like nothing more ominous than the captain had reported. And the visuals—should be good enough to please even Pilar.
Outside, Jared found himself on open deck, on a narrow walkway between the ship’s bulk and the metal rail. The sky was still purplish, a deep twilight color, and the sea looked black and oily. He saw no one, heard nothing. The ship rocked, listless, under no power. Jared turned left, heading for the stern.
Something hit the back of his right knee and he tipped toward the rail. He raised his arms to try to find balance. Mistake, he thought, for the silvery gleam of a huge gaff came up and under his left arm, lifting him up and over the rail. The water is a long way down, Jared thought, surprised. Distantly, far, far away, he heard a feminine, high-pitched wail, and realized it was Paul, but he’d never heard Paul sound exactly like that.
Jared hit the water with his right arm outstretched, the wall of wet striking the right side of his face, numb even before the water closed, briefly, over his head. Remembering—a naked man immersed in water at minus 1.9 degrees C will lose his breathing reflex in five seconds. Jared flailed his arms and found the surface and pulled in as deep a breath as his lungs would hold.
But he wasn’t naked. He had at least a minute, maybe three. A bubble of air rose up from beneath the clothing on his back and puffed up the shoulders of his parka. He pushed with his arms, fighting the numb cold in them and the air cushion of the parka’s padded sleeves, and braced himself to scream.
Insectoid, black, a goggled face rose inches from his own. Diver? Jared wondered. How? It’s so cold here. The black gleam of goggles, a rubber caricature of a human head. A gloved hand reached for his collar and he remembered: don’t fight. He tried to relax while he felt himself pulled forward, the pain of burning ice flooding in around his neck and down his chest.
The rubber head tilted in the water, as if questioning something. And jerked his collar, hard, pulling him down, again, into the black water, into the darkness.
THIRTEEN
“Signy!” Paul’s voice screamed, hoarse and choked, a tortured scream that pulled Signy out of sleep and into a dead run toward the studio.
“Signy! My God! Get in here; get here now!”
From a solid, stonewalled sleep that seemed to have lasted only minutes.
“I’m coming. I’m coming, damn it!” Signy turned the corner into the hallway. The floor was cold on her bare feet.
The image of Paul’s face filled the holo stage, in a projection so large that Signy waded through black stubble on his chin, each whisker as thick as her forearm. She was naked, her skinthin tossed on the bed behind her before she slept, so she was spared the expected sensation of the slick moisture of Paul’s lip sliding across her face and down her shoulder as she entered the image of his skin. She reached through the inner corner of Paul’s eyelid and grabbed for the room’s controls.
“So cold,” Paul whimpered. “Goddamned son of a bitch! Bad. Very bad.”
“Paul, make sense! What the fuck is going on?” Signy snapped the words at him over dread that rose from her gut and a sudden sure inner vision of how Jared’s face would look, relaxed in death.
Injured, or dead, someone had to be, or Paul would not have woken her like this. Paul’s enraged face looked intact and Signy couldn’t see anything else of him. Jared, then. Oh, my God, Jared. Signy pulled on her goggles and Paul’s image shrunk to something human-sized.
“Jared,” Paul gasped. “He was right. We wouldn’t listen. Damn it, Signy, they’ve drowned the son of a bitch!”
“When? How?”
“He went overboard. I can’t pick up anything, anything.”
“Show me.” Signy sat down, her fingers chilled and the keyboard cold. The fabric on the chair felt like ice. Signy moved Paul’s image to the flatscreen in front of her and left the holo stage blank. “No, don’t. He’s in the water?”
“Damn it, yes!”
“When did this happen?”
“Now. Just now.”
The clock on Signy’s console read 0520. She shuddered with the hypothermia of disrupted sleep.
“Did anybody see him go over?” Signy tucked her hands into her armpits for the warmth and then untucked her right hand and hit the room’s thermostat.
“I don’t think so. I don’t know,” Paul said.
“Does the ship know?” Signy asked. She had to get a blanket. Jared drowned? No. Signy’s heartbeat thudded in her ears, slow, loud, and she felt the muscles in her shoulders and belly begin to shiver in unwilled spasms, her body protecting itself from cold and fear. Jared drowned? Dead? No. She had to think, to keep him alive. Think!
“The ship?” Paul asked.
“Wake up, man! Call the Kasumi. It’s a ship; it has a phone.” Paul’s face was so baffled. “Oh, shit, I’ll do it. If we’re lucky, they’ll be pulling him out of the water about now, and if we’re really lucky, he’s still alive.” Signy pulled Tanaka’s information files to her screen and wondered how the hell the Kasumi would be listed. Stupid, she chided herself, as she punched in Tanaka Company’s main number, 81 plus a string of digits, an international call that would get the offices in Kobe, for God’s sake. Would the secretary speak English?
“Oh, God, Paul. Talk to them. I can’t.”
Signy switched his audio inputs to feed through to the open line. The call went out voice-only but she stared at the blank monitor screen as if a face would form from its blinking cursor.
“Tanaka Company,” a young male voice said.
“There’s a man overboard the Kasumi,” Paul yelled. “Tell them!”
“Excuse me?” the voice asked.
“A man overboard. Tell the Kasumi.”
“Emergency?”
Not so good with English, this kid. Codes, international codes, what was it you said? “Mayday!” Signy yelled. “We need contact with the Kasumi, a ship, a Maru. It belongs to Tanaka and it’s in Antarctica. Mayday! Now!”
“Very good, sir,” the voice said.
“Now!” Paul shouted.
A series of clicks and pauses went on forever.
“Siranui,” a bored voice said.
“This is Paul Maury, of Edges. Jared Balchen just fell off the Kasumi. Stop the engines, do whatever you do. Do it fast. He’s going to drown.”
“Man overboard?” the voice asked.
&n
bsp; “Yes, damn it!”
“You are calling on satellite-to-ship line. Is this a joke?”
“God damn it, no!”
“I will check with Kasumi,” the voice said.
The studio filled with the white silence of a line on hold.
“I’ve g-got to get a blanket,” Signy said.
Signy ran for the bedroom. Paul’s face, seen in the unenhanced holo that he had just sent, was pale, haggard. When had he gotten so thin? Signy grabbed up Jared’s down sleeping bag and her skinthin and heard Siranui’s bridge as she reached the hallway again, voices in Japanese that sounded like static.
“What do they say?” Signy slammed into her chair, draped the sleeping bag over her shoulders and rolled the skinthin up over her foot.
“Hush,” Paul said.
“Caller?” a voice asked.
“I’m here,” Paul said.
“Kasumi will call lifeboat drill. They will check.”
“I saw him! Paul screamed.
Signy fought the tangle of fabric and jammed her leg into the skinthin. I should have rolled the son of a bitch up right, she thought. I’ll never get this thing on. She twisted the heel around so it approximately fit on the back of her leg and then pulled the suit off and began to roll the legs down to try again.
“Lifeboat drill,” the voice replied.
“Bastard!” Paul shouted.
“Excuse me?” the voice replied.
“Not nice,” another voice said, and the line went on hold again.
Signy had the skinthin pulled up to her knees. She stood up, shrugged the suit up across her middle, and stuck her hands through the arms. A fold of Lycra caught at her elbow and she pulled at it, hard, and sat down fast, already reaching for her keyboard again, for the Tanaka directory. There had to be another line into the ship, had to be.
In the net, her skinthin feeding her the familiar sensations of dry, emotionless, unscented corporate lists, Signy scrolled her way past lists of departments, acronyms with unknown meanings, ranks of names listed with extension numbers first. Numbers. She found the 81 numbers and scanned through them, looking for anything familiar, anything at all.
“Have you heard Jared mention anyone’s name on the Kasumi?” Signy asked.
“I can’t remember,” Paul said. “There’s a captain. Jared met him. He recorded some hours and I watched—”
“There isn’t time to go back and find his name. Damn.”
“Caller?” the phone asked.
“Paul Maury here.”
Signy looked away from the lists and to the flatscreen where Paul’s face glared at his unseen caller.
“You have Captain Ito on the Kasumi,” the phone said.
“Mr. Maury?” a different voice asked.
“Yes.”
“We are calling a lifeboat drill. The stations are beginning to report in. You will listen, yes?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Dr. Balchen did not have an assigned lifeboat station. This may take a few minutes.”
Voices babbled in the background.
“I saw him fall,” Paul said. “I saw him.”
“Pardon me. Just a moment, please,” Ito said.
“Sir, begging your pardon.” In the background, Alan Campbell’s Western drawl was unmistakable. “Do you have any idea where Dr. Balchen might be?”
Signy clenched her fists and shoved them, hard, against her mouth. It was true, then. It had happened. She rocked back and forth on her chair, tried to stop doing it, and couldn’t. Red numbers on the clock face blinked from 0526 to 0527.
She pulled her fists away from her face and tried to relax them. Hands, fingers, the dextrous markers of human skills, and she couldn’t remember how to make them work. Signy stared at her right index finger until it uncurled. Then she reached for the keyboard and punched in the familiar codes to wake the Seattle house.
“No one is reported missing in the crew,” Captain Ito’s voice said. “But Dr. Balchen has not appeared at any station.”
“You will look for him?” Paul asked.
“We have looked in the water. We will search the ship and retrace our last hour’s course. Yes.” Perhaps there was sympathy in the man’s voice, perhaps only fatigue.
“Thank you,” Paul said.
“You will get information from the Siranui,” Ito said. “We will report everything to them. I am transferring your call there now.”
“Wait!” Paul yelled.
Ito was gone.
A view of the Seattle studio blinked into place on Signy’s screen.
“Signy, what the hell is going on?” Janine leaned against the door of the Seattle studio, her face lighted from the hall, the room behind her dark except for the tiny points of ready lights. In her good travel jacket with her duffel over her shoulder, she stood swaying back and forth like a sleepwalker. “Jared’s lost,” Signy said. “Wake Pilar.”
“Siranui,” the phone said.
“I’ll get her.” Janine paused at the doorway. “Jimmy’s with her.”
“Don’t bring him,” Signy said.
In the background, Paul argued with an officer on the Siranui. “Hang the expense,” Paul said. “We’re paying. Just leave the line open, okay?”
Janine nodded and left the room. Signy turned up the lights in Seattle, on the bare studio where the night was still black beyond the undraped window.
Paul and the Siranui continued to debate the wisdom and the costs of an extended ship-to-shore call. “At least give me a direct number,” Paul said. “Please.” He paused, listening. “Yes, I tell you, I watched him go overboard.”
Paul’s voice had lost its quaver and had gone to tones of formal outrage. He’d be quoting statutes at them any minute now, and Signy relaxed a little. Paul’s consciousness was back on-line.
Splitscreen, Paul on one side, in Seattle:
—Pilar frowned as the room’s light hit her eyes. She had tossed on her stained caftan and she pulled the black length of her hair free of its collar. Behind her, fiddling with the sensors on his skinthin, Jimmy McKenna padded into the room.
Abomination, this intruder in this place. “Company biz, Pilar.” Signy’s words hissed; the muscles in her mouth felt stiff. “God damn it, Janine, I told you not to bring him.”
“I didn’t bring him.” Janine spun around toward Jimmy and looked ready to tackle him. Pilar stepped between the two of them on her way toward her keyboard in a move that was perhaps unplanned, but Pilar never made an unplanned move.
“Signy, you’ve been listening to the Siranui since Jared got there,” Paul said. “Are we still hooked in?”
Paul’s voice was a distraction Signy didn’t, at the moment, want. “We only get what the Siranui transmits,” Signy told him. “I don’t have a bug on the bridge, just a capture on outgoing transmissions.”
“Then we need the line,” Paul said.
Signy looked at the Seattle crew: Jimmy, who had no business here, Pilar blinking at the bright lights, her eyes soft with sleep or, Signy figured, recent sex.
“Pilar, get him the fuck out of here.”
Jimmy raised his head and looked at Signy’s image on the flatscreen. “You need me,” Jimmy said simply. He bent his head again and calmly continued adjusting his skinthin against his chest.
Janine backed away from McKenna. Janine tucked her head down like a bull about to charge.
“Jared’s drowned?” Pilar asked.
Pilar’s eyes had a way of going from brown to amber when she was very, very up on drugs or when she was stoned on her work. Her eyes glowed amber now, a hawk’s eyes focused on prey.
“I don’t know. Paul saw him go overboard. The ship is looking for him. Why do we need you, Jimmy? Tell me fast or get the hell out of here.”
“I can get into Tanaka’s private lines to the Siranui,” Jimmy said.
“Can you?” Signy asked.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said.
“Oh, hell. Just do it, then.” Signy heard no objec
tions from anyone. Jimmy’s loyalties, wherever they might lie, were unimportant for the moment.
There was no talk from the Siranui. Jared’s body would be rigid from the slushy salt cold by now, his flesh gone as waxy as Skylochori’s dead hand. Food for busy crabs, sinking in the water, Jared’s dark hair swirling in the currents as he sank.
Jimmy sat down at Pilar’s station and hooked his leads into the system. Signy picked up a sudden wave of Jimmy’s body signals, a slow man, warm and comfortable in his flesh, sleepy, but waking now toward a bemused pleasure in anticipation of an absorbing task. This was only work to him, just an off-hours call to midly interesting job. Didn’t he care? Jared, my love, doesn’t anyone care?
Jimmy pulled up a room that filled the space in Seattle and the holo stage in Taos, a solid image that washed over Pilar and Janine, leaving them blurred ghosts, unsuited as they were. Signy sat in that space, her flatscreens small squares in its reality. Brass fittings outlined the circle of a porthole high on a cabin wall. The cabin was shadowed. It looked warm; its polished teak fittings reflected the glowing lights of a bank of monitors and a desktop holo stage. A cabinet bunk was made up with puffy celadon comforters that had the soft sheen of raw silk.
“Where the hell are we?” Signy asked.
“On the Siranui,” Jimmy said. “That’s all I know. Hang on a minute.”
The room lurched out of focus and twisted on its axis. Indefinite swirls of black and amber became a view through a fish-eye lens that looked down at cluttered desktops, a bird’s-eye view of heads of black hair and the backs of hands busy at keyboards.
“Here’s the Siranui’s control room,” Jimmy said. “The camera’s hung in an overhead light. Anybody speak Japanese?”
“Fuck, no,” Pilar said, her disembodied voice harsh. “Record what they’re saying. Save it all. I’ll get somebody I know; there’s this guy in L.A. Let me at your console, Janine.”
“You’ll need a suit,” Signy said.
“I’m getting them!” Janine called, followed by the sounds of footsteps on an unseen floor. A door slammed.
On Signy’s flatscreen, one of the officers on the Siranui’s bridge talked quietly into a telephone headset. Talked to Paul, and told him that he would try to get in touch with Mr. Campbell, as soon as there was a line available. Two other officers seemed intent on their monitor screens. Another chattered intermittently into a mike, in tones that sounded excited and not at all approving. He sat rigid in his chair and he had pulled away from the screen.
