Half the Day Is Night

by Maureen F. Mchugh

David popped the clip and cracked it to see if it was clean. The clip was full, the rifle looked as if it had never been used. “I thought they did not allow them in Caribe.”

  “Military issue. They’re not a good idea in a dome. Crack the dome, you break the integrity and the water pressure squashes the place flat.”

  His head was a little clearer this morning, he had followed that. “What’s the range underwater?”

  “I don’t know,” Tim sounded irritated. “You ever used one before?”

  “Not underwater. In Africa.” In Namibia, Windhouk, Gobabis, and the Kalahari, David thought. Before that in Serowe, Soweto, Pretoria. Mbabane and bloody Durban. South Africa.

  “Are you going to stand there and play with the gun or are you going to hand me a mask.”

  “Excuse me,” David said, embarrassed. But he pulled the clip before he put the rifle back and picked up two masks. Idiot. He had promised himself he would be careful, he would make a good impression on these people. It was time to forget Africa. He should have ignored the rifle. So clean, still steel blue and smelling faintly of oil.

  He’d had an AP15 but not one like this with its fake wood stock. His stock had been a metal frame with a place on it where he’d scraped it on the sidewalk in Joburg.

  He could not keep this job. Too many things were not right. He had come here to start new but security was guns and fear and he did not want any of that.

  “Mayla has three recyc units but the Honeywell is so old that it doesn’t even have a humidifier.” Bennet showed him how to put one on, how to jack the connections into the mask and hook the airfeed into the jaw. “Ever use a full facemask before?”

  “Yes, and a mike. What is the setting?” He had never used one for swimming but the facemask was similar to the respirator mask they used to drill for gas attacks. He would not mention that.

  “Three. Four through eight are commercial bands. Nine is official, Port Authority mostly. Most of the fish jocks use eleven and twelve, so if you need help, try those.”

  “Fish jocks?” David said.

  “Fish jockeys. The guys that work at the fish farms. Divers. Public starts at thirteen so everything above that is crowded. Eighteen is emergency but the local police force is not very useful.” Tim pulled on his flippers. “Ever swam in the dark?” Tim asked.

  “No.” And did not plan to do it often, thank you.

  “Okay. There’s a lamp mounted on your mask. The switch is a touch plate, you have to tap it twice to turn it off.” He tapped once underneath the eye of the light and it came on. He tapped twice and nothing happened. Tapped twice with more emphasis and the lamp went off. “They turn on easier than they turn off.”

  David pulled on the mask, it was cold against his chin and smelled of metal. He tapped blindly since the lamp was on the forehead of the mask and it came on. It took him a couple of tries to get it off. Why would anyone ever want to turn one off?

  “Look,” Tim said, looking at the floor, “I ah, I noticed your limp. Your, ah, leg. Will it bother you swimming?”

  “No,” David said. “It’s fine.” He looked at Tim so that Tim could not look at his knee and Tim hauled the recycs out of the pool instead.

  “Yeah. Ah, well then,” Tim said. “As soon as we’re suited up, that’s it. The thing to remember when you’re diving is to breathe normally. There’s a telltale on your facemask that measures the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. Just try to keep it within normal range and if you find you’re having a problem, let me know.”

  They hauled on the recyc units, heavy with water, and David fell backward into the entry pool, copying Tim.

  The water was very cold. It was a shock. The tights and suit had been uncomfortably warm but they weren’t now. The pool was really a tunnel, a u-shape that dove under the ground and back up into the sea. It was about two meters across and that didn’t seem like much. Tim hit an orange circle between two lights and the opening above them constricted shut. The air from the recyc had the faintest taste of the inflow valve, a rubbery taste, but it was warm. He tried drawing deep breaths to keep himself warm. The warm air in his lungs would warm his blood and that would warm all of him, but he might hyperventilate.

  “When you come out,” Tim’s voice came clearly, “don’t look straight into the lights, okay?”

  “Okay.” The telltale displayed amber numbers, they seemed to hang in the water in front of him about level with his left eyebrow.

  They began to swim down, angling their bodies. Tim kicked lazily, David felt the water resisting his kicks. Cold, viscous saltwater. (He knew cold water did not resist any more than warm water did.) He was not sure if he was breathing properly, he seemed to be taking unnecessarily deep breaths. The telltale flickered, “26, 27, 26, 27, 28, 29, 28.…” What was normal and correct? Ahead was the black eye of the ocean, or was it black because the ocean had no eyes? His indicator told him his respiration was still increasing. They followed the tunnel up, no more than six meters all told, and rose out of the garden, outside the dome. They came up past the window, looking in the living room, and the benevolent sun on the wall watched them sadly.

  They rose over the second floor, all dark, and their headlamps reflected off the dome. Their masks were blanks of copper in the reflection, like new smooth coins. Down the other side towards the lighted ring of garden. It would be better in the garden, in the light he would not feel so adrift.

  There was no feeling of weight, they moved through space unencumbered, down past the curtained main floor to the rock garden below, where frightened fish fled silver around the dome.

  Into the dark beyond. David slowed up, Tim kicked easily, moving like a shark. David followed. Light was swallowed up by ocean. He had to swim hard to catch up. He had trouble knowing which way was up and which was down. His legs were shorter, he kicked more often than Tim, and because of his bad knee he kept veering to the left. He wasn’t in very good shape, but at least he wasn’t worried about hyperventilating anymore.

  He wished Bennet would slow down, but he wasn’t about to ask for any favors. Where the hell were they going? If he lost Bennet he wouldn’t have any idea where he was, although he figured he could always double back. He glanced back, he could still see the dome. But then he had to work to catch up. Funny there weren’t any other domes out this way, Bennet must be taking him out away from the city. They angled up a bit until the ground disappeared. He looked back again, barely able to make out the glow of the dome. Goddamn it was cold. He should stop right here and not go any farther. He should swim back.

  Which was ridiculous, Bennet must have a reason for swimming this way. He concentrated on working his bad leg better, making his kicks more even. This would be good exercise. The therapist had told him that swimming was good, no weight on his knee. No dome visible behind them. The farther they went, the more depth the dark had, not by the absence of light so much as the quantity of dark that separated them from the lighted dome. Entropy made palpable. Entropy, quit thinking like a physics student. Besides, entropy isn’t a substance, it’s an absence. Disorder, not malevolent, but the slow seepage of energy, the heat leaving his body, swimming slower and slower, as Bennet, the machine, would disappear into the dark at the edge of the light cast by his mask. He would be lost out here, without even directions like up and down. He wouldn’t even realize he was slowing down, but he would get slower and slower until he was empty and the heat of his body evenly, randomly dispersed among the cold water.

  Particularly paranoid this morning, he thought. It was the dark, the dark always bothered him. A child’s distress, maman don’t turn out the light.

  He was panting with the effort to keep up. Bennet wanted him to ask to slow down. Macho nonsense. So ask to slow down, you stubborn fool. Where were the other domes? What were they doing out here? How did Bennet know where they were? They could be angling up. That was dangerous, could lead to the bends. Nitrogen bubbles in the blood. Stroke.

  Paranoia, he sang to himself, par-a-noi
-ah. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t really out to get you. If he lost Bennet he would turn around and try to head back for the dome but there was a good chance he would miss it in the darkness, particularly with his tendency to veer. His recyc unit would go on taking oxygen out of the water for days, but already the cold was making his hands stiff. How long until hypothermia? He would die of exposure in a couple of hours. Very convenient for Bennet. He could say he’d thought David was behind him, and he didn’t know when they’d gotten separated. In a few hours, would he find another dome?

  Bennet stopped suddenly, with a graceful swirl of hands and arms, and hung. “Don’t go swimming alone,” he said, “It’s easy to get lost.”

  “Paranoia,” sang in David’s head. “How do you know where to go?”

  “I used to be a fish jockey, I’ve got an implant in the back of my head that tells me what direction Port Authority is. You can get one if you really want to, but you don’t need it unless you plan to do a lot of swimming.”

  “Which way is the dome?”

  Bennet pointed slightly to the right of the way David thought they had come. He peered into the dark but all he could see was the cone of light from their headlamps. Bennet’s headlamp went out on his right, and as he turned, the Australian made a couple of strong kicks that took him out of the cone of David’s light.

  Abruptly he realized he had been moving for the space of half-a-dozen kicks in the direction Bennet had vanished. He didn’t remember moving. No sign of the reflecting bands on Bennet’s recyc unit, and he should have been able to see them. He halted. Was he paranoid if he was correct? He turned in a full circle to see if he caught the glint of silver off Bennet’s fins or unit. Bennet could go anywhere, up or down as well as any direction. Turning had been a big mistake, without anything to orient, he wasn’t sure how far he had turned or what direction Bennet had gone, what direction was the dome, from here no way to even guess direction, he was fucking well lost in the night and the amber lights of the indicator were flickering as his respiration went up; slow down, slow down, slow down. Think. He could turn off his headlamp. With his off he would stand a better chance of catching sight of Bennet’s light—if Bennet’s was still on. With his on he was visible to Bennet. He reached up and tapped his headlamp twice, had to do it a couple of times. His light finally went off.

  Instantly, the black rushed in at him. He saw movement in the nothing, things, shapes, shells, bullets, streams coming at him, his mind making something out of the absence of sensory information, son of a bitch, he couldn’t handle the dark, even if it made good sense he couldn’t do it, the amber letters of the telltale going up and up, his respiration climbing, he fumbled for the lamp, cold fingers missing the plate while the only light, the amber letters of the telltale told him he was approaching hyperventilation, he used both hands and the light came on and shapes swirled only at the periphery of his vision. Panic, frigging anxiety attack, come on, he thought, be calm, you can die if you aren’t calm. He whirled again, circling to find someone, nothing, but hanging there in the water his headlamp was a beacon, he was vulnerable, a still target, he had to think, think think think, think about the dark. Don’t think about the dark. What would orient him? Nothing around but water, 250 meters of water between him and the sun above, below, below there was ground. Bottom. Under water ground was called bottom, swim down, folding in the water, not sure if this direction was really down but it must have been because almost instantly he saw sand and rock. The indicator said his breathing was down a little. He touched bottom, solid bottom, hard and rocky, not much sand, like the Kalahari which really had very little sand at all, groped and found a rock as big as his fist, hefted it, feeling how heavy it was, how slow he would move it in the water.

  A headlamp came on close by and he turned to face it, his rock held ready, slightly behind his body, because he’d have to get real close to Bennet to use it. Bennet said matter-of-factly inside his mask, “That’s exactly what you should do if you’re ever lost, head for bottom.”

  David held the rock, waited for the other to come closer, he would be slower in the water, he would have to wait until the other was very very close. And he did not know if Bennet was armed.

  “Around here you can always switch to band eleven,” Tim said. “Somebody will be on the band, around here there’s always someone. Of course, I was close. Sorry about that, but that’s the way I was taught, you don’t forget a lesson like that. You ready to go home?”

  David nodded.

  He dropped the rock about halfway back. Later he realized that if he’d brained Tim he’d never have been able to find his way anyway.

  2

  Funeral Games

  Mayla did not read about Danny Tumipamba’s murder in the paper because that morning she didn’t get a chance to finish it.

  Most mornings Mayla got into the kitchen before Tim. She made her coffee and listened for signs that he was awake. She hated to admit that she ordered her life around Tim, but there it was. She hated when he was there, and the quiet time before he came down was ruined by anticipation.

  She heard his feet on the stairs from the loft. She looked at her paper.

  “Morning gorgeous,” he said. Some mornings he came downstairs furious, some chipper. He touched the side of the coffee pot. “Cold. Christ, Mayla,” he said, “how can you drink this stuff?”

  “Practice,” she said. No one really drank coffee at boiling, not even in Los Etas. Tim had a special coffee maker in the loft. He didn’t really need to use the kitchen but most mornings he did. Mostly to bitch about her coffee. He said he didn’t like Caribbean coffee, that it was bitter and weak. She didn’t like surface coffee, it tasted wrong, bland. And on the surface coffee stayed too hot, too long.

  He rummaged around the cupboards while she read about Mandatory Sterilization for Incorrigibles, particularly women who were addicted to neuro-stimulation. He was looking for the jar he used every morning. “Why don’t you use that vacuum thing in the loft?” she asked.

  He found the jar. She kept pushing it to the back of the cupboard but he kept finding it. He poured coffee in and tightened the lid.

  “One of these mornings it’s going to explode,” she said.

  “Nah,” he said. The coffee boiled almost instantly, frothing until it filled the jar. He left it, letting it build up pressure, a tiny little storm of coffee.

  Mayla could sympathize with the jar. Don’t, she thought. Just relax, don’t let him get to you. If it breaks, then it breaks. The worst that would happen was that it ruined the flash. She could buy a new flash.

  The jar didn’t break, it never had yet. Jars didn’t break for the Tims of the world, she reflected. If she stuck a jar in the flash there would be coffee everywhere. It would look like the scene of a murder. The flash binged and he pulled it out, opened the lid and the room smelled of coffee. He had to hold the jar with a dish towel to pour. “Ah,” he said. “That’s what coffee should be. You know, cold coffee is what destroyed the Roman Empire.”

  She nodded, pretending to look at the paper. Mandatory Sterilization, the headline she had already read. Too late, she thought, he’s already born.

  “Oh,” he said, eyebrows quirked. “Cranky this morning.”

  “I’ve run out of things to say about coffee,” she said. Her voice was flatter than she intended.

  Tim just turned from her and sipped his coffee. The only way he knew how to talk to people was to joke.

  She waited for him to say something. If Tim wasn’t talking he was mad. “Want the sports?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  Another long pause. He wasn’t going to be here much longer. She could be polite. “How are the driving lessons going?” she offered.

  “Okay,” he said, his back to her while he fiddled with his coffee. Now he wouldn’t talk in the car, either. She should just enjoy it when he didn’t talk but she never could. He had all this energy in the morning—he had all this energy, pe
riod—but mornings she was murky and he was ready to fight, to be angry.

  “Maybe David could drive this morning?” she said.

  He shook his head. “I dunno,” he said. “He really isn’t ready, yet.”

  “Ready for what?” she said. “He gets on the belt and puts it on automatic, and when he comes off the belt he’s at the bank.” She certainly sounded cranky. She wanted to sound reasonable.

  “He can’t drive very well yet,” Tim said.

  “This way he could get some practice.”

  “Give him a break, Mayla,” Tim said, sounding aggravated.

  “Give me a break,” she said.

  “What is your problem this morning?” he said, turning around.

  “I want David to drive the car,” she said. Take your place, she was saying, and he knew it.

  “And you don’t give a damn whether he’s ready or not,” Tim said. “Fine.”

  “You wouldn’t say he was ready if he could—” she couldn’t think of an example of expert driving, her mind didn’t work in the morning, “—if he could, I don’t know, drive like a race car driver.”

  “Fine,” he said again. “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “Go back to bed,” she said, “enjoy the time off.”

  “Hijo de la chingada,” he said. “Son of a bitch.” Except that no one but an anglo would use it that way. When Tim swore in Spanish he sounded even more like a foreign gabacho than he normally did.

  He would be gone in a month, she told herself. A month, at the most. As soon as David was ready to take over.

  * * *

  When she told David that he would be driving that morning he looked uncomfortable. He came out to the kitchen to get a coffee cup—unlike Tim he used the coffee maker in his rooms. He was dressed but his hair was still wet and slicked back from the shower.

  “You don’t have to unless you feel ready,” she said. “Tim can drive me.”

  “Oh,” he said. Which wasn’t really an answer. It was hard to be sure how good his English was. He spoke pretty well but sometimes she got the feeling he was nodding without understanding. But he didn’t say he wouldn’t drive and he was waiting in the kitchen when she was finished getting ready.