The Deep 2015.06.23

by Michaelbrent Collings

  "That's why you shouldn't go," said Tim with a nod.

  Mercedes shrugged, and in the shrug and the look on her face Tim saw that there was something driving her to do this. Something quieter but no less compelling than the things which drove Sue, Geoffrey, and Haeberle.

  "Fine," he said. And then, because there was nothing else to say, he added, "Let's get started."

  BEGINNING

  ~^~^~^~^~

  This is how the dive began.

  First: dragging anchor.

  The average scuba diver can swim anywhere from one-half to 1.5 knots per hour underwater – a knot being a little over a linear mile. Underwater currents of four knots per hour are not unusual. And water being over eight hundred times denser than air, this means a diver swimming as fast as he can into a current will actually be dragged backward at a rate of 3.5 knots per hour. If swimming with the current, that augments his normal pitiful speed of 1.5 knots per hour to to five knots per hour.

  Both of those mean a diver can be assured of being yanked away from starting points – and having a good chance of it being impossible to return.

  Then you add in the ascent, which can take several hours. Several hours of being dragged at least a few knots per hour away from the spot where you dove… and the diver may surface up to six miles away from his dive boat.

  Even one mile away, a dive boat will be utterly invisible to the surfacing diver – and vice-versa. The diver will likely be stranded. Marooned on a microscopic island that consists only of his gear and his own body. And soon to die of hypothermia, lack of water, exposure, or the tender attentions of underwater sea life.

  To combat this, deep divers tie on to the ascent line. They then have a way of pulling themselves to and from where they need: let out the line to go in the direction of the current, then pull back to the line when it is time to ascend – and stay clipped to the ascent line the whole way up.

  This is why Jimmy J released the drag anchor before anything else happened. The drag anchor was a four-pronged grapple designed to grab onto underwater outcroppings, either natural or man-made. Mr. Raven would pilot the boat in a straight line over the mass on the bottom, dragging the anchor along the bottom until it caught. If it didn't, he would turn and try again. Dragging the anchor was one of the time-consuming and somewhat stressful parts of a deep dive, since one never knew how long it would take or even if the operation would be successful.

  A few feet above the anchor, Jimmy J attached an emergency strobe. It blinked a steady flash, two per second. If anyone got separated from the line, the strobe might help them to find it again in the darkness of deep water.

  At what he guessed would be about twenty feet below the boat, Jimmy J attached an emergency air tank to the line. The tank would allow a diver in trouble to wait at a final deco level before ascending all the way. Hopefully this would provide a failsafe against running out of air, against a possibly fatal case of the bends.

  The anchor fell, trailing its thick line. The passengers and dive crew watched it reel out. Waited.

  In the wheelhouse, Raven piloted the boat with a steady hand. He also frowned at the nearby printer. A single paper lay there, stained from the sweat and grease that perpetually coated his fingers.

  The printer had recently spat out something… interesting. Perhaps helpful. Raven felt like he stood on the edge of destiny. A return to the greatness – financial, emotional, reputation-wise – that he had once enjoyed.

  The paper was, he decided, not merely interesting, but helpful.

  He felt it likely that things were finally going his way again. Felt it in his bones.

  Back on the deck, the passengers and crew saw the line twitch, felt a minor tremor as the boat was jerked a bit. The engines cut immediately, and Raven leaned out of the wheelhouse.

  "We hooked?" he shouted.

  "Looks like!" Jimmy J responded.

  Raven nodded once, curtly, then leaned back into the wheelhouse. He looked at the paper again, and only one word kept going through his mind:

  Interesting.

  On the deck, the divers began final checks.

  The dive was ready to begin.

  FALL

  ~^~^~^~^~

  Tim felt a gentle tug. It was Jimmy, pulling lightly on his back tank to make sure it was secure. Of course it was, and of course Jimmy J knew it would be. Tim recognized the action for what it was: concern. Jimmy J was making a final check because it was all he could do.

  People always act to control… even if those actions are fruitless gestures. Even if people know they are fruitless gestures. Because lack of action is an admission that we are not captains of our ships, that we are simply huddled in the hold in a storm-tossed sea, hoping for the best, a large part of us expecting the worst.

  So when Jimmy J tugged on his back tank, Tim knew he would find it perfectly secured, the hoses in place, all as it should be. But he let Jimmy J proceed – it made them both feel a bit better. And "a bit" was the best either could hope for.

  "You sure you want to do this?" said Jimmy J. The words a whisper that barely carried above the slap of the waves against the hull of the boat.

  "Not much choice if I want to keep everyone safe," said Tim. He realized he was doing the same thing Jimmy J was: pulling on his gauges to make sure they were firmly attached, looking at his hoses, eyeballing his regulator.

  It's okay, man. It's okay.

  Right.

  "What about the fish thing?" said Jimmy J. "Weird."

  Tim had told Jimmy J what he had seen last night: the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of fish swirling on the surface. A school of disparate pupils so massive as to be unheard of.

  What caused that?

  "Fish always gather at wrecks," he said. "Coral grows on them and an ecosystem moves in."

  He knew that was a stupid excuse for what amounted to a natural impossibility. Not only were masses of fish like that unknown, but there couldn't be any coral growths. Coral reefs took thousands of years to grow, and the place below them hadn't even existed before yesterday.

  Jimmy J shook his head, giving voice to Tim's own thoughts: "This isn't a wreck site, man. This is Mother Earth puking on us."

  Tim felt a chill that had nothing to do with the stiff breeze that blew. Because Jimmy J was right: this wasn't a wreck site. Wreck sites didn't just appear, didn't just rise up from an eight-hundred-foot drop and settle at the diveable but dangerous level of one-hundred-fifty feet.

  He shook his head. Not sure if he was shaking his head at Jimmy J, or to give a silent voice to his own need to insist that this was a good idea. All evidence to the contrary.

  "I know," he said. "I know. But my job is to make sure these people come back." He clapped Jimmy J on the shoulder. "And yours is to make sure I come back. Don't forget that."

  And then, before Jimmy J could say anything else, anything that might –

  (terrify him)

  – dissuade him, he lumbered to the dive platform, put a hand to his mask to hold it in place, and stepped off.

  The water hit him as a mix of pleasure and pain, the internal opposition that was the sea. She was life to everything on the planet, but also a force that could kill with impunity. As large-scale as tsunamis that buried entire islands, and intimate as a rolling tide that pulled a child out to sea and buried her forever under a trillion tons of liquid.

  He waited a moment, bobbing on the surface, but didn't look at the boat. He didn't want to see the worry on Jimmy J's face –

  (and maybe – hopefully? – on Sue's?)

  – or look at the boat that represented his last and sanest opportunity to turn away from what he was about to do. He knew this was all wrong – they were going in for the wrong reasons, at the wrong place and time… but wasn't this his job? Not just to show passengers a good time, to b.s. with the dilettantes and toss out interesting facts to weekenders, but to guide. To protect.

  He let air out of his buoyancy compensator and let the sudden
decrease in his personal buoyancy drag him under. He swam quickly to the dive line.

  And began his descent.

  Down here, at this level, it was a different world. At ten feet the sea was light blue. Empty and formless as the void that God had to work with. The only sounds were the bubbles that escaped his regulator as he breathed. He inhaled, he exhaled.

  His heartbeat started to sound in his ears. Palpitations that banged a drumbeat through his body.

  Bubbles leaked from his BC. Slowly letting him fall.

  The light began to leave him.

  He began to fall from the light.

  Below him lay his destination. Below him lay the unknown.

  Below him… lay the dark of the true deep.

  MARK

  ~^~^~^~^~

  Raven looked at the paper on the printer. Still where he had put it, shoving it back on its tray after he printed it, as though to deny what it had shown him. Because it had scared him. He had to admit that to himself, if to no one else. What he saw on that page was a new element in a situation already fraught with unknowns.

  But a moment later, holding the page, about to call the naval vessel, about to let them know what he held… a moment after that he put the paper back. He thought.

  And, thinking, he realized that this was no curse, no stumbling block in his path. No, it was one more stepping stone. One more step in his path to fame, fortune. To money and power and women throwing themselves at him the way they had when he was young and strong.

  There are many different kinds of strength.

  He leaned out the wheelhouse. Everyone was on deck, most of them leaning toward the dive platform as though they could see through the bottom of the boat and spot Tim's dive.

  Raven grinned tightly. He hadn't been surprised when Tim volunteered to go first. The man was noble to a fault – meaning he had more than an iota of nobility. Being noble was just code for putting the needs of others above your own. The worst kind of foolishness.

  The one person who wasn't looking toward the sea, but rather sat on one of the benches bolted to the deck, was the man Raven wanted to see.

  Figures. Bastard doesn't care about anyone but himself.

  Just like you, Rave?

  Birds of a feather.

  And with that thought, any last doubts over what he was going to do disappeared completely.

  "Haeberle?" he called to the man.

  "What?" Haeberle answered. He didn't look up. Just kept staring straight ahead. Raven wondered what the man was staring at. Then decided he didn't want to know. Then decided he didn't give a damn.

  "I wonder if I might see you in the salon?" said Raven. He started down the ladder to the deck.

  "No," said Haeberle. Surly as always. Intractable.

  Not this time.

  "Please, Matthew," said Raven. "It's important."

  Haeberle – or the man who called himself Haeberle – stiffened. "What did you call me?" he said. He glanced at the others, who took no note of the conversation the two were having.

  "I'm sorry, didn't I call you Mark?" Raven had seen Haeberle smiling at Sue and Mercedes. Had seen the shark-grin the man lavished on them, the smile that said, "I will own you completely. You're already mine, you just don't know it yet."

  Now Raven smiled that way at the big man. A shark-grin – the humorless, deadly smile of a great white – of his own. "I thought I called you Mark. I'm sure I wouldn't call you anything but your given name, after all."

  He turned and went into the salon. Knowing Haeberle would follow.

  Yes, this was going to work out after all.

  Everything was.

  ENGULFED

  ~^~^~^~^~

  Tim dropped…

  … dropped…

  … dropped…

  … into darkness.

  The water was first blue, then darkened to the cobalt tones that reach out to capture the sun as twilight falls. Then even that color fell away. Twilight deepened to the uniform gray of a world without direction or differences. Just an entropic mass, the only thing guiding him in the right direction was the anchor line he held tightly in his hands.

  Then… black.

  Tim switched on a light attached to his shoulder. It sent out a slim dagger of brightness into the black, but the dark around him was stronger by far. The light only extended a short distance. Surrounding him with a sickly halo and shooting out directly in front of him a few additional feet before being beaten to a premature death by the raw power of a dark, empty sea.

  And then not so empty.

  His light caught something. A flash reflected back to him. It was so out of place in the loneliness in which he found himself that he couldn't place it.

  Another flash.

  Another.

  Another another anotheranotheranother.

  Now he understood. But before he could respond, he was engulfed.

  It was just like the other night. A huge school of silver fish, about the length and thickness of his arm. They absorbed him into what seemed a single mass, a gigantic organism whose cells were not the microscopic variety but large and hostile. They batted against Tim with tails; he felt fins flutter all over his body.

  He felt his body clench, and at the same time his gut felt loose, achy. He had to concentrate on not losing control of his bowels. Voiding himself in a wetsuit wouldn't be fun.

  The fish swirled, whirled, slammed into him harder and harder, nearly bruising him with their impact. Visibility was next to nothing. He held to the anchor line so tightly his fingers ached.

  Then he saw something else. A larger shape flashing in front of him, slipping in and out of his light so fast he wasn't sure whether or not he imagined it.

  Then the shape came again. Bigger than the silver shapes. Much bigger. Blue-green-gray, a huge series of featherlike fins atop its back, an extended snout that lengthened into a thin spike with a deadly tip.

  A sailfish. Not unusual for them to be attracted to schools of fish. They would use their sweeping back fins to separate large groups of fish from the edges of a school, then would turn on their tails and gulp down great mouthfuls.

  But this sailfish didn't seem to be eating. It flared in and out of Tim's view, in and out of his light. It swam jerkily, almost panicked. Like it was trying to shake free of an invisible hook, the drag of something unseen. And every time it appeared it seemed closer to him.

  Where Tim's stomach had felt loose only a moment before, now it drew into a painfully tight knot. Sailfish could swim almost seventy miles per hour, and if this one barreled into him, even with a sideswipe it could be a crippling blow.

  If it hit him with that sword point….

  Then the sailfish was joined by another. And two more. And then dozens. All flapping, fluttering their way through the water in lieu of the graceful manner for which they were famous.

  One came so close its dorsal fin slammed into Tim's chest as it turned away. He felt the breath explode out of him, almost lost his regulator.

  Almost lost his grip on the anchor line.

  If that happened he would be lost for sure. He was at near-neutral buoyancy right now: his weight was almost exactly that of the water around him. Which meant there was almost no sense of gravity. If he lost his line he wouldn't know up from down. He could swim straight down and end up caught in a current that would drag him away from any hope of returning to The Celeste. He could swim straight up and be bent before he knew what was happening.

  There was only one thing to do.

  He loosened his grip on the line.

  He opened the pressure release valve on his BC as far as possible. The air bubbled out of the vest's bladder.

  He dropped like a rock.

  UNDERSTANDING

  ~^~^~^~^~

  Haeberle entered the salon, and experienced a rare emotion: fear.

  Did he really call me Matthew?

  Was it a mistake?

  Could he know?

  Then he was into the small room, c
losing the door behind him and facing Raven. The smaller man had arms across his chest, a smug look on his face like he owned the universe.

  That chased the fear right out of Haeberle's mind.

  Bastard.

  Sonofabitch.

  I'll kill you.

  He felt his body tensing, felt his muscles – the envy of all men, the object of lust of all women – ball into dangerous masses. Fear was gone, because. He. Was. Power. Raw energy, greater than any wave, more terrifying than any earthquake.

  I'll kill you.

  Aloud he said, "What is it?"

  Raven uncrossed his arms. He dug something out of his pocket. A white paper, creased and with faint dark stains on it where he had clearly been handling it.

  "When I contacted the Navy about helping us they had a very interesting question to ask about my passengers. Even sent me a picture that I printed out."

  He held out the folded page. Haeberle took it, and when he opened it cold –

  (fear terror oh shit oh damn I'm in trouble)

  – rage engulfed him. White, terrible. The muscles that had been clenched before now started twitching.

  He had to concentrate on not flying across the cabin and ripping out Raven's neck with his teeth.

  Not now.

  Soon.

  The page had a picture of him at the top right. Beside was the name "MATTHEW JERROD" in large bold letters. A name he knew well. His old name, his old disguise.

  One of the wonderful things about being him was that he could be anyone he wanted. When you are the only real person in a sea of imagination, be anyone you choose to be. So he had chosen to be Mark Haeberle, and just like that Matthew Jerrod had ceased to exist.

  But here was that other person, that previous self, Matthew Jerrod staring up at him from this paper.

  Below the name, the old him, was a long list. Words like WANTED and KIDNAPPING and SEXUAL ASSAULT and MURDER written, accusations that were ridiculous on their face. How could you steal a person who existed only to serve your whims? How could you rape women who clearly desired you?