“And then someone came in and apologized,” said Ollie. “They just came in all, ‘Forgive us! We made a mistake!’ and they let us out. I don’t know why they changed their minds, but Artur said it was probably best not to ask.”
“And what about the ‘where are we’ part? Do we know?”
Artur cleared his throat. “I think we’re in Deeper Down,” he said. “Don’t go asking me how I know, because I can’t tell ye.”
“That’s what the nose guy said, but there’s no such place.”
“I beg to differ,” said Artur. He shifted uncomfortably, then jumped on the opportunity to change the subject. “And what ‘nose guy’?”
“That nose guy,” said Dan, as the blue-green man with the broken nose slapped into the room on his flipper-like webbed feet. He was dressed in an all-in-one silver swimsuit that covered him from neck to groin and clung to his torso like a second skin.
“My name is Cobia,” he said, making no effort to hide his contempt for Dan. As he turned to the others, his expression changed into something much more welcoming. “You will all please join me in the auditorium.”
“What about these?” asked Dan, turning side-on and highlighting his shackled wrists. Cobia made a dismissive waving motion with the elongated fingers of a webbed hand.
“Someone will remove them eventually,” he said. “This way, please.”
DAN STILL DIDN’T BELIEVE they were in Deeper Down as they passed through several security doors and then moved through a network of tastefully decorated corridors. The walls were adorned with artfully arranged paintings and carvings, all depicting underwater scenes.
He continued to not believe it as they crossed an immense ballroom with sweeping golden staircases and towering ice carvings of unfamiliar marine creatures.
It was only when they stepped outside that Dan’s natural skepticism was forced to shut the fonk up and go sit somewhere at the back.
Technically, they weren’t ‘outside’ at all. A vast semi-transparent dome covered the whole place, protecting it from the unwelcome attention of the oceans above. Through it, Dan could see a variety of fish and various other kinds of water-dwellers zipping around. A sizeable squid-thing clung to the barrier somewhere near the top, its suckers squashed against the glass, or whatever the dome was made of.
They were in a grassy plaza with a large fountain in the middle in which children were playing. All around it, more of the blue-green adults relaxed. Individuals sat up reading books. Couples lay together in the grass. Groups laughed and joked.
They all stiffened when they saw Dan and the others, but a reassuring nod from Cobia relaxed them again.
“Whoa,” said Finn. “This is awesome.”
Ollie melted a little as his fingers tightened around hers. “Awesome,” she agreed.
Dan, who was plodding along at the back of the line with Artur on his shoulder, called up to Cobia at the front.
“So, this is really Deeper Down?”
“It really is. This way.”
He stepped onto a moving path that immediately swept him in the direction of the fountain. Ollie stopped just before the walkway, but Finn gave her an encouraging smile.
“We’ll go together, OK?”
Ollie nodded. “’K.”
Finn stepped, and Ollie jumped on. She wobbled unsteadily for a moment, holding her free hand out at her side to steady herself, then she laughed with relief when she managed to keep her balance.
“You did it!”
“I did it!”
“Way to go!” Finn said, then – to his surprise, as much as hers – he leaned in and kissed her quickly on the cheek.
Ollie stiffened, relaxed, blushed, temporarily forgot how to breathe, then just sort of giggled as the moving path carried them along together.
“Love is definitely in the air wi’ those two,” Artur announced. “Ye can smell it a mile off. And, I might add, it makes a refreshing change from yer own revolting stench.”
“I still don’t trust him,” Dan said. He stepped smoothly onto the walkway and lowered his voice so only Artur could hear. “This can’t be Deeper Down. It doesn’t exist. Right?”
Artur wriggled a little uncomfortably. “Well, I mean, I suppose it depends on yer definition, doesn’t it?”
“No. It either exists or it doesn’t.”
“Right. Yes.” He took a deep breath. “Well then I guess it exists.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Artur?” Dan asked. They were almost halfway across the plaza now. The children who had been playing in the spray of the fountain stopped to watch them as they trundled past, the smaller ones taking cover behind the bigger ones.
“Sure, I don’t know what ye mean,” Artur replied.
“Bullshizz. I know you. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
Artur sighed. “Fine. OK. If ye must know, I may have been aware of this place’s existence. I’d have told ye before now, but I was sworn to secrecy.”
“By who?”
“I can’t tell ye that, either. Not even if ye start with them puppy dog eyes of yours. My lips are sealed, Deadman, and there’s nothing ye can do to make me change me mind.”
From somewhere close on Dan’s left there came a banshee-like screech. Dan had barely managed to turn his head before a blue, green and gold shape slammed into him, knocking him off the walkway and onto the grass. He rolled clumsily, his hands still fixed behind him.
Twisting, he kicked out at his attacker, but found only empty space. A tall woman in golden armor was leaping around and stomping down on the grass. She’d have been strikingly beautiful if her face wasn’t quite so contorted in foam-spitting rage.
Artur scampered and dodged in the grass, his red and white checked dress making him an easy target.
“Hey, steady now!” he yelped. “Whoa! Cut it out, ye crazy bedge! Ye don’t want to do this!”
“Stay still, runt!” the woman shrieked, kicking and stamping at him as he darted this way and that. “I’ll kill you!”
“Hey.”
The woman spun just as Dan’s bare foot crunched into her armored chest plate. Knocked off balance, she thumped onto the grass. Her attempts to get back up were thwarted when Dan placed a foot on the armor.
“Stay down,” he warned her. He was aware of some commotion growing around him. Ollie and Finn had doubled back to help, but were currently jogging on the spot as they fought against the moving walkway.
“Steady on, Deadman!” Artur cried. “That was a bit harsh, was it not?”
“She was trying to kill you,” Dan pointed out.
Artur scratched the back of his head and looked around at nothing in particular. “Sure, she was that. But, well, she may have had good reason.”
“Too fonking right, I do!” the woman hissed.
Ollie and Finn finally figured out they could get off the walkway and hurried across the grass to join the others.
“Everything OK?” Ollie asked. “What happened?”
“Don’t know,” said Dan, narrowing his eyes. “Artur’s about to explain.”
Artur cleared his throat. “Aye. Well. Right. OK.” He took a deep breath. “Deadman. Peaches. Other fella whose name I can’t quite put me finger on at the moment…” He gestured to the woman pinned beneath Dan’s foot. “Say hello to me wife.”
He smiled sheepishly, then winced. “Or one of them, anyway.”
NINETEEN
DAN LOOKED AT ARTUR.
He looked at the woman below his foot.
“Your wife?”
“You have a wife?” Ollie gasped.
Finn frowned. “I didn’t know you were married, brah.”
“To be fair, ye don’t know feck all else about me, either,” Artur pointed out, then he looked up at Dan and shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a complicated man of mystery. I’m layered. And yes, that’s me wife, so if ye’d be so kind as to take yer flapping great plate o’ meat off her ample bosom, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“Releas
e her!” Cobia warned. “Release her this instant.”
Just for that, Dan kept her pinned there for a few more seconds.
“OK, Artur,” he said, holding Cobias’ gaze. “Since you asked so nicely, I’m going to remove my foot.”
He waited until Cobias blinked, then looked down at Artur, who was hidden by grass up to the waist. “But don’t blame me if you get stamped on.”
“Ah, she’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Artur, then he yelped and jumped back as Dan removed his foot and the woman’s open hand thwacked down on the spot where he’d been standing. “Shoite, come on now, Marnie, quit acting the maggot. Joke’s over, sweetheart.”
“Joke?” Marnie hissed. “Do I look like I’m laughing, ‘chaun?”
“No,” Artur admitted. “Which is a shame, because ye look fecking gorgeous when ye laugh. The way yer nose all crinkles up and—Urk! Feck off!”
He legged it as she dived at him, both hands grasping like claws. “Look, can’t we just talk about this like fecking grown-ups?” he cried.
“You made me look a fool!” Marnie spat.
“No offense, lady,” Dan said. “But right now, the only one making you look a fool is you.”
He gestured with his head to the gathered onlookers. Even the children had stopped playing in the fountain and were watching her with open mouths as she scrambled around in the grass.
Marnie looked from face to face. A set of gills or fins or something along those lines rippled on either side of her neck, then quickly folded flat. If Dan had to take a stab at what the gesture meant, he’d say it was some flavor of shame or embarrassment. She stopped trying to kill Artur, anyway, and jumped quickly to her feet.
“Fine,” she said through gritted teeth. “Let’s talk.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Cobia, stepping between them. “The prisoners are expected in the auditorium. We do not have time for… personal matters.”
“Prisoners?” said Marnie.
“Wait. We’re still prisoners?” asked Ollie. “I thought you let us go.”
“We let you out of your cells. For now,” Cobia said. “That does not mean you aren’t still prisoners here.” He looked Dan up and down, his already wide nostrils becoming even more so. “Especially him.”
He motioned for them all to step onto the walkway. Artur made a show of looking disappointed.
“Ah, really? Well, that’s a shame, that is. I’d have loved to stick around and catch up wit’ ye, Marnie, but what can we do? Still, great to see ye. Give me love to yer da’.”
“He wants your head on the end of a pencil,” Marnie said.
“OK, well maybe not love then, exactly. Me best regards, maybe.”
He hopped up onto the walkway and waved as he was carried along. “Bye now, b’bye!”
“Screw you, ‘chaun!”
Ollie and Finn stepped on the walkway beside him. “Why does she call you ‘Con’?” Ollie asked.
“What can I say? She’s a complicated woman,” Artur said, still waving. “Cracking old pair o’ tits on her, though. Real beauties.”
Finn grinned, but then stopped when he saw Ollie looking at him. “Inappropriate,” he murmured, trying to look disapproving.
“Nice to meet you,” said Dan, stepping onto the moving path.
“Fonk you,” Marnie retorted.
Cobia shot her a stern look, but said nothing as he joined the others on the walkway. Barging past Dan, he made his way to the front. He stood straight and upright, his hands crossed behind him as the walkway curved towards an open doorway just ahead.
“Now, assuming no further interruptions,” he said, “we shall be there momentarily.”
As they drew closer, Dan saw six women all bunched together, their expressions ranging from ‘anxious’ to ‘grief-stricken’ and covering pretty much the full range in between. They hugged, supported and consoled each other, a few of them turning to gaze imploringly at Dan and the others as they trundled past.
The path carried them through the door and into the most mind-bogglingly confusing room any of them had ever seen. The ground on either side of the path fell away, revealing a deep chasm-like space beneath them. More paths crisscrossed through the empty space, connecting other doorways on hundreds of different levels.
Looking up, Dan saw easily another forty or fifty walkways trundling along above them. Like the one they were riding, most of them fed directly into a wide central column that ran from somewhere far below to somewhere high above. The whole place was like a complex spider’s web, and they were currently stuck on one of its strands.
They weren’t the only ones. Hundreds – thousands – of blue-green people rode the walkways. Some chatted freely to friends. Others rode in solitude, their heads down as they tapped the screen of some handheld gizmo or other.
The ocean was further away here, like a dome had been placed on top of the original dome. Through gaps in the walkways, Dan caught glimpses of distant lights moving smoothly through the water. Submarines, he guessed. A lot of submarines.
“Please stand clear of the edge,” Cobia intoned.
“No shoite,” Artur muttered.
Ollie and Finn shuffled into single file, though they managed to keep holding hands. “What is this place?” Ollie said. She said it in a whisper in case her usual volume would somehow make the whole complex structure come crashing down around their ears.
Cobia ignored the question. He glanced back at them as the walkway trundled them towards the central column. “This may initially seem… unpleasant,” he warned. “But there is no cause for alarm. I assure you it is quite safe.”
“Quite safe?” asked Ollie. “Can you make it very safe?”
“I meant ‘quite’ as in ‘very,’” said Cobia, visibly irritated. “Not ‘quite’ as in ‘partially.’”
They rolled in through an opening in the central column then staggered as the path unexpectedly shoved them off onto a spongy floor. It was the color of kelp, and emitted a faint bio-luminescence, not unlike the moss in the sewers, only fainter. It swallowed the sound of their footsteps as Cobia led them into the center of the circular room.
“Stop here. Stand apart,” he instructed. He motioned to Ollie and Finn. “You two, step away from each other.”
“Good luck with that,” Dan muttered, but Ollie and Finn did as they were told. Their fingers remained entwined as they side-stepped in opposite directions, their touch lingering for as long as possible.
“Good,” said Cobia, although he looked far from impressed. He nodded. “Now then. Try to relax.”
This had the opposite effect to the one intended. Dan tensed immediately. “What do you mean? Why do we need to—?”
Some gloop fell on him. A lot of gloop. It hit him from above with a sploosh and cascaded like gunge down over his shoulders, back and chest.
He tried to shout his objections, but the stuff had covered his face, trapping his words in there with him. His hearing became muted, but because the goo was transparent, he could see reasonably clearly.
Cobia, Ollie and Finn were all in the process of being coated, too. Whoever had dropped the stuff obviously hadn’t made any allowances for size, and Artur was current trapped beneath a gelatinous mound of the stuff. He was completely frozen in place, like a prehistoric man perfectly preserved in a block of ice. His eyes darted around freely. They briefly met Dan’s, then Artur’s blob rocketed up towards the ceiling thirty feet or so overhead.
Dan couldn’t move his head enough to follow Artur’s flight. He struggled against the gloop, but it had cocooned him fully now, just as it had done to Ollie and the other two. Dan watched helplessly as first Ollie, then Finn streaked upwards.
Before he had a chance to figure out what the fonk was going on, Dan felt his center of gravity shift. He lurched into the air and saw the floor fall away from him. Raising his eyes, he saw no sign of Ollie or the others. What he did see was the ceiling. It was approaching really rather rapidly and had a worryingly solid appeara
nce that didn’t bode well for the next few seconds or so.
Instinctively, Dan tried to close his eyes, but the gloop held them open. He hissed as his head collided with the ceiling. Rather than come to an abrupt spine-shattering stop, though, he felt himself speeding up.
There was a schlomp sort of sound as he passed through the ceiling and the floor above. To his surprise, this part of the column looked nothing like the one they’d just left. In fact, from what he could gather it wasn’t part of the column at all.
He was rocketing along a water-filled tube that was barely wide enough for his goo-covered frame. The hardened gunge made a series of echoing screeches as it bounced off the tube’s narrow walls, rocketing him around its many twists and turns.
The tube itself was clear, but he was moving too quickly to really grasp what was outside it. More water, he guessed, although it could equally be outer space, or even the Malwhere. It was dark, mostly, with the occasional glimpse of light or suggestion of a shape. Nothing helpful, anyway, and nothing that told him where or when he was likely to emerge from the pipe.
He didn’t have long to wait. He hit another barricade with the same schlomp sound as before, then his momentum was replaced by a sense of sudden deceleration.
The solid gloop became just plain old gloop. He scraped enough of it out of his eyes to see that Ollie and Finn were both standing in front of him in relatively the same position they had been before. Down on the ground, Artur clawed and gasped his way free of the sludge mound, then spent several seconds bemoaning the fact that his outfit was, “Fecking ruined!”
Dan wasn’t really listening. No one was. Instead, they were gazing up at the roof of the dome which was now just twenty feet or so above their heads. It felt closer, like the ocean was suspended right above them within touching distance.
Clouds of colorful fish streaked by like fireworks. Vibrant glowing eels rippled through the water, sparks flickering from their dancing bodies. Tiny specks of light zipped this way and that like shooting stars, painting trails behind them.
Beyond all this, the darkness was layered in blues and blacks, suggesting the immense scale of the ocean, and the promise of everything it held.
Dead in the Water_A Space Team Universe Novel Page 20
