Isle of Man

by Ryan Winfield

  The professor clears his throat.

  “Ahem. We need to get moving now, I already set the locks to lower.”

  I turn back to Hannah.

  “Fine, but I’m not letting you stay here alone. No way. Someone either stays on with you, or none of us goes at all.”

  Hannah drills me with an angry stare, but I stand my ground.

  “You need the professor to pilot the sub,” she says. “And there’s no way Jimmy would let you go without him. I know that much. So I guess that leaves Red.”

  I look at Red, having entirely forgotten for a minute that he was even there. He raises his hand meekly, almost as if he were asking permission to speak.

  “Yes,” I say, “what is it, Red?”

  “I just want to say, for the record, that I’ll stay if you need me to, but after last night I’m ready to go.”

  I smile, remembering our talk.

  “I know you are.”

  Several quiet moments pass with only the sound of our breathing audible in the almost absolute silence. A fan turns on in a building somewhere.

  I step to Hannah and wrap my arms around her. She leans her head on my shoulder and I smell her wet hair, the scent of shampoo. My guts are knotted up and aching with heartbreak already, but I don’t cry. We stand together hugging for a long time, neither of us moving to pull away. I know when we do it will be time to say goodbye, and I have no idea what to say.

  I think about the first time I saw her from the bluff. It was sunny then and she was wearing that white skirt and knocking tennis balls across the net. I remember Jimmy hoisting me up to look over the fence and her standing there with her hands on her hips. She told me Aubrey was a funny name for a boy. Man, it seems like ages ago already. Almost like another life.

  “Give us ninety days,” I hear the professor say. “If we’re not back by then, bring up some help from Holocene II and make a plan. I’d suggest any of the managers from the loading bay. They’re practical people.”

  Hannah nods, her head still resting on my shoulder.

  “Other than that, try to have as little contact as possible with them. They don’t expect to hear much from us up here.”

  Suddenly, I feel Red standing beside me on the dock. I pull away from Hannah and turn and look him in the eye. He nods, seeming to understand what I want to say but can’t. With just his eyes he promises to look after her.

  Then I turn and climb aboard the submarine and descend into the hatch without looking back.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 7

  Whales, Sharks, and Great Apes

  The door eases open.

  “I don’t want to talk.”

  Junior slinks in and lays his head on my bunk, even though I know Jimmy cracked the door to let him in.

  I’m upset with everyone right now. I’m upset with the professor for pressuring us to leave. I’m upset with Jimmy for not helping me convince Hannah to come along. I’m really upset with Hannah for staying behind at the last minute. But mostly I’m upset with myself for being relieved that she didn’t come. There’s just been so much arguing between us lately.

  Oh, well. At least she’ll be safe.

  Juniors licks my hand.

  “You’re a good boy, Junior,” I say, scratching his ears. “What do you think? Will we be able to find this key and get back safely and put all this behind us?”

  He whines, turning his head for a deeper scratch.

  “What’s that? You’ve had enough adventure? Me too, little fella, me too. Let’ go see what Jimmy’s up to.”

  Panic grips me when I discover the submarine is empty. Then I notice the open hatch and climb out onto the deck and find Jimmy and the professor sitting with their backs against the sail, watching the dim cavern walls slide past. The only light comes from the water itself, which seems to be glowing green, and it throws moving reflections onto the rock walls, painting a watery silhouette of the passing submarine there.

  I drop down beside Jimmy.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  We sit silent for a time, listening to the bow wave splash softly against the cavern walls. It’s very hypnotic. We seem to be moving at a steady clip, but if the submarine is throwing a wake, it’s too far back for me to hear it.

  “Hey, wait just a minute.” My voice echoes off the walls. “How come we’re not going through any locks?”

  The professor chuckles.

  “Good question, young man. We are passing through locks, we’re just not stopping.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s the beauty of these step locks. The journey’s length of nearly three hundred kilometers combined with its 1,400 meter drop, allows for very long locks. So, you see, the water lowers while we’re moving and we roll into the next lock without pause. It’s all timed perfectly for a sixteen hour trip at ten knots.”

  “Seems funny to call them step locks then, if there aren’t even any steps,” I reply.

  “I see your point there,” the professor says. “Perhaps we should call them escalator locks.”

  “What’s an escalator?” Jimmy asks.

  “Oh, just an old moving staircase that they used to put in shopping malls.”

  “What’s a shopping mall?”

  “Ha!” he says, looking over at Jimmy and me. “Mostly just a place where kids like you could hang out and get into trouble. Something from long before your time.”

  We spend the next fourteen hours or so getting used to life on board the submarine. The shower is small and cramped, but I feel much better after letting the hot water run over my body. My shirt smells like wet fox from Jimmy’s using it to dry Junior, but I pull it on along with Dr. Radcliffe’s old pants and happily stuff my zipsuit away in a drawer next to my pipe.

  I teach Jimmy to use the electric cooktop in the galley. At first, he won’t go near it, fearing the red, glowing swirls beneath the glass. But I explain that it works just like a cook fire, and soon he’s stirring up a pot of potato soup that he insists on picking himself from among the cans, even though he can’t read the label. The galley even has a rack of spices, synthetically produced down in Holocene II, and Jimmy gets so excited by their exotic smells that he mixes everything in, making the soup nearly inedible when he’s finished. Still, the professor and I choke it down and tell him it’s good. Only Junior won’t lie, leaving his bowl untouched on the floor.

  I’m reclining in my bunk with my lesson slate, reading an ancient collection of stories that chronicle the lives of fictitious people on Mars, when the professor pokes his head into the bunkroom and says: “We’re almost out!”—meaning, I assume, free of the tunnel and into the Pacific Ocean.

  Jimmy and I climb onto the deck. The channel is no longer illuminated, and the dark stretch of water ahead leads to an arched opening that shimmers with a silvery brilliance. As we near the end of the long tunnel, small waves meet us, lapping at the side of the submarine. We glide beneath the cavernous arch and spill out into the wide expanse of the moonlit Pacific.

  The moon hangs low above the horizon to the southwest, sending a silver highway across the water’s surface to meet us. Jimmy takes a deep breath beside me then lets it out. In the silver light I can see his eyes are closed, his hair rustling in the salty breeze. He’s smiling.

  The professor guides the submarine several kilometers out to sea before leaving the silver highway and turning us south to follow the coast toward the southern tip of the continent and the Panama Canal. The distant shoreline rolls past, shrouded in deep shadows, gradually growing clearer as the eastern sky fades from black to deep blue. I’m somewhat relieved when the professor calls for us to come back down, because I wouldn’t be surprised if our course takes us past the cove where Jimmy’s family was slaughtered. We don’t need to be reminded.

  The professor seals the main hatch behind us and pushes us toward the control room where he waves us into chairs and sits himself in front of the controls. Then
he throws a switch and floods the ballasts, and the submarine drops beneath the waves and all becomes quiet.

  “How deep can this sub go?” I ask.

  “Submarine,” he corrects, cocking a busy eyebrow at me. “We say submarine or boat, but never sub, and never ship.”

  “Okay,” I say, rolling my eyes at Jimmy. “How deep can this submarine go?”

  “Maybe three hundred meters or so,” he replies. “Used to dive deeper before we installed the acrylic windows.”

  Jimmy’s face lights up.

  “It has windows?”

  The professor grins and reaches for a switch.

  Near the front of the submarine, on either side of Jimmy and me, interior wall panels slide open, revealing the blue ocean beyond. A strange sight out the windows makes my heart skip.

  The morning sun slants into the blue water with gorgeous rays that cut like luminescent blades through a sort of floating forest. Giant, black cylinders, that look themselves like vertical submarines, hover with their upturned noses just beneath the surface. The professor cranks the wheel and dodges left to miss hitting one, and I get a glimpse of how truly enormous they are. He quickly floods the ballasts with more water and drops us beneath the behemoth floating obstacles.

  “That was close,” the professor says. “I’ll need to check the sensors and see why the alarm didn’t sound.”

  Jimmy and I stand glued to the windows, looking up at the floating forest, now just dim shadows above us.

  “What are they?”

  “Physeter macrocephalus.”

  “Physter what?” I ask, assuming the professor is speaking German again, or whatever language he uses when he’s excited.

  “Sperm whales,” he says.

  “Are they dead?” Jimmy asks.”

  “No, no. They’re just sleeping.”

  Jimmy shakes his head with awe.

  “I seen a lot of whales,” he says, “but I ain’t never seen one sleepin’ before.”

  After the excitement of the whales, we spend the next six days in relative boredom, trapped on board the submarine. The professor teaches us each to operate the controls, and we work into an easy system, taking turns relieving him so he can sleep, although it seems he only takes the shortest of naps.

  We stay at a shallow depth most of the time, but still, the silence is almost absolute. Junior spends many hours lying in the corner, looking depressed with his head on his paws. During the afternoons, we plead with the professor to take us up to the surface and he usually agrees, but only after much grumbling about the wasted energy consumed by the friction of the bow wave and wake, which I’m happy to point out costs nothing since the batteries are recharged by the sun.

  “Nothing costs nothing,” the professor says.

  Every day when we pop the hatch, the eastern landscape visible in the distance is more arid, and the air feels warmer. It’s torture to sit on the deck and watch the blue water sliding by without being able to get in, but the sun feels good on my face, and the salty breeze is a welcome relief from the unnatural purity of the submarine’s filtered air. Even though it’s winter, Jimmy goes bareback, and his skin takes on its former deep tan. Mine picks up a little color, too. We spend many hours on deck, watching the white churn of water disappear into a glassy calm behind the submarine. Junior joins us most days, pacing the borders of the small deck, stopping only on occasion to look into the water or to hold his nose in the air and read some important news sent on olfactory channels only he can receive.

  Jimmy nudges me.

  “You see that?”

  “See what?”

  “There!” he says. “Starboard side ahead.”

  I chuckle because until yesterday’s boating lesson from the professor, neither of us even knew what starboard meant. I stop laughing when I turn and see what he’s pointing at.

  Not ten meters from us and coming up fast is a giant octopus bigger than any I’ve ever imagined existed, its floating carcass being ravaged by a pack of thrashing white sharks. The octopus’s orange flesh bobs in the low swell, and countless fins and open mouths of razor teeth encircle it, jostling for position. As we cruise past, I catch sight of an open mouth, big enough for a man to dive into and disappear, and when it clamps down and tears into the dead octopus, the shark’s visible eye rolls back into its head with gluttonous ecstasy before rolling back and focusing its milky stare on us as we pass.

  I shiver at the sight.

  “I’m never asking the professor to stop and let us swim again.”

  “I dun’ think we need to worry about swimmin’ any time soon,” Jimmy says, pointing to the horizon ahead.

  A dark wall of clouds races toward us, pushing enormous swells ahead of it. The first set crashes into the submarine just as Jimmy seizes Junior by the neck, nearly sending all three of us overboard. Soaking wet and panicked, with images of the sharks still swimming in my head, we scramble to the hatch and descend into the safety of the submarine, double checking the seal before stumbling down the listing passageway and joining the professor in the control room. He floods the ballasts and drops us beneath the waves into the calm and quiet world that forever resides just below the surface.

  Two days later, we arrive in the evening at the entrance of the great canal. The professor brings us to the surface, and we all gather on deck and gaze at the canal in the lingering light of a phenomenal sunset. The canal looks like an enormous river inlet, except the water is flowing into it instead of out.

  “Why’s it flowing the wrong way?”

  The professor doesn’t respond for a long time, and I begin to think he didn’t hear my question. Just when I’ve forgotten that I even asked it, he says:

  “Water never flows the wrong way. There used to be a series of locks that lifted ships up to a manmade lake, allowing them to cross Panama before being lowered into the Caribbean on their way to the Atlantic. The system was useless by the time we discovered it after the war, the dam having been bombed and the lake long since drained out to sea. So we did something the old French once wanted to do, back when man still thought he could shape and control the land. We a cut sea-level canal from one ocean to the other.”

  I’m startled by an audible spray of mist and notice a pod of passing porpoises, their humps rolling above the pink sunset water before diving quietly beneath the surface again.

  The professor continues:

  “The Pacific side is slightly higher, mostly due to water density, so what you’re seeing here is the world’s only river that flows constantly from one ocean directly into another. It was an unhappy necessity for us to cut it. We have charges buried somewhere in the channel walls to cave it in once we no longer need it. And the sooner we blow it the better, if you ask me.”

  “Why’s that?” I ask.

  The professor ignores my question. “We can wait out here for daylight, or cross in the dark. I don’t much care either way. It’s up to you two.” Then he disappears into the hatch.

  “What do you think?” I ask Jimmy, now that we’re alone on deck. “Wait ’til morning or go now.”

  “I dun’ see no reason to wait,” Jimmy says.

  “Me either. Hey, does the professor seem nervous about something to you?”

  “Maybe,” Jimmy says. “But he’s prob’ly jus’ in one of his moods. This was the first time I even seen him up here.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I say. “I don’t think he likes the sun.”

  The canal is too shallow in places to traverse its entire length fully submerged, and Jimmy and I stay topside and watch as the dark jungle creeps by on either side of us. The submarine is being pulled by the strong currents and without the bow wave or wake, an eerie silence descends over our crossing. As the red horizon behind us bleeds fully into black, the jungle recedes into the night ahead, and only a wide swath of winding starlit sky is visible above the high edges of the flowing canal.

  “Sure is peaceful,” Jimmy says, breaking a long silence.

  I reach into my
pocket and take out my father’s pipe, using the last of the tobacco he gave me to load the bowl.

  I nudge Jimmy.

  “You got your strike-a-light?”

  There’s no wind at all, and it only takes two good sparks to coax the pipe lit. We pass it back and forth, tasting the sweet tobacco on our tongues. Jimmy takes to it right away.

  The night is so calm, and the air so still, that it would be hard to tell that we are even moving if the smoke didn’t leave our mouths and rush aft, passing in clouds of shadow through the light of the open hatch before making its way out into the night. Or maybe the smoke stays still and it’s us who moves. Depends on where you’re standing, I guess.

  When the last of the tobacco is gone to ash, I tap the pipe clean against my palm and pass it to Jimmy.

  “I want you to have it.”

  “No way,” Jimmy says, trying to give it back.

  I hold up my hands, refusing it.

  “I mean it, Jimmy. I want you to have it.”

  “But it was yer dad’s.”

  “Yes, it was. And he would still be imprisoned in Eden, in that awful brain tank, if it weren’t for you helping me set him free. And you know what else? That pipe would be clogged up in the gullet of some vulture that picked apart my corpse if you hadn’t saved me when I stumbled into your life.”

  “You more’n paid it back,” Jimmy says. “You’s saved me now at least twice.”

  “Still, I want you to have it.”

  “How ’bout I hold onto it for ya?” Jimmy says, slipping the pipe somewhere safe inside his clothing.

  I’m about to tell him again that it’s his to keep when something hard slams into the deck right beside me. Before I can even react, another missile whips past my right ear and bangs against the deck behind us. Suddenly, it’s raining rocks. Rocks and clods of dirt. They hammer down on the deck in a thunderous riot from both directions on the banks above.

  Jimmy and I scramble toward the open hatch with our arms over our heads. A stone rockets past us and ricochets down into the passageway. We manage to get inside and seal the hatch just in time to shield an even heavier hailstorm.