The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  If she'd been alone there's no way anybody would've bought the project, least of all a boys' club like Benthic Petroleum. But there was Bud. They'd go with Lindsey out to the prototype, Deepcore I, listening to her in the car, getting more nervous all the time, and then at the pier they'd meet Bud. They looked at him like an angel come to rescue them from Hell. They stuck to Bud like he was their big brother. Which he was, in a way. These guys wore suits all the time, they had haircuts every two weeks, they played racquetball, they got their tans in a booth or on a beach. They looked at Bud and saw a guy who got his tan and his strength honestly, by working with his body out in the weather. They saw a guy who didn't go underwater in little snorkel outfits to look at the fish - he had learned to dive because guys on his rig were going down into the water, and he believed he couldn't ask any man to do something he had never done himself.

  "Hey, Bud, I envy you," they all said, every one of them. "Living this close to the sea, testing yourself all the time."

  Bud didn't argue with the suits. Let them get off on their macho-worship. But he always thought the same thing: Only a fool tests himself against the sea. The sea's going to win every time. No, you don't go down in that water unless you know you already got the ocean licked. You got to know every bit of your equipment is working, you got to know exactly what your equipment can do and what it can't do. You go down there knowing that it's no test. And then when you come up, you can look out over the water and say, I beat you, you hungry old bitch, I got in and I got out, you didn't swallow me this time.

  That's what Deepcore meant to Bud. Going down into the water. Going deep, living there with all that pressure inside you, all around you, all those thirty or forty or fifty atmospheres poking and prying right there in your lungs, in your blood, in every cell of your body - but you're breathing, you're alive, and when it's all done, you come up and feel the sunlight on you and you won again. No contest.

  Bud didn't like contests.

  Which is why the marriage didn't work for long. Lindsey treated it like a contest. What bothered her most was that she always won. She'd come home raging about something that Benthic did or coldly furious about somebody's incompetence on the project, and Bud would listen patiently, sympathetically, saying little. It didn't matter - eventually he'd say something wrong, or not say enough at the right moment, and then Lindsey would lash out at him. Accuse him, attack him, say terrible things. And he'd answer, angry, hurt, there'd be a real fight - and then he'd go silent, he'd leave the room, and when he came back it was over, he wouldn't fight anymore. It drove her crazy, though she didn't know why.

  The worst was when he "handled" her. She'd seen him in action, watched him, first with the guys on his rig, then with the test crew on Deepcore I, and she saw how he noticed where tension and conflict were getting out of hand, how he'd come in with the right word, separate two guys at the right time, before they even realized they were starting to hate each other. How Bud always knew how to keep a group working together in the right direction. And then, when the two of them were fighting, she'd see him try to keep their marriage working, using exactly the same techniques. Giving in to her when he could, joking her out of bad tempers, being teasing or tender at just the right moments, so that she'd laugh or love him for a moment, till she caught herself.

  She hated it when he did that. It was just like her mother - manipulating people to get them to do whatever she wanted. She was not going to fall for it the way her father did. What Lindsey could never see was the difference between her mom and Bud. Her mom always manipulated people to get her own way, at their expense. Bud handled people to help them get what they wanted. Cathy Thomas stole from people's souls, making them smaller and smaller the more she had to do with them. Bud helped people get along together, accomplish things together, and the more he worked with them, the stronger and better and more confident they got. It was the difference between a healer and a poisoner but all Lindsey could see was the subtle way they both administered their potions.

  There was only one place where Bud didn't give in to Lindsey, and that was his crew. She could snipe at him at home, and he'd go on loving her. But if she did anything to hurt morale in the crew - accusing somebody of doing a bad job, criticizing anything they did - Bud would shut her down so fast that sometimes even Lindsey was left speechless. She didn't understand it - he wouldn't fight to stand up for himself, but he'd fight to protect his people.

  She convinced herself that this meant he didn't really love her. She didn't realize that Bud's crew was as important to him as Deepcore was to Lindsey. His crew was the one thing he had created in his life: a group of men and women who trusted each other, who liked each other, who got along well enough not to kill each other when they had to stay together for weeks on end - all without any kind of military discipline, without losing any sense of their freedom and independence. It was a delicate thing to get a bunch of individuals to work together willingly. He didn't need to have an outsider like Lindsey come in and start bossing them around like she thought she owned them. It made them defiant, and when they did go along with what she wanted, it made them feel defeated; either way, it hurt morale. Bud had to protect his crew from her or lose all he'd worked for.

  It was inevitable. Since this was the one point where he'd stand up to her instead of trying to "handle" her, she kept coming back to it, again and again, criticizing his crew, blaming him in front of them for everything that went wrong. Even as she did it, Lindsey knew it was wrong, knew that if she weakened Bud's crew, got them surly and rebellious, then they'd get passed over for the first trial well. That was the worst thing she could do to Bud. He'd never forgive her.

  She had married Bud because she needed him to make her project succeed. Now it wasn't working that way. The project had its funding. Now it was her turn to give Bud his chance. If being married to the project engineer would help his crew get assigned to the trial, well, then she would have stayed married to him, she was sure of that. But it wouldn't help, it would only hurt. For his own sake, she had to divorce him. Had to.

  Had to get away from him, from his always being so damned decent to her. Had to get away from the fact that Bud's crew treated him better than she knew how to. Had to get away from the constant reminders that their marriage was miserable, and that it was probably her fault.

  So she filed for separation just as Deepcore II got ready for initial tests.

  It worked. No more fighting with Bud at home, because he wasn't there. A lot less tension at work because they hadn't been fighting at home. Their relationship now was all business. No more emotional involvement. Just get the job done. She even got involved with a boyfriend - a sort of recreational love affair with an ambitious young executive working in Benthic's resource-development division.

  And Bud took the separation OK. Why shouldn't he? What was the marriage to him anymore, except a lot of pain, a lot of tension? What was the divorce, except the end of the fighting? A blessed relief? That's what he told himself. Glad to be rid of her. Marrying her was the stupidest mistake I ever made.

  Everything was fine now. Nothing to distract him from training with his crew. Except Bud couldn't stop thinking about her, couldn't stop worrying about her, couldn't stop hating the guy who was sleeping with her now, couldn't stop longing to have her with him. He thought maybe it was just the sex that he missed. He tried to get something going with other women in Galveston, where they were testing Deepcore II. But when it came time to take them home, Bud couldn't do it. Didn't want to do it. He still wore the ring, dammit. He was still married to Lindsey. Even when he hated her, he loved her. Even when he was so damn pissed off at her that he wanted to smack her with a two-by-four, he loved her, looked out for her, wanted to make her happy.

  That's the way it is sometimes. You love somebody even when you can't stand them. It made Bud really hope he'd get assigned to the first test drill. Months underwater with his crew. With his crew, and without Lindsey Brigman.

  Chapter 3
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  Coffey

  One more person you've got to meet before we go on. Lt. Hiram Coffey, U.S. Navy, SEALS.

  When you see a guy in uniform, you don't see the guy at all - just the uniform. Whatever you think of the military, that's what you think about him. Maybe to you he's a hero. Maybe to you he's a trigger-happy killer. Maybe to you he's an unfeeling robot. But the guy inside the uniform, he isn't a hero and he isn't a killer and he isn't a robot, he's a guy. He was a kid once, and then he grew up into the kind of person who for one reason or another joined up. He saw that uniform, and he knew he had to get inside it, even though it would cost him, even though he'd give up a lot of freedom, maybe a lot of other things, too. There are as many different reasons for putting on that uniform as there are guys who wear them.

  Hiram Coffey wasn't a rough kid. If he'd grown up in some "Leave It to Beaver" town, he would've played baseball and hide-and-go-seek in the neighborhood. He would've come in when his mother called and counted to ten when he got mad instead of punching anybody. The worst thing he probably ever would've done was steal a Penthouse magazine and share it with his best friend.

  Trouble was, the neighborhood he grew up in wasn't the kind you see on TV except in cop shows. His dad walked out when Hiram was ten, and by the time he turned twelve, him and his mom were at rock bottom. The two of them lived in the second story of a crummy rundown fourplex in a neighborhood of East L.A. that needed real bad to get torn down and replaced by something better, like a freeway.

  Even in hard times, though, Hiram Coffey tried to be a good kid. His definition of good wasn't too complicated, either. Good was his mom. Whatever she needed, whatever she asked for, he tried to oblige. After all, didn't she ride the bus forty-five minutes each way to get to her crummy typing job at a crummy second-rate sign company, just to buy food and clothes for him? So he didn't kneel down in his jeans if he could help it, so they wouldn't wear out and need patches, and if he scuffed up his shoes he felt like he was as low as a hammered dog turd.

  It's not like his mom ran him around on the end of a stick or anything like that. She trusted him and gave him a lot of freedom. It wasn't her doing it to Hiram Coffey. It was Hiram Coffey doing it to himself. He just didn't feel like it was his right to decide what ought to happen. But once his mom said what was right and good, well then, he'd near to kill himself trying to see to it that right and good won out.

  It made him a serious kid. He could laugh and joke, sure, but his face always settled right back to this firm no-nonsense look. He never clowned around in class, 'cause Mom said he had to take education seriously and get good grades or he'd never get into college and that's where he had to end up if he was ever going to get out of East L.A. He never just hung around on the street 'cause Mom said the kind of boys that did that was no good and they'd never amount to anything except maybe ending up on the post office wall with a list of phony names.

  There was this kid in Hiram's neighborhood, named Darrel Woodward. He was about fifteen and big and he scared people. Not cause he was strong and dangerous. In fact he was kind of flabby and slow. What scared you was his eyes, always kind of half closed, and his mouth, which was always sort of smiling at a joke that nobody got but him. When you saw him, you knew that he'd do anything. Things like being fair and decent, that was for suckers. He'd beat up a baby if he felt like it. If he fought with you and got you down, he wouldn't stop, he'd go right on and poke out your eye if he wanted to.

  And when you know that about somebody, it gives him power over you. As long as he leaves you alone, you don't mess with him. When he stops leaving you alone, then you try to go along with what he wants so he'll leave you alone again. Above all, you never let him know that after he touches you the first thing you got to do is go wash the place he touched you, scrub it till it bleeds, because having his mark on you makes you want to puke.

  That's how Hiram felt about Darrel Woodward. Darrel Woodward hung around in the neighborhood and Hiram stayed out of his way. Now and then Darrel would notice him, though. Call him over. "Hey Folgers! Hey Maxwell House!" Hiram didn't act offended at jokes on his name. He just came over to where Darrel was standing with his cronies gathered around him. They were all of them waiting to see what kind of show Darrel was going to put on, using Hiram Coffey as the butt of the joke.

  "Hey, Coffey, I hear you got your name cause your dad's really a coon."

  Hiram didn't say a thing. He didn't argue, he didn't agree. The less he said, the sooner Darrel would leave him alone.

  "I hear your dad's got him a big black dick, and that's why your mom ran off, cause he was nearly killing her with it all the time."

  Hiram shrugged.

  "Didn't she nearly choke on it, Coffey? I heard that's why she left him, cause she was sick of drinking Coffey."

  Darrel's friends all laughed real loud and nasty. Hiram didn't say a thing.

  "You got a big black dick, Coffey?"

  Hiram shook his head.

  "Come on, Hiram, don't hold out on us. Give us a look, Hiram. Come on, unzip your pants and whip it out here, give us a look at your hose."

  Hiram just stood there. He wasn't going to obey, but he wasn't going to run, either. Stood there till Darrel's friends took him down and got his pants and shorts off him. He didn't wriggle around trying to get away or cover himself. He didn't argue when Darrel made a bunch of jokes about how tiny his penis was. He didn't plead when Darrel whipped out his pocket knife and made out as how he was going to cut it off. Finally Darrel said, "Shit, his dick's too small to cut off. I bet somebody already did it." When the laugh was over, he said, "Let him go."

  Hiram Coffey got up from the sidewalk. He still didn't act mad or cover himself or anything. Here's the thing: He was angry, all right, but he wasn't humiliated. You can only be humiliated if you care what people think, but Hiram didn't care diddly-squat about what Darrel and his friends thought. The only person whose opinion mattered to Hiram Coffey was his mom. So the only thought going through his mind was: I have to get my pants back cause Mom can't afford another pair, and I have to get inside the house without her knowing what these guys did to me or she'll worry about me all the time.

  Does this make Coffey sound like a mama's boy? I hope you can tell the difference. Coffey wasn't trying to please his mama in order to get something from her. That would mean he was thinking of himself. No, the way he pictured the world, it was his family on one side, and everybody else on the other. Mom and him, they were us, and everybody else was them. He had to do what was good for us, that's all, and it was Mom's job to decide what that was. Hiram's job was to help all he could, do what he was asked, and make sure she never had to worry about him, make sure he didn't add one extra burden to her shoulders.

  "Get out of here," Darrel said. "What are you waiting for?"

  "I need my pants back," said Hiram. His voice was as steady as if he was holding a ten-gauge shotgun.

  Darrel grabbed his pants from the boy who was holding them, and held them up in the air. Darrel was about a foot taller than Hiram. "Come and get them."

  Hiram just stood there.

  "You must not want them real bad, then, if you won't even come get them."

  "My mom can't afford to buy me another pair," said Hiram. He wasn't a bit worried about letting on how poor they were. His pride depended on getting the pants back, not pretending he wasn't poor. Everybody in this neighborhood was poor. In fact, there wasn't a one of them there who didn't know right off that Hiram was right - stripping a boy naked in the street was funny, but stealing his pants so his mom had to buy new ones, that wasn't funny.

  Darrel was no fool. He could feel the boys around him kind of shifting their weight, feeling a little ashamed. The joke had gone too far.

  Darrel tossed the pants in Hiram's face. Hiram saw his shorts lying on the sidewalk, and he went and picked them up. Then he turned around and walked across the street and up a few houses till he was home. He didn't stop and put his pants on. He didn't carry his pants so
they'd cover him up. It's like he didn't even notice he was bare-assed. Darrel tried yelling out some ugly jokes at him as he walked away, but hardly anybody laughed. Pretty soon Hiram was up the stairs and he unlocked the door to their apartment and he went inside.

  That was Hiram's pride. He got his pants back, and he got inside before Mom got home from work, so she never knew. And as for Darrel, there was nothing he could do that mattered to Hiram, as long as the family was OK. Hiram just plain didn't give a damn.

  I told you about that one time because you have to realize that Hiram wasn't holding a grudge against Darrel. He didn't care that much about Darrel Woodward. If everything had gone on the same way, Hiram would've stayed out of Darrel's way all he could and eventually Darrel would've been drafted or addicted to some drug or killed by some punk from another neighborhood who was even meaner than him.

  But things didn't go on the same way. Darrel got tired of picking on kids and started going after bigger game. He'd get his boys to knock grocery bags out of old ladies' arms and let air out of people's tires. He'd order them to steal candy and cigarettes for him. And when adults yelled at him, he'd just laugh in their faces. He didn't even try to run away. He just laughed at them. It was a new thing in those days, in that neighborhood, to have a kid show no respect at all for adults.

  What brought things to a head was Mr. Ling, who ran the little corner market. He caught a couple of Darrel's boys stealing Cokes out of his cooler, and he called the cops on them. They got hauled away to the police station, and all the time Mr. Ling was saying, "About time somebody put a stop to these gangs. I won't put up with it anymore. You boys won't get away with it anymore."

  It was some kind of crisis for Darrel Woodward. The cops coming into the neighborhood and taking away two of his boys they showed who had real power, and it wasn't Darrel. Even though the boys' parents got them out before dark, it was a real blow to him.