The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  And there was a little metal suitcase, just the thing the SEALS would use for keeping their best secrets - it was right under the bench, within easy reach of Lindsey's left foot. Coffey and Schoenick were so busy reading, they wouldn't notice if she reached out her toes like this and popped the left-hand latch like that, almost silently, and got her toes inside and lifted the lid of the case. Just to get a peek inside. It wasn't papers. She caught a glimpse: silver-colored metal, shiny, ribbed; a cylinder maybe three inches in diameter.

  Coffey didn't even look up. He stamped his foot down on the lid of the case so hard that if Lindsey's reflexes hadn't been so good, if she hadn't pulled her toes away in time, they would have been dealing with five little amputation wounds with the minimal first-aid supplies in the pressure chamber.

  Only after the lid was safely shut, Coffey's heavy boot resting on it, did he look up at her with a half smile and a twinkle in his eye. "Curiosity killed the cat."

  What bothered Lindsey most about it was that Coffey didn't seem annoyed the way he had before. When she'd just been insulting their male pride by reminding them of pressurization problems like HPNS, he'd been ticked off at her. Now, when she had actually been doing something wrong, he seemed to have enjoyed the momentary conflict. As if he didn't really have fun unless he was on the verge of doing something violent.

  It didn't occur to her that maybe he smiled because he absolutely understood her - exactly how much of a threat she posed, and how to handle it.

  The time was up. Everybody inside the pressure chamber was breathing the same mix of argon and a tiny bit of oxygen and nitrogen that the rest of Deepcore was using. Catfish spun a couple of valves closed and then cranked the wheel on the chamber hatch. It popped open with a faint puff of air like a virgin's sigh - the pressure is never exactly equal, but with Catfish running it it was damn close.

  "Y'all are done to a turn and ready to serve," said Catfish. "Everybody OK?"

  The SEALS shouldered past him as if he didn't exist, carrying the largest equipment cases out toward the moonpool. Wilhite and Coffey led the way. Lindsey came out in the middle of the group. She could see that Catfish was annoyed at how the SEALS didn't so much as say hello, didn't even acknowledge the guy who'd given them every breath they took for the last eight hours. She patted Catfish on the shoulder. "They're really very sweet," she said. He grinned.

  Almost at once she came up against Jammer, who was so tall his chest was at Lindsey's eye level. "I don't remember putting a wall here. How're you doing, Jammer?"

  "Pretty good. How're you, little lady?"

  "I'm OK." Monk and Schoenick moved through, carrying a grey, trunk-size metal equipment case. With Lindsey standing there talking to Jammer, there wasn't room to get by. They got through anyway, without saying excuse me. Lindsey watched them as they slid the case along her backside. "OK," she said, echoing herself.

  The SEALS set down their stuff in the sub bay, the open area around the moonpool. Lindsey could hear Coffey talking - but he was talking only to his own men. "I want a full check on that gear."

  "These guys are about as much fun as a tax audit," said Lindsey. Catfish nodded. What he didn't mention was that Lindsey wasn't exactly a one-woman party herself.

  Coffey pushed back through the little clump of civilians. He heard Lindsey's remark, but he didn't care. His team wasn't here to entertain take-charge stunters like her. He understood more about Lindsey than she thought. For instance, he knew from the minute she came over to Cab Three back on the Explorer that she wasn't authorized to be their pilot. Before she even raised her hand to call for the crane to lift the cab, he had considered what to do. He had been briefed about her long before the helicopter picked her up in Houston - if he hadn't thought she might be useful, he could have refused to take her with him even then. So he knew she was an experienced deep-sea diver, knew that she understood Deepcore better than anybody else. She could get them down, and if there was some damage to Deepcore or they had to improvise something mechanical, she'd be an asset. If he had concluded otherwise, he would have drawn a weapon and arrested her on the spot. If she had resisted him, he would have disabled her. She thought she had bluffed him, but you didn't bluff Coffey. He knew what you could do, or he found out damn quick.

  What he didn't know was her motive for going down. A hot-dogger? Or perhaps an enemy agent determined to be on-site when they went into the Montana? Sticking her toe into the case, that was what gave her away as a pure hot-dogger. No agent would be stupid enough to try that when two wide-awake SEALS were in the room - especially when popping the latch of the case wasn't silent. She was too amateurish to be a spy. She was just a meddlesome jerk. She might get in the way, but she wouldn't try to interfere actively.

  Coffey bent down, picked up the case Lindsey had been prying into, set it on the bench. It was then that he noticed his hands were shaking.

  Coffey's hands never shook. He knew immediately what it meant - he was at least as aware of the danger of HPNS as Lindsey. He had the jitters. Did he have it bad? Would he become delusional? He paused a moment, thinking through the alternatives. Would he know if he had a lapse in judgment? He should immediately turn command over to . . . who? Wilhite would be true to the mission, but he didn't have the initiative, the drive - he wouldn't be able to push these civilians into doing what was needed. Schoenick had the strength for it, but he didn't really have the brains. He wasn't good at looking at the whole situation and making the right decision. Monk? Monk could do it, but Coffey felt uneasy about him, felt that Monk was holding something back. Not much, but there was just a tiny part of him that didn't belong to the team. A tiny part of him that resisted discipline. Not that Monk had ever done anything wrong, had ever rebelled or disobeyed. But Coffey had felt it, that even when Monk was working right alongside the rest of the team, sweating his guts out, doing his all, there was something inside him that was just watching, observing it all, but not part of it.

  Or maybe I'm paranoid. Maybe the HPNS is making me find weaknesses in all my men. Find reasons to mistrust them. After all, I must have trusted them enough to pick them for the original assignment in the Central American mountains. I didn't have any qualms about them until I got down here, until I got pressurized.

  No. Coffey knew himself, knew exactly what he was capable of, and he knew his men. His judgment was not impaired. He was the only man here who understood all that was at stake, who was able to deal with any contingency. If the mission was to succeed, he had to lead it.

  What Coffey didn't know about himself was his absolute reluctance to surrender command. He might follow general orders, but when it came down to the split-second, moment-by-moment tactical decisions of an operation, he had never, ever yielded to anyone else's judgment. It had never been necessary - he had never been in a situation where decisions mattered and he wasn't making them. He didn't realize how difficult it would be for him to surrender command even if he was in perfect control of himself.

  And he wasn't in perfect control of himself.

  He clenched his trembling fingers into a fist. Couldn't let anybody see this. It would jeopardize the mission to let anybody know he had the jitters. He picked up the case and carried it on out to the sub bay. Things would be fine.

  Chapter 7

  Breathing Fluid

  Lindsey probably should have checked in with Bud the minute she arrived. After all, he was toolpusher on Deepcore,. It was like reporting to the captain the minute you went on board the ship the commanding officer had a right to know who was on his craft at all times. But then, Lindsey didn't think of Deepcore as being anybody's craft but hers.

  So she went straight to the locker room, just off the sub bay. The various test crews on Deepcore I and II had long since learned never to clean out her locker, even if they knew she wasn't coming along. Lindsey wasn't very good at staying away from Deepcore, and so it was always a good idea to have a couple of changes of clothes on board. Especially now, since she hadn't brought anything else
with her.

  She pulled out the clothes. They stank. But the clothes she'd been wearing all day - on the Explorer, in Cab Three, and in the pressure chamber - smelled considerably worse. She'd get used to stinking pretty soon, but she wasn't used to it yet. She stripped off her orange jumpsuit right there in the locker room and put on the blues from her locker. Halfway through changing her clothes, it occurred to her that it was a little late to start dressing up to please Bud.

  What an absurd thought. She wasn't dressing to please anybody but herself. Bud had nothing to do with it. She wasn't even nervous about seeing him; she certainly wasn't changing clothes just to postpone talking to him. Why, he should be the one trying to avoid talking to her. Wasn't he responsible for letting them take her drill rig on this cockamamy errand to rescue codebooks? That's why he hadn't come looking for her the moment he knew she was out of the pressure chamber. That's why he hadn't come by to chat during the eight long hours she was in there.

  Not that he should. Not that he had a duty or anything. But it would have been nice. It would have been common courtesy. Bud was probably trying to get even with her for being mad at him. Or maybe he was punishing her for coming down to Deepcore in the first place. Well, he'd find out that it didn't work. She wasn't his wife anymore. She was his project engineer, and she had a right to come down to her project whenever she wanted to, so if he didn't like it, screw him.

  Clothes changed, she walked out into the sub bay, behind the dive platform. The SEALs were still there, playing with their toys. She ducked through the hatchway into the corridor and made her way down to the end. A left turn would take her into the infirmary trimodule. Since it also included the lounge and mess hall, it was bound to be full of lazy, bored, lousy-joke-telling crewmen. She turned right.

  Bud was in the command room, of course, with Hippy off to one side in the sonar shack. Bud looked busy. Lindsey tried to think of something to say to him. Some greeting that wouldn't start a fight but also wouldn't sound like an apology. For what? What would she apologize for?

  Hippy was holding his white rat up to his lips. Kissing it. Or nibbling at it.

  "Hippy," said Lindsey. "You're going to give that rat a disease."

  That was their first clue that she was in the room - but they obviously weren't surprised to see her. Bud turned around slowly. "Well, well. Mrs. Brigman."

  "Not for long," she said. Just like him, to try to pick a fight with his first words. He used that name like a suitcase label, to assert ownership. Well, she wasn't going to fight with him. She was going to ignore him. She walked up to the command center and scanned the monitors and readouts. She could tell at a glance what each one said, like a mother looking at her baby, knowing right away if there was some problem. Lindsey's big iron baby.

  "You never did like being called that, did you?" said Bud.

  As if you had forgotten. "Not even when it meant something." Back in the dark ages. She looked out the viewport. She could see Flatbed's lights floating out there in the darkness, leading Deepcore through the permanent nighttime at two thousand feet. Who would Bud have riding scout? "Is that One Night in Flatbed?"

  "Yeah, who else?" said Bud. "Here, say hi." He handed her the headset.

  She held it so the mouthpiece was in position and one earphone was at her left ear. "Hi, One Night, it's Lindsey."

  Lindsey heard One Night's cheery answer. "Oh, hi, Lindsey."

  Out in Flatbed, where nobody could see her, One Night pantomimed gagging herself with her finger.

  Lindsey didn't need to see it to know how One Night felt. She knew One Night wasn't glad to hear her voice - the very cheeriness of her answer was a lie. Jammer and Catfish might have joked with her, One Night might fake a pleasant answer, but Lindsey knew that she was an outsider, an interloper. And worse she was the woman who was divorcing their beloved toolpusher, Virgil Brigman. I broke their poor hero's heart, and so I'm slime. Screw you, One Night.

  She handed the headset back to Bud and turned away. Might as well tour Deepcore and see just how screwed up everything is. Bud's precious crew wasn't exactly perfect. They let things slide. Everybody did, after a while. Nobody kept their edge underwater. Except Lindsey. She always kept her edge.

  Behind her, Bud signaled to Hippy to come take over for him at the joystick. Hippy had the good grace to get the message silently. Bud got up and followed Lindsey out of the command module and out into the corridor.

  Lindsey being here was a problem, and, just like any other problem, Bud knew he had to handle it. He'd done it before, back when their marriage was still alive, and even earlier than that. Teased her a little just enough to let her see she was being a bit ridiculous. It always worked. Or at least it used to work. Turn a point of friction into a kind of game. Verbal karate, only never quite connecting hard enough to hurt.

  This time wasn't going to be so easy, though. Things had changed. For one thing, just having her down here made Bud a little crazy. All these months without her - not so bad since he'd been down in Deepcore, but the months before that. Thinking about her in bed with that college-educated asshole. Trying to figure out what he'd done wrong. Trying to pretend that he didn't love her, that she absolutely wasn't lovable, wasn't worth it, and then remembering what it was like when they were still working well together, when it clicked. It was smooth, no effort at all, both of them concentrating on something outside themselves, something they both cared about then they meshed like well-tooled gears, at work and at play, the whole rhythm of their life perfect.

  Perfect, and then she started picking at him, and no matter what he did she got pissed off. It came out of nowhere, there was no reason for it. She just decided one day that she was going to hate everything he did, even his crew, and then after a while she tells him, Bud, it isn't working, we fight all the time. Damn right we fight all the time! So if you don't want to fight, don't divorce me, just stop the fighting! And if you are going to divorce me, why do you have to keep getting into my face? The divorce didn't stop the fighting, it just stopped the stuff that made it so I could stand your sniping at me; you still won't leave me alone, only now I don't even get to sleep with you.

  So even though Bud meant to simply tease her out of her foul temper, he couldn't help pushing it too far. Saying it with a sort of half-smile, so that it would look like he meant it as a joke. Only it wasn't a joke. Not really.

  "I can't believe you were dumb enough to come down here." Just kidding. Right? You can hear in my voice that I'm teasing. "Now you're stuck here for the storm. That was dumb, hot-rod, real dumb." I'm teasing, but it was dumb.

  "I didn't come down here to fight with you."

  Oh, really? What was that crap about Mrs. Brigman and rubbing his face in how that name didn't mean anything anymore? But take it easy. Don't let her attitude get to you. "Then why did you come down?"

  "You need me." She kept on walking down the corridor. "Nobody knows the systems on this rig better than I do. Once you're disconnected from the Explorer, you guys are on your own for however long this storm lasts. I mean what if something was to happen after the surface support clears off? What would you have done?"

  "Wow, you're right," said Bud. He followed her down the ladder to the drill level. "Us poor dumb ol' boys might've had to think for ourselves. Could've been a disaster." What did she think they'd been training for during the last year and a half? How did she think they managed to survive through their first one-month shift and most of their second without her?

  But I'm smiling, see? Just trying to joke you out of your bad mood.

  She headed for the compressor room, started checking the life-support systems.

  Except the jokes weren't working. Bud wasn't a fool, he knew he was even more pissed off at her than he was showing.

  Get it under control, Bud. You know how to handle her. "Do you want to know what I think?" Bud asked.

  She was paying no attention to his argument. Or rather, she was paying attention, and intended to answer by proving that they
did need her. "Do you see where this is set?" she demanded. She turned a valve. Not all that much. It wasn't far off, but it wasn't right on where it was supposed to be, either. Sloppy. Lazy.

  "You want to know what I think?" He wasn't giving up.

  "Not particularly." She moved away from him again. He followed.

  "I think you were worried about me." Now that's a joke, right? She'll laugh at that.

  "That must be it," she said. Not exactly a laugh, but kind of a joke, so his teasing was beginning to work. She was lightening up.

  They turned a corner and Lindsey nearly ran into a rigger. "Hey, Perry," she greeted him.

  Since she was beginning to respond, Bud kept up that line of conversation. "No, I think you were. Come on, it's OK." Bud said it to make her laugh. At the same time he didn't want her to laugh. He wanted it not to be a joke. He wanted her to turn around and say, Yes, as a matter of fact I was worried about you. "It's OK, you can admit it."

  She heard the pleading, not the joking tone. So she explained it to him like he was a three-year-old who didn't catch on unless you talked clearly. "I was worried about the rig. I've got over four years invested in this project."

  She meant it, he knew that. The rig was all, it was everything, it always had been, their marriage was a lie right from the start. Well, what the hell. At least we can laugh about it, can't we? "Yeah, you only have three years invested in me."

  She paused in the doorway. She said it so he couldn't miss the meaning. "Well, you have to have priorities." Then she turned and walked out.

  I did this to myself, Bud thought. I set myself up for this, I begged for it, I was begging her to tell me she cares about me, and she won't do it, she can't do it because she doesn't. It's that simple, only I'm too stupid to remember it, because I need her so much, I care about her so much, think about her all the time, I keep forgetting that it's nothing like that with her. She never thinks about me at all, just the rig. I know this about her, I know she isn't even human about some things. I always knew that.