The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  Monk also was aware of what was going on around him - SEALS who can't keep watch while carrying out a task generally end up coming home in a bag. So he knew that the ROV operator, a short nervous guy named Hippy, was walking along the edge of the moonpool toward Monk, kind of watching as people worked on the submersibles.

  Catfish called to him. "Hey, Hippy, toss me a couple of cyalume sticks!"

  Hippy reached down, got them out of the box, tossed them to Catfish. When Hippy turned around again he almost bumped into Monk.

  "Excuse me," said Monk.

  Which was more than he should have said, since Hippy immediately took it as a friendly gesture, instead of the slightly sarcastic rebuke that Monk meant it to be. As usual, Monk had varied from the MCT by talking too much.

  Naturally, Hippy noticed that Monk was working with some weird equipment he didn't understand. Hippy made sure he understood every piece of equipment he ever saw. "What is all this stuff?"

  Monk didn't look at him. Is it all right to tell him? The Deep Suit was top secret, but fluid breathing systems weren't. Monk thought back over his training - he knew a lot about fluid breathing because it had been his specialty since they first started working with the Deep Suit while training with the Experimental Dive Unit six months ago. They'd been testing fluid breathing with rodents all through the sixties, and it was clear back in 1973 that Johannes Kylstra first got a human breathing in liquid - a hyperbarically-oxygenated saline solution, tested in just one lung, since if a two-lung experiment had failed, the patient would have had trouble filling out his report afterward. Liquid fluorocarbon had been used by Thomas Shaffer in his demand-regulator breathing system, and Peter Bennett had done a lot of testing with it in his hyperbaric chamber in the mid-80s, so even the breathing fluid was a matter of public record. Hell, the fluid they used was nothing more than the medical grade of a 3M product used for leak testing in electronics. Anybody could buy it. It was OK to talk about it. "Fluid breathing system. We just got them. We use it if we need to go really deep."

  "How deep?" asked Hippy.

  "Deep."

  Hippy didn't respond well to evasive answers. Maybe that was one of the reasons his father kicked him out of the house when he was fifteen. "How deep?"

  But Monk wasn't being evasive just for the hell of it. Partly it was because it was against military policy ever to reveal the limits of any equipment. Partly it was because nobody had ever found out Deep Suit's limits. "It's classified."

  So that was that. Hippy left the question alone.

  Monk understood, though, that Hippy didn't mean to be a problem. To these guys in Deepcore, experimental hyperbaric equipment was a fact of life. Any new piece of equipment had to be understood completely - all that it could do, all its limitations. Especially a guy like Hippy, who got along a lot better with machines than he did with people. So Monk went ahead and explained what he could while he drained the liquid fluorocarbon out of the Deep Suit tank, letting it flow into a clear plastic box. He couldn't tell him details, but he could tell him the stuff that was in the library at Duke University. "Anyway, you breathe liquid, so you can't be compressed. Pressure doesn't get you as bad."

  Catfish was with them by now, working at the same table, so he heard that last bit. He couldn't let it go by. "You mean you got liquid? In your lungs?"

  Monk turned off the drain valve. "Oxygenated fluorocarbon emulsion."

  "Bullshit," said Hippy.

  It didn't bother Monk not to be believed. He wasn't a salesman. Whether they believed him or not made no difference in his mission. Still, it'd be fun to show them. They were divers, weren't they? They spent a lot of effort making sure they never had to breathe anything liquid; but they also knew that it was that very dependence on gases that put a bottom limit on how deep they could go. They'd know just how important it was. Besides, Monk kind of liked these guys. If he weren't a SEAL, this was the kind of work he might like to be doing - something that took real courage, but not the kind of thing you'd ever get famous for. Even though Monk was a SEAL and therefore completely separate from them, he still felt a bit of kinship. A bit of brotherhood under the skin.

  Monk reached out and got a wire-mesh box from the table and dumped out the valves that were stored in it. "Check this out," Monk said. Then he reached out and snaked the rat off Hippy's shoulders. "Can I borrow your rat?" It was the correct way to get what you need from civilians. Ask permission after; finish the mission before the civilian finishes saying no.

  "Hey, what're you doing, man! You're gonna kill her!" Hippy was grabbing at him, but Monk paid no attention. He put the rat into the wire box as if it were a cage, then turned it upside down and pushed the cage, rat and all, down into the fluid. The liquid was tinted pink, so it could be distinguished immediately from water. But it was still liquid, so Monk knew what it looked like to Hippy - the rat was going to drown.

  Monk tried to reassure him. "It's OK, I've done this myself." No need to mention that it was probably the most terrifying experience of his life, even though they doped him up a little to help stifle his gag reflex and keep him from thrashing around so much from raw, naked panic as he felt the liquid burn its way into his lungs. That information would only increase Hippy's resistance. All Monk explained was the MCT.

  "You're going to kill her!" Hippy was trying to grab the wire box, pull it out. But he wasn't trying extremely hard. Not hysterically hard. Monk stopped him just by keeping his shoulder in the way.

  "I've breathed this myself," said Monk again, sounding calm, soothing him. "He's going to be fine."

  "She's gonna drown! Look, she's freaking out!"

  "He's just going through a normal adjustment period." The moment when you know you're going to die and you're afraid it's going to take too long.

  "Normal! That looks normal to you?"

  The rat was panicking - swimming around, struggling to get out. But there's only so long that any air-breather can hold its breath underwater. Eventually the rat had to open its mouth, had to gasp at the liquid. Except that this time when liquid flowed into its lungs, the air-breather didn't die. "He's taking in the fluid," said Monk. "See his chest moving?"

  Catfish was finally turning into a believer. "He's breathing it. This rat is breathing that shit!"

  Monk enjoyed this, watching their amazement. He'd brought them something they valued an experience, a new thing. There weren't all that many new things in life. Monk liked feeling their excitement about it. "See? He's digging it. it."

  "She's doing it," said Hippy. "She ain't digging it."

  True enough. The rat opened its mouth each time it took a breath. This stuff was thicker than air, it had to be breathed through the mouth. It worked, carrying oxygen to the lungs.

  But there was no chance that the rat was actually getting pleasure from it. Monk remembered his own experience with this stuff too well.

  Hippy didn't know that, of course. He only knew that nobody had asked Beany if this experiment was OK. The rat was scared half to death. It was a shitty thing to do, and just because Beany wasn't belly-up dead didn't make it any nicer. "Let her out now," he said.

  Monk was content to obey. They'd seen; that was enough. Besides, the liquid wasn't heated yet, and the rat was very small. Rodents weren't like larger animals. Hypothermia didn't cause a rat's body to collect blood and therefore heat in the brain. If Monk left the rat too long, it would come out with brain damage, and that really would be a lousy thing to do.

  Monk lifted up the cage, pulled out the rat, and held it by the tail, upside down over the dish, draining the fluid out of its lungs. He knew from experience that this was the most painful part it hurt down in your lungs, burned, stung, so you knew you didn't want to do this every day. But pain or not, fluid breathing was real. Lungs didn't care what they sucked in, as long as it had oxygen in it that could be picked up by the bloodstream. This stuff could actually hold sixty-five percent oxygen at one atmosphere of pressure, even more when the pressure was higher - that wa
s more oxygen than there was in air, more than there was in blood. And because it was liquid, it cleaned out the gas pockets in the lungs, allowed a diver to get down past the depths where gas-breathing lungs started to burst and bleed. It allowed a diver to get so far down that the synapses of your brain would begin misfiring from the sheer pressure squeezing all your brain cells together. So deep that you had to be doped half out of your mind just to be able to think at all.

  I don't ever, ever want to go that deep, thought Monk.

  Hippy was chattering at the rat as it hung there from Monk's hand. Hippy was reassuring it like a nervous mama. He kept reaching out, his hands fluttering, hungry to take Beany, to touch it.

  "Let the fluid drain out of him for a minute," said Monk.

  "Easy easy easy easy easy," said Hippy, chanting it like a prayer. "Whoa whoa whoa, give me give me give me."

  Catfish was praying, too, after his fashion. "That is no-bullshit hands-down the goddamnedest thing I ever saw."

  Well, why not. It looked like a sure-enough miracle. Monk handed the rat to Hippy. The kid started moaning with relief as if he'd been the one breathing liquid. Monk tossed him a towel. The rat moved as Hippy dried him off. "Oh, Beany, are you all right?" He started kissing the rat, cooing to it, petting and patting it. For all the world it looked like what you'd expect from Mary and Martha after Jesus raised their brother Lazarus from the dead.

  "See? He's fine," said Monk.

  Hippy looked at him with withering contempt. "It's a she," he said.

  What was I supposed to do, thought Monk, check for a little teeny dong? But he didn't say it. Didn't say anything more. In fact, he was already regretting having done this demonstration at all. Not because he'd breached security - he hadn't, he never would. It was mostly because he realized that he had been showing off. He really wanted these guys to like him. And that was scary. This was the first time since he joined the SEALS that Monk had cared even a little bit whether somebody outside his team liked him.

  It wasn't Coffey who was losing it, Monk realized. It was himself. This was not a good time to go native.

  Chapter 8

  Seeing Things

  For all his misgivings, Bud couldn't help but catch the sense of excitement that everyone felt as they set out for the Montana. Civilians could talk all they like about how they'd hate to be in the military, how they couldn't stand the discipline, even how they disapprove of war and despise the military mind but when it came down to it, the idea of being led by crack soldiers on a dangerous mission stirred up something inside a man. As the son of a Marine, Bud might see right through all the phony talk of guts and glory, but when it came right down to it, battle-hunger was built into his genes as sure as the thinning and receding of his hair.

  He was never completely lost in his thoughts, however, one part of his mind was listening intently to the headset chatter. Lindsey's voice, coming over the UQC from Cab One: "Com-check, everybody. Flatbed, you on line?"

  One Night was piloting Flatbed, of course even though she'd just spent twelve hours straight doing the same job, without much more than a catnap in between. "Ten-four, Lindsey, read you loud and clear." It was kind of fun listening to her speak so calmly to Lindsey, knowing that One Night resented Lindsey with a deep and abiding rancor that began even before Lindsey filed for divorce from Bud. One Night didn't hate Lindsey solely out of a sense of duty to Bud; One Night was a volunteer.

  The communications check went on. "Cab Three?"

  Hippy came, on. "Cab Three, check. Right behind you." Everybody was on line.

  So now it was time to check their progress. "What's your depth, Cab Three?"

  Hippy didn't have to concentrate as much on finding his way, since he could follow the two sets of lights in front of him, had the best opportunity to read the gauges. "Eighteen-forty. Fifty. Sixty. Seventy." Ticking off the depths like decades through history. Going down.

  Bud looked around at the other men standing on the back of Flatbed as they moved through the water, packed together like bizarre migrant workers, off to pick hyperbaric lettuce. Only these guys had the wrong attitude for tedious manual labor. They were after war, wearing the armor of the underwater uniform, helmets on, backpacks loaded with breathing mix, ready to fight it out with their old enemy, the sea. They were all pretending to be calm, almost businesslike about the whole thing, but if they could act out what was going on inside them, Bud was pretty sure they'd be just like a troop of chimps when it was time for battle waving their arms, jumping up and down, hooting and screeching.

  Especially the SEALs, directly across from Bud. Coffey looked icy calm through his mask. But he had eyes of fire, Bud thought, eyes all lighted up with danger. Coffey might not have invented the business of death, but he was an ambitious young executive in America's killer corporation. He'd go far, if he didn't get everybody killed first.

  Bud's father never had eyes like that. He was just a guy, just Dad. But maybe Dad changed when he got to Vietnam. Maybe when some VC looked at him through his telescopic sights he saw murder in Dad's eyes and he knew: This is the one I've got to kill so these Americans will all go home. He didn't know that Dad was just a regular guy when he was in the U.S.

  Maybe when Coffey isn't on a mission, he's just a regular guy, like Dad.

  No way. Not possible.

  Lindsey's voice interrupted Bud's thoughts. They were at the edge of the Trench. "Going over the wall. Coming to bearing zero-six-five. Everybody stay tight and in sight."

  One Night was right behind her. She was the one with passengers out in the open. "Starting our descent," she said, like a tour guide at Disney World. "Divers, how're you doing?"

  Bud looked down the row, his men and the SEALs. Everybody in place, nobody in distress, all hanging on tight. "Okay so far," he said.

  Now that one of the divers had spoken, it was like giving the others a license to chatter. "How deep's the drop-off here?" asked Jammer.

  "This here's the bottomless pit, baby," said Catfish. "Two and a half miles straight down."

  Thanks, Catfish, you're always helpful in building morale, thought Bud.

  Coffey shut them all down by getting back to business. "Cab One, do you see it yet?" This wasn't officiousness, Bud knew - idle chatter could be dangerous. Channels had to stay open for serious communication. Somebody might die while another guy was joking around. Still, Bud knew that his crew all understood that. Jammer's question, Catfish's answer, that would have been the last of it. These men weren't fools. But then, how could Coffey know that? Bud couldn't resent him for making sure.

  Lindsey answered Coffey's question. "The magnetometer is twitching. Side-scan is showing a big return, but I don't see anything yet. Are you sure you got the depth right on this?"

  Lindsey was good at this, but Bud knew there were some things that only came with experience she simply hadn't had the time to get. It took a while to get deepwater eyes, to get used to how far you could see at this depth, even with bright lights. Lindsey knew it intellectually, of course, but, as Bud well knew, knowing it didn't stop you from feeling uneasy when you knew you were close and still couldn't see a thing. So he reassured her. "You should be almost to it, ace."

  "Yeah, roger that." And then she had it. Like a magician's black drape suddenly dropping to show what had been hidden behind it all along. The giant propeller loomed in front of her, so massive that she felt like her own submersible was dwarfed beside it. Yet this huge thing had been bent and scraped like a child's toy. We build our monsters out of metal, but the earth and the sea are still stronger. "Found it," she said.

  Coffey listened to the chatter, learning from it. Even though he had shut down Brigman back at the moonpool, he got the message, and he saw that Brigman was right. These civilians had their own way of doing things, and it worked pretty well. Coffey was used to civilians being chaotic, unorganized, unpredictable, each one acting for himself in ways that were dangerous or hurtful to other people. Only with the eleven other men in his own
team of SEALs had he ever found human beings who behaved rationally, predictably, cooperatively. Until now. Maybe the training was different, maybe the rules allowed more room for individual choices, but Brigman's crew worked well together, and the more Coffey studied them, the better he was able to predict what they'd do and the more he could count on them.

  I should have known that earlier, thought Coffey. Should have seen the way they take care of each other, the way me and my men do. And who's to say their way isn't just as good? We work to erase our individual differences, to become one soul with twelve bodies, so I could have taken almost any three with me on this mission. But Brigman's guys keep their quirks, their strangeness, and the others just learn to work around them, to use those quirks, count on them, make allowances for them. And when things got tight, when somebody got hot or jumpy, there was Brigman, like a drop of oil into the mechanism just before the friction gets bad enough to cause a squeak. It made a smooth machine out of a bunch of parts that otherwise couldn't fit.

  The only one who wasn't part of that team was this Lindsey bitch, and that wasn't Brigman's fault. She was crazy with selfishness, the kind of person who was incapable of subordinating her own judgment to somebody else's. She was so smart it never occurred to her that maybe somebody else had a better idea. Why Brigman ever married her was beyond comprehension - maybe Brigman thought that rolling her down was the way to control her. Well, to hell with that. She was a danger to Brigman's crew at the best of times, and if Brigman didn't know how to neutralize her, well, Coffey did.

  For now, though, he had to deal with her - and she was the best at piloting the Cabs. That's why Coffey had her at the point position. Flatbed was too vulnerable, with the divers exposed on the back, and Hippy was piloting the other Cab; no way did he belong in front. You use your best asset for every job. Even when your best asset happens to be Lindsey Brigman.