The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  And now here was Bud, giving her a second debriefing as he scanned through the rolls of developed film. It was obvious he thought the whole thing was kind of funny. "So you didn't get anything on the cameras," he said. There was a hundred thousand dollars worth of camera gear in Cab One, and her job at the Montana was to take pictures, nothing else - and yet she hadn't thought to take a single picture of the thing she saw.

  "No," she explained again. "I didn't get a picture of it." Didn't Bud describe losing power himself? She couldn't have taken pictures if she'd tried.

  But that's what bothered her most of all that she hadn't tried. This thing she saw had so surprised her, unnerved her, that she hadn't remembered she had cameras until it was gone. She felt like an idiot.

  Still, if Bud knew her at all, he'd know she wasn't hallucinating or exaggerating, he'd know she really saw what she said she saw.

  "What about the video?" he asked.

  "No." Of course, he didn't know her at all. That's why she was divorcing him, wasn't it? So it shouldn't bother her a bit that he wanted objective proof. She shouldn't take it so personally. "Look," she said to him. "I'd just really rather not talk about it."

  "Well fine. Be that way." He stepped back by the dome window where the stuffed Garfield hung on for dear life with his suction cups.

  She could tell from his voice that he was a little bit disgusted with her. He was acting as if she was refusing to talk about it out of personal pique, because she didn't feel like talking. And because that was in fact part of her reason, she had to answer.

  "Look, I don't know what I saw. OK?" How can I explain it to you when I don't understand it myself? Do you think I can turn a glimpse of something strange into a clear vision of something familiar, just by having you ask me more questions? If you want to turn it into something more familiar, do it yourself. "Coffey wants to call it a Russian submersible, that's fine. It's a Russian submersible. No problem."

  She was trying to end the conversation without a conclusion. Bud wouldn't let her get away with it. He never did, if he could help it. "But you think it's something else. What? One of ours?"

  "No." If it was American, I would have known it. Hell, I would have known who designed it, even if it was so top-secret nobody had seen it outside the military. I know this field.

  "Well whose, then?" That was Bud. Always pushing too damn hard. Always insisting on knowing what she thought. Always wanting to get inside her head even when she didn't know what she was thinking herself. "Come on, Lins. Talk to me." How many times had she heard those words?

  And yet this time she really did want to tell him. If only she knew anything to tell. All she could do was explain her own confusion. "Look, Jammer saw something down there, something that scared the hell out of him."

  "His mixture got screwed up. Jammer panicked and he pranged his regulator."

  That's right, Bud. You've got your explanation for what happened to Jammer and that's it, that's enough, even if your explanation is no better than saying, This guy's dead because his heart stopped beating, without bothering to find out why his heart stopped beating.

  He had to see it her way this time. He had to realize how very strange this whole situation was. It was very important for Bud to understand that this was not a Russian submersible or anything else that made sense.

  So she put the real question to him. "But what did he see that made him panic?"

  Once again he threw it back at her. "What do you think he saw?"

  And there it was. Should she tell him what she really thought? That whatever it was she saw, there was no trace of human thought or experience in its design? She didn't dare tell him that. He'd start muttering about HPNS getting to her, about pressure-induced hallucinations. So she had to fall back on what she had told Coffey.

  Yet Bud was not Coffey, and so when she spoke, she couldn't help but put a little pleading in her voice. "I don't know. I don't know! I should, and I don't." Believe me, Bud, she was saying. Take me very seriously on this one.

  Maybe he understood her. Maybe not. The hatch opened at that moment, and Hippy stuck his head into the room. "Hey, you guys. Hurry up, check this out. They're announcing it!"

  The Explorer was piping the satellite TV signal down to them. It wasn't a rerun of "The Waltons." They were on the news.

  To Bud it came as a relief. The secrecy lid was off. They might be alone at the bottom of the sea, but at least now the whole world knew they were down here. Of course, that meant that if they screwed up, the world would see that. But it also meant that nobody could do anything to them without it being noticed. That was what scared him most when Coffey started talking about Russian submersibles. If the Russians really could build something like what Lindsey described, what could stop them from destroying Deepcore? Now, though, under the glare of publicity, even the Russians would try to behave.

  Everybody crammed around the topside-fed television in the rec room, making noise and telling each other to be quiet.

  "Quiet, quiet!"

  "Turn it up, bozo."

  It took Lindsey to shut them down and get them to listen.

  ". . . and the Kremlin continues to deny Russian involvement in the sinking of the Trident sub USS Montana. The Navy has not released the names of the hundred and fifty-six crew members, all of whom are presumed dead at this time."

  Catfish reached out and started fiddling with the controls, trying to adjust the signal. He was taking his life in his hands, doing that. Everybody hates it when somebody starts fiddling with the TV in the middle of a story they want to see. Better to have a good-enough signal than to screw it up completely. So they practically jumped down his throat. "Leave it alone, 'Fish!"

  "Civilian employees of an offshore drilling rig owned by Benthic Petroleum . . ."

  "Hey, that's us!"

  "Shhh!" They were like little kids, thought Bud, excited about seeing their hometown mentioned on the news.

  ". . . are apparently participating in the recovery operation but we have little information about their involvement. Bill Tyler is at the scene of the sinking now. Bill, there seems to be a massive naval presence out there already-"

  "Bullshit! We want names!"

  Right, boys. A hundred and fifty-six dead on the Montana, and you want your names mentioned on TV. Not that Bud was angry about it. You don't get angry at people for being human. It's just that he kept hoping that people would be just a little better than that, just a little less concerned about always being the center of the universe.

  Well, if their names couldn't be mentioned, they got the next best thing. A helicopter shot of a lot of ships being tossed by dangerously high and irregular waves - and among them, wallowing in the water with far more stability than any of the others, a ship they recognized. "There's the Explorer!"

  What caught Bud's attention was how many other ships there were. Down on the bottom of the Caribbean, Bud hadn't imagined anything more up top than the Explorer, tethered to Deepcore's umbilical, and a lot of wind and water. Now he realized that on the ceiling of the sea the Navy was scooting around like bathtub toys. Doing what? There was a hurricane coming, didn't they know that? Ships didn't belong out there in such waters.

  And if Bud knew that, the Navy surely knew it. So they must be really scared of the Russians, if they felt a need to keep an escort for the Explorer in seas like this.

  The reporter made it clear that the situation was even worse than it appeared. "With Cuba only eighty miles away, the massive buildup of U.S. ships and aircraft in the area has drawn official protest from Havana and Moscow and has led to a redirection of Soviet warships into the Caribbean theater."

  Bud could feel the mood in the control room change. No more we're-on-TV excitement. Soviet warships in the Caribbean. What bothered Bud was the way it seemed to be cycling upward. The Navy gets scared that the Russians might move in on the Montana, so they bring a large escort to protect the site. Then the Russians see our big military force building up, and so they move in on
the Montana. As if the fear itself caused the thing they feared to come true.

  The anchor asked the standard asinine follow-up ques- tion, so it would sound like he was doing something more important than just reading the news off a prompter. "Bill, how would you describe the mood there?"

  "The mood is one of suspicion, even confrontation. A number of Russian and Cuban trawlers, undoubtedly surveillance vessels, have been circling within a few miles throughout the day, and Soviet aircraft have repeatedly been warned away from the area."

  It was like an anthill up there. The red ants and the black ants. It made Bud feel a little bit better on the bottom of the sea. For all he knew, this might be the safest place on Earth right now.

  When the broadcast ended, Bud and Lindsey headed toward the moonpool. If the news broadcast had shown Bud anything, it was the fact that the Explorer couldn't stay above them much longer. There was no hope of the storm passing far enough away that they could stay connected. It was time to see if One Night had got Flatbed prepped to go out and disconnect the umbilical so the Explorer could leave.

  He didn't even have to tell Lindsey where he was headed. She knew what had to be done as surely as he did. For a moment it felt like the old days when they could work together almost without talking, because they understood each other and Deepcore so perfectly.

  Only this time Hippy tagged along. He was agitated, almost frantic in his tone of voice, his gestures. Bud had seen Hippy in this mood before. Things are going wrong, Do something! Do something! The solution was usually for Bud to give Hippy an assignment. When Hippy actually had something to do, something that required his concentration, then he calmed down, he did the job. But what was there for Hippy to do right now?

  Still, Bud had to get him calmed down somehow. "This really sucks!" said Hippy.

  There was only one thing to do: Let him have his say. Bud stopped, turned back in the corridor, faced Hippy. "Hippy, what's the matter with you?"

  "What's the matter with me? Now we're right in the middle of this big-time international incident. Like the Cuban Missile Crisis or something."

  Bud was listening patiently, but Lindsey didn't catch on to what he was trying to do. She so rarely did. So instead of encouraging Hippy to talk it out, she tried to shut him down with ridicule. "Figured that out for yourself, did you?" she said.

  Smooth, Lindsey. You should give a Dale Carnegie course.

  All Lindsey accomplished was to make Hippy even more agitated. "We got Russian subs creeping around. Shit! Something goes wrong, they could say anything happened down here, man. Give our folks medals."

  Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I thought of it myself. "Hippy, just relax." Bud tried to make a joke out of it. Pointing at Lindsey, he said, "You're making the women nervous."

  "Cute, Virgil," said Lindsey.

  The distraction calmed him a little. Hippy was winding down. From a whine to a mumble. "Those SEALs aren't telling us squat. Something's going on."

  "Hippy, you think everything's a conspiracy." Bud walked away, taking Lindsey with him.

  Behind them, Hippy tried to figure out why Bud would bother to say something so obviously true. "Everything is," he said.

  Maybe so, thought Bud. Can you call it paranoia if everybody really is out to get you?

  No sooner had they left Hippy behind than One Night came pounding down the corridor from the sub bay. It was a bad sign.

  "Hurry up!" One Night shouted. "Coffey's splitting with Flatbed! He got me to show him the controls and he's out of here!"

  This was a little more serious than a kid taking off with the family car. Before she finished talking Bud was already past her, running toward the moonpool. "Goddammit!" he said as he ran. "Didn't you tell him we need it right now?"

  "Yeah, but he wouldn't listen to me. I told him we had to get the umbilical unhooked ASAP."

  It was the most nonsensical thing he'd ever heard of. Coffey was supposed to be a smart guy. The umbilical couldn't be uncoupled at the top end; it had to be done here, at Deepcore. Did Coffey think he could accomplish the rest of his mission if the Explorer sank or got damaged? Or worse - what if the umbilical got damaged while they waited for him to come back? Did he think they were going to find a spare in one of the neighboring countries? You don't go shopping for specialized equipment like that in Haiti or Honduras. "Where the hell is he going?"

  "I have no idea," said One Night. "You told us to cooperate with him."

  Yeah, that's right. And it should have been OK. How could I know he had his head up his ass?

  When Bud got to the moonpool, Wilhite, Monk, and Schoenick were standing on Flatbed in full gear as Coffey piloted it down. They were facing Bud as he ran into the room. He screamed at the top of his voice, knowing they could probably hear him. "We need the big arm to unhook the umbilical. There's a goddamn hurricane coming."

  In the meantime, Lindsey had grabbed a headset. "Coffey, Coffey, do you copy?"

  The SEALs' heads disappeared under the water. No answer came over the speakers. No explanation. Nothing. Just the dumbest, most dangerous, most irresponsible kind of behavior Bud had ever seen in all his years of work on oil rigs - landside, over the water, or under it. He turned away from the moonpool. "Son of a bitch," he said. Softly. Like a benediction. "Unbelievable." I knew I should never have let them come onto Deepcore.

  He looked at Lindsey, waiting for her to say the same thing. Waiting for her to say, Didn't I tell you not to let the military take over? Didn't I tell you they didn't give a shit about the safety of the rig or the crew?

  But she didn't say it. Maybe because she knew she didn't have to. Maybe because she knew that when Bud was really wrong, nobody had to stick it to him because he already stuck it to himself so bad.

  McBride gripped the handrail as he looked out over the deck of the Explorer. There were still men scurrying around in lifejackets, trying to keep things secure in the storm. But it was clear that this storm was far too big to deal with. The Explorer was designed to cut and run when it got this bad. Even now he wasn't sure they could get out of the way of Hurricane Frederick without sustaining major damage. The wind was eighty knots. The Hurricane Center was telling them about the possibility of two-hundred-knot winds near the eye. Which was heading for them as directly as if they had hooked it on a fishing line and were reeling it in.

  McBride staggered across the heaving deck and pulled himself back into the Explorer's command center. There was DeMarco, standing around as if he had all the time in the world. Surely he couldn't be so stupid as not to know the danger they were in. Most of the Navy escort was standing much farther off now, for fear of ships getting tossed into each other by waves and wind. "We need to get unhooked and get out of here now!"

  DeMarco looked at him with no expression. "All right, then, do it." Somebody handed DeMarco a foil-wrapped sandwich. He was going to have lunch. Perfect. Next thing he'd say would be, Let them eat cake.

  But McBride had to make damn sure DeMarco knew where the responsibility lay. "No problem except your boys go sightseeing in Flatbed when my people need Flatbed to get unhooked on their end."

  DeMarco unwrapped his lunch. "They'll be back in two hours." Then he brought the sandwich up to his mouth and took a bite.

  "Two hours? We're gonna get the shit kicked out of us by our pal Fred in two hours!"

  It was no use trying to get DeMarco interested in their problems. He just stood there, calmly chewing, looking out over the Caribbean as if there were anything to see out there besides hell.

  The SEALS opened one of the missile hatches. It took a few minutes, but Coffey got the hang of controlling Flatbed's arm well enough to help them hoist the plastic diaphragm out of the way. And then there it was, the blunt nose of the Trident C-4 missile. Like looking down the barrel of a gun at the bullet aimed right at you.

  Only the bullet would never get fired. The missile would never launch. The only useful things inside were the MIRV warheads, short metal cones with the power of a s
mall star locked inside. If any of them went off right now, Coffey thought, all the water for miles around would be vaporized, instantly. It would rise up at once and make a bubble on the surface, which would instantly pop, releasing poison into the atmosphere. Not that much water, really, compared to the amount there was in the whole ocean. Just a little belch in the sea. Along with a shock wave like an underwater earthquake.

  Trouble was, this was no longer speculative information in a training session on land. This was real. He, Coffey, was going to arm a warhead so it could happen.

  They lifted away the nose cone, exposing the warheads. Monk read off the instructions from the plasticized card he had been given in Houston by a man who acted as reluctant as if the card were his only child. Schoenick and Wilhite followed each command as he read it; Monk watched to make sure they were doing it correctly.

  "Separation sequencer disconnected," said Wilhite. "Next?"

  "Remove explosive bolts one through six in counterclockwise sequence."

  "Check," said Schoenick. "Removing bolt one."

  Coffey looked down through Flatbed's window at his men working on the missile. He felt the same flat sense of inevitability that he had felt long before, standing halfway up a flight of stairs in an apartment building in Los Angeles, holding a cinder block, waiting for Darrel Woodward to come home. It's going to happen. Wait. Wait. Maybe he'll come, maybe he won't. Wait.

  Not far off, a builder hovered in the water. She was watching, but not with her eyes; light was not that helpful here. Instead she used other senses. Tendrils she had spun out of her embraced Flatbed, the Montana, the SEALS, and the missile in an invisible web, each strand only molecules thick; next to these, the threads of the fiber-optic communications system seemed thick and clumsy. With these she tasted and touched to discover what was happening.