The Abyss

by Orson Scott Card

  And as the builder held the tube near the warhead, she could also feel their fear. They were terrified that she might set off the weapon, or that she'd be angry at them for having it, that she'd retaliate. There was also hope in some of their minds - hope that she'd disarm it, that she'd take it away from them. These humans - they don't even trust themselves.

  Coffey and Schoenick had been back in the locker area, talking where they knew they couldn't be overheard. Then they heard a commotion as the others ran down a distant corridor. Something was going on, something unknown and therefore dangerous. Coffey suspected rebellion, mutiny; he and Schoenick came into the sub bay with pistols drawn, prepared to act. Then they saw the probe rising out of the moonpool like a giant tentacle, reaching through the door. It was unbelievable. Coffey dropped his gun, recoiled from the thing. He couldn't deal with it. I'm gone, he thought. My brain is completely gone and I'm seeing things that can't be there.

  Except that Schoenick was seeing it, too. So it had to be real. And that meant that whatever it was, it was reaching into the rig. And that was too dangerous to tolerate. Yet he had never been so frightened. This was an enemy he was completely unprepared for. There was no protocol for dealing with impossible underwater monsters that could reach a two-foot-thick arm into your craft. There was no special weapons training.

  But Coffey had dealt with new situations before. He could improvise. The tentacle was reaching into a door? See what happens if the door closes.

  He stepped quickly to the button that worked the automatic watertight door. He pressed it. The door began to close.

  It took only three seconds for the door to close. In that moment, the probe recognized the danger and informed the builders. They instantly stopped what they were doing and raced back down the tube. It took less than a second before they were gone. Then even the porters that sustained the probe withdrew, leaving behind water-structures that, without constant replenishment and direction, were already collapsing. By the time the door closed, there was nothing alive in the probe. They had gone, all their memories intact, and what splashed on the decks of Deepcore was nothing but seawater.

  In the maintenance room, the rig crew had no warning. The tentacle was there, its tip hovering near the warhead, and then, suddenly, it was gone, and water splashed onto the floor, spattering them. What happened? What killed it?

  Back in the sub bay, the stump of the probe recoiled from the door. For a moment it looked like it meant to attack Coffey and Schoenick. Coffey cried out, put up his hands to ward off the thing. In fact, the builder inside the probe was reaching out with her tendrils, doing a quick scan of both their brains. It found unspeakable terror inside Coffey even worse than what Jammer had felt. This is the one that tried to kill us, thought the builder, and now it fears retaliation. Fear of us is driving him to madness; if we stay we'll cause him harm. She withdrew her contact with Coffey and pulled the probe back into the moonpool.

  The stump of the tentacle fell back into the water with a splash. Coffey, gasping, watched it go. It didn't touch me, thought Coffey. It knew who I was, it saw me, but it didn't touch me. I cut it off and it didn't hurt me. We beat it. He felt the way he did after the cinder block hit Darrel Woodward's head. As Darrel lay there and Coffey stood over him for just a moment, realizing what he'd done. Not a speck of remorse, because he was only doing his duty. But he was filled with a sense of his own strength.

  As he sat there, panting in relief, he realized that the Brigman woman had been right. This wasn't the Russians - there was no way in hell they had something like this. What was incredible to him was that she thought it was better this way. She was out of her mind. This thing was so much more dangerous than the Russians that he could hardly conceive of all the possibilities. At least the Russians were human, bound by the same constraints as he was. They had to breathe, they had to carry fuel with them, they had limits. But these things, whatever they were, they belonged down here.

  And whatever they are, they've got a technology beyond belief. They've also got access to dozens of warheads on the missiles in the sub. And nobody knows about it but us. They could come out of the water and do whatever they want, anytime they want. We're the only ones who know about them, and we can't warn anybody. There's a military doctrine about this. Something can't remember. Always the rule is, Get back and give warning. Don't engage an unexpected superior force without orders, just get back and report. Only what do you do if you can't report, if there's no way to give warning?

  You do what you can to neutralize the enemy. You expend yourself in the effort, if need be, but you neutralize the foe and shield your main forces from the surprise attack.

  Only what if you can't do anything to harm it? What if the enemy is so superior that all you can do is stand up in front of it and die? I don't want to die for no purpose. It's too much to ask.

  Maybe, though, maybe there's something we can do. It was easier to hurt the thing than it looked at first. It'll think twice before it comes back here. And even though we still don't know much about it, we know that it can be damaged. Maimed. Broken. And that means that we can win. Maybe only a tiny chance of it, but if I can figure out exactly the right thing to do, then I can beat them. The most dangerous, terrible enemy that any soldier ever had to face, but I can beat them.

  In the sonar shack, Sonny woke up, startled. It was the sound of the splash of water in the corridors that woke him, but all he could hear now was the hum of the sonar. He struggled to get a fix on the thing as it rushed away from Deepcore, but it was gone before he could accomplish anything.

  Hippy came out of the can, feeling much better, but still ready for some sleep. If there was any bed space left. When he stepped on the deck, it splashed. He looked down, saw water an inch deep running the length of the corridor. What the hell could have caused it? There weren't any alarms. It couldn't be a leak. He followed the water until he found the others coming up from the maintenance room.

  A few minutes later, they were all gathered in the mess hall. Lindsey was feeling so exuberant she could hardly contain it. They had doubted her, but now they knew. Coffey had been so damn sure it was Russians, and now he was absolutely proven wrong. Or maybe Coffey didn't get it. "So raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water-tentacle. Lieutenant? No? A breakthrough. Takes a while, but..."

  Bud listened to her. She had a right to gloat a little, but Coffey was looking thoroughly crazed right now, and it wasn't a good time to goad him. He smiled and said, "Hey, Ace."

  "Yeah," she said. She gave a little laugh of embarrassment. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. She'd been pushing too far.

  "You done impressing yourself?" he said. He said it teasingly, even affectionately. But for a moment Lindsey felt the rush of anger that always came when he started doing this, when he started handling her. But this time she caught herself. Bud knows how to make this work. He's the mechanic in charge. She pinched the bridge of her nose, held her tongue, took it. It was damn hard. But it didn't feel as bad as she had thought it would. In fact, it felt kind of good to cooperate with him for a change, even when it cost her a little embarrassment.

  It was One Night who spoke up at once, taking the pressure off Lindsey. "No way that thing could be just seawater."

  It was a question, a problem, and Lindsey began searching for possible explanations. The ideas came easily to her. "They must have learned how to control water. I mean at a molecular level. You know. They can plasticize it, they can polymerize it, do whatever they want to do with it. They can put it under intelligent control." As she said it, it sounded so right to her, so certain, that she could not possibly doubt that it was true. Why? Why was she so sure?

  Bud was doing the same thing. "Maybe... their whole technology is based on that. Controlling water." She heard him, and recognized that what he said was the truth. How did they know this stuff?

  Hippy was full of questions, since he hadn't seen anything but water on the floor. "Was it the same thing you
saw last time?"

  "No," said Lindsey.

  An idea came to him - an idea he was sure of the moment he thought of it. "You know, I don't think that thing was them."

  Catfish didn't get it. "Hippy, what are you talking about?"

  "I mean I don't think it was an NTI. I think it was like their version of an ROV. Like Big Geek."

  "Hippy, you mean they were just checking us out?" asked Catfish.

  "Yeah."

  "How come?" asked Catfish.

  Lindsey was willing to guess. "Curious, I suppose. We're probably the first people they've seen, right? Who's been down this far?"

  Sonny thought back to what had been going on here the past couple of days. What was going on topside, with war looming. "Hope they don't judge the whole race off of us."

  Catfish thought that was pretty funny. "Maybe I ought to shave."

  "Naw," said Lindsey.

  Coffey listened to all this, kept still, heard them out. The Brigman woman was so cocky, they all thought they were so smart. All excited about this stuff, like it was a game, like they were playing scientist and these NTIs were all going to be as sweet-tempered as dolphins. Well, Coffey knew something about the world, and one thing was sure: Nothing had the kind of terrible power these NTIs had without using it. He heard them talking and laughing, and the whole time he was shivering inside with fear. He could feel it as an inward trembling, and he knew that if he once let that shaking show on the outside he'd fall apart completely, and then who would stop these things, who would defend the world from an invasion that would make the Huns and the Vandals look like Brownies? He had to keep control, had to, and so he did the only thing he could think of. Pain worked. Pain kept him in focus, it always had before. So he took his K-bar knife in his right hand and held it under the table and carefully, slowly, methodically, cut crosswise into the flesh of his left arm. One cut, then another, then another, working down his arm.

  The pain came into his brain like a drug, clearing out his head. The shaking eased up, and a kind of strength took its place. The strength he'd felt before, every time he was right at the cusp of a mission. Those last terrible, glorious moments when he heard the downstairs door open, heard Darrel Woodward walking up the stairs, those moments just before it was time to act.

  He was in control again. And now they were laughing, making jokes about dressing up pretty for the NTI visitors. He stood up abruptly and left the room. Schoenick followed him. They walked through the group as if they were smoke.

  Outside in the corridor, Coffey reached up and leaned on the ductwork in the low ceiling. Schoenick was right there, waiting to be told what to do. A perfect man. Loyal to the core. Not like those fools inside. "It went straight for the warhead," Coffey said gruffly. "And they think it's cute."

  Coffey turned and led the way down to the maintenance room. He reached for his gear bag, pulled it out from under the worktable. Inside it was a short-barreled CAR-15 assault rifle. It was time to take action.

  Coffey was right about Schoenick. He was absolutely loyal. But not to Coffey. He was loyal to his orders, to the rules. One rule was that you obey your commanding officer at all times. Fine. But another rule was that you evaluate your team to see what's in their best interest. There was blood on Coffey's arm. A row of slices. Nobody could have done that but Coffey himself. He was actually cutting himself. This was not good. And now he was pulling out a CAR-15 and loading it up. For what? Where was the enemy? He reached out and gripped Coffey by the left arm up high, above the bleeding. "You need to get some sleep," Schoenick said.

  Coffey slapped his hand away and finished with the rifle. Then he set it down and held his hands out in front of him the way he always did when he was about to begin an explanation. As if he held a box of truth between his hands and he was about to open it and show what was inside.

  "We have no way of warning the surface," Coffey said. His voice was measured, but Schoenick could hear the chaos behind the words. "Do you know what that means?"

  Schoenick didn't know.

  Coffey reached out and grabbed him by the front of the shirt, pulled him close. He spoke directly into Schoenick's face. "It means whatever happens is up to us. Us."

  It registered. Schoenick understood. Of course Coffey was tense. Schoenick knew as well as Coffey did that the civilians weren't with them, had no respect for their mission. Now the mission was changed, now it was ten times, a thousand times as important. They couldn't have any interference.

  Coffey pressed the assault rifle into Schoenick's hands. Schoenick took it. Snapped the bolt. Safety off. Ready to go.

  A few minutes after the SEALS left the mess hall, Bud caught Hippy's eye, then nodded toward the door where the SEALS had gone. Hippy got the message. Go after them. See what they're doing. Hippy got up and left.

  He went down the ladder to the bottom level. The maintenance-room door was slightly ajar. He looked in the window. Couldn't see anybody inside. He pushed the door open. It creaked a little, but it didn't matter. The room was empty.

  Completely empty. Including the table where the warhead had been lying all this time. They were taking the warhead somewhere. This was bad shit, them taking it God knows where to do God knows what. Hippy headed back upstairs. Before he got back to the mess hall, though, he heard a loud hissing sound coming from the sub bay. He turned and followed along the corridor. The noise got louder, and now there was pounding. No, he knew that sound. The winch. Somebody was moving one of the vehicles into the water.

  He got to the door and looked in. He was right. It was Big Geek, being moved over the deck, out toward the water. Only Big Geek wasn't alone. The warhead was tightly strapped under it. Big Geek was now a guided missile with a single nuclear warhead. And Hippy himself had set the target only a few minutes ago.

  He backed away from the door, leaned up against the wall, thought about what that could possibly mean. Only one thing. These guys were setting up to blow the NTIs. Smart. So smart. They don't know how many there are, they don't know for sure what kind of weapons they have, don't even know if the NTIs are hostile, and here they are starting a goddam nuclear war with them. Bud is not going to like this.

  Hippy turned to head back for the mess hall. But he didn't get to take a single step, because there was Coffey, looking at him real calm. His lips were almost brushing the barrel of his pistol, which he held diagonally, his finger on the trigger. Not pointing at Hippy, but the threat was very clear.

  "Did you sniff something? Did you, rat boy?"

  Then with his left hand Coffey grabbed the front of Hippy's shirt and jerked him out into the corridor.

  In the mess hall, Bud leaned into the dome of the window, his back to the others. He was looking out and down. Not that he expected to actually see one of the NTIs. He just had to look into the dark of the ocean while he was thinking about them. Things - no, not things, a kind of people that lived down here where the ocean was most terrible. People that could tame the water and make it do whatever they wanted. People who were smarter and stronger and tougher than the ocean. People who looked at this place and thought of it, not as the enemy, but as home.

  Behind him, the others were still working on the curiosity the builders had encouraged in them. "You think they're from down there originally?" asked One Night. "Or from - you know." She pointed up toward the sky. Hesitantly. It was embarrassing to suggest the idea, even though she knew that it had to be true.

  Lindsey was beyond embarrassment. She always had been. It was plain that these creatures came from a completely different evolutionary track. It didn't make sense to think of them as having been there all along. "I don't know." She laughed. "I think - I think they're from you-know. Some place that has similar conditions. Cold, intense pressure."

  "Oh, man," said One Night.

  "Happy as hogs in a wailer down there, probably," said Catfish. He speared a breakfast sausage with his buck knife and brought it to his mouth.

  The door swung open and Hippy plunged into the
room, Coffey pushing him. They all looked up in time to see Coffey give a shove that sent Hippy down on the ground among them. Before they could react, Coffey was pointing his pistol at them, and there was Schoenick beside him with a wicked-looking rifle. "Freeze!" shouted Coffey. He raised the pistol to aim squarely at Bud, then back down again at the others. "Don't move," Coffey said. The message was clear: I can move this quickly. I can kill any of you before you take a full step toward me. Mother may I? No you may not.

  Once Coffey saw that they were all holding still, he backed out into the galley, where Monk was sitting up on his makeshift bed, watching. Schoenick immediately moved into the center of the archway, where he could see everybody, shoot anybody.

  Always with an eye on the gun, the crew helped Hippy get up. Now he could deliver his message. "They're using Big Geek to take the bomb to the NTIs." Hippy spotted Lindsey, spoke right to her. "We set it up to go right to them."

  "What are you talking about?" asked Bud.

  "Oh my God," said Lindsey. How did Coffey know they had set the ROV to go down into the abyss? He was going to nuke the NTIs, even though Lindsey knew, everybody knew that they were harmless. And without meaning to, Lindsey and Hippy had helped him do it.

  In the galley, Coffey handed his pistol to Monk. "Here, hold this a second." He helped Monk get up and half-carried him into the mess hall with the others. "We're going to Phase Three." He leaned Monk up against the wall in a place where he could keep watch. It was all that Monk could do right now to help the operation keep the others under control.

  Monk, though, was shocked. Phase Three - set the detonator and evacuate. But how could they possibly evacuate? Explode the warhead at the Montana or down in the chasm, and the effect would be the same - Deepcore was so close to the edge it would be blown off by the shockwave either way. Even if they could all suit up and ride Flatbed and Cab One out of harm's way, they couldn't carry enough tetramix with them to stay alive more than a few hours. Certainly not enough time to decompress and get to the surface. One way or another, Phase Three would be fatal. Unless Coffey had made contact with the surface and knew that rescue was imminent. Maybe they were setting up a towline to pull Deepcore to safety behind some underwater ridge. That would make sense but how could Coffey have communicated with the surface without the rig crew knowing about it? Impossible. Coffey was sentencing them all to death.