She flipped another switch. It was the wrong one. Something shorted out in a shower of sparks. She ducked, covered her hair - this wouldn't be a good time to have a spark ignite it and have her head go up like a torch.
The sparking stopped. The cabin was dark now, no power at all.
"You all right?" asked Bud.
"Yeah."
Bud turned on the underwater flashlight that was always kept in the back of Cab One. He played it across her face to make sure she really was OK.
"Well, that's that," she said. Phone's disconnected. No more calls. Should've paid the long-distance bill.
"Wonderful," said Bud. He realized that even when he turned the light away from her, he could see her OK. A bluish light coming through the window. "There's some light from somewhere. Somewhere back to the right."
"Yeah, it's the rig."
He looked out the window, found it. "It's a good sixty or seventy yards, I'd say." It could've been worse. They must have been angling back toward Deepcore at the end, without noticing it.
"They're gonna come out after us," said Lindsey.
Bud kept hearing the water coming in. Seemed to get louder. The flow seemed to be getting stronger all the time. "Yeah, but it's going to take them a while to get here. We gotta get this flooding stopped."
She came through the hatch, back into the compartment with him. "You see where it's coming in?"
"Yeah, can you hold this?" He handed her the light. She trained it on the leaking panel. "There's a busted fitting here in this panel. Problem is, I don't think I can get to it." He tried to pull the panel away from the wall so he could see behind it. "You got any tools?"
"I don't know. Look around."
He did, but without hope. "Yeah, well, I looked already." He turned back to the panel. "Goddammit, all I need's a goddam crescent wrench." Wishing gets you nothing but wishes, as his mom used to say. He hooked his fingers behind the panel on the,top and the right side. Lindsey got the idea and hooked her fingers on the top and the left. Bud braced his feet against the wall and pulled. So did she. He strained, groaning, until his fingers couldn't hold on anymore and they came free, scraping the skin.
"Shit!" Bud shouted. "Son of a bitch!"
It made her nervous to see him so upset. "Calm down, Bud." She needed him to be calm, because as long as he was calm that suggested there was something they could do about this. But the water was up to their waists now as they knelt on the floor in back, and that suggested that they didn't have much time to figure out what to do. "Calm down." She wiggled her fingers, tried to get some feeling back into them.
"OK," said Bud. The confidence was coming back to his voice. "OK, uh. We've got to get you out of here."
The water was really cold. He was in a dry suit. She wasn't. "Yeah. How?"
"I don't know how!"
"All right, all right." It was hard to think of something when there was nothing to think of except a single terrible fact. "We've only got one suit."
"I know! I know! But we gotta think of something."
She wasn't listening to him. Even though she was standing up now, bent over, to keep more of her body out of the water, it wasn't helping. "Oh, God, I'm freezing," she said. It made her realize what it meant, him swimming under the rig to get into the moonpool. That was a dozen yards, though. Not sixty.
"Here, give me your hands," he said. She did. He held them - his hands really were warmer. He wasn't losing so much heat through his suit. "Listen," he said. She thought he was going to tell her the answer. What he said was something a good deal less helpful. "You're smart," he said, "think of something. Can't you think of something? Think of something."
It was absurd. But the way Bud asked her, calm, expectant, that made her feel more confident. And she thought of something. "OK, why don't you swim back to the rig and bring back another suit."
"That'd take me about seven, eight minutes to swim, get the gear, come back. I wouldn't make it." He held up her hands. They were stiffening, turning blue with cold. "Look at this. By the time I got back you'd be - "
"Yeah. OK. Look around, just look around." There had to be something they could use, something to give them an idea. She found a breathing mask.
"See if that works," Bud said.
She already had it up to her mouth. Nothing. She let it drop. Looked around some more, trying to move her arms, keep them moving, keep warm. She kept making involuntary sounds. She made herself stop. It sounded too much like whimpering. She wasn't going to go out whimpering.
Suddenly Bud started moving with real purpose. "All right," he said. He was handing her his breathing pack. "Put this on." He got his hands under his neck-dam, started pulling it off over his head.
It took her a second to realize. He didn't have a plan. He had just decided to give her the suit and make her go while he stayed back here and died. "No, no! What are you doing, growing gills or something? You got it on - "
"Don't argue with me, goddammit, just - "
"Look, this is not an option, so just forget about it." She thought of him drowning. Thought of him sucking water into his lungs like Hippy's rat did, only this wasn't going to end with somebody hanging him upside down and squeezing the juice out like Hippy said Monk did with Beany.
"Lindsey, shut up!"
"No!" Let me think, there is a way.
All he knew was that if she didn't have the suit she was going to drown. This wasn't a time when he was going to put up with her stubbornness. This was the worst thing in the world. He knew. He remembered. He'd felt the water come into his lungs, and it wasn't going to happen to her. He wasn't going to live and have to spend the rest of his life imagining how she felt as she died the way he had to do with Junior. "Shut up and put this thing on!"
"Would you just be logical for one - "
"Fuck logic!"
"Listen, listen! Just listen to me for one second. You've got the suit on and you're a much better swimmer than I am, right?"
"Yeah, maybe."
"Right? Yes. So I got a plan."
"What's the plan?"
"I drown, you tow me back to the rig."
He couldn't believe she was saying this. He rocked his head back and yelled at her. "What the hell kind of plan is that!"
"I drown - "
"No!"
"Yes."
"No!"
"This water's only a couple of degrees above freezing. I go into deep hypothermia. My blood goes like icewater. My body systems slow down, they won't stop. You tow me back and I can - I can be revived after maybe ten, fifteen minutes."
"Lins, you put this on! Put it on!" He was begging now, pleading with her. But he was also hearing her, processing the information at some level in his mind. He knew it was true that if you got to coldwater drowning victims soon enough, they could sometimes be revived. Often. But not always.
"It's the only way," she said. "You just put this on. Put this on, you know I'm right. Please, it's the only way. You've got all the stuff on the rig to do this. Put this on. Bud, please."
She was right. There was no other plan except the one he'd been working on - both of them staying in Cab One, arguing, until they both drowned. Her way offered some hope. "This is insane."
"Oh my God, I know, but it's the only way."
He pulled the neck-dam back over his head. She held the breathing pack, helped him shoulder it, even though her fingers were so numb from the cold that she could hardly grasp anything. They both kept chattering, murmuring, concentrating on the task.
"You can do this, you know," she said. She looked at him with eyes that said, I trust you. For the first time in all their years together he looked into her eyes and saw that she absolutely, absolutely believed in him. She was going to go right down to the edge of death and it was up to him to bring her back, him alone, and she trusted him. She touched his cheek. Her hand was ice, but it burned him. He would feel that hand on his cheek forever. "You can do this."
"Oh God, Lins, I - "
He w
as going to say he loved her. "No. You can tell me later." Then she told him, not in words, but by reaching to him, leaning toward him in the eight inches of air left at the top of the compartment and kissing him, long and deep, not a kiss of passion, not meant to arouse, but a kiss of belonging. It said, I'm part of you, I love you, I trust you with everything. He never thought she'd say a thing like that to him, and yet he understood it all as if she'd said it to him a thousand times. He believed it. It was true.
He put the helmet in the water, ducked down, put it on. Then he came up, the helmet not yet fastened to the dam, and held his breath while the regulator built up breathing mix inside the helmet, driving the water down and away. It was the ugly way of doing it, with water inside the helmet, but there wasn't enough room left between the water and the roof to put it on dry. All the time he was doing it, he heard Lindsey coughing, sputtering - the water was so high now that she was angling her head sideways or tipping it back to keep her mouth out.
He was clear. He fastened down the helmet clamps. Then he hung there in the water, watching her gasp for the last bit of air at the top of the compartment.. It was one thing to decide this. It was something else to do it. She couldn't help panicking, couldn't help crying out, "Bud!" And then: "Help me." And then there was no more room. She knew it, she sank down, facing him, holding her last breath, looking into his face.
And he looked out of his face mask, saw her watching him with terror in her eyes, her mouth partly open. Then she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his mask. Supplication. As if she were trying to breathe the air he had inside there. And all he could do was look at her, all he could think was It's happening again, oh, God, it's happening again.
She reached behind him, clamped her hands behind his helmet, put her head on his shoulder and held onto him, embraced him so tightly, and he also held her. He was holding her when he felt her chest heave as she finally, deliberately filled her lungs with water. She shuddered, spasmed, her chest heaving again as her body tried to expel it.
All the times he had wished, If only I could have been with Junior at the end, if only I could have held onto him as he died. And now it was happening, he was holding on to her, she was drowning, and it was worse to be there, to be helpless, to have her cling to him and feel her body losing control, knowing I can't do anything to help her, it's the worst thing in the world.
Then her hands went slack. She was unconscious.
No, she was dead. Everything had stopped. The only hope they had was that she was also being killed by the cold, which was slowing down all her systems so they couldn't die as fast as they normally would. Her life was being strung out by the conflict between the two deaths. Virgil Brigman was holding the string.
He opened the lockout hatch, put his feet through, then reached up and took hold of her. He worked quickly, but not so fast that he fumbled, not so fast that he couldn't watch carefully to make sure he didn't hurt her as he drew her through the hatch. When she was out, he reached in and took the light. Maybe they'd be watching from inside Deepcore. Maybe they'd see him coming, see his light and come down to the moonpool. Maybe they'd be ready, and that would save a few seconds, and those would be the seconds that would make the difference, that would allow him to pull her back out of the abyss.
Chapter 14
Candles
When Lindsey died, the builders noticed a most curious thing. As they sent out tendrils to scan her brain, they themselves were filled with grief. They never grieved for their own who died, as long as their memories had been gathered in to the city. Yet Lindsey's memories were being gathered - they were doing it themselves - and still they were filled with sorrow. Why?
The question circulated quickly through the city, and in a far corner it was heard by the builder who had dared to help Catfish make it to the moonpool. She knew the answer, but for a brief time she hesitated to supply it - to venture into this debate again would surely expose her to further censure. But then she remembered Catfish's decision at hatch six, to attempt the swim that he knew he could not make. Was she, whose memories could never die, less courageous than he, whose life could be snuffed out, his memories lost? So she offered her answer to the city:
We grieve for her as we never grieve for each other, not because her memories will be lost, for they won't be; we grieve for her because her independent actions in the world, which were so strange, which no one else would ever have done, for good or ill, those actions will stop. We grieve, not for her past, which we will have forever, but for her future, which we will never have. We knew her best of all of them, and so the loss of her future hurts us worst of all. More than the self-destruction of the entire species of humankind, the loss of this one will grieve us.
The city listened, and the idea astonished them. And they also thought of something else: This very builder who gave the answer to them had been transformed by knowing these humans, and had acted in a way that was different from what any other builder might have done. What other builder has spoken despite the city's ban? What other builder has ever dared?
For which this builder should be taken into the city, remembered, and then dispersed.
Isn't that precisely what these humans do? Destroy individuals that make them afraid?
She's one of us. She won't be destroyed, she'll be remembered.
But we'll also remove the possibility of her acting strangely ever again. And why? Because we fear the change that she has brought to us. We would remove her future influence because we're afraid of it. We have done that again and again in our history. We never thought of it as killing, because no part of their past is lost. But hasn't she shown us that it's just as grievous to cut off an individual's future?
It was a strange and terrible idea, that they themselves practiced something that resembled killing, and that their motive was also fear. They never acted in the manic rage these humans showed in battle, but they still did what every other living creature did: They acted against individuals to protect themselves. Until they met these humans, they had never valued individuals, had never really conceived of what true individuality could mean, since they shared memories so freely among themselves that each builder remembered having done what all other builders did; thus the boundaries between them meant little. Now, though, as Bud Brigman dragged Lindsey's body through the water toward the lights of Deepcore, they finally understood what those boundaries were, and how it was possible to prize one person and mourn her loss.
Then her memories began to circulate among the builders of the city. Above all, they were astonished at the moment of her death. She was afraid of death, and yet she had chosen to die herself rather, than take breath away from Bud. An angry fear had driven her to kill Coffey, but an even stronger fear remained untinged with anger. Instead she acted on a stronger feeling - a certainty that Bud would keep her alive. They recognized this feeling. It was the same confidence the builders themselves had when one of them was at the point of destruction of her body, and another builder came and took her memories. I will live, the feeling said; I will live in you. And Lindsey meant more by this than the hope that Bud could bring her back to life. She knew that hope was slim compared to the probability of her permanent death. She also knew that even if she died, finally and forever, she would continue to live on in him.
Impossible. How could she, when they don't share memories the way we do?
Again, a quiet voice proposed an answer to the question, and this time she was joined by most of the other builders who had been close to Deepcore, who had experienced the humans most directly:
She knows that she has changed him, and so his future will be colored by her influence as long as he lives. She's part of who he is, and so her influence on the future won't die with her.
The city listened, astonished; they examined this answer, and then believed it. Though the process wasn't as clear and direct as the sharing of memory, it was true. The humans had found a way of living on in someone else's life.
Watch them
, the city said. There still may be some hope for them. By watching them we still may find some way to undo the harm we've caused them, some way to help these humans save themselves.
One Night was watching out the window - on the side that Bud was coming from. They had all seen the lights of the chase; they had seen where the submersibles struck each other and then dropped and went dark. Beyond that they had no idea what had happened. But when One Night saw a single light from a lone diver swimming toward them, she knew it had to be Bud - he was the only one who had a drysuit and helmet. "I got him!" she shouted. "I got him!" Now he was closer, and she could see that he was towing something. Someone. "Oh my God, that's Lindsey!"
His voice crackled to life on the UQC, faint and broken up, but they heard him. "Deepcore, Deepcore, do you read?"
Hippy was on the line. "Yeah, we got you, Bud. We're here."
It was hard for Bud to talk, since he was working his body so hard, swimming as swiftly as he could, trying to make headway against the drag of the water on their two bodies. It slowed him a bit, talking to them as they watched him through the window. But it was worth the delay of a few seconds if it meant they were ready for Lindsey when he got her there. "Go to the infirmary. Get the cart. Oxygen. The de-fib kit. Adrenaline in a ten-cc syringe. And some heating blankets. You got all that?"
"Got it. Over."
"Meet me at the moonpool. Make it fast."
"Now, come on, let's go," said Hippy. They were already moving, splitting up the jobs, getting it done. She was clearly dead - no one could live out there without a suit, without breathing mix. Yet if Bud said to do it, then they'd do it. And they all knew the stories of people drowning under frozen rivers and being brought back ten minutes later, sometimes even an hour later. It might work.
Nobody bothered with neatness. They took what they needed and let anything and everything else fall where it wanted. By the time Bud came under the moonpool they were there on the deck at the edge of the pool. Sonny saw the orange helmet rising up through the water. "Here he comes!"
The Abyss Page 31
