Guns and Guano

by Andrew Knighton

CHAPTER 9: DANGERS OF THE DEEP

  Dirk’s heart was the world, and the world was void - icy dark and without hope.

  There was nothing but that sense of oblivion, nothing but the heart, a funereal beat slowing towards its end. What else could there ever be?

  Dirk sank through the void, his mind tracing faces against the black. Terrible faces, sharing with him their agony and grief. Faces shrouded in chains and pain, swallowed by the dreadful deep. They were his only companions and he followed them down.

  The beat grew slower, his mind duller, his whole body accepting inevitable death. What was there to struggle for? There were only the faces, his company in pain. The lost ones. The ones Ubu Peter had tried to save him from, or tried to save from him.

  Ubu Peter.

  The name became a face in his memory.

  Became a body.

  Became a moment of action, bodies grappling on the docks.

  Became a whole scene, a tangle of motive and emotion, of protecting his friends and seeking something beyond himself, beyond the swirling faces, beyond the icy reach of death.

  Purpose flooded back into Dirk’s mind. He was not the darkness that surrounded him. He would not be ruled by it.

  But still the gloom pressed against him, a swirl of shapes so black that they blurred into one, blotting out everything beyond them. Dirk took a step forward, and another, and another, but still they surrounded him, following him along the ocean floor, keeping him constantly surrounded. He tried to brush them away but the ghostly shapes flowed through his fingers with the current. They weren’t going anywhere.

  Feeling was returning to his mind, but not his body. His legs and arms grew numb as the spirits sucked the warmth from him. He couldn’t feel his feet, could barely move his fingers. Stumbling over something, he fell with terrible slowness to the ocean floor. If only there was some damn light.

  He fumbled at his belt, trying to work out what he could use. The harpoon gun was no good and he couldn’t slice ghosts up with a knife or a hatchet. So many blades and nothing to stick them into. Nothing more solid than darkness.

  He touched something cylindrical with a funnel base.

  Nothing more solid than darkness, huh?

  Numb fingers fumbled to unhook the tube from his belt. He fought back the terror whose icy tendrils were snaking into his mind. His left hand would barely obey his commands. He couldn’t feel his legs.

  Finally unhooking the tube, he rolled onto his back. Focused all his will into the fingers of his distant left hand. Slowly, achingly, they closed around a metal tab and pulled.

  The flare burst into life, spraying Dirk with bright white light. The ghosts screeched and scattered, fading as they fled, their shadow bodies dissolving in the harsh magnesium glare.

  Feeling flooded back into Dirk’s hands. The feeling was pain. Seeing the suit’s gauntlets begin to glow he let the flare go, trailing pearlescent bubbles as it raced like a shooting star towards the surface of the sea.

  The warm ocean currents flowed around Dirk, thawing his body and soothing his hands. He twisted around, rising on one knee. Sand rose in a cloud round his legs as he dragged himself up on the ocean floor and set off once more towards the wreck.

  Inside the wreck, jagged shadows split the sand, the broken planks of the deck above casting tiger stripes. Dirk approached them warily, watching for any sign of movement, any hint that these were anything more than ordinary darkness. Any sign that the spirits remained.

  A century and more of drifting currents had buried the base of the ship and speckled her sides with sea-life. Clumps of weed hung between patches of barnacles. Brightly coloured fish flitted through the weeds, anemones stretching for prey just out of reach. A crab scuttled out of the shattered stern, tapped an experimental claw against Dirk’s boot and thought better of it, disappearing back into its man-made and rock-broken shelter.

  Dirk walked towards the back of the ship, each step a study in slow motion. He pushed harder, trying to force the pace against the overwhelming weight of water. It wasn’t that he minded slow so much, some goals needed a little patience. But enforced slowness was frustrating.

  The ocean changed for no man. For all his straining he moved no quicker, and trying to just made him more frustrated. The helmet didn’t help. He wanted to glance around, to scan the wreckage for any sign of the tablet, to look out for any returning shadows. But his view was constricted to the glass panel at the front, and he had to turn his whole body to look around. It was like being a toddler, unable to move faster than a waddle or see anything above his own height.

  He turned left as fast as he could, then back to the right, the side of his face pressing on the glass as he struggled against the suit. All he could see were splintered planks and seaweed. He didn’t even know what he was looking for. Would the tablet be in a chest? Lying loose? Buried five feet beneath the drifting sand? It could be anywhere in this wreck, or nowhere.

  Stopping for a moment he took a deep breath, reining in his emotions. The air was thick with sweat and the unsettling scent of rubber seals, but a pipe to the surface kept it breathable. He closed his eyes and let the staleness pass over him. He focused on the rhythm of his breath, the sensation of it moving in and out of his body, a technique he’d learned on an all too brief visit to Tibet. Just using it reminded him of the Brothers of Sleeplessness, their saffron robes and wrinkled smiles. He let that memory go too, let all memory and mindfulness leave him, until there was only his breath.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  In and out.

  He opened his eyes and waited, still in body and mind, taking in every detail of what he could see. Then slowly, so slowly even the water saw no need to resist, he turned on the spot. This time, instead of frantically hunting out details he gazed ahead, letting the details wash over him. The drifting sand, the rippling weeds, the intricate pattern of interlaced timbers. And as he accepted the patterns of the world around him, other details stood out. The scuttle of a crab. The shimmer of a fish. The sharp angles of an iron-bound box, protruding from the sand.

  Of all the things he’d seen, the box looked the most likely to hold something of value. It seemed a good place to start.

  There was a handle on the end of the box, as rusted as the other fittings but still solid enough to grip. Dirk took hold of it and heaved, a cloud of sand rising around him as he drew the box from its resting place.

  As the cloud settled he knelt down next to the box. It was a foot across and deep, by two wide. Knocking on the top and the front he felt no give - the wood was still solid. There was an iron clasp on the front, its padlock rusted into place. Dirk took the knife from his belt, slid the tip between the clasp and the wood. Pressing against the pommel, he managed to get the blade beneath half the clasp, then pressed his foot against the box and heaved. For a long moment he thought it wouldn’t give, that time and rust had embedded the nails so firmly into the wood that they wouldn’t part. Then something shifted, the knife slid sharply down the wood, and the whole rusted lump of the clasp fell to the sea floor.

  Dirk lifted the lid and laughed. The front of the chest had been so solid, it never occurred to him to check all the way around. But the back was completely gone, probably smashed out during the wreck. The box itself was empty.

  The sand where the box had been buried was still loose. Dirk stabbed at it with the knife, probing the soft ground. On the fourth go he met resistance. Setting the knife aside he dug with his hands, the sand sliding back almost as fast as he could shovel it out of the way.

  A nearby shoal of fish scattered and darted away.

  Down in the hole, his fingers brushed against something solid. Something hard and square edged. He wormed them around in the sand until he had a grip on the end of the object, then pulled it clear.

  The cloudy water swirled at the edge of his restricted vision. He ignored it, focusing on the task in hand.

  The sand settled, revealing a lump of stone. A tablet, just like t
he one he’d seen at the Epiphany Club. The next step on the road to the Great Library.

  This time his laughter was joyful, not self-mocking, as he slid the stone into the bag on his belt. It wouldn’t be fun, walking with that banging at his thigh, but once he was clear of the wreck all he needed was to tug on the chain and Blaze-Simms’s machine would haul him back to the surface.

  He turned to face the open sea.

  Two feet away, staring right at him, was a shark.

  Dirk grabbed his harpoon gun, raised it and pulled the trigger.

  The radium chamber glowed and shot a string of bubbles from the empty barrel. He hadn’t reloaded since the ghosts.

  The shark lunged, a mass of razor teeth and hunger. It slammed into Dirk, throwing him against the wall of the wreck.

  Dirk fumbled at his belt where the knife should have been. Nothing. He cursed his own stupidity. He’d got so damned excited digging up the box that he’d left the knife on the floor.

  The shark lunged again. Dirk dodged as best he could, twisting right and down, away from the attack. Teeth snagged at his leg, not reaching the flesh but snagging on one of the metal plates, tearing the rubber seal that joined it to the suit. Water poured in.

  With one hand Dirk grabbed the torn seal, trying to stem the leak. If he couldn’t stop it, the suit would flood and he’d be drowning in moments. His other hand grabbed the hatchet from his belt. Not ideal, and it would be hard to swing hunched over his leaking leg, but better than nothing.

  The shark flashed towards him again. Dirk waited until the moment before it struck, water rising past his thigh and down the other leg, then lashed out with the hatchet. The timing was perfect. The flat of the axe slammed against the creature’s nose, turning it from its attack. Before it had time to recover he swung again, burying the blade in the flesh behind its right eye. Blood turned the water red.

  The shark jerked, wrenching the axe from Dirk’s hand. It turned, one fin twitching, blood streaming from its head as it lined up for another attack.

  The water was up to his waist now inside the suit. There’d be no more dodging.

  Flicking its tail, the shark opened its mouth wide, its movements growing sluggish but its teeth still deadly points.

  Dirk clenched his fist. If that was all he had then that was what he would use.

  The shark gave one last twitch and fell still, blood still streaming into the water.

  Dirk breathed a sigh of relief, almost choked on the water rising past his neck. Saved from being shark-food only to drown. Perfect.

  Then he remembered the other piece of equipment Blaze-Simms had given him.

  He grabbed the tube from his belt, realised he couldn’t get it to his face. The damn suit was in the way.

  Who the hell came up with emergency oxygen but no way to use it?

  He fumbled at the fastenings around the helmet, but they were too small to work with his hands enclosed in the suit.

  He dragged himself forwards, each step a greater struggle with a suit full of water and no air. How long without breath now? Half a minute? A minute?

  He stumbled down by the box, grabbed the Bowie knife and slid the blade between the plates enclosing his chest. With a great wrench he prised them apart, the rubber seal splitting from the point of the knife. He tore one clear, then the other.

  He could feel the lack of air, a blurriness of thinking, a strain in his chest.

  He freed his right arm from the suit, let the metal limb drop to the ground. He was dizzy now, the knife trembling in his hands, dangerously close to his own flesh.

  The blade stopped, stuck in the other shoulder seal. He wrenched at it once, twice, the knife still stuck, the plates not parting.

  He punched at the knife handle, an act of desperation in a world growing dark. The knife spiralled away, becoming lost in a stand of seaweed.

  Behind it, the shoulder plate popped free and the left arm fell from the suit.

  With the last of his strength, Dirk lifted the helmet from his head. He grabbed the emergency breathing cylinder, twisted the tube, and pressed the opening to his lips. Sweet, merciful air rushed into his lungs.

  The ocean parted and Dirk burst into the open air. He took a long breath, and another, filling his lungs with the joy of fresh oxygen. Grateful as he’d been for the emergency air, it tasted of chalk and iron. It had been enough to get him to the surface, just, but it couldn’t compare to the real thing. He wasn’t sure he’d ever appreciated how wonderful fresh air could be, but he’d never take it for granted again.

  Lying back, he floated on the surface of the sea, letting his aching muscles rest. He relished the breeze brushing his skin, the sun warming his body, the waves lapping against him.

  But the weight of the tablet was dragging him back down and he knew he couldn’t lie there forever. Regretfully he looked around, spying the yacht a few hundred yards away. He rolled onto his front and swam towards it.

  A rope ladder hung from the back of the boat, trailing down into the water. Dirk grabbed the rungs and climbed. At last he grasped the edge of the deck and hauled himself up, flopping down on the warm wood. He sprawled there, eyes closed, letting the exhaustion of two long days drip away with the salt water.

  But rest was for the weak when there were better things to do. Dirk grabbed the bag at his side, rolled over and looked up.

  Straight into the barrel of a gun.