by Chris Howard
Yeah, yeah. Everybody always wanted everything right away. It was useless to argue. The job would take as long as it took. Wilraven navigated the conversation back toward useful. “When are you going to tell me where to find her?”
“In a separate communication.”
Corkran cut the call, and the screen went black.
Chapter Five
Cold
Jon Andreden laughed over his shoulder as he rushed through scanning at Knowledgenix security, lugging his dive gear. The guard at the front gates, also amused, had relayed Martin’s extremely high-priority message. Two words: “Hurry up.”
Once inside, Martin couldn’t wait to start. He was talking before Andreden had dropped his gear. “It certainly looks advanced. Dying to scan it or open it up.”
“If it can be opened up,” said Andreden from across the room, kicking his backpack under one of the desks. “Without breaking it. Seriously. Thing looks like it was grown, not bolted together.”
Martin didn’t look up from the empty stainless steel tank where he’d transferred the sub for study. He bent closer. “We’ll see. Just waiting for you. Going off what I’ve seen so far, Theo’s visuals, and your description of its behavior, I have to say it’s tiny for its capabilities. I thought we built the world’s smallest, smartest U-machines, but someone’s beaten us to it.”
“No markings, right?”
Martin shook his head absently. “Nothing but the soft dark-blue skin. You’re right, an unusual material. Not one of the standard insulation and anechoic skins. This stuff definitely feels . . . organic.”
Andreden leaned over the other side of the tank, adjusting the overhead lighting. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, but I had gloves on. Did you run it by anyone? Search MISTIC for any kind of identity? Nanoskin’s not my area.”
“Yeah,” said Martin absently, staring at the sub, running a finger along it. “The Cons and MISTIC aren’t talking to us, which probably means they’re still thinking.”
Andreden looked up, met his eyes across the tank. “What do you think?”
Martin said “Yeah,” reaching in with bright green surgical-gloved hands, rotating the submersible. “The Navy’s newer anechoic skins have that wet and slimy feel. But they dry when they’re left out of water, and when you squeeze them you know you’re pushing your finger into some polymer, something man-made, some advanced kind of foam. It compresses, and you can feel the compression. This thing has something . . . new.” He pulled off one surgical glove to touch the skin with his bare hands. “Look at the way the skin moves out of the way, as if the molecules slip over one another. It doesn’t compress.”
Andreden glanced up at Martin, alarmed. “Bacteriological?”
Martin Allievi cranked one eyebrow up. “Probably. Our microbial skin is still years away from this though.”
Andreden hadn’t even bothered with gloves. He was up to his elbows in the empty tank, lifting the sub gently out of Martin’s hands, tilting it on end, one hand cupping the fore dome, while he manually shifted the long cone of the tail one way then the other. “It’s almost insect-like.” He tugged the long flagella around, gathering them into a bundle and twisting them gently into a spiral. “Corkscrew propulsion and a flexible tail-end hull for maneuvering. Just brilliant.”
Allievi let out a snort, clearly unhappy about what they were looking at. “Can’t believe this. We’re a decade ahead of anyone else. Thought we were, anyway.”
Andreden ran his fingers over the sub’s hull, pressing gently to see if he could feel any structural features beneath. “Except these guys.” His voice came out in a low whisper. “Not just the skin. Everything about it.”
Martin gestured toward the end of the lab where the hall led to the sub room. Theo lived there in his house pool—Theo, who could talk to you like a human, reason better than some, and had no trouble with complex conversations. “Well, not everything. You still have the superior intelligence engine. No one on earth has created an expressive interface like Personifex.”
“How do we know?” Andreden looked up as he spun a valve and started filling the tank with seawater pumped in from the bay. “The damn thing hasn’t spoken to us yet.” He waved toward Theo’s room with one wet hand, inadvertently flinging water across the floor. “Did you talk to Theo? This thing talked to him. Or it told him where it was from or who made it. Something like that.”
Not really listening, Martin pointed out, “Whoever it is, they’re not selling these. They’re not at the shows. Very low profile. Has to be military.”
Andreden pulled a frown, but nodded in agreement. They hunched over the machine for a few more minutes, just staring at it. Beyond them, high on the lab’s wall, Alan Turing looked out from a giant poster, a blown-up reproduction of the Father of Computing superimposed over a block of 1s and 0s. The image was from an old twenty-cent stamp from St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
An hour later, after putting the sub under several different ultrasonic and tomographic scanners to determine what it looked like on the inside, they were back to staring at it, up to their elbows in the evaluation tank full of seawater. The submersible appeared solid on all the screens, using any sound or X-ray or magnetic imaging devices they had access to. The machine’s hull was impenetrable.
It lay dormant in the tank, flagella stiffening over the last hour as if the long whiplike appendages were going into some sort of programmed hibernation state—or even worse, something Andreden didn’t want to think about: death, with rigor mortis setting in.
Legs drawn up, boots hooked into the rungs of a tall stool, Andreden hunched over the machine, slowly rolling it in the tank water with the tips of his fingers, his eyes focused intently on the soft dark surface. A scalpel and a few other tools lay nearby, unused. Martin dragged a stool to the other side, leaning on the tank rim, his long legs touching the floor, one hand rubbing a day’s white chin stubble.
Andreden pulled his hands out of the tank, dropping the sub. “Ouch.”
There was a tiny dot of blood on the pad of his index finger. He had been stabbed by something sticking up through the pliable blue skin.
Martin looked over. “What is it?”
Andreden was examining the tip of the finger. “Don’t know. It bit me.”
He reached over, rubbing the sub’s skin with his thumb. The membranous material stretched and moved a little. If he scraped hard with a fingernail, the skin hardened and tiny ridges rose up, rough against his skin like sandpaper. If he handled it gently, the skin remained smooth.
“Can’t find anything sharp.” He lifted the sub out of the water. “I still can’t believe the hull covering is completely wet where it’s been above the water.”
Martin leaned in, eyebrows jumping with what looked like a new idea. He grabbed the sub from Andreden and moved it gently back into the water. He let it sit there on the surface for a moment and then pushed it to the floor of the tank, half a meter deep. When he pulled out his hands, the sub remained on the bottom.
Andreden glanced up at him. “That’s unexpected.”
It was his turn. He reached in, curled his fingers under the sub at each end and lifted it about halfway to the surface before letting go. It remained there, mid-water in the tank, neutrally buoyant.
Martin Allievi leaned over the tank, staring down into the water. “No vents, no noticeable fore and aft ballast adjusting. It’s as if it knew you wanted it to be level in the water about halfway between the floor and surface of the tank.”
“Shit, this is beautiful.” Andreden reached in and lifted the sub out of the water, holding it in front of him like some weird technology offering. “I’d give a fortune to talk to the man who built this.”
“You mean woman, Mr. Andreden.”
Andreden spun around. Martin nearly fell off his stool and had to skip a few steps sideways to catch his balance. He thrust one hand out, hooked the rim of the tank, and braced himself against the end. The stool went down, bouncing and skidding loudly acr
oss the floor.
A woman stood just inside the door at the sub-room end of the lab. Water ran off her in rivulets to the floor, pooling at her bare feet. She looked as if she had just stepped out of the sea—without any diving gear.
“What?” said Andreden quietly.
“You meant to say you would give a fortune to talk to the woman who built this.” She spoke with a rich, old-world-sounding accent, but Andreden couldn’t get a handle on it. Not Slavic. Not exactly Greek, but definitely Mediterranean.
Her long dark hair twisted into wet curls around her ears and throat. Her gaze was sharp, petitioning and pointed at Andreden. She gestured to the sub as if she wasn’t sure he understood her. She opened her mouth for a second—perhaps still not sure he was getting it, about to repeat herself—then closed it in an irreverent smile. Her mood and intention were made clear in the way one side of her mouth sharpened: urgent, demanding, uncooperative.
Stunned, Andreden stood staring at her with water running off the sub in his hands, down to his elbows. dripping to the floor. On the other side of the tank, Martin mirrored Andreden’s expression—and silence.
She was barefoot and wore a faded navy-blue sweatshirt and shorts. The wet blue material looked almost black; the sleeves were pushed up her forearms. The material was bunched up around her waist and looked a couple of sizes too large. Her face was unafraid and aristocratic. Her clothes were insurrection. She gave him a nod and raised her eyebrows, a little impatient, as if she had expected him to respond by this point. Her eyes locked on his for another moment, then dropped to the submersible in Andreden’s hands.
She walked up to him and pulled the sub out of his grip, and he let it go.
He let his open hands turn into a questioning gesture. “Who are you?”
“I’m not ready to tell you.” She didn’t turn back the way she had come into the lab, but continued past Andreden and Martin toward the front Knowledgenix offices, which led to the fenced lot, the main gate, and the security pass-through.
Andreden followed her out of the lab, Martin not far behind him.
“Who do you work for?”
“How did you get past security?” Martin called from behind Andreden. “How did you know we had your sub? Where did you launch it from?”
She didn’t turn or reply. She went through the offices and out through the reception area as if she knew the way, skirting the reception desk, heading for the big glass front doors. Outside in the cool summer air Martin slowed down, expecting security to stop her at the gate, but she went through without being noticed. Andreden jogged to catch up to her, waving off the stunned guard, who was already pulling the hold-downs on his holstered gun.
“No problem, Carl. We’re good.”
Despite her bare feet, she kept her pace, angling toward the north end of the fenced Knowledgenix grounds. It wasn’t completely dark beyond the streetlights; the night sky lit up with three-quarters of a moon. Andreden caught up to her as she turned at the corner of the lot, heading back toward the bay.
“Let’s talk about this. The skin. The buoyancy system. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before. Brilliant.” He made another open-handed gesture. “And I’m assuming you know we’re pretty good at this stuff.”
“Secrets, Mr. Andreden,” she said over her shoulder.
“Then tell me where you’re from?”
She half-turned while walking, motioned toward the Pacific with a tilt of her head. “My home begins where the land ends.”
That made him stop for a second, and he had to jog to catch up. “What?”
Still walking, she swung the sub around and pointed at him with it. “Look. My purpose was to meet you, Mr. Andreden, and to determine what you and your company are capable of. I am done. Goodnight.”
“Done?” He caught up and was keeping pace beside her.
Holding the sub in one hand, pointing at him with it, petitioning. “What is the phrase you use? Touch? I will be in touch? I think that’s it.” She was speaking in a low voice, as if to herself, and then she looked directly at him. “I like you. I like what you are doing in the sea, and I want to help you. I will help you—if you will help me find my sister.”
Andreden followed her along the north-facing side of Knowledgenix and down to the beach. The whole world seemed to shift under his feet. He felt like a teenager stammering out some lame conversation with the most popular girl at school. And he stopped on the rocky edge of the shoreline. She kept walking, her pace increasing as she approached the waves.
“You know my name. At least tell me yours.”
She glanced back, a quick, capricious smile on her face. It was the smile of a goddess playing a trick on a mortal. Stepping lightly over the slick, rockweed-covered boulders, she said, “I will think about it.”
Then she was in the surf. Andreden hesitated and then jumped across the rocks, calling after her. “Where are you going?”
The dark water sloshed against her knees. “Home.” She said it simply, as if it was the only obvious answer.
That stopped him at the edge, thoughts in disarray, none of them making sense, and so he picked one at random. “But it’s cold out there.”
Her shoulders jumped. She may have laughed a little, wading deeper into the black waves with the submersible, the flagella starting to whip around in her grip as if it sensed how close it was to the water.
Andreden jumped into the surf, hands out to keep his balance, watching and not really believing as the woman vanished. Without a breath or wave goodbye, she slid beneath the waves. And without thinking, Andreden pushed forward through a shallow swell, the water slamming against his knees.
He waded into Monterey Bay, the crest of the next wave hitting him in the chest. Then there was saltwater in his mouth, the spray blinding him for a moment. He lost his footing and kicked up, boots heavy on his feet as he headed straight into the following wave. He went under, opening his eyes when the world went silent. Nothing but darkness and swirling motion where a faint moon hit the rolling surface just right.
Andreden kicked harder and broke through the waves, sucking in air. He let the tidal surge take him and lift him with the rise of the next roll of surf. Teeth clicking together, his body shaking violently with the cold, he paddled back and forth, looking for her.
She never surfaced.
Chapter Six
Seven Pounds of Broccoli
The ghost of Regina Lowell kicked Captain Wilraven out of the dream. He woke up sweating and disoriented. Regina had been reaching for him, screaming for him to stop the sea from taking her away, her gloved hands clawing in panic at the dark. “Promise me, Jay. Promise you won’t let me go!”
“I won’t, Regina, I won’t.” He reached for her, the lights from his dive hat dancing across the flat faceplate of her diving helmet with the Don’t Fuck with Chuuk sticker across the top. Regina was right there, right in front of him. And he would promise anything, trade his own life for hers—if the sea allowed him to.
But the cold sea coiled up his limbs, holding him back, and he knew he couldn’t keep that promise. He also knew he had never promised to hold onto Regina; she had been deep in the water and on the other side of the sunken rig when ninety feet of structural support broke loose and swung into her, dragging her with it. The rusted edges had cut through her comm and air lines, casting her into the airless night, feeding her to the violent pressure of the deep.
He knew Regina didn’t panic—ever. Like everyone else on the Marcene, he had heard her calm voice telling them what was happening as it was happening—sharp, clear, deadly serious, deadly calm to the end. That was Regina Lowell. “The structure’s coming apart, top.” Top was the open call for anyone listening topside. “Definitely a problem. I’m in the way. See what I can do to free myself. Keep everyone back. Don’t want the rest of the rig coming down on anyone else. What I’m going to try to do is . . . ”
Wilraven sat up in his bunk, breathing hard, staring at the empty sky through the porthole wh
en Angelo knocked on the door.
“Captain? The Carla’s coming alongside with supplies. I’ll be on deck with Olad and Miles to receive.” Angelo sounded amused as he said, “April radioed ahead, said she was only going to deal with you over the bill.”
Wilraven rubbed his eyes, waited for his first’s footsteps to hit the end of the hall before he tugged his boots on. Standing in the middle of his tiny cabin, he stared around as if seeing it for the first time, then closed the screen on his Mac and stowed the workspace. He wrestled into a windbreaker, grumbling to himself, thinking of Corkran’s weird fear of the sea. “What is wrong with everyone?”
Angelo had laughed over April’s demand for personal services, that Wilraven be involved in receiving their food and dry goods. He and April were old friends, but was there something funny about a supply delivery?
A good first officer could run the ship without him, taking on most of the responsibilities of a captain, and Angelo was the best. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be captaining his own vessel.
Wilraven made his way down to the deck. Why would April be insisting on special arrangements?
April Capek was captain of the supply ship Carla, a tall, muscular woman in a faded black tank top and jeans, short pinned-up black hair, with tarot cards, palm trees, and handguns tattooed wrist to shoulder up one arm, and what looked like a sinister, sailor-beckoning mermaid up the other.
She wasn’t as tall as Wilraven, but she could have arm-wrestled him down on any tabletop, and he wouldn’t want to go up against her in a fistfight. It was a good thing they were friends from way back. He’d been a second mate on the ill-fated Donna II when April signed on with her Merchant Mariner's Document—ill-fated because not long after he and April had left for other decks, the Donna II grounded on a reef and sank off Haiti. The crew waited more than a week to be rescued. Everyone was safe, as was most of the cargo, which allowed Wilraven and April their joke about renaming her the Donner; the captain rarely bought enough food for a week, and cannibalism might have been a close thing when the crew was finally rescued.
