Sound

by Alexandra Duncan

  “Bienvenidos.” He grips my hand, then Cassia’s, then Rubio’s. “Bienvenidos.”

  “G . . . gracias.” Rubio’s voice falters.

  I look closer at the crowd. Some of them are missing ears, fingers. Some of them have burns and knife marks across their faces. Metal benches line the wall, and the floor slopes down to what looks like a drain in one corner.

  Cassia peers into the faces. Suddenly, her hand tightens on my arm and a small noise escapes her throat.

  “Nethanel.” She rushes forward and falls to her knees beside one of the men. “Nethanel, it’s me.”

  He looks up. Shock and recognition flit across his face. He throws his arms around her, and they rock together on the floor.

  A murmur runs through the room. I step closer to Rubio. The ghost of my mother’s hands are on my back, smoothing my hair, and my homesickness for her hits me like it never has before.

  Finally Cassia and her brother draw apart, and then they are a flurry of hands, signing rapidly and silently. I pick out a few words—the symbols for daughter and sick and ice. Then Cassia waves a hand at Rubio and me and makes the sign for friend. Nethanel catches first my eyes, then Rubio’s, and nods his thanks.

  “That’s the sister?” says the same woman who spoke to us in the dark.

  I turn to her. Her dark hair is pulled back with a piece of string, her cheekbones hollow. Her skin was probably olive once, but has gone sallow, and dark circles droop beneath her eyes. She’s thin—too thin—everywhere except for the odd bulge at her waist. It takes me a moment to piece together. She’s pregnant.

  Nethanel stands and waves her over, gathers her in with one arm, and signs to Cassia with his free hand.

  Cassia turns back to Rubio and me, a half smile on her face.

  I eye her. “What?”

  “My brother says thank you for helping me find him. He and Aneley have been figuring out a plan to escape, but most of the people here are too weak.” Her smile widens. “He wants to know if we can help.”

  We sit in a circle, those of us who are well enough to plan, while everyone else huddles against the wall, out of my lights’ reach. There are ten of us: Nethanel, Aneley, Cassia, Rubio, me, and five other captives. The youngest is a skinny boy of twelve or thirteen who calls himself Pulga. The oldest is a woman around Soraya’s age, Lisbeth. Aneley’s father sits with us, too, but all he can do is rock back and forth and chant, “La hora viene, la hora viene, la hora viene.”

  Cassia translates for her brother, and Aneley repeats the words in Spanish for her father.

  “Nethanel has the security codes for the control room. One of the guards thought he wouldn’t understand and typed it in right in front of him.” Cassia smiles conspiratorially at her brother. “Sometime in the next day or so, they’ll come to take us to the diving transport, right at the entrance to the bay. There are never more than two guards, one at the front of the line, and one at the back. That’s when we act.”

  “Put me at the front.” Rubio scowls. “I’d like some quality time with these putamadres.”

  Cassia looks at her brother. He nods and signs something to her.

  “Good,” she tells Rubio. “Nethanel wants to know if you can show everyone some basic defense moves. Ways to incapacitate someone.”

  “I can do that.” Rubio nods. “But it would be better if we can get our hands on some weapons, too. Anything, a knife or even a rock . . .”

  Aneley signals to Nethanel. He lifts the foot of one of the benches while she reaches down and pulls a handful of round, palm-sized shells with serrated edges from a hole in the floor.

  I squint in the low light. “Are those . . .”

  “Limpet shells.” Aneley holds one up. “They grow on the sides of the ships. We’ve been collecting them whenever we’re sent on a dive.”

  “Are those all you have?” Rubio nods at the stack in her hand.

  “For now,” Aneley says. “We’ve been sneaking them back a few at a time. If we carry too many, they’ll notice.” She glances nervously at the ceiling.

  Nethanel signs to her, a swimming motion with his hand.

  “We can get more, though,” Aneley says. “The next time they take us out.”

  Rubio swallows. “If that’s the best we have.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look scared before, not when we fought the Dakait, not when we faced down the harrow, not even when Rött captured us. He glances at me. “Kind of makes you wish we’d brought the cat along, huh?”

  Nethanel signs to Cassia again. She looks down, silent for a moment, and then nods. My stomach tightens.

  “There’s one more thing.” Her mouth wavers. “We aren’t all going to make it. Someone has to stay behind and barricade themselves in the control room to open the air locks. The rest will run for diving transports. We’ll need two to fit everyone, which means two pilots—”

  “What about the Mendicant?” I interrupt. “Everyone could fit in there. And we’d only need one pilot, so if one of us who can fly didn’t . . .” I stop and swallow the lump rising in my throat.

  Cassia nods. “That would be less risky. But we still need someone for the control room.”

  “I’ll do it.” Lisbeth looks up from her lap, her face a map of pain.

  The room falls silent.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  She looks at me. “How old are you, mija?”

  “Sixteen,” I say quietly.

  She pats my knee. “My boy, he would be one year older than you if his oxygen line hadn’t split down in the warmwater.” She lifts her chin and surveys the rest of the circle. “I’m sure.”

  “If we make it, we fly back to the Tsukinos in Ny Kyoto.” Cassia signs to her brother as she speaks. “From there, we figure out how to get you back to Milah.”

  I lean close to Aneley. “How did you two manage to figure out as much as you did?” I glance at Nethanel. “I mean, when you couldn’t talk.”

  “We found a way.” Aneley holds out her hand and traces an S on her palm. “I saw him the first time they took us all out to work. They thought he was simple, but I knew better. I could see it in his eyes.”

  She looks at him. “One of them kept . . . he was trying to touch me, and Nethanel . . . he let the winch he was turning slip. He looked right at me and let it go, even though he knew what they would do to him.”

  “They make you work?” I glance at her stomach and frown. “Even with . . .” I’ve taken only one reproductive biology course, but she must be at least five months along.

  A mix of fear and fury crosses her face. She looks away from me, at the bolted door. Her jaw tightens. “Yes.”

  Pulga whips his head toward the door. “Ya vienen.” He looks at me, panic all over his face. “The light.”

  No. Not yet. We need more time. Everyone scurries for the corners, a whisper of bare feet and ragged clothes. I reach for my sleeves and slap off the lights just in time. Our prison door swings open.

  Chapter 25

  They sort us into two lines, shouting and sparking the electric prods they carry. They’re only men, I try to remind myself, but it’s all I can do to stand my ground and not back against the wall.

  “You.” Juna, the lone female guard in the group, points at me. “You can swim?”

  My stomach sinks, but I nod.

  “Good. Fall in.” She jerks her thumb to where Aneley and her father stand and turns to Cassia. “What about you, tös? Can you swim?”

  “Of course I can.” Cassia sounds brave enough, but underneath, I hear something that might be fear.

  They march us down the corridor to the lift in two lines, Rubio and Nethanel in one, Cassia and me in the other. I catch Rubio’s eye, and he shakes his head ever so slightly. Not yet. We need more time to go over the plan, and he needs time to teach us to fight. Whatever is at the end of this long walk, we have to live through it.

  I clench my fists. I killed a harrow. I fought off a band of dakait. I walked into a witch’s lair and saved us
from poisoning. I survived a typhoon. These pieces of tatti aren’t going to be the end of me.

  Behind me, Cassia chokes down a whimper. I glance back, quick. Her face is green.

  “What’s wrong?” I whisper.

  She shakes her head.

  They herd us onto the lift, the same one Rött used to bring me down from the surface. I push us near the back, away from the guards, and bend my head toward hers. “What is it?”

  “I lied.” She looks at me, and her eyes are too big. “I don’t know how to swim.”

  I swallow and wrap my hand around hers. “Stay close to me, okay? Don’t let them split us up.”

  Then the doors are opening, and we’re back on the main deck. Several guards watch us from the glassed-in control room overlooking the open hangar. My pulse jumps at the sight of the Mendicant. It’s still there, its loading ramp open. But then we’re shuffled past. The dakait push us onto different windowless shuttles, separating Cassia and me from Rubio and Nethanel. Low metal benches stretch along the walls of the shuttle’s hold. The floor is an open sluice. I grip Cassia’s hand harder as the loading door seals shut behind us.

  “Maybe they have boards,” she murmurs, eyes fixed on the floor.

  I glance at the man standing guard. His eyes are flat and disinterested. I don’t see any boards.

  “Maybe.” Even I don’t think I sound convincing.

  A grind and thump sound outside the hull, and we jostle into each other. The hum of the ship’s engines deepens.

  “She’s away!” the pilot shouts back to our guard.

  The guard grunts and pulls a bin from a compartment in the bulkhead, then hands it down to Aneley’s father, sitting on the floor by his feet. The old man lifts out a pair of goggles, a headlamp, and a worn plastic sack with shaking hands, then passes the bin to the woman next to him. I take my own set and examine them. The goggles’ elastic is frayed and a whorl of scratches clouds the lenses. Definitely no diving boards. I wrack my brain, trying to remember what I read about the Enceladan oceans. What is the water like? Freezing, like it was outside Ny Kyoto? Or boiling from the cryovolcano? Are there harrows here, too? I should have spent less time feeling sorry for myself and more time with the Mendicant’s data banks after we got back to the Tsukinos’ spindle.

  The shuttle engine slows.

  “All up!” the guard barks.

  We climb to our feet, and I catch Aneley’s eye. “They have suits for us, right?”

  She flicks a fearful look at the guard and shakes her head.

  Of course they don’t. They’re about to send pregnant women and old men out into the dark sea to do . . . what?

  I don’t have time to ask. The guard passes around another container, this one full of unrendered cryatine. One by one, the captives dip into the bucket and coat their exposed hands and feet in the mixture. This is how they’re going to send us out, then.

  “Grove five. In position,” the pilot shouts.

  The guard opens a compartment built into the bulkhead, revealing several reels of clear plastic tubing, each the width of a garden hose and dozens of times as long. He pulls the end of one and passes it to Aneley’s father. The old man fits it in his mouth.

  I look at Lisbeth. If his oxygen line hadn’t split . . . She nods.

  Chaila. My hands start to sweat.

  The guard taps a command into a keypad on the wall, and then pulls back a lever built into the floor plating. The cabin fills with a sucking, rushing sound. A whirling vortex of water and pressurized air appears where there was a section of floor a moment before. An air lock.

  One by one, the others strap on their goggles and headlamps and line up. Cassia and I file in behind them. The guard hands each person a tube and hand chisel. And then they jump. The whirlpool spits as they disappear through it, spattering water across the walls. When my turn comes, I stop short, staring down past the vortex and into the darkness beyond. I can hear Cassia breathing fast and sharp behind me.

  I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

  The guard shoves an air hose at me. “You want air or not?”

  I take the hose and a chisel, numb, and step up to the edge. I don’t have a choice. It’s okay. Hydrostatic pressure is equal to gravitational pull times liquid density times depth times. Hydrostatic pressure . . . But I can’t seem to make my feet move any farther. I take a tiny step back.

  Behind me, the guard sighs. He shoves me, and I fall.

  Spray whips at my cheeks and hair. I nearly lose my goggles but press them fast against my face and hold on to the air tube. The water hits me. Darkness and pressure. Cold. Cold, but not freezing. I take a deep, gasping breath through the hose and inhale a lungful of stale, mildewed air. I force myself not to cough and draw away. Don’t panic. Don’t panic. I have to get my bearings.

  I fumble at the headlamp and switch it on. The beam doesn’t penetrate far through the murk and debris, but several meters below me, I catch sight of the other divers’ above the bubbling blackwater vents. Their air hoses trail behind them, leading back to the shuttle. It hovers above us, lights glowing in the salt water. For some reason, I think of angler fish.

  Cassia plunges in behind me, thrashing and flailing. She screams—a long trail of bubbles streaming out of her mouth as she begins to sink under the weight of her own clothes. I kick hard and catch her breathing line before it can whip away. I grab her, thrust the tube back into her hands, and link her arm through mine. She coughs into the hose. I point at my feet, and she twitches her legs in a rough imitation of mine. We’re still sinking, but it’s slowly now, more controlled. I nod and flip on her headlamp.

  We follow the others down to a flat space between the vents, the pressure tightening around us. I grip my air hose and glance back as we touch down on the shale seabed. There are dozens more blackwater vents here than in the waters outside Fru Rangnvaldsson’s spindle. Salt and minerals thicken the water, making it difficult to see anything more than the lights on our fellow divers.

  We push forward, our headlamps tracing out the few meters before us. It’s all I can do to get enough air and keep us moving through the water. Step, breathe, step, breathe. The lights ahead of us stop. Suddenly my beam sweeps across something immense and white. Harrow. Get back!

  But it doesn’t move. I reach out and brush the whiteness with my fingertips. Hard and smooth, like a wall. I look up. The structure curves up as far as my beam can reach, stippled with dark spots.

  No, not spots. Portholes.

  A ship.

  I look at Cassia, the words bursting in my throat. A ship. But then the full meaning of it descends on me. A ship like the Ranganathan, grown here. Who do you think our best buyer is?

  Cassia tugs at me. I blink and tear my gaze away from the ship. Aneley stands a few meters away in the murk, waving us forward. We follow her around the ship’s prow and climb through one of the lower portholes into a stripped-down version of one of the Ranganathan’s corridors. The walls to either side of us are thick and smooth, but the ceiling has yet to finish growing. I stare up into the ship’s delicate inner scaffolding—translucent chains of nutrients that will grow into floors, service shafts, dining halls. For a moment, I forget why we’re here. A wave of wonder rushes over me. Living on one of these ships, it’s easy to forget what an elegant work of bioengineering they are—cascading chemical reactions between a keratin-compound base and the mineral-rich Enceladan seas. How many people have the chance to stand inside one while it’s still growing, see it being born around them? But then reality comes rushing back, like all the weight of the sea above me. I’m not a scientist surveying the triumph of human endeavor. I’m trapped here, along with everyone else.

  Aneley hands me a chisel and points to the others, chipping away at barnacles and limpets stuck to the ship’s inner walls. Rage sucks away the last of my wonder.

  We join them, prying the barnacles loose and shoving them into sacks. The limpets turn out to be the real challenge. Something about them feels more al
ive than the barnacles, and if we’re not fast enough, they suction themselves to the wall with an unbreakable seal. I finally free one and toss it in the bag, but Aneley fishes it out and shakes her head at me. She slides the limpet in her pocket. Right. Weapons, or the closest thing we have to them. I can see how Nethanel’s deafness wouldn’t matter down here. His way of talking with his hands might even be a benefit.

  I lose my grasp on time. Barnacles, bag. Limpets, Aneley. When her pockets are full, she points to Cassia. I try counting out minutes—one one thousand, two one thousand—but the numbers slip and jumble and my head feels heavy. I can’t be getting enough oxygen.

  A muffled shout breaks through my fog. I turn and see Lisbeth holding her hand, spotlighted by her headlamp. A bright red cloud billows from it. Everyone near her recoils. Aneley catches Lisbeth’s breathing tube before it can snake away and pushes it back into the other woman’s mouth. Lisbeth wheezes into it, her eyes popped wide with pain. A deep gash runs across her palm. Her chisel lies at her feet.

  I swim to her and turn her hand so I can look more closely. A loose flap of skin lies over the laceration, gushing blood. It’s cut all the way down to the bone. We need to staunch the bleeding and dress it before she loses too much blood. No one besides Aneley moves to help. Some of them are even wrapping up their chisels in their sacks and making for the porthole where we came in.

  Aneley clenches her air hose in her teeth and rips off a piece of her shirt. We wrap it around Lisbeth’s hand and tie it in place with the string from her hair, but a thin trace of blood still seeps out into the water. Lisbeth blinks slowly and leans against the wall. Aneley looks around and points up. The shuttle.

  Her father shakes his head, but Aneley makes her hand into a claw and mimes it crawling, then points at Lisbeth’s hand. The blood. Something in the water will come after the blood.

  Aneley’s father and the last of the others swim for the porthole where we entered. Aneley shakes Lisbeth’s arm, but the older woman doesn’t move. I shine my headlamp in her eyes. Her pupils don’t shrink like they should. She’s still breathing, but we don’t have much time. Aneley slings one of Lisbeth’s arms over her shoulders and gestures frantically for me to do the same.