Emma Tupper's Diary

by Peter Dickinson

More silence, during which Emma could hear the faint scrape of the fibreglass head nudging against whatever it had touched, held there by Anadyomene’s slight buoyancy.

  “If we flood the tanks a bit we’ll begin to sink,” said Roddy. “That might clear the head enough for us to reverse out.”

  “All right.”

  Emma could hardly whisper. To be actually sinking . . . But hardly had the gurgling stopped when they heard the gentle rasp of the keel settling onto rock.

  “We’d better try it like that, even so,” said Roddy in a firmer voice. Emma couldn’t speak, but settled back in her seat.

  “Ready?” said Roddy. “Half speed reverse.”

  The motor hum rose, reached a peak, dipped, growled.

  “Motor off,” said Roddy, and rattled on as though he were afraid of letting the silence settle again. “I didn’t hear the keel move, but it’s lead and we might not. If we made a bit back then, we may have cleared the head from whatever was touching it, and . . . Hello, there’s one. It popped down beyond the end of the rock as though it was coming out, and then it saw us and popped straight back again . . . Let’s pump her buoyant and try again.”

  It was no good.

  “We got in, damn it!” said Roddy angrily. “Let’s . . .”

  But that was no good either. Nor was the next try. Nor the next.

  “We’re in some sort of tunnel,” said Roddy ten minutes later. “I wonder if I put the propeller right over to one side—we might be able to swing her slowly round and then we could see our way out.”

  “No!” said Emma. “You’ll get jammed across it, and then . . . Roddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been listening to the motor?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s giving up quicker. As soon as we start pushing against something it gives up. We’re running out of electricity.”

  “Rot!”

  “No.”

  “All right. I’d noticed too. You should see how the light dims when you’re taking current. We must think of something else.”

  “Roddy, that creature you saw just now—did it look as if it was really going up?”

  “Yes.”

  “How deep are we?”

  “Shine the torch round . . . twelve feet.”

  “I’m sure they breathe air, and there’s such a lot of them they must have a big space to live in. We’re only twelve feet under, and the one you saw came down and went up. It might be just beyond that ledge: we’d have room to turn round and come out again forward . . . we could wait till it was light outside, too. There’s bound to be a little light from outside.”

  Roddy thought about it.

  “You want to go further in?” he said.

  “Yes. It’s the best chance. Besides. . . besides, if we’re going to get stuck, don’t let’s get stuck here. If we go in, at least we’ll find out. I want to know before I . . . before . . .”

  Astonishingly, Roddy laughed.

  “Don’t say it,” he said. “I’ve never heard a madder reason.”

  “It’s not as mad as Finn getting drowned rather than marry Andy Fertagh,” said Emma sourly.

  He laughed again.

  “OK,” he said. “We’ll just give the batteries a rest. Sometimes they pick up a bit when you do that. I’ll turn the light off, too.”

  Almost at once the hull was shaking to the steady onslaught of the creatures. For a moment Emma thought that they were actually going to do the trick of bundling Anadyomene bodily out into the open loch, but then she heard through the racket the grinding of the fibreglass head against the tunnel roof.

  “I can’t stand this,” shouted Roddy. “Light on! There they go! You’re right, they really hate it. Motor on!”

  Emma hauled at the lever. The motor ground sluggishly up the scale, and levelled off nowhere near its proper note.

  “We’re moving,” said Roddy. “Come along, you poor old thing, come along! Keep going, just a bit more. Come along. Easy, easy. There. Motor off.”

  Even the blue spark was tired.

  “Shine the torch round here,” said Roddy. “Yes, we’re going up. Oh, damn!”

  Rock grated near the tail. Emma snatched the torch back and watched the bubble move forward as the bow rose while the tail stayed fast. Then there was a longer scraping, a twitch of the hull, a rattle from the propeller, and the bubble stayed where it was.

  “Nothing much,” said Roddy. “Slid out of it. I can see the surface now, at this tilt . . . wait for it . . . we’re there.”

  Emma heard the rattle of water breaking from the fibreglass, and behind it a faint, wailing noise, like wind in a chimney.

  “I’m going to switch the light off,” said Roddy. “Then we’ll pump her higher. If they attack us like they did in the tunnel, we’ll have to switch on again; but that may only have been because we were blocking the tunnel. I want to rest the batteries as much as possible. Lights off. I wonder what that noise was. It’s stopped now.”

  Chapter 7

  “THE NOISE WAS THE CREATURES, of course,” wrote Emma. “I think they make it when they see a light, and even the wild-cat noise is what they do when they first come out of the cave and see the moon. They hate light.”

  A movement caught her eye outside her window—the Jaguar hissing through the drizzle with Andy driving and Poop bouncing in her seat beside him like a child waiting for a circus to start.

  “It hurts them,” wrote Emma. “You can hear it in the noise they make. When Roddy first poked the torch up through the hatch . . .”

  “They’re leaving us alone, then,” said Roddy after they’d sat waiting a couple of minutes for the onslaught. “They’re learning. Shine the torch this way so that I can find my pumps. Fine. We’ll pump her out as far as she’ll go—I want to get that head off if I can.”

  “Why? How?”

  “So it doesn’t catch in the rock on the way out. We aren’t going to have enough juice to allow for that. Ewan’s left the right wrench here, ready for tomorrow.”

  “It’s probably today by now.”

  “Half past twelve. You’re right. Up we go.”

  As she worked the pumps Emma discovered how bad the air inside the hull had become. She pumped slowly, so as not to use up more oxygen than she had to, but Roddy’s impatience made him flog the levers to and fro so that he finished long before her.

  “That’ll do,” he said. “Let’s see what happens if we raise the lid an inch and poke the torch up. You watch through the port.”

  He was already kneeling on the seat when Emma crept round and, crouching clear of him, cupped her hands on either side of her eyes like blinkers and pressed them against the glass.

  “It’s warm!” she said.

  “So’s the hatch.”

  “This is where the hot springs must be. This is how they got through the Ice Ages—in here! That’s why they can’t stand light! That’s . . .”

  “Hold it,” snapped Roddy, cutting off her excited gabble. “Now’s what matters. Turn, you brute.”

  Click, went the clasp, and light dazzled across the water. Slimed rock on the extreme right. A band of water, seen from only a couple of inches above the surface, rippling green and yellow in the yellow light. The clamour of the creatures racked her through and through—not a miaow, but an endless, wavering yell. One of the lizard heads plopped out of the water a few feet in front of the bows and coming towards her, but in an instant it was streaking away. Then the whole scene became a blaze of white foam as the hull rocked and plunged beneath a buffet from above, up near the bows. A few drops sprinkled the back of her neck. The yelling cut short, and she realised that Roddy had let the hatch fall, but he still had the torch on and in the thin beam that shone from either side of her cupped hands she saw one, two, three much smaller creatures slip into the water. One of them touched the hull, but she could only just sense the slight jar, as Anadyomene was still lurching from the original blow.

  “Wow! what a stink!” said Ro
ddy. “Did you see what hit us?”

  “I think we’ve come up beside a rock, and a big one jumped off it to get away from the light. It must be used to the water being deep there—they wouldn’t splash like that if they were diving normally. Three babies followed it. Are you all right?”

  Roddy’s face was very pale and he was gulping slightly.

  “Think so. It’s the stink. Didn’t you smell it?”

  “I smelt something pretty nasty, but the air’s so bad down here anyway, and I was too busy looking to notice.”

  “It’s like . . . like . . . I won’t say it. But perhaps it’s why they aren’t chewing at us any more. They make so much pong in here that they can’t even notice our pong on the hull.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “They seem to be scared of the light all right. If we can put up with the stench we’ll try and get the head off. I’ll go the same way as last time, put the hatch up a little, give them plenty of time to clear off, and then climb out. When I’m out you’ll have to follow me and hold the torch while I work. Here we go. Hold your nose.”

  This time, as the hatch rose, Emma saw two of the heads darting across her line of sight. The ragged teeth were made for tearing, not chewing. A little hump which might be nostrils rose at the top of the snout, near the front, like a crocodile’s but flatter. The heads were the colour of toadstools all over except for a black streak down the back of them. The eyes were even smaller than she’d thought, little black beads sewn on to the toadstool skin

  She felt a blow on her shoulder, and looked up. Roddy was kicking her, and she realised that she had become so absorbed in the effort to remember every detail of what she saw that she had never noticed that the clamour from the creatures was too loud to shout through. She climbed out of the hatch, into the reek.

  The vast cave stank. It was all horrible things, everything slimy and rotten and hidden from the sun, but mostly fish. And all the time the long yelp beat at her brain.

  Roddy handed her the lamp and pointed to where the beast’s head lay back along the hull. Gingerly she balanced herself round on the curving metal above the stinking water and crouched to steady the head for him. The hull rocked at every move. Suddenly terror of an attack from behind overcame her, and she twitched herself round, almost losing her foothold; rock soared there, only just aft of Anadyomene’s propeller, and arched over them before it was lost in darkness, and a rock ledge, against which the submarine nestled, ran out beside them and became the cave wall—no attack from that side, unless there was a creature still on the ledge. The hull joggled and she turned back; Roddy was lowering himself down the hatch.

  He was gone for only a few seconds, and came back with a coil of rope, one end of which he fastened to the shackle by the conning-tower. He turned to her and she saw his lips form the words “Hold tight”; the hull bucketed as he leapt for the slippery rock, scrabbled, and climbed to the ledge. She saw the cord tauten as he hauled the hull in close against the rock; then there was a long pause, with him out of sight, looking for a projection to tie it to, presumably. And then he was back, poised on the ledge.

  He just stood there.

  All round the high, wailing bellow continued, but nothing came into the circle of light. Emma thought how fast the creatures could move through the water, in how few seconds they would be on them if the torch went out, if she dropped it. The first thing was . . . no . . .

  Holding the torch above her head she lowered herself into the hatch and felt for the boathook, pulled it out of its catches and fed it up through the hatch beside her. Back again on deck she lifted the fibreglass head and closed the hatch. That would give him something solid to jump against. He had the cord already. Now she stretched out the boathook to him.

  He reached for it, felt for the cord, shut his eyes, opened them, stared at her and shook his head.

  Well then, thought Emma, crosser than her fear, I’ll have to lower him from above.

  She hooked the lamp on to the boathook and passed it up. Then she grasped the cord, leapt and scrabbled. Roddy had her by the back of her jersey and half pulled it over her head as he hauled her the last two feet.

  “Sorry,” he yelled. She smiled sourly.

  When she’d settled her jersey and looked down, she at once understood, and regretted her sourness. It might be only a few feet, but the green, wet metal of the submarine seemed a tiny and treacherous landing-place in the dark water from which, even as she watched, another of the lizard heads shot up and shied away. She moved back, and stepped into softness. A softness like a pile of rotten leaves. Roddy moved the torch.

  She was standing on the edge of a nest, a two-yard circle of water-weed, slightly hollowed in the middle. On the edge of the circle of light, further along the ledge away from the cave entrance, she thought she could see the edge of another nest. Without thinking she flicked the switch in the side of the torch so that the light no longer shone out of the dome on top to make their protective circle round them, but shot in a long searchlight beam from the side. As she swivelled the beam down the cave wall the water exploded into a boiling flurry as creature after creature flung itself from the line of light into the water. In one place she saw a nest which seemed to be still palpitating, and then four or five little lizards, none of them a foot long, had not dived but tumbled over the edge. As she flicked the switch back to the less fierce illumination of the dome Emma found herself hoping that the little nightmares could swim.

  Roddy was tugging at her elbow, so she picked her way out of the odious softness of the nest. He pointed to the next ledge above them. Emma tried to mime surprise—it wasn’t easy to be tactful when you couldn’t even talk. He took the torch out of her hand and put it down against the rock, then screened it from the cave with his body. The yell of protest diminished to individual sharp yelps, backed by a continuous whimpering; but as that torture was taken away Emma was again aware of the stench, borne on the steamy air of the hot springs. The sweat of terror was mixed with the sweat of heat and humidity; all her skin was streaming under her two jerseys.

  “I can get down there again,” said Roddy, pointing to the ledge. “I think I can get down to Anna if I have to. I don’t know why I came up, except that I was frightened of being attacked from behind while I was dealing with the head and wanted to be sure we were moored close in. I don’t think they can reach more than the ledge by the water—they can hardly move on land. They get up as far as this by throwing themselves out of the water, like dolphins. I could see what they were doing better when you were holding the torch. So if we can get up there we can have a bit of a rest.”

  Swaying, Emma knew that a rest was what she needed. The next ledge was level with her head, and first of all she settled the lantern firmly on to it, as though that were more precious than either of them. The maddened and maddening wail began at once. Roddy gave her a leg-up, and then she hauled him from above. This ledge was not level, but sloped up towards the heart of the hill, and Roddy pointed up it. Emma was sick with tiredness and fear and the stink and heat of the great cave. She longed to sink to her knees, cuddle herself close and let the world go black. Roddy looked at her fiercely, took her by the wrist and almost dragged her up the slope. A part of her mind noticed that they were now walking over a different kind of softness, like rotten leaves on the floor of a wood, a very old wood. She looked down and saw a fine grey powder which their footsteps stirred. It was arranged in a jumble of patterned ridges, and these too were part of a larger pattern, big circles, ten feet across. So once there had been nests up here. The creatures had been more active, or the water-level had been higher. She wondered how long ago. Before Columbus? Before the Conquest? Before Christ? Yes, all of those. Perhaps when the glaciers melted . . . How long ago was that? She would look it up when . . .

  Not when, if.

  Roddy was walking with the boathook under his left arm and the torch in his left hand, close to the edge of the ledge, so that she could see down to the water. Although
they had only climbed two ledges, they were now four levels up—all the ledges tilted like this one, then. The whole hill was tilted, and the layers of rock of which it was made ran up on parallel slopes. In her tiredness it was some time before she thought of slipping her hand out of Roddy’s and taking the torch from him. He looked round as she put in her right hand, furthest from the water, and walked on, holding it as low as possible.

  The clamour faltered, died, welled out where the ledge narrowed and she had to let the creatures see the beam direct, and diminished again.

  “Hang on a sec,” said Roddy. “Let’s have that torch.”

  She gave it him where the ledge widened, and he turned and faced across the cave, grinning as the hideous baying rose. Suddenly he switched the light off. His voice, deep and pompous, filled the silence.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said. “I cannot tell you how deeply I am affected by the welcome you have given me. My friends, fellow citizens, fellow Scots . . .”

  The light flicked on and the mad mob bayed. This time he moved the torch slowly back and down so that the noise lessened bit by bit.

  “Thank you again. It is a name of which we are all proud—all justly proud . . .”

  They nearly lost the torch over the ledge as Emma snatched it from him and switched it off.

  “But it’s exactly like,” he said. “You must have heard them on the telly.”

  Emma found herself choking in the dark, choking with rage and tiredness.

  “It hurts them,” she said, over and over again. “Can’t you hear how it hurts them?”

  “Them?” said Roddy in an astonished voice. “They’re vermin. They’re . . . oh, all right. I’m sorry. Let’s sit here—I don’t think anything can get at us here.”

  They eased themselves down in the dark. To Emma it seemed not quite so warm up here, and the appalling stench was certainly less, and best of all they had silence. No, not silence, for the water was in ceaseless turmoil thirty feet below them. Sometimes a single yelp rang back and forth, but mostly it was the swash and splash of water as the creatures dived and leapt, and a little shrilling cry which Emma thought might be the babies clamouring for food as a parent returned.