'But you surfaced for us.'
Magna smiled, a smile so wry and complicated it looked like a frown. 'Only because you happen to be the friend of a' well. It wasn't the first time I netted a floating deader. I've never caught one who could talk, though. He told me things. Comforting things. These days I take my validation where I can get it. He said his name was Jack, and that a girl named Sarah would find me, that he needed to talk to her. Here, will you help me with this?' She handed Sarah a folding patio chair. 'I'd let you to talk to him down here but the smell... I'm sure you understand. He must have been floating for weeks when I found him. I don't know who he is when he's at home but right now he's terrifically whiffy.'
Together the women climbed back up to the deck where they set up the two patio chairs under a sun umbrella. Magna put out a pitcher of ice water (the submarine had its own desalinization plant, she explained proudly) and a single glass. Sarah's guest wouldn't need one. Then Magna untied and unwrapped the tarpaulin-covered mass at the back of the deck. Frowning and holding her face very tight she brought her burden over and dumped it unceremoniously in the second patio chair. 'If you need me, shout,' Magna told Sarah. 'I'll be below watching series four of Prime Suspect on DVD. I've seen it so many times the perspex has worn right off the disk but I never get tired of Helen Mirren.'
There were words in that sentence Sarah had never heard before.
Magna finally put her pistol down next to the pitcher of ice water and left Sarah alone with Jack. What was left of his borrowed body, anyway. Fish had been at it leaving little that looked human. He had a torso and most of two arms. A head like a boiled chicken with some matted hair on the top. No eyes, nose or lips at all.
'You look like hell,' she said.
'In Finland they call hell Tuonela, at least they used to. It wasn't supposed to be so bad. A city under the ground where you went to sleep forever. When you arrived you were still pretty active and there was a welcoming party, they gave you a big beer stein. It was full of frogs and worms but it made you groggy and when you were finished they found you a nice soft patch of ground to lie down on. Sounds better than how it actually worked out, hmm?'
'I suppose,' Sarah said. It was tough to look at him. She'd seen plenty of corpses in her day but this was bad. He stank of stale brine and sun-baked skin.
'I didn't have much choice in bodies,' he explained, 'and I needed to talk to you. It's urgent, Sarah. There are things you need to know.'
She bit her lip and nodded. 'I know that rescuing Ayaan isn't going to be easy. I'm committed, though, and I've got Osman to go along with me. Ptolemy wants revenge, I can work with that'' She stopped. Something fragile and small opened inside of her, a flower of emotion. If she examined it too closely she knew it would collapse. 'Ayaan is dead. That's what you're here to tell me,' she guessed, her breath very cold in her lungs. 'I mean, you would know, somehow.'
'Yes,' Jack replied. He looked a little like he was melting. 'They're all' down in here with me. All the dead people. If she was dead I would be able to find her, and I can't. She's still alive, for the moment at least.'
'Oh.' The feeling inside her liquefied and drained away. It was'it had been'a kind of relief, and now it was gone. She understood that when she had heard Jack wanted to talk her subconscious had assumed it was to tell her that she'd done all that she could, that she'd been very brave but now it was over. But it wasn't over, it couldn't be yet. She had actually, in some quiet, small way, hoped that Ayaan was dead.
The thought wasn't worth the energy it would take to rationalize it away. Sarah looked away from him and changed the subject. 'So it's true, all that religion stuff? There's an afterlife?'