A blurred shout jolted her. A forceful thump dislodged her mask and icy water gushed in. Breath throttling in her reg, she wedged her shoulder against the hull to steady herself and clear her faceplate. A basic skill to cancel the insult—hardly an injury—of forcing her attention as one might a fear-impaled novice under pressure of being under pressure. Thanks, jerk. Silt swarmed her like flies at a feast. Zero viz. Wait it out, she told herself. Let the crap settle. Give the bastard a scare.
Or call it, as Jane had suggested—not just this dive but diving with him period. She’d soloed flooded quarries and mines and magnificent submerged limestone caves, and one cave formed entirely of rough-edged marble. She’d tootled stag through salty warm seas stocked with bejeweled corals and blue tang and damselfish, companionless braved the bilious North Atlantic until clouds of transparent, broken-backed shrimp crowned aureoles around her drowsy, decompressing head that felt liquid as the element in which she was immersed. Solo was a desirable option. Or partner with others more like herself, or more novice. Jane, for example.
But alone or re-partnered meant slow and steady training, baby steps which rankled the pride she’d only recently, these past two years, discovered she possessed—while love’s tight, scratchy fit took her farther faster. Each holy-shit-complicated excursion with Rand led to a re-stitched seam of the surface, a thing as freshly remade as her newly accomplished self. The two of them together another surprise—never so close, his post-dive bulk seeming to swell in her arms. Both of them sweeping aside the tedious task of figuring who’d done what to who, and why. Together replacing the unvoiced why go on at all with each other? with why stop now?
Enough. She rose above the waning silt-cloud to the deck’s railing, to the wheelhouse slumped to one side like a rotting haystack in a long-fallowed field. To Rand. He regarded her then shrugged. In response she thrust two fingers forward. Let’s go. Soon the other, lesser-skilled divers from the boat would spasm by and the viz would drop. Jane would be down.
She finned toward the ship’s deeper-lying stern. It soon cliffed into view—as did, beyond and slanting ever deeper, the lakebed’s non-navigable underwater dunes, marker-less and disorienting. And so, tailed by Rand she hugged the hull as she crossed over the vessel’s half-buried massive propeller. Portside she located the entrance with her beam, and nudged in. The greater darkness swallowed some of her wattage. She focused on an interior doorway immediately to her left, knowing from previous dives that this led to a corridor lined with the tiny quarters for the crew. The brief concentrating cleared her head. And then with a few careful frog kicks, mindful of the accumulated silt, she soon arrived at the descending staircase to the engine room—where the real dive would begin.
10
She hung back while he unclipped a four-inch reel from his harness. He unspooled some of the thin nylon and wrapped it several times around the top of the steel banister and tied off. Then he reefed down the narrow stairs, running the line behind. Within seconds a rust blizzard stormed up. She clutched the railing with one hand to keep her bearings. When the sleeting orange flakes engulfed her, she began to grind down too—sightless, head first, on hands and knees. Catch, release, pick, unpick. Metal scraped metal. No surviving a torn hose or whacked-open tank valve—her air fluming at once into the slosh would mean game over in less than a minute. And yet there was no turning back on this freeze-frame rollercoaster—too tight here to have second thoughts and scooch around. She ticked down each step like a cog in the gear-work of fright, claustrophobia nipping her brain, but she soon beat it back by calming her breathing, felt herself expand to fit the contours her body normally made. In the zero viz her optic nerves still fired, shaping the sprawling silt and rust into jagged, grasping edges. A crying mouth like a cyst. Mother crooning rock-a-bye. Father’s throat-bob swallow before opening a present—a comb she bestowed when she was six. Gone but still here until she shut her eyes against them.
She opened her eyes again—only a gummy mess.
Soon the tightness yielded and she stubbed her elbows on what must be floor. She pushed off with her arms, lofting several inches, and stroked once with her fins. Just past the slag lay a kettle-black midnight scummed with white foam. Narcosis. She needed to find his line, and right now. The engine room likely seethed in tortuous switchbacks among bashed, silt-coated machines. Snagged on some instrument or machine, unable to free herself in the murk, she’d hoover her air to zip. Or freed, blindly search for the exit while sucking her tanks dry. Drown or drown. Great fat chances. She peered through the narcosis and screen of whitish particulate with a rabid ferocity as if to will the line into being. She’d done it before. In other tough situations underwater—head addled by the cold, the dark, the depth—by the sheer force of mental power, she’d conquered, survived by finding what she needed. Just as she sometimes willed her parents still alive into her dreams.