“Rainbow minnies,” said Suzie. “The redfish come up from under and feed on them. Where you see minnies, there’s redfish.”
“Get your air!” yelled Jale.
All the older kids, the teens, started hyperventilating.
“They have to fill their tissues with oxygen,” Suzie explained.
“Jesus,” said Milo. “How deep are the redfish?”
“Deep,” answered Demon Rum.
Milo looked thoughtful for a second. Then he started inhaling and exhaling as fast as he could.
“No, Milo,” said Suzie.
“Working in the lung,” Milo said, speaking on the exhale, “with my dad…we’d get gas bleed-off…from the waste membranes…the cartel gas masks didn’t work for shit…so we’d have to hold our breath…couple minutes at a time…I can swim…no reason I can’t…dive and fish…”
Demon Rum handed out short wooden spears to the older kids.
“Milo,” said Suzie, “listen, you don’t—”
“I’m going,” he said, feeling light-headed.
“Jale!” shouted Suzie.
“Let him,” said Jale.
Demon Rum came skipping back and handed Milo a spear. He tried, without success, to mask a smile.
What weren’t they telling him? What didn’t he know?
“Go on one!” yelled Jale. “Three…two…one!”
The teens all swallowed one final, great breath and dove over the gunwale. Milo was the first one in the water.
Surrounded by cool, surrounded by blue, he kicked with his legs, pushed with his arms, and aimed straight down, where the water was a deeper, dusky blue. Like a sky in reverse.
Islander kids knifed past him. In a second, they were twenty feet below. Thirty.
What the hell? What were they doing?
They were using their legs and feet, their bodies undulating, the way a dolphin swims.
Milo did the same. He went down faster, deeper, and it got darker all around.
The others were out of sight, below. His lungs began to burn, but he didn’t want to turn back yet. The fish couldn’t be far.
Something in his head warned him: What goes down must come up and needs time to come up.
Shit.
Milo turned and pulled his way back toward the surface.
You have a lot to learn, he told himself. Take time to learn it.
Goddamn, the daylight and the mottled sun up above were awfully far away.
But he made it.
He broke the surface in a universe of shooting pain. Pain like explosions in his lungs. He opened his throat and screamed in reverse, sucking up air like an anaconda; he got water, too, but didn’t care. Coughed it up.
Suzie grabbed him and dragged him into the boat.
He was bleeding. He could feel it. His eyes and ears.
“You are one simple fucker, you know that?” Suzie bellowed at him. Was she hitting him? Hard to tell. Parts of him felt sharp and broken; other parts felt dead. “If that’s all the smarter you can be, like a two-year-old, I don’t care if it breaks my heart, you asshole, I’ll—”
“Leave him alone,” said a young voice. Very young. Demon Rum. “Let him come around. He was brave.”
“He was stupid,” spat Suzie.
“He was learning. Still, Jale’s gonna be pissed.” By the time Milo was able to move, able to sit up, the rest of the divers were breaching, breaking the waves like fish, gulping air. Some of them, including Jale, had thrashing fish on their spears. Redfish the size of small children, with long red whiskers and narrow fins.
The young kids cheered and helped them aboard.
—
Celebration! There were extra food and water rations when false night came around and Jupiter eclipsed the sun. And they sang some songs.
Milo sat down beside Jale, who was snuggling with Chili Pepper, and said, “I’ll be able to do it right next time.”
He didn’t know how he would do this, exactly, but he felt that it was true.
But Jale said, “No.”
“Listen,” he said, “back on the crawler—”
“Forget the crawler,” she said. “You wait ’til Chili has had time to teach you right. You and Suzie can both learn, and then next time—”
But Milo was already standing, already heading back toward his place by the mast.
Dammit, he thought. I was just being courteous, anyway. Whose permission—
“Milo,” said Chili Pepper, calling after him. “Jale’s captain. Her own father does what she says, when we’re on the water.”
Milo tuned him out by playing some music inside his head.
—
A day later, when Frodo sighted minnies, Milo grabbed a spear and went over the side right after the others, before anyone could stop him.
“Shit, Milo!” both Suzie and Demon Rum cried.
But Milo had been conferencing with the voices in his head, and they had given him some helpful memories from other lives (so the voices said).
You could imagine your brain was a house, with a toolroom inside. You could open that toolroom and find ways to make your brain work better. He recalled floating in space, at peace, stark naked.
He recalled meditating with the Buddha (yeah, right!). In, out. Breathing was much more than taking in air. Breathing was where your rhythms interfaced with the rhythms of the world.
Even when you were holding your breath.
He passed Jale, who gave him a brief, surprised look. The water darkened around him.
Pressure and movement. Balance.
Glowing dots wriggled through the dark…Milo struck with his spear (that was breathing, too, the death struggle and the spear trying to wrestle free).
The fast ascent, into light again, flying up through rolling waves, into warm sun and light.
And climbing aboard by himself, because, oddly, no one held out a hand, no one helped him over the side or complimented him on his fish.
No one even looked at him.
“Oh, I see,” he said, but he said it almost silently, because he finally got it.
They had their ways and their captains and rules because those things kept them alive. He had made a successful dive, but he was an asshole for disobeying Jale.
He didn’t make eye contact with any of them as they went about the business of storing fish and steering for home.
Suzie sat down beside him.
“That time was fucking awesome,” she said. “Way better than before. Smarter, you know? You’re not as simple as I thought. But Jale’s going to rain on you, I think.”
“Suzie—” warned Chili Pepper.
“Let it go, Chili,” she said sharply. “You turn your back on him, you turn your back on me.”
Milo’s brow furrowed. He loved her.
—
A day later, when the island came in sight, they still weren’t speaking to him.
Fine. He and Suzie and Mom and the twins would make their own village on the other side of the island. He knew about catching redfish, and they could grow some crops, maybe.
“Hey,” said Suzie, waking him up, nudging him with a big toe.
It was the supernatural time of day, eclipse time. The great planet was a hole in the sky, surrounded by misty light and stars.
“Hey,” said Suzie, lying down beside him, facing him. “Do you remember me, from before?”
“Sure,” he whispered. “From the day the riot started.”
“Not that,” she said. “Before then. Before…”
“I never met you before then. I’m sure we must’ve passed on the concourse or on the rec level or something, but we must’ve gone to different classes and sims—”