Ocean on Top

Chapter Fourteen

There was no sign of Bert in the corridor outside, and I didn’t dare wander in search of him. I did remember the way back to the near-the-ocean entrance and swam there in the hope that it was a logical place for him to be waiting.

There were at least a dozen people in the big chamber, and more could be seen dimly in the darker water above, but none of them was Bert. I could think of nothing to do but wait for him, as far as the main program was concerned. But it did seem a good time to pick up a little local education.

I swam up to the interface and hesitated. Other people were going through from time to time. I decided I’d better watch their technique before I tried it myself.

It was simple enough. All one did was cling to a ladder, remove one’s ballast belt and hang it on one of the numerous hooks lining the rim and swim through. However, everyone who did this was wearing helmet and coveralls, presumably to keep the special liquid in their mouths, ears and so on. Maybe ocean water would hurt lungs, for all I knew. Anyway, no one stuck an unhelmeted head through the boundary, and I decided to play safe myself even though I couldn’t see what the danger, if any, might be.

Several of the people around were watching me, I noticed. One or two of them had expressions of concern on their faces. One gestured at me, but of course I couldn’t read her signs. She watched me for a moment, saw that I didn’t answer, made another flickering series of hand motions to those around her and then swam over to me. She pointed to the water and then to me and raised her eyebrows quizzically. The nature of her query was easy to guess, though the girl herself commanded more attention than her signals.

She might have been the one I had seen outside, though there was no way to be sure. There were several others in the group who were just as likely to be that one. She had straight blonde hair, cut short in a bob which could easily be accommodated in one of the swimming helmets. She was about five feet three in height and would have weighed about a hundred and ten pounds out of water. She was wearing a two-piece affair which was a long way from being a coverall, but protected much more acreage than a bikini. Her face was rather harrow, and I could make no guess at her regional origin.

In response to her question, or what I assumed to be her question, I raised an arm toward the water surface, very slowly, watching her with raised eyebrows as I did so.

She gave a violent negative headshake, wrapped her arms tight around herself and shuddered realistically. I could also interpret that and was annoyed with myself for not remembering that the water outside would be cold. It was useful data; it justified the inference that the liquid we were in was not a very good heat conductor, or I’d already have felt the chill of the ocean water only a few yards away. Of course it couldn’t be too poor a conductor either, or we’d be having the standard spacesuit problem of getting rid of surplus body heat. I hadn’t been conscious of either heat or cold up to this moment. Now I wished I had a thermometer so that I could form some numerically meaningful opinions.

I held up one finger and joked it toward the boundary, asking the girl the same question with my eyebrows. She shrugged, as though to say it was my finger, so I pushed it on through.

The temperature was bearable, but I could see why the swimmers wore coveralls. I thought I could stand it for a short time if I had to, but saw no reason to make a test of the matter just then.

I thought it would be more useful to start to get familiar with the normal communication method of these people. In spite of Bert’s remarks and my earlier try through the tank walls, it seemed possible that some of them might know at least a little of some language I did. I showed the girl the writing pad. She nodded at the sight of it and flashed a sidelong smile at the others who were drifting in the vicinity. I wrote a short sentence in each of my more usable languages and held the pad up for her to read.

She looked at it courteously and carefully, but smiled and shook her head. I showed it to the others, with much the same reaction. Then there was a lengthy session of flickering fingers as they held a conversation among themselves. Several of them, including the girl, looked as though they would have laughed if it had been physically possible. Then the girl took the pad and stylus from me, and began to make marks of her own.

The stylus moved very rapidly, but not in a set across-and-back lines like ordinary writing. It was more like drawing, from where I floated. It took her perhaps thirty seconds to finish, then she handed the tablet back to me and let me gawk at it. I gawked.

What she had done is impossible to describe in real detail, though a general idea can be given. In a way, it was rather like an electrical diagram, with straight lines going from one place to another, most of them parallel to the edges of the pad. Sometimes there were tiny gaps in the lines where one would have intersected another; sometimes the junctions were marked with dots; sometimes one line went through another with no effect on either. Here and there in the maze were tiny patterns, incredibly complex considering the time that had been spent on them. None of these looked exactly like an electrical symbol I knew, but all left a vague feeling of familiarity. The whole pattern was almost a picture. It gave a tantalizing effect of being something I should recognize but couldn’t dig out of the back of my mind. I kept trying to interpret it in terms of a circuit diagram, which as I said it vaguely resembled, but got nowhere. I tried to think of it as one of those trick drawings all made out of straight lines which become modern art every few decades, and got no further. I had to shake my head as the girl had done.

I cleared the sheet and tried some more languages, this time ones I don’t know at all well. All I was hoping for was evidence of recognition. I didn’t get it. Not a trace. This was very odd, since the dozen or so languages I had covered represent native tongues for something like three-quarters of the Earth’s population and included at least a few known slightly by educated people everywhere.

The girl reciprocated my second effort with another of her own. I could see that it differed in detail from the first, but it bore a strong family resemblance to its predecessor, and I couldn’t make any more sense out of it. If I’d had a camera able to work under the circumstances I’d have photographed it on the chance that it had something to do with the power plants, though even at my most optimistic I’d have admitted it was a very slim chance.

The thought of plans in general gave me an idea, though. I cleared the pad again and drew in its center a small sketch meant to represent the room we were in, the various passages leading from it and the chamber where Marie’s sub was berthed. The girl didn’t get the idea at first, so I swam over to one of the passages whose entrance I had indicated, looked down it to see whether it were straight or not and extended the appropriate lines on the drawing.

That seemed to get across. She nodded her head after some more hand-talk with her friends; then she gave me a ‘so what’ look. I handed her the pad and stylus and gestured around, hoping she’d see I wanted a map of the place.

They understood this, too, I felt sure, but the hand-talk went on for a good deal longer. I hoped they were merely arguing about the best way to give me the information, rather than whether to give me it at all. What I would have liked best was a regular chart of the place, not someone’s freehand sketches.

The argument, if that’s what it was, was interrupted by Bert’s return. It was a relief to be able to converse understandably, however slowly, once more, but Bert had his own ideas about the subject of conversation. He took the writing materials from the girl and cleared the pad without a glance at what was on it.

“Did you get any co-operation out of Marie, or has she lumped you with the rest of the outcasts?” he asked.

“I think I’m on probation,” I replied. “Nothing will really satisfy her but a definite report on Joey.”

“Well, we can’t give one. To the best of my knowledge he never got here.”

“You didn’t spot his sub in the vicinity, even?”

“No one reported it.”

“But how about your sonar?”

“We don’t use it except under very special circumstances. It would be too likely to be picked up. We’re quite willing to have the world know about us, but only if they find out all about us. Don’t you have that picture yet? We simply don’t want to be lumped in with the power-wasters the Board is always after, and you know perfectly well that’s the picture people will have if we don’t get a chance to explain.”

“I suppose that’s true. It’s the picture Marie has now, and she seems quite fond of it. I wonder if just explaining is really going to be enough.”

“It would be if people would believe the explanation.” I said nothing about the profundity of that remark.

“You’ve been explaining to Marie for six weeks, and she doesn’t.”

“No, we haven’t. We’ve been talking for six weeks and she doesn’t listen. There’s a difference. She refuses to discuss anything except Joey. I think your greatest service, both to us and to the Board, would be to get her to pay attention to a genuine description of the whole situation.”

I digested that for half a minute or so. Several of the people who had been there when Bert arrived had now swum away, but the girl and two or three others were still watching with interest. They were deeply absorbed in seeing what we were writing on the pad, crowding in to look at each message in turn over the writer’s or intended recipient’s shoulder. The girl always seemed to get the best place. Standards of courtesy seemed a bit old-fashioned compared with most regions at the surface.

“You may be right,” I wrote at last, after trying to fit what he had said into the program I had outlined for myself. “That would seem to mean that I’ll have to see this whole installation with my own eyes, so as to be able to claim first-hand knowledge.”

“Precisely. Come along. With this job, you may be spared farming after all, but at least you’ll have to see the farms.

As a matter of fact, I’m getting hungry, and it must be even longer for you than for me since the last decent meal.”

I had no objection to this thought, and followed him as he swam off through still another of the passages. The girl and three others, after a couple of gestures, followed us.

As before, it just wasn’t practical to write and swim at the same time, so I had plenty of opportunity for thought as we traveled. I wasn’t able to use it very constructively, and there’s nothing much I can say about the trip except that it took around fifteen or twenty-minutes. Absolutely nothing of interest, and as far as I know nothing of importance, happened until we reached a doorway much less regular in shape than the circular and rectangular ones I had seen so far.

The light on the other side was fainter than in the tunnels, but brighter than in the ocean beyond the regular entrances. I followed Bert with quickened interest, guessing what I’d see.