Ocean on Top

Chapter Twenty-one

It took a long time, but I did my best. She read each page with care, sometimes nodding silently, sometimes asking questions after finishing it. I answered them all as my knowledge permitted.

About half her questions had to do with how heavily I had depended on Bert for my information. It must have been over an hour before I had painted about the same general picture for her that I had formed myself.

I closed with the plea that was the key to the whole plan.

“Marie, you’ve got to get back and report all this. Whatever Bert may have said about your staying, the Board has got to know everything. Bert and I will get back on our own when we can, and you don’t have to consider Joey anymore.”

“Bert? Why should he want to go back? I know he’s staying. He admitted it. He’s had a taste of doing what he wants, without having to consider other people. He tried to talk me into doing the same, the dirty beast. The fact that he’s staying here is the only thing that makes me willing to listen to your suggestion that I go.”

“I don’t believe that of him,” I wrote. “He told me he was staying, too, but implied that it wasn’t permanently. My feeling then was that he’d joined to find out what we need to know and would come back when and if he could, just as I did.”

“I can believe it of you.’” She fell silent again and thought for several minutes while I listened to my own heartbeat. It was the most encouraging thing she’d ever said to me, and I felt worse than ever about the lie. I had to tell myself several times more that it was for her own safety.

Her own safety wasn’t Marie’s concern, however. She made that clear enough in the next few minutes. When she finally did speak again, it was clear that she’d been doing some rapid planning.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll go, though I still don’t think they’ll let me get away. There’ll be some sort of accident. I’ve an idea, though, which just might tell which of us is right about this.”

I looked at her inquiringly, but didn’t bother to write anything.

“You seem to believe that they’re willing for me to go back and report to the Board, and that the change that’s been made in you and Bert can be reversed so that you can come back and breathe air again when you want to. Right?” I nodded. “All right. I don’t believe either of those items. To find out, you just swim off and tell Bert that I’ll go back if he’ll come with me, in this sub. He can come back down afterward again if he likes, but I’ll be much more convinced of his yarn if I see him breathing air again, and I’ll feel a lot safer if he’s in this boat with me when I drive it out of here. Now tell me why you think that’s a silly idea and a waste of time and effort, and all that sort of nonsense.”

I didn’t need air-normal sound transmission to know there was sarcasm in her tone; I couldn’t hear it, but it was certainly there. She didn’t trust me entirely, either. At least I could get some satisfaction out of surprising her with my answer.

“It seems like a fine idea to me,” I wrote. “I’ll find Bert and put it up to him. I suppose you wouldn’t accept me as a substitute if he prefers to stay a while longer.”

Her expression changed a little, but I wasn’t quite sure what the new one meant.

“ ’Fraid not,” she said. “It would prove your point about the return possibility, but I don’t think you’d make as good a hostage.” That was some comfort, anyway. “We’ll play it my way, as far as it goes. Go find Bert and learn what he says.”

I swam off obediently. Bert was waiting in the entrance chamber this time, apparently improving his knowledge of the finger language with the assistance of our same old followers, the girl and her friends — two of them, anyway. I couldn’t have told which was the missing one.

I had boiled everything down to one sentence on the pad and showed this to him the moment I was close enough.

“Marie says she’ll go if you’ll change back and go with her.”

He stared at it for a full half minute without even moving to take it from my hand. Then he suddenly snatched it and, without clearing the writing swam off down the tunnel toward the sub. The rest of us followed. He streaked over to the conning port where her face was still visible and held up the pad with my words still on it. She looked at it. He pointed at me and back at the pad and put on an expression which anyone, regardless of cultural background, could have read. She answered aloud.

“That’s it, Bert.” He cleared the page, looking at her in a puzzled fashion.

“Why?” he wrote.

“I may explain later. Will you come?”

His answer startled Marie. I wasn’t sure what it did to me.

“Sure. I may have to come back later — there’s useful work to do down here. But it might be best if I went with you now anyway. There’s a lot to be reported that there hasn’t been time for either of us to tell you.” I thought that was a pretty tactful way of passing off her refusal to listen to him all those weeks. “I could make a more thorough job of it.” He paused in thought, even longer than it took Marie to read the sentences. Then he went on, “We’ll tow your sub to the operating room — it’ll be easier that way than for you to pilot it — and connect it to the lock. I’ll go in and get de-pressurized. They won’t argue too hard. I can come in through your lock then, and we can go back up together.” He turned to me and added the word, “Okay?”

I wasn’t sure it was okay. Without Bert I wouldn’t be able to do anything useful, as far as I could see. No doubt the girl who was still watching us, and her friends, might be willing to keep me from starving until I learned my way around. They might even guide me back to where I could work with Joey, if that was to be my main occupation; but I couldn’t see what use I’d be to the Board that way. I hope it’s been obvious that I never intended my residence to be permanent, as Joey apparently had. I hadn’t been lying to Marie about that.

There was no use suggesting that I go back with the two of them. The sub wouldn’t take us. It was built for one, and crowding Bert in would be hard enough.

Then I remembered that Bert’s own sub should still be around somewhere. I grabbed the pad.

“Why can’t we all go back?” I wrote. “Your boat must still be here, too. If Marie feels so strongly about having you in hers, I could still use yours. You can still come down again, or both of us can, if the job seems to call for it.”

It seemed like a fine idea to me, and even Marie appeared to approve of it, but Bert had a question or two. I had to admit he raised good points.

“The operating room will handle only one at a time. Once I’m done, there’ll be communication trouble during your own depressurization.”

“You could explain the whole program to them first. For that matter, I could go through it first.”

“I’m not sure I could explain it too well. Remember, I’m no expert in this finger-wiggling.”

“But why couldn’t I go first, with you directing which sub was to be connected, and so on, until it was your turn?”

“You could, I suppose. We’d better check my boat, though. It’s been here a long time and been used for regular work here. The flotation system will certainly need going over. I’m not sure I’d like to risk it against pressure differential myself, but we’ll see. We’d better check that first.”

Marie had been reading our conversation and nodded approval, so our flock went off to look over the vessel.

He was right. The flotation liquid was completely gone. It hadn’t been used even locally for months, since there were no facilities for making the hydrocarbon its buoyancy tanks were designed to use. The local machines used the same sort of low-density solid employed in the swimming coveralls; it would have involved major structural changes to put that into the submarine. No one had considered it worth the trouble.

“I could use one of the local boats,” I suggested when this became clear.

“Don’t try it until you learn the language,” was the rejoinder. That seemed a little silly. A sub is a sub, and you either understand them or you don’t. A look into one of them educated me, though.

I still don’t see why their control panels are made that way; the laws of physics are the same down here as up above. Apparently the difference in basic thinking which goes with that weird graphic language extends into more factors than mere common sense would lead anyone to expect.

It began to look as though the other two were going back alone. Bert seemed quite resigned to it, and even I was getting that way. When we went back to Marie with the word, though, she came up with another of her ideas. I’ve come to suspect since then that she had something more in her mind than just getting me back to the surface, just as she had when she insisted on Bert’s going along, but she didn’t confide in me. Of course, that may have been because there was no way for her to speak to me alone.

“There’s plenty of spare buoyancy in my tanks,” she pointed out suddenly and firmly. “Just attach that wreck of Bert’s to my tow-lugs, and we can haul it along. You say the hull’s sound enough to hold against the pressure when you pump it down again.”

Bert seemed startled, no doubt because he hadn’t thought of that himself. That was my suspicion, anyway. But he promptly agreed; and so it was settled. He went off to get help in towing the subs and to arrange for the operating room, and I took advantage of his absence to write a remark to Marie.

“You seem to have been wrong about Bert. He certainly took you up fast enough on that test suggestion.”

“So I noticed.”

I waited for further comment, but got none. I suppose I should have known better than to expect any. When she did speak again, it was on a wholly different subject — I thought.

“Be sure you check the bitts on both subs very carefully.”

I nodded, surprised; that was too standard a procedure to call for special comment.

“And the lines, too. You’ll use mine; they’re newer.” I agreed silently, wondering and perhaps hoping a bit. Anything from Marie that sounded like interest in my welfare was enough to make me hope. I was still several miles behind her reasoning, only partly because I hadn’t started out with the same set of prejudices. She wanted it that way, I guess; She firmly changed the subject by asking about the people who were floating beside me.

“Who are your friends? Is the lady one of the reasons you decided to stop breathing air?”

“No!” I wrote emphatically. “I never saw her to my knowledge before I made the change.” I couldn’t understand why Marie was laughing. “I can’t introduce you, because I’ve never heard their names. With this language, I’m not sure what a personal name would be like. Maybe they haven’t any.”

She grinned for the first time since I’d seen her down here.

“That accounts for your staying, then. No, don’t bother to point out that you didn’t know about the language till afterward. I know you didn’t. It must be a strong recommendation for the place, though, now that you do know about it.”

As it happened, I hadn’t thought of that. She was quite right, though. That was one nuisance of my life which couldn’t possibly follow me down here. Marie was watching my expression and, I guess, reading it like a book. She laughed even louder than before. The sound wasn’t much like laughter under the circumstances, but it was different enough from ordinary speech to catch the attention of my attendants. They looked from me to the sub and back, but could make nothing of it. The girl smiled again though.

Marie was right, in a way. If I did have to stay down here for any reason —

I killed that thought firmly. Where Marie went, I was going sooner or later.