Mer-Cycle, Page 3

  Don got a grip on his nerve and opened his own. The same rotten odor wafted out.

  “Hey, is your converter leaking?” Gaspar inquired.

  “Not that I know of. Why?” As if he didn’t know!

  “That smell. Something’s foul. No offense.”

  Wordlessly Don held out his package.

  Gaspar sniffed, choked, and took it from him. In a moment it was in the converter. “You got a bad one! Didn’t you know?”

  “They’re all like that, I thought. I was afraid—”

  “They can’t be! These things are sterile. Let me check.”

  “B-be my guest.”

  Gaspar checked. “What a mess! I can tell without having to use the water. Did you actually eat that stuff?”

  “One bite.”

  Gaspar laughed readily. “You’ve got more grit than I have. What a rotten deal! Have some of mine.”

  Don accepted it gratefully. Gaspar’s cherry glop tasted like cherry, and his steak like steak. Texture was something else, but this wasn’t worth a quibble at this stage.

  “H-how do you think it happened?” Don asked as his hunger abated.

  “Oh, accident, I’d say,” Gaspar decided. “You know the government. Three left feet at the taxpayer’s expense. We’ll share mine, and we’ll both reload at the first supply depot. No trouble, really.”

  The man certainly didn’t get upset over trifles. But Don wondered what kind of carelessness would be allowed to imperil this unique, secret mission, not to mention his life. For a man had to eat, and they could only assimilate food that had been phased into this state.

  “Is it a government operation?” Don asked. “I thought maybe a private enterprise.”

  Gaspar shrugged. “Could be. I wasn’t told. But somebody went to a pretty formidable expense to set us up with some pretty fancy equipment. If it’s not the government, it must be a large corporation. This looks like a million dollar operation to me, apart from what they’re paying us. But you’re right: the big companies get criminally sloppy too. It could be either. Let’s hope their quality control is better on the other stuff.”

  That reminded Don about the female voice on his radio. Had it been mistuned, so that it connected to someone not with this mission? If so, he had been right to cut off contact, though that was not why he had done it. Obviously that person wasn’t Gaspar. Did she speak on both their radios, or only his own? Or had he imagined it? Should he ask?

  Yes, he should. “D-did you t-turn on your—?”

  “Say, look at that!” Gaspar cried.

  Don looked around, alarmed. It was a monstrous fish, three times the length of a man, with a snout like the blade of a chain saw.

  “Sawfish,” Gaspar exclaimed happily. “Isn’t she a beauty! I never saw one in these waters before. But then I never rode a bike here before, either. My scuba gear must have scared them away. What a difference that phase makes. Not that I’m any ichthyologist.”

  “I thought sea-life was your specialty.”

  “No. The sea bottom. I can tell you something about rock formations, saline diffusion, and sedimentary strata, but the fauna I just pick up in passing. I know the sawfish scouts the bottom—see, there she goes, poking around—and sometimes slashes up whole schools of fish with that snout, so as to eat the pieces, but that’s about all. Relative of the rays, I believe.”

  That ugly chill returned. The fish was horizontally flattened, with vaguely winglike fins. It did resemble a skate, from the right angle.

  “Y-you know, w-we aren’t completely apart,” Don said. “The bones—they interact—”

  “Oh, do they?” Gaspar asked, as if this were an interesting scientific sidelight. As of course it was, to him. “I suppose they would, being rigid. There has to be some interaction, or we would sink right through the ground, wouldn’t we? In fact, I’m surprised we don’t; it isn’t that solid, normally. Sediment, you know.”

  The sawfish vanished, and Don was vastly relieved. “You’re right! If we intersect the real world by only a thousandth, why don’t we find the sand like muck? If anything, it’s harder than it should be. My tires don’t sink into it at all. And how is it we can see and hear so well? I should think—”

  “I’m no nuclear physicist, either. I have no notion how this field operates, if it is a field—but thank God for its existence.”

  “Maybe it isn’t exactly a field,” Don said. He was glad to get into something halfway technical, because it was grist for conversation, and he was curious himself. “Why should we have to ride through that tunnel-thing—you did do that?—to enter it, in that case? But if we were shunted into another, well, dimension—”

  “Could be.” Gaspar considered for a moment. “Maybe one of the others will know. I’m just glad it works.”

  “Others? I thought this was a party of three.”

  “Oh? Maybe you’re right. I wasn’t told, just that there would be more than one. I thought maybe four.” Gaspar seemed to sidestep any potential disagreement, inoffensively. “Do you happen to know his specialty?”

  “Me? That official was so tight-lipped I was lucky to learn more than my own name. And we’re not supposed to tell each other our last names, I think.”

  “Necessary security, I suppose,” Gaspar said. “I clean forgot. Well, you just forget mine, and I’ll forget yours. Did you get to see anyone?”

  “No, it was just an interviewer behind a screen. A voice, really; it could almost have been a recording.”

  “Same here. I responded to this targeted ad on my computer, and the pay and conditions—I was about ready for a job change anyway. I still don’t know what the mission is, but I’m already glad I’m here.” He glanced at Don. “How’d you get into this project, anyway? No offense, but archaeology is mostly landside, isn’t it? Digging trenches through old mounds, picking up bits of pottery, publishing scholarly reports? There can’t be much for you, under the sea.”

  “That’s a pretty simple view of it,” Don said, glad to have a question about his specialty. His reticence faded when he was in his area of competence. “But maybe close enough. The fact is, a great many archaeologists have combed through those mounds and collected that pottery, on land. They’ve reconstructed some fabulous history. If I could only have been with Bibby at Dilmun …” He sighed, knowing that the other would not comprehend his regret. No sense in getting into a lecture. “But I came too late. Today the major horizon in archaeology is marine, and the shallow waters have been pretty well exploited, too. No one knows how thoroughly the Mediterranean Sea has been ransacked. So that leaves deep water, and I guess you know better than I do why that’s been left alone.”

  “Pressure,” Gaspar said immediately. “One atmosphere for every thirty four feet depth. A few thousand feet down—ugh! But I was asking about you. I don’t want to seem more nosy than I am; I just think we’d better have some idea why and how we were picked for this mission. Because the sea is formidable, even phased out as we are; make no mistake about that. The depths are a greater challenge than the moon. So it figures that the most qualified personnel would be used.”

  Don laughed, but it was forced. “I—I’m the least qualified archaeologist around. My only claim to fame is that I can read Minoan script, more or less—and there’s precious little of that hereabouts.”

  “I’m not the world’s most notable marine geologist, either,” Gaspar agreed. “Any major oil company has a dozen that could give me lessons. But what I’m saying is that for this project, they should have used the best, and they could have, if they cared enough, because they evidently do have the money. Instead they placed little ads and hired nonentities like us, and maybe we aren’t quite even in our specialties. You’re—what was it?”

  “Minoan. That’s ancient Crete.”

  “And I specialize in marine impact craters. Want to know what there’re none of, here in the Florida shallows? If they had taken us down to the coast of Colombia, as I had hoped—” He shrugged.

  �
��What’s there?” Don asked.

  “You don’t know? No, I suppose that’s no more obvious to you than Crete is to me. That’s where we believe the big one splashed down: the meteor that so shook up the Earth’s system that it wiped out the dinosaurs.”

  “The extinction of the dinosaurs!” Don exclaimed.

  “Right. But the site has about sixty five million years worth of sediment covering it. So it will take an in depth—no pun—investigation to confirm it, assuming we can. But instead of sending me there, they sent me here. We’d have to bike across the Puerto Rico Trench to reach it, which is pointless and probably impossible. So either they have some lesser crater in mind for me, or they don’t care whether I see a crater at all. I’m out of specialty, just as you are. See what I mean?”

  Don nodded soberly. “Maybe we’re expendable.”

  “Maybe. Oh, I’m not paranoid about it. This phase thing is such a breakthrough that I’d sell my watery soul for the chance, and I think I mean that literally, to explore the ocean floor at any depth, unfettered by cumbersome equipment—that’s the raw stuff of dreams. But why me? Why you?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Don said. “All I can do is say how I’m here. I wasn’t the bright boy of my class, but I was in the top quarter, with my main strength in deciphering. The lucrative foundations passed me up, and anyway, I wanted to go into new territory. Make a real breakthrough, somehow. Too ambitious for my own good. The prof knew it, and he made the contact. Swore me to secrecy, told me to buy myself a good bicycle and ride it to the address he gave me—well, that was two days ago, and here I am.”

  “You’re single?”

  “All the way single. My father died about five years ago, and my mother always was sickly—no s-sense going into that. I’ve got no special ties to this world. Maybe that’s why the ancient world fascinates me. You, too?”

  “Pretty much. Auto accident when I was ten. Since then the sea has seemed more like home than the city. So nobody is going to be in a hurry to trace down our whereabouts. I think I see a pattern developing. We must have had qualifications we didn’t realize.”

  “Must have,” Don agreed. “But you know, it’s growing on me too. I don’t know a thing about the sea, or even about bicycles, but I do know that the major archaeological horizon is right here. Not that I have the least bit of training for it. I guess I just closed my mind to the notion of going to the sea. But now that I’m in it—well, if I have to risk my life using a new device, maybe it’s worth it. All those ancient hulks waiting to be discovered in deep water—”

  “Sorry. No ancient hulk is in the ocean,” Gaspar said. “Not the way you’re thinking, anyway. Ever hear of the teredo?”

  “No.”

  “Otherwise known as the shipworm, though it isn’t a worm at all. It’s a little clam that—”

  “Oh, that. I had forgotten. It eats wood, so—”

  “So pretty soon no ship is left. Modern metal hulks, yes; ancient wood hulks, no.”

  “What a loss of archaeology,” Don said, mortified. “I could wring that clam’s neck.”

  Gaspar smiled. “Of course the ship’s contents may survive. Gold lasts forever underwater, and pottery—”

  “Pottery! That’s wonderful!” Don exclaimed.

  For the first time Gaspar showed annoyance. “I’m just telling you what to expect.”

  “I wasn’t being sarcastic. Pottery is a prime tool of archaeology. It breaks and gets thrown away, and so it remains for centuries or millennia, undisturbed, every shard a key to the culture that made it. Who wants broken pottery—except an archaeologist? There is hardly a finer key to the activities of man through the ages.”

  Gaspar gazed at him incredulously, or so it seemed in the fading light of the headlamps, whose reservoirs were running down now that the bikes were stationary. “It really is true? You do collect broken plates and things? You value them more than gold?”

  “Yes! Gold is natural; it tells little unless it has been worked. But pottery is inevitably the handiwork of man. Its style is certain indication of a specific time and culture. Show me a few pottery shards and let me check my references, and I can tell you where and when they were made, sometimes within five or ten miles and twenty years. It may take time to do it, but the end is almost certain.”

  Gaspar raised his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, friend. If we find a wreck, I’ll take the gold and you take the broken plates. Fair enough?”

  “I’ll have the better bargain. You can’t keep the gold, by law, unless it’s in international waters; but the shards could make me famous.”

  “You archaeologists may be smarter than you look!”

  “I should hope so.”

  Gaspar smiled. “Let’s sack out. We’ve got a long ride tomorrow, I fear.”

  “What’s the position?”

  “The coordinates for the next rendezvous? I thought you had them.”

  “N-no. Only this one. The same one you had, it seems, so we could meet.”

  Gaspar tapped his fingers on his coordinate meter. “What a foul-up! They should have given one of us the next set.”

  Don’s eyes were on Gaspar’s fingers, because he couldn’t meet the man’s eyes. “I guess I should have asked. I just assumed—” He paused. Next to the meter was the radio. He had been about to ask Gaspar about that, when they had been interrupted by the sawfish. “Maybe the—did you check your radio?”

  Gaspar snapped his fingers. “That must be it. I just came out here, gasping at the sea-floor and fish, never thinking of that.” He flicked his switch.

  “Leave it on!” the female voice cried immediately.

  Startled, Gaspar looked down. Unlike Don, he was not dismayed, and he did not turn it off. “Who are you?”

  Don kept silent, relieved to have the other man handle it. Maybe he should have had more confidence in his own judgment about both this and the bad glop, but he couldn’t change his nature.

  “I’m Melanie. Your next contact. Why haven’t you answered before?”

  “Sister, I just turned on my set for the first time! What are your coordinates?”

  “I’m not going to give you my coordinates if you’re going to be like that,” she responded angrily.

  “M-my fault,” Don said, “I—I heard her voice, and thought—no one told me it would be a woman.”

  Gaspar looked at him, comprehending. Then his mouth quirked. “Give with the numbers, girl,” he said firmly to the radio, “or I’ll turn you off for the night. Understand?”

  She didn’t answer. Gaspar reached for the switch.

  “Eighty one degrees, fifty minutes west longitude,” she said with a rush, as if she had seen him. “Twenty six degrees, ten minutes north latitude.”

  “That’s better,” Gaspar said, winking at Don. “What’s the rendezvous time, Melanie?”

  “Twenty four hours from now,” she said. “You did make it to the first rendezvous point?”

  “Right. We’re both here. Just wanted you to know who’s in charge. Don, turn yours on so we can all talk.”

  Don obeyed. Gaspar had covered nicely for Don’s prior mismanagement of the radio, and he appreciated it. Why hadn’t he realized that the woman could be one of their party? He had simply assumed without evidence that it was to be three males. Maybe he just hadn’t wanted to face the prospect of working with a woman, especially a young one. He wished he could do something about his shyness.

  “A day,” Gaspar said. “Ten miles an hour for twelve hours, cumulative, and we can sleep as much as we want. That’s in the vicinity of Naples, Florida, you see.”

  Don hoisted up his nerve. “Are—are you—have you gone through the tunnel already? You’re in phase with us?”

  “Yes,” she replied. “I’m still on land, but I’ll come into the water at the right time to meet you there.”

  “D-do you have the coordinates for the next one?”

  “Yes, for all of them. I’m your coordinate girl. But I’m allowed to tell o
nly one rendezvous point at a time. You just be thankful you’ve got company. I’m alone. That is, alone in phase. It’s weird.”

  “Wish you were here,” Gaspar said generously.

  “Did they tell you what the mission is?” Melanie asked him.

  “Nope. They told us no more than you. I answered an ad, believe it or not, and they checked my references—which were strictly average, and sent me out to get a bike. Same as you, probably.”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “I think this secrecy kick is overdone.”

  “It certainly is,” Melanie agreed. “I never even applied, actually. But here I am.”

  “There must be some rationale,” Don said. “I’m archaeological, you’re geological, she’s—”

  “Hysterical,” Melanie said.

  “The next member is mechanical, I hope,” Gaspar said. “Suppose the phase equipment breaks down when we’re a mile under? Do you know how to fix it?”

  “N-no.” Don shuddered. “I wish you h-hadn’t brought that up.”

  “We’re going to click out for about five minutes, Melanie,” Gaspar said. “Nothing personal. Man business.” Before she could protest, he turned his set off, gesturing Don to do the same.

  “Your stutter,” Gaspar said then. “Does it affect your decision-making ability in a crisis? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t suspect that my life may be subject to your ability to act, at some point.”

  Don could appreciate why Gaspar had an undistinguished employee record. He was too blunt about sensitive issues. “N-no. Only the v-vocal cords. Only under stress.”

  “No offense. Ask me one now.”

  “Not n-necessary,” Don said, embarrassed.

  “Well, I’ll tell you anyway. My friends—of which I have surprisingly few—all tell me I’m nice but stubborn and sometimes insensitive. The less tenable my position, the worse I am. They say.”

  Don shrugged in the dark, not knowing the appropriate response.

  “So if it’s something important, don’t come out and tell me I’m crazy, because if I am I’ll never admit it. Tell me I’m reasonable, jolly me along—then maybe I’ll change my mind. That’s what they say they do.”