“Were they?” Dad asked.
“Not as much as you might think.” Gabriel laughed.
“You should have seen the clothes Gabriel demanded that year,” Mom went on. “An eight-year-old boy in puffy-sleeved blouses.”
“You make blouses?” Misty rested her chin on her hand, a forkful of lasagna dangling.
“Do you have pictures?” Peter asked.
“Oh, you bet,” said Nerissa.
She laughed, and Jaideep added, “We have all of them on the Nebula database.”
Mom patted Nerissa’s hand, her eyes crinkling.
“So is that what it was like?” Misty asked. “Just the four of you, studying, watching movies?”
“Movies were strictly regulated,” Dad said. “But Dr. Nemo had a soft spot for Prince from her days topside.” He meant Gabriel’s mom.
“But weren’t you … lonely?” Misty pressed on.
Gabriel’s parents looked at each other uncomfortably, and his dad waved a hand. He pointed a knife at a cloud of brilliantly colored jellyfish that spun and swarmed up along the dome. “You can’t be lonely. Not with that out there.”
“That’s why the experiment,” Mom said. “We raised Gabriel and Nerissa to be a part of the Nemo vision, to be one with the sea. But after a while it was time to see if Gabriel could bring that vision to the land.”
“Just Gabriel?”
“Oh, I was gone by then,” Nerissa said.
Mom smiled, or tried to. “You, too. We would have done the same with you.”
“Would you?” Nerissa dabbed her mouth with a golden napkin embroidered with an N. “Because what I remember is that you didn’t want us out there. Not in the dirty world. Except you’re willing to send him to land with no guidance. Oh, except you set him up with a lawyer.”
“Nerissa.” Gabriel lowered his voice as if he could mentally force her to do the same.
“No, if they want me to shut up they’re totally capable of saying it, Gabriel.”
“Was there bread?” Peter asked, searching the table. “I could have sworn there was bread.”
“We were getting reports, daily reports, that there were pirates who had ships like ours, hiring out their services to anyone who would pay, and what were they doing? Using technology stolen from us in the service of navies, of whalers, of smugglers. And what did we do? Nothing.”
Gabriel blanched and tried to explain. “We were working on the Nebula.”
“Which I had to steal to get any good out of it,” Nerissa snarled. Peter reached across her to get at a basket of sea-cucumber bread, and Nerissa picked it up and slammed it down in front of him.
“Even we never accused you of that.” Mom looked down, hurt showing on her face. “What’s ours is yours.”
“And isn’t that convenient? So you can keep your hands clean in this hermetically sealed … Shangri-la.”
“Nerissa!” Dad looked appalled. “Stop.”
Gabriel felt bad for him. His dad was … complicated. He represented a family known for raining terror on the seas, and he’d worked to change that, but it was as if the adventurous Nemo spirit had a dark half that seeped through. Had that infected Nerissa? Or was she just rebelling against their ideas the way anybody might, just wanting to tick off her parents? But he could see on his dad’s face that it was killing him that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. Gabriel wanted to shout and come to his parents’ defense even though part of him was with Nerissa. They didn’t really take the world seriously, not the way Nerissa did.
And this was supposed to be a nice dinner.
Nerissa looked like she was about to hurl her plate before she stiffened her shoulders. “I have some studying to do.” She rose and left her napkin on the plate, then strode out.
Jaideep excused himself and headed for whatever room they’d assigned him in the dormitory.
The spell was broken and everyone separated. “I want to check out the Lodger some more,” Gabriel said. “Misty and Peter, you want to…?”
They nodded silently and followed him. Gabriel kissed his mom on the cheek, feeling the warmth of her skin against his lips. He walked quickly, his own cheeks burning. Nerissa, why do you have to ruin everything?
As the crew of the Obscure exited into the corridor, Peter slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. “Wow.”
“What?” Gabriel asked, staring at his boots as he walked. The corridor was all Nemoglass, the whole sea beyond, but he couldn’t draw any comfort from it.
Peter laughed. “It is a normal family.”
19
THEY STOPPED AT the window before the Lodger’s dome. Gabriel felt his cheeks still burning with embarrassment.
Peter saw how uncomfortable he was and said, “Check this out.” He switched on the microphone next to the one-way mirror. The Lodger on the other side swam around the space of the holding dome. Peter started to rap on the mirror when Misty interrupted him.
“Hey.” She tilted her head toward Gabriel as they stood next to the glass. “You okay?”
“He’s okay,” Peter said. “This is family stuff.”
“Peter, aren’t you, like, an only child?”
“Ouch.”
“I’m sorry,” Misty said to Peter. Then to Gabriel, “You, too.”
“It’s not my problem.” Gabriel shook his head. “Nerissa is who she is.” That wasn’t enough, but it was as much as he could bring himself to say.
“Okay,” Peter said. “I’ve been thinking about this. Now watch.” He thumped the glass rapidly, a series of steady bumps.
The Lodger shifted, the whale-sized body twisting, its crawfish head pointed away from them.
He did it again. Now the creature seemed to look up, the head turning toward them. Something inside it responded, a long purr of multiple beats echoing in the water.
Misty listened. “Bumps. Like the drumming of the whales.”
“Yeah. You do the pattern like they make; they make it back,” Peter said. “Or at least I was hoping they would. And they did!”
“Huh,” Gabriel said. “So if we wanted to send a series of bumps, tones like this, what would you use?”
Peter nodded. “Like how much, how many?”
“Like a lot, steady and regular.”
Peter considered it. “We have the sonar pings. Yeah!” he said excitedly. “You could use the sonar array.”
“So you could send a whole bunch.” Misty nodded. “Bump bump bump. But it would sound like sonar.”
“Yeah.” Peter agreed. “But we could lower the frequency. Then the bumps would sound … deeper.”
The creature sent out a series of whining bumps.
“Like that?” Gabriel motioned toward the window.
“Sure.” Peter was nodding. “And you know what? I’ll bet I can make it portable.”
* * *
Gabriel ran down a shimmering white corridor to the private rooms of the Nemo family, yelling as he went. He knocked on his parents’ door and then raced across the hall to Nerissa’s room, yelling the universal code for everyone get out here. “Hey! Hey! Mom, Dad, Nerissa! Hey! Up every soul!”
He heard pounding footsteps, and Nerissa ripped her door open. She was wearing black pajamas. “What is it?”
“I want you to see something.”
Down the hall, his mom and dad were looking out of their room in matching silver robes that made them look like aliens in an old movie. “What?”
Nerissa looked annoyed. “You said ‘Up every soul.’”
“Well, yeah. This is amazing.”
“You only use that when people are dying,” Nerissa called, but he was already running back toward the lab.
“Well, you will die when you see it.”
When his parents and Nerissa joined them back at the one-way mirror, Gabriel was standing before a table he and his friends had set up. Next to a bunch of tools they had a junction box with a few knobs. “You have the batteries charged?”
“Yep,” Peter answered.
“Hi, guys,” Gabriel said brightly as the rest came in from the corridor.
Nerissa frowned. “This had better be good.”
Misty turned to them all. “One of the questions we’ve been asking is how the Lodgers communicate. With one another. Because we know they guard one another and coordinate themselves.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean they communicate,” Nerissa countered. “Beavers build dams, but it’s largely instinct. They’re not going out and drawing up blueprints. Salmon all swim upstream, but they’re not mapping it out on Google beforehand.”
“But they’re not beavers,” Misty insisted. “They do communicate. There’s variety. There’s that whining scream we heard when they yelled at us. But otherwise they send out what I’d call signals. Like…”
“Like whales,” Gabriel continued. “But maybe smarter. I want you to see what we’ve come up with.”
He bounced excitedly as he stood before the holding tank. The creature within hung in the water as if waiting while he spoke. “We thought the thrumming sound it made with its tentacles and body sounded like some effort at communication. It even moved excitedly when I tapped on the glass in response. So Peter”—he rubbed the back of his friend’s head, making the hair all stand up—“the genius, rigged up this.”
Peter showed them a box. It had an antenna on the end and a small dish that made it look something like an alarm clock. There was a button in the center and a pair of sliders on either side. “This is crude … but it works.”
“What does it do?” Nerissa reached out, but Peter held it back.
“Ah, let me show you.” Peter pressed the button as he held the box near the glass. At first it was hard to hear, but then he moved a slider and they heard it more clearly—a rhythmic thrumming emanated from the dish toward the glass, fwow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow.
The creature perked up, turning toward the sound. It trilled in the water, its tentacles vibrating and answering the hum. Peter turned the box, pointing it toward the other end of the tank, and pressed again, emitting a higher-pitched fwow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow.
The creature moved in the water, the whole enormous body sailing toward the end he was pointing at.
“Oh, wow.” Gabriel’s mom clasped her hands. “You can direct it.”
“Yes. Meet the Crabsiren,” Peter said.
“Crabsiren?” Nerissa asked.
“Just what we’re calling it for now,” Gabriel said. Misty subtly shook her head because she hated the name. Everyone was a critic.
“Crabsiren is go!” Peter pressed the button, and the Lodger slowly swam in the direction he pointed. He turned up the volume, pointing at the top of the tank. The Lodger rose steadily, echoing the Crabsiren’s volume. The thrumming coming over the speakers intensified. Peter looked back to the rest. “And this is just the beginning. There’s no telling what we might be able to work out in time.”
Misty went on, “What does the rhythm mean, for instance? Maybe we can develop a whole vocabulary.”
Nerissa crossed her arms. For once, she looked impressed. “You guys. This is good. We’re learning a lot.”
The creature swept a tentacle frond by the window, and Gabriel’s dad cleared his throat. “I wanted to say, there’s something else. Something Nerissa reminded me of when she called us a Shangri-la. See, that was a famous place of exotic creatures and plants.”
“Dad…”
“Save it,” their dad said. He looked out at the beast in the dome. “The Lodgers are two creatures, we said. Right? The crustacean, hermit-crab kind of creature, and these wormlike appendages that let them burn through metal. When we looked at the samples we saw that they were partially crystallized. There was something familiar about it that I had to think about.”
“And?” Looking at his dad, Gabriel remembered hundreds of moments just like this, standing next to Nerissa under a dome while his father lectured them about marine biology.
“We have exotic places down here, too. I’ve only ever seen biology like that in one spot.” His dad turned around. “The Black Smokers.”
20
GABRIEL TRIED TO keep up with Nerissa’s insistent stride as they walked rapidly through white corridors toward the equipment they’d need. Misty matched him step for step, Peter close behind.
“The Obscure’s engines are still being looked at, your little side trip notwithstanding,” Nerissa said. “And anyway, you wouldn’t have the room. We’re going to take the Nebula. You.” Nerissa stopped, pointing at Peter.
Peter practically gulped. “Me?”
“You’re the helm on the Obscure?”
“Yes, for nearly six months.”
“Good, we’ll need another driver.” They, reached a large rectangular hatch the size of a garage door, and Nerissa put her palm on a Nemotech icon beside the door.
Peter whispered at Gabriel as the door slid open. “To drive what?”
“To drive that.”
Beyond the door was a massive hangar where Gabriel could see rows upon rows of equipment and vehicles—light trucks, forklifts, a few small subs under construction, even a pair of helicopters that could be carried up to the surface to whisk critically injured personnel off to some mainland or another.
Gabriel felt a swell of pride looking at the hangar. Weird recluses or not, the Nemos had some cool toys.
Nerissa was pointing at a vehicle about fifty feet away to the left.
“This is a Nemotech rover.” The vehicle was roughly the size of a minibus, with heavy armor and extended axles holding massive tires with deep scallops in the tread. The one Nerissa hurried to now was the same deep green as Gabriel’s dive suit, but parked near it were five more, each in an equally dark but different color. She beckoned Peter closer. “Climb up on the wheel well and look in.”
Peter did so while Gabriel and the rest crowded around. Inside, they could see multiple seats that stopped at a partition labeled AIR LOCK.
In the driver’s seat were a joystick and a tablet display, currently dark.
“How does it…?”
“It drives like a sub—one of ours, anyway.”
“The idea was that if you could learn the controls of a Nemotech sub, you could drive any of the other vehicles,” Gabriel offered, though he sensed that Nerissa didn’t want his interruption. Still. He had helped put these things together, and anyway, she’d left before he did—how did she know they hadn’t completely changed everything while she was gone? She was lucky her palm print still worked the doors.
Misty raised an eyebrow. Let her do her thing.
“Get in.” Nerissa pulled a lever and the door opened up. Peter stared at it.
“I’ve never driven this before.”
“Yeah, but you know how. And there’s no time like the present. And anyway, we need someone to drive it to the Nebula.”
“Is it…” He touched the ceiling inside, which was festooned with countless buttons and switches. But his hand went to the rivets along the thick windows. “Watertight?”
“Well, it could function as a sub if the air lock were compromised. If that happens”—Nerissa leaned in, pointing at a panel over the driver’s seat—“there’s a mask in there. And a high-pressure suit to get into. Uh, and quickly, because the pressure down here will kill you, so you’ll have about ninety seconds after water starts coming in to…”
“Hang on!” Peter waved his hands. “Wait just a minute. Now you’re talking about the ocean floor. As in outside the sub and crawling on the bottom like a crab.”
Gabriel frowned. He didn’t want to embarrass Peter, but this had to be said. “We have a deal. Peter doesn’t get wet.”
“He doesn’t get wet?” Nerissa’s lip curled.
Gabriel nodded. Misty folded her arms. “That’s the deal.”
“It…” Peter wobbled his head. “Yeah, that’s the deal.”
“Why can’t your helmsman do it?” Gabriel offered.
“I need him for the Nebula.”
“Just
…” Gabriel waved a hand. “What does Peter need to do?”
Nerissa pinched the bridge of her nose for a second. “Okay. Listen. Peter. You won’t get wet. I’ve taken this thing out to four miles down. The external skin has never leaked. The air lock is the only concern, so watch the integrity gauge and make sure she stays cool enough. In the end, it’s the same job.”
“Are you sure?”
“I lead a crew of three hundred souls.” Nerissa put her hand on Peter’s shoulder as he looked up at her. “And I don’t betray their trust.”
“Me, either,” Gabriel added. “It’s the same job.”
Peter paused, then nodded. “You owe me big time.”
“Sure do.” Gabriel clapped Peter on the shoulder.
“Are you ready to see the suits?” came Gabriel’s dad’s voice from the entry to the hangar. They turned around to see he’d changed into a deep-green jumpsuit. He was walking across the hangar to an area in the back enclosed in white metal walls.
“What kind of suits?” Misty asked as they all ran after him.
He opened the door, and they entered a room that Gabriel had not been inside for years. There were lockers along one wall and all manner of diving apparatus stored on shelves, with multiple suits hanging from metal arms.
“Now.” Dad pressed a button and a rod extended with a silvery suit hanging off it. He ran a hand along it. “We designed this Nemosuit for extreme environments. It can handle ocean-floor depths and even space.”
“Space?” Peter asked.
“Well, that was what they wanted.”
“Who’s they?” Misty asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Nerissa mumbled.
“Oh, come on.” This was one of Gabriel’s favorite things about the family. “Mom and Dad design all kinds of stuff for all kinds of people. I’m talking government, NASA, NOAA, navy, private guys like SpaceX, weird guys like HEXEN and the Polidorium, universities…”
“Yeah, anyway.” Dad nodded. “Space.”
The chest of the suit, which shimmered blue and green, was armored and sectioned to allow for movement. “This is hard stuff.” He rapped the chest plate. “I wouldn’t walk into a torpedo with it, but…” He shrugged. “Come on, feel.”
Young Captain Nemo: The Door into the Deep Page 13