66
The way Tobi Ruto saw it, things really couldn’t get any worse. He passed the pressure hatch and started down the stairs in the tube, headed for the Underwater Bay. The UB was supposed to be on his daily inspection and maintenance routine. After Bill’s gruesome murder, no one had done anything according to schedule. The situation was too appalling and incomprehensible. Tobi couldn’t rid himself of the memory of Bill’s body. Every time he thought of it, it made his skin creep. He’d loved Bill. Everyone had.
The notion that little Felix had murdered Bill—cut him apart and dissected him—defied any kind of credibility, but there it was. That cute little precocious eight-year-old child had committed bloody murder and then sliced Bill’s body open to play with the man’s guts?
Tobi slowed on the stairs, peering at the tube windows. They should have been crystal clear, allowing a visual experience as he descended beneath the waves, and then got a view of the underwater scape where the reef dropped off. Instead, each of the oval windows was covered with green-blue, leaving the tube so dark that the lights illuminated the steps.
Well, hell, that was just more of the shit that he was going to have to hose off. But what was it about that algae and the Pod? Last he’d seen it was coating every square centimeter of the pilings and water line. Worse than any moss or algae he’d ever seen on Earth’s oceans.
Another thing to put on his endless list.
As his feet thumped off the stairs, he rubbed the back of his neck. During all those years in Ashanti, they’d grown into a tight-knit community. A sort of extended and sharing family. Like him, Jym, and Casey. Didn’t matter that Tomaya was his daughter and little Saleen was Jym’s, or that two men and a woman could be as good as married. Sure, Casey and Jym both had PhDs, and Tobi was a lowly Pod Technician Level 1. They loved each other for one another’s human qualities. Back in Solar System people would have looked at them askance. In the Maritime Unit they were accepted as who they were.
But it was all coming apart at the seams. So many beloved friends, dead. The realization of how perilous their existence was, and now Felix had used a vibraknife to murder Bill. Bill, of all people? For God’s sake why?
And little Toni was comatose, his neck swelling, and it appeared to be nothing that Anna Gabarron could cure?
To his, Casey, and Jym’s horror, that morning Tomaya had been bleary-eyed. Said she wasn’t feeling good. That her neck hurt.
Ruto, felt that nervous tension build in his stomach. Tomaya hadn’t been herself. Not for a couple of weeks. She’d been listless, sometimes so vacuous it was like she was suddenly sleepwalking. Then, after someone touched her, she’d be right back, as if unaware that she’d ever gone blank.
“Give her a bit,” Jym had told him. “She’s under a huge amount of stress. We’re in a new place, an entirely new environment, and it turns out that it’s full of sea monsters. Bill is murdered, and her friend Felix did it. Casey almost died in the sub that day. Tomaya will figure it out. The miracle would be if she wasn’t reacting to all of this.”
Still, the thing was, little Toni had a swollen throat. Whatever it was, pray to God that Tomaya didn’t end up like Toni. Or worse, turn psychotic like Felix.
“How does that happen to a little boy?” Ruto wondered as he tapped in the code for the pressure hatch that would let him into the Underwater Bay. Especially to a boy he’d known from the time the kid had been nothing more than a bump in his mother’s belly?
Neither of Felix’s parents had been crazy; if there had been a history of mental illness in their families, they’d have never been chosen for the Maritime Unit. Living as intimately as the Maritime Unit did, any physical or mental abuse would have been known to everyone. Felix had been loved and cherished his entire life.
“So where did this freaking murderer come from?” Ruto cycled the hatch, felt the pressure build, and undogged the interior door, stepping out into the Underwater Bay.
He stopped short as the hatch door closed behind him.
“What the hell?” The sight and the smell hit him at once. The bay reeked of . . . what did he say? Spicy? Musky? Pleasant and growy but alien and dank?
And the algae. The stuff was everywhere, lines like veins creeping across the bay floor, branching out, and thick where nodule-like growths emerged from the water. Ruto stepped over to the closest, stared down. He could see the trunk, if you could call it that. Thick at the base where it emerged from the water, it pulsed just the same as a pump. Ruto could see that it pushed water up through the trunk and along the stem on the floor. At each branch, the pulse of water was divided, the branches continuing to push the smaller and smaller pulse of water through additional branches to the ends where they radiated out like roots across the sialon.
And this was just one! Across the entire bay floor, the dendritically patterned veins of blue-green growth spread in a mazework across the sialon. At the nearest sub cradle, they traced up the track, onto the framework that supported the heavy craft. Here and there, the thin branches reached previous colonies, and now seemed to supply them with water. Those same colonies—that Ruto remembered as only being the size of a Port Authority 1 SDR coin—were now thick mats the size of a dinner plate.
The yellow submarine was splotched with them. Made it look oddly sick, as if a gleaming piece of equipment could.
Ruto stepped over the closest trunk, picked his way on tiptoe to the sub. Where Bryan Atumbo had been working to repair the bent propeller housing, a thick coat of the algae had grown around the disassembled parts.
“It’s only been two days,” Ruto cried.
His gaze traveled down the length of the bay. From one wall to the other, algae was growing out of the water, pumping, expanding.
Bending down to get a closer look, Ruto was amazed to see that the stuff was actually crawling. Moving slowly across the floor. Kind of like looking at the sun back on Earth. You never actually saw it move, but when you measured it against something like a scratch on the sialon, you could see an irregularity in the side of the trunk was actually creeping its way past.
So the stuff was growing out of the water; what the hell was it going to do? Take over the bay? What did it eat, anyway? It was supposed to be a bunch of single cells that would make up a sort of mat. Vik had said nothing about any tree-shaped madness growing to take over the UB.
“And it’s only been two days? What if I hadn’t made it down here in three?”
Maybe it would have been hanging from the ceiling, too?
Growling under his breath, Ruto heedlessly stomped his way across the bay floor. As he did, the trunks squished and splashed as they ruptured, pulses shooting along the various branches. Each of the stems convulsed—and the entire floor went apeshit, wiggling, jiggling and berserk.
“Crap. What a mess,” he muttered as he reached the roll of hose on its spool and looked back.
How long was it going to take to shoot all this mess back into the water, and if it floated, how was he going to flush it back into the sea?
“I don’t need this today,” he cried as he began unspooling the hose. “My little girl’s sick, and I gotta shoot a bunch of scum back into the ocean? Give me a fricking break!”
Ruto opened the valve, water shooting out from the nozzle. As he pulled out the hose and whipped pressurized streams back across the floor, clots of torn algae went with it.
That’s when he saw where the stuff had made it across the floor and was climbing the UUVs in their hangers. Not just little threads of the blue-green, but whole thick mats were wound around the propellers, the camera stalks, and buoyancy tanks. Cleaning them was going to take hours.
His heart sank, irritation rising as he turned the nozzle on the closest mat of algae. Shit on a shoe, the stuff was a good three to four centimeters thick. Blast one spot loose and flap it back on top of itself, and it seemed to stick together, making a six-or-seven-cent
imeter-thick layer of ever-tougher-to-dislodge biomat. And the thicker it got, the more it resisted the blast of water. When that happened, instead of a jet blowing algae loose, it broke up the stream, shooting spray back in all directions. Within minutes Ruto was dripping, splotched by little patches of algae that had splattered back to land on him.
As he stomped back and forth, more algae was clinging to his boots. So, he figured he’d concentrate on the last in the line of UUVs. Shoot it clean, and slowly work his way back across the bay. Force the stuff into the water. Sort of like peeling a label off a smooth surface.
Bracing himself, he started shooting down the Aquaceptor’s sleek hull, concentrating on blasting out the nooks and crannies. Which shot more water up onto the ceiling, with spray soaking the cabinets, toolboxes, benches, and underwater suits, as well as speckling them with algae.
Realizing what he was doing, Ruto groaned. That was just making more mess.
He shut the water down at that nozzle and stared glumly at the Aquaceptor. Patches of algae clung to the crevices around the camera stalks and tanks. Like it or not it was going to take a stiff brush to break the stuff loose. Then he could wash it away with the hose.
To Ruto’s surprise, his feet were heavy where algae clung to his boots. Had to be a couple of centimeters thick where it stuck together on fastenings, around the soles, and conformed to the heels.
Nevertheless, he slogged across the floor, now awash with algae and water. Got the brush and slogged back to the Aquaceptor III. Brushing and scraping, he broke most of the goo loose. So what if little bits were left here and there? He’d get what remained tomorrow.
Well, assuming Felix didn’t escape from his ad hoc prison and murder anyone else.
Ruto had been at the scraping and brushing for a good fifteen minutes. Shifting his feet, he’d barely noticed the drag. Now, when he tried to take a step, it felt like slogging his foot through wet concrete. To his surprise, the algae had thickened around his boots to become round masses. Looked more like elephant feet that extended up past his ankles.
“What the hell?”
Figuring he’d blast it off, he could see where the hose slithered down from the spool to disappear in the algae. The nozzle had vanished, buried in slime. Ruto tried to pull his right foot loose, but the thick mat of algae had sort of congealed.
“Oh, snot-sucking hell. This isn’t happening.” He bent down, used the brush to swipe at the goo, and actually managed to cut a couple of swaths before the bristles packed up solid.
Ruto straightened, feeling that first gut-deep stirring of unease. Looking back across the bay, the floor where he’d stomped his way across the trunks was now a mosaic of thick mats of algae joined by veins that continued to pump from the open water.
Ruto used all of his might, felt the muscles in his hip pull as he tried to break his right foot free. All he did was lift the thick mat a couple of centimeters. And when he gave up, and let it sink back down, his boot was that much deeper in the gunk. The blue-green jam just thickened around his upper ankle.
Now Ruto’s heart was pounding.
“Hey!” he bellowed. “Anybody hear me? I’ve got a real problem here!”
He stared anxiously at the closest com terminal on the wall above the work bench. The blue icon blinked on the screen. All he had to do was touch it, and he’d be in contact with Michaela or Dharman up in communications. That fricking icon seemed to mock him: flash . . . flash . . . flash . . .
“Hey! Help!”
As if anyone would hear through the walls, all the water, or the heavy hatches that lay between the UB and the Pod.
“Help me!” Ruto screamed.
In a desperate panic, he threw himself against the thickening algae. Each time he pulled, it turned out that he was dragging more of the stuff across the floor to thicken around his boots.
Get out of the boots!
That was it. All he had to do was unfasten his boots, slip his feet out, and run like a striped-ass banshee before the stuff could cling to his bare feet. Make the hatch, cycle it, and he was golden. Michaela could figure out how to get her damn Underwater Bay back from the algae.
He reached down, flicked the fasteners at his boot tops free.
Heart hammering, breath coming hard in his lungs, Ruto slipped his fingers into the cold goo as he reached for the next set of fasteners. Felt the stuff, thick like an impossible jello, clinging. With all his might, Ruto managed to rip his hand free. A slick coating of blue green covered his fingers.
What the hell was this stuff? How was it sticking together like this?
“Help me!” he bellowed again.
The fear knot tightened deep down, running up from his anus, knotting his belly, and shivering his lungs. Twisting back and forth, he couldn’t even manage to slide his feet.
“Oh, God. Somebody come! Please. Anybody. Help me!” The first of the tears silvered his vision. His heart quivered, blood electrified in his veins.
He tried to calm himself. Began to sob his fear. Just beyond the Aquaceptor’s nose the thick trunk of algae was pulsing where it sucked water up from the open sea.
Ruto could feel it, the pulsing as algae contracted. Feel it through his boots, the rhythmic constrictions around his ankles. Looking down, to his horror, with each pulse the algae was creeping up his legs, having reached the tops of his boots.
“This isn’t happening to me,” he pleaded with the universe. Clenching his hands, the sticky algae squeezed between his fingers.
When he felt it top his boots and begin running down around his socks, Ruto screamed, thrashed this way and that, and in a fleeting instant of clarity, knew that instant when he lost his balance.
And then he was falling, the panic like a bright fire as he flopped into the cold goo, felt it closing around him, thick as it entombed his beating arms. Cold soaked in around his coveralls, eating into his skin.
For a moment, he whimpered, every muscle in his body quivering, the cold and wet running down his neck, seeping in around the back of his head and into his hair.
And through it all came the throbbing contractions as the algae slowly spread up around his body.
His glance—as the slick goo rose around his nostrils—fixed on the blinking blue icon on the com above the work bench.
The algae swallowed his last scream.
67
When the door to the dome burst open, Dek came staggering in with something long, shiny, and wet hanging over his shoulder. Talina did a double take as Dek duck-walked his way over to the small kitchen and flopped the heavy thing onto the counter there.
Talina rose from where she’d been on the radio with Two Spot, asking, “What the hell is that?”
“Supper,” Dek told her proudly. “It’s a fish. Er, uh, it’s a snake. Well, maybe it’s a . . . ? Who the hell knows what it is? I caught it out of the river. Made a lure out of a piece of chrome I took from one of the old engines out in the shed. Fashioned a hook from a bent bracket. For line I used some of that carbon-fiber twine. The pole I made out of old antennae. And, what do you know? Third cast and wham!” His gaze went slightly askance. “Of course, the thing came within a whisker of dragging me right into the water. If it had been one of the big ones, I might have ended up half drowned and going over the waterfall again.”
“Yeah, well . . . you’d have been on your own. I’m not doing that again. Not even for you.” She studied the sleek beast. The thing measured a meter and a half in length. Must have weighed in at around forty kilos. Brownish-green above shading into silver and finally a snowy white on what she thought was the bottom. Three lines of fins ran down the creature’s muscular sides, eyes equidistant around the triple jaws with their long, in-curved teeth. A trio of tail vents must have been used for propulsion.
“You think it’s edible?” she asked.
Dek sniffed his fingers. “Doesn’t smell
like fish, but we can test it for toxins. There’s a spectrograph in the cabinet along with an FTIR that should give us an idea of what this thing’s made of. That and Two Falls Gap was placed here because the water’s good. The river’s fed by surface water cascading down the cliffs. Doesn’t have time to pick up much of a heavy-metal load. This guy,” Dek indicated the creature, “might not be too terribly toxic, and I’m really tired of broccoli.”
“I’d say order out next time.”
“Inga’s doesn’t deliver.” Dek reached over and plucked the long knife from Talina’s belt. “Do you mind?”
“If I did, do think I’d tell you?” She gave him a nudge with an elbow. “Let’s see what this guy’s made of. If it turns out we can eat it, you might have found your calling.”
Derek Taglioni, fisherman. Inga would pay a fortune if she could add something unique to her menu.
An hour later—the three-jawed fishsnake dissected, tested, and sort of filleted—the curious odor of frying fishsnake filled the air. Talina watched Dek carefully sear the pink meat while trying to decide what it smelled like. The closest she could come to the sweet aroma was paca meat—what the locals in Belize called “gibnut.”
She crossed her arms, asking, “So, where did a mucky-muck Taglioni learn to cook? Or is that one of the skills, along with charming the fair sex, that your father taught you?”
“A Taglioni? Dare to foul his hands by preparing his own food? Not a chance in hell. Nope, this, like so many of my endearing traits, was learned aboard Ashanti. Not that we had much to prepare, but Gonzo really tried to do something with ration. I sat around for hours listening to him and Bill Martin talk about food. I mean, we were all starving, right? Those two guys could go on and on expounding about preparation, spices, temperatures, and recipes. Having eaten at the finest restaurants in Solar System, I was a rapt listener. Promised myself I’d learn to cook. A while back, Madison Briggs let me try it for real in her kitchen, and miracle of miracles, most of what Gonzo and Bill told me actually worked.” He beamed a smile as he laid a fishsnake steak on her plate. “Now, if we only had a bottle of wine.”
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