Fathom

by L. L. Standage

  I watched it with mingling awe and alarm, almost forgetting I was supposed to stay hidden from the man who shared in the vision. The smoky figure faded a little, then reformed itself as though it had more to say.

  A knock sounded at the door. I jumped. The figure, the lights, and the voices disappeared as quickly as a television set switching off. Linnaeus opened one of his drawers and dropped the clam into it with a clatter. The door opened.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Linnaeus,” said a nervous female voice, “but there’s a problem at the assembly hall. Jerry wanted me to come ask for your help.”

  “Can’t it wait? I’m extremely busy,” he replied tersely.

  “It-it’ll only take a moment,” she stammered.

  He sighed, growled, “All right,” and stomped out of the room. The door slammed. A key turned in the door lock.

  I waited for a while, unable to move from a mixture of relief and panic. My galloping heart pumped waves of adrenaline throughout my body. When I found some control, I unfolded myself from the corner and crept over the bluish glass with trembling knees. I opened the drawer Linnaeus had just closed and found it.

  The clam rolled a little in the momentum of the opening drawer. I picked it up. What was this thing? Certainly more than a clam. A vessel, they called it. A vessel for information Linnaeus would kill to get his hands on. That poem…what did it mean? Where did this vessel come from?

  Should I take it? Doran Linnaeus would never know it was me. I could toss it over an ocean bluff. Or maybe watch more of the lights and voices. I might learn what this thing was for, why the red-headed Delfina woman wanted me to keep it safe, or maybe why Mr. Linnaeus wanted it so much. I slid it into my purse and closed the drawer. Still in a daze, I walked to the door, unlocked the knob, and peeked out.

  No one in sight. I shut the door and walked down the hall, feeling like I left my brain twenty minutes in the past. Around the corner, down the hallway, toward the exit. I still couldn’t believe I didn’t get caught. But even more, I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. But it was there. Real. In front of my eyes. Some strange projection had come out of the clam.

  I reached for the handle to the outer door, but it swung toward me. My stomach slipped to my shoes. There he stood, his head turned away, shouting at someone outside. Doran Linnaeus. He didn’t see me. I hurried back to the janitor’s closet and hid, waiting until his shouting passed.

  After several deep breaths, and all quiet outside the door, I walked out… right in front of another Oceana park employee.

  “Umm,” I said stupidly, my voice shaking. “I’m sorry. I think I’m lost.” I scurried away. The employee just watched, looking surprised and a little amused. For a wild second, I thought I’d gotten away with it, until someone in a suit emerged from around the corner.

  “Hey, you, wait! Stop right there!” Linnaeus shouted. I plowed through the door and took off running.

  “Stop her!”

  I sprinted down the sidewalk, heading away from where Samantha waited. I didn’t want them to find her. I looked back at my pursuers. They had multiplied. One of them included the man with the missing pinky whose name I now knew to be Marinus.

  People stared as I tore through the park. Gasping and clutching my purse like a priceless treasure, I squeezed through a crowd where strollers pulled out of my path and a man dropped his lunch. I wanted to shout back my apologies, but Linnaeus’ men remained hot on my heels.

  My lungs ached, my legs burned, and the exit was nowhere in sight. Sooner or later I would come to a dead end and they would find me. I wanted to throw up, half from exertion and half from despair. I couldn’t run anymore.

  But as I stumbled around a hedge, someone jerked me into the bushes. A hand clamped over my mouth, cutting short my scream. I struggled, brambles scratching my arms and face. My stifled screams continued as I tried to claw away the arms holding me from behind.

  “Shut up. It’s Calder Brydon. I’m helping you,” came a hoarse, Scottish whisper in my ear. Calder Brydon. The Hottie McScottie. I stopped screaming. He didn’t take his hand away from my mouth. My body went limp but my mind buzzed, still going a hundred miles an hour. My pulse throbbed through my whole body.

  “I’m going to take my hand away now,” he said. “Don’t scream.”

  I nodded. He freed my face. I coughed, gulping air through the sharp cramps in my side.

  “Quiet.”

  I quieted. We stood there in the hedge, his arms still wrapped around me. Bleeding scrapes striped his forearms, matching the ones I had on my own. Behind me, I could feel his body against mine. His chest rose and fell with each steady breath he took. I watched my pursuers through the gaps in the bushes as they passed.

  After a few more seconds, he let me go.

  “Follow me. Be quick,” he whispered, pulling me by the wrist. The bushes raked us a second time as we emerged. Exhausted and trembling, I had a hard time keeping up. I wanted to curl up on the pavement and never move again, but Calder wouldn’t let up his pace.

  We drew a few more stares from people in the park, but Linnaeus’s men had either gone away or Calder scouted our path well. We soon found the exit and hurried into the parking lot.

  “Wait. Samantha’s still here.” I said. “I can’t go without her.”

  He stopped. He let go of my wrist and turned to look toward the entrance of the park. The muscles in his face clenched and unclenched. “Does she have a cell phone?” he asked.

  I nodded and he thrust an old flip phone at me. It took several tries because of my unsteady fingers, but finally I found the right buttons to dial Sam’s number—one of the few I actually had memorized. She answered before the end of the first ring.

  I sighed in relief. “It’s me. Meet me at the exit. Now. Hurry.” I hung up the phone. He took it back and paced as we waited. I watched the entrance to the theme park, my stomach twisting in knots, my hands gripping one another. He paced in front of me.

  “How’d you know I needed help?” I asked.

  “I came to retrieve the vessel,” he replied. “Saw you running with it.”

  “That Linnaeus guy is neglecting the animals in this place,” I said with a scowl. “I couldn’t let him—”

  “Not here,” he cut me off. He paced for another minute. “There’s your friend. Let’s go.” I whirled around and saw Samantha jogging out of the entrance, wide-eyed and anxious.

  “Samantha.” I wanted to talk to her, to tell her what had happened, but Calder grasped my arm.

  “We need to go.”

  I followed him while Sam caught up.

  “I heard some security guards talking about you,” she said as we trotted behind Calder. “What happened?”

  “Later,” Calder said over his shoulder.

  I opened my purse and showed her the clam inside. She looked from me, to the scratches on my arms and face, and to Calder up ahead. The worry in her eyes grew. Calder led us to a car parked on the far side of the lot, a nondescript beige sedan. He unlocked it with a remote on his key chain.

  “What about our car?” Sam asked, hanging behind. He looked back.

  “Yes, I suppose you’d better bring it. I’ll wait.” He turned to me. “You stay.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I’m taking you to Eamon,” he replied without looking at me. He climbed into the car without looking at us. Mystified, I handed the keys off to Sam. She took them and walked to where we had the car parked. I hesitated before getting into the car. The last time I’d gotten into the car with strangers, my life turned upside down—and nearly ended. Calder rolled the passenger window down.

  “Come on,” he said, authority lowering his voice. “We can’t wait around for Linnaeus to find us.”

  I got into the car.

  We came to a neighborhood south of San Diego, with houses sitting close to the shore. Calder turned onto a street where only weathered decks and porches separated the houses from the ocean. He parked in the driveway of a sand-col
ored, weather-beaten two story with blank windows. It had peeling paint and a neglected front yard, cracked pavement, and an ocean in the back. I’d kill to live in it.

  Calder got out without a word. Did he want me to go with him or stay in the car? I opened the door and stepped out. He unlocked the front door and went inside. Sam got out of my car along the sidewalk. With a shrug, she made her way to the door. I kept my arms folded and together we entered an empty foyer. Sam’s eyes roved over the white walls and dusty wood floors.

  “You’re back already?” someone asked from the next room where Calder had gone.

  “I am,” he replied.

  “Then you have it?”

  “Yes. Surprised?”

  “No. Impressed.”

  He huffed. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “What? I’m serious.”

  “I had help,” he said, sounding reluctant to admit it.

  “From who?”

  Calder appeared in the entryway. “Come in.”

  Samantha lingered near the front door, looking nervous, while I stepped forward.

  I entered a spacious family room equipped with folding chairs and lightweight desks. The desks held a mess of cords draped and taped in semi-organized chaos. The screens of three laptop computers glowed in the dim lighting along with other various pieces of equipment I couldn’t name. The only other furniture was a very ugly, worn out sofa of light brown plaid. The family room, dining room, and kitchen were otherwise empty and open.

  In the room sat some people I recognized: the gigantic South African man and the emo Australian woman with the long black hair. Eamon O’Dell stood nearby. Expressions of confusion and astonishment passed over their faces as they set eyes on me.

  “Why are you still here?” Eamon asked me. His tone wasn’t harsh—only sorrowful and concerned. I looked at the ground, wishing Sam stayed beside me instead of hanging back at the front door.

  “She got the vessel,” said Calder.

  The South African guy stood. I took a step back, intimidated by his bulk. “Will you show it to us?” he asked, his voice low but kind. I reached into my purse and held it out to him. He didn’t take it. He and the others only looked at it, then me, and back at the shell again.

  “Natasha, would you please go prepare a place for our guests?” Eamon said.

  “Of course.” Her gaze lingered on me as she passed by, walking to the carpeted staircase on the left-hand side of the family room and going up. I looked around, feeling awkward and anxious.

  “Calder, we’ll need more supplies.”

  Calder nodded once and walked out of the house.

  “Now, would you care to sit down?” Eamon gestured to the sofa. I looked back at Samantha uncertainly. “Please, come in. Walter, would you mind getting some water?” Eamon spoke as though we were a couple of neighbors dropping by for tea and crumpets…or whatever Irish people ate when entertaining. Sam, wringing her hands, came into the room. We walked around the equipment and sat on the ugly couch. Eamon took a seat in one of the folding chairs. He rested his elbows on his knees. I offered him the clam, but he shook his head.

  “No, you just hang on to it for now.” He sighed and frowned in deep thought before speaking again. “Why did you go after it?” His eyes bore into mine. “You had no obligation to.”

  I looked down and took my time putting the clam back into my purse as I felt a creeping flush in my cheeks. “It was really stupid of me, I know.”

  “Yes, it was. You could have been killed, or worse.”

  I marveled for a moment at what could be worse than death but then decided I didn’t want to know.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, for lack of a better reply. Why did this man care so much about whether I lived or died? Despite all he and his friends had done for me, he was still a complete stranger.

  “The young ones are always reckless,” said Walter with a smile. He handed Sam and me bottles of water.

  “Have you had training in reconnaissance or retrieval?” Eamon asked the odd question in the tone of a lecturing parent.

  “No.” I said. Of course I hadn’t been trained in reconnaissance and retrieval. I was an average nobody, not a CIA agent. But the word rang a bell. Reconnaissance was listed on Delfina’s profile in the Project Fathom folder.

  “Why did you come?” Eamon asked.

  “Your Scottish friend brought me.”

  “No, why are you here? In San Diego?”

  “Oh…well, my aunt asked me to housesit for her while she’s in Europe for the summer. I’d like to major in marine biology, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to put together a scholarship project for college.” A scholarship project that I’d completely forgotten about the second I saw Linnaeus walking through the Oceana theme park with the clam in his hand. “I invited Samantha to come with me.”

  Eamon’s brow furrowed. He stared at me for a long time as his face paled.

  “Where, exactly, are you from?”

  I exchanged a perplexed look with Samantha.

  “Arizona,” I said. This phrase, so insignificant to me, appeared to be a complete revelation to Eamon. He stared at me in shock, his jaw slack.

  “So you’re not…” His voice withered. He turned his head to look at Walter. All the affability in Walter’s face turned to widened eyes and a raised brow. He seemed to have dwindled a little in his loud Hawaiian shirt.

  “But Calder said…” Walter murmured, his great black eyes like granite.

  Eamon looked back at me. “You have no idea what you’ve done, do you?”

  I slouched.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Walter said. “It’s all right. Just tell us what happened.”

  With my eyes on my shoes, I swallowed, licked my dry lips, and began at the beginning.

  “It started with the tide pools.”

  I told them about Linnaeus and one of his men catching me at the tide pools. I told them about seeing Calder and the Delfina woman on the beach. I told them about the crime scene, about Delfina giving me the clam, and about the kidnapping. Then about Oceana: seeing Linnaeus across the dolphin feeding pool, following him to his office, and finding the clam after hiding from him.

  All the while, Samantha stared at me as though I’d declared a hidden hatred of baby chicks and puppies.

  “I know it was my fault that Mr. Linnaeus got it,” I said. “And that Delfina died.” I swallowed. “She told me to keep it safe at all costs. And I just…tossed it aside. When we were at the park, I’d followed after Linnaeus to tell him he needed to fix his theme park, or the animals would die. But then I saw him with the vessel and—I remembered Delfina. So when I got the chance, I took it back.”

  “How do you know Delfina?” Walter asked, leaning forward.

  I looked up. “I don’t. She just brought me the seashell. I don’t know why she did it. I just saw her hanging around a couple times, and she brought it to me. I thought she was on drugs or crazy. I don’t know. Mr. Linnaeus had a picture of her in his office. That’s what made me think she wasn’t so crazy after all.”

  Eamon’s eyes widened. “Tell us everything.”

  I told him as much as I could remember about the Project Fathom file. He sat back with a frown.

  “I should have known Delfina took her own life,” he said to Walter when I gave him the tragic news.

  “That complicates things,” Walter replied.

  I looked between the two of them. “Why would she do that?” I asked.

  Eamon ignored my question. “Please, continue.”

  I hesitated, but kept going, describing everything I saw while hidden in Linnaeus’ office. When I came to the part about the song coming out of the vessel, Eamon stopped me.

  “This song. Do you remember any of it?”

  “Um…a little. It mentioned some names. Lord and lady something. And something about life and limb on the land?”

  “Were the names Nereus and Doris?”

  “Yeah, that sounds familiar.”
/>   Eamon looked at Walter, then gestured for me to continue. I went on from the song in the seashell to my narrow escape from Oceana with Calder. When I finished talking, Eamon moved his fingers to the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes and massaged his brow for a moment. A cell phone jingled and all of us but Walter jumped. He reached for the phone.

  “Andrus,” he said into the receiver. He looked over at Samantha and me, then stood and walked away. “We have it. No, but he brought us the ones who did.”

  He went into the kitchen to continue his conversation. My throat felt dry from talking.

  “What happens now?” I asked, looking back at Eamon.

  “What happens now is I need to ask that the both of you stay here.”

  “Why?” Samantha asked. “And how long?”

  “Until we can be sure it’s safe to return. Linnaeus knows you took the vessel. It isn’t safe for you to be on your own right now.” He stood. “You both have shown extraordinary bravery in bringing the vessel back.”

  “What is it? What’s it for?”

  Eamon and Walter exchanged glances. Eamon smiled. “Nothing dangerous. But it is an important artifact. I thank you for retrieving it.”

  I wanted to say, “You’re welcome,” but it sounded really stupid, so I stayed quiet. Walter walked back toward us while putting his cell phone back in his pocket.

  “Uther’s on his way,” he said. “I’m curious,” he continued, looking at me. “What were you going to do with the vessel once you obtained it?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Mostly I just didn’t want Mr. Linnaeus to have it. At least now I can give it back to its rightful owners.”

  “I’m glad to hear it, but we aren’t the rightful owners either.” Eamon walked into the kitchen. “Are you hungry? It is nearly dinner time.” He opened an ice chest sitting in place of where a refrigerator would have been.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairway, and Natasha appeared.

  “Their room is almost ready. I just need to get them some fresh towels from the garage. And we’re down to our last pack of bottled water, Eamon.”

  “Calder has already gone for supplies.”

  Natasha disappeared through a door in the kitchen, then came out holding a few folded towels. She smiled at us before going back upstairs.