Firestorm

by David Klass

  “With the rock hoppers?”

  “Of course. I don’t care what we have to smash. We go in, we get a rich catch of fish, and we get the hell out. Once we’re gone, no one will be able to pin it on us. Agreed?”

  “Dargon will be happy. Surely he will reward us.”

  I watch the captain’s polished shoes step toward the door. He unlatches the hook. Then he turns. “Be careful when it comes to Dargon,” the old voice cautions. “A flame knows neither gratitude nor mercy. Only how to scorch and consume.”

  54

  Raise window. Squeeze outside. Hang by hands. Jump down to deck. Gisco? You still here?

  You don’t really think I’d run away? How little you understand the loyalty and bravery of dogs. Didn’t Odysseus’ faithful hound, Argos, await his master’s return to Ithaca lo those many years? Didn’t Themistocles’ brave dog refuse to be left behind when Athens was evacuated, and swim behind his master’s boat all the way to Salamis, where he fainted and died from exhaustion on the beach? Didn’t the great sled dog Balto prevent a diphtheria epidemic in Nome by heroically—

  Okay, I get it. Then where exactly are you?

  Hiding behind the derrick.

  I join the cowardly canine, cowering in the farthest night shadows. I tell him what I overheard, and see the horror on his face at the prospect of soon trawling a virgin reef. So what’s the ICCAF? I ask him. Why did you nearly jump out of your pelt when I mentioned it?

  It’s an acronym for the International Committee to Control Atlantic Fisheries. It was a group formed right before the Turning Point, chartered by the United Nations. Its crucial mission was to protect all the remaining undestroyed reefs outside territorial waters.

  Like the one we’re about to fish?

  Right. Those unprotected reefs lay in what was called the global common, meaning they were not close enough to any single country to be protected by that country. So they were supposed to be protected by all countries, working together. What it really meant was that all countries exploited them.

  But if the ICCAF was supposed to protect the reefs, how does it figure that this trawler is using an ICCAF chart?

  Future historians of the destruction of the seas speculated that the International Committee to Control Atlantic Fisheries was corrupt. They dubbed it the International Conspiracy to Catch All Fish. The ICCAF used international conservation funds to survey all the still-uncharted floors of the world’s oceans. Someone in the committee must have sold the maps of virgin reefs to this trawler company.

  The ship is dark and silent. We must be over the reef now. I can feel the trawler cutting its engines. The fogbanks are thick around us. When the crew wakes, in a few hours, the net will be lowered.

  I’m starting to understand what I should do. But I’m afraid of it. Is it absolutely necessary?

  One question, dog. The ocean is so vast. We’re just going to trawl one reef today. Is that really so damaging? Won’t it grow back?

  That’s what’s so special about reefs, Gisco answers. Coral grows slowly. A deep-sea reef takes thousands of years to form. But a trawler can pulverize it in a single day. Bottom trawling with rock hoppers destroyed all the world’s reefs in less than two decades. And that took away the last chance.

  The last chance to do what?

  Deep-sea reefs and trenches were the incubators of ocean life. Life first began there. Fish spawn there. Overfished species recover there. Fish down a single species, and it might recover in the deep-sea reefs over time. Rip apart the incubators of life, and you deprive the ocean of its only way of healing itself. So yes, ripping up a virgin deep-sea reef is a big deal. What are you doing now?

  I need to see it for myself.

  What?

  The reef.

  Are you crazy?

  I hesitate for a second. Am I? Why exactly am I doing this? My father’s second warning has been haunting me. I’m aware that there is another, very different meaning of the word “chimera.” It was the fire-breathing monster of Greek legend, but it also means an illusion or fabrication of the mind. The deep-sea reefs that Gisco described sound fantastical. Can meaningful life really exist so far down, so removed from sunlight? I need to see it for myself, with my own eyes. I need to make sure that my father wasn’t warning me about risking my life for an illusion. I start to climb over the rail. Ask dog: Do you want the good news or the bad news?

  The good news, please.

  I’m going to dive down and check out the reef. I should be back up in less than an hour, if I don’t get eaten by a shark or squeezed to pulp by a giant squid.

  That’s the good news?

  No, the good news is that one of us should stay behind. So you don’t have to come.

  The dog cheers up. Yes, that makes sense. I’ll remain here, watching over everything. What’s the bad news?

  If I’m not up in an hour, it means the beacon of hope has been extinguished. So then it’ll be up to you to find Firestorm on your own, and figure out how to use it, with the weight of the whole future on your back.

  Hold on a minute! I told you that the canine spine was not designed to support weight. Come back here!

  In one smooth motion I dive over the side. Glide easily down five feet, seven feet, ten feet into the dark, cool water. Gisco’s telepathic warnings begin to fade as the pressure builds in my ears.

  55

  Can’t take this for long. Pitch darkness. Numbing cold. Roaring pressure.

  Feel my arm, my wrist, the dark metal band with the old-fashioned watch face. Sure enough, the band grows warmer. The watch begins to glow. A million points of light surround me.

  Goodbye, cold. Adios, pressure. My watch is now like a high-beam spotlight, shining a tunnel-path downward.

  I fumble with the beads around my neck. What was it Eko said when she put the necklace on me? “Men should wear more jewelry. It gives them a sensual dimension.”

  Jewelry wasn’t the approved accessory for Hadley jocks. I never wore a chain or even an earring. But I’ll keep Eko’s necklace as long as I live. It’s all I have left from the woman who took me beneath the waves and flew with me among the clouds.

  I swallow a bead. Feel it breaking apart inside me. Okay, I’m ready. Can I really swim down to a seamount? Only one way to find out.

  Seems like I swim downward for an hour. I don’t have Eko to show me the way and point out the dangers. Will I end up as shark bait? Do I have enough oxygen? Am I on course or am I lost at sea, or rather lost far under the sea?

  Just when I’m convinced I must have missed the seamount and be headed down to the empty Atlantic floor, I’m suddenly surrounded by orange roughy.

  Thousands of them. Mingling and swirling like kids in a playground during recess. They swim around me and brush up to me, fearless or oblivious. I imagine the gaping maw of the trawler net sweeping through this cloud of orange. It could scoop up the whole school in a matter of minutes.

  Then I’m through the orange roughy, diving down alone. I miss their bright color and companionship. Nothing else down here. Maybe I should turn back.

  Wait, something looms ahead, shimmering like the mirage of an oasis in a desert. I stop swimming and stare.

  It’s not a mirage. Not a chimera. It’s real! More than a thousand feet beneath the Atlantic, an unspoiled Garden of Eden blooms up at me out of the cold darkness.

  A virgin reef. Thousands of years in the making. This is not a shipwreck that has been taken over by fish and coral. This is in no way a work of man.

  This is pure ocean.

  Imagine a vast tabletop, protruding up from darkness. As I swim down toward it, I can see where the edge of the table ends and massive black boulders slope away into the uncharted depths.

  But the plateau of the seamount is aflame with vibrant colors, teeming with fish, and crawling with sea creatures.

  Here’s the strange part. I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s the most exotic, otherworldly place I’ve ever been. But at the same time, it
feels strangely familiar.

  Can there be such a thing as ancestral memory stretching back millions of years? It doesn’t seem likely—I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast. Yet, swimming toward this oasis of life, I’m overcome with wonderment and odd nostalgia.

  The seamount is a garden, a secret, magical garden, hidden from the world! The kind you imagine in childhood games, tended by fairies in the woods.

  My mom kept a small garden in Hadley-by-Hudson. When I was a baby she used to lay me on a grassy spot in the center of the planting beds. Summer breezes stirred the ferns and flowers, and bees and crickets buzzed and chirped around my head.

  That’s what I think of now. A country garden. Bees and crickets, worms and centipedes, pollinating flowers and stirring soil. The bustling magic of it comes back to me.

  Yesterday I saw coral pulled up in the nets, pulverized. Here it’s intact, the way it’s been growing for centuries. A thicket of it near me is rosy red and wide-branched, with yellow anemones glinting from its folds, like an orchard of scarlet apple trees hung with ripe yellow fruit.

  Next to it bristles a grove of what looks like bamboo—thin tapering coral fronds in a brown and yellow thicket.

  Uh-oh, I’ve disturbed an octopus convention. No, wait, they’re not animals. It’s a patch of green and brown corals, each of which have eight armlike tentacles reaching upward.

  I gingerly set down on the seamount and wander past giant sponges and tendril-twitching anemones. The sponges are comically similar to shapes I know from my own life—they look like elephant heads and Christmas trees and baseball mitts. The pink and red and rainbow-spackled anemones flutter in the deep-sea current, like petals in a rose garden.

  A shadow roves silently over rock and coral. It’s a ray skimming effortlessly, like a square Frisbee. There’s a funky flounder watching me from all three green eyes on top of its flat head. A spindly eel pokes out of a coral formation to take a look. No, he’s not looking at me, but at a white arrow shooting past. It’s a three-foot-long albino squid propelled in sudden bursts.

  There are mussels that look like turkey wings. Tiny luminescent jellyfish with scarlet tentacles. And almost transparent sea spiders crawl by, like moving flakes of ice.

  I have no idea how long I’ve stayed down. Twenty minutes? A half hour? An hour? I can’t say. I have no desire to return to the trawler.

  It seems so much safer here.

  And more beautiful.

  But soon it will all be gone. That’s the thought that makes me kick regretfully off the seamount floor and head up into darkness.

  In a few hours the trawler net will sweep down and the rock hoppers will pulverize this coral, and the fish and the sponges will be netted and yanked skyward.

  Somebody has to do something about that.

  56

  I emerge from cold ocean into warm soup. That’s how thick the fog is. I’m lucky I surface near the trawler, or I might miss it in this gray miasma.

  Gisco? Are you there?

  I thought you were reef roadkill.

  How do I get back up on deck?

  Here’s a rope. Did you learn anything useful?

  I grab hold of rope and clamber back up to deck of trawler. Yes, I can’t let them do it.

  What?

  Trawl the virgin reef. It’s too beautiful.

  Beautiful or not, the crew will be waking up in less than an hour. The net will soon be on its way down.

  No it won’t.

  Who’s going to stop it?

  We are.

  We meaning?

  You and me.

  Impossible.

  Possible. We’ve seen how they lower the nets. It shouldn’t be hard to wreck the equipment.

  Even if you succeed, they’ll figure out it was you.

  Is that a reason not to do it?

  They’ll punish you in some painful and permanent way. And they probably won’t have mercy on your dog, either. Then we won’t be around when we’re really needed, to save the future. So, whatever scheme you’re concocting, please abandon it. We need to be patient. Where are you going?

  I saw a fire ax hanging near the wheelhouse.

  Haven’t you been listening to my sage counsel? We need to take a long-range view here.

  No, I tell him, halfway to the wheelhouse. It’s time to act. I can’t control the whole world, but I can do one very specific thing to prevent the atrocity that’s about to happen. Let’s boogie.

  Gisco looks a little shocked. The words of Dann! You echo them perfectly!

  Which words? “Let’s boogie”?

  No. Dann wrote: Do not waste time seeking to save the whole earth. Try to preserve one tiny pebble. And by doing that, you can, in fact, save the planet.

  Well said. Dann and I are on the same page. And here’s the fire ax. Damn, it’s heavy.

  Your intentions are noble, but your priorities are wrong.

  Meaning? I head back across the deck toward the starboard winch, lugging the fire ax.

  Dann was trying to inspire the general population. His words were not addressed to the beacon of hope at the critical moment just before the Turning Point. If he were here, he would tell you to put that ax back and play ball.

  No, if he were here, he’d say “Strike hard and true.”

  Nonsense. I’ve studied his philosophy all my life.

  He’s my ancestor.

  And you can be certain that if he were here he would say, “My brave descendant, listen to wise Gisco. Be guided by his caution and superior intellect. See the big picture.” There’s a time for heroics and a time for cowardice. Sometimes cowardice can actually be heroic …

  The fire ax is big and red and heavy in my hands. I step up to one of the two main winches. Spot the cable and the hydraulic controls. Raise the ax over my head.

  Don’t do this. I’m. begging you. I’m pretty sure the captain isn’t fond of dogs.

  I summon every iota of strength I have and bring the ax down with a CRASH. And AGAIN! And yet a third CRASH! Cable split. Controls wrecked. Dials dangling. This is one winch that won’t be lowering nets anytime soon.

  Okay. You did it. Now throw the ax in the sea and let’s go hide in some dark spot. I know the perfect closet …

  I walk across the deck to the winch on the port side. Raise the ax. CRASH.

  Oh no. They’ve heard you. They’re coming!

  Voices approach rapidly through the fog.

  I strike one last fierce blow with the ax. CRASH! Cable severed. Port winch also inoperable.

  Half a dozen crewmen surround me. The first mate’s there, too. Holding a pistol.

  The old captain walks up. His shrewd eyes survey the damage. Then they flick toward me and lock onto my own eyes for a long second.

  He whispers gently to the first mate, “Tie him up. And his ugly dog, too.”

  57

  Dog and boy bound together, hand to paw, to the steel cable of the aft winch—the only one still functioning. Fog lifting a bit. Morning sun burning through.

  Crew assembled on deck. Many of them look furious at us, but also deeply apprehensive.

  The first mate addresses them: “Less than a week ago we saved this boy and his dog. They rewarded us by sabotaging our ship. Instead of fishing today, we’re on our way to a dockyard. Repairs will take weeks. Some of you may be fired because of the delay. So it’s time to punish those who are responsible.”

  The captain steps to the winch controls. He’s going to do this himself! Lower us slowly down into the depths. I destroyed his winches, so he’s going to use the sole remaining one to destroy me. Slowly drown us. Let the pressure crush us. Let the bottom feeders nibble on us.

  He looks right at me for a second. Tough old guy. Unblinking, purposeful stare. You screwed with me and now you’re going to pay the price. He glances at Gisco, who snivels pathetically.

  Unmoved, the captain looks back at his angry crew and announces, “This boy is a runaway and a confessed thief. No one will miss him. N
o one will mourn him. From this moment forward, he never existed. We never picked him up. He died on that small boat in the hurricane. Does anyone have anything to say?”

  No one does. I spot Ronan, in the second row of crew members. He wets his lips with his tongue, but remains silent. His face is pale. For a moment our eyes meet, and then he looks away.

  I try to move my wrists. To pry the knots loose to at least create a tiny bit of slack. Forget about it. Sailors know how to tie knots, and they’ve done their job expertly. There’s no escape for me. Nor for Gisco, who has stopped sniveling and begun to shed big dog tears. They gush out of his eyes and splash onto the deck, like the sudden onset of a monsoon.

  Oh, woe is me. Who would have ever thought Gisco would come to such an end? Surely they’ll have mercy on an old dog who’s much too young to die.

  There’s no point in blubbering, I tell him. They’re not the merciful sort. Death is coming, so let’s take it with a stiff upper lip and show them what we’re made of.

  I’m made out of pure fear, Gisco admits, trembling. I told you to put down that fire ax. The whole future depended on you, and you let it down. Oh, woe is me.

  I did what I thought was right, I tell him. I saved the reef. If I was really destined to find Firestorm and save the future, then they shouldn’t be able to kill us now. But they are, so I guess I wasn’t.

  Yes, that doesn’t make sense to me either, the miserable mongrel admits.

  A sad-faced crewman with a Bible begins intoning a passage that I think is used for burials at sea. Strange that they should introduce religion into what is essentially a double murder. But maybe the captain is trying to make the crew feel better about the whole thing.

  Another crewman checks the knots that bind us.

  The prophecies about you finding and using Firestorm were pretty definite, Gisco says. We came so far and got so close. They shouldn’t be able to stop us now.

  I don’t really believe in prophecies, I admit.

  They are not of your world. But over hundreds of years, as life on earth changed and darkened, the powers of the mind deepened. You yourself as a descendant of Dann have some of these abilities. You mastered telepathy. You’ve seen shape-changing. There are other powers that to you might seem magical, but that I fully accept.