Jake watched the two of them. Fleming looked upset, while Em looked curious.
“Upset stomach, too.” Em held out her hand. “By the way, I’m Em Tullis. I’ve heard of you, but we’ve never met.”
Fleming quickly shook Em’s hand, and then ducked her head, pulled off her wire rim glasses, polished them on the hem of her t-shirt and put them on again. She tilted her head. “Well, I’m leaving.”
Jake looked from Fleming to Em and back again. Something about the way they tilted their heads was similar, almost as if they were related or something. But Em was adopted from someplace in California, if he remembered right.
“Do you want to go home, too?” He wanted to feel her forehead and cheeks to see if she ran a temperature. But he didn’t think she’d allow him to touch her.
“Yeah, I better,” Em said. “But you go on out and check on the harbor seals.” She turned to Fleming and asked, “Could I get a ride?”
Fleming’s brows furrowed and for a moment, Jake thought she’d say no. But she nodded reluctantly. “Sure. Put your bike in the back.
While Em wheeled her bike to Fleming’s car, Fleming turned to Jake: “Here’s the phone number for Jeremy Prism, the vet. Call him and explain your project. Tell him it’s okay with me, but to call me if he has questions.”
She got in the car and stared straight ahead, like Em was invisible. Jake didn’t know what was going on, but she didn’t seem to like Em at all. Wouldn’t have had anything to do with her, except Em was sick and asked directly for a ride, and she couldn’t avoid a direct request like that.
Killing Earth
On Monday morning, Jake walked deliberately down the noisy school hallway and stopped in the doorway of the counselor’s office. After Friday, he had worried all weekend that eventually Coach Blevins would recognize him. It was time to get out of his classes.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“You need something?” the secretary said.
“Yes. Could I see the counselor or get an appointment to see him?”
“Wait here.”
She disappeared through a back doorway, and Jake plopped his backpack onto an empty chair. He couldn’t seem to sit still, though. He rolled his feet from toe to heel, stretching, and then back heel to toe. Toe, heel. Heel, toe.
“You can see him now,” the secretary said.
Jake had met Mr. Cuvier the first day of school when he got his schedule. His office looked about the same with jumbled shelves of books; the desk, however, looked almost empty now that school had started and schedules were worked out. Mr. Cuvier stretched out his legs, leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his neck. “Have a seat. What’s up?”
Cuvier’s massive work boots were scuffed and the shoestrings were half-raveled out. They were a working man’s boots. Jake had heard that Cuvier owned a small farm with goats, U-pick strawberries, and blueberries. In fact, he had a side contract with the school to provide them with goat’s milk for students who were allergic to cow’s milk.
Jake sat and hooked his legs around the chair legs. “I’d like to change classes, please.”
Cuvier’s eyebrows went up in a question.
“Well, I’m just not getting along well in civics class with Mr.—with Coach Blevins.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. He wants me on swim team, and I don’t want to do it. Always talking about Risonians too, calling them Sharks. I just don’t feel comfortable in that class.” There. That should do it, Jake thought. He didn’t have to be any more specific than that.
Cuvier stared at him for a slow minute, and then leaned forward to rise to his full height. He wore a plaid flannel shirt and jeans that gave him a casual, laid-back look. Calmly, he said, “Wait here.”
He left Jake alone in his office.
He’s probably just getting the right forms to make this switch, Jake thought. Nervously, he stood again and held onto the back of his chair to do a lunge that stretched out his hamstrings. He knew he should just sit still, but he had worried all weekend. He had to get out of Blevins’s class!
Jake smelled something odd. Looking around, on a side table he saw a shallow bowl with small wrapped packages. He picked one up and smelled it. The label said, “Goat Milk Soap, made on Bainbridge Island by the Cuvier Farms.” Each bar of soap smelled different, and after sampling a few, Jake’s nose was confused.
“He’s in here.” Cuvier entered, and behind him was Coach Blevins.
Shocked, Jake let the soap bar drop. It hit the edge of the shallow bowl and flipped the bowl over, spilling soap bars across the room.
“Oh! Sorry!”
Face blazing in embarrassment, Jake crawled around grabbing soaps until they were all safely in the bowl again. Then he stood awkwardly and looked from the counselor to the civics teacher.
“Sit,” Cuvier said.
Jake sat. This was an ambush, but he had to see it through.
Blevins had a puzzled look on his face, “Why do you want out of my class?”
Jake said nothing.
Cuvier said, “Answer him.”
So, Jake repeated what he’d told Cuvier, since Cuvier had probably already told Blevins. “I don’t want to be on swim team, and you won’t stop asking. And you’re always talking about Risonians, too, calling them Sharks. I just don’t feel comfortable.”
Blevins’s dark brown eyes opened wider and his nostrils flared. “Look—I teach a fair class. Sure, I talk about my political opinions because it’s a civics class. And sure, you’re entitled to your own opinions. Just like I’m entitled to my opinions. I’m a fair teacher, though. I’ll never give you a grade based on your politics.”
It was good to know that Blevins still had some morality. He tried to be fair in the classroom, at least in his own eyes. But Jake couldn’t risk being around him day after day. Of course, getting his personal attention right now was dangerous, too.
Jake gathered his courage and asked, “Why do you hate the Risonians so much?”
“Can’t say Sharks, can you?” Blevins shot back.
“It’s not a good name for them,” Jake insisted. “They aren’t anything like Sharks.”
“And how do you know that?” Blevins narrowed his eyes.
Jake looked away and self-consciously scratched his ear to keep his hand away from his nose with its alien flaps that were designed to shut out the water. “I don’t, of course.”
“But I do.” Blevins’s voice was hard now, bitter. “I’ve dealt with them. They’re trying to kill the Earth, to invade, to get us off guard before—“ With an effort, he stopped. Nostrils flaring, he said, “I’m just trying to protect my students.”
Jake balled up his hands in frustration and literally bit his tongue to keep from saying anything else.
“Sorry,” Coach Blevins said in a cold, but calm voice. “You’re not getting out of my class that easily.” He stood and stomped out.
Curvier shrugged. “There you have it.”
Jake stood stiffly, too. “If my grandmother came in to talk with you—”
“She’d get the same answer,” Cuvier said. “But you can take Easter a sample of my soap. Been trying to get her to try it for a long time.”
Angry, embarrassed, defeated—Jake just wanted to get out of there. He took a step, turned back, grabbed his backpack and—
“Stop.”
Jake stopped in mid-stride and spun back, ready to fight.
But the counselor merely held out a hall pass.
Grabbing it, Jake stomped out. The hallways were eerily silent, waiting for the next bell to disgorge students from classrooms. At his locker, Jake put away books he didn’t need. Suddenly emotions flooded through him, and he sank to the floor with his back to the lockers and put his head between his legs. For a long minute he was overwhelmed with a jumble of emotions: anger, fear, hope, frustration. Everyone here on Bainbridge Island was against the Risonians.
The alone-ness of it all struck him with a force. He was unique, the only
creature ever born who was half-Risonian, half-human. He was born different, and it would never change for him. He’d always be alone. He wanted to bang the lockers, to kick them, to smash something hard—or to be smashed by it. He just didn’t want to be alone any longer.
Slowly, though, the emotions passed, and he was left just tired. Coach Blevins’s words came back to him. “They are killing the Earth.”
He means Mt. Rainier, Jake thought. But what if he was right, just in a different way. Something about the waters of Puget Sound made him think of umjaadis. What if somehow, someway—as impossible as it sounded—a Risonian had released umjaadi into the waters? It was possible that the umjaadi would love the salinity of the Earth’s oceans. If it started living and growing in Earth’s oceans, what damage would it do?
Jake decided that he had to investigate. He had to swim in Puget Sound and try to figure out what was happening. It would be his own private biology research project, at least until he knew that it wouldn’t betray the Risonian cause.
Eavesdropping
Later, walking to the cafeteria for lunch, David caught up with him, slapped him on the back and asked, “Hey! Why were you late to first-period?”
Jake smiled. Gordon was becoming a good friend, and Jake liked that.
“I was in the counselor’s office,” Jake said. “Trying to get my schedule changed so I didn’t have to have Blevins for a teacher.”
“They wouldn’t let you change?”
“Nope. Ambushed me. Cuvier brought in Blevins, and I had to say things directly to him. Embarrassing.”
David whistled. “Wow, that’s bad.”
Jake nodded. “He didn’t like it, at all. Called me a Shark Lover.” They stopped at Jake’s locker long enough for him to throw his backpack inside, and then at David’s locker a few steps farther on.
“He’s been on your case since you came.”
“Yeah. I would’ve asked for a different class a lot earlier, except—”
“Em?”
“That obvious?” Jake’s face flamed.
“You just watch her all the time.” He looked at Jake sideways, started to say something, but stopped. He nodded his chin.
Slowly, Jake pivoted.
Em’s locker was near enough to David’s that she’d just heard everything. She was blushing.
Jake’s heart leapt up. She wasn’t frowning.
David gave him a small shove toward her. Throwing a smile back at him, Jake took another step closer and said casually, “Going to lunch? Mind if I walk with you.”
Em looked at him sideways and smiled. “Please yourself.”
Behind them, David burst out laughing, but Jake didn’t care. He was going to get to eat lunch with Em. After all the tension between them for the past week, this was a pleasant change. The day wasn’t totally lost.
Dive, Young Man, Dive
After supper, Jake decided it was time to investigate the steady thumping sound that he heard toward the north each time he was in Puget Sound. It wasn’t a natural sound, and he thought he should recognize it, but he couldn’t quite place it. And besides, he was still suspicious about what was causing the harbor seals to be sick. He needed to spend some time in Puget Sound to see if he could figure out anything.
He told Sir and Easter, “I’m going to walk along the beach to David Gordon’s house and visit a while. I’ll be back later.”
“Great,” Easter said. “Glad you’re making friends.”
The early November wind off the water was cold. Jake wore his swim trunks and a rash guard shirt under sweat pants and a hoodie, along with lightweight, waterproofed tennis shoes. It was just 6 pm, but the sky had already gone from twilight to full dark; across the water, Seattle’s skyline glittered. And beyond that, a steady stream of smoke poured from Mt. Rainier.
At the water’s edge, Jake pulled up the sweatpants and let the elastic bottom hold it above his knees so he could wade, picking his way among the rocks till the shoreline curved west into Murden Cove. The land started to rise, leaving a narrow beach that would vary in width as the tide rose and fell. Here and there were wooden stairs from a house or public access to the beach from the road above. If he was really going to David’s house, he should leave the shoreline and find the road that paralleled the water. Instead, he stayed at the water’s edge until he found a couple large boulders that would act as landmarks when he came back to claim his clothes.
With only the constellations as witnesses, he stripped off his sweats, hoodie and shoes, walked into the water till it was waist-high, and dove.
The shock of hitting the cold water lasted only a moment before his body adapted: his nose flaps shut down, his gills opened and took over his breathing, and the villi on his legs meshed. Instantly, he was transformed from a land to a water creature. For a moment, he reveled in feeling like himself for a change; he’d almost forgotten how it felt to be fully Risonian.
Jake followed the sloping sea floor downward in a leisurely swim. After weeks on land, it was a joy to be weightless in the water again. In the dim light, he found himself at the edge of an underwater shelf, a cliff. He waved his hands in circles and fluttered his feet, his villi unlocking automatically several inches to adjust to the movement. He hovered and studied the drop. The deeper he went, the darker it would be. The thumping sound definitely came from somewhere down there, though.
With a joyous abandon, he let the thumps pull him deeper; he spread his arms and dove.
On Earth, he’d read about skydiving, or jumping out of an airplane with just a parachute, but the feeling of free-fall and the thrill of skydiving couldn’t be better than this. He fell quickly, steadily, yet at every moment, he knew he was in control. He tucked his head and pulled up his feet to do an aerial-like somersault; he un-Velcroed his legs so he could spread both arms and legs wide to slow down. He somersaulted; he stopped; he hovered. Abruptly, he Velcroed his legs, pulled them in, and wrapped his arms them. He plummeted like a huge rock. To slow, he opened his arms and spread his unVelcroed legs wide. Spread-eagled, he hung suspended upside down, looking upward. Currents washed over him, colder water pouring off the shelf above in a sort of underwater waterfall; but it was a slow-moving current and he drifted easily, watching the distant surface.
Gently, he did a slow barrel roll, turning to face down, and then completing the roll to look upward again. With the deepening of night, the darkness had grown, and he barely saw the surface.
He paused.
That wasn’t right. The light was brighter below him than above him. Probably a bioluminescence of some kind. Lazily, he did half of a barrel roll and floated, looking downward.
Jake wavered, caught in limbo between two worlds, the air and the sea, each hiding its own secrets. Below him the diffused glow grew brighter; it was definitely not bioluminescence. And now that he paid attention, the thumping was louder, filling him, beating against him gently, calling to him, “Come down, come down.”
It was like he stood at the center of time, watching it unwind.
He let it uncurl for a heartbeat, a heartbeat, and half a heartbeat.
Then, he pulled his body back into a line and down he went, like a straight arrow, shooting directly for the light and the thumping.
The water temperature grew colder and colder. Jake guessed he was 150 feet deep and going deeper. His Risonian metabolism responded though, keeping him at a comfortable warmth, giving him the liberty of swimming even deeper.
As he drew closer to the light, he realized that it was coming from structures. Definitely manmade structures. On one side, it looked very much like a Risonian building with windows open to the sea. Especially in old villages or towns on Rison, like Koloman or Danot in the Southern Sea, houses were open to allow ocean currents to flow through them. And why not? In Easter’s house, he might open his windows to let the ocean breeze blow through.
But on the other end were structures that looked like submersible-buildings. They weren’t submarines, probably because subs a
re too small. Instead, it was—
Jake shivered in fear. And anticipation.
Jake had been on Earth for over three months now and had heard that thumping sound before. He’d heard it when he had kayaked with Ms. Fleming and fallen into the Sound. He had heard it, but he hadn’t heard it. He hadn’t connected it. Anger at his foolishness surged through him. That sound was a common tool on Rison that allowed people to navigate the dark depths of the sea; it was a homing beacon.
This was a tiny bit of Rison transplanted to a tiny bit of Earth. A beginning.
Jake swam cautiously now, on the lookout; he didn’t want to trip any warning system and alert the inhabitants that he was here. For there were definitely inhabitants. Even from this distance, some of the windows showed blurry figures that moved around. Humans or Risonians? It could be either. Or both.
Jake swam slower and slower, his shock growing. This wasn’t just an underwater habitat; it was a small village. The center was a circular structure, large and sturdy; circular structures were more stable underwater because of the steady pressures of the water around them. From the center, three tubes ran sideways creating hallways to three other sections.
The first large pod was dotted with smaller windows, probably living quarters. A second pod had large windows but it was dark, work areas Jake guessed. It would be lit up during the day. Jake realized the third pod was separated by airlocks that the first two lacked. It would be a saturation diving lab, then, for humans.
At this depth, a human would need to decompress for hours before going back up to the surface. Jake did a rapid calculation and thought it would likely be 2 1/2 or 3 days of decompression. The problem with humans at this depth was the formation of gas bubbles in the body. Air on the surface was composed of oxygen and nitrogen, with traces of other gases. At ocean depths, the gases are under pressure and are forced into the body’s cells. But as the diver rises, the pressure lessens and the gas expands.
One fisherman described it like this: fish have a swim bladder, a structure that holds gas and helps give them buoyancy which lets them swim easily. If you take a deep-sea fish and travel toward the surface, the swim bladder can expand to seven times its normal size, which crushes the other organs in the fish’s body.
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