Man From Atlantis

by Richard Woodley

  “It is underway.”

  “Underway, underway. I wish I had a penny for everything around here that was underway but unfinished. Where does it stand?”

  “So far we have his name, and—”

  “He told me his name, for heaven’s sake, hours ago! What else have you got?”

  “There is not much to report, as yet. The investigators are having difficulty assigning and assessing certain components and characteristics. Our sensors seem confused by his emanations. And others in the new group seem unfamiliar with him.”

  “Difficulty, confused, unfamiliar. That is not the stuff by which solutions are arrived at, George.”

  “Ordinarily, Mr. Schubert, we would have a chance to interview and observe a subject for whom you wished to compile a dossier. The whole procedure would be simplified if he were wearing the prescribed color-coded identification bracelet.”

  “Yes, yes, George. That’s the first paragraph on page six of the operations manual. I don’t need it quoted. I wrote it, as you may be aware. Well, we have no time for ordinary procedures. I will myself have to dope him out. Get on with your duties, George. Time’s a-wasting.”

  George backed away from the desk.

  “Go.”

  When the knock came on the door, Mark, in his clean-room suit, was standing before the mirror, examining his eyes and nose and mouth as if looking for symptoms of something. He started for the door when it opened. A pale man in a similar outfit stepped in.

  “Would you follow me, please?”

  They walked through some corridors and arrived at a broad steel door. The man held his palm under a small purple light beside the door, and it lifted. He motioned Mark through, then turned and walked back the way they had come.

  Mark found himself in a vast cavem of labs and tanks and electronic equipment. Several scientists bustled around the equipment and tanks, taking readings from gauges, writing things on clipboards, pressing buttons, pulling levers, turning wheels.

  Here and there, contrasting with the scurrying, white-clad people and the humming, sophisticated equipment, were ancient statues, mosaics, urns, coral-encrusted jugs, eroded marble faces, terra-cotta dolphins—recognizable to Mark as booty from the sea—all spotlighted dramatically from concealed beams.

  In the large tanks swam severa! varieties of fishes and other sea animais.

  “Ah, yes,” Schubert came forward, smiling, “Mark Harris. I thought you might be interested in our laboratories. I daresay you’ve never seen anything like it, for nothing like it exists in the world. Our experiments here can, in fact, change the course of life on this planet.”

  He steered Mark over to a tank where several sea turtles swam lazily.

  “What we are doing here, quite simply, is associating ourselves with the future of mankind. The future is not land, but water. Nearly three-fourths of our globe is covered with water, my boy. Land is not permanent. The continents are moving. The Americas, Africa—all are slipping and sliding one way or another. Not fast enough to make you lose your balance, mind you. It takes centuries. But they are moving. Some have even disappeared—but I won’t get into all that now. It would only serve to confuse you. But the fact is, the oceans have more energy, more power, more nutriments, larger mammals, taller mountains—bigger and better everything—than those impermanent dry hunks of real estate upstairs. And those humans who invest all their chips in land are going to be rudely disappointed when the sea age comes.”

  Schubert elbowed Mark gently. “And the sea age is coming sooner than anybody thinks, my boy. Because we are creating it, right here. We have developed mankind’s first home and society on the ocean floor. And not a bad job of it, do you think?” He gestured pandly. “We are quite comfortable, the air is clean, everybody has a job and three highly nutritional meals a day. Plus we are absorbed in the greatest of all challenges: We are creating and expanding our world here, so that when the time comes—and it’s just around the corner—we shall be prepared to live forever, through future generations, protected from the elements, in the safety of the eternal sea. Interesting and exciting, wouldn’t you say?”

  Mark said nothing.

  They moved along among the tanks, stopping to look into each of them. “Before we came along,” Schubert went on, “the idea of a sea-mountain habitat was just a bunch of chicken tracks on a piece of paper. It was all theory and sand castles in the deep. A few absentminded professors were interested in it—mainly because they made their livings pondering matters that nobody cared about. But nowhere among the mighty nations was the bottom of the oceans perceived with anything but ignorance and contempt. There was no money in it. You couldn’t sell any Buicks or Cadillacs there, or fast-hamburgers. You couldn’t set up bank branches, or movie studios, or World Trade Centers. You couldn’t hold the World Series there, or the Super Bowl, or political conventions.

  “In short, the ocean depths provided none of the opportunities for development of things that mankind’s movers and shakers thought made the world go round. But we were not so shortsighted. We saw where the future would be. And we made it work. And I’ll tell you the secret: make friends with the ocean. Good advice for you too, Mark—make friends with the ocean.”

  They moved over to the section of tables and electronic consoles and gadgets and burners and bubbling vials and tubes and coils and bottles and steaming trays and tanks of various compressed gasses. A small man with wispy blond hair and long, delicate fingers moved among the equipment, peering at things, making adjustments, tapping gauges.

  “Here now,” Schubert said, touching the man’s shoulder, “Emil, tell us what you’re up to.”

  Emil spoke in the same monotone Mark heard from evervone there except Schubert. “Our ultimate aim is to adapt ourselves to life in the ocean by creating homo aquatis—a water-breathing man. By associating and blending certain gasses and diffusing them through certain tissues in saline solution, we are approaching the time when we can accommodate the differentials between dissimilar partial pressures of oxygen and nitrogen, whose requirements of balance between man’s cardiovascular system and the atmosphere have allowed him to breathe air but have not heretofore yielded to the requirements for man’s similar breathing of water.”

  “Tut-tut, Emil, a bit complicated for our new man here. Not sure I follow the little egghead myself, Mark, although I know what he means. Tell me, Mark, do you believe it’s possible to develop a water-breathing man?”

  “When he learns to breathe water... he will be other... than a man.”

  “A most philosophical observation.” Schubert studied him through narrowed eyes. “How very charming. Not terribly relevant, but how vice to hear someone express a thought around here.”

  Mark turned up the corners of his mouth, copying Schubert’s smile.

  “What he means, simply, is that through certain transplants and grafts, and thenceforth natural evolution, we shall soon have a man who can breathe water like a fish. Don’t laugh. We’re already well along. You may see such an adaptation in your lifetime.”

  Schubert paused, as if expecting Mark to chuckle. Seeing no flicker of amusement on the green-eyed face, he turned to a bank of shallow metal drawers and pulled one open. It contained a tray of black squares the size and consistency of bouillon cubes. “When it comes to ocean science, my good man, we’re quantum jumps ahead of the rest of them. Even the Chinese—who, unbeknownst to you Americans, are significantly more advanced than the rest of the surface world in experimentation with the possibilities of water. Everything here in our habitat comes from the sea—power, air, light, food, everything.”

  He picked up one black square and held it out to Mark. “Taste it.”

  Mark studied it without touching it.

  “Go ahead, it won’t kill you. Trust me. Go on, have a bite.”

  Mark reached out his hand—the fingertips slightly brown in early dehydration—and took the square and popped it into his mouth. He chewed for a moment, then swallowed it. “Plankton,”
he said.

  Schubert took a step backward, his eyes wide. “By golly, he’s right. Plankton it is. Right on the nose. One of the most nutritious foods provided by the earth. My, my, my.” He narrowed his eyes. “I figure you to be a marine biologist. Am I right? You heard about us from some loose-lipped colleague up in Santa Barbara or Wood’s Hole and stowed away on our shuttle to see for yourself.” He stood beaming with satisfaction.

  “I am a citizen of... the ocean.”

  “Then we have a lot in common.” He took a square himself and tossed it into his mouth and chewed vigorously. “I was a seagoing junkman for twenty years—Bali to Boston, Vladivostok to Venice, Santiago to Sydney—until I got smart. I had collected from the sea beds artifacts that would boggle the mind of any museum. You see examples throughout the habitat. But finally I got smart. Who wants to spend his life boggling the minds of dusty old museums? Nobody up there really appreciated these treasures from the sea. I appreciated them so much I even wanted to be part of the sea, submerge myself and be independent of all that topside clutter we call civilization.

  “But I needed money. So I made one final worldwide scavenge and sold it all—except for what few things I have here—to a bunch of wheezing old teary-eyed museum masters for more money than Midas. And I began my project. And now that I am smart, and rich, and, if I may so, imaginative and daring, I do what I want. And I am in the process of making the greatest contribution to mankind that has ever been contemplated. In time these figurines of Neptune and all the rest will symbolize the new society. Mine, of course.”

  Schubert wrinkled his pudgy face in a broad smile, put his arm around Mark’s shoulders, and raised his other arm and moved it in a slow arc through the air. “All this, and everything and everybody in it, is mine. Not bad for an ordinary Aquarius, wouldn’t you say?”

  Inside a small, dimly lit viewing room before banks of screens, two men stared at the central monitor. One was George, the supervisor. The other wore a pocket badge that said TECHNICIAN-AB2.

  In the semi-darkness they gazed dully at the animated images on the screen. They were looking at computer images of systems in Mark’s body. His face and torso were shown on the screen, and fiowing through them were dots of various colors.

  “We are at plus-four,” said the technician in his monotone. “Baseline studies are complete. TM is good. Wave formation is good. Neurons firing at ten to the minus-twenty.”

  George did not nod or acknowledge the statements in any way. “Mr. Schubert requests priority scan of skin-structure anomalies.”

  “Please inform him that those remote readouts will proceed immediately. Would he prefer to see all this in the standard bound volumes?”

  “No. He wants them hot. He has informed me that there is no time for standard procedures.”

  “Is he dissatisfied with my work?”

  “No. He insists only on speed, at this point.”

  “Very well.”

  “You may be pleased to know that the mathematicians are lagging behind you once again.”

  “Thank you. That does enhance my sense of well-being.”

  Mark’s tour continued into the mammal lab, where tiny overhead cameras continued to swivel to follow his movements. Here the tanks extended from floor to ceiling, with viewing ports at eye level. Mark and Schubert walked among the statuary and stepped up to a large tank. Mark leaned to peer through the port.

  Two killer whales swam around and around, their white and black markings glistening under the lights. High-pitched whale sounds came from small amplifiers in the tank. Mark listened intently as he watched them circle.

  “Freddie,” Schubert motioned to a white-suited scientist nearby, “would you please tell Mr. Harris what you are doing with the orcas here?”

  The scientist bowed. “Orcas—or killer whales as you probably know them—are not fish but are, like other whales, mammals. Unlike other whales, however, they have a reputation for dangerous behavior. They will attack dolphins and seals, and even human beings, under some conditions. Their savagery is generally exaggerated, however, and we have them here because they are intelligent and cooperative. Being mammal, this whale has a culture and a refined system of communication. It is their communication with which we occupy ourselves in this section. Would you step this way, please?”

  They moved away from the tank to the opposite side of the room, where there was a steel desk surrounded by audio equipment and graphs. As the whale sounds came over small stereo speakers, an electronic stylus traced squiggly lines on a graph.

  Above Mark, a small sensor protruded a couple of inches from the ceiling, and in it a small purple light began to pulse.

  “Here,” the scientist said, “we are recording what we call, for lack of a better term, the whales’ voices. These recordings will go over to cryptoanalysis, where the patterns and inflections of their squeaks are studied and will, in time, be translated into words or sentences or paragraphs—whatever meter and length the whales use. Computer translation of their language is imminent. Mr. Schubert is interested in learning what they might actually be saying in their quaint lingo.»

  “I know the language of whales.”

  “Oho!” Schubert smiled at Mark. “But of course! You mentioned it before. How can I be surprised at yet another talent you possess? Our submarine hitchhiker here,” he winked at the scientist, “knows whale talk. Well then, what are they saying, Mark?”

  “They tell me... they wish to go home.”

  “Tut-tut. Nobody here wants to go home, my good young man.”

  “He is correct, Mr. Schubert,” the scientist said without inflection.

  “Hunh?”

  “Initial analysis of their repeated squeals indicates that message.”

  “Humph. Balderdash. First hunches are usually incorrect, in science. Tell them to plug in a new diode or something. No whale would say such a thing. Look at them. Did you ever see whales swimming in such satisfied circles?”

  They walked back over to the tank and looked in the port.

  “Ah, yes. One happy set of orcas. Nice water, even temperature, no pollution, safe and secure environment. They don’t even have to hunt for food. We feed them very well. Plankton cubes as you yourself tasted. Even an occasional small turtle, which are the most succulent kind, and a rare delicacy on the open market.”

  Mark stared into the port, turning his head slightly to put his ear nearer the glass.

  Elizabeth stood tensely before the silent, blank monitors, talking on the red telephone. Ernie stood nearby, scanning sheets of transcriptions of conversations during his dive, and the monitored path of Mark’s exploration subsequent to it.

  “No contact so far, Admiral,” she said, her voice raspy and dry. “The S & R unit is making another pass above the trench.”

  “Your assumption,” came the admiral’s weary voice, “is that he’s trapped on the bottom?”

  “Well, ‘trapped’ is a bit more conclusive a word than I’m willing to use. I believe he has not left the bottom, and that he is probably still in the general area where we lost him. I have a feeling, sir, if I may.”

  “You may.”

  “I have a feeling that he is still viable.”

  “And on the mission?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “You say you picked up a second dot on your scope.”

  “Yes. And then they both disappeared.”

  “Hmm. Do you think it’s possible, Dr. Merrill, that the second dot could have been another of his own kind, that he hitched up with?”

  “I don’t see how, sir. Mark’s signal was from the transponder. It would be highly unlikely that somebody else like him was down there with a transponder. The signal we got was electronic.”

  “I see, yes.”

  “But I think I must now admit to you, sir, since we have no solid evidence to the contrary, that it’s indeed possible that Mark—as you suggested before—just forgot about us and took off.”

  There was a paus
e.

  “Do you believe that, Doctor?”

  “No.”

  “Then you keep searching.”

  They stepped into a dark Toom. Schubert turned a rheostat dial on the wall, and the lights came on gradually, illuminating the room with a dim, dramatic glow.

  “This is the rest of my stuff,” Schubert said. “My storehouse.”

  The room was filled with statuary, some still encrusted with coral.

  Mark approached a full-figure statue of a Greek sea god holding a trident. The head and body were eroded in places from long immersion in the sea. Mark stared at the face, which seemed to be staring back at him. There was a remarkable resemblance between their strong features, deep-set eyes, and fine classical aquiline noses.

  He reached out and touched it, with a hand now turning black. His breath came shorter as he moved his hand over the face, tracing its lines.

  “My people tell me,” Schubert said, waving his hand around, “that all this is the best sculpture the human race has produced. Nobody has to tell me, of course. It’s true that some of this is the best mankind has done. Some of it is not. Most people wouldn’t know the difference, but I do. I just don’t believe in letting anything go to waste. The ocean is still full of stuff I’m saving from the madness up there. You know what I mean by madness?”

  Mark took a couple of breaths. “I... learn.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps. Not many human beings learn anything fast enough. Madness. Wastrels and scoundrels control the earth. They don’t know the true value of anything. I do. I surround myself with treasures. My inspiration. And one day, those left will appreciate what comes from the sea.”

  “Those... left?”

  “Yes.” They walked past more statues and fragments. “For three thousand years, they’ve destroyed our land, air, and water. The nations of the world have been left in the hands of base idiots and crass clods and insensitive boors, with no more esthetic taste than. an amoeba. They have planted the seeds of their own destruction. Now they’re going to finish each other off in one last big war.”