“Are you good?”
Alison nodded.
“Okay. Hold on,” he said, before turning to receive Neely.
She stumbled into him with a soft bounce, but managed to latch onto the rail next to Alison. Her fins went on just as quickly and Smitty moved back to Alison.
“Okay!” he yelled. “Let’s go to the end.” He wrapped his arms around her and they shuffled to the end of the railing together. “We have to wait and go with the roll! When we’re as close to the water as possible, you take a step to your right and jump! Don’t be afraid if you feel me give you a little push! We have to do it fast!”
When Alison felt the starboard side begin its dip, she stepped nervously to the side while Smitty maintained an iron grip from the back. She was surprised when Smitty launched her forward, sending her head first into the dark ocean with a giant splash.
From between the swells, she watched as Neely stepped to the end of the rail. She wished she could warn her about Smitty and that first step, but only moments later, Neely hit the water next to her. Lastly came Lightfoot, splashing on the opposite side of Alison with a natural grace that reminded her he’d been a semi-professional swimmer before joining the Navy. Even in those conditions, he surfaced as relaxed as anyone she’d ever seen.
“Can you both hear me?”
“Yes,” answered the women in unison.
“Good. Any problems?”
“Nope. I’m fine.”
“Me too.”
“All right,” he said. He motioned to Smitty and turned back to both women. His full face mask reflected brightly from their LED strips. “Ms. Shaw, we’re all yours.”
Alison nodded. “Lee, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear, Ali.”
“Are we ready?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be. I’ve paused the translating on your vest. When I turn it back on, it will only be filtering for Dirk and Sally to begin with.”
“Okay.” Alison looked to Neely and Lightfoot. “Here we go.”
Alison used the button on her scuba BCD to release some of its air and reduce her buoyancy. She began slowly sinking and watched the waterline pass over her mask and head. Together the three continued down, eventually adding enough air to end their descent.
Neely and Lightfoot became silent, marveling at the hundreds of dolphins swirling around them.
“Still there, Lee?”
“Like a bad penny.”
She smiled inside her mask. “Let’s turn it on.”
“Okay. Here goes.” Far above them on the ship’s bridge, Lee typed a command on his keyboard and hit the enter key. Almost instantly, the lines on his screen began dancing as the microphone was reactivated on Alison’s vest and began transmitting wirelessly to the server at Lee’s feet.
However, below the surface Alison heard nothing through her earbuds. She waited patiently for almost a minute before finally responding. “Lee?”
“Yes, Ali.”
“I’m not hearing anything. Is it working?”
“It’s because of the filter. I’m getting an audio feed from your mike, but the server isn’t translating any of it. Try calling Dirk or Sally.”
“Sally? Dirk? Are you there?”
After a moment, the reassuring mechanical voice of IMIS sounded in Alison’s ears.
We here Alison.
They both appeared from out of the darkness and into the bright glow of her lamp.
Behind her, Lightfoot reached out his hand and skimmed the body of several passing dolphins. “My God,” he said through his microphone. “I’ve never seen anything like this. What is this place?”
Neely twisted around to face him. Her LED lamp illuminated him as if he were suspended in space without gravity.
“That’s what we’re about to find out.”
70
Where Chris?
Alison stared blankly at Sally, her mind returning to her friend. She could still see him, lying unconscious in the ship’s sick bay.
“He’s resting.”
Sally did not reply. For a moment, Alison could have sworn a look of doubt passed over the dolphin’s face. She cleared her throat and answered Lightfoot’s question.
“We originally thought this was a breeding ground, since dolphins tend to seek out protected areas for birthing. But this is different. This,” she said, “is literally off the scale.”
She turned to Dirk and Sally, still watching her and strangely quiet.
“Sally. Dirk. We’ve come to see the plants.”
Sally surprised Alison with her response.
We know.
Alison began to speak before Sally interrupted.
Follow now.
The abruptness felt strange as she watched the dolphins turn and move smoothly downward with a single thrust of their tails. The motion was clear and Alison turned to the others while letting more air out of her BCD. “Stay close.”
The three followed the dolphins in a gradual descent, below the endless field of dolphins and into the darkness, with only a few meters before them lit by their headlamps. They continued until nothing could be seen above them, lacking even the slightest hint of moonlight. One by one, they cleared the pressure from their ears and continued downward until it appeared.
The darkness below them gradually began to lighten, first into a field of gray, and then followed by a subtle, strange green glow of phosphorescence. Finally, the plants began to appear, waving rhythmically in the gentle ocean currents.
“Wow,” Neely whispered. “It’s beautiful.”
For as far as they could see, beyond even their lamps, the faint green glow continued until finally disappearing again into the blackness.
Dirk and Sally slowed, watching as Alison stopped kicking and let her momentum carry her forward. She was now within an arm’s reach of a large sea whip, sweeping back and forth in slow motion. The bright light from Alison’s lamp washed over the plant, displaying its branches of polyps in a darker green.
She reached out and touched one of the tubes lightly with her fingertips, rubbing it carefully between her thumb and index finger.
Neely and Lightfoot both slowed beside her. “This is incredible.”
“How far does it go?”
“Far,” answered Alison. “Over a square mile.”
“Good God.”
Neely propelled herself forward, gliding horizontally over the vegetation and studying it. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“I don’t think anyone has.”
She reached down and brushed her hand over another large plant as it passed silently beneath her. Awash in the bright light, its streaming tendrils resembling long ribbons and changing colors into translucent oranges and pinks.
“Amazing,” she whispered.
Behind her, Alison turned back to Dirk and Sally, both still floating effortlessly. “Sally, is something wrong?”
No Alison. No wrong.
“Then what are you doing?”
We wait.
“Waiting? For what?” Alison studied them, waiting for a reply but not getting one. Instead she got an answer, when three shapes emerged from the darkness.
It was three dolphins. Larger and older. The same three she’d met before. Three “heads” as Sally called them. Elders.
As the trio neared, Dirk and Sally faded back slightly.
Alison smiled behind her mask. Perhaps for the first time in all of this, it was exactly what she was expecting.
“Lee, can you hear me?”
“Yes, Ali. I’m here.”
“I think it’s time to test your new program.”
Topside, Lee squinted at his screen, enlarging the smaller video picture from Alison’s vest.
“Yes,” he replied slowly. “I think you’re right.”
He switched back to the IMIS control window and typed out a long command. “Cross your fingers.” With that, he held his breath and hit the enter key.
His worst fear was realized. The new
software didn’t work.
Below him, Alison’s earplugs screeched with a jumble of high-pitched noise as IMIS listened and tried unsuccessfully to translate hundreds of conversations at once. Sound carried further in water, which meant everything from any dolphin within earshot of Alison was easily picked up by the vest’s microphone. All without the video feed, an essential element needed for identifiable translation. The sheer deluge of noise completely overwhelmed both the processors on Alison’s vest and those in Lee’s small servers.
Alison cringed in pain and immediately yanked the buds out of her ears. “Lee! It’s too loud!”
“I know, I know!” He scrambled to lower the sound. “Is that better?” There was no response. “Ali? Ali, can you hear me?”
With one headphone back in, she nodded. “Yes, barely. But I can still hear all the noise. Turn it off!”
A moment later, the background noise was gone and Lee’s voice rose again in volume. “Sorry. How’s that?”
“Better. What happened?”
“The software doesn’t work.”
“Crap. Okay, just turn Dirk and Sally back on.”
“I can’t. The process is hung on the server. I can’t stop it without stopping everything.”
“You mean permanently?”
“No, just until I can reboot the system. Maybe ten minutes.”
Alison looked at the dive watch strapped to her left arm. “That doesn’t leave much time. We have to surface soon.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But we have no choice. The only thing that isn’t hung is our radios.”
Alison shook her head and peered at Neely and Lightfoot, who were both watching her.
“Fine. Reboot.”
71
From their viewpoint, Sally and Dirk were both watching Alison, puzzled. They didn’t understand why she was not speaking.
“Why are they no speak?” one of the elders asked.
Dirk peered at Alison. “They talked much before.” He drifted in closer and could see Alison’s mouth moving inside the glass. He examined the machine on her chest. The small light was on. Dirk circled back toward the other two. Their mouths were also moving. “I don’t know.”
The three elders continued floating, waiting.
After a long wait, the silence was broken by Alison’s translated mechanical voice.
-ally Dirk can hear me?
“Yes, Alison. We hear you now. You are not talking before.”
Metal broken. Work now. Sorry.
Sally watched as the three older dolphins glided in closer. “You hear us?”
There was no answer.
“Alison, you are hearing?” repeated Dirk.
Metal broken. Hear Dirk and Sally. No heads.
One elder seemed to understand and spoke through Dirk instead. “Ask her why plants.”
“Why do you come back, Alison? For plants?”
Yes. Plants important.
“Yes. You take plants, Alison. We want to talk.”
Alison turned and nodded at Neely, who was still hovering beside her.
Neely acknowledged and reached down to retrieve a knife from her leg. She then reached out and cut a small sample from a nearby tendril. She moved forward and took a piece from another plant, continuing until she had several. The dolphins followed her curiously.
What talk?
Dirk turned back to her. “You come back with more friends. Heads want to know how many others.”
From inside her face mask, Alison watched as the dolphins spoke to each other. She paused, trying to understand Dirk’s translated question. The IMIS system was amazing, but it still had limitations. And the way Alison sounded to them must have been just as challenging.
“How many of us? Um…three.”
She watched the elders speak again through Dirk.
Not three. How more?
How more? Alison thought to herself. How more what?
“I don’t understand.”
How more peoples?
“How many people where?”
No. How more peoples there.
Alison still didn’t understand. What did they mean by there? On the boat?
“I’m not-” she began to speak but stopped. IMIS hadn’t caught it. But she suddenly did. They didn’t mean there, they meant everywhere!
“You mean how many people are there?”
Yes. How peoples all there?
Alison smiled, briefly gloating over the realization that she’d translated something before IMIS did. Yet her face became dour again as she considered the question. They wanted to know how many humans there were. In total. She suddenly found herself nervous. They understood numbers, but there was no way they could understand billions. And if they did, her answer was probably going to scare the hell out of them.
“Many,” she replied.
How?
Alison looked to Neely and Lightfoot, both still watching her. She wasn’t about to lie, but there was no way the dolphins were ready for the truth of just how many humans there really were. Not by a long shot.
“Many,” she repeated. She took a breath. “Like fish.”
Their reaction was unreadable. The elders simply stared at her with their dark, soft eyes. It wasn’t worth pointing out that not all people were friends.
The third elder on the right moved closer. She drifted past Alison’s shoulder, examining the scuba gear.
She say stay.
Alison began to reply when she was interrupted by the beeping from her dive computer. They were reaching their nitrogen limit. They needed to get to the surface. “I cannot stay. We must go up.”
She motioned to the others and added a brief blast of air to increase her buoyancy. “I’m sorry, we’re out of time. We will come back.”
They want stay.
“I’m sorry,” Alison repeated. “I cannot. But I will come back.”
It was the last translation Alison heard before reaching the pod of dolphins above her, where the trio stopped and hovered for a few minutes before finally breaching the surface.
Bobbing among the waves, Alison pulled her mask off and inhaled a lung full of fresh air.
She raised her voice so the others could hear her. “We have to get back aboard!”
Lightfoot nodded and swam forward. Neely followed, leaving Alison floating behind them. Something had struck Alison from the moment they’d reached the bottom, but it didn’t register until Dirk mentioned the plants. She suspected neither Neely nor Lightfoot knew enough about phosphorescence to catch it. There was something wrong with what they saw. Bioluminescence caused by the light-emitting pigments and enzymes, luciferin and luciferase, had very distinct hues of green and blue. But what Alison had just seen below was not the same –– it was a very different hue of green. One that she’d seen only once before and in a place very far from the ocean. It had been on top of the Acarai Mountains in South America. She didn’t notice the first time she’d seen the plants because they were there during the day.
She had to get to a phone. Immediately.
72
The tropical waters from which Alison was being lifted could not have been more different from those in which John Clay now stood. Water had collected at the lowest point of one of the mine’s shafts, leaving an ultra-clear basin that was waist-high, stretching over a hundred yards along their path. And unlike the warm Caribbean, this water was ice-cold.
Carrying his bag on one shoulder and holding his phone and flashlight with the opposite hand, Clay could feel his toes growing numb. Which meant it must be even worse for Li Na, who was trailing behind him.
The only consolation was that the second half of the tunnel was relatively free of debris, while in the first half they had encountered a number of small cave-ins. It had slowed their progress considerably, making the icy water a faster, if somewhat painful, change of pace.
They had been underground for hours, far longer than expected. And unless the remainder of the shaft was in better shape than the w
ay they’d came, their chances of finding a way out anytime soon weren’t very good.
Clay continued pushing forward through the water, maintaining a slow enough pace to keep the ripples to a minimum. He held his flashlight above his head, allowing him to see the bottom clearly, or at least well enough to spot any surprises. But maintaining a clear view wouldn’t be a good trade-off if their slow progress resulted in frostbite.
He paused to look ahead and could hear the chattering of Li Na’s teeth.
“Not much farther.”
The teenage girl behind him nodded, but said nothing.
The truth was she had no idea what she was doing. She felt sure the man in front was trying to help her, but she didn’t know anything about him. She finally spoke to distract herself from the biting pain in her legs and feet.
“Mister Ishmael. W-Why did you come here?”
Clay stopped again, momentarily. He smiled at Li Na under the glow of his light. “My name is not Ishmael. It’s John.”
She looked at him with a confused expression. “Why did you say it was Ishmael?”
He turned back around and continued. “It’s kind of a joke.”
“Oh.” She didn’t understand the joke. “Why did you come here?”
“To find the case you’re holding in your arms.”
In the dark coldness of the cave, she’d almost forgotten she was carrying it and gripped it tighter. “My father’s case?”
“Yes. Did your father tell you what was inside?”
“Not exactly. I wasn’t awake the last time he came.” After thinking, her expression changed to quizzical. “You didn’t know I was here?”
“I did. But only shortly before I arrived.”
“I see. So you weren’t expecting…all of this.”
Clay grinned again but continued moving. “No.”
Li Na shrugged and tried to lighten the mood. “Surprise.”
Clay chuckled. “Your English is very good.”
“My father was a soldier. He told me it was important to learn English, like the Americans. He said someday they would have to learn Chinese.”
Catalyst (Breakthrough Book 3) Page 30