Ocean on Top

by Hal Clement

  We went only a few yards — twenty or so — down the tunnel before coming to another large room which opened from it. They towed me into this. It had several much smaller tunnels — maybe I should say shafts — opening from its floor; I counted eight in my first glance. None of these openings had lids or doors either. Apparently a large part of the installation was flooded and under outside pressure. Maybe it was a mine; that would account for the energy, if the product were uranium or thorium, and it would not be practical to try to keep all the windings and tunnels of a submarine mine free of water.

  I had just about time to run that thought through my mind while the swimmers were putting me and my tank down on the floor. It started to roll a little, and I put out three legs to prop it. Luckily all three got through the meshes of the net which was still around me without being jammed.

  With that settled, I looked at the bunch of people around me to see what they’d do next. It was clearly up to them.

  I’m used to it now, but I still don’t like the memory of what they did and what it did to me.

  They took off their helmets. A mile under the sea, in pressure that would crush sponges, metal into foil, they took off their helmets.

  Chapter Eight

  It must be obvious from the things I’ve already said that I’m no psychologist, though I’ve read a little about the field. I’ve been told that it’s possible for a person to deny flatly and categorically the evidence of his own senses, if their reports disagree violently enough with what he thinks he knows. In fact I’ve met people who claim that the ability to do this is all that keeps most of us sane. Until that moment, I’d doubted both statements. Now I’m not so sure.

  I’d seen us come in from definite, obvious sea-bottom conditions to the place where we now were. I had not seen anything even remotely like a door, valve, or lock either open before us or close behind us, and I had certainly been looking for one. To the best of my knowledge and belief, therefore, my tank was now in a room full of sea water at a pressure corresponding roughly to a mile’s depth.

  I had seen the people now in the chamber around me swimming in the sea outside — the same people, for the most part. I had seen them, continually or nearly so, as they brought me in. They, too, were still in high-pressure water and had been all along. I was forgetting for the moment the clarity with which I had been able to see those some faces in the water outside, but even if I’d remembered I probably wouldn’t have seen the relevance just then.

  I had seen them remove the helmets, just now, still apparently in high-pressure water. No, I couldn’t believe all of that at once. It was missing something, but I couldn’t believe it was recently an observable fact. I’d been battered around during the storm and had certainly missed the technique which had been used in finding me, but I hadn’t been unconscious, then or later. I was short on sleep, but surely not so dazed by it as to have missed any major happenings. I had to believe that my observations were reasonably complete. Since I was, in spite of that belief, clearly out of phase with reality, there was something I just plain didn’t know. It was time for more education.

  I wasn’t too worried about my personal future; if there had been any intent to dispose of me, it could have been done earlier with much less trouble — and as I’ve said before, I couldn’t believe, deep down, that people would dp anything final to me anyway. If you think that doesn’t jibe with the way I’ve admitted I felt a few minutes before, you ask a psychiatrist.

  I had a couple of days of breathing still in the tank, and presumably before that time was up my new acquaintances would do something about getting me out — though I couldn’t offhand see what it would be, now that I thought of the problem. Any way I, looked at it, though, the next move seemed up to them. Maybe that shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was.

  Apparently they felt the same way — not comforted, I mean, but that they should be doing something. They were gathered in a group between the tank and the door we had come through, apparently arguing some point. I couldn’t hear their voices, and after a minute or two I decided they weren’t actually talking; there was a tremendous amount of gesticulation. They must have a pretty comprehensive sign language, I decided. This was reasonable if they spent much of their time, and especially if they did much of their work, under water. I couldn’t see why they used it now, since my common sense was having trouble admitting that they were still in water.

  In any case, they seemed to reach an agreement after a few minutes, and two of them went swimming — yes, swimming— off down one of the smaller shafts.

  It occurred to me that even if they couldn’t talk under the circumstances, they should be able to hear.

  So I tried tapping on the walls of the tank to get their attention — gently, in view of my experience with tank-tapping so shortly before. Evidently they could hear, though they had the expected difficulty in judging the direction of the sound source and it took them a few minutes to recognize that I was responsible. Then they swam over and gathered around the tank, looking in through the ports. I turned on my inside lights again. None of them seemed surprised at what they saw, though a continuous and animated gesture conversation was kept up.

  I tried yelling. It was hard on my own ears, since most of the sound echoed from the walls of the tank, but at least a little should get through. It evidently did; several of them shook their heads at me, presumably indicating that they couldn’t understand me. Since I hadn’t used any words yet, this wasn’t surprising. I tried telling them who I was — not using my name, of course — in each of the three languages in which I’m supposed to be proficient. I attempted to do the same in a couple of others in which I make no claim of skill. All I got was the headshaking, and two or three people swam away, presumably dismissing me as a hopeless case. No one made any obvious attempt to communicate with me by any sort of sign or sound.

  Eventually I felt my throat getting sore, so I stopped. For another ten minutes or so nothing much happened. Some more of the crowd swam away, but others arrived. There was more of the gesture talk; no doubt the newcomers were being given whatever there was to tell about me.

  All the new arrivals wore coveralls more or less like those I’d first seen outside, but some of these were in fancy colors. I got the impression that it was the difference between work clothes and white-collar suits, though I can’t give any objective reason for the notion.

  Then some new swimmers, less completely dressed, appeared from one of the tunnels, and things began to happen. One of them worked his way through what was by now quite a crowd, came up to the tank, and tapped it gently. It was refreshing to have one of them try to get my attention instead of the other way around, but the real jolt came when I recognized the newcomer.

  It was Bert Whelstrahl, who had disappeared a year before.

  Chapter Nine

  He recognized me, too; there was no doubt about that. He put on a larger-than-life-size grin the moment he got a good look through my port, gave another bit of knuckle play on the tank and then drew back and raised one eyebrow in an oh-no-what-do-we-do-with-this-one expression. I decided the situation justified using up what was left of my voice and called out, “Bert! Can you hear me?”

  He nodded, and made a palm-down gesture which I interpreted as meaning that I didn’t need to yell so loud. That was a relief. I cut volume and after a bit of trial and error found that he could hear me when I spoke only a little louder than a normal conversational tone. I began to ask questions, but he held up a hand to stop me and began making some more signs. He pinched his nose shut, holding the palm of his hand over his mouth at the same time; then he held his left wrist in front of his face as though he were looking at a watch, though he wasn’t wearing one.

  I got his meaning clearly enough. He wanted to know how much breathing time I had left. I checked my panel, did a little mental arithmetic and called out that there was about fifty hours still in my tanks.

  Then he stuck a finger in his mouth and raised his eyebrow
s; I answered graphically, which was easier on my throat, by holding up the partly emptied box of dextrose pills. He nodded and put on a thoughtful expression. Then he hand-talked for two or three minutes to the people nearest him, the head motions which they threw in occasionally being the only part I could understand. With everyone seemingly agreed, he waved at me and vanished back into the tunnel he’d come from.

  Nothing more happened for the next half hour, except that the crowd grew even larger. Some of the newcomers were women, though I couldn’t tell whether the one I had seen outside was among them. I hadn’t seen her closely enough to recognize her face. Some of them certainly weren’t; apparently swimming doesn’t have to be the aid to figure control some people claim it to be.

  Then Bert came back. He was carrying what looked like an ordinary clipboard, but when he held it up to the port I saw that the sheets on it weren’t paper. He scratched on the top one with a stylus, which left a mark. Then he lifted the top sheet, and the mark disappeared. I’d seen toys of that sort years ago; apparently he’d spent some time improvising this one. It seemed a good and obvious solution to the problem of writing under water, and I wondered why none of the others had thought of it.

  He had to print fairly large letters in order for me to read clearly, so even with the aid of the pad our communication was slow. I started by asking what the whole business was about, which didn’t help speed, either. Bert cut me off on that one.

  “There isn’t time to give you the whole story now,” he wrote. “You have a decision to make before you run out of air — at least twenty hours before, in fact. It has to do with whether you go back to the surface.”

  I was surprised and made no secret of it. “You mean they’d let me go back? Why did they go to all that trouble to get me down here? I was already at the surface.”

  “Because your decision and its details will affect a lot of people, and you should know who and how. They didn’t know you were a Board official until I told them, but it was obvious your story when you got back would get to the Board anyway. It’s rather important just what the Board hears about this place.”

  “I suppose it’s a case of being released if I promise to tell nothing. You know I couldn’t do that.”

  “Of course not. I couldn’t either. That’s not what they expect. They realize you couldn’t go back without telling; there would be no rational explanation of where you’d been or why. You can tell everything that’s happened to you and that you’ve seen, but there are other things they want to be sure you include. We must make sure you know them.”

  I jumped on the pronoun.

  “You switched from «they» to «we». Does that mean you’ve chosen to stay down here yourself?”

  “Yes.” This was a nod, not a written word. “For a while, anyway,” he added with the stylus.

  “Then you’ve managed to stomach the morals of a bunch of people who waste thousands of kilowatts just lighting up the sea bottom? Have you forgotten your upbringing, and why—”

  He interrupted me with a violent shake of his head and began to write.

  “It’s not like that. I know it looks terrible, but it’s no more wasting power than the Board is wasting the sunlight that falls on the Sahara. Maybe there’ll be time to explain more before you decide, but you’re enough of a physicist to see that analogy or you wouldn’t be a Board worker in the first place.”

  I spent some time digesting that one. The Sahara point was understandable. The Board has always resented having to let all that solar energy go unused. Their stock difficulty, of course, is deciding when it’s worthwhile to put energy into a project in the hope of getting more back. It’s been the standard belief for decades that man’s only real hope lies in hydrogen fusion, and most of the authorized speculative expenditure is for research in this direction. From time to time, though, a very eloquent plea for a solar-energy project comes in. Sometimes an especially promising one gets approved, and one or two of these have even paid off since I’ve been working for the outfit.

  I couldn’t see, though, how natural sunlight shining on a desert could compare with artificial light shining on the sea bottom. I said so.

  He shrugged, and began to write.

  “The energy here comes from below the crust — straight heat, though I can’t properly call it volcanic heat. If they don’t keep their working fluid circulating down to the collector and get the heat out of it when it comes back up, the hot end of the unit will melt. Your real complaint, if you must have one, is that they don’t tie into the planetary power net and observe the rationing rules like everyone else. The reasons they don’t are very good, but there isn’t time to give them now — they call for a lot of history and technology which would take forever by this scribble-board. What I’m supposed to tell you is what you have to know if you go back up.”

  “I take it that Joey and Marie decided to stay down here.”

  “Joey hasn’t been here. Marie doesn’t believe me when I tell her that and is still arguing. No decision has been made in her case.”

  “But if Marie is still here with her future unsettled, why did you say I have to make up my mind in thirty hours or so? She’s been down here for weeks. Obviously you have facilities to take care of us.”

  “We don’t «have» them. They were made especially for her, as far as food and air are concerned. She’s still living in her sub. It would take more work to get supplies into your tank, which doesn’t have locks or air-charging valves. Besides, you’re not in quite as good a position as Marie to have people go out of their way for your convenience.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re neither female nor good-looking.” I had no answer to that.

  “All right,” was all I could say. “Tell me the official word, then. What am I supposed to know if I go back?”

  “You’re to make sure your boss on the Board knows that we do have a large energy supply down here — ”

  “That I’d tell him anyway.”

  “ — and that it isn’t being rationed.”

  “That’s also pretty obvious. Why do you want those points stressed? I can’t think of any better way to get this place raided.”

  “Believe me, it wouldn’t be. If the Board thought this was just another bunch of powerleggers you’d be right, of course; but fifteen thousand people don’t make a gang. They make a nation, if you remember the word.”

  “Not pleasantly.”

  “Well, never mind that phase of history. The point is that the Board has hushed up this thing in the past and can be counted on to do it again if they know what they’re doing.”

  “Hush it up? You’re crazy. They’d do just one thing to an operating power plant, even if it was illegally built. They’d tie it into the network. The idea that they’d let it go on running independently, outside rationing, is dithering.”

  “Why do you suppose you never heard of this place before? It’s been here eighty years or more.”

  “I would suppose because nobody’s found it. That’s likely enough. The bottom of the Pacific isn’t the most thoroughly covered real estate on the planet.”

  “It’s been found many times. Several in the past year, if you’ll stop to remember. Twelve times that I’ve heard of since this place was built it has been reported to the Board as a finished, operating project. Nothing further has come of it”

  “You mean the Board knows where this thing is and still lets me come looking for you and — ”

  “They may not know the location. I’m not sure the present Board knows anything; I don’t know what was done with the earlier records by their predecessors. The last time was over fifteen years ago.”

  “You know all this for fact?”

  “Objectively, no. I’ve read it in what seem credible reports. I’m not qualified as a historical researcher and didn’t make professional tests. It all seems very probable to me.”

  “It doesn’t to me. Have you told all this to Marie?”

  “Yes.”


  “Does she believe it?”

  “She doesn’t believe anything I say since I told her that Joey has never been here. She claims I’m a dirty liar and a traitor to mankind and an immoral skunk and that we disposed of Joe because he wouldn’t swallow our ridiculous falsehood.”

  “Would I be able to talk to her?”

  “You’d have my blessing, but I don’t see how. She’s a long way from here, since her sub arrived at a different entrance. I don’t think it would be possible to get your tank there without taking you outside again; it would take longer than you can spare, and I’d have trouble finding enough people to get you carried.”

  “Can’t whoever runs this place assign a crew?”

  “How do you think we’re run? There isn’t anyone who could order a person to do such a thing, since it’s more for your pleasure and convenience than public necessity. Besides, I told you there isn’t time.”

  I pondered that for a little while. His remark about how the installation was run was a little surprising, but this was hardly the time to go into local politics. He’d started to give me a more interesting impression, anyway; if what he’d said could be credited, it seemed almost as though it would be better for these people if Marie and I left than if we stayed. Why was the choice being offered, then? I asked Bert, a little indirectly.

  “What will your friends do if I don’t go back up? More people will come to look for me, you know. Even if I hadn’t reached the surface and started my rescue set, which I did, the Board knows where I was going and why.”

  He shrugged again. “No one cares how many come down. Unless there’s a whole fleet at once, we can pull ’em in and give them the same choice we’re giving you. It’s happened often enough, as I said.”

  “And suppose a whole fleet does come and starts wrecking those lights and that tent or whatever it is without wasting time looking for me or Marie or anyone else? Sooner or later if folks keep disappearing down here that’s what will happen.”