Ocean on Top

by Hal Clement

  I tapped again. The second response was equally clear, but I’ve promised Marie not to quote it. I got annoyed, and my third tap came as close to pounding as the liquid environment permitted. That was a mistake.

  A man can stand the explosion of a stick of dynamite a hundred feet away, in air, quite easily. The noise is uncomfortable but not by itself dangerous. If he’s swimming at that distance from the same stick when its detonates under water, though, he can count on being killed.

  My fist didn’t pack the energy of a stick of dynamite, but things might have been less painful if it had. At least I’d have been comfortably dead. My eardrums didn’t actually break when the shock wave hit them, but the sensations can’t have been much different. I was long in recovering to permit Marie to come to the port, recognize me, get over whatever shock the recognition may have caused her and freeze up again.

  She claims now that she was glad to see me for the first half second or so. She says she even yelled my name, in spite of my known feeling about that. By the time I was aware of my surroundings again, though, she was certainly showing no sign of pleasure. She was glaring at me. I could see her lips moving, but I couldn’t yet hear her words over the ringing and pounding still in my ears. I held my hands over them for a moment and tried to signal her to wait, but her lips kept right on moving.

  I gave up on the signals and got to work with the stylus. By the time I had filled the sheet with writing, I was beginning to make out her words. They made it clear why Bert had preferred not to stay with me. Angry as she was, though, she was still sane enough to pause and read what I had written when I held it up to the port. The words had been carefully planned, on the basis of what Bert had told me about her current attitude.

  What I wrote was, “Don’t say anything likely to get me in trouble with these people. Why did you stay down here?” That was supposed to divert her attention from the question of why I was here myself, apparently enjoying all local rights and privileges. It might even give her the thought that I was playing spy. It was partly successful; at least, the strong language stopped, and she took time out to think before she spoke again.

  Then she answered, “I’m here to find Joey. He disappeared down here — you know that as well as I do. I’m staying here until I know what’s become of him.”

  “Wouldn’t there be some point in going up to tell the Board about this place?” I asked. “Then a really well manned force could come down and accomplish something constructive.”

  I thought of that,” she admitted, “but when Bert told me I could go back and report everything I knew, I was sure there was some trick behind it. Besides, I was more worried about Joey, and they wouldn’t tell me anything about him.”

  “Didn’t Bert say you could stay if you wanted?”

  “Yes. That’s what made me suspicious. How could any decent person agree to stay here? It was just a trick to help make sure I couldn’t go back. Once you’re changed to breathe water, you can’t change back, obviously.”

  I almost pointed out that the liquid wasn’t water, and then I almost asked what was obvious about her conclusion. I realized that the first point was irrelevant and that she’d dismiss it as quibbling, and the second was likely to bring up the subject of my own conversion. Besides, any argument was likely to force me to use information I’d have to admit came from Bert, so she probably wouldn’t believe it.

  Come to think of it, I realized with a sudden jolt, I had only Bert’s word for it that the change was reversible to the extent of letting me go back to the surface. Well, if he were mistaken or lying to me, it was too late now. I was writing again as those thoughts flickered through my mind.

  “But what do you expect to accomplish just sitting here in your sub? What have you done in the six weeks since we last saw you?” She ducked that one.

  “I don’t know what I can do here, but if I leave I’m shut — off from further information. I still hope I can get something out of Bert. I’m sure he knows where Joey is, even though he denies it.”

  “How can you get any word out of him if you won’t talk to him? You told me to get out just now when you thought I was Bert.”

  She grinned, and for just a moment looked like the Marie I knew back at Papeete.

  “I just think it’s better technique to keep him wanting to talk to me” was her answer. I couldn’t understand the rationale of that one, but there was much about Marie I’d never understood, and she knew it.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I wrote, “and whether it turns out to be for keeps or not I can at least move around and get something done. Subject to your approval, I plan to devote my time to getting information which you can take back to the surface when you go — I assume you don’t plan to spend the rest of your life here.”

  “I don’t plan it, but I rather expect it,” was her reply. Before I could write any comment she went on, “Of course, I’ll have to give up and start back some time, but I know they’ll dispose of me when I do. That’s assuming they did the same thing with Joey, and I’m very sure they did. If I do find him alive, of course, what I do will depend on him.” She fell silent, and after a moment to make sure she had finished I wrote again.

  “But you’d like me to find him for you.”

  She looked at me with what I hoped was a tender and sympathetic expression, though I couldn’t be quite sure through the port. She knew how I felt about her, of course. I’d never made any secret of it, and even if I’d tried to, a woman would have had to be a lot more stupid than Marie to miss the evidence. Most of the girls in our section are more stupid than she, and it’s a standing joke with them.

  Marie didn’t answer for several seconds, and I decided I still had the conversational ball. I resumed writing.

  “Of course, he’s part of the job anyway. I came down to find out what I could about the three, of you. I know about Bert and you, now, but the job’s not finished. There are other things here to learn. I’ve got to pick up the technical information that makes this place possible, especially its ability to ignore power rationing, and there’s a little question which talking to you has brought up. If you’re so sure they’ve disposed of Joey, and are planning to do the same with you when you leave, why do you think you’re still alive? They could have holed your sub without the slightest difficulty — or for that matter spared themselves the considerable trouble of supplying you with food and air.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that last,” Marie answered, this time without hesitation. “When I first staged this sit-down, it was meant to test them on that point—” She saw me start writing and stopped while I finished.

  “Weren’t you taking some chances with that sort of test?” I asked. “Suppose they’d failed it. Would you have lived to report the results?”

  “Well, no. I wasn’t really caring what happened to me about that time, but I did think I stood a chance of driving out of here and making a decent try for the surface, with something really worthwhile to report.”

  “Marie, I’ve always thought as much of your brains as of your other qualities, but for the last few minutes you’ve been dithering. You must know it. Are you going to give me straight data, or do I have to work here even more alone than I’d hoped? I repeat, why do you think they haven’t killed or at least starved you?”

  That was taking a chance, I realized, but it worked. She started to frown, then fought it off with a visible effort, thought for a moment with her lips pursed and then began talking more quietly.

  “All right. I didn’t trust any of the juice-breathers out there, and I’m not sure I trust even you” — I was grateful for the “even” — “but I’ll take a chance. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking here; I’ve had nothing much else to do. I’ve come up with one explanation, and I haven’t been able to think of any others or find any holes in it. It accounts for their not killing me and their letting you and Bert join them. It suggests that Joey might possibly be alive, though if he is it doesn’t explain why he hasn’t come to see me
the way you and Bert have.” She paused to think for a moment and then went on. “It’s quite simple in principle, but it could do with some detailed facts. That’s one reason I’m telling it to you.” She paused again, and looked at me hard before going on.

  “They must need us. There’s something they’re short of that you, and Bert, and Joey, and I, and maybe anyone else from the surface can supply. It’s the only sensible answer.”

  I pondered that. It was a possibility I hadn’t thought of, though I was not ready to accept it as the only sensible one.

  “You don’t think they might just be so pleased with their way of life — freedom from power rationing, they’d probably call it — that they just want recruits on general principles? That sort of thing has happened.”

  “I know it has,” she replied. “But I don’t believe it has this time. You got that sort of thing back in the days of nations and political parties before the Board’s necessity was realized.”

  “If you think we’ve outgrown politics,” I retorted as quickly as the stylus would let me, “you’re less alert than I thought you were around our own office. And what’s wrong with regarding this bunch as a nation? It’s the picture I’ve been forming of them.”

  “Nation? You’ve a short circuit between the ears. They’re just another bunch of power-wasters. There aren’t enough of them to be a nation.”

  “Do you know how many there are?”

  “Of course not. I’ve been in no position to count. A few hundred, I should think.”

  “You think a few hundred people could build a place like this? Or even a small part of it? There must be miles of tunnels here. I swam for the best part of an hour to get from where they worked on me to this place, and it was a maze. I haven’t seen any part of their power unit yet, but it must be huge to supply all this volume with light, and there’s that big tent area outside — you must have seen that. How could a few hundred people possibly do such a job? On the surface, with unlimited time and normal construction machinery, sure; but what standard machinery could have been used here?”

  Marie had wanted to cut in a little way back, but waited for me to finish. There’s no point in trying to quote the next few minutes verbatim; they boiled down to the fact that she hadn’t seen the lighted area outside. She’d spotted a work sub while she was prowling around searching for Joey, had followed it, and wound up at an entrance apparently out of sight of the ’tent’. Apparently there were a lot of entrances. She had no opinion to offer on the lighted area, and I couldn’t help feeling that she didn’t entirely believe my account of it.

  She hadn’t been captured. She’d followed the sub to the entrance, found she lacked ballast enough to get through the interface between the liquids and simply stayed there, blocking traffic, until they’d loaded her down and towed her inside out of the way. Women are interesting creatures, with interesting powers. I wasn’t sure I believed her, but decided not to tell her so.

  “All right,” I finally summed up on the pad. “The jobs for me seem to be to find Joey or reliable word of him; to find a specific, convincing reason why they are so willing or eager to have us join them; to get reliable information about the size and population of the place; and to get the technical information about their power plant.”

  “Right,” she nodded. “I won’t demand that you do all that without confiding in Bert, because I have no way of enforcing such a request. I’ll just say I don’t trust him, myself.”

  “I still don’t see why not. He’s changed over to this high-pressure scheme, but so have I, and you’ve decided to trust me, I gather.”

  “Don’t remind me of it. It’s a point against you. Still, I’m hoping that with you it’s just a cover-up. After all you seem to believe it’s a reversible change, even if I don’t, judging by your expression when I said it wasn’t. I hope for your sake you’re right.”

  “Why shouldn’t Bert have believed the same and had the same motive?”

  “If that’s the case, why has he been down here a year? If he can come back, he must be up to something, because he hasn’t. If he can’t he’s up to something because he must have told you it was possible. Think it over.”

  I did and found myself with no good answer. The best I could say was, “All right. I’ll be careful.” I had started to swim away when she called my name. Irritated, I turned back and saw her face pressed close to the port. As I looked she spoke again, much more softly, so that even immersed in the liquid I could barely hear.

  “You’re a pretty good egg. If it weren’t for Joey —”

  She broke off, and her face disappeared from the port.

  I swam away, listening to my own heartbeat and trying to organize my thoughts.

  Chapter Fourteen

  There was no sign of Bert in the corridor outside, and I didn’t dare wander in search of him. I did remember the way back to the near-the-ocean entrance and swam there in the hope that it was a logical place for him to be waiting.

  There were at least a dozen people in the big chamber, and more could be seen dimly in the darker water above, but none of them was Bert. I could think of nothing to do but wait for him, as far as the main program was concerned. But it did seem a good time to pick up a little local education.

  I swam up to the interface and hesitated. Other people were going through from time to time. I decided I’d better watch their technique before I tried it myself.

  It was simple enough. All one did was cling to a ladder, remove one’s ballast belt and hang it on one of the numerous hooks lining the rim and swim through. However, everyone who did this was wearing helmet and coveralls, presumably to keep the special liquid in their mouths, ears and so on. Maybe ocean water would hurt lungs, for all I knew. Anyway, no one stuck an unhelmeted head through the boundary, and I decided to play safe myself even though I couldn’t see what the danger, if any, might be.

  Several of the people around were watching me, I noticed. One or two of them had expressions of concern on their faces. One gestured at me, but of course I couldn’t read her signs. She watched me for a moment, saw that I didn’t answer, made another flickering series of hand motions to those around her and then swam over to me. She pointed to the water and then to me and raised her eyebrows quizzically. The nature of her query was easy to guess, though the girl herself commanded more attention than her signals.

  She might have been the one I had seen outside, though there was no way to be sure. There were several others in the group who were just as likely to be that one. She had straight blonde hair, cut short in a bob which could easily be accommodated in one of the swimming helmets. She was about five feet three in height and would have weighed about a hundred and ten pounds out of water. She was wearing a two-piece affair which was a long way from being a coverall, but protected much more acreage than a bikini. Her face was rather harrow, and I could make no guess at her regional origin.

  In response to her question, or what I assumed to be her question, I raised an arm toward the water surface, very slowly, watching her with raised eyebrows as I did so.

  She gave a violent negative headshake, wrapped her arms tight around herself and shuddered realistically. I could also interpret that and was annoyed with myself for not remembering that the water outside would be cold. It was useful data; it justified the inference that the liquid we were in was not a very good heat conductor, or I’d already have felt the chill of the ocean water only a few yards away. Of course it couldn’t be too poor a conductor either, or we’d be having the standard spacesuit problem of getting rid of surplus body heat. I hadn’t been conscious of either heat or cold up to this moment. Now I wished I had a thermometer so that I could form some numerically meaningful opinions.

  I held up one finger and joked it toward the boundary, asking the girl the same question with my eyebrows. She shrugged, as though to say it was my finger, so I pushed it on through.

  The temperature was bearable, but I could see why the swimmers wore coveralls. I thought I could s
tand it for a short time if I had to, but saw no reason to make a test of the matter just then.

  I thought it would be more useful to start to get familiar with the normal communication method of these people. In spite of Bert’s remarks and my earlier try through the tank walls, it seemed possible that some of them might know at least a little of some language I did. I showed the girl the writing pad. She nodded at the sight of it and flashed a sidelong smile at the others who were drifting in the vicinity. I wrote a short sentence in each of my more usable languages and held the pad up for her to read.

  She looked at it courteously and carefully, but smiled and shook her head. I showed it to the others, with much the same reaction. Then there was a lengthy session of flickering fingers as they held a conversation among themselves. Several of them, including the girl, looked as though they would have laughed if it had been physically possible. Then the girl took the pad and stylus from me, and began to make marks of her own.

  The stylus moved very rapidly, but not in a set across-and-back lines like ordinary writing. It was more like drawing, from where I floated. It took her perhaps thirty seconds to finish, then she handed the tablet back to me and let me gawk at it. I gawked.

  What she had done is impossible to describe in real detail, though a general idea can be given. In a way, it was rather like an electrical diagram, with straight lines going from one place to another, most of them parallel to the edges of the pad. Sometimes there were tiny gaps in the lines where one would have intersected another; sometimes the junctions were marked with dots; sometimes one line went through another with no effect on either. Here and there in the maze were tiny patterns, incredibly complex considering the time that had been spent on them. None of these looked exactly like an electrical symbol I knew, but all left a vague feeling of familiarity. The whole pattern was almost a picture. It gave a tantalizing effect of being something I should recognize but couldn’t dig out of the back of my mind. I kept trying to interpret it in terms of a circuit diagram, which as I said it vaguely resembled, but got nowhere. I tried to think of it as one of those trick drawings all made out of straight lines which become modern art every few decades, and got no further. I had to shake my head as the girl had done.