"I'm asking her,” Kitti said. “She agrees."
Osaji could see it now: Mota was going to become an improvement project for Kitti. And Mota would just acquiesce, as she always had done. She had spent so many years trying to please others, she didn't even remember what it was like to want something for herself. A tweak of compassion made Osaji say, “Can I talk to her, Kitti?"
Kitti climbed to her feet. “I've got to go check on the little ones."
Osaji sat down next to Mota. The old woman took her hand and squeezed it, but said nothing.
"Mota, I need to know something,” Osaji said softly. “Do you want to come with me for another round on an ark, or would you rather stay here?"
Mota said nothing. Osaji waited, then said, “You have to decide. I'm leaving tonight."
"I want whatever you want,” Mota said. “Whatever makes you happy."
Even though she had half known that would be the answer, Osaji still felt a familiar burn of frustration. Her grandmother's passivity was a kind of manipulation: a way to put all the responsibility onto others, an abdication of adulthood. Mota had always been like this, and there was absolutely no way to fight it. It made everyone around her into petty dictators. Osaji hated the role, and she hated Mota for forcing her into it.
It should have been a decision made in love, but instead it was grim duty in Osaji's heart when she said, “All right. You're coming with me."
She emptied out the wastebasket and stuffed all the things back into the bag they had come from, then hefted as many duffels as she could carry and took them down to the waiting cart. The baggage took three trips, and on the fourth she helped Mota to the door. It crossed her mind to leave without saying anything, but at the last moment she stuck her head in the sleeproom door. “Kitti, we're going now. Our ark is leaving."
"Now?” Kitti sounded startled, but not unhappy at the news. She got up to hug them both, wish them a happy round, and to press some food on them, which Osaji declined.
All the way to the docks Osaji rehearsed what to say to her new arkmates. But when they got to Divernon, there was no sign of Lura, or anyone else. She helped Mota through the flexible tube into the ark, calling out “Hello? Divernons?” There was no answer.
Finding the spare quarters was easy, so she left Mota inside and went back to ferry in the baggage. It occurred to her that it would be easy to hide Mota's presence till they had embarked, and then it would be too late for anyone to object.
She had just hooked the last bag over her shoulder and paid the driver when a shout from down the hall made her freeze. “Hey, shrike!"
It was Scrappin’ Jack, coming down the hall like a torpedo locked on her coordinates. She would have ducked inside the ark, but feared he would just follow her.
From twenty feet away he bellowed, “What's the idea, sending me to that shrink-wrapped prig?"
Everyone in earshot was staring, and Osaji could feel her ears glow. “A man should be quiet,” she pleaded.
"You thought you could pull a fast one on Scrappin’ Jack, did you? Well, news flash: it takes more balls than you've got to screw me over.” He waved a hand as if to clear away invisible gnats. “That didn't come out right."
"Go away!” Osaji commanded. Down the hall, Lura was approaching with another woman at her side. Keenly aware of first impressions, Osaji tried to pretend that the raging eruption in front of her did not exist. She waved at them cheerfully.
With a deafening crash, the floor jerked sideways, flinging everyone to the ground. Carts overturned, their contents scattered, and broken glass rained down. Again the floor bucked, sending Osaji skidding across tile into a wall with bruising force. For a moment there was silence, except for the groan of stressed girders and the ominous sound of falling water. A stream of it was running down the floor. Then a third jolt came. Osaji scrabbled for a handhold.
"Quick, into the ark!” said a voice, and Lura's strong hand was pulling her up. Osaji was lying across the entry, blocking the way into the ark. Not trusting her balance, she scrambled on hands and knees up the chute. When she got into the ark, it was bobbing around in the turbulent water like a balloon on a string. Barely able to keep upright, she turned to help Lura through—and found it was not Lura behind her after all. It was the spacer, Jack.
"What is the awful man doing here?” Osaji cried.
He looked as buffeted as she. “Some pirate dyke shoved me in the umbilical and told me to climb. I climbed."
"Where is she?"
At that moment the room turned sideways and they were thrown in a heap onto the yielding wall. The aperture connecting them to the mooring tube contracted and disappeared. That meant they had broken free of the tube; but still the ark wasn't rising. Instead of floating in the smooth motion of the sea, Divernon was jerking like a leashed animal.
"There's still a mooring line attached,” Osaji said. She snatched up the breather and face mask that had been knocked from their pocket on the wall. “I'm going to find Lura. You, stay here."
There was no time to put on a suit, so she just stripped to her underwear, strapped on the mask, and thrust head-first through the lips of the orifice. Only a few bubbles of air escaped with her.
The first shock was the temperature of the water—bathtub warm. The second was the noise—a mere growl inside, here it was like the roar of a thousand engines. The water was nearly opaque, full of roiled-up sediment. The harbor lights were still on, turning everything into a golden brown fog. Feeling her way along the surface of the ark, she searched blindly for the line that was tying them down, for it would lead to the station.
It was taut when she found it; the ark was tugging on it like a creature mad to escape. By feel, she traced it down to a clip attached to a U-bolt on the dock. Now she realized what must have happened; the other two lines had broken, detaching the ark from the landing tube before Lura and her companion could get in. Now Osaji only had to find the tube in this blinding muck.
Before she could move, she felt the metal under her foot bowing out. The last U-bolt was giving way. She clutched the line tight as if she could pull the ark down, and keep it tethered.
There was a metallic pop and the bolt came loose. With Osaji still clinging to the line, the ark rose swiftly into the upwelling water. Instinctively she hung on as water raced past her ears.
They quickly cleared the turbid layer, and Osaji saw what lay below. The Cleft of Golconda was erupting. A raging glow of blood-red lava snaked along the seafloor, obscured by hellish clouds of steam. As she looked down on the station, another tremor passed through it, and a panel on the largest dome collapsed. In seconds, the adjacent panels were caving inward, the dome crumpling. A huge bubble of air escaped, and all the lights went out except the livid lava.
The ark was caught in a steam-propelled plume of hot water, flying upward. Darkness closed in. Osaji could no longer see the cleft below, nor the line above; the only light in the world was the dim bioluminescent globe of Divernon. Her hands were turning numb. She forced them to clamp down on the line. If she let go, she was lost.
Her ears began to pop. They were rising too fast; the pressure was dropping dangerously. She needed to get inside quickly. Setting her teeth, she tried to climb the line, hand over hand; but she was pulling against the rushing water, and didn't have the strength.
Then she felt a tug on the line, and her spirits revived. She kicked to draw closer. Pain shot through her legs. Get me in! she prayed.
The skin of Divernon was stretched taut, she saw as she came closer to it. If the ark kept on rising, it would pop like an overfilled balloon, unless someone inside vented gas. Slowly, too slowly, the distance between her and the ark's skin lessened. At last she could reach up and grasp the edge of the hole where the line disappeared inside. But when it began to open to admit her, the pressurized gas inside came shooting out in a jet, sending the ark spinning and wrapping the line around it. Osaji's body thumped against the surface hard enough to knock the breath out of her. But
it was just what she needed. She let go of the line and it snaked away into darkness while she clung to the tacky surface of the ark. It felt reassuringly familiar. Slowly, muscles cramping, she crept along till she got to the orifice, and dived inside.
Someone was swearing. It sounded like, “Bull banging damn!"
The ark was still spinning; Osaji was thrown forward on top of Scrappin’ Jack as the wall turned into the floor, then into a wall again. As the rotation slowed, they came to rest a few feet apart, staring at each other.
"What the gutting hell are you doing alive?” he said, holding up the empty end of the line. When she had let go, he must have thought her lost.
"Such concern is touching,” she said sourly. Ignoring the shooting pains in her arms, she started barefoot up the rubbery organic tube toward the control pod. Jack followed close on her heels.
The control pod of Divernon was more elaborately equipped than any she had seen. Arrayed around a curving console, four screens lit the darkened room in eerie colors. Things tumbled about in the spin still littered the floor.
Osaji had been in control pods many times, but had never navigated. Gingerly, she sat down in the swiveling seat, staring at the screens to figure out the ark's status. Jack peered over her shoulder, muttering.
"Sonar, temperatures ... what the hell is that?” he pointed at a screen with an animated 3-D diagram.
Osaji was looking at that one, too. “Currents,” she said, then pointed to a tiny red point. “That is us."
It showed their true peril. All around them, angry pillars of heated water rose, a forest of deadly plumes, dwarfing them.
Osaji looked for the pressure ratio, and exclaimed, “May the lifestream preserve us!” The pressure inside was enough to burst the ark. “We've got to vent gas, now, or we'll explode."
But her hand hung motionless over the control, for the choice of where to vent was critical. The jet of released air would propel them in the opposite direction, and if they floated into one of those hot plumes, that would be the end. She searched desperately for a safe choice. There was none.
"What are you waiting for?” Jack said.
"I can't decide...."
"Just do it! Do you want to die?"
Still she hesitated, searching for a solution.
With an oath, Jack reached over her shoulder and slammed his palm down on the control himself.
"You evil, reckless man!” Osaji cried out. “You have killed us."
"You're the one who'll kill us, with your anal dithering,” Jack yelled back.
The pressure dropped into a safer range, but just as Osaji had feared, they were slowly floating toward one of the hot upwellings.
Desperately she vented more air to stop their motion. But the plumes on the screen were shifting, converging, leaving Divernon no space. Again she vented as a plume seemed to reach out toward them. But it only sent them into the arms of another.
She sat back resignedly. “It is our fate."
"What is?” Jack demanded. He had no idea what was going on.
She didn't answer. She could feel Divernon shudder, then rock, as the swift current took it. They were rising again, like a bubble in boiling water, little bumps and shifts betraying their speed. Osaji wanted to look away, but couldn't take her eyes from the screen. Even as she watched, the heat was probably killing the bioengineered outer surface of the craft, the membrane on which their lives depended. It did not matter; they would die anyway, in the terrible heights where no human or habitation was meant to be.
* * * *
3. Through the Gap
The sonar screen was showing something strange. To their west was a solid return, something gigantic. Osaji increased the range, and felt a flutter of terror in her belly. It was a wall, a sheer cliff towering over them. There was only one thing it could be: the underwater mountain range that rimmed the ancient basin where life had taken such a precarious hold. Improbably, it seemed to curve outward over them like a mouth about to bite down. Osaji stared at the screen for several seconds before she realized what it showed. “Save us!” she exclaimed.
"What?” Jack asked.
"It is showing the bottom of the ice."
All her life it had been a rumor—the unseen cap on the sky, the lightless place where the world turned solid and all life stopped. She could feel it now, hanging above her, miles thick, heavy enough to crush them. She swallowed to quell a claustrophobic flutter in her chest. “The light shuns what is not meant to be looked on,” she quoted a saying of the paracletes. Legend said that the underside of the ice was studded with the frozen corpses of people who had died without proper burial, and had floated up.
"I don't understand your problem,” Jack said. He pointed to the screen. “The upwellings aren't as bad along the mountain range. Can't you just steer over there?"
Osaji closed her eyes and shook her head at his ignorance. “Our visitor thinks like a spacer,” she said.
"So?"
"Arks are not ships. We have no propulsion system."
Jack looked thunderstruck. “You mean you can't control this thing?"
"We can rise and fall. In an emergency, we can vent air from the sides. But we go where the currents take us."
"What if there's no current that happens to be going where you want?"
"Now the visitor understands our problem."
As they rose toward the cap on the world, the screen showing the currents above them changed. Where the upwellings hit the bottom of the ice, there was a region of turbulent eddies and horizontal flows.
Jack was fidgeting nervously. “What happens when we hit that?"
"We will go where the lifestream takes us."
"If the lifestream means to feed me to the crabs, I'm swimming against the current."
"On Ben, feeding crabs is a noble calling,” Osaji answered. One was supposed to feel serene about it. “It is all part of the Great Work of seeding the ocean with life."
"No offense to Ben,” said Jack darkly, “but a body donation wasn't in my plans."
How little anyone's plans counted now! Osaji stood up, saying, “I have to go check on something."
"You're leaving?” he said incredulously. “Now?"
"I need to see if my grandmother is all right."
"You've got an old lady in the ship?"
"Yes. She is not in good health. It would be good for someone to watch the screens while I am gone."
She sprinted down the springy corridor to the quarters where she had left Mota. The room was tumbled and chaotic from the ark's gymnastics. Mota was sitting on the bed, unharmed but confused and disoriented. “Saji, where am I?” she asked.
"Don't worry, Mota,” Osaji said. She was about to explain the situation—the eruption, the heat plumes, their danger—when she saw that what Mota really wanted was much simpler. “We're in an ark called Divernon. This is your room. Don't unpack yet. I'll come back as soon as I can."
"This is my room?” Mota said, looking around fearfully.
"Yes. Think about how you want to fix it up."
"What ark are we in?"
With a shrinking feeling Osaji repeated, “Divernon."
"Aren't we going to Golconda?"
"We just came from Golconda. It—” The last sight of the station flashed vividly before her, cutting off her voice. She didn't want to say what she feared; she didn't even want to think it. Kitti and Juko, the trees, the playground where they had talked—all dark, all cold, all drowned.... She forced it out of her mind. If she thought about it, it might come true.
"Your sister lives there,” Mota said. “I don't know how people can live that way, so crowded."
"Well, you don't have to worry about it,” Osaji said. She caught Mota's hand and pressed it between hers, longing for the days when she was the child and Mota the one who took care of things. “Mota, I love you,” she said. “I wish I could keep you safe."
She left wondering which would have been the more terrible error: dragging Mota along, o
r leaving her behind.
When she got back to the control pod, the displays had changed. While she had been gone, Divernon had hit the turbulent zone, and now a horizontal current was sweeping them swiftly westward, toward the rock wall. It looked like they were going to smash into it. Osaji stood next to the chair Jack was occupying, to indicate she wanted to sit down in it, but he was mesmerized by the screens and didn't notice her body language. She cleared her throat. “I might be able to keep us alive a little longer,” she said.
"How?” he said.
Courtesy was wasted on him, so she said, “If you would allow me to sit...."
At last he got the message and let her have the chair.
The cliff was approaching at an alarming rate. Osaji vented air on their forward side to brake their speed, but they still felt the jar when Divernon hit, even inside all the cushioning internal organs. Osaji winced for the poor tortured membrane.
They caromed off the cliff and back into the current, spinning like a top. Now the sonar showed cliffs on every side of them. It took Osaji several seconds to realize they had been swept into a narrow cleft in the rim rock. For several minutes she kept busy sending out strategic jets of air to keep them from crashing into the rocks again.
"Is it safe to be venting so much air?” Jack asked.
It was his spacer instincts talking again. Preoccupied, Osaji said, “Oxygen is a waste product of the membrane cells’ metabolism. We are constantly having to get rid of it."
At last the turbulence eased and the cliffs drew back, but the current was still swift. Osaji glanced at the compass to see where they were headed. Then she looked again, for what it showed was impossible.
"That can't be,” she said.
"What?"
"We're still going west. But the mountains are behind us."
Ahead, the sonar showed a rugged plain sloping downward. Every moment the current was carrying them farther into it. “We have been swept through a gap in the mountains,” Osaji said. Her lips felt numb around the words.
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