Mark, sure of his safety and that of the shark, turned his attention back to the wounded assailant. On approaching the man, he could see how the cut on the arm had been bound tightly in an effort to staunch the flow of blood. To some degree it had succeeded, but still a small amount of red could be seen flowing from beneath the bandage and disappearing into the seawater. Again Mark questioned, why had this wound not closed as his always had? The man was completely motionless and even when right next to him, Mark could not see any movement of the chest. Without taking in the life-giving water, the man would die as surely as the shark would have.
His eyes were closed and, as Mark came to a stop in front of him, they remained closed. Mark was given a sudden start when the man’s voice came into his head as clearly as if they were back by his pool having a conversation.
“Ja-Lil, I am sorry.”
Mark had never experienced anything like this before. Never had the language of any person registered in his brain! There had been odd times, over the years, when he assumed he knew what others were thinking and indeed guessed very closely when subjected to tests at the lab. The message between him and the other mammals of the sea were not words that other men would understand. In these cases he did, 100 percent of the time, know what was communicated, but it seemed to bypass language and registered directly as mutually possessed thoughts. This man was speaking to him!
“Ja-Lil, I knew it was wrong.”
The voice was getting fainter, and something in Mark guided him in his effort to open his mind more to receive this new and wonderful thing. It seemed natural to think as he always had when communicating with other creatures in the sea. However, this time he tried to direct them. Looking into the young man’s graying eyes, he thought, I do not understand what you mean. Who is Ja-Lil?
His question was not answered and he was not sure his thoughts had reached him. The man’s eyes were half closed now and his head began to nod forward. Mark gently took him by the shoulders and, leaning him against the boulder again, knelt to better look into his face. The eyes, which were wandering without seeing over the landscape that surrounded the two men, fixed on Mark. The contact seemed to revive the man’s focus and he locked on Mark’s gaze.
“I have broken the cities sacred vow to protect your line.”
With none of this making any sense to Mark, all he could think to ask was, “Who are you?”
“I am no one.” An answer! Mark knew now that the young man was hearing him. Before he could pose another question, the weak voice continued.
“When you return, tell them it was my wish to end here. My choice not to be taken to the Tanta.”
The voice was now so weak that nothing Mark could do would change its direction. It was getting farther and farther away. He was aware of something else now. A vague sense of darkness. Not everywhere but a small speck, a pin-point of heaviness, of blackness. When he felt the spot would turn into something that he could understand, Mark saw something. At least he thought he saw something. It was as if the man’s body expanded ever so slightly. He knew it had not, for he was watching him very closely. But he felt it expand. Then there was a rush that felt like a sudden current in the water. It was water, lightness and darkness. It was energy. It was life! It rushed out from the man, hit Mark, and passed through him. Mark could feel it rush in a perfect circle out from the man and into the sea. It expanded as it dispersed, and in a second it disappeared just as the blood had faded and become one with the water.
It took some time for Mark to realize what had happened and to be aware that now the young man was gone. He had seen countless things die in the ocean. He had seen it give birth, nurture, and take care of its dead. He had not, however, felt a life in its essence as he had just now. Whatever had been this man’s life, up to this very moment, was gone. What was left had only one function, and that value was to nourish the living. In a short time, all that would remain would be the clean bones that had once been this person, and the rest would return again to its source. He knew it was right to leave this body to the sea.
He also knew the door to any more information was closed and, therefore, the other man was his only option. But was it? Other choices were also apparent to Mark. He could return now as he had promised Elizabeth. That night on the beach he had told her he would always returned from the sea because of her. Even now, he felt the desire to continue his life on the surface. The pull was stronger, however, from another direction. Swimming somewhere just in front of him was the key to everything. If he followed, his past would most certainly be revealed. That knowledge would also dictate what his future would be. So there really was no choice. The only unknown was whether he would live or die. Would he, whatever he was to discover, be able to return to the surface and his friends, or would it end with him knowing all and them left with only questions? His mind played for him the clear image of Elizabeth giving him a smile and that little wave of theirs.
He smiled back into the darkness and he turned.
Sure of the direction—and that the man probably did not know he would be followed—Mark set out after him. In a short time, he had made up the distance lost by his encounter with the shark and incredible experience with the dying man. He saw him just inside the vision range, which in these strange new waters was farther than he had ever experienced. The man had slowed and no longer changed direction; he headed in a straight south by southwesterly path.
The last car had pulled out of the lot at AORI hours ago. Elizabeth sat in the captain’s chair at the console holding the cup of cooling green tea in both hands. She had been staring at the security monitors; not out of concern but because she had no other place to focus. It seemed an apt analogy of her life now. Constantly changing vignettes of places that used to hold so much interest for her and were now just reminders of what was missing. She could see the patrols making their rounds and had notified them she would be working late so they avoided disturbing the Beachlab complex.
Reaching to the keyboard in front of her, she returned the wall to the map of the world and spun the chair around. The overhead lights in the main room were off and everything was bathed in the green and red power and stand-by lights on the hundreds of pieces of equipment. Elizabeth felt like she was looking through the glass wall that was between them into a giant underwater aquarium. She rose from the chair and walked toward the door. The motor under the floor clicked, the glass partition slid to the left, and she stepped out into another world. It was so different now. Just ahead was Staci’s desk and computers. What would she do now? What could go forward if he didn’t…? Stop! That was not where her mind should go. Countless times now in the past week, she had to stop herself. It can’t be…if! Forget…if!
Thomas’ area was more like a shrine as the time grew since he’d been in touch. As she thought about things, she continued to walk and now stood before the door to Mark’s office. Since the first day back at work after the phone call, she had avoided this place. It was too close. Too much like him. Too painful. It was not entirely dark, but the chair and coat rack stood as dark sentries, outlined in green light from the monitors on his desk, and the two aquariums against the far wall. She griped the cooling pottery cup tightly and tried twice before successfully freeing one hand to have it rest on the handle to the door. Silently, it gave way to her pressure, and she went in. This was why she never came near before. He was here. She felt him. Everything but his voice said, “Hello, Elizabeth. I have been waiting for you.”
She didn’t cry. She couldn’t. This pain didn’t touch nerves or skin. It was beyond even where her heart should be. It was the lonely pain in the depths of her mind, and it was worth more than tears.
His chair rested at an angle to the desk, and she sat slowly until she could lean back and close her eyes. This was as close as she could get. It wasn’t him, but it was his and that would do until he did as promised and returned. It was the shift in tone from the computer that op
ened her eyes. Clicks and hums were common background music here in the lab so she wasn’t sure why this hum, that sounded exactly like the others, seemed so different.
She looked at the charcoal gray of the screen and the green dot to the lower left. The mouse laid waiting and she responded. The movement, as she touched it, made the gray quiver for a moment then disappear into the electric blue background. Icons and phrases she was very familiar with. Shortcut to this and shortcut to that, most with names of projects in various states of progress. The few games that he found to be no challenge to his logic at all and were never played again after being successfully won. And the My Computer and the Recycle Bin and just a folder…just a folder and a title. She saw the arrow creep up from the lower left towards the target. Her hand didn’t seem to move, but the arrow continued on its arc, and her eyes never left the goal. Just a folder and shortcut to Mark.
The click opened the file. And it was just as it said. Just as he told her he wanted it to be in the car so long ago, coming back from Arrowhead. Long lists of things. Sometimes a feeling or a concept. Others were things. House. The Long Day. Whistles. The Dead Bird. She knew what it was. He had written as he had wanted to. He never told her, but then that’s what she had told him poetry was sometimes. Secret little windows you open to let things in or out—for you and you alone.
As she scrolled down the list, she noted that it read like a beautiful poem itself. It was the shortcut to him and she smiled. Then he was there. Her heart was back. It tripped and stumbled to signal its return and pushed up and down inside her until she thought she would burst open. The arrow stayed on her. It stayed squarely in her middle, its point on the “a”. The first click lined her name in darker blue. She watched it thinking,
Did it look like a name tag?
And
Did it look like a marquee?
Or
Headstone?
The second click.
Looking down
Inside, you found me.
Floating free, carried
By currents, feared, around me.
Stretching upward
Through dusty green
Feet in sand
Seeking sunlight.
Not thinking
Taking
Thankful
Closer.
The warmth of closer
My home embrace
I take your gifts of
Freedom
And rush before the tide.
As sea
You are a part of me,
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth.
Elizabeth.
It all fit just within the screen. The screen looked back at her, and she could trace the outline of her hair backlit by the glow from the main room. She sat in the chair watching the shadow drawing of herself, watching Elizabeth Elizabeth Elizabeth. The tear left a warm path as it trickled down her cheek.
For two more days, Mark and the man traveled together, but not together. Always the same distance apart as if tethered by a long mountain climber’s line. The second day, the man followed a salmon road, an ageless invisible path in the sea that took them on a multilayer circuit of the Pacific. Mark knew it and had traveled it often but had not been aware it extended this far south. Towards the end of the day, the leader of this two-man expedition broke from the path and swam off to his right and around the base of the foothills that eventually rose into a moderate-sized mountain range. Several old volcanoes stood high, with their gaping mouths looking like frozen anemones. One towards the far end of the range still pushed liquid rock that left the opening with just a hint of pink to turn a dusty gray as it formed the embryo of some future island. Passing close enough to feel the sharp increase in temperature, the man stopped at the edge of a small valley where the water had cooled.
Mark held back about a hundred yards in the safety of a small arroyo of an ancient lava bed. The valley formed almost a perfect circle several miles in diameter. The foothills that rose in all directions held the ocean floor like giant stone hands. Mark surveyed the entire area carefully and could feel the comfort of the surrounding mountains. The feeling was familiar but obscured by the dark of his memory.
He watched closely as the man moved very deliberately to a spot on the floor by a large boulder and, while standing upright immediately to the side of it, held both hands out in front of him about chest high. His behavior was very strange. Why had he stopped here? What was this ritual? Mark never took his eyes off him. The man moved forward, not more than a foot, and Mark watched him…
He disappeared! Mark blinked once, almost as if the action would bring the man back into focus. But it did not.
Mark floated out of the lava bed, hoping the new point of view would show that the man had just moved behind something. But it did not. He could see by moving up and to his left that the man was not behind the rock...inside the rock! One moment he was there and the next he was not. The man was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mark swam down to the lava flow and the eighty or so yards
towards the large boulder where the man had disappeared. He stopped every so often, expecting, even hoping, he could catch sight of the man, confirming that he had just moved out of Mark’s vision and not vanished into thin air. Within a few yards of the boulder, he slowed to a complete stop. From a distance, what appeared to be a small valley in the open ocean was really something else. Where Mark floated in the water, he could trace the almost invisible outline of a large arc; it swung from one side of the valley—where the sand dunes piled like frozen waves against the edge of the foothill—up and across at the height of several hundred feet, and then down to the rising ocean floor on the other side. From where he was hidden, when the man disappeared, it had not been visible and could not be seen until he was almost touching it as he was now.
After swimming along the edge of the valley in both directions for some time, he realized that it was a circular Dome that covered the entire open area. It seemed transparent, and he had the feeling he was enjoying an unobstructed view of the other side of the valley. From any position around its circumference, the Dome somehow optically reflected the corresponding terrain from the other side. That and its plastic-like consistency made it almost invisible to the naked eye.
Coming full circle back to the large rock once again, Mark investigated the composition of this Dome. Although it appeared transparent, he could not see inside it. One could assume it was completely solid, though Mark knew it could not be. The man had disappeared, and the only explanation was that somehow he had gone inside. Several times he swam to the top and hovered several hundred feet to look down. Again the view seemed unobstructed. The Dome reflected the ocean floor so perfectly that anyone viewing from his vantage point would assume the valley to be empty. This structure was the perfect camouflage. For the first time, he touched the surface. Quickly he drew his hand away. Not because of the feel of the substance itself but because of the mental pull he felt and sense of welcome it generated. It merely responded to the touch by giving slightly, but when he pushed again and exerted a lot of force the material resisted. The only matching experience he could call from his memory was the simple moon jelly, a jellyfish with a transparent but quite fragile float. In fact, if he were to make a report to Elizabeth on this giant Dome, he would have to say that it was…alive!
He knew he was at the exact spot the man had been standing so Mark began to precisely duplicate the actions he had made before he disappeared. He moved a little to the right and then to the left, and then extended his hands out and moved to the Dome. Where his fingers touched the substance, they were no longer met with resistance but easily penetrated the surface. He continued to move forward and, at one point, felt a slight suction or pulling sensation draw him in. One minute he was watching as his hands and arms vanished into the jelly-like mass and raising his foot to step
forward; the next instant he was on the inside. He continued the single step and came to a halt.
He was standing in a small room. He looked back to where he had come through the wall. There was no opening or door or even an indication of how he had entered. He also noticed there was no water puddle on the floor. The airlock apparatuses he had used before carried some of the outside water in with the person entering, but here there was none. There was not even moisture on the wall to indicate that this was indeed the portal in and out. Then it dawned on him. He was also completely dry! Only his body and the suit he was wearing had come through to the inside. Every droplet of water, even the wetness on his skin, had been left on the outside.
He tried to think inside this, but he could not force his mind to do it. He did not understand but felt, deep in his life, no urge to question it. The sense of welcome rushed through him and expanded. He set his heart rate back to normal and calmed his system. Once settled, he stepped farther into the room. Everywhere, hanging from small fine outcroppings on the walls, were garments in differing hues of muted colors. Mostly the softer colors of the sea with pale greens or countless shades of whites and blues. Although he was perfectly still, the fabrics continued in constant motion like the gentle pushing and pulling of delicate sea grasses in a tidal basin. At the far end of the hall-like room was an opening with the choice of going right or left. Mark was aware of something else. Although he had left the water and was no longer wet, he was not feeling the gradual depletion of energy. He had an internal gauging system that would start to register how long he had been out of the water and at what rate he was using up his strength. He had always felt it and it had become merely a peripheral awareness. At some point, he would inevitably have to return to the sea to absorb its life-giving energy. However, now inside this dry area, instead of burning the fuel he had taken from the water, he could feel the ocean and its energy being absorbed into his body. Once again, the competing systems of comfort and tension vied for dominance.
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