Drowned Worlds

by Jonathan Strahan

  He holds it up for Zack to look at. His husband frowns. Zack points at the mask. The stream of bubbles coming from his regulator moves faster. In confusion, Derek peers at his find.

  Zack’s gestures become more urgent. <>

  Derek instantly withdraws. The mask drops from his gloved fingers. Sequins shine as they fall.

  Zack swims between Derek and the storefront. Derek follows his line of sight to a long, skeletal hand.

  ZACK WAS ALWAYS one of the best school athletes growing up. He liked sports—as a relatively quiet boy without much else in common with his peers, it gave him something to do and a way to fit in. His build didn’t lend itself to any sport particularly, but it left him with plenty of options. His favorites were solo—swimming, biking, running—letting his muscles go while he spent time in his head.

  Being both quiet and an athlete also kept anyone from noticing that Zack was gay. That meant he could keep people from picking on weaker kids—including the gay ones—sometimes, if he got there at the right time. People knew Zack didn’t like it when they made fun of the disabled class, or the fat cheerleader it was easy to make cry. So they didn’t do it if he was around.

  Probably, no one from his high school would have remembered much about Zack, if it hadn’t been for the day two months before graduation when he came back late from an after-school run. As he circled back onto campus, he saw a guy with a handgun crossing the parking lot.

  Zack ran him down.

  The kid got off a shot by accident. It grazed Zack’s shoulder, but otherwise, he was fine.

  Later, it turned out the kid had found out he was failing biology and wouldn’t be able to graduate. He’d gone home, gotten high, and grabbed his grandpa’s gun. On his way back to his teacher’s classroom, he’d stopped to make sure her car was still in the faculty lot, which was when Zack saw him.

  At his graduation party, Zack’s mother urged him to tell the story to his uncle, the Vietnam vet. Zack felt both embarrassed and proud of himself as he stood beside his uncle’s chair, leaning down a bit because he didn’t hear well from his left ear.

  “I guess I figured out how to protect someone from a bullet,” Zack said.

  “Good job,” muttered his uncle, reaching for a handful of pretzels as he watched the muted football game on TV.

  Zack was nonplussed by the reaction. “You know, my mother always tells that story? How I asked you how to protect someone from a bullet?”

  His uncle looked up, eyes suspicious under heavy brows. “Stop a bullet?” He grunted, a heavy, humorless sound that didn’t seem to be meant for Zack or anyone else. He shoved a pretzel into his mouth. “Want to protect someone, stop the goddamn war.”

  IN THE CLOUDY water, Zack’s body almost forms a wall between Derek and the shop window. Derek can hardly see past him to the trailing, bony fingers in the mud.

  Zack pulls his flashlight from its loop on his vest and shines it down to get a better look. <>—

  Zack’s text ends as a mass of mud shifts, throwing more dirt into their faces. His flashlight beam swings loosely for a moment, illuminating flashes of grit and dark water.

  It stabilizes as Zack grabs hold again, showing the skeletal hand. It rises up from the ocean floor like a living thing, trailing forearm and elbow. The bones are uncannily articulated. The flashlight suffuses them with a weird, greenish glow.

  Something bulky shifts overhead. Zack’s light, shining upward, catches the jut of ribs. Zack reaches for them with his free hand, and the bones fall on him as if attacking.

  A glow catches Derek’s attention from below. It’s the skeletal arm, pinned to the street by a clot of debris. The hand waves free, still stretching upward.

  Derek had assumed the flashlight was giving the bones an illusory illumination, but in fact, they are glowing. Derek pulls on the hand. With a tug, it disconnects from the wrist. It starts to float upward, but Derek tightens his grip.

  Up close, the bones aren’t even fully distinguished from each other. Finger joints are painted on, and the back of the hand is a single piece. He prods the palm. One finger flickers off before lighting again.

  <> Derek tells Zack. <>Derek releases the hand. It floats upward, its own lamp.

  <> Derek surmises. <>

  He looks up. Zack hovers above him, holding the bulk of the fake skeleton—its ribs and spine and trailing femurs. The skull is missing. Zack looks as if he might change attitude in the water and begin a grim waltz.

  DEREK WAS THE one who got sick, but Zack had the nightmares. They began with the smell of brine—at first a faint whiff, not unpleasant, but soon thickening into a miasma of rotting fish and beached animals. Zack would slowly come into a sense of his body. Floating: arms outstretched, hands and fingers extended, feet moving instinctively to keep him upright. The back of his neck broke the surface. Heat prickled on his face. His nostrils drew humid, salty air into his lungs.

  A stillness so potent he could hear it. A silence like buzzing.

  Like a stirring alligator that breaks the illusion of a log, the water would change. It would sling its mighty weight against him: walls of water, rocks, and silt. Human-made wreckage bruised and bloodied him—a doorknob punching into his stomach, the uniquely painful shape of an iron on his thigh.

  Inexorably, the water rose, one silty inch after another. Zack would flail, rocks and metal slashing his hands. Brine filled his mouth, his nostrils, his sinuses, his throat. He woke choking.

  Zack’s doctor diagnosed him with sleep apnea, but the nightmares never fully resolved. He never told Derek what they were about.

  ZACK’S SCREAM ISN’T a sound. His regulator remains in his mouth; he is too well-trained an athlete to remove it. He screams with his whole body, twisting and tearing at the skeleton, trying to crack its deceitful bones.

  <> Derek repeats, but he can see the frantic quality of Zack’s movements. Each of his husband’s fists is wrapped around one of the skeleton’s ribs as he tries to crack it in half. Its legs trail beneath it as if treading water.

  Part of a rib breaks off. It snags Zack’s sleeve, and Derek murmurs thanks for the wetsuit. If Zack doesn’t stop, something much worse could happen. A hose could get severed.

  Bracing himself against shrapnel, Derek swims around his husband, coming in from behind to comfort and restrain him. He repeats himself as he moves, a gentle, steady flood of <>

  Zack’s hands open. The broken skeleton moves upward through the water.

  <>

  THREE AND A half weeks ago, Derek had been having breakfast with a friend when the name “New Orleans” caught his ear. He’d looked over at the next table where a fit, young straight couple were discussing travel plans.

  “New Orleans?” he asked.

  The boy nodded. His blond ponytail trailed down his back, bright in the sun. “They cleared it out maybe a year, two years ago? You didn’t hear?”

  Derek navigated the following conversation automatically. They haven’t dived in ten years; Derek learned how to dive when he was twenty-three; yes, the Great Barrier Reef has changed a lot since then; no, they hadn’t invented warmsuits back when he and Zack dived in Alaska.

  New Orleans.

  It had been both the first city to go under, and the only one to get everybody out. New Orleans was used to worst case scenarios. Without their foresight and infrastructure, things would have been much worse.

  The other flooded cities weren’t under enough water for diving. It would be a long time before they were opened to visitors, if they ever were.

  On the train home, Derek sat with his head leaning against the window, watching the desert pass. With work and therapy, things had been getting better,
but most days, Derek still felt his life orbiting around the absence at its center. Sometimes he felt the whole middle of him was gone. If this was the closest he’d ever get to his son’s grave, then he had to go—he had to prove to himself that he could.

  Two and a half weeks ago, Zack had come home from therapy in angry silence. Their therapist had seen Derek at his worst. How were they supposed to go through that again? How could they take it? New Orleans. A whole city killed by the ocean. His heart would break.

  When news had come about Baltimore, Zack had left work immediately, even though the hospital could have fired him. He didn’t care; he knew that Derek would need him. Derek was tender, nurturing, fragile. He needed someone to take care of him.

  Zack sat in the den on the old smoke-grey couch and set his head between his knees. He couldn’t do anything about his frustration, so he had to let it go. He took a deep breath, let it out, then sat straight as he sent his lens an inquiry about diving in New Orleans.

  DEREK ASKS ZACK: <>

  He knows the answer. He checked their LCDC link before doing anything else. Zack used a lot of air with his exertion, but he’s not in danger.

  Derek had hoped the act of checking would help call Zack back to himself. Stiffly, Zack shifts, checking his physical gauges before reporting. <>

  Derek has no intention of letting Zack push himself any further than he already has. <> he says. <>

  She’d also confirmed Derek’s guess. She hadn’t seen any of the skeletons herself, but she said other dive masters had come back with stories. The ghost tour companies got fined if they were caught, but it was hard to prove which ones were responsible.

  <> Zack says.

  Without tone, it’s hard to tell, but over fifty years, Derek has gotten to know Zack well enough to understand his subtleties. Zack is apologizing. He thinks he’s failed Derek, which breaks Derek’s heart.

  <> Derek answers.

  Derek takes Zack’s hand and runs his thumb over the torn fabric of his husband’s gloves. With his other hand, he reaches upward, making sure their path is clear for ascent.

  Their fingers twine. The waters lighten around them as they rise. One day, one of them will say Noah’s name and smile.

  THE NEW VENUSIANS

  – SEAN WILLIAMS –

  TODAY I APOLOGIZED in person to a Tuvaluan. Now I’m on Venus with my grandfather, who I haven’t seen in ten years. To top it all off I’m suddenly unsure about my prepositions.

  On? Over? In?

  It’s entirely my fault. You don’t make puns while visiting a monument to the first country swallowed by rising oceans—because people live a long time and they’re still sore about it. Even really good puns like I don’t sea what the fuss is all about or They didn’t do it on porpoise! I get that now.

  Still, that place was a real dive.

  God, I can’t help myself! Anyway, the damage is done. Someone saw the log and complained about my poor taste, so I had to d-mat back to the monument (basically a deck stranded in the middle of an ocean where the low-lying archipelago used to be) in order to express my regret and sorrow directly to a representative of the Tuvaluan diaspora. Afi Tekena looked old enough to be my grandmother’s grandmother, all thick gray hair and wrinkles and constellations of age spots making up her own personal Zodiac. My sign was Teenage Girl Needs To Learn About Respect, and you know, fair enough. I did bad, which I admitted, and she accepted it with solemn grace. Maybe she thought the public shaming was lesson enough.

  My parents disagreed.

  “Just because you can d-mat anywhere now,” Mom scolded me, “doesn’t mean you should treat everywhere like home.”

  “You have to learn to observe other people’s boundaries, Tash,” said Dad. “You can’t do what you want and stroll away from the consequences.”

  “I didn’t stroll anywhere,” I said. “Ten feet in any direction and you’re in the water.”

  They exchanged a look and I knew I’d made a tactical error.

  “We’re tailoring the punishment to fit the crime,” Mom said. “We’re sending you to Grandpa.”

  “But isn’t he—?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean I—?”

  “The permits have already been organized.” Mom works for OneEarth, so surprise surprise, she pulled strings. “You have one hour to pack.”

  “One hour!” The complete unreasonableness of this demand momentarily overwhelmed the crazy nature of what they were doing to me. No counselor this time. No talking therapy. No lectures, which frankly I would’ve preferred, even the ones I’d heard dozens of times before. Just sixty minutes to pack everything I might want to take to another planet?

  Holy shit. Venus. And I still don’t know if I’m on, over or in it.

  When I look out the grimy yellow porthole, all I see is cloud.

  THE TRIP TOOK eleven minutes at the speed of light, which means I’m now that much younger than I would’ve been if I’d stayed behind. I’m orbiting a lot closer to the sun too, and therefore ageing more slowly. I can’t decide if that’s a good or bad thing.

  It’s all moot when I’m face to face with Grandpa, Hudson Sixsmith, who looks like Afi Tekena dried a shark, stood it on its tail, and painted a human face on its chin. Thin, dry, and wrinkled. And wearing a tuxedo, oddly.

  “Birdie has always had terrible timing,” is the first thing he says to me.

  He’s talking about Mom. She hates her real name.

  “You can send me back if you want,” I tell him, thinking please please please.

  “Nonsense. That would be rude.” His withered mask shifts into a new shape, one of consternation, or perhaps resignation. “I’m forgetting my manners. Please, come in.”

  He steps back and waves me out of the booth and into his home. It’s an aerostat called Hieronymus floating high above the hellish surface of Venus. I imagined something like a modern laboratory crossed with an old man’s den from a video drama, a mixture of brushed aluminum and stuffed leather, but what I see is nothing like that. Light filters through stained portholes along both sides of a cigar-shaped central cabin with hatches leading above and below. The ceiling is high but it’s adorned with hooks and racks from which hang a motley assortment of pipes, cables, wires, ropes, vines and dirty clothes. It’s a jungle. It’s a frat-boy’s bedroom. It’s a mess.

  It smells.

  “Been here on your own a long time, have you?”

  “Twenty-two years,” he says, brushing off a faded deckchair and inviting me to sit. “Few people visit.”

  I stay standing, looking around me in horror. “I wonder why.”

  He bristles. “Not for lack of invitation. I have been attempting to raise interest in what I found here, but will anyone listen? Not at all. Instead they distort my data and question my qualifications. They—” He catches himself on the verge of indignation with a deep breath. “They send me their unruly students, but you’re not one of those. You are an unruly granddaughter. What did you do, again? I’ll make some tea while you tell me. Sit, sit.”

  It takes me longer to overcome my feelings about the filthy chair than to elucidate my crimes. Why dwell on those when Mom has no doubt given him a blow-by-blow account?

  “I remember Tuvalu,” he says, coming back from a corner of the aerostat where a fabber has been working hard, making tea, cups, saucer, milk, sugar and a silver tray from random atoms and energy. It all looks preposterously shiny, like the tuxedo, and I realize then that he’s making an effort to be hospitable. If he hadn’t skipped basic cleanliness and gone straight to Five-Star Service, I would’ve noticed sooner.

  “I visited the islands just before they went under,” he’s saying while he pours. “Took some samples, but they are gone now, lost in the Water Wars. This was back before we scanned everything as a matter of course, so there are
no patterns archived. Whatever species lived on those scattered rocks either drowned or adapted to the wider ocean.”

  “Afi Tekena looked plenty lively to me.”

  “I’m not talking about people, Natasha. I’m talking about bacteria, the real rulers of the Earth.”

  Right. Okay. I concentrate on the cup of tea he’s handing me. It’s fragrant and hot, and I breathe deeply of it to mask the smell of sulfur and old socks.

  “What is it you do here, exactly?” I ask him, keen to put some more distance between us and the topic of my transgressions.

  “Much the same as I did back then.” He leans into his deck chair, looking marginally human now he’s sitting down. I hadn’t noticed the beard before: it’s sparse and white and really needs to go. “Sample. Analyze. Speculate. Preserve where possible. At this altitude in the Venusian atmosphere the conditions are very hospitable for biological processes. There’s even water vapor! Why anyone would willingly waste their time sifting through Martian dust or stirring Galilean slush is a mystery beyond my comprehension—particularly when what I have found here overturns the history of life in our solar system.”

  My stomach sinks. Please don’t make me be the audience for a madman. “Is that my punishment, then? To help you panhandle for microbes from inside a rusty old balloon?”

  “Goodness me, no,” he says. “We have to go outside to do that.”

  “Bit of a long way to fall, isn’t it?”

  “Fifty kilometers. Into hurricane winds, acid, and temperatures high enough to melt lead.”

  “There you go. That would be cruel and unusual, even for Mom and Dad.”

  “I will provide protective garb. And a very strong rope.”

  He winks and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. He’s messing with me. Old people: it’s so hard to read them sometimes. Their faces are non-Euclidean and complicated, and they can be crafty when they think they have the upper hand. Never let them believe that for too long: that’s my motto.