Undercurrents

by Pamela Beason

  He pointed into the murk. Sighting along his finger, Sam spotted a dark shadow headed their direction. No. She wasn’t ready for a shark. As the creature approached, she concentrated on breathing slowly.

  The shadow transformed into a spherical beast with wings. A turtle, flying underwater. Whoa. The sight was amazing. Dan returned to his examination of the ocean floor—he’d probably seen hundreds of sea turtles. Sam swam closer to the marine reptile. Its dark eyes were huge and soft, almost spaniel-like. Black spots freckled its pale green beak and neck. The turtle ignored her, gliding past with powerful thrusts of its long flippers. She took a photo with the turtle in the foreground and Dan hovering over a cluster of starfish in the background.

  She finned back to Dan, who obligingly plucked a mottled red-and-white lobster from among the starfish and held it out toward the camera. As she centered his figure in the frame, his head jerked and a cloud of bubbles burst from his regulator. Alarmed, she curled the fingers of her right hand into an “okay?” sign. Another burst of air bubbled from his regulator, then he quickly jabbed a finger at his throat, and returned the okay sign. Just coughing.

  It was understandable. The compressed air was dry; her own throat felt tight and scratchy. As she reframed man and lobster in the viewfinder, she noticed a torpedo shape in the blue gloom beyond him. Uh-oh. She took a breath and pressed the shutter button, exhaled, and then pointed.

  After a quick glance, Dan thrust his fingers into a vertical fin on top of his neoprene hood. Scuba sign language for shark. There was no mistaking the dorsal fin on its back, the flattened profile. It was indeed a shark. Sam hovered uncertainly in place. What was a diver supposed to do to look avoid looking like food?

  Dan held his hands out, two feet apart. A little shark? As it swam closer, she saw that he was correct. It was bigger than two feet, but probably no longer than three. Its sleek hide was an intricate mosaic of shaded patches. A leopard shark. Harmless, gorgeous, and best of all, alone. As the shark swam upward, she followed with the camera, capturing a shot of the shark suspended beneath the triangular shape of their boat. Even as she snapped the photo, Sam knew she shouldn’t have glanced up. She had a perfect view of the bubbles streaming upward from both regulators. There was fifty feet of water between her and normal air.

  Her breathing sounded mechanical and forced now. Calm down, she told herself. In—hiss. Out—bubble, bubble, bubble. You signed up for this.

  She looked down. Below, Dan stared at her and coughed again. The display on her computer was flashing, the technological equivalent of a stern teacher shaking a warning finger. She’d been down with Dan, up after the turtle, down with Dan again, and then up after the shark. Yo-yoing. A definite no-no. Letting air out of her buoyancy vest, she slowly sank again, holding out her arms in an underwater shrug, then pointing to her camera, hoping he’d read that as being an overly enthusiastic photographer. If her fingers trembled, maybe he’d attribute it to the water’s chill. He had definitely been right about the wetsuit. Her computer registered seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit, which was surprisingly cold when suspended in liquid for thirty minutes.

  With another burst of bubbles, Dan turned away, circling over the algae-mottled seabed, searching for more marine life. She followed, gliding a yard above the rough black lava, delighting in the marvels of a red-and-white cushion star and a psychedelic display of orange cup coral.

  Suddenly the rock floor beneath her fell away, and she found herself suspended above a deep chasm. Dan was below her, his form made hazy by a shoal of tiny blue fish between them. His bubbles streamed up between the darting shapes. One air globule hit her mask squarely in front of her right eye, and clung there like a droplet of mercury until she turned her head and it rolled away to continue its journey to the surface.

  She was suspended in blue-green space. It felt marvelous and frightening and astounding, all at the same time. Her air gauge showed almost 1000 PSI left; she was breathing well, not too fast. She was gliding through the liquid womb of Mother Earth with fish and reptiles and—what was the proper classification for sea cucumbers, anyway? Echinoderms? Her wildlife biology studies had focused on mammals; she needed to brush up on the cold-blooded classifications.

  She came face to face with an exquisite purple lace fan. On land, she would have said it was part of the fern family. Down here, coral? She wasn’t sure. According to her books, corals came in many shapes, sizes, and colors. So did sponges. To make identification even more confusing, other creatures mimicked plants. Bryozoans? She didn’t yet know which name applied to which creature. Or even if it was one creature she was staring at. Some marine organisms were actually groups of animals. Mind-blowing.

  They’d been down for nearly forty minutes. Hadn’t Dan told the boat pilot they would circle? They hadn’t. Unless her underwater navigation skills were seriously flawed, they hadn’t traveled very far at all. Shouldn’t they be swimming more, counting more? Beneath her, Dan listed slightly to starboard. His computer dangled on its wrist cord in the slight current. He floated facedown, barely moving. Sam joined him to see what was so mesmerizing. Unable to detect much of interest within his range of vision, she tapped him on the shoulder. When he didn’t react, she tugged at his arm.

  His body rolled toward her like a mannequin. Behind the face mask, his eyes were dull, his eyelids at half-mast. She flashed the “okay?” question at him.

  Dan floated listlessly, unresponsive.

  2

  Dan seemed only semiconscious, barely breathing. Sam grabbed his air gauge. He had 800 PSI, plenty of air left. What the hell was wrong? She jerked a thumb toward the surface, asking if he wanted to go up. His half-closed eyes stared blankly. She reached out and tapped his face mask directly in front of his eyes. He blinked and a bubble of air burst from his regulator.

  At least he was alive. Maybe his regulator wasn’t working right? She frantically ran her gaze over Dan’s equipment. He had an octopus, which involved more hoses than her safe-second mouthpiece built into the inflator hose on her BCD. What could be wrong? She had rehearsed only one rescue scenario, the out-of-air drill. She let her camera dangle from its safety strap, reached down, put her alternative regulator into her own mouth, and then thrust her primary mouthpiece toward him. With the same motion that she used to entice her cat Simon into playing with a feather, she waggled the mouthpiece in front of Dan’s face.

  No response.

  Desperate, she yanked his mouthpiece out and jammed hers between his jaws before he could inhale, then tapped hard on the regulator, forcing a burst of air into his mouth. That woke him up. He kicked, his right heel connecting hard with her shin. The regulator hose jerked taut between them, and she grabbed the strap of his BCD and pulled him close to keep him from ripping the mouthpiece out.

  She watched as he took a deep breath. Were his eyes a fraction more focused now, or was that just wishful thinking? She again jerked a thumb toward the surface, followed by the “okay?” sign. He coughed, nodded slowly, and clasped his fingers around her shoulder strap. They finned slowly upward. Her camera and his computer dangled beside them on their tethers, gently bumping their thighs as they ascended.

  When her computer dinged at eighteen feet, they hovered for the recommended three-minute safety stop. Clinging together like mating dolphins, staring into each other’s eyes and breathing the same air, was almost unbearably intimate, and Sam was relieved when they finally broke the surface. She waited until Dan spit out the mouthpiece and pressed the inflator button on his BCD, then she pushed him away. At the sight of him floating, conscious and breathing between hacking coughs, her galloping pulse finally slowed.

  After the turquoise world below, the glare of sunshine was downright painful. Sam squinted as she sucked in huge lungfuls of real air. When she could talk again, she yelped, “What the hell happened down there?”

  “Damned if I know.” Dan coughed once more and then leaned back into the water with his eyes closed.

  They’d surfaced a g
ood thirty yards from the boat, but it motored in their direction and then slipped into place beside them. Sam handed up the camera to Ricardo. She and Dan removed their fins and tossed them on board. She followed him up the ladder into the boat.

  Aboard, she dumped her tanks and gear into the cockpit, then pulled her legs up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees in an attempt to control her trembling.

  Dan’s hand grasped her shoulder. “Please tell me that’s not going in your post.”

  “It can’t,” she muttered. “No pictures.” Not to mention that she was too confused about what happened to tell any coherent story.

  “Good. I’d never live it down.” He seemed recovered now, although his movements were sluggish and his face was the purple-red of a sliced beet. Turning away from her, he dug through his gear bag.

  How could he be so calm? If becoming catatonic was a routine scuba event, she was giving up the sport right now.

  Unfolding herself, Sam reached for her computer console. The needle on her air gauge was in the red zone. Two hundred PSI. Or maybe less. Her instructor had told her never to surface with less than five hundred.

  She picked up Dan’s gauge. Stretching the hose to which it was attached, she held it out toward him. “You had plenty of air.”

  He pulled an electronic gizmo out of his bag, disconnected his regulator hose from his BCD, and then applied the device to the end of the air hose. After a few seconds, he held the gauge up for her to read. “Seventeen percent oh-two.”

  “What?” Air, normal air, the air that all life on earth depended on, contained nearly twenty-one percent oxygen. Her tremors came back with a vengeance. “How can that be?” She took the oxygen meter from him and snapped it onto the end of her own regulator hose.

  Ricardo emerged from the cabin, holding an orange in each hand. He stood a foot away, staring at them. “Un problema?”

  “Everything’s okay now,” Dan told him. Turning to Sam, he said in a low voice, “We’ll discuss this when we get back.”

  The meter reported that Sam’s tank contained 20.9 percent oxygen, right where it should be for normal compressed air.

  “Interesting fishes down there?” Ricardo handed each of them an orange. Sam accepted hers gratefully, glad to have something to dig her shaky fingers into.

  “Just like we expected,” Dan told the boat pilot. “This area is pretty devoid of sea life.”

  “Devoid?” Her jaw dropped. “All those fish. Sea cucumbers. Starfish. A turtle. A shark.”

  Dan turned his gaze on her. “A fraction of what was here ten years ago. Especially the sea cucumbers.”

  A scowl darkened Ricardo’s face.

  “Of course, we’re close to town and outside the reserve, so I’d expect it to be more or less fished out.” Dan slicked back his hair with his hands and looked up at the boat pilot. “We’ll have better luck tomorrow when we’re inside the marine sanctuary. Right, Ricardo?”

  The Ecuadorian did not return Dan’s smile. “Tomorrow . . . is no longer possible,” he answered. “This boat, she is busy.”

  Dan’s eyes narrowed, and the two men assessed each other for a tense moment. Finally Dan said, “Then we’ll find another boat, amigo. You can take us in now.”

  As Ricardo turned away toward the cabin, Sam noticed the distinctive outline of a cell phone in his back pocket. She was surprised that they seemed as common here as in the States.

  Beneath their feet, the engine rumbled to life. Dan rubbed his temples with his fingertips, wincing.

  “You okay?” Sam asked.

  “My head aches. But I’ll be fine.”

  She jerked a shoulder toward the boat cabin. “What’s up with Ricardo?”

  “Mea culpa. The NPF logo—I should have been more careful.” He wiped a drip from the end of his nose.

  “Should have been more careful about what?”

  His gaze shifted toward the boat cabin and then back to her. “Later.”

  She concentrated on peeling her orange. “How can you get less oxygen in a tank of air?”

  “Contaminate it with carbon monoxide.”

  Dan casually tossed out the words, but they made Sam’s breath stop halfway up her windpipe. “How could that happen?” she whispered.

  “Most likely exhaust of some sort near the compressor intake.” He shrugged. “It might have been accidental.”

  3

  Alarm bells clanged in Sam’s head all the way back to Puerto Ayora. The combination of adrenaline and jet lag made her nauseous and she had to keep her gaze on the horizon. Contaminating Dan’s tank with carbon monoxide might have been accidental? She couldn’t wait to hear his explanation. But after they hopped off at the dock in Puerto Ayora and the boat had pulled away, he said only, “I’ll return the tanks. You take the rest of our gear back to the hotel.”

  She frowned. “Are you nuts? I’m not letting you out of my sight. Especially after what just happened.”

  He studied her face for a few seconds. “I know what you’re thinking, but seriously, don’t sweat it. That tank thing was probably an accident.”

  Tank thing? Probably an accident? Her mind was swirling and his words weren’t helping. “I’ll be a couple of hours, no more.” Dan beckoned to a wizened man leaning against an equally ancient car with a taxi sign on the roof. The fellow trotted in their direction.

  “José will take good care of you.” He lightly slapped the taxi driver on the back. “Right, José?”

  The driver turned to her. “You got the money, honey, I got the time.” He looked at least ninety years old. But he loaded the two heavy gear bags into the trunk of his decrepit Ford with surprising agility, and opened a back door, gesturing her in.

  She resisted Dan’s gentle hand on her back. “We shouldn’t separate.”

  “Look,” Dan said, “I need to sort out alternative arrangements. I know the terrain and the language. You don’t. Plus, I can see you’re jet-lagged and you’ve probably got business stuff to do.”

  All good points. “But—”

  “I’ll be fine. Really.” He pressed his hand against her back again, and Sam climbed into the backseat.

  José recklessly sped through the streets of the small town, trailing a wake of windblown trash. The amount of litter in the town surprised her. She’d read that recycling was mandatory here. Bins for paper, glass, and plastic were stacked alongside each pastel-colored building. Yet the back alleys and drainage ditches were filled with discarded plastic bags and Popsicle sticks and foam egg cartons.

  There were no cruise ships in the harbor, and the schoolchildren had already gone home, so the roadways weren’t crowded in the late afternoon heat. That was a good thing, because José had little regard for driving on any particular side of the street. Sam saw only a few pedestrians, including a black woman with intricately braided hair, whom José seemed to aim directly for. The woman leapt from the street into the doorway of a store, shaking her fist. Her angry figure was swallowed up in the ensuing cloud of dust.

  After depositing their dive gear on the doorstep of the six-room Hotel Aurora, José grasped Sam’s fingers along with the folded dollars she thrust at him. “A-OK, babycake. Come up and see me sometime. Got a rocket in my pocket.” A lecherous wink creased his face like a fold of fruit leather. He drove off in a belch of black exhaust.

  Sam stepped into the hotel lobby and pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head. It looked like the place would be full tonight. A quartet of pale-skinned, long-haired young women—two blondes, a brunette, and a ponytailed redhead—stood before the hotel’s reception desk, conversing in what sounded like a Scandinavian language. The three tables that made up the lounge/breakfast area were occupied, one by a couple in matching Hawaiian shirts who hovered earnestly over a guidebook, another by an elderly woman with a suitcase by her side, and the other by a short-bearded man with sunglasses hanging from the V of his shirt and a folded newspaper before him.

  Struggling with a bag of heavy dive gear ha
nging from each shoulder, Sam headed for the stairs, determined to get a shower before all the hot water was gone. As she staggered across the lobby, Mrs. Vintner, the tiny Swiss proprietress, stepped out from behind the desk.

  “Mizz Vestin.” Mrs. Vintner wiped her hands on the hips of her skirt. Sam had liked her at first sight, because the top of the woman’s head reached only to Sam’s eyebrows, making five-foot-two seem statuesque for a change. “Ve have problem.”

  Sam shifted a bag strap on her shoulder. “Oh?”

  The woman shot a quick glance toward the lounge area. “Your room. And Mr. Kaza-ki? I say before you can have rooms for five days, but is not so. After tonight, no rooms are free. You must leave. You understand?”

  What? After the “tank thing” and then Ricardo refusing to take them out again, this was too much. Sam dropped the heavy gear bags to the floor and angrily crossed her arms. “No, I don’t understand. Explain it to me.”

  “Is my mistake. In the reservations. I am sorry. Is best, I think, you go to Baquerizo Moreno.” Her gray eyes connected with Sam’s gaze for only a few seconds before flitting away. “You tell Mr. Kazaki?”

  “I most definitely will,” Sam said. The town of Puerto Baquerizo Moreno was not remotely close; it was on a completely different island.

  Dan had reserved these rooms. Maybe he could work out the problem. “I’m sure Dr. Kazaki will want to talk to you about this.”

  Mrs. Vintner lowered her gaze to the blue tile floor. “Sorry.” After a last glance toward the lounge, she scurried back to her post at the reception desk.

  Sam turned to survey the lounge tables. The Hawaiian-shirted couple was still head to head over their guidebook. The elderly woman was gone, along with her suitcase. At the other table, the bearded man was now invisible behind his newspaper.

  As she bent over to grab the gear bag straps, her sunglasses fell off her head and skittered across the floor. The redheaded tourist scooped them up, inspected them for a second, and then held them out. “Here. Is not broken.” Her words had a foreign lilt.