The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending

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The Histories of Earth, Books 1-4: In the Window Room, A Prince of Earth, All the Worlds of Men, and Worlds Unending Page 36

by Steven J. Carroll


  ���If you like,��� she answered, and made a spot for him near the ledge.

  However, when he finally made it up, Timothy sat as far away from the edge as he could, with his back against the windmill. For a while, there was nothing but the sound of the windmill blades turning, though after several minutes he was able to collect himself enough to speak.

  ���Ata finished the air,��� he told her.

  There were beads of nervous sweat on his face, so Barbara eased back from the ledge to have a seat nearer to her friend.

  ���I wasn’t worried,��� she replied. ���I knew he could do it.���

  The body of the windmill creaked slightly as it caught the breeze.

  ���Are you still worried about tomorrow?��� he asked, glancing at her, as she kept her stare out over the waves below them.

  She looked down, and not directly at Timothy. ���I was getting used to the fact that it would just be me, there at the bottom of the ocean.��� And she smiled a desperate sort of smile, then continued, saying, ���I could deal with that… but now that it’s all three of us. You shouldn’t be forced to do this just because of me.���

  ���This is what I want to do, not what I have to,��� he said, being sure that she could see the sincerity in his eyes.

  And she may have fought him over this, but she knew it would be no use, so she held her lips tight, and ran her fingers through her hair.

  ���Do they know how far down at least?��� she asked, seeming slightly bothered that he would not change his mind.

  His eyes shifted as though he did not want to answer. ���Not yet,��� he said, then explaining, ���They had to bring the rope back up after their first try, so it’s more than a hundred meters, maybe a lot more… sorry.��� And his face was very honest as he said the word ���sorry,��� which helped her to not be so frustrated with him; And possibly for the first time, she allowed herself the consolation that she would not have to suffer through this alone.

  And they continued in thoughtful silence, as night fell upon Aden.

  *

  �� A ballast tank is something that helps an underwater vessel to either sink or float, depending on how much air is placed within it.

  Chapter Thirty

  Returning to the Sea

  At the break of dawn, they were lowered in a ship from the side of the city. In the same manner that you might lower a life raft from a cruise liner. This boat would house the air pumps for their underwater vessel, acting as their lifeline to the surface.

  The seas were calm, but their hearts were not.

  ���Let ‘em roar,��� Ata shouted, forgetting for a brief moment, in his excitement, that the old man, Destek, would not understand his modern English slang.

  ���Should we scream?��� Destek asked, puzzled by Ata’s request.

  (From the other side of the boat there was an audible girl’s laugh, for though it was rude of Barbara to amuse herself with their conversation, she couldn’t help it, she found the old man quite endearing.)

  ���Um… no, sorry,��� Ata explained. ���It means, start the pump engines.���

  Then Destek directed his ship’s hands, a crew that was comprised of Eldemir and some of the other men and women who’d helped construct the devices, and by his orders they let loose the cords that held the wind turbines, which then began to spin in the morning breeze, charging and powering the pumps that in turn pushed Ata’s new air mixture through the long lines, and into the underwater vessel which was already in position and floating at the side of the boat. The chamber of their vessel soon filled to overflowing with air, so that the excess spilled out in large violent bubbles.

  ���Ha! It works,��� Timothy said, taking in the sight of it all. ���I can’t believe it,��� he muttered.

  And all of a sudden, from the starboard side, which is the right side of a boat, there was a girl’s half-scream and laughter, and a surprising splash. Timothy and Ata ran to the railing to see that it was Barbara, treading water in her custom tailored leather wetsuit, which several of the women of the city were kind enough to make for her (and for them all).

  ���There is a ladder, you know,��� Ata yelled down to her.

  ���Well, I’d have to get wet eventually, wouldn’t I,��� she answered, pulling a few soaking strands of hair from her face.

  ���Fine,��� Ata replied. And turning his mechanical sphere to full power, he left it with Eldemir for safe keeping, giving him certain instructions, and unannounced he did a running headfirst dive into the water near Barbara, swimming beneath her feet and coming up behind her to scare her.

  ���Aren’t you coming, Tim?��� Barbara asked, seeing him cautiously standing on the railing, scanning the waters beneath them.

  ���Is something wrong?��� she asked, with a high tone in her voice.

  ���Why would anything be wrong?��� he said, and quickly changed his face.

  ���Look out below,��� he warned, splashing them with a wave of water as he landed, and trying not to worry as he soon thought that it would have been, perhaps, better to have remained quiet on the surface, if they’d not wanted to wake whatever beasts may dwell in the deeps, in the dark and lurking ocean.

  The water, though still warm, was freckled with the tinges of cold that would suggest that it might not always be so welcoming. Ocean water swooshed between their toes. They’d already sunken below a depth of forty feet, though in the clear water the surface seemed to be right above them.

  With one hand they held fast onto ropes, to keep themselves within the diving bell and within their pocket of air, and their other hands were left to float freely in the water.

  This underwater vessel was a glorious recreation of something Timothy had seen depicted in the illustrations of an old history book: A diving bell, which is exactly how it sounds, a gigantic bell, like a grand church tower bell, that is fed with air pumps from the surface, through a long line of tubing, which in their case stretched much further than they had ever wished to go. From end to end, their air tubing spanned a length of a little over three hundred meters, which for the American is roughly nine hundred and eighty feet. And the bell itself was expertly fashioned out of hardened glass, nearly a foot thick in all places, so that it allowed them a clear unobstructed view in all directions, and their best chance to find the sunken globe.

  They continued to sink until the surface was not so visible, and the light fell in more distinct lines beneath them, as opposed to how it tends to shine in shallower waters, evenly and unnoticed. The very fact that they could now see pinpoint delineations, and visible shafts of light, meant that the darkness was now becoming more pervasive, that it was working its way through the light in cracks, until eventually, it might drive the light away altogether.

  ���How far down are we?��� Barbara asked, hearing for the first time the echo of her words within the diving bell, like a small watery cavern.

  ���Oh, no. I’d forgot to count the knots,��� Timothy said. And he, trying to make up for his lapse in duty, turned to gaze through the hazy bell glass out toward the depth line beside them.

  ���It can’t be more than eighteen, though, I’d imagine,��� he reassured her.

  ���This next one is twenty,��� Ata said, correcting him. (And Ata knew this because since they’d begun their descent several minutes ago, he’d noticed his friend had been uncharacteristically distracted, and so he’d been keeping up both with his job, which was to adjust the air levels in the ballast tanks, as well as with checking the knots on the depth line, which was Timothy’s job.)

  ���Alright… so twenty,��� Timothy said, and continued, ���Twenty times two is forty. So, forty meters.���

  ���Is that all?��� she asked, and then some seconds later she added, sounding bothe
red, ���My feet are already getting cold.���

  ���Mine are too,��� Ata said. His eyes were now wide and serious, and they had been growing more so like this as the water darkened.

  ���It can’t get much worse, I’m sure…��� Timothy said, which even he did not believe.

  And they continued to fall, further beneath the waves, and the air bubbles escaping below the rim of their bell began to compress under the weight of the water all around them, until very large brimming bubbles became a less vibrant trickling stream, and still they fell at an even pace, into the blackened heart of the sea.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A Valley of Black Shadows

  ���Just drop the torch, alright,��� Timothy argued.

  ���Why do you care so much?��� Barbara answered back. ���I’d rather not see the bottom, if it’s that much further.���

  At this time you should know, that it was Barbara’s job to keep the flares, safely locked within a clasped pouch by her side. And at the present moment, she held a lit torch flare, under the water level of their bell, so that they could see the depth line as they sunk in a shadowy darkness.

  ���He’s right,��� Ata interrupted. ���The way it is now, we could smash up against an underwater cliff, or into rocks at the bottom, without even knowing it.���

  Timothy turned back to Barbara, seeing her in the pulsing red and yellowed torchlight. ���See, we need to know what’s down there,��� he said.

  Barbara, who’d known even Timothy’s subtle mannerisms by then, caught something in the timbre of his voice that she hadn’t yet noticed.

  She peered at him suspiciously. ���And what is down there, Tim?��� she asked.

  ���How should I know?��� he said, shrugging her off.

  Their flare, as it burned away under the water’s surface, became an even darker red.

  ���No, I think you do,��� she said, within the echoing glass bell.

  About a minute prior, though they had not noticed exactly when, air had stopped escaping from under the rim of their diving bell, and the water level had risen up ever so slightly, as their air pocket compacted even further under the pressure of the waters layered above them.

  ���You’ve been off, ever since we started sinking,��� she continued. ���What aren’t you saying?���

  What a worse place to tell his friends about the truth of their danger. Timothy blinked his eyes closed, taking in some heavy breaths to help him form the words, and he finally told them everything about the shadow beneath him when they had first come to that world, and how he knew somehow that it must have been some great sea beast, and he told them why he’d kept it a secret until then: so that Barbara, who was already scared, wouldn’t have to worry as well, about some ferocious monster.

  ���I should have said something before,��� Timothy said, finishing his story, looking apologetically to Barbara.

  She sighed, her face now glowing in a deeper red flare light.

  ���I know why you did it, but I’d also like to know the truth,��� she said.

  And she loosened her grip on the torch flare, letting it sink like a slowly moving stone: falling deeper, and deeper, and deeper than they would have thought possible. It sunk past a school of small deepwater bait fish, that were unknowingly just beneath them, descending past what looked to be an underwater steep mountain range, and further, into the mouth of a low and dark valley.

  It landed upon the sanded ocean floor, but as soon as it did, the dark shadow of something diabolically massive, swam like an eel or a serpent, away from the light, and passing between them and the torch, it blocked their light for a brief second.

  All their hearts jumped in their chests; Startled, breathy, muted screams left their mouths, ringing off the bell walls.

  Almost immediately (and there was no talk of conserving torches), Barbara lit another flare. And they continued falling, as their air pocket continued to shrink and the water level inside the bell inch by inch continued to rise; So that it was nearing the halfway point along the walls, so that they were forced to huddle closer together, which they might have done anyway, for warmth, and protection, and comfort in the frigid, lightless voided emptiness of deep water.

  They landed on the deep sanded ocean floor bed, within that valley of black shadows. During the last few meters of their descent, they were sure they had seen the globe, obscured by the stark night of that place, but only roughly twenty yards away from them, ominously resting near the jagged rim of an even darker, unsearchably deep chasm.

  And now, they were huddled at the top of the bell, floating shoulder to shoulder, breathing from a tiny pocket of air, and all of them were making their individual case for why they should be the one to retrieve the globe: Beginning with Barbara, who said that it was her fault that they were there, and as so she should be the one to go. However, Timothy argued that since he was the better swimmer, it should be him instead. (Which was a true statement, considering the fact that Barbara, through no fault of her own, had not been taught to swim by her parents, and so because of this, she had only just recently learned the skill during her previous year in Gleomu.)

  But to this, Ata interjected that he was, in fact, a better swimmer than all of them. (Which happened to be also true, taking into account that he had lived by the sea, in a port town, his whole life, and he, nonetheless, had also in his younger years been raised in an orphanage, built upon a coastal island near the main city of Istanbul, and as such, he was considerably the best swimmer.)

  Yet, since there was no way to test this, Timothy re-contested that he should go, because he’d still had his force-shield bands, and also since he was the one to keep the secret about the giant sea creature, that he should be the one to go and face him.

  ���But won’t you be electrocuted, if you use the armbands underwater?��� Barbara asked.

  ���There’s a chance he won’t,��� Ata interrupted. ���But it’s not for sure…���

  It was an honest answer, but not one that made any of them feel more at ease. Though in the end, they agreed with Timothy, that since he was the only one with any sort of weapon, or protection, that he should go first.

  Barbara reached into her side pouch, and lighting a new flare, she handed it to him beneath the cold surface of the water.

  ���Don’t be a hero, please,��� she said. ���If you start to run out of breath, come back, we can take turns.���

  ���Alright,��� Timothy said, though he’d no intention to give up halfway.

  And taking the deepest breath that he could fill into his lungs, he dove beneath the waterline, swimming and kicking underneath the rim of their glass bell, and into the cold blackness, with a red and yellow burning flare in one hand, and a deflated recovery balloon wrapped loosely over his shoulder.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  A Dangerous Cold

  The first thing that he noticed after swimming beneath the rim of their bell was the cold, a biting and dangerous cold that would try to steal all the air from his lungs.

  And then there were the duskly shadows: They had not gone so far into the heart of the ocean, that the world was entirely pitch black, but they were in the in-between, where colorless shadows could be seen at close distances, and everything beyond that faded in a twilight haze.

  His torch flare had helped somewhat, making those things nearest to him distinctly seen. Though it seemed to blind him to anything at length, not allowing his eyes to fully adjust to their present state, so that by keeping his light the clarity of nearby objects sacrificed his sense of distance and direction, but still he would not dare put it out.

  Behind him Barbara lit another flare within the bell, so that he could see where he’d come from, he thought. The air closed within his lungs began to slowly ache, and he realized in looking behind him, seeing Barbara’s flare, th
at he had unknowingly veered somewhat off the mark. He kicked and paddled toward the right to make up for this.

  The ocean waters in that world, while still relatively salty, were hardly as salty as our own oceans would be, so that he could open his eyes, without much burning. Below him the sand passed by with every stroke, red tinted from his flare’s flame, and spotted with the occasional pointed boulder.

  All he’d needed was to find the globe, to tie the rope of his recover buoy to its rim, inflate it, and send it rising to the surface like a parade balloon. Yet, he’d had to find it first.

  He kicked and swam more erratically. The air in his chest was beginning to grow painful.

  ���Have I overcompensated to the right?��� he thought.

  Though soon, washed in a reddish diminishing flare light, he saw the curved surface of something on the ocean floor ahead of him, not a pointed craggy rock like the ones he’d seen before.

  ���The globe!��� Timothy shouted in his head.

  But then another thought crept into its place. ���Could that be the sea creature?��� he thought. Could it have been lying in wait for him on the ocean floor?

  And the air in his chest was a tiny fire. He drew in the small pockets of breath that he’d held in his puffed cheeks, but that only lessened the fire, it did not put it out. So that, whether that unknown shape was their globe, or a vile sea monster, he had no choice. The air within his lungs would likely only last him till the distance of that curved object, on the other hand it might also be enough for him to change his mind, to swim back toward the bell, but it would not be enough for both.

  He could either do his duty: as a prince, and a knight, and a friend, and save Barbara’s life. Or he could swim back, to watch her be reflected, and eaten by a monster of the deep. However he could not both save her life and his, he reasoned. Though it was not something that he stopped to consider, he had already made up his mind before he left the bell, and so he kept swimming.

 

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