by G R Matthews
“ARE YOU READY?” the text flashed up on my screen. A message from Keller in his sub.
“PICK UP. CONFIRM.” I chose the response from my menu. He could have spoken his message. Every response I made would have to come from the menu or be laboriously typed. The Oxyquid, which I was forcing in and out of my lungs with my aching ribs, prevented any speaking. You need air to talk. It is true, in the ocean no one can understand your screams.
I guessed he was using the text system to preserve the security of the city. A tight beam laser conveyed the text in a quick burst rather than the longer beam of speech. Across this short distance radio would have worked too, but there would be the inevitable bounce around and leakage. Laser was safer.
I caught the cord and hook as it was played out from Keller’s sub and attached it to the eye on the suit front.
“ATTACHED. GO.” I sent and within a second felt the tug on the suit. My screen showed that I was rising again and the resistance of the water against my chest and arms confirmed I was moving forward. It wasn’t the smooth ride of yesterday. He was probably still pissed with me. As long as we stayed clear of the struts, stanchions and other bits that stuck out here and there, I’d let him work out his anger issues.
“SOUTH SIDE. PREP FOR DROP.”
“DROP.” I sent back and started to sink again, either the sub was descending or he was playing out more cord. There was enough room for the sub to come down a little way. “STOP.”
I used a little energy from the batteries to spin in place, getting a good look at the small, sharp, valley I was dropping into. A few flicks of my fingers and the view changed, zooming in and out, building up a mental picture as well as the generated one. The image of the valley floor was blurred and imprecise. That was to be expected. They’d dropped the support through it which would have disturbed the floor. At the base of the support, the valley floor, there was just room for both of my feet. The support had started to cut through the valley side higher up.
“RELEASING.” I sent, unhooked the cable, and used the motors to control my descent. The valley sides, which I could reach by stretching out my hands, looked rough and jagged. There was a chance that a sharp stone could cut the suit and that was not something to contemplate.
Normally, you’d find the stone quite smooth, evidence of the ocean currents power to erode but not here. The land was too new and still moving. A few hundred years and the little valley I was in now would be another twelve metres west and a little smoother. A thousand years from now and it would have moved sixty metres. Not fast, but sometimes, just occasionally, there were big quakes that shoved the sea floor up and out, further and faster than the reckoned six centimetres a year it was moving now.
I stumbled a little as my feet touched down. The floor was uneven and I had to put out a hand to steady myself. Everything that doesn’t belong in the ocean seems to move in slow motion. You had to remember that, even if you moved slowly, you had your whole weight behind it. It paid to be careful.
I flicked the lights on full. White first of all to get an understanding of the location. Then red to avoid attracting too many fish, either curious ones or those that hunted the curious ones. The white light only penetrated about 2 metres, but a slow sweep of the area showed the floor became more uneven further away from the strut. Little and large rocks dotted the valley floor. Some loose and some part of the valley sides itself. The support itself was driven deep through the rock and it was wider than three men stood shoulder to shoulder. I would have to move up and around it to complete the work.
“IN PLACE. BEGINNING NOW.” I sent up to Keller.
“ON STATION.” Came the reply and I unhooked the tether so I could move freely.
I detached the hand held scanner from my belt and moved up to the strut. Before starting, I made a mark on the strut to indicate where I had begun. The scanner itself was a low power but incredibly accurate multi-spectral device. It measured electrical resistance, magnetic changes, x-rays, anything you could imagine. However, I needed its ultrasound. The emitter, I placed just below my mark and switched it on.
Then I went clockwise around the strut, the scanner in contact with the surface the whole way. The little device sent its readings to my suit and I watched the display carefully. The emitter sent ultrasound pulses through the strut and the scanner detected them. If there were any fractures, the break in the structure would reflect the pulse and that would show up on the scanner. There were defects, just like the other struts. Nothing major right now. In a few years, with a little more movement of the sea floor, they could be significant.
“DROP CAN.” I sent and then waited. After a few minutes a large canister came into view, through the red beams, and landed in the valley floor. I scooted over to it and lifted it into my arms. There was some buoyancy to the canister, not enough for it to float, but enough to make it manageable.
Placing it down again at the base of the strut, I took hold of the tube that came out of the top. This was wrapped around the strut, as many times as it would go, and then I entered the command on the canister’s keyboard. It flashed up a message confirming it was working and that was it. Under pressure, an incredibly fine liquid was being infused into the strut. Where it met a fracture it would fill in the small gap, making it whole again. There was a lot more to it than that, but I had stopped reading the manual at that point. It worked. That’s all I needed to know.
“DONE. PICK UP.” The message flashed up to Keller’s sub and I used the suit motors to move up the water column and meet the descending cable. Two more supports to go.
Chapter 16
We placed another cylinder at the next strut and then I was dropped near the last. Once this had been scanned and a cylinder dropped in, if it was needed, my work was done. The end of my first job on my new contract and, apart from an argument, it hadn’t gone too badly. It had been an easy job. Perhaps it had just been a test. I could see why they needed a Fish-Suit. The room at the bottom, near the struts was cramped and getting a sub in close enough would have been impossible. A diver in normal gear would have been crushed by the pressure and there was no robotic arm on the planet that could have wrapped the cord around the bases.
“READY TO DROP.” Keller’s message appeared in green text across my helmet’s head up display.
“DROP,” I sent and unhooked the cable. I sank down into another steep valley, the slopes rising either side of me. I turned on the beams and picked out my landing place. The little motors in my pack pushing me a little to the left. A cloud of sediment billowed up around my feet as I touched down. I stood still as it rose around my legs, a mixture of eroded rock, construction dust and dead sea life. It was a bit deeper here than in the previous valley but it provided a level surface to walk on, as long as I was slow and careful. I didn’t want to scuff up too much debris. It would settle, but it would reduce visibility.
As before, I made a mark, placed the emitter, unhooked the scanner and set off on a clockwise circumnavigation of the support. The onscreen report showed the same micro-fractures as all the others had. They had built the city in a hurry and I reckoned the supports hadn’t been put in entirely plumb. They were ever so slightly out and that put stress on them all. Combine this with the moving of the earth and fractures should have been easy to predict. On the other side, at least they gave me a job, a chance to earn some money, and to travel again.
There was something different. I was getting a ghost ping from the other side of the support. I’d known it happen before. Usually because of a great big rent in the metal or a manufacturing defect. It was hard to believe that it was the latter considering it would have been tested before it was put in place. Then again, it was unlikely to be the former as this support was taking its share of the city’s weight.
“HOLD FOR CAN.” I sent upwards to Keller’s sub. I’d need to find out what the ghost signals were before he dropped the canister. I might need a lot more than the liquid metal to fix the problem. So I continued on, around t
he strut, taking the measurements and recording them.
When I found the source of the readings, it wasn’t the great big hole I had been expecting. At first glance, in the red glow of my lights, I wasn’t sure what it was. I had to edge back a little to get a clear line of sight, not that I could actually see it, to Keller’s sub. I sent a short message, I had found something and to standby. I didn’t wait for a response.
From the base and running up the strut until it vanished at the limit of the illumination provided by my red lamps was a thick cable. Every thirty centimetres, give or take a few, along the cable was a small box. My hand, even in my gloves, just about covered the rectangular box. I could feel the sharp edges but nothing else. The deep ocean is incredibly cold, somewhere between a bracing thirty two Fahrenheit and positively balmy thirty seven.
I could reach the next box up, but that looked exactly the same. It was a better bet to follow the cable down and that is what I did. At the base of the support the cable disappeared into the accumulated sediment. Before everything had gone wrong, I had been on a few archaeological digs on the sea floor and they all used vacuum hoses. A long tube that sucked up disturbed sediment so that the scientists could see the artifacts they were uncovering. As luck would have it, I had nothing like that with me.
There was a solution, though far from ideal, and I decided to try it. Using both hands, I dug down into the sediment for a few moments until it was hard to see because of the suspended settlement. Then I twisted around, braced myself against the valley sides and ran the motors on my back for a few minutes. They threw water out, as a propulsive force which made my arms ache to hold myself steady, and set up a small current which moved the sediment away. It wasn’t ideal and it didn’t work perfectly, but it did help.
On the third go, I turned back around to inspect the hole. Through a thin layer of sediment, a set of blinking lights was visible. Once I had brushed the last of the sand off, I could make out a little screen, only a few centimetres across, with a set of icons, one of which was flashing on and off. It looked like a large letter “V” with smaller ones spreading downwards from two sides. I watched it for a few moments and noticed that the flashing was increasing in speed. The cable went straight into the new box so, clearly, it was either the power source or the controller for the other boxes that ran up the support. Curious.
A quick check of the city plans that had been provided did not show up anything. No devices, no repairs and no modifications. It was still unclear, to me at least, the nature of the research taking place in this Silent City, but given its location something geologic was likely. Therefore, these devices were likely related to that and I wasn’t sure if I should interfere.
“DEVICE FOUND. CABLE + BOXES. WAITING FOR ADVICE.” The message raced up towards Keller’s position at the speed of light. Slightly slower than absolute c, I did listen a little in science class, but not enough to make a difference. The next thing Keller would do was contact the city and then wait for an answer before telling me what to do. All I had to do was wait.
I waited and had the suit computer run a diagnostic check. Just to make sure everything was fine. You could argue that it was standard procedure. A safety regulation. A result of training. Checking the suit during use was all of those things. But, it was also because I still wasn’t sure what Keller had done to it. Being safe was better than being dead. It came back clean. Maybe, he’d been telling the truth and some tech just hadn’t closed the door properly. It was, grudgingly, possible.
I waited. The red beams of my lights made the marine snow, that continually fell, turn black. The snow was never particularly pretty. Once you knew what it actually was, any notion of a poetic, pure beauty that snow had held in the old world was truly gone. Oliver Twist was still taught in the NOAH education system. The central tenant being; never ask for more than you have and be grateful for it. Sure, Oliver did all right in the end but look at the hardships, the threats and violence. It was only when a benevolent old man, a sure sub-text revealing that wealth was good and that the corporation would look after you, came on the scene and rescued him that the danger abated.
I waited. It was way past the time needed to check and respond.
“RESPOND,” I sent and waited some more. I couldn’t talk to the city directly, not from here. My link was to Keller and from him to the city.
I altered the pitch and intensity of the red light. Tried to pierce the darkness and spot the sub. It was pointless, they were not powerful enough.
“RESPOND PLS. INSTRUCT ON ACTION.” It wasn’t right. By now something should have come back from him. Even an acknowledgment. The battery indicator on the UI showed a good level still. I engaged the motors and began to lift myself out of the valley, up towards Keller’s sub. It was possible he had developed a problem.
I was piloting blind. Just guessing he was in the same place that he had left me and I should, very soon, be coming across the dangling tow cable. Up I went. There was comfort in being under my own control. If Keller was in trouble, he would need me.
The cable wasn’t there. I took a chance and widened the laser communication. Instead of the stealthy narrow beam, it was now dispersed. It wouldn’t travel as far, but it covered a wider area. If Keller had drifted it should reach him. No response.
Lifting further, I was beginning to get into line of sight of the city’s communications. I used the plans and my UI to locate a city receiver and sent a query message. All the operator had to do was measure the angle my laser struck the receiving station and he could locate me, at least enough to return a message. It came through not long after.
“QUERY: KELLER SUB LOC? NO RESPONSE TO MSG,” I sent.
“STANDBY.”
I hung in the water column and waited some more. A lot of work, civilian and during my time in the military, involved waiting and doing nothing. It spoke to my skill set.
“CONFIRM. NO RESPONSE FROM KELLER SUB. WILL SEND HELP. CAN YOU INVESTIGATE?”
“YES.” A man in need, no matter what I may feel about his fiddling around with my suit, trumped everything in the deep ocean. It had to. One day it might be me and I’d be grateful to anyone who came to help.
“STAY IN CONTACT. UPDATE WHEN POSSIBLE. SUBS ON WAY. TEN MINUTES.”
Ten minutes was a lifetime and meant they had so few subs that they didn’t keep even one on standby. I flicked my fingers in the control gloves and moved power to the engines and lights, switching from red to white. The increased spectrum might pick out more features. I pushed away from the city, seeking Keller’s sub.
At first, when it hit me, I didn’t realise what it was. The suit was buffeted and a rumbling, grinding moan passed through Oxyquid and into my ears. I sensed it rather than heard it. Then I felt a pulse in ocean. It pushed me from behind, increasing my speed and separation from the city.
The suit thrusters span me around on command so that I could see the city and determine the source. A cloud of sediment was rising up from the depths.
“SUPERSTRUCTURE FAILURE. PREPARE FOR INSTRUCTIONS.”
The message flashed up on my screen. It was clear. The strut that I had yet to fix had given way, had failed, and the city was in danger. It shouldn’t have failed. Nothing in the scans I had taken suggested imminent failure. Add that information to the pressure wave and you had the cause.
Explosives.
Someone had blown up the strut. The cable, boxes and display, a bomb. Someone had planted it on the strut and blown it up. If I had to guess who, Keller was top of my list.
However, right now, this second, I had another problem. I wasn’t too far away from a city that had suffered the explosive destruction of one of its supporting struts. It shouldn’t have spelled the end of the city. On the remaining struts, it should be able to survive, but they were out of alignment and already weakened. The city was falling down.
It was falling on me
Part 3
Chapter 17
I’ve never worried that a city would fall
on me. It’s not an event that I’ve lain awake worrying about, it’s one of those fears you take as read. Sadly, a city was falling on me.
One supporting strut had been blown up, destroyed. An act of terrorism or war if ever there was one. No one blows up their own city. The other struts already weakened by the movement of the ground underneath had not been able to cope with the shift of mass and weight. The city was falling down.
At the bottom of the ocean nothing happens quickly. Again, I had little to compare it with, but the resistance of the water was slowing the process. It was this fact of physics that gave me a chance. I jammed the throttle on my suit motors to full and tried to outpace the city walls as they slumped towards me.
The city displaced water as it fell and that gave me a little boost to my forward speed. Every extra knot would help. Through the Oxyquid, I could hear the little suit motors whining under the stress. There was the terrible queasiness in the pit of my stomach. It wasn’t going to be enough.
The display on the inside of my helmet told me the motors were giving it all they’d got and they had no more to give. But they did and I knew that. I suspect my suit knew that too as a warning flared up. Maximum safe levels of power and thrust deployed. It was followed with the warning not to exceed these limits as it may cause the suit to malfunction and put the user’s life in jeopardy.
I turned the safeties off and pushed the motors even harder. The whine rose in pitch and my screen flashed up more warning messages and icons than I’d ever seen. There was nothing I could do about them. The one safety feature you couldn’t over-ride, was the one that told you all the things you were doing were wrong.