Black Gold

by Chris Ryan

  Paulo saw Hex's light jerk wildly. He powered towards him. Immediately comforted by Paulo's light, Hex stopped struggling and stayed still, but at first Paulo couldn't see what was wrong. There were the discarded pipes, but Hex wasn't touching them. Yet he clearly couldn't move. He tried to touch Hex's fins. And then he felt it. A nylon fishing net, no more visible than a cobweb in the water, tangled around the discarded pipes – and around Hex's legs. Fishing nets were the bane of divers' lives. They were hard to see, incredibly strong and took ages to untangle. This was how dolphins often died, trapped by tuna nets and held under until they drowned.

  Paulo pulled a piece of the fishing net up so that Hex could see it. Hex nodded; he understood. Paulo unsheathed his knife and began to cut the net. He had to saw to and fro to get through the tough nylon, but even when he signalled to Hex to move his fins, Hex was still trapped. The fins had sharp edges and ridges on them, like ribs, with a metal clip to hold them on. Hex pulled his gloves off to get a better grip, leaned over, grabbed a handful of the netting and started cutting too. A sharp pain made him pull away, his hand throbbing and sharp as though he had closed it around a blade.

  Paulo saw him recoil. Had Hex cut himself? That was the last thing they needed. He shone his torch on Hex's hand. He looked at the net and there, trapped in the nylon web, barely visible, were long ghostly filaments like see-through strings. What were they?

  Hex was shaking his hand as if that would stop it hurting. It looked very painful. Paulo had to finish the cutting himself.

  At last Hex was free and the two rose up gratefully, looking at the dive computers to check their depth. They were blinking. They had stayed at the bottom too long – about five minutes too long.

  They wasted no time in swimming to the first decompression stop, thirty metres up. They found the anchor chain, a black slanted line in the water, and hung there, one arm wrapped around it.

  Both their dive computers were blinking red warnings.

  Hex wrote on his slate: Down too long.

  Paulo nodded.

  Hex showed Paulo his dive computer. It had recalculated their decompression time. That extra five minutes down translated into another fifteen minutes necessary to decompress. They had allowed more air for emergencies, but not that much. They would not be able to do the last ten minutes of decompression.

  Paulo wrote on his slate: Follow plan. Shorten last stop.

  Hex nodded. The lower stops were most important; shortening the last stop wasn't exactly a good idea, but it was the best they could do.

  Paulo started to play the game on his dive computer. Hex looked around in the gloom. His display kept on blinking, telling him he didn't have enough air to decompress properly. He'd have to shut it up. He clicked to the game. Rubbish – just a 2D platformer. But while he was thinking about how bad it was, at least it shut out the immediate problem. They might be about to do themselves a lot of damage. And his hand was really painful.

  It was getting cold. Hex clicked away faster, hoping the time would go more quickly. But he kept seeing an image in his mind – an image of a viper with a bubble in its eye . . .

  A sharp bang reverberated off the headland and out to sea. Amber threw her book down and grabbed the binoculars.

  In the distance was the tanker – the only place it could have come from. The tanker itself still looked much the same, but figures on the shore were running about in a panic. Obviously something had happened on board. She shuddered. Was that the explosion Greg had warned them about?

  She opened a compartment and pulled out the charts. As the tanker was between them and the dive centre bay, she began to work out somewhere else they could land, so that they could then call Danny and get him to drive the boat back on a trailer.

  Paulo was wishing they hadn't done their homework so well. They were at the last stop, ten metres below the surface, their air gauges nearly at empty – and they were about to cut short their decompression by ten minutes. Cold pages of clinical text swam before his eyes: nitrogen bubbles floating in his veins and arteries, attacking tiny blood vessels, then rupturing bigger vessels in the lungs, causing heart attacks and strokes.

  Hex wrote on his slate and turned it so Paulo could see: Medic centre. Decomp chamber. ASAP.

  Paulo nodded. He took a breath but got nothing. His tank was empty. He let go of the anchor cable and went up.

  The two boys exploded onto the surface, gasping.

  Amber lifted her head from her book and looked at them. 'About time too.' But then she saw something she didn't like. When Hex and Paulo took their masks off, they put them on top of their heads instead of round their necks. Some people did that by mistake, but it was a move you were supposed to save for when you were in trouble and there was no way that Paulo or Hex would be that undisciplined.

  Hex was the nearer. She pulled him into the boat first, then they both hauled Paulo in.

  'We need decompression, fast,' Paulo gasped. 'How quickly can you get us to the medical centre?'

  Amber yanked the anchor up into the boat, started the engine and wheeled it around in one smooth movement. She opened the throttle on full and pointed it towards land.

  'What went wrong?' she said. 'I thought we calculated it thoroughly.'

  'Hex got trapped,' said Paulo. He slipped off his BCD and the tanks clanged into the bottom of the boat. 'We spent longer at the bottom than we meant to.'

  Hex pulled off the last of his dive kit. His fins were ragged where Paulo's knife had cut him free.

  Amber looked at the headland. She could see a red shape on the cliff overlooking the tanker. A fire engine. Her intention had been to go straight to the road that came down that cliff, but now it was blocked by emergency vehicles, she'd have to go elsewhere. To the next bay? No, she remembered, she couldn't – that bay was inaccessible by vehicle. She could do what she had planned – go to the next bay along and call Danny – but that would be no good either because it would be too far to drive from there to the medical centre. She would have to make for the beach where the tanker was.

  Ahead was the yellow sorbent boom and its pink buoy. Amber grasped the tiller and swung the boat around the edge of the pink buoy.

  Hex slumped down on the bench, his head in his hands, confusion in his eyes.

  Paulo shook him. 'What's happened, amigo?'

  The radio crackled and Amber grabbed it. 'Fathom Sprinter receiving. Over.'

  'Fathom Sprinter, this is the coastguard. You are in danger. There has been an explosion in the tanker and you are in a dangerous area. Please use a different beach to dock, repeat, use a different beach to dock.' The voice changed. 'Lynn, is that you? Over.'

  'No, it's Amber. Is that Greg? Over.'

  'Amber, you can't go to that beach. The tanker's unstable and there's oil all over the water. It could ignite. Over.'

  Hex was trying to explain how he felt to Paulo. 'I tried to stand up and just felt dizzy.' His voice was dazed. He looked at his hands, watching the fingers open and close. Across his left hand was an angry red weal. He banged that hand against the boat as the boat hit a wave but he didn't seem to feel it. 'My hands are going numb,' he said slowly.

  Listening, Amber went cold. Paulo was looking sleepy too. Numbness; drowsiness – both were symptoms of the bends.

  'Amber?' said Greg on the radio again. 'Are you still there? Over.'

  'Here, Greg,' she replied. Her voice was brisk. 'I've got two divers here with the bends. I don't have time for a detour; they're showing symptoms and they need decompression immediately. Over and out.'

  Hex looked as though he was calm and floppy, but inside he was panicking. He felt trapped in a tingling, fuzzy body that didn't obey him any more. He couldn't even scratch where his skin felt itchy. He was perfectly aware of what was going on, but felt totally helpless.

  Amber was alongside the tanker now. She could see the slope of its deck as it poked out of the water. Her heart pounded in her throat as she pushed the throttle further, but the engine was g
iving her its top speed. The Fathom Sprinter was making a deep wake in the water, pushing aside the oily scum on the surface. It was all flammable. Past the tanker now, just the home stretch to go, but still they were surrounded by oil. Ahead on the shore, firemen were waving to her frantically, the fluorescent stripes on their uniforms accentuating their agitation. 'Go back,' their signals were saying. 'Go back.'

  She couldn't go back. Every second counted. She was less than 300 metres away from the shore now. Now 200 metres. Paulo and Hex looked as though they had gone to sleep. 'Not long, guys,' she called. Behind her the boat's engine churned the oily water into a coffee-coloured wake.

  Suddenly she was surrounded by firemen wading into the water. She cut the engine. She'd done it.

  'Those two,' she gasped, out of breath. 'They've got the bends.' A fireman grasped her around the waist and lifted her out. Behind her, more were lifting out the unresisting bodies of Hex and Paulo.

  9

  THE CHAMBER

  The decompression chamber was a yellow cylinder four metres long and a metre wide – a solid metal capsule at one end of the room. Pipes and valves came out of its sides and connected to a big compressor that pumped pressurized air into the chamber.

  It was split into two halves, each with a couple of hospital trolleys so that patients could lie down. In one half, through a tiny glass window, another patient wearing a transparent oxygen mask watched Hex and Paulo settle into the new compartment while their three friends stood around an intercom talking to them.

  'Interesting outfits,' said Amber to the boys. They were wearing white cotton T-shirts and boxer shorts. Usually they were strictly men in black.

  'Mara made us put them on,' said Paulo. His voice through the intercom was a little crackly.

  'We're not allowed synthetic fibres in case they have to give us oxygen. They could catch fire.'

  'Oh my,' said Li. 'Clothes catching fire.'

  Paulo managed a seductive grin. 'This is a regular problem of mine.' But his eyes looked hollow and tired.

  'So, no palmtop for you, Hex,' said Amber.

  Hex gave her a withering look, slightly blurred by the thickness of the glass. 'The pressure would probably upset it anyway,' he said.

  'Doh!' said Amber, smacking her forehead with the palm of her hand. 'How could I not know that?' But she was worried. Hex looked even worse than Paulo.

  The chamber began to pressurize. There was a faint hiss, then a high-pitched whine like a jet engine powering up. Inside the chamber, the pressure was rising. Paulo and Hex were now 'diving'.

  Mara had downloaded an entire record of the boys' dive from the wrist-mounted computers – depths, timings, the gases they had been breathing. She was closely watching a bank of dials, pressure meters and lights, although they were all controlled by her laptop. 'As we increase the pressure the bubbles should dissolve,' she explained. 'Then we gradually bring them to normal surface atmosphere. Of course it takes longer because they did it wrong the first time and we have to make sure the gases clear properly.'

  Inside the chamber, Paulo and Hex started swallowing hard, looking uncomfortable.

  Alex moved away from the intercom, his face concerned. 'Are they OK?'

  Mara glanced in at the window. 'They're OK – they're descending quite fast and it makes your sinuses pop.'

  'What about Hex's wound?' said Amber. 'On his hand.'

  A jellyfish sting,' replied Mara. 'But not a bad one. They're Cyanea – not poisonous, just uncomfortable. They get caught in fishing nets and leave tentacles behind when they break away. I see lots of fishermen with stings.'

  Li gulped. 'Cyanea?' She spoke into the intercom. 'Hey, Hex, the jellyfish that stung you is two metres across and seventy metres long.'

  'Don't believe you,' came Hex's voice faintly.

  He sounded exhausted. Amber and Li exchanged worried looks. They both knew that Hex didn't like enclosed spaces.

  The patient in the other half of the chamber was now lying down with his eyes closed. 'Mara, who's their room-mate?' Li asked.

  'That's Andy,' said Mara. 'Don't take any diving tips from him. He dives too often. He's a dreadful example.' Her eyes were flicking from the dials to the laptop, checking that everything was going according to plan. 'He's also rather accident prone and managed to get himself shot with a harpoon gun this morning.'

  Li and Amber looked into the chamber again. The patient had a big dressing on his left arm above the elbow. 'Shot with a harpoon gun?' Li repeated.

  'Yes. The police have been here questioning him about it. He was barely conscious and didn't make a lot of sense so they're going to come back when he's more compos mentis.'

  Hex and Paulo were now lying full length on their beds, looking even more like patients.

  'We'd better let them rest,' said Amber.

  Li nodded. She put her hand on the intercom switch to turn it off, but before she did so, she held up the video camera so that they could see it. 'You guys got some brilliant footage. The drill site's much bigger than we thought. We'll come back later.'

  Hex propped himself up on his elbow. 'Make copies,' he called. Both girls nodded at him. He sank back and Li turned off the intercom.

  'I can put a copy on my laptop,' said Mara. She put her hand out.

  Alex was with Mara, watching the instruments. 'How long do they have to spend in there?'

  'A few hours. Then I'll keep them in the centre tonight for observation and see how they are in the morning. But there'll be no more diving for a month.'

  Li handed the video camera to Mara. 'A month!'

  'It takes a while for gases to dissipate. Even you guys have got a few extra gases dissolved in your blood after that dive down to the tanker yesterday. Hex is particularly vulnerable – the dive computer shows that he was using air at twice the rate he would if he was swimming normally when he was down at his deepest, so he'll have more gases in his blood than Paulo. Quite a lot of the cases of decompression sickness I see are because something went wrong at the bottom, someone panicked, or had to struggle. They start breathing really fast – more gases get dissolved in the blood . . .' She shrugged. 'The main thing is, you got them here in time. If you'd had to get us to pick you up from another bay it might have meant a delay of another half hour.'

  Li patted Amber on the shoulder quietly and Alex nodded.

  Mara then connected the video camera to her laptop and brought up a program to copy it onto her hard drive.

  'How's it going with the Clean Caribbean Consortium?' said Alex.

  'An inspector's coming tomorrow,' said Mara, 'travelling down from Barbados. They want to come in person, particularly because it's a major company like ArBonCo. I'm also going to show them the medical notes of patients I've treated recently. I've been overrun by children with skin irritation and asthma, and lots of older people with respiratory problems.'

  The video file finished copying. Mara pressed PLAY and the footage began to run.

  Alex saw the dull red metal pipes like a tree plantation in the gloom. He'd seen it before on the monitor's tiny camera, but now he saw it on Mara's laptop screen he realized how big it was. He whistled softly. 'Well done, Hex and Paulo.'

  Mara was horrified. 'This is huge. It's a major site. If this goes into production it will be a vast platform. There will be helicopters and boats going out there every few days and this coast will become like a bus terminus. The pollution will increase tenfold. It will kill the ecology and the dive schools will be gone for good.' She turned to Alex, Amber and Li. 'This footage really shows what we're up against.'

  'Well, it had to be something big,' said Alex.

  'Leave this to me,' said Mara. 'I'll guard it with my life. You go off to the festival now and celebrate.'

  'Festival?' echoed Amber.

  'There's a concert in the stadium at Willemstad. Reggae bands, jazz – you name it, they'll be there. Go on – let your hair down. You deserve a good time.'

  Alex looked at the little windows in the de
compression chamber. 'They do too. They worked really hard today.'

  'Seriously, guys,' said Mara, 'you can't be in Curaçao at this time of year and miss the festival. I'll be keeping an eye on Hex and Paulo. You go and chill out, have a change of scene. You've done nothing but work since you came here.' She gave them her most severe look. 'Doctor's orders.'

  Amber, Li and Alex would rather have stayed, but they got the distinct feeling that Mara wanted to be left in peace to do her job. 'We'll bring you popcorn,' said Amber as they headed out of the door.