by Adam Roberts
Billiard-Fanon scrambled back up the corridor to the engine room, gabbling ‘Aye-sir! Aye-sir!’ like a slogan. At the other extreme of the craft Castor’s bestial face head popped through the doorway. ‘The ballast tanks won’t inflate, sir. They won’t. There’s—there’s—’
‘What is it, sailor?’
Castor spoke again in a smaller voice, ‘There’s nothing we can do, sir.’
The captain looked about, his brows ridged with wrinkles like beach sand at low tide. ‘But this makes no sense! Three vital systems malfunctioning simultaneously – and on our first proper dive?’
‘Ill luck,’ noted Lebret, laconically.
‘Luck? It must be sabotage!’ roared the captain. ‘It cannot be otherwise!’
‘Well, Captain,’ said Lebret with a weary sigh. ‘If one of the crew has betrayed us, he is going to die along with everyone else. So justice will at least be done.’
The descent continued to tug insistently inside the guts of all the crew.
‘There must be something we can do!’ declared the captain.
The depth gauge spun past three thousand metres. At exactly that moment, by strange synchronicity, the whole length of the vessel began to moan, like a spirit in torment. The noise was a sinuously modulated organ note, an octave and a half below middle C: a weirdly vocalic, human-sounding din. Struggling back into his tipped-forward seat, Le Petomain wrestled the main controls.
‘The ship itself sings our death chant,’ said Dilraj Ghatwala, looking surprisingly calm. ‘Under the circumstances …’ he began, before drawing a silver cigarette case from the inside pocket of his tunic, and taking out a white tube.
The captain rubbed his face with his hand. Finally – an action nobody in any of his previous crews had ever seen him perform before – he crossed himself. ‘Messieurs,’ he announced, to the bridge. ‘Our fate is sealed. We have, I fear, only short moments before inevitable extinction.’
He lifted the ship’s microphone from its cradle, and addressed the entire craft. ‘Messieurs, crewmen, comrades. Please assemble on the bridge, without delay.’
Replacing the microphone, he turned to Ghatwala, ‘Sir, my pipe is in my cabin, and I do not believe I shall have time to retrieve it. May I trouble you for a cigarette, and a light?’
‘By all means, Captain,’ Ghatwala replied, in his heavily accented French. He fumbled one of the white, hyphen-shaped sticks from his case, and then struck a match to light it for Cloche. As the captain sat back, blowing out smoke, the bridge slowly filled with the entire complement of crew. Billiard-Fanon, his passage aided by the forward tilt of the craft, returned from the engine room. Alain de Chante led Avocat, Capot and Castor up from the front. Even Pannier emerged from the galley, wiping sweaty hands on his white apron.
‘Monsieur Le Petomain,’ the captain said, when everybody was assembled. ‘Please silence the alarm.’
Though the chiming alarm-sound could hardly be heard over the Hadean groaning of the hull, Le Banquier did as he was ordered.
‘Messieurs,’ said Capitaine Cloche, drawing deeply on his cigarette and exhaling a spear of smoke. He spoke loudly, to be audible over the din. ‘I regret to inform you all that disaster, swift and deadly as a serpent, has stung the Plongeur. We descend to inevitable death. You can all see for yourself, on the depth gauge, the terrible speed with which we are going down; you can hear for yourself the implacable, increasing forces pressing in upon us from every side. Truly did a great poet once write: facilis descensus Averno. As truly did he add: impossibility attends the return. We must ready ourselves!’
Every face was angled towards the captain; every ear strained to hear his words over the persistent metallic clanging noises.
‘Soon one of two things will happen,’ Cloche continued. ‘Either we will strike the seabed in a collision that must rip open the stern; or else the sheer pressure of water will overwhelm the structural integrity of the Plongeur, crushing us all. In either case we will all die quickly, and cleanly, and so we shall surrender our spirits to the deep. Some of us here have been sailors all our lives; and fought not long ago through a long, bitter war, a conflict that could have taken our lives at any moment. Some of you’ – and he nodded towards Lebret and the scientists – ‘are not. In either case, messieurs, I suggest you direct your minds to whichever God commands your heart.’
He drew himself up in his chair, bracing himself against the angle with both feet, and looked about him, speaking still more loudly to be heard as the noises of the squeezed hull magnified and shrieked. ‘I shall share with you all something I have told no other human being – not even my wife! It is this: Death is an ocean. I have always known that I would die beneath the surface of the sea. God created the earth not from void; but from the primal waters – you can read this truth, in the book of Genesis, at the very beginning of the Bible. And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moved over the waters. What does this mean, messieurs? I am no theologian, but it seems clear enough to me. The deep waters preceded the creation of the universe. The deep waters preceded even God, perhaps. From the deeps came the cosmos; and we who are returning now into the deeps, to meet our final rest, will find a purer, more authentic death than those human beings fated to die upon the alienated land.’
He stopped speaking. All around the confined space of the bridge, faces looked harrowed, expressions clenched with fear. Only Lebret appeared calm in the face of his imminent demise.
Taking their cue from their captain, everybody – with the single exception of Billiard-Fanon, who did not smoke – brought out cigarettes, or borrowed some from others.
‘Depth three thousand metres,’ announced Le Banquier. ‘Pressure three hundred and ten kilograms per square centimetre.’
‘I’m astonished the hull has not already cracked,’ said Jhutti, in a low voice. ‘At the very least, the observation window should have caved-in.’
‘Nothing on the sonar.’
‘Nothing? Surely the seabed must be registering?’
‘Nothing, Captain.’
‘Is it working?’
‘I—I don’t know, Captain.’
Still the digits whirled.
‘Comrades!’ barked Castor, suddenly. ‘I must unburden myself before I die. I married a woman called Marie in the town of Vésinet, in Alsace, before the war. Then in 1947 I married Antoinette Tronson in Marseille. Marie died of typhus a few years ago, but I had already married again – a widow called Emma Chassoux, who has a small dairy farm near the coast in Normandy. I planned to retire to that farm, messieurs. Antoinette has no idea of the existence of Emma, nor Emma of Antoinette.’
Nobody made any comment upon this confession of bigamy on behalf of the snout-faced engineer; for if none felt inclined to condemn, yet none felt authorised to forgive, his delinquency. The groaning of the hull increased in volume, and slid a semitone up in pitch. The entire structure of the sub was starting to vibrate, like a wine-glass rubbed around its rim by a wet finger.
A moment later young Avocat spoke up. ‘I grew up on a farm,’ he announced. ‘Near Saint-Jean-les-Deux-Jumeaux, which is in Seine-et-Marne. When I was a boy, my cousin, Emmeline, died. I watched her die and I did nothing to help. She was epileptic, messieurs. One day she milked the cow. But she had a seizure, and her head became wedged in the milk jug, and she choked to death. I did nothing, except laugh at what seemed to me, as it was happening before my eyes, only an absurdity – a merely comic eventuality. I could say I thought she was deliberately acting the fool; or that I was simply overcome with the ridiculousness of this girl with her head in a jug – I no longer know the truth of it. By the time I realised how serious matters were it was too late.’ He began to weep, tears clearing paths through the sweat upon his cheeks. ‘I told the priest about it, and he absolved me, but I have never felt clean – I have never forgotten it. And I told no other human being, save my sainted mother who is dead now. I have told nobody else, until
this moment!’
Billiard-Fanon, who was standing near the young sailor, patted his back reassuringly. ‘God forgives you, young man,’ he said, gruffly. ‘God forgives.’
Avocat gulped like a frog once, twice, thrice, with sorrow, and buried his face in the crook of his arm.
Pannier coughed, and said. ‘If it’s death we’re discussing,’ he said, ‘then I’ve my bit to add. I killed a man in the war. I killed many, of course, for it was war, and killing is the idiom of war. But this man was not a German. His name was Maheut, and he came from Saint-Andiol-Bouches-des-Rhône. I put a bullet in his back. I’m not sorry I shot him, for he was a bad man. But I regret that I did not shoot him in the front, like a man. There! I have spoken. I’m not going to say anything further about this matter, ever again.’
When nobody replied, and despite having declared that he would not say anything more, Pannier spoke again. His voice betrayed intense inner strain. ‘I’m not sorry I killed him,’ he said. ‘He deserved to die, when round us both, men who deserved to live were being killed. He was a coward and a cheat. But sometimes I have dreams. Bad dreams. I don’t know why it is so, for he was a wicked man. But sometimes I do. He was,’ Pannier added, after another pause, as if this explained it, ‘rich. I was poor.’
‘We shall all be equally wealthy soon,’ said Lebret.
After that nobody spoke.
When the time came, Le Banquier called out, ‘Four thousand metres.’
De Chante gave a great, shouty laugh. ‘What is the delay?’ he cried. ‘Our guilty consciences have confessed themselves. What is fate waiting for? Extreme unction?’
‘It will be soon,’ declared the captain. ‘Is the sonar functioning?’
Le Petomain replied: ‘the signal is going out, Captain. I think. But there’s nothing coming back.’
‘Another malfunction! The entire vessel is breaking down. No way of knowing when the collision shall occur.’ He looked around the bridge. ‘Perhaps there will be time for one last confession. Three things fail, simultaneously, catastrophically, just as we begin our first deep dive – it is too much to be a coincidence. I believe somebody here has sabotaged this craft! Somebody prepared to sacrifice his own life in order to destroy this vessel. Well … the sabotage has been successful. Nobody here will ever speak to another human being again. It will do you no harm. Whoever you are, confess!’
Not a word was spoken in reply to this; each one looked from face to face. Eventually the captain sighed – a resonant, thrumming sound, like a lion’s purr.
‘Whichever of you is behind this,’ he announced, having to shout to be heard, ‘you disappoint me. Own your treachery! What harm can your confession do now? We shall all of us be folded into Death’s bosom presently!’
Nobody spoke.
‘So be it,’ said Cloche, shaking his head slowly.
‘Captain?’ enquired Jhutti. ‘May we—may we retire to our cabins? Since our individual extinction is assured, we would like prepare for it in the ways that our culture and religion stipulate.’
‘Of course,’ said the captain. The Indians struggled up the awkward slope and along the aft corridor.
‘Captain?’ asked Capot. ‘Although it is hopeless, I think I would prefer to be busy. I would prefer not to meet my doom idle. May I go aft and attempt again to repair the driveshaft?’
‘Of course,’ said Cloche.
‘And I will go fore and look again at the tanks,’ declared Castor. ‘With your permission, Captain. I don’t pretend I will be able to fix things, but I would at least like to know why they failed. I would like to know it, before I die.’
‘Everybody is excused. Go where you please, messieurs. Go to meet your dooms severally.’
Castor scurried down the sloping corridor and away from the bridge. Pannier repaired to the kitchen – to open a bottle of the captain’s table wine (for, he thought to himself, it would add tragedy to tragedy to waste so fine a vintage). Le Banquier remained at the controls, though there was nothing he could do with them. But the other sailors dispersed throughout the craft. Only Lebret loitered, standing a little behind and to the left of the captain’s chair.
The walls increased the intensity and tone of their vibrations: a step change. Several dials in the control panel popped their circular glass covers from their slots. One of the bolts that fixed the captain’s chair to the floor worked loose and bounced upwards. A light bulb burst into a steam of glass fragments. ‘Here it comes!’ declared Cloche, and closed his eyes. ‘It is the end!’ But his words were inaudible, drowned out by the huge basso profundo roar of the metal fabric of the Plongeur, trembling on the extreme edge of collapsing under the inescapable weight of water.
4
AFTER THE DISASTER
But the end did not come. Instead, and gradually, the shaking calmed, and the deep buzz of vibration quietened. It was a very long drawn out diminuendo, the noise and the shaking withdrawing itself incrementally until both had almost disappeared. Impossible to believe that the implacable wrath of the ocean was diminishing – it was quite against all the laws of physics.
‘Monsieur Le Petomain,’ said Captain Cloche. ‘What has happened?’
‘I—I cannot say, captain,’ replied the astonished shipman.
‘What is our depth?’
‘Five thousand seven hundred metres, sir, and still descending.’
‘Impossible! The ocean is not so deep! Not at our location, at any rate. We should long since have collided with the continental shelf.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Your instrumentation is faulty, sailor.’
‘That may be, Captain,’ conceded Le Petomain. ‘Except that – well, we are still descending!’
There was no denying this. The Plongeur was still angled sharply forward; the downward motion, shuddery, a little uneven, but still unmistakably downwards, could still be felt in every solar plexus.
‘Sonar?’
‘Nothing, Captain.’
The captain pondered for a moment. ‘The depth is consistent with both the rapidity of our descent and the length of time elapsed,’ he announced. ‘In which case – the only explanation is that we have fallen into some unmapped trench within the ocean floor.’ But then, again like a lion, he shook his shaggy head; a gesture of immense force and emphasis. ‘No!’ he contradicted himself. ‘These are not the south polar seas – or the middle of the Pacific! This is a few score leagues west of the coast of France! It is not possible that our oceanographic maps could have missed such a feature! I have sailed above and beneath the waves in these waters for two decades. There is no such trench!’
Lebret lowered himself into a seated position upon the sloping floor, his foot braced against a bulkhead. He lit a new cigarette. The smoke pooled about him like a caul. ‘Quite apart from anything else,’ he observed. ‘Even if we had slipped inside some uncharted fissure, the pressure should have crushed us completely by now.’
‘Six thousand metres,’ announced Le Petomain. ‘Hull pressure … is decreasing, sir. How can that be?’
‘It cannot!’ replied the captain. ‘What is the reading?’
‘Four hundred and seven kilograms per square centimetre, sir.’
‘Quite impossible. That pressure gauge must be faulty, even if the depth gauge is correct. Indeed,’ the captain added, as the idea started up in his head. ‘It is likely that the pressure gauge would malfunction. The sensor is not designed to measure pressures of the intensity to which it has been exposed. The very thing it has been measuring would destroy it.’
‘Sir!’
‘Water pressure increases at approximately one hundred kilograms per square centimetre for every thousand metres one descends,’ the captain said, as if speaking to himself. ‘Accordingly we can calculate the approximate pressure that must obtain – if the depth gauge is indeed correct.’
‘The calculation produces a number far in excess of the tolerances of our hull,’ Lebret pointed out.
The captain sho
ok his head again – a gesture of such exaggerated swing he might have been having a conniption fit. ‘No!’ he announced. ‘It cannot be. You have kept something from me, Lebret. You and your damn blackface scientists from India, and your mysterious Jewish-Swiss finance. I don’t care if de Gaulle himself vouched for your patriotism – you have kept something from me. I don’t know what the Plongeur’s hull is made of, but it must be a material tougher than steel. Titanium is it? I have heard rumours that the Americans have built a bathysphere out of titanium, to lower into the Mariana trench. Is that it?’
‘Take a moment, Captain,’ said Lebret, carelessly. ‘And think through what you are saying. You inspected the ship yourself, I presume, before you took her out of port. You went through her inside and out. Yes?’
‘Of course,’ conceded Cloche, reluctantly.
‘You are saying you can’t tell the difference between steel plates and some other metal?’
‘That could hardly be,’ said Cloche. ‘Only I did note the newness and thickness of the paint that had been applied to all surfaces.’
‘Quite apart from anything else,’ Lebret said, shaking his head, ‘there is no magic material that could preserve a teardrop-shaped cavity of air under the degrees of which we are speaking. Besides – the walls themselves shook and groaned as we descended. And now they are silent. You may believe the evidence of your own senses, I hope?’
The captain pulled on his beard with his right hand, deep in thought. After a moment, Le Petomain sang out: ‘Seven thousand metres, sir! External pressure – according to the read-out, sir – is two hundred kilograms per square centimetre.’
‘Impossible,’ growled Cloche.
At that moment, Lieutenant Boucher and Enseigne de vaisseau Billiard-Fanon climbed back up the corridor and into the bridge. ‘Sir?’ asked the second-in-command. ‘What has happened, sir?’