He’d almost done it. After leaving Barbara’s beach rental for the second time in three nights, he’d come
this
close to breaking his promise about getting high on weed. Tomlinson had hidden aboard
No Más
a baggie full of jays, beautifully rolled, all sprinkled with resin crystals from his kef box. The jays had glittered like éclairs when he held them near the candle he had lighted before sitting in meditation, as he did every day twice a day.
Meditation stilled the chaos of stars inside Tomlinson’s head. That’s why he did it. Smoking, though, sometimes added colors to the stillness. After a few ghost hits from really good shit, meditating also brightened the swirling stars and warmed the black chill of inner space.
Tomlinson hadn’t broken his promise, though. There was a reason. Just as he was about to light up, the kid had paddled past
No Más
in a canoe.
Damn kid. I should’ve ignored him. I could’ve pretended like I’d passed out or something, how would he know?
Talk about divine intervention! God had a wicked sense of humor for someone who had carved out so many prissy rules about behavior, but a reminder of the promise to stop smoking weed was exactly what he deserved after two-timing a close pal.
Tomlinson thought,
I’ve got to deepen up here. I’ve
got to take stock.
Yes, he did.
The regulator had been knocked from Tomlinson’s mouth when the first rocks fell, but he had managed to fit it in place before the second wave of limestone covered him. It was a pounding weight that had compressed him, in a fetal position, in darkness against the lake’s rocky bottom.
That was the way he lay now, as he tested the weight of the rocks that covered him. He moved his elbows, his feet, his fingers, relieved that his nervous system seemed to be okay and also that the rock and sand that covered him seemed to be malleable.
Will Chaser was beside him, still alive and conscious. Tomlinson knew because the boy’s fins were in his face. Every time the kid tried to struggle free, he came close to knocking off Tomlinson’s mask or kicking the regulator from his mouth.
But where was Ford? Had he been caught in the landslide, too?
Tomlinson let his mind settle, and then he pinged the area around him for information. As he did, his memory reviewed the moments prior to the wall’s collapse. He recalled Ford turning away from the mammoth tusk and then looking downward. In his peripheral vision, Tomlinson had seen Ford jettison air from his BC, before jackknifing toward the bottom. The man had one arm extended as if to pluck something from the sand.
And then . . . what had happened? Rocks had begun raining down, and Tomlinson couldn’t remember anything else but trying to fend off the crushing weight.
Now, beside him, Will Chaser rallied and tried to battle his way free once again. One of his fins knocked Tomlinson’s mask askew before the boy stopped struggling.
Tomlinson thought,
First time in my life I’ve been kicked in the face, and I’m happy about it.
He felt good, but only for a moment. The feeling was soon replaced by the memory of what he had said to Ford: “I’ll assume full responsibility for the kid’s safety.”
Gad! What a ridiculous thing to say.
Why did he make such stupid promises? There was no controlling destiny—few people knew that better than Tomlinson. Guaranteeing some future reality was as futile as attempting to change the past. But he had done exactly that—flipped God and destiny the finger, in effect—and now here they were.
Ford’s gonna kill me for this one! I don’t blame him, either.
That was almost funny, thinking about how pissed off Ford would be, but not for long, because the shock of what had happened was beginning to solidify in Tomlinson’s brain. His was a big brain, with banks of active synapses few other people possessed, but it was not an orderly brain. The cerebral segments were complexly wired, but they were also interrupted by filaments of scar tissue—not unlike the trunk rings of a tree that had been struck by lightning many times.
Tomlinson had, in fact, suffered several electrical shocks in his life, most as medical therapy, but some not. Plus there were also scars related to his experimentation with drugs, which, as Tomlinson viewed it, was part of his job description.
As a social scientist, it was one’s duty to explore the inner universe.
Ford had once told him, “The way your brain works, the shortest distance between two points is a circle.” The man had been frustrated by some debate they were having, something to do with philosophy or possibly baseball, which were pretty much the same thing in Tomlinson’s estimation.
Baseball?
Why the hell had his brain leaped to that?
Maybe he had suffered a concussion when the rocks fell. It was possible, so Tomlinson’s focus turned inward. He inspected the inner workings of his skull, but there was no pain, and his memory was definitely in the pink.
You don’t have time for this, dumb-ass. Hunker down and concentrate—or the boy’s going to die.
Tomlinson knew it was true.
The fact that he, too, would die was a secondary consideration. Tomlinson believed—believed to the core—that he had already died, and not just once. He had died at least three times, he felt sure, and possibly more. He was a walking ghost and he was comfortable with that fact. But Will Chaser’s life mattered. The kid was only sixteen. He had never driven a car, as far as Tomlinson knew, and had probably never been with a woman—or possibly even kissed a girl.
Tomlinson thought,
I’ve got to save this kid. I’ve got to save him or go down trying.
That thought came into his mind with a force that was as violent as anything he had ever experienced in his existence, dead or alive. It was then that Tomlinson asked himself,
How would Ford deal with the situation?
It came into his mind formulated like a weird chemical equation. It was another semihumorous cliché that would have irritated the hell out of the ever-pragmatic Dr. Ford:
W2D2.
What would Doc do?
Marion Ford was,
in Tomlinson’s experience, the most competent man he had ever met. Ford had a dark side, true. The man danced with demons, but at least Doc kept the contents of his dance card to himself.
Ford had a first-rate intellect, but it was not a dazzling intellect. He possessed no stellar gifts, mental or physical—something Tomlinson wouldn’t have said to the man’s face, but it was also true.
What Marion Ford did possess, though, was a genius for getting whatever needed to be done
done
. He was steady and relentless, and so by God dependable that Tomlinson actually admired the man for their polar differences, and he was a little jealous, too.
As Tomlinson lay beneath the rocks, a sensory impression came into his brain. It had to do with Ford, something current, not a memory from the past. It wasn’t just a feeling, it was a defined presentiment that was more like data being fed to him by a scanner, a mechanism of sorts, that existed outside himself. He waited, and soon the data took the form of an intuitive voice telling him,
Ford’s okay. He’s alive . . .
Tomlinson inspected the impression until he felt certain it was true. His sensory probing—along with his recollection of Ford jackknifing away from the wall—were additional proof that the man was still out there, swimming free. The confirmation created such a jolt of optimism in Tomlinson that he could have wept, had he allowed himself.
Instead, he tried to manipulate his brain into making an orderly assessment of the situation, which is precisely what Doc would have done.
First things first: How much air did he and the boy have left?
After a moment spent trying to organize the figures, Tomlinson gave up, thinking,
Oh . . . shit-oh-dear!
because he realized he didn’t have a clue how much air they had left. He had been so focused on the dive, on what he was seeing, sailing over the pristine lake bottom, then finding the beautiful mammoth tusk, that he had lost all track of time.
His dive-gauge console would have the information, but he couldn’t reach it. The console, which was attached by a hose to his BC, was somewhere pinned beneath him. Without it, all he could do was guess at how long they’d been down.
No, wait! That wasn’t true.
Moments before the wall collapsed, Ford had scribbled something on his dive slate and showed it to Will. Ford had written,
Surface in 5.
The man wouldn’t have written in it unless he’d checked Will’s pressure gauge and knew that the boy was down to half a tank. That had been only a few minutes ago.
Tomlinson thought
, The kid’s got between twenty and twenty-five minutes left . . . if he doesn’t start panicking and suck the bottle dry.
Twenty-five minutes was a sad excuse for a lifetime. Unless . . . unless one happened to be meditating, or zone-locked, soaring on some horizonless high, a feeling of euphoria that Tomlinson had experienced plenty of times but the kid probably had not. Sex came close . . . But only twenty-five minutes? Tomlinson reminded himself it was unlikely that Will Chaser, age sixteen, had touched that particular base.
Twenty-five minutes . . . Jesus, what a rotten hand to be dealt!
Or . . . maybe not. Could be that twenty-five minutes was time enough. Right now, Ford was probably hovering above the rubble, bulling rocks, clawing at the sand, digging like a cadaver dog to free them.
But what if he wasn’t?
Tomlinson closed his eyes in the blackness and listened. He could hear the metallic exhalations of Will’s rapid breathing. He could hear the percussive croaking of distant fish and the grandfather-clock ticking of limestone as it settled. But he didn’t hear anything that sounded like digging. Where the hell was Ford?
Tomlinson gave it some thought, then decided,
We can’t wait here, expecting Doc to find us. I’ve got to do something now.
He took three long drags on his demand regulator. The hiss of compressed gas jetting into his lungs was louder than the percolating bubbles that he exhaled. Next, he pushed the face mask tight to his face, levered an elbow under his ribs, then bucked hard against the weight of rubble that covered him.
The rubble moved.
The rocks didn’t budge much, but the weight above him shifted, and he gained enough space to use both hands.
Tomlinson tried it again and managed to fight his way to his knees. As he rested, he wondered why the limestone continued to move and grind next to him. Will Chaser, he realized, was struggling to create his own space. There was a danger, of course, that by struggling they would damage their tank fittings or crush a regulator hose, but there was no other option. Just lie there and die?
Nope, we’ve gotta ride, Clyde.
Tomlinson bucked his hips upward, but this time the rocks didn’t move. Twice more he tried, then attempted to think of a better method as he rested. His fins were making it difficult to find purchase with his toes, that was the problem. He couldn’t reach his feet with his hands, so he used his heels to pry one fin off, then the other.
When he felt ready, he got his knees under him, dug his toes into the sand and used his back to lift mightily, straining against the suffocating weight as if lifting a piano. The weight shifted as rocks grated overhead, but there was little gain.
Damn it.
He tried again. He lifted until his muscles trembled and his ligaments popped . . . and then something very strange happened. The limestone above him didn’t move, but a plate of rock beneath him made a bone-cracking sound, then splintered beneath him like a trapdoor. Tomlinson felt his body fall several feet. It was like falling through a rotten floor.
He winced, expecting the limestone above to come crashing down, but it didn’t. There was a brief clattering of rock, then silence. He had thrown his arms over his head to protect himself, but now he opened his eyes and stared up into a blackness that was like looking into an abyss.
The discomfort of crushing weight was gone, and now . . . now he could sense space around him. Not much space, but he could move his arms and legs. Tomlinson got his knees under him and very slowly sat up. When he did, he felt limestone hard against the back of his head, but there was a foot of clearance above his head.
He realized that they had dropped into a karst chamber or vent—a chamber that had been sealed by one or more large slabs of limestone as they fell.
Like a blind man, Tomlinson extended his hands, with his fingers wide, to explore the space around him, only to be suddenly blinded when Will Chaser switched on the little rubber-coated flashlight that he was carrying. The kid was pointing the beam directly at Tomlinson’s face.
Damn . . .
the thing was bright!
It wasn’t as powerful, though, thank God, as the little light that Ford had loaned Tomlinson. Of course not. Ford was a flashlight snob. An aficionado of high-tech LEDs and all instruments that manufactured light—understandable in a man who had spent so much of his life in dark places.
Fortunately, or maybe not, Will had insisted on carrying what equipment he had, which included the cheap little vulcanized flashlight. The thing was bright enough, though, to be blinding after so many minutes of total darkness.
Tomlinson made an
awwggg-shittt
sound through his regulator. He covered his eyes with one hand as he used the other to find the boy’s arm and then he pushed the light away.
Before the rock slide, he and the boy had gotten pretty good at verbal communication despite clinching regulators between their teeth. In Tomlinson’s experience as a diver, not many people could do it. Communication with a chunk of rubber in one’s mouth required mental skills that bordered on the telepathic. Ford refused to attempt it, but Will Chaser was a natural.