Authors: Moore-JamesA
Nothing.
Not a damned
thing.
I went back
inside and killed off my brandy.
This time
around, sleep came quickly.
7
I learned
something important the next morning.
I learned
that science really can be a religion.
The weather was crappy, with high winds, dark clouds and choppy
waters.
Anyone with half a brain would
have called it a done deal and stayed off the waters.
My employers failed to heed my advice and
because they were paying for the privilege, we went out to the same spot as the
day before.
I don't think
the temperature broke forty degrees, but Ward insisted on having his team dive
and Charlie, being a man of strong ethics, went along with them into waters guaranteed
to make joints ache.
Me?
I sat in my cabin and brewed up coffee by the
gallon while the divers went into the water and then deep below the
surface.
They'd need something warm when
they came back up.
I've been in that
sort of cold before; there's nothing but pain involved when you come out of it.
I used to
dive, a long time ago.
It was a passion
of mine for a few years
in
the
Navy and afterward.
People change and sometimes experiences change them.
I got over my love of diving around the same time
I almost bled to death in the ocean.
I
got myself caught in a bad turn of events, starting with a vicious sting from a
man-o’-war.
Being hit by a jellyfish is
bad news, the sting leaves ugly red marks and even though it's seldom fatal,
the pain from the sting is enough to leave you in poor shape for a day or
so.
The Portuguese Man-o’-war is a nasty
little surprise that can do a lot worse to you.
It's not one jellyfish, but a colony of them bottled into a lethal
package.
I managed to run into one while
diving, and got the life half stung out of me.
That would
have been bad enough, but I was stupid that day and diving alone.
I remembered seeing the rocks, but not being
able to stop myself from hitting them hard.
I spent about half an hour getting knocked around and beaten by the
waves.
I probably would have died there,
but someone on the shore must have seen me.
Any way you look at it, I got lucky.
The Coast Guard pulled me out of the water before I could bleed to
death, but it was a close thing.
I spent
two weeks in a hospital room recovering from the lacerations and blood loss,
plus complications from infection.
Funny thing
about the accident:
it took all the fun
out of diving for me.
Ever since then
I've thought about diving a lot, and then decided against it.
Maybe I have an overdeveloped sense of
self-preservation.
We got out to
the reef a little after nine in the morning.
By ten, all of the divers were in the water and going down again.
For a change of pace, Ward relaxed a little
and stopped pacing like an expectant father.
Just because I
was a little bored and not ready to go fishing yet, I asked him why he wasn't
going along on the dive.
He smiled at
me,
a little embarrassed to be caught in the act of not
boldly facing any possible threats, and shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"I'm not much good at it, I'm
afraid.
I'll be going down later, but
felt it best to wait until they've mapped out a part of the caves before I
tried."
I looked at
him for a few seconds and read between the lines.
"Hate the water that much?"
"Absolutely terrified of it."
"And yet
here you are, ready to go swimming through underwater caves."
"There
are some things a man can let others do, and some things he has to take care of
himself.
I want to see those caves, and
my desire for knowledge — along with a good stiff drink when we get back up —
will outweigh the fear."
He
shrugged again and looked down at his feet.
"At least that's the plan."
"Sounds
like a good one to me."
"I've
seen you looking.
Granted it's not a
part of what you were hired for, but I'm rather surprised you haven't decided
to go along."
"Well,
I'm not a spring chicken these days, but also, I don't dive anymore."
I guess it was
my tone, but he didn't ask the reasons.
I didn't
volunteer, either.
"If you
change your mind, Captain, you have but to ask.
I think we could find a spare mask and tank."
"Thanks.
You never know.
I might take you up on that."
Instead of
leaving him to worry and pace, I showed the man how to bait lobster traps.
We talked a bit more about not much of
anything.
I found out he was married and
divorced.
He found out I was
married.
Other than the job at hand, we
also discovered we had damned near nothing in common.
That didn't
mean we couldn’t get along.
The two of
us sat in silence and manned the traps for a few hours.
It was nice.
I didn't ask
him if he and Diana
were
an item.
It wasn't any of my business.
Honestly, I don't think there was anything
between them.
I think there was a mutual
attraction, but I also don't think he was the type to try sleeping with his
students.
Okay, let's be honest
here:
I couldn't imagine him sleeping
with anyone.
He wasn't a bad looking
guy, but I sort of got the impression he was prissy.
The idea of dirt touching him was enough to
make him want to shower, and the idea of exchanging bodily fluids?
I could just see him spending a week in a
decontamination chamber.
That might be
mean, but that was just the impression I got from him.
*
*
*
*
*
Close to four
in the afternoon, they were done for the day.
That was a good thing, because they'd used up all the oxygen tanks by
then, having come up a couple of times to get refills.
Charlie was
finally getting over his attitude, and that was an even better thing.
He walked over to me as he was toweling off
and shivering violently.
Mostly, I
think, because I was the one handing out coffee and chicken soup in big mugs.
"Cold enough for you?"
Charlie looked
at me as he took the hot coffee and downed half of it in one gulp.
I figure there were probably a few layers of
his throat that weren't burned to sin after that, but only a few.
"You don't know from cold, Joe.
My balls didn't shrink, they
disappeared."
I chuckled and
handed him a mug of soup and a spoon.
He
was the last in line for the stuff and I had the heater going in the main
cabin.
He was still shivering but it was
a little less violently.
The thing about
being in water like that is your body adapts to a certain extent.
It feels a lot worse when you come out and
your blood starts flowing again.
Charlie
was proof of that.
He was practically
doing a jitterbug; he wasn’t trying to.
A couple of kids who'd been down there were still shaking so hard they
were having trouble carrying their mugs without covering themselves in coffee
or soup.
I don't think they minded much
when the hot liquid spilled over them.
I'd thought
long and hard about telling Charlie what I'd seen along with Mary Parsons.
In the long run, I decided to keep my mouth
shut unless he asked about it.
Instead I
brought up the dive.
"Did you
see anything interesting down there?"
"Oh, yeah."
He nodded hard and fast.
"Seriously?"
"Very seriously."
He settled down and I sat across from him on a couple of the
chairs.
"Those caves, Joe, they're
unbelievable.
We've mapped a big part of
them with the sonar, and I swear, I think they could go on forever."
He sounded as stunned as I guess he should
have.
I was trying to picture the caves
and having trouble.
"There's this
little tunnel — I guess you'd call it — and it goes on for a damned long time,
but once you're past that, it opens up and it's huge."
"What the
hell causes something like that?"
"Doc Ward
says it's probably gas bubbles from when the reef formed in the first
place."
He frowned.
"I dunno.
Parts of it seemed almost too smooth, does
that make sense?"
"Too smooth?"
"Yeah,
like they were polished."
He sipped
at his soup, and then broke down and used his spoon like a human being.
"Yeah, I
think that's called erosion."
"Underwater?"
"Ever
hear of a current?
See, now and then
water moves along the same course for a long, long time and as the years go by,
the water's constant motion makes the stone break away a little at a time.
You can even find pebbles that are almost as
smooth as glass."
Was I being
sarcastic?
Yes, I was.
Did Charlie catch it?
If the middle finger he waved at me was any
indication, then yes
..
"You'd
have to see it, Joe."
He got an
innocent look on his face.
"Oh, I
forgot.
You don't dive anymore."
Charlie was
one of those people who knew about my little diving accident.
Normally he'd have the good taste not to
mention it, but in his defense, I probably had it coming.
Of course, being as we were friends, a little
ribbing was to be expected.
Charlie went
to get into real clothes and I went off to pilot us back to Golden Cove.
I had a few books I wanted to look into, and
I needed to get things in order.
Meanwhile, I had my other crew members and the good professor pull in
the lobster traps.
We got enough of the
damned things to make dinner an easy choice for everyone.
Before dinner,
however, all of the divers that weren't staying on the yacht went back to their
rooms to get properly dressed in heavier clothes.
I took that time to go into town for the
first time.
Golden Cove
was just as nice to look at up close as it was at a distance.
The difference was you could see that most of
what was there was still new.
It was
like what I suspected walking onto a
everything was
real, but it didn't really feel like it was.
The only
bookstore I found in town was a place called Eats and Reads.
It was exactly what I would have expected to
find in a touristy little bookstore.
There were a dozen books with pictures of Golden Cove, complete with one
about how the town was rebuilt from the remains of Innsmouth.
That one was mostly filled with pictures and
a few notes about the different buildings and what they had been in the
past.
I bought the damned thing, but
mostly because the photography was damned nice.
I had an attendant
from the moment I walked into the shop.
There was a girl there who was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, both of
which were topped by an apron with a name tag that told me her name was Kathy.
I think that if she'd actually been doped to
the gills with Valium, she might have been less interested and maybe even less
dazed.
Despite her
sloth-like tendencies, the girl managed to find me three books written by the
Parsonses.
I spent a little over a
hundred dollars buying those books and a magazine about yachting.
Belle would have been proud of me; that was
more than I normally spend on books in a year and she always thought I should
read more.
The sun was
setting by the time I started back toward the
Isabella
.
The glare off the
water dazzled my eyes and left me feeling disoriented.
I thought back to the fuzzy pictures Jacob
had shown me on the first day, and tried to imagine what it would have been
like to walk toward the shore when those dark shapes came up from the water and
attacked.
Did anyone even know what was
coming for them before it was too late?
I didn't like to think about it.
The more I considered the devastation and considered the vague gray
forms, the more I wanted to head for home and screw the fat check I'd already
deposited in my checking account.