Submerged Read online

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I’m sure you’re right. If there was anything to be seen, you’d have seen it.”

  Gayle look relieved, but she just nodded.

  “All right, then. You ready to go down?”

  “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

  * * *

  I’d misspoken.

  There was no way I could have been ready for the descent, crammed into a ball half the size of my dorm room at Husker Hall with two other people. I’d never realized I was claustrophobic until about fifteen minutes into the trip, when I tried to adjust away from the instruments that lined the interior of the sphere for about the thousandth time, only to elbow the pilot, Hans, in the side, eliciting some German that sounded like cursing. Then again, everything German sounded like cursing. Still, I’d been at the bottom of my fair share of dog piles on the field. I knew what tight quarters were like, having someone’s knee in your crotch or ass in your face. But those situations only lasted for a short while before the whistle blew and your teammates were dragging people off of you. In this case, the people smothering me were my teammates, and that whistle was hours away from blowing. I don’t know how my parents handled it.

  “Just breathe,” Gayle advised. “It takes some getting used to, especially for a big guy. You feel like a bull in a china shop. But nothing in here is that fragile. Except maybe Hans.”

  Which elicited more German, and an answering laugh from Gayle. It was that laugh, more than anything, that got me to relax a little. That, and the flash of tentacle I spied out the starboard peephole.

  Lucy.

  I guess she wanted to know what happened to my folks, too.

  Or maybe she already did, and wanted to be there to comfort me when I found out.

  Which was utterly ridiculous, of course; squid might be smart, but empathetic? Compassionate? That seemed like a reach.

  Then again, dogs exhibited those qualities and people didn’t bat an eye, maybe because they were warm and furry and had those soulful, sad eyes. So why couldn’t a cephalopod, which was arguably smarter than a dog? Just because they lived in an environment alien enough to be another planet didn’t mean they couldn’t relate to human pain just as much as a warm-blooded surface-dwelling animal, did it?

  I shook my head. How my parents would laugh at my questions. Still, Lucy’s presence was a comfort, and I held onto it as we descended ever farther.

  * * *

  “Three hundred,” Panut’s voice said over the comm unit. We were all wearing head-phones, so we could hear each other over the noise of the submersible’s systems and stay in touch with the Ricketts. Crammed in together like the proverbial sardines, and we could only communicate electronically. “Temperature’s at seventy-three point nine. That’s just crazy.”

  “It’s hot, that’s for sure,” Gayle said.

  She was right. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I had expected—despite knowing, theoretically, that we were descending into a heated blob—to be cold. Cold, I was used to. You didn’t play for Nebraska, or live there, without getting used to that.

  “Three-fifty,” Panut said. “Seventy-three point—no, seventy-four even. Everybody okay down there?”

  “Okay here,” I said.

  “Are you sure we’re in the North Pacific?” Hans asked. “I think Collum was drunk when he was charting our course.”

  I could feel Gayle tense from where I sat. “Lights,” she said. “All of them.”

  Hans flipped a couple of switches, and suddenly the night-dark ocean was daylight-bright, at least for a hundred feet or so. Beyond that, the darkness encroached.

  And at its edge, barely visible, were tentacles. Lots of them. Thousands.

  “The cephalopods,” Gayle said. “There they are.”

  I couldn’t see Lucy, but guessed she was there somewhere, amidst the others of her kind.

  “They are outside the Blob,” Hans said. “Maybe too hot for them here?”

  “Some are warm-water cephs,” Gayle countered. “This should be a picnic for them.”

  “Well, they don’t want to go inside, it seems.”

  “Three,” Panut said. “The floor here is at ten-three and change, but you’re just skirting the slope of a volcanic dome.”

  Gayle started to say something, but whatever it was, it was lost in a deafening crunching sound. The submersible jolted and shuddered. I might have screamed a little. Hans definitely did.

  “What was that?” Panut’s voice asked.

  “I don’t know!” Gayle replied. “It’s like we were hit by something.”

  “By what?”

  I was looking out the big windshield but I didn’t see anything, much less anything big enough to have slammed into us with that much force.

  Just water. Little things swimming or floating in it, but not even many of those. Not with the water this hot.

  Across from me, Gayle was doing the same thing I was: scanning for whatever unknown force had hit us. Hans was busy at the controls, and he looked worried.

  “What’s going on, Hans?” I asked.

  “The instruments are going berserk!” he said. “Panut, are you seeing this?”

  “I don’t know what I’m seeing,” Panut shot back. “None of it makes any sense!”

  Then it happened again. This time was worse. The James Cook II was swung sideways in the water and I heard what sounded like the squeal of tearing steel. If I hadn’t been belted in, I’d have fallen onto Hans, or past him into Gayle’s lap. I thought that was the worst of it, but then we started to spin in the water, surrounded by a cloud of air bubbles.

  “We’re ruptured!” Gayle said. “Tanks on, quick!”

  Before we left, I’d been shown submarine escape immersion equipment, which were used for deep-water emergency escapes. But I’d also been told we weren’t expecting to go deep enough to make them necessary, especially since warm water was less dense, therefore diminishing the pressure. I couldn’t remember where the SEIEs were, but there was Scuba gear for each of us, and it was handy.

  My parents had taken me diving many times, so I was used to how it worked. What I didn’t know was how to get the gear on while the vessel I was in was spinning and flipping over and the most important bodily function I wanted control of at the moment was holding in the breakfast I was about to lose, because about two seconds after I puked it up, I’d be flung right into it.

  Gayle unbuckled her shoulder straps, leaving the waist strap on, and tried to shrug into a buoyancy control vest with two cylinders and a regulator attached. That made sense to me, so I tried the same trick. I had it mostly on when the walls caved in.

  Whatever invisible something was slamming us around the ocean was squeezing the James Cook II, like a fist pulping a lemon. The windshield shattered, and a shard of glass slammed into my face as the ocean rushed in. I batted it away with my right hand, gripping my seat with my left so I didn’t fall out. I glanced over at Gayle, who’d lost her battle with her BCV—I could just see it, through the bubble storm, dropping out of sight.

  Then I saw Hans, his mouth open in a soundless cry of agony. The water around him was tinged with pink. He was pinned into his seat by a jagged chunk of steel from the hull or the instrument panel. It had sliced into his abdomen, and blood from the wound mixed with the water.

  The James Cook II whirled around like a ride from some demented undersea carnival. I was breathing, at least, but I’d have to share what air I had with Gayle. It was too late for Hans—blood flowed from his open mouth and his eyes were blank. I didn’t have a mask or fins, and if they were somewhere near me, I didn’t know where. My hand bumped into a dive light and I grabbed it, slipping my arm through the wrist lanyard.

  I grabbed Gayle next, or she grabbed me. I pulled her close and handed her the spare mouthpiece. We shoved free of the spinning submersible and made for the surface.

  As we swam away from the wreckage, I looked for whatever had crushed it. I don’t know what I expected to find—a colossal squ
id, a kraken, a whale—but I didn’t see anything. Nothing but the warm water of Son of Blob. It was as if the thing was malevolent, using water pressure alone to murder Hans and to try to get us.

  The James Cook II’s lights were gone. I was a pretty strong swimmer, but more than that, I was a Husker. I didn’t let little things slow me down.

  I held Gayle’s hand, so we didn’t get too far apart to use the spare tube. We were both dizzy, discombobulated, and the dive light didn’t do much to show the way, but we swam with everything we had.

  Worried about the bends, I was about to suggest—as well as I could, using sign language—that we stop for a bit. But then I looked up, only to discover that we had been swimming in the wrong direction—right toward the slope of the undersea dome, instead of toward the surface.

  That’s when I saw it. A dark spot—well, darker—surrounded by rocks. And a lone cephalopod who’d braved Son of Blob motioning me toward it.

  Lucy.

  I didn’t hesitate.

  Pulling Gayle along with me, I made for that patch of blackness like it was the end zone and I was about to score the winning touchdown in the National Championship game. Or, you know, like my life depended on it. In Nebraska, which of those was more important was often debatable, especially during football season. Either way, I made it to what turned out to be an opening in record time, feeling all the while like there was something hot and hungry on my heels, but every time I glanced behind, there was nothing but ocean.

  It was the wreckage of the James Cook I, upside down, smashed much as our submersible had been, and lodged up under the rocks in such a way as to be invisible from above. Even at the same depth as the small vessel, if sharp-eyed Lucy hadn’t been there to point it out, I’d never have seen it.

  I found the open hatch, pushed Gayle through, then squeezed in myself.

  The interior of the James Cook I was only about half-full of water. Inverted, it was apparently acting like an ancient diving bell, keeping some mostly breathable air at the top. As Gayle and I pulled in great lungfuls of the stale stuff, I saw that air wasn’t all the submersible still held. A battered oxygen tank, its gauge low, but seemingly still usable, caught in some of the dangling instrumentation.

  And beyond that…

  “Nick…my God. I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t answer her. I couldn’t.

  I’d found them. What was left of them, anyway. Pauly wasn’t there, but my parents were.

  They’d only been gone a week, but they appeared mummified—some trick of the air down here, that probably held very little oxygen, after all. God knew I was suddenly finding it much harder to breathe than I had before.

  I could almost convince myself it wasn’t them, if not for the customized wedding bands they wore, Dr. Dr. Dad’s red coral and green opal swirled around a lapis center, Mom’s the inverse, with lapis and opal swirled around the coral.

  And for the fact that, even in death—maybe particularly in death—they were entwined in each other’s arms, as if daring eternity to try to separate them.

  I turned away and wrapped my arms around myself, realizing suddenly how cold it was down here. I rubbed my hands rapidly up and down my biceps for warmth, but the only heat I felt was the tears that scalded my cheeks as they made their way down to join the saltier water at my waist.

  A soft splash drew my attention. One of Lucy’s tentacles rose out of the water, coming near me. First, it hovered around my hands questioningly, so I reached a palm and let her touch it to feel the small amount of warmth the movement had generated.

  “Friction generates energy—in this case, heat. It’s a way we humans use to warm ourselves up when we’re too stupid to dress appropriately for the conditions.”

  Satisfied with my explanation, or not comprehending it, or possibly just bored, her tentacle left my hand and moved up to my face, where it gingerly wiped one tear from my cheek, then patted it softly. I felt a strange rush of emotion, not quite of comfort, but of…community. As if she were trying to tell me I was not alone in my grief.

  “Thanks, Lucy.”

  Then a shudder rippled through her tentacle and it was suddenly pulling urgently at my shoulder.

  “I think she’s saying it’s time to go.”

  I looked up at Gayle. She was strapping on the other tank as she spoke.

  I nodded.

  “I’ve seen all I needed to.”

  Lucy’s tentacle retracted back into the water and Gayle went in after it. I took one last look back at my parents’ corpses—my final farewell, for I knew it was unlikely I’d ever find this place again—and then I followed suit.

  Back out in the cold dark, I felt Lucy’s tentacle wrap around me and could just make out Gayle’s nearby form similarly enfolded in another suckered appendage. Lucy drew me close enough to see her basketball-sized eyes, and the sharp beak at the center of her buccal mass. Then we were shooting toward the surface so fast I knew decompression sickness was likely to be a real concern. But so was running out of air before we made it there, and of the two, only the latter was certain to be fatal. So I sucked in what oxygen I had left and let Lucy do her thing.

  Her thing, it turned out, involved buzzing the group of cephalopods that we’d been following, only now, instead of swimming, they were arranged in some sort of gigantic, living net, their tentacles all interlocked so I couldn’t tell where one squid began and another ended. We went by them so quickly, and their myriad of appendages, small and large, were moving back and forth so fast that I couldn’t see what it was they were trying to hold in—it just looked like more water to me—but I could definitely feel the heat, as if someone had opened the door to an underwater sauna.

  And then we were past the cage of tentacles with its invisible prisoner and going up and up and up…

  I think I must have passed out at some point, because the next thing I remember is breaking the surface and coughing up about a swimming pool’s worth of ocean, Gayle doing the same beside me. Lucy hung around long enough to make sure we weren’t going to choke to death on seawater and spit, then started to pull away, heading back into the deep.

  “Wait!” I said—or tried to, anyway; my throat was so raw, it came out as more of a grunt. But, as usual, Lucy seemed to understand me even without words. A tentacle came questing back.

  I didn’t bother talking this time, just reached out a hand until we were touching, palm to sucker.

  Thank you.

  That rush of togetherness came again and I think I understood it this time. She wasn’t just telling me I wasn’t alone. She was saying I never would be. That we were family.

  There was something else, too. It felt like…relief? I’m not sure human concepts could even encompass cephalopod emotions, but it seemed almost like our rescue was some sort of atonement for my parents’ deaths—as if she had somehow felt guilty for not having been able to save them, and that burden had now been lifted.

  Then she broke contact and disappeared back beneath the water, presumably going to rejoin the rest of her—our?—family.

  “It’s the Ricketts!” Gayle said excitedly, pointing behind me. I turned, and sure enough, the ship was there, as if it had been waiting for us the whole time. “We’re saved!”

  So we were. Lucy had done for us what she could not do for my parents. As we started to swim toward the ship, I was left wishing my own atonement could come so easily.

  * * *

  “…weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” Panut said. “Son of Blob kept getting smaller and hotter—almost boiling—and then it just suddenly…vanished.”

  “What do you mean ‘vanished?’” Gayle asked. We were back on board, dressed in warm clothes, swathed in blankets, hearing what had occurred on the Ricketts while we’d been gone.

  “As in, one minute there was a clearly definable heat signature, and the next minute there…wasn’t. The temperature cooled right back down to normal temps in a matter of minutes. It was like Son of Blob never existed.”


  “It was Lucy and the others,” I said. “That cage they made. Whatever they were doing, they somehow managed to destroy Son of Blob.”

  Gayle shook her head slowly.

  “No, Nick. I mean, yes, it was them, but they’re not the ones who destroyed SoB. You are.”

  We all looked at her.

  “What?”

  “When you explained to Lucy how friction worked, remember? And then when we were going past them, their tentacles were all moving up and down, almost faster than the eye could follow? Superheating the Son of Blob, compressing it, until it ultimately—I don’t know—imploded? Whatever they did, they clearly got the idea from you.”

  I scoffed at the thought, but I could see she was serious, and the others seemed to be taking her seriously, too.

  “Well, there’s no way we’ll ever know for sure, I suppose,” I said, and everyone nodded with various degrees of enthusiasm, and that seemed to end the conversation.

  Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Gayle said, especially as I lay in my bunk later that night. If Lucy had gotten the idea from me, and passed it on to the rest of the cephalopods, then in a way, I’d atoned for my parents’ deaths as well. Not that I could have done anything to stop what happened—unlike Lucy, I’d been thousands of miles away when it occurred—but logic seldom got in the way of guilt when it came to the loss of loved ones. And it wasn’t really atonement I was looking for, I realized, so much as vengeance. A rematch. The chance to play the game again, with a different outcome this time around.

  Of course, I couldn’t have the outcome I really wanted—my parents back, alive—but I could have something else almost as good. The destruction of the thing that had killed them.

  If Gayle was right, I’d gotten that. Son of Blob had been annihilated because of me. And if she was wrong…well, maybe the cephalopods could have done it on their own—but, if so, wouldn’t they have taken out the Blob, making sure there never was a Son to deal with in the first place?