many exploratory dives in a rebuilt Trieste, its components dug out of various museums by Nathan Lammockson. Now this new sub was one of a fleet of ferries capable of reaching the ocean floor. “She was constructed in Jackson, Wyoming,” Dexter said. “A long way from the ocean back then. But when the flood came in ’43 she just floated off.” He rapped his fist on the metal wall. “This is our pressure hull. The rest of the sub’s volume is mostly taken up with flotation tanks, full of gasoline, pretty much incompressible even at extreme depths; conventional air tanks would just crumple, though we do have those for navigation close to the surface. We have hoppers of rocks we can dump if we need to ascend quickly, though mostly we abort down to the Ark in such contingencies. More likelihood of help there than up top.”
Thandie said, “You got any coffee in this tub?”
Masayo had strapped Eddie loosely into a couch, but the boy soon clambered out and started crawling over the floor, poking his fingers through the mesh.
Dexter watched him curiously. “We don’t carry many little kids on these ferries, as you can imagine. He looks like he feels at home.”
“He was born in a box,” Mike Wetherbee said. “This is what he’s used to. The safety of confinement.” He breathed a deep breath. “And the peculiar, comforting staleness of recycled air.”
There wasn’t much conversation after that. Dexter handed out coffees.
Within minutes the ocean beyond the windows was growing dark. Thandie had told Kelly that little light from the surface seeped deeper than a hundred meters or so. Kelly heard the hull pop and bang, creaking as it adjusted to the increasing pressure of the water. How strange it was that she had spent two decades inside hulls intended to contain breathable air against a vacuum, and now the situation was precisely reversed, she was inside another hull surrounded by water clenching like a fist.
She looked at her companions. Thandie lay back in her couch, a blanket tucked up to her chin, her eyes closed. Mike Wetherbee seemed quietly interested in the engineering. Masayo kept his eyes on Eddie, who sat on the floor happily fiddling with the mesh partition. Lisa Burdock sat facing the passengers, saying nothing. Kelly realized, in fact, that the girl hadn’t said a single word. She was a creature of Ark Two, evidently, perhaps educated all her life for a single purpose, and now was not truly interested in anything else-not even returned star travelers. Kelly wondered if as a Candidate she had once been just as monomaniac.
And Dexter concentrated on his controls. That was his job, but Kelly was pretty sure he was using his absorption in his tasks to avoid any conversation with her, or indeed with Masayo and Eddie, his half-brother.
She was guiltily relieved. She definitely needed time to come to terms with the situation. Although she had always said that part of her motive for coming back to Earth was the child she’d left behind, in her heart she hadn’t really believed that she would ever find him again. It hadn’t occurred to her that if her father had constructed Ark Two as some kind of haven for himself, it was likely that he would take his grandson in there with him. She’d never even imagined Dexter growing up, she realized now. In her head he had always been the two-year-old she had kissed goodbye that last morning, sneaking out of his bedroom before he woke up to know she was gone, and then running for her transport to Gunnison. It was as if Dexter had died, not that she’d abandoned him.
Well, she was trapped with him now, committed to whatever confrontations and conciliations lay ahead.
As the dive continued the air temperature dropped steadily. Dexter wiped condensation from the control surfaces with his sleeve. The adults bundled into the thick coats Lisa and Dexter had handed out. Eddie said he didn’t need a coat, but Masayo draped a blanket around his thin shoulders. A little later the boy started to slow down, and Masayo lifted him onto his lap and wrapped him up inside his own coat, and let him nap.
In the sapping, damp cold, in the humming, comforting calm of the submarine, despite the kilometers of ocean water piling up over her head, Kelly felt oddly safe, reminded of the Ark.
Maybe she slept.
She was jarred awake by a buffeting, a whirr of engines. Lisa pointed at one of the small windows, beyond which lights moved in the dark.
Kelly got out of her couch, stiff and cold, and bent down to peer through the plug of glass. She saw spheres set out on the ocean floor, fixed by cables and illuminated by floods, gleaming like some industrial facility. The spheres touched each other, kissing at the circular interfaces that connected them. The spheres all had paintwork on their hulls, the Stars and Stripes, a bold UNITED STATES, and that triangular Ark Two logo. Another submarine like their own hovered over the facility, tethered by loose cables.
They were floating over what looked like a road, and a hummock in the dirt that might once have been some kind of vehicle. But ocean-floor silt lay everywhere like a murky snow, and strange fish and crabs worked their way over broken tarmac, pale pink and white in the sub’s lights. A fence of wire mesh stretched off as far as she could see, picked out by the sub’s own spotlights, broken by what looked like watchtowers.
Dexter tapped a key. A screen filled up with a human face, broad, gnarled, and a harsh voice rasped, “Ferry Three, you have permission to dock. And you passengers, you are now twelve point four kilometers beneath the waves, deeper than any point on the ocean floor before the flood started. Welcome to Ark Two.”
Kelly stared. “Dad?”
Edward Kenzie glared. “That you, Kelly? I knew you’d screw up. I’ll see you when you come through regularization. Ark out.” The screen flickered and filled with blue.
81
“Regularization” turned out to be a lengthy process. Everybody who had been “up top,” including the crew of the ferry, was put through pressure equalization, which involved sitting in a kind of airlock for a couple of hours while medics took samples of blood and tissue from their nostril linings, and gave them basic medical checks. Dexter said the purpose was to ensure they didn’t carry any unfamiliar bugs into the Ark itself. The airlock itself showed more similarities to Ark One: the scuffed metal surfaces, the door handles polished smooth with use, the faintly scarred glass of the thick portals. Like Ark One, this was another old machine.
Beyond the processing chamber was a junction of metal-walled corridors. Here, Mel Belbruno met them. He was standing to attention when the airlock door opened. But when he saw Kelly he broke, ran forward and hugged her. “My God. I never thought I’d see you again.”
“Well, you weren’t supposed to.” She held him at arm’s length. He had bulked out with age and was losing his hair, but above his thickened neck was a very familiar, slightly anxious face. He was dressed in a coverall like the others, but smart, his trouser legs looked as if they’d been ironed. “You look good, Mel. You always did look like you belonged in uniform.”
“We’ve all read your log. What an incredible adventure. I always did envy you. The sights you saw, the places you went-”
“We’ll talk about Holle. We’ll make time.”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“She did well, Mel. Very well. And she didn’t find anybody else. Or not as far as I know, up to the Split. It was only ever you.”
He nodded, his mouth tight.
“Mel, my father-”
“He’s asleep right now. He’s ninety-four.”
“I know how old my own father is,” she snapped.
He flinched. “I’m sorry. Look, he wants to see you, but he needs a lot of downtime. Let me host you for a while. You want to rest, sleep, eat?”
“I feel exhausted just standing here. If you’ll let me lean on you, why don’t you show us around?”
“Sure.” He glanced at the party, including Eddie, who held his father’s hand. “And this is Eddie? We have a playroom for the kids.”
“You have children down here?”
“We’re in it for the long haul. Lisa, maybe you could take Eddie-”
“No,” Kelly said. “Sorry, Mel, I’ve a better idea. Dexter, why don’t you take him?”
