He’d moved to the forward seats for the best view. A pale, batlike craft emerged from the snorkel and sped south. One of the harvester dirigibles loitered near the entrance, awaiting clearance to proceed. Rafts of green biomass drooled from its collector baskets.
The DC-3 had approach priority. The descent steepened, and then they were inside the snorkel, flying down a completely enclosed air-corridor. Geoffrey tried to judge the angle of descent, but without a visible horizon it was hard to estimate. It felt much steeper than his usual landing pattern in the Cessna, but at the same time there was a sense of calm routine, the ride elevator-smooth. He hadn’t even been told to sit down or buckle-up.
The corridor darkened as the sunlit mouth receded. Red lights slipped by on either side, marking their progress. Once, another batwing craft sped by in the opposite direction: silver-bodied with the Initiative’s green whorl painted on its skin.
‘We’ve descended a long way,’ Geoffrey said. ‘We must be underwater by now.’
‘They’re blocking me.’
‘What?’
‘Aug degradation. The duct must be interfering with the signal. I imagine that’s not accidental.’
‘Can’t you do anything about it?’
‘Dear me – that almost sounds like concern for my welfare.’
‘It’s not. I just value a second pair of eyes.’ He paused. ‘Eunice?’
His visual field clotted with error messages. She was gone.
His ears popped. The ride levelled out for a stretch. Then, softly enough that he almost thought it might be his imagination, the DC-3 was down. It rolled for a short while, as smoothly as if sliding on ice, and then came to a halt. The tunnel had widened out into a larger space, lit by banks of blue lights.
The door whirred open, the stairs lowering simultaneously. Geoffrey grabbed his overnight bag and climbed out of the now silent transport. He stepped onto hard black ground, sheened like wet asphalt. The chamber was large enough to hold half a dozen other aircraft, though none were as old as the DC-3. Nearby a harvester was having its collector baskets raked clean.
Without Eunice, and without the aug, Geoffrey felt more vulnerable than he’d been expecting. He didn’t want to think about all the megatonnes of seawater somewhere over his head, especially as some of it appeared to be dripping through the ceiling.
‘Well, thanks for the welcome,’ he said quietly.
A merwoman strode out of the darkness. Her mobility prosthesis encased her body from the ribcage down, gripping corset-tight. Mechanical legs emerged from the exo’s pelvic girdle, spaced wide on complex joints. They were articulated backwards, giving the merwoman the look of some giant strutting bird. The exo whirred and clanked, as if it wasn’t in the best repair. The framework was bottle-green, traced with luminous kelp-like patterns.
In impeccable Swahili she said, ‘Good afternoon, Mister Akinya. I hope your journey was a pleasant one.’
‘Whose idea was the Dakota?’
‘Truro thought you’d appreciate the antique touch. Rest assured, though, that you’ll be going home by conventional means. I am Mira Gilbert – UAN Office of Scientific and Technological Liaison. It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Tiamaat. I trust the absence of aug isn’t too distressing?’
‘I’m coping.’
‘We have our own local aug here, and something very like the Mechanism. You’ll be given access to the baseline functions, but before that, I’m afraid we’ll need to neutralise any recording devices you might be carrying.’
‘I’m not.’
‘That also includes your eyes, Mister Akinya. Their capture-and-record function must be disabled.’ Her tone was apologetic but insistent. ‘I trust this isn’t too great an inconvenience? Any information already on the eyes should be safe.’
Geoffrey bristled, but he’d come too far to throw a tantrum now. ‘If that’s what it takes.’
‘Please follow me.’
She whirred around in the exo and clanked away, leading Geoffrey through a door in the side of the cavern and along a dank, wet-floored corridor.
‘You speak Swahili very well,’ he told her.
‘Helps, in this region. I understand you’ve been in space recently?’
‘The Moon and back, assuming that counts. Do you leave Tiamaat very often?’
‘I don’t leave
‘How long have you been . . . ?’ He felt tongue-tied.
‘Aquatic? Thirteen years now. Takes a little while to get used to the alterations – the brain has to learn a whole new way of moving, a whole new hydrodynamics. The first six months were difficult. After that, I never looked back.’
‘And could you be . . . reversed? If you wanted to?’
‘Perhaps,’ Gilbert said, managing to sound as if the notion had never really occurred to her. ‘Some have defected back to lubber. But they must have been ’formed for the wrong reasons.’ She turned to look back over her shoulder. ‘People think becoming like this is the magic spell that’ll sort out their lives, put an end to all their worldly woes. Nowadays the psych screening’s much more rigorous. There’s also a huge waiting list for new surgery. You
