Undersea (15 page)

Ralla kept her head up as she strode across the courtyard, doing her best not to look down. She couldn’t help herself when she got to the center. From below the rig a thin filament dropped down from the station far into the distance. Farther than she could see, which somehow made the whole thing worse. She fought back a wave of nausea and kept going.

“Hi, mom.”

The figure remained hunched over the microscope, and for a second Ralla wasn’t sure if the other woman had heard her. Finally, her mother spun in her chair and opened her arms wide. They embraced, and for a moment Ralla felt safe and relaxed.

“Give me just a second to finish up some notes,” she said, turning back around and scribbling on a notepad. Ralla stood awkwardly behind her mother while the rest of the lab continued at a seemingly frenetic pace. “You know, I only got word you were coming this morning. Why the surprise visit?” Ralla’s mother asked, still hunched over her notes.

“Dad asked me to come.”

“Did he?” The question sounded almost rhetorical.

“Mom, can we go somewhere and talk?”

“We can talk here, sweetie; my people are far too busy to care about what we’re talking about.”

“That’s the thing mom: why aren’t you packing up? We have to get away from here. There’s a war going on and you’re defenseless out here.”

“Nope, that’s not it. Try again.”

“Huh?”

“That’s not why you’re here,” she said to her notepad. Ralla made a face at her back.

“I’m here because Dad asked me to come get you.”

“Has he gotten worse?”

“Yes, but…”

“Well OK, then,” the older woman turned. Her long gray hair was tied back in a ponytail, which seemed to move on its own. “Sweetie, I made peace with your father’s illness a long time ago. I made peace with your father long before that. This is where I need to be. You can’t imagine how important our work is here.”

“Actually, that is why Dad asked me to come get you.
Because
what you’re doing is so important. He wants you to be safe.”

“Sweetie, don't worry your head about this,” her mom said. Each time she said “Sweetie,” Ralla got a little more annoyed. “You don't understand, we can’t do this work on the
Universalis
. If your father is having a fit of nostalgia and wants to see me again, that’s sweet. But it’s also selfish. I need to be here, and he should know that.”

“No, mom...”

“I’m sorry you came all this way, but we’re not leaving. I’ll be taking a break for supper, if you want to join me in the Mess. Always good to see you, Sweetie. It’s been too long. But I need to get back to work. I’m sorry.” And with that, Ralla’s mother buried her face in her microscope, leaving Ralla standing very alone in the crowded and busy lab.

“You want a drink?” the bartender asked Thom. After the briefest of pauses, he shook his head.

“Yes, but just some water, please.” The bartender put the glass of water on Thom’s tray, and he made his way to a table in the middle of the low-ceilinged common area. He noticed on the wall opposite the entrance a sign that read “MESS” in big letters, then “Leave it like you found it” painted carefully in red underneath. Thom hadn’t gotten more than two bites into his sandwich before he saw Ralla enter. She also got a tray of food, but ordered two tall, though skinny, glasses of beer from the bartender. As she sat down across from him, he could tell her mood had clearly not improved since arrival. She seemed more annoyed than anything.

“Well, cheers, Thom. This has been a complete waste of time,” she said after depositing one of the glasses on Thom’s tray. They hoisted their glasses, but Thom took just a sip while Ralla downed the whole glass. After a moment’s hesitation he put his glass on her tray. She angrily bit into her sandwich. Thom thought better of asking her what was going on.

“So, what is it they do here? I’d never heard of this place before yesterday.”

Between bites, Ralla answered.

“It’s an ocean research station, though that much I’m sure you figured out. What they’re testing is the water from the surface, water at this level, which is roughly the depth the
Uni
cruises at, and from several different depths below, all the way down to the bottom.”

“OK…”

“The wind on the surface churns up the water. Waves are the obvious result of this, but it acts like a blender. Air gets mixed in with the water on the surface, so immediately the water on the surface is contaminated by the air up there.”

“Mmhmm, that much I remember from school.”

“The radiation might do different things at that point. It may just stay at that depth, and in that general area. Or it may drift with ocean currents. The radiation in the air is pretty uniform, so we can’t tell if what we’re reading was mixed in the water directly above, or on the other side of the planet. Regardless, the water eventually makes its way to the north, and as the surface water cools, it drops down towards the bottom. Now the radiation has gone deep, but there is so much more water down there, the radiation gets rather diluted. So even if it starts getting moved around with other currents, it’s not strong enough to cause any threat to us. That’s why we live so deep. One of the concerns with the attack a few months ago wasn’t just that we may have been grounded, but that in our carelessness trying to escape, we entered shallower waters and picked up more radiation than we would have in 50 years traveling at depth.” As she took another bite, she waved off the question that Thom was obviously about to ask.

“Don’t worry, we’re fine. All that is the conventional wisdom. But up until 25 years ago, we had no idea if this was a set, stable system. As in, if the radiation in the atmosphere would continue to poison the ocean, and eventually we wouldn’t be able to go deep enough to avoid it. Not to mention destroying what little life is left down here.”

“So what happened 25 years ago?”

“There was a group of scientists, one in particular, who led a campaign to convince the Council to build this station. It needed to be near a trench so that they could sample the water at many different levels. We had no baseline readings, you see. So the background radiation the ship, and our drysuits, are easily able to cope with, well, we didn’t know if there was actually more 50 years earlier, or even earlier than that. By the time our forefathers built the
Uni
and the
Pop
, they were more concerned with survival than scientific tests, and then more concerned with killing each other than with science at all. So we needed a baseline, and going deep was the only way to establish one. So it came down to that one scientist, who had the theory and the confidence to fight against the conventional wisdom at the time.”

“Which was that everything was fine.”

“Right. That scientist was also conveniently married to an influential Council member,” Ralla said, taking the final bite of her sandwich. It took Thom a moment, but he leaned back in his chair and nodded.

“Oh.”

“Exactly. So my mom spearheaded the project, came up with the design for the labs and even some of the equipment, and was the natural choice to lead the team that would stay out here collecting data. I was four when my mom left, and every time it would look like she’d be coming home, there would be some new theory, some new test she would have to oversee or try out. Testing water isn’t the only thing they do here. That water you’re drinking? My mom and her team came up with a way to purify it in half the time, using half the energy as the old way. The harvests in the Garden doubled in less than two years because of that.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. For a lot of years I'd look at a glass of water and think,
you took my mom away from me
. But I’ve come to terms with how she is. And she and my dad don’t seem to have any resentment about how it all played out. I don’t know, sometimes I wonder if they ever…” She looked up at Thom, casually scratching his stubble with his thumbnail. “Most people look at me different when I tell them what it was like for me growing up. But not you. Why?”

Thom shrugged. “You knew your mom, and could talk with her when you wanted, for the most part. That’s better than I could do, so I guess it makes you seem a little more normal to me, not less. Not sure who you all hang out with, but among my friends, my story is a lot more common than not.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hey, if growing up didn’t suck, how would we know what good a time we’re having now? I mean, wasn’t that the best cold sandwich you’ve had in a remote isolated research station?”

Ralla smiled. “Thank you, Thom.” It was irritating how much she wanted to kiss him right then. And like that, her animosity from the night before vanished. He may be a drunk sometimes, but he really did try. “Want to take a look around? We came all this way.”

“Why, are we leaving?”

“Oh, sorry, right. Well my dad sent me here to get my mom. Her work is critically important, and we couldn’t let her be killed or be captured by the
Pop
. She thinks he just wants her there to take care of him now that he’s close to dying.”

The casualness with which the words left her mouth surprised even her.

“How about this: lets walk around, check this place out. See if we can not throw up standing on one of those insane clear walkways. Then you can have another run at your mom. If she still shoots you down, we can kidnap her.”

The little spark in her eye when she heard that scared him a little.

“Ralla, I was kidding.”

“I know you were.”

The building walls were all paper-thin, no more than an orangey-yellow plastic membrane stretched between black metal and composite support frames. Somehow this was strong enough to create multi-storied structures. The tallest was three floors, its roof about two stories below the ceiling of the station. As Ralla and Thom walked around, they found mostly dormitories, one other eatery (a café), and a large room labeled “Theater,” with a screen hardly bigger than the personal vidscreens found in many cabins on the
Uni.
No bars, no real entertainment, nothing superfluous.

“People come here for three to six months at a time, then head back,” Ralla told Thom as they were walking. “About 20 percent sign up for another stint, but the rest continue the research back on the
Uni
. The longest, other than my mom, have been here about nine years.”

“I think I’d go insane in a place like this.”

“Me too.”

As they reached the far end of the station, Thom eyed the pool.

“It’s so weird they just leave it open like that.”

Ralla stomped on the floor. Thom, took a step back, and looked at it as if for the first time. The deckplates they were standing on were fused together, with a defined line running in an arch shape behind them. The shape and length of the fused plates were such that if it pivoted up from the end closest to the pool, it would fit snuggly with the ceiling and walls. It reminded Thom of draw bridges he had seen in vids as a kid.

“Well, that’s rather genius.”

“They needed a way to lock off the pools in case of an emergency, but they had no real walls or ceiling to hide the door.”

“As I said: genius.” They were alone, standing side by side, looking back on the cluster of buildings at the center of the oblong dome.  They soon found themselves sitting on a pile of shipping containers lining the wall. Ralla’s feet dangled, so she tapped the hard plastic with her heels. Ralla felt she should say something, but Thom beat her to it.

“I’m sorry about the other day. It was my first off in weeks and I hadn’t seen my friends in forever.”

“Thom, stop. Don’t apologize. I had no right to be mad.”

“Yeah, but...”
“Please. It’s fine.”

“Fine like it’s fine or fine like you’ll yell at me later for it.”

“Thom...”

“OK. ”

The echoes of Ralla’s random tapping thundered in the silence that had appeared between them. He really didn’t have anything to apologize for, she thought. Why did he even bring it up? The quiet got the better of her, as it often did.

“I don’t think I could work here. It’s so damp and creepy,” Ralla said, surprised at the nervousness in her voice.

“It’s because I’m afraid I’ll turn out like my father,” Thom answered. There was only a moment while Ralla adjusted to the new direction of the conversion.

“I’m afraid I won’t,” she replied.

The station creaked beneath them. Water lapped against the edges of the pool. Thom lifted his right arm up, and after a moment’s hesitation, she slid over and under it. She hadn’t realized she had been cold. He always smelled so good. She could hear his voice resonating in his chest before her brain focused on the words.

 “I think we could make it work,” he said. Ralla stiffened, the conversation progressing much faster than she had anticipated.

“Make what work?”

“This place. If you and I had to work here,” he said, motioning towards the station with his free arm. She relaxed with a short laugh.

“Sure. A few colored lights.”

“Exactly. Some trees.”

“Maybe a dance floor?” Ralla said with a smile.

“Absolutely. Techs love a good dance. Me too. I get some of my best standing-around done at dances,” Thom said, his face deadpan. Ralla elbowed him playfully. She tilted her head to look up at his face, her hair falling to partially bock her view. His eyes were locked on hers. His head moved almost imperceptibly closer.

Then suddenly his grip relaxed, and he let his arm drop from her shoulders as he leaned back.

“Man, all this talk of not dancing has gotten me wondering what these techs do in their spare time,” Thom said, carefully looking away from her down towards the rest of the station. Ralla sat up, and pulled her hair behind her ears. “When did your mom say she’d be done? he asked, looking back at her, though not as piercingly as just moments before.

It came to her suddenly: He’s worried about Cern! That made her want Thom more than she had when she leaning against his warm chest.

“Thom,” she started, but it was too late. Thom slid himself off the crate. Everything that she wanted to say welled up into her throat and stuck there. Her mind focused on what he had said.