Пол Андерсон: Orbit 1

Why did we call her Jennifer? Why, of all the names we could have used? The Jennifer was a sea-thing, and cursed…

It was no use. Mary killed the sound from the screen, walked back to the phone, lifted the handset and dialed. She listened to the clicking of the exchange relays, the faint purr-purr at the other end of the line. An age, and the receiver was lifted.

“Ye-es?” The slight coo in the voice, unmistakable even through the surging distortion of the sea. The Belmonts were just a little conscious of their status; Alan Belmont was fisheries manager for the area. Mary licked her lips. “Hello? Hello, Anne, this is Mary. Mary Franklin. . What? Yes, fine thank you. . Anne… is Jen still at your place by any chance? I told her nine, she’s late, I wondered if..”

Anne Belmont sounded vaguely surprised. “My dear, I shooed them off positively hours ago. Well, an hour. . Hold the line. .”

Unidentifiable human sounds. Someone calling faintly. The wash… crash… of the sea.

“Hello?”

“Yes…”

“Just before nine,” said the phone. “We sent them all off, there’s no one here now. . You say she’s not back?”

“No,” said Mary. “No, she’s not.” Her knuckles had whitened on the handset.

The phone clucked. “My dear, they’re all the same; ours are hopeless, time means nothing, absolutely nothing . . But I’m quite sure you needn’t worry, she’ll be along any moment. Perhaps she’s with that Cy boy, whatever his name is…yes…”

Ice, along the spine, moving out like fingers that gripped and clutched. “Thank you,” said Mary. “No, no, of course not. Yes, I’ll let you know. . Yes, goodbye, Anne. .” She laid the handset on its cradle, stood looking at it, not knowing what to do. The sea pushed at the dome gently, slurringly.

A quarter after ten.

Mary stood very still in the middle of the living area, lips pursed. She had called the airworks, Cy was off duty, could not be traced. And two or three neighbors and friends. No Jen. She could not ring Jack at the construction office, not again. Down here you helped your husband, pulled your weight. You didn’t run panicking at every little thing. . The trembling had started, in her legs; she rubbed her thighs unconsciously through her dress. She touched the hair pinned into a chignon at the nape of her neck. In front of her, on the sill of the window, a plaster foal pranced, hooves outlined against greenness. The greenness was the sea.

Decision. She pulled at her hair, shook it free round her shoulders. She unsnapped the clasp at her neck, wriggled her dress up over her head. Beneath it she wore the conventional blue leotard of a married woman. She plucked automatically at the high line of the legs, kicked her sandals off, crossed to the equipment locker. She came back with her sea gear, lung, mask and flippers. She dressed quickly, fastening the broad straps round her waist and between her legs, the lighter shoulder harness that held the meter panel across her chest. Habit again made her check the dials, valve air, slap the red cancellator-tab on her shoulder. That was another safety factor; if for any reason air stopped flowing from the pack and that tab was not touched, a built-in radio beacon would arrow town guards down to the wearer.

She looked in at David again, satisfied herself he was still sleeping. She walked to the sealock, stopped on the way to see herself in the half-length mirror. She was heavier now, her hips had broadened and there were maybe faint worry lines round her mouth. But her hair was brown and soft; landside she would still be a desirable woman.

She looked round the dome slowly, seeming to see familiar things in a new light that was bright and strange. The bungalow was double-skinned, the inner ceiling finished in octagonal plates of white and pale blue plastic. The half-round shape, dictated by considerations of pressure, had the secondary advantage of enclosing the greatest possible volume of space; deep-pile carpets covered the floors, the furniture was low and streamlined, easy to live with. The telscreen was tucked neatly into an alcove; to each side of it were wall tanks with fish and anemones. Through a half-open door she could see the kitchen. It was miniaturized but well equipped, with plenty of stainless steel like the galley of a ship.

The whole bungalow was as safe as it was functional. In the unlikely event of a fracture in the pressure shell, the second skin would hold the sea while instantaneous warnings were flashed to a central exchange, insuring help within minutes. Not that anything could or would go wrong, of course, the whole system was too carefully worked out for that. People had been living undersea for years now, and fatalities were far fewer than on the overcrowded land.

Mary grimaced, stepped through into the lock and closed the inner hatch. The ceiling lamp came on; she pressed the filler control, heard the hiss as air was expelled through the outlet valves.

She squatted in rising water to work the straps of the flippers over her heels, then straightened up. The coolness touched her hips; she brushed her hair back, spat in the mask and rinsed it, pressed the transparent visor onto her face. The plastic was self-adhesive, molded to her skull contour; it fitted from forehead to chin. She palmed the earphones into place, reached under her arm for her mike leads, flicked the tags onto the magnetic contacts in her throat. The compartment filled, water rising greenly over her head. As the pressure equalized, the outer segment of wall slid aside automatically, letting in the hazy glow of the street fighting. Mary kicked away and floated up from the dome, sensing the old lift as the sea shucked off her weight. Her hair swirled across her eyes gracefully, like fronds of black fern.

She swam slowly across the town. To each side, lines of round-topped buildings marched out of the haze. Some of the houses were still new and bright with their coated steel skins, others had grown a rich waving cover of algae. In the main street the shop windows were brightly lit; the plate-glass ports displayed seafoods set on white dishes garnished with fronds of weed; there were Aqualungs and radiophones, Surface ware of all sorts, clothes and books, records, dolls, toys. Here the ocean floor had been cleared to the rock that underlay the sand; overhead were slim arches to which were moored the sledges of out-of-towners, the fish herders and oceanographers whose work took them to lonely domes scattered over the bed of the sea. There were lights on the gantries; each globe hung glaring in greenness, surrounded by a flickering cloud of tiny fish like moths round a terrestrial lamp. Over everything was an air of peace; the dreamy peace of dusk on an ancient, unspoiled Earth.

There were few human swimmers about, but here and there, careening over the roofs of buildings, Mary caught sight of glistening shapes. Dolphins — they had been quick to discover the sea-floor communities and take advantage of them. Many families, in fact, kept one or more of them as semi-permanent pets, became very attached to them. Other creatures occasionally troubled the townships— sharks, rays, the odd squid. But the repellants carried by the swimmers in their harness had been developed to a stage where there was little to fear. The town guards could be relied on to harpoon or shoo off any of the big fellows who hung around too close or too long, though in the main there was little to attract predators.

Disposal of garbage was rigidly controlled; locking offal into the sea was about the worst crime in the book; it could result in being sent landside. The “monsters of the deep,” in so far as they existed, tended to avoid the colonies. They disliked the brightness and noise, the bustle, the thud of many vibrations criss-crossing in the water. As Jack never tired of pointing out, life down here was as safe or safer than on land.