Jack McDevitt - Infinity Beach

“That the best we can do?” asked Kim.

“There are better landing sites—” he was looking at a couple of beaches, “—but we’d have a hard time getting out into the river.”

The slab, in fact, was perfectly situated, if they could manage the landing. Solly lowered the aircraft cautiously, arranging his approach so that the treads were parallel to the angle of incline, with the forward end up . “Hang on,” he said.

He was feeling for the concrete, much as a person reaches for the next step down in the dark. A burst of wind drove them off. He took it up, came back and tried again.

Kim found herself willing the aircraft down, behaving as if she were at the controls, telling herself easy . Easy. They touched, lifted, and touched again. Solly maintained power. The aft section settled, and it suddenly seemed as if the angle was steeper than it had looked, that they were about to slide back into the river.

And then they were on the slab.

He let the engine run for a minute. When nothing happened he shut it down and took a deep breath. “Nothing to it,” he said.

Kim let her heartbeat return to normal. “I knew you could manage it.”

Solly opened the door, climbed out, and leaned upslope. “It’s slippery,” he warned.

One of them would have to stay with the sensor, to direct the dive. Kim started to remove her earrings. Solly watched her and then shook his head. “ You stay put.”

“Why?”

“Take a look at the river.” He had to shout to get above the wind and the roar of the water.

Kim got out, planted her feet on the wet concrete, and nodded. “It is a little rough,” she said. “Which is exactly why you need to stay here.”

“How’s that?”

The target area was just a few meters out from the slab. Not bad. She held up a tether. “If you go in and get into trouble, I’d never be able to pull you out. We need the muscle here .”

His eyes drilled into her. “That’s a dumb argument.”

“Who says? Anyway, this is my project. And Solly, I’d feel a lot better knowing you were up here ready to lend a hand if you have to, than down there where I couldn’t help worth a damn if something happened.”

He stared at her and she saw his irritation grow. Because he knew she was right. She pulled her suit out of the back of the aircraft. “Let’s just get it done.”

“I really don’t like this.”

A pair of iron clamps jutted out of the concrete. “Relax,” she said. She fixed the tether to one of the clamps and clipped the other end to her belt. “If anything goes wrong you can haul me out.”

They argued for another few minutes. Then he gave in and she looked at the rushing river, watched it surging across the lower end of the slab, and wondered briefly whether this was a good idea after all, whether they should not have waited and maybe got a diving team together. She was about to back off when Solly shook his head, lowered the radio receiver into the water, and glowered at her. “Dumb,” he grumbled.

“It’s no big deal.”

He grimaced, apparently uncertain what she’d said, but she shrugged and spoke into her mask radio. “It won’t be bad once I get down a couple of meters.”

He nodded and mouthed the word dumb again.

She tugged on her flippers, connected the jets to her belt, strapped a lamp on her wrist, and pulled her converter over her shoulders.

He gave her a pained expression. “Good luck.”

She returned a smile that was meant to be reassuring, pulled the mask in place, and slipped into the river. “It’s not that bad,” she told Solly.

“The slab’s breaking it up. That won’t last.”

She ducked under, heard the converter kick in and begin extracting oxygen from the water. Competing currents pushed at her, carrying her first one way and then another. She ran a radio check. Solly responded, she turned on the lamp, and started down, feeling her way along the smooth face of the slab. The water was murky and she couldn’t see. She kept descending until she felt bottom. It was thick with mud and rock.

“Straight ahead,” said Solly. “About twelve meters, looks like.”

At first the water was relatively calm. She moved out away from the wall, trying to keep contact with the bottom. She worked her way past debris, drowned trees, pieces of machinery, concrete chunks. The rush of water pushed her one way and then another, then bore down on her until she lost all track of direction.

But it didn’t matter. Solly had both the diver and the target blip on his screen. “Drifting right,” he told her.

The current kept getting stronger. She had to use a burst from the jets to compensate. Dangerous, that, when she couldn’t see.

“Drifting right again. Eight meters dead ahead.”

Another burst carried her forward. The river tore at her, tried to carry her away. She anchored herself to an engine housing and caught her breath.

“How’s your visibility, Kim?”

“A half meter.”

“Okay. You should be right on top of it.”

The lamp was no more than a soggy glow. “I don’t see anything.”

“It’s right there.”

“It could be buried.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. Why don’t you come up? We’ll get a team and the right equipment and come back tomorrow.”

The light reflected against something. Off to her right. Reluctantly, she dug in her heels, let go of the shrubbery, and crawled forward.

It was a piece of plastic. Sticking out of the muck. “We might have something, Solly.”

“What is it? What do you see?”

Inside the plastic. “A shoe.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

She pulled at it. “Solly, it’s a foot .”

“Okay. Go easy.”

“It’s somebody .”

“You can see a corpse?”

“I think so.”

“Man or woman?”

“Are you serious? I’ve got a leg. That’s all.”

“Okay. You all right?”

She knew what he was thinking. “I’m fine.”

“What’s it look like?” All business again.

“It’s small. I guess it is a woman. Or a child.” She removed a line from her belt to fasten it to the plastic. But she lost her balance and the river caught her and sent her tumbling.

Solly’s voice stayed calm. “Status, Kim? What’s going on?”

She crashed against something hard, but found a handhold.

“Kim?”

“Current caught me.” She was hanging onto a tree branch.

“You want me to come down?”

“No,” she said. “My God, no.”

The current tried to jerk her mask off. She grabbed hold of it, got it back in place, and listened to herself breathe.

“I think this would be a good time to come up, Kim. We can alert the authorities in the morning and let them do the rest.”

“Which way’s up?” she demanded. The question wasn’t entirely facetious. She needed guidance getting back so she didn’t pop out of the water at the wrong place and get sucked through the dam.

“You need to go about six meters right. Do that and you’ll come up directly in front of me. Calmest water in the area.”

Which wasn’t saying much.

But it was hard to follow directions in the river. And she was getting tired. How long had she been down?

She used the jets to move right.

“Hold it,” said Solly, alarmed. “You’re going the wrong way .”

But the river caught her. She seized something, a piece of iron, and hung on. “What’s happening, Kim?”

She knew immediately. Communication breakdown: her right wasn’t his right.

“I’m sorry,” he said, figuring it out. “My fault. You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to worry about going anywhere you don’t want to. I’ve got the line.”