The Navigator, page 18
They were the two traits Joab had that Petal most admired.
"Over here." Joab walked up to a tall stack of coiled cables and black rubber bags.
"What are those?" Petal followed him over to the strange gear.
"Balloons." Joab began to untangle the stack. "Know what we use them for?"
Petal shook her head. The boat rocked from a wave, but she kept her feet solidly on the deck without stumbling.
"Most of the things we salvage off the bottom are pretty heavy - can weigh tons. We lash whatever we're gonna bring to the surface to these balloons. We can fill them underwater using an air hose. If the salvage ain't too heavy, the balloons can bring it up. If it's really heavy, the pull from the balloons helps lighten the load on our winch. Before the Flood, they used to salvage entire ships off the bottom using balloons like these but way bigger. They could bring up a whole ship, intact."
Petal nodded along with the explanation.
After Joab finished untangling the stack, he gingerly lowered half of it into Petal's arms.
Petal took the stack from Joab and bore it with a smile, peeking up at him from behind the bulges of rubber.
"You thought I couldn't handle this, didn't you?"
"Naw." Joab walked toward the bow. "You're a beast."
"What does that mean?" Petal shuffled her feet to keep up with him.
"That you're strong. Really strong for your size. Look at you - hauling around all of that gear, skipping across the deck in rough seas like it wasn't even moving. Pretty soon you'll make one helluva deckhand."
Petal lowered the mass of metal and rubber into a bin Joab directed her to.
"I'm a deckhand right now, aren't I?"
"Haha! Don't get too cocky now, greenhorn."
Three stories above Joab and Petal, Quill had just begun her shift in the Deep Star's bridge.
The Deep Star was the largest ship Quill had ever worked on. At one hundred and fifty feet, it was a third bigger than Naris's ship, the Widower. Its bridge contained the helm, the captain's chair, and a long side desk, across which Quill set up her navigational maps. The walls were windowed, giving the captain and Quill a clear view of the deck and the surrounding sea.
Currently, Kole was manning the helm. Quill was pouring over her current chart, standing slightly to his left.
"Not a bad job you've done, Quill, considering what I'm paying you. And to think I was so iffy about hiring a dry foot."
Quill didn't look up from her chart. She was trying to trace the arc of a nearby current, to make sure their path didn't cross it.
"Glad I make a good Hesperian ambassador."
"I actually don't have anything against Hesperians as a whole. My old deck boss was excellent, and he was from Yong. Just never met someone from the P.R.K. I could stomach.'
"We're not all bad you know. It's a big country."
"The P.R.K.'s got a shitty reputation out on the sea, and if you ask me, those fascists deserve it," Kole huffed. He scanned the horizon. "Ah, you see - there it is - dead ahead. Have you ever been to the Salvage Yard?"
"No." Quill walked up to the window.
Far ahead of the Deep Star were four other large salvage vessels. They were gathered around an unremarkable-looking patch of sea, bobbing up and down near the horizon. All the ships were white and gray. They were too far away to see their crews, but Quill could see large cranes and other hauling gear bristling across their decks.
"Why don't you take us in, dry foot?" Kole stepped back from the helm.
Quill hadn't steered a ship since the Academy, and that had been a little thirty footer. She jumped at the opportunity and grabbed the wheel.
"Really? Sure. I'd love to."
"Careful, the Salvage Yard is a shallow shoal. Don't run us aground on the bottom. Make sure to keep your distance from the other ships. You could tangle their lines on our propeller." Kole scrutinized Quill's every move. "Take us down to ten or so knots and let's try and just drift up to it. No – no! We need to go slower. We need to be able to reverse quickly. Careful! We'll be on the reef before you know it. . ."
Back on deck, Petal and Joab finished checking the salvage balloons. They'd inflated every balloon in the stack to make sure they wouldn't leak when the crew needed them. As he and Petal emptied the air out of each rubber sack, the ship closed in on the Yard. It had to take a zigzagging course to avoid the other vessels.
Joab watched a few of the competing salvage ships pass by to starboard. He walked over to the railing and stared down at the sea.
"Look. See the shadows under the waves? The Salvage Yard. It's giant. It's beautiful."
"Uh-huh." Petal saw several dark splotches under the water. "Doesn't look like anything. Just brown shapes. Like any other reef."
"Ain't a natural reef. It's a sunken city. The top of it's only about twenty feet down. It was built back before the Flood - before the Khoi drowned the world.
"The Khoi?" Petal giggled. "You believe in the Khoi? They're make-believe."
"That what you were taught? You also think people built the trells then?"
"Uh-huh."
"Yeah right. No man could have built those things. They were built by Khoi. The Khoi used the trells to come down from the sky and flood the world. The trells are like ladders - ladders that link the sky to heaven."
"People flooded the world. They ruined it with all their big machines."
"And how do you know that?"
Petal shrugged.
"That's what I thought. There's a whole lot about this world that you don't understand. . .little girl."
"Watch it."
Joab laughed off Petal's reaction. "The people who lived before the Flood were pretty advanced, but they weren't that advanced. I've seen what they built. They built this ship we're standing on - rust, rivets, and all. They couldn't have brought about all of this." He motioned out to the endless ocean. "That was the work of Khoi."
"That's stupid. People did that. They made the ocean rise by dumping all their trash into it. They were wasteful and greedy."
"Heh, that's stupid. How could they have made so much trash? Why would the water have risen so quickly? They weren't dumb - wouldn't they have noticed what they were doing and done something to stop it? Naw, the Flood was divine intervention. Divine judgment. That's what the Khoi were - agents of God, like. . .like angels."
Petal gave him a slight sniff.
"Don't believe me? Why don't you come and see for yourself?"
"You have wings?" Petal smiled. "Are you going to fly me into the sky so I can see a trell?"
"No, I'll take you down into the sea with me. You can see the sunken city. What's left of it, anyway. You'll see. It ain't no Amanahora. Ain't no way the men who built that city could have flooded the world. Ain't no way they could have built the things that are still hanging up there in the sky. . . two hundred years later."
- 36-
Quill walked up to her cabin door. Even though she'd been on the vessel for several days, she was still ecstatic that she had an entire cabin to herself. The Deep Star was operating on a skeleton crew. Since the Salvage Yard was picked clean at more accessible depths, Kole spent most of his silver buying specialized, deep-water salvage gear. He recouped that loss by hiring very few crewmen. Their absence worked in Quill's favor. She'd never been given a private cabin while out at sea.
When Quill lived at home and at the Academy, sleep had never been a problem. She had her own room and her own bed. She could sprawl out on her mattress in pitch blackness, close her eyes, and be lulled to sleep by the gentle surf of Khai Shen Bay, or by the soft chirps of crickets in her native Dhaj Njang forest.
Out at sea, those conditions were nonexistent. On each vessel Quill worked on, she'd been relegated to a bunk bed. The crew quarters surrounding the bunks were always half lit, as other crewmen needed to come and go in a continuous shift schedule. The constant noise and lack of darkness meant she rarely got more than three or fours hours of unrestful sleep. The deprivation made her cloudy-headed and irritable.
Quill had tried everything to weasel herself into a private room. She'd only found that privilege with Naris and Tarquin. Now, she could be comfortable. She'd invited Petal to share the cabin with her, but Petal refused - preferring to sleep in the bunks like any other greenhorn.
Quill plopped down on her bed, exhausted. Before she could take off her boots, someone knocked on the cabin door. She rolled her eyes, stood up, and opened it, expecting Kole to be on the other side, ready to assign her a laundry list of tasks she'd have to do tomorrow.
Instead, it was Petal.
"Hey!" Quill beamed. "There you are. I haven't seen you in days."
"Hello," Petal mumbled.
"Want to come in?"
"Uh-huh."
Quill's room was nearly empty. It had a narrow bed and a little desk and chair unit that folded out from the wall. Both were vinyl green. A set of fluorescent lights shone down from overhead, giving the room a washed out look. The cabin's interior was exactly as Quill found it when the Deep Star left the Raft. She hadn't been able to buy or bring along anything to personalize it to her liking.
Its stark, stuffy atmosphere made Petal feel like she'd been buried in a coffin. Nervous perspiration beaded up on her chest and shoulders.
"Kole says you've been doing a good job out on deck. That's great. I'm proud of you."
Petal said nothing.
"Are. . .Are we still not talking?"
"We can talk. I just don't have anything to say to that."
"Okay." Quill sat down and untied her boots. "What brings you up here?"
"Joab said I could go diving with him tomorrow. He wanted me to see the sunken city."
"Neat." Quill fought a stubborn knot in her laces. She gave up and kicked the boot off.
"Do you want to come with me? I've never been diving before. You could help show me how to swim with fins, or how to put the gear on."
"I haven't been diving either. Joab would be more of a help with that. . .and. . .I don't want to swim again for a long time. Being adrift got that out of my system. I'll stick to staying dry for now – except maybe for a shower."
Petal's mouth puckered like she'd bitten into a lemon.
"Thanks though," Quill added, worried she'd insulted her. "It was a nice thought. Thank you."
Petal began to say something but swallowed it.
"Was there something else?"
"Uh." Petal's eyes darted. "No. I just wanted to say hello. I - I didn't know how you were doing. . ."
"I tried to visit you out on deck a few times, but I thought you were trying to avoid me. I really like it on this ship. Kole's been fair and has been keeping me busy. He even let me take the helm for a while." Quill patted her bed for Petal to sit down. "How have you been? Whether you want to talk or not - remember - I'm here for you."
"I. . .I just wanted to say hi. I have to go now. I'm supposed to help Joab test the winch."
"Well, thanks for coming to see me. Talk to me tomorrow after you've gone diving. Let me know how it goes. I hope you have fun down there. Joab seems like a nice boy. Make sure you listen to him."
"Uh-huh." Petal yanked the cabin door open and disappeared down the hallway.
She missed me. . .
Quill savored that thought as she tried to drift off to sleep.
The next morning, Quill was back at the helm of the Deep Star. She watched from the bridge as Petal, Joab, and four other crewmen prepared to go scout diving.
Most of the worthwhile salvage on the Yard lay between one hundred and two hundred feet below the surface. At that depth, there was very little light. The divers had to work within the tiny areas illuminated by their spotlights.
Joab wanted Petal to get a better idea of the scale of the city. She could only see that from near the surface. For her first dive, he'd given her a simple set of fins and a snorkel.
Petal gawked at the funny-looking snorkeling equipment. She bit down on her U-shaped snorkel. The mouthpiece had jagged little edges meant to grasp her teeth. Instead, they dug into her gums. The warm plastic tasted bitter on her tongue. She removed the mouthpiece and fiddled with her fins. She then looked over at Joab. He'd just put on a wetsuit and scuba tanks and was now testing his respirator.
"How come I don't get all that?" She pointed at his dive gear.
"This is for diving deep, and we only have so many tanks to go around. One day, after you've proven yourself, you'll get a tank and can join us down there. For now, stick to the pipe and fins. Besides, the really pretty stuff is in the shallows. Go and take a look. Just keep your eye on our boat - if you start to drift away, I, for one, am not gonna rescue you."
Petal pulled the mask over her face and inserted her snorkel. The diving fins felt like they were strangling her feet. Condensation immediately began to build up inside her mask. She felt hot and uncomfortable. She took a deep breath and jumped over the side of the ship, crashing into the water.
Petal hit the ocean with a thud. The mask was ripped off her face, and her eyes and nose were flooded with seawater. She gagged on the brine and bobbed back to the surface.
"Hey greenhorn!" Joab called down from the ship.
Petal continued to cough while glaring up at him, teary-eyed.
"Don't put on your mask until you're in the water!"
Petal emptied out her mask while treading. It was much easier to swim in fins then she'd expected. They allowed her to glide across the water like a fish. She slipped her mask back on, and did a sharp dive downwards.
The seafloor was otherworldly. At first glance it looked like a coral reef built upon dozens of huge, squared platforms. Upon closer look, Petal realized those platforms were actually rooftops. The top of an ancient city's skyline.
The brown and gold rooftops were overgrown with spongy coral, giant anemones, and a carpet of green algae. Although the roofs' original façades were unrecognizable, their perfectly geometric shapes and right-angled edges betrayed their man-made origin.
Petal stared down at the rooftops until her oxygen ran out. She resurfaced and blew through her mouth piece to clear out her snorkel. She inhaled a few drops of water, but was amazed that she could get a full breath of air without breaking the surface. She felt like she'd been turned into a dolphin. She dove under the sea, again, curious to see how deep she could go on a single breath.
Petal fluttered down toward the tallest rooftop. She saw a sea turtle cut in front of her. Its skin and shell looked like pleated leather. A school of tiny, neon colored fish drifted right behind it. She followed the turtle down toward the reef, pretending she was a shark chasing after it. It glided through the ocean like an eagle soaring through the sky, much too fast for her to keep up with.
Petal stopped her dive about ten feet above the tallest rooftop. That roof looked like it had once held a planted garden. There were large bronze urns in each of its corners. They had long ago tarnished to brown and had turned into a temporary home for spiny red urchins and sea cucumbers.
At the center of the roof was a raised section that used to be a flower bed. Now it was a lawn of billowing sea grasses and jagged coral. Black and yellow parrot fish nipped at the underwater garden, gently pushed back and forth by an undersea current that made everything move in a ghostly, flowing motion.
Petal lingered in her spot above the rooftop. She felt like she was in space – able to float in the sky without the meddling of gravity. She looked down; past the edge of the roof and saw the sides of the building disappear into deeper water and pitch black darkness.
Next to the edge of the rooftop garden was an unnatural shape. Petal tried to swim to it, but her lungs cried out for air. She resurfaced, and then dove down to examine it more closely.
It was a thin, anthropomorphic lump of metal.
Petal slowly spiraled her way down to the lump. The pressure began to squeeze her eardrums like her head was in a vice. She came closer and realized the lump of metal was actually the remnants of a statue. Its finely carved features had long ago eroded, and its head and shoulders were now encrusted with coral. Even though centuries had passed since it had been submerged, Petal could still tell what it was. It was a statue of a mother with a baby swaddled in her long, flowing robes. At the back of the woman's head was a golden disk meant to represent the sun. She wore the sun disk like a hood. Its golden aura was just beginning to set behind her.
