Cradle (11 page)

Carol was about to joust with him again when the renewed ringing of the alarms diverted
her attention. Regaining her footing as the boat levelled off, she saw in the monitor
that they were above a coral reef. And deep beneath the boat, barely discernible on
the screen, were three whales of the same kind that she had seen on the beach that
morning at Deer Key. They were swimming together in what appeared to be an aimless
pattern. But there was more. The special alarm message code indicated that there was
also a foreign object in or near to the same field of view as the desultory whales.
Carol could not contain her excitement. She clapped her hands. ‘Anchor, please,’ she
shouted, and then she laughed. She saw that Troy had already thrown the anchor overboard.

A few minutes later Carol was hurriedly putting on her buoyancy vest in the aft portion
of the boat behind the canopy. Her mask and her flippers had already been adjusted
and were beside her on the deck. Troy was helping her by holding up the air bottle
that was built into the back of the bulky vest. ‘Don’t worry about Nick,’ Troy said.
‘He may be grumpy today for some reason, maybe because Harvard lost the basketball
game, but he’s a fabulous diver. And he has the reputation of being the best dive
teacher in the Keys.’ He grinned. ‘After all, he taught me a couple of months ago
and we’re not even supposed to be able to swim.’

Carol smiled and shook her head at Troy. ‘Don’t you ever stop joking?’ she said. She
slid her free arm through the second opening and the vest fell into place. ‘By the
way,’ she continued softly, ‘for an expert diver your friend certainly uses antiquated
equipment.’ At this moment she regretted her decision to leave her customized diving
vest in the station wagon. She always used it when she dived with Dale and it had
all the latest advances, such as ABC (Automatic Buoyancy Compensation) and a perfect
pocket for her underwater camera. But after all the brouhaha when she came through
the marina headquarters with her footlocker of electronic equipment, Carol had decided
not to attract further attention by bringing in a state-of-the-art diving vest.

‘Nick thinks the new vests make it too easy for the diver. He wants them to have to
adjust their buoyancy manually—so that they are more conscious of how far down they
are.’ Troy looked Carol over. ‘You’re pretty light. This belt may be enough by itself.
Do you normally use any weights?’

Carol shook her head and pulled the belt around her waist. Nick came around the canopy
carrying his mask and flippers. He had already put on his diving vest with air bottle
and his weighted belt. ‘Those whales of yours are still in the same spot down there,’
he said. ‘I’ve never seen whales hang around like that.’ He handed her a piece of
chewing tobacco. She rubbed the tobacco on the inside of her mask to prevent fogging,
while Nick walked around behind her. He looked at her air gauge and checked both her
regulator and the secondary mouthpiece that he might have to use to share her air
in the event of an emergency.

Nick talked to Carol while he was making her final equipment checks. ‘This is your
charter,’ he began in what sounded like a friendly tone, ‘so we can go almost anywhere
you want while we are down there. The dive will not be too difficult, since it’s only
thirty-five feet or so to the floor. However,’ Nick moved around in front of Carol
and looked directly in her eyes, ‘I want one thing thoroughly understood. This is
my boat and I am responsible for the safety of the people on it. Including you, whether
you like it or not. Before we dive, I want to make certain that you will follow my
lead under the water.’

Carol recognized that Nick was trying to be diplomatic. It even flashed through her
mind that he looked quite attractive standing there in front of her in his diving
gear. She decided to be gracious. ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘But one thing before we descend.
Remember that I’m a reporter. I will have a camera with me and may want you to move
from time to time. So don’t get angry if I motion you out of the way.’

Nick smiled. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll try to remember.’

Carol put on her flippers and mask. Then she picked up her underwater camera by the
strap and threw it over her neck and shoulder. Troy helped her tighten the strap in
the back. Nick was sitting on the side of the boat at a break in the railing, right
next to a crude ladder that Troy had just dropped overboard. ‘I’ve checked the water
already,’ Nick said, ‘and there’s quite a current up here. Let’s go down the anchor
rope until we reach the ocean floor. Then you can pick the direction from there.’

Nick rolled backward off the boat. In a moment he surfaced, treading water. Carol
returned his thumbs-up sign (the signal between divers that everything’s all right)
and sat down herself on the side of the boat. Troy helped her make one last comfort
adjustment to her vest. ‘Good luck, angel,’ Troy said. ‘I hope you find what you’re
looking for. And be careful.’

Carol put the regulator in her mouth, took a breath, and then repeated Nick’s backward
roll manoeuvre. The ocean water felt cool against her sunbaked back. In a few seconds
she joined Nick over at the anchor rope and the two of them repeated the thumbs-up
sign. Nick led the way down. He went hand over hand, cautiously, never completely
releasing the rope. Carol followed carefully. She could feel the strong current that
Nick had mentioned. It pulled at her, trying to take her away from the rope, but she
managed to hold on. Every six to eight feet in the descent, Nick stopped to equalize
the pressure in his ears and looked up to see both that Carol was following and that
she was all right. Then he continued his descent.

There was nothing much to see until they reached the reef beneath them. The telescope
pictures had been so sharp that they had been misleading. The reef with its riot of
colour and its surfeit of plant and animal life had seemed to be right underneath
them because of the automatic focusing action of the optical system. But thirty-five
feet is a long way down. Any normal three-storey building could have been sitting
on the ocean floor underneath the
Florida Queen
and it would not have touched her hull.

When they finally reached the top of the reef where the anchor was implanted, Carol
realized she had made a mistake. She did not recognize her surroundings and therefore
did not know which direction to take to find the whales. She reproached herself briefly
for not having spent a few more moments studying the monitor to make sure that she
knew where all the landmarks were.
Oh well
, Carol thought,
it’s too late for that now. I’ll just pick a direction and go. Besides, I don’t have
any idea where the alarm object is anyway
.

Visibility in the water was fair to good, maybe fifty to sixty feet in all directions.
Carol adjusted her buoyancy slightly and then pointed to a gap between two reef structures,
both of which were covered with kelp, sea anemones, and the ubiquitous coral. Nick
nodded his head. Tucking her arms to her side to streamline her movement, Carol kicked
up and down with her flippers and swam toward the gap.

Behind her, Nick watched Carol swim with appreciation and admiration. She moved through
the water as gracefully as the school of yellow and black angelfish beside her. Nick
had not interrogated Carol very much about her diving experience and had not known
exactly what to expect. He had suspected from her ease and familiarity with the equipment
that she was a seasoned diver; but he had not prepared himself for an underwater peer.
Except for Greta, Nick had not encountered a woman before who was as comfortable under
the water as he was.

Nick absolutely loved the peace and serenity of the rich and vibrant world beneath
the ocean surface. The only sound he ever heard down there was his own breathing.
All around him the coral reefs teemed with life of unimaginable beauty and complexity.
There, underneath him now, was a grouper taking a bath by sitting at the bottom of
a natural hole and letting dozens of tiny cleaner fish eat away all the accumulated
parasites. A moment earlier, Nick’s downward excursion toward the ocean floor had
disturbed a manta hidden in the sand. This large ray, called a devilfish by the cognoscenti,
had undulated out of its hiding place at the last moment and just missed Nick with
its powerful and dangerous tail.

Nick Williams felt at home down in this watery world at the bottom of the Gulf of
Mexico. It was his recreation and his refuge. Whenever he was distressed or disturbed
by events on the surface, he knew that he could dive and find relaxation and escape.
Except on this particular dive he was aware of an ineffable emotion, a beginning perhaps,
a longing that was barely defined, possibly mixed up with a memory of years ago. He
was following a beautiful mermaid as she swam along the reef and the sight stirred
him.
I have acted like a schoolboy
, he thought,
and a bore. Or worse. And why? Because she is pretty? No. Because she is so alive.
So much more alive than I am
.

Carol and Nick made two different excursions, each time starting from the anchor rope,
without finding the whales or anything else unusual. When they returned to the anchor
after the second unsuccessful foray, Nick pointed at his watch. They had been under
the water for almost half an hour already. Carol wagged her head up and down and then
held up her index finger, indicating that she would try one more direction.

They found the whales immediately after they crossed over a big upward bulge in the
reef that came within fifteen feet of the surface. Nick saw them first and pointed
down. The three whales were about twenty feet below them and maybe thirty yards ahead.
They were still swimming slowly, more or less together, in the same directionless,
near circular pattern that Nick and Carol had watched on the screen. Carol waved Nick
out of the way and pointed at her camera. She then swam toward the whales, taking
pictures as she approached them, while carefully monitoring her depth and equalizing
the pressure in her ears.

Nick swam down beside her. He was certain the whales had seen the two of them, but
for some reason they had made no attempt to flee. In all his years as a diver, Nick
had only once seen a whale in the open ocean accept the nearby presence of a human.
And that had been a calving mother, in a Pacific Ocean lagoon off of Baja California,
whose birth pangs were a more powerful force than her instinctive fear of humans.
Here, even when Carol approached to within twenty feet or so, the whales continued
their indolent drift. They appeared to be lost, or perhaps even drugged.

Carol slowed her approach when the whales made no attempt to get away. She took some
more photographs. Close-up pictures of whales in their natural habitat were still
uncommon, so her trip had already been a journalistic success. But she too was puzzled
by their behaviour. Why were they ignoring her presence? And what were they doing
hanging around this particular spot? She remembered being surprised by the solitary
whale during her morning swim and wondered again if somehow all these strange events
were related.

Nick was off to her right, about twenty yards away. He was pointing at something on
the other side of the whales and gesturing for Carol to come toward him. She swam
away from the great mammals and headed in Nick’s direction. She saw immediately what
had attracted his attention. Below the whales, just above the ocean floor, there was
a large dark hole in the bottom of an imposing reef structure. At first glance it
appeared to be the entrance to an underground cave of some kind. But Carol’s sharp
eyes noticed that the lip-shaped fissure was extremely smooth and symmetrical, almost
suggesting to her that it was an engineering construction of some kind. She laughed
at herself as she swam up beside Nick. The amazing underwater world and the bizarre
behaviour of these whales were playing tricks with her mind.

Nick pointed down at the hole and then at himself, indicating that he was going down
to check it out more closely. When he started to leave, Carol had a sudden impulse
to reach for his foot and pull him back. A moment later, as she watched Nick swim
away, a powerful fear of unknown origin swept over her. She began to tremble as she
struggled gamely with this strange emotion. Goose-pimples appeared on her arms and
legs and Carol felt an overwhelming desire to get away, to escape before something
terrible happened.

An instant later she saw one of the whales move toward Nick. If Carol had been on
land she could have yelled, but fifty feet deep in the ocean there was no way to warn
someone from afar. As Nick drew near the opening, unaware of any danger, he was brushed
to the side by the whale with such force that he bounced against the reef and then
caromed off. He fell down on to a small patch of sand on the ocean floor. Carol swam
toward him quickly while keeping a careful eye on the whales. Nick had lost his regulator
and did not seem to be making any attempt to replace it. She drew up beside him and
flashed the thumbs-up sign. There was no response. Nick’s eyes were closed.

Carol felt a surge of adrenaline as she reached for Nick’s regulator and thrust it
into his mouth. She beat against his mask with her fist. After a few painfully long
seconds, Nick opened his eyes. Carol tried thumbs-up again. Nick shook his head, as
if he were clearing out the cobwebs, smiled, and then returned the okay signal. He
started to move but Carol restrained him. She indicated with gestures for him to sit
still while she hurriedly looked him over. From the force with which Nick had hit
the reef, Carol feared the worst. Even if his diving gear was all right, certainly
his skin would have been ripped and torn by the sharp coral and the impact. But, incredibly,
there did not appear to be significant damage either to Nick or to the equipment.
All she could find were a couple of small scrapes.