The League of Sharks (5 page)

Three metres. Two. The light kept reducing. It was possibly now too small for him to pass through, but he kicked harder. No time to hesitate. With one last surge of effort, he went through. He could feel the opening constrict around him like a solid aperture closing.

Finally the light disappeared completely and Junk with it. All that remained was the tip of one of his fins. Sliced clean through, it floated slowly to the seabed. Junk was gone.

Junk squeezed his eyes shut. His head was pounding. He ripped off his mask, spat out his mouthpiece and filled his lungs. He opened his eyes but found it hard to focus so he closed them again. Closed out the spinning room.

Room … ?

He opened his eyes again. There was a cold, hard, reflective floor beneath him. It was metallic, green-black. It made Junk think of a picture of a scarab beetle he had once seen in a book. He was disorientated.

*

His head didn't hurt so much now. He sat up and looked around, pulling the neoprene cowl off. He had no idea where he was. He was in a cavernous chamber so large that he couldn't see the ceiling or the walls. The distance just dissolved into shadow. But all around him were portals of green light, just like the one he had come through. Thousands of them. Thousands of doors. A room of doors.

The doorways weren't set into walls. They were
free-standing. They were arranged in ordered rows and columns. Junk pulled off his one and a half swim fins and stood up. He walked around the door he had passed through. He was able to view it from three-hundred-and-sixty degrees and it looked the same from all angles. The green hue was deeper in here. It pulsed at regular intervals like a heartbeat.

Only now did Junk notice that all the doors were pulsing softly, in unison, and if he trained his ear on the sound he could feel a sonorous thrum reverberate through him every ten seconds or so. It entered the soles of his feet and moved upwards. The room felt like it was inside a living organism, a vast whale maybe. The sensation had soporific qualities and Junk found his eyelids growing heavy. He sucked in a sharp bubble of air. It was cold, like air in a meat locker, and it made Junk feel alert.

He remembered what he was doing here. The creature. Where had he gone? He looked around but there was no sign of him. He listened but couldn't hear anything other than the low drone of the doors. Now what? Then he noticed footprints. A trail of wet tracks leading away from him. He followed them.

The tracks moved away to the right for about a hundred metres and then stopped at one of the many doorways. Evidently the creature had gone through. Without hesitation, Junk followed. As the light from the doorway touched his skin, he could feel a tugging sensation as if some invisible force was pulling him in. For a moment he started to pull back, but the force was
growing stronger and he was unable to stop himself being drawn in.

For a second or two Junk felt as if he was moving so quickly that the molecules of his body were being sucked apart, but before he had time to panic they were all slammed back together and he was spat out.

He found himself on a narrow ledge still in the Room of Doors but much higher up. He was a good fifty metres or more off the ground. He could judge this by the fact that there were twenty or so levels of doors beneath him now, whereas before they had been only above him. He looked down and spotted his air tank, mask and swim fins a long way down. A surge of vertigo-induced dizziness fluttered through him. He groped for a wall but there was nothing to hold on to. The only solid thing was the tiny ledge beneath his feet. It was made of the same cold, hard, metallic green-black substance as the ground level and was about a metre wide. After a moment Junk got his balance. He looked around and saw that the trail of wet footprints carried on to his left. Gingerly he started to follow them, walking sideways to maintain the most secure balance.

After he had gone thirty metres or so, the footprints started to evaporate and Junk felt a flicker of panic at the prospect of losing his only clue as to the creature's path. Then he reached two doorways that stood side by side, with only about half a metre's gap between them. Here the footprints, or the little that was left of them, stopped. The only problem was that it wasn't clear which of the
two doors the creature had gone through. The two portals were so close that the shallow film of seawater was in front of both. Junk could see nothing to do but choose one and hope for the best.

He looked back the way he had come and counted the number of doorways he had passed on the ledge: eighteen. Then he turned and looked down, searching for the first doorway, the one he had initially come through. His empty air tank, mask and discarded swim fins were sitting on its threshold. He counted the doorways he had passed on the ground level: thirty-nine. Now that he felt confident that he knew the way back, he turned to the two doors in front of him and pointed at the one on the left and recited a rhyme from the deep recesses of his mind:

‘Eenie, meenie, tipsy, toe, Olla, bolla, domino, Okka, pokka, dominocha, Hy! Pon! Tush!'

The left door. He took a deep breath and then stepped forward. He felt the pull take hold of him and suddenly he was yanked into the portal.

*

Once again he felt himself travelling at great speed, this time for a little longer than before. He felt his molecules being pulled apart and circling around one another, before being slammed unceremoniously back together in more or less the right order as he was spat out.

For a few moments he was encased in a shroud of air bubbles, but these slowly disappeared and Junk realized he had not come out in another part of the Room of Doors this time. This time he was underwater once again. It
took him only a moment to realize that he didn't have his air tank or mask with him. Another moment to realize he didn't know which way was up and which way was down, and what was worse he didn't know how far down he was. The only light was the light of the doorway, but the momentum with which he had passed through it meant he was moving rapidly away from it.

Junk opened his mouth for a split second to allow a single bubble of air to emerge. It chose a direction and rose quickly. This told Junk which way was up. He made a decision and spun round. He started swimming, chasing his air bubble as if he was trying to get it back. His arms reached up and pushed the water down, causing him to ascend swiftly. His lungs were starting to burn and the spent air bubbled out from his nose as he swam upwards in a panic. His oxygen was running out, this time much faster than before and with no doorway to pass through. The portal was shrinking many metres below him, but Junk wasn't even aware of it. All his focus was aimed straight up as he scrambled madly to reach the surface. His lungs were empty. Utterly depleted. His instinct was to inhale, but he fought the urge as hard as he could. He knew if he breathed in he would drown. He wasn't going to let that happen. He ploughed on, racing upwards, but still he couldn't see an end. No sunlight or moonlight from above. Nothing but darkness all around him. His head was beginning to pound mercilessly as his brain protested at the lack of oxygen. His vision started to blur and black tentacles of unconsciousness
started to creep in from the peripheries. Still he kept his jaw clamped tightly shut and still he continued upwards.

Then it was too late and the unconsciousness beat him. And as his body went limp, his jaw opened and the cold seawater gushed inside him. He started to thrash about as he drowned, the water entering his lungs. Fortunately Junk had lost consciousness altogether. The thrashing was nothing more than a mechanical response of his body. He was not aware of his own death.

*

Garvan Fiske lay in his boat, staring up at the clouds above him. He liked this time of day. The cool, salty breeze that danced over the top of the calm, still water moved the thick hairs on his powerful forearms and he could feel his skin pimple. It made him think of his home so far from here. He remembered lying on the old jetty, trailing a hand in the water as he was doing now and looking up at the sky. It was the same sky. The same shade of pale blue. But the sounds were different. Back there he would hear the insects and animals in the nearby forests and the sound of his brothers and sisters playing. Here there was none of that. A few gulls floating nearby squawked occasionally and he could hear the waves breaking on the distant shore. The sea thumped against the side of his boat and the oar moved in its cup, creaking softly. Now he thought about it, he realized how quiet it was. How different the sounds were. Back home, laughter, song and labour. Here, emptiness and solitude. He remembered
how alone he was and he felt a spike in his throat. He sat up and shook those thoughts away. He started humming in a vague approximation of the song he had enjoyed hearing his mother singing. He made tuneless guttural sounds from the depths of his windpipe and he knew he sounded like a constipated cow, but there was no one here to object apart from the gulls. One of them flew away but the others stayed. He reached behind and grabbed his net. He checked the areas he had spent the previous evening repairing and saw, in the cold light of day, that he had done a good job. The only way one could tell they were new was by the difference in colour. The mended sections were lighter than the old, but after half a dozen fishing trips it would all look the same.

Garvan stood up and his little boat rocked under his immense frame. He wore nothing but a pair of old shorts cut down from a pair of trousers that once belonged to his father. They were patched so often now that there was more new material than the original. Everything he possessed now was patched, mended and repaired. His net, his boat, his cabin, his shorts. How different from his early years. Maybe one day he would once again be the first to own something. Before anyone else. Something new. Actually new and not just new to him. He paused to wonder what it might be, but nothing came readily to mind.

He loosened his broad shoulders and started to spin the fishing net above his head, getting faster and faster and raising it higher and higher until, just at the perfect
moment, he let it go and it sailed out to sea, spreading wide as it went. Landing the optimum distance from the boat, the small weights attached to the edges started to sink and in moments the net vanished from view. Garvan wrapped a trailing rope around his arm and waited. He was perfectly still. The rope twisted around his forearm tightened as the net filled with fish. Then, all of a sudden, something much heavier and much bigger than his usual catch was scooped up below the water. Garvan knew this because he was yanked forward. His reactions were quick. His muscles tensed and he brought his powerful leg up, slamming the four toes of his right foot against the bow. He grunted and started to bring the net up, drawing it in hand over hand.

It was too heavy and he wasn't sure he was going to be able to land it. That would be a disaster. He would have no alternative but to cut the net away and all his fine work repairing it would have been for nothing. He was determined not to let that happen. He growled with exertion and pulled harder. He could see the net coming up. Only a few more metres. He paused, breathing heavily. He took a moment to brace himself and then with an almighty tug he hauled the net into the boat.

Garvan's feet slipped out from under him and he fell backwards. He lay there for a few moments panting. Then he looked up. What had he snagged? What had weighed down his net? Could it be one of the big gaper fish? They still came round here, though he hadn't caught one for a long time. He saw a black and grey shape in the middle
of the net, covered with a hundred silver-green mackies flapping and writhing.

Garvan grabbed an oar and used it to open up the net, staying a safe distance away. As the net unfurled, the fish parted and there was Junk, lying in a twisted heap. Garvan frowned and poked the lump with the end of his oar, causing Junk's arm to slip to the side. Junk was lying on his back, but not moving and apparently not breathing. Garvan poked him again with the oar, a little harder this time. He was debating what to do. Should he throw it back in the sea? It looked dead. He poked it one last time and suddenly Junk started to cough and vomit up a huge amount of water. Garvan held up the oar as a weapon, ready to bring it down if Junk attacked.

Junk didn't. After all the water had evacuated his body, he opened his eyes and tried to focus. He saw Garvan looming over him. To Junk, Garvan was immense. He was easily four metres tall and about half as wide. His skin was somewhere between light brown and grey. His shoulders were broad and muscular. His hands were twice the size of Junk's head and he had only four digits on each. Same as his toes. He had a strong chin but a weak mouth. His nose was broad and little more than nostrils. It was almost snout-like. He had long unkempt brown hair. For a fleeting moment the thought started to bloom in Junk's mind that he should panic, but before it could amount to anything substantial unconsciousness overtook him once more and he passed out.

Garvan looked down at Junk, who looked as unusual
to him as he did to Junk. He prodded him with the oar again but Junk didn't move. Then, feeling brave, Garvan crouched down and poked him roughly in the chest with his index finger. Junk didn't react. Garvan tossed the oar down on the deck and stood contemplating his unusual catch. What was he supposed to do? The fish were all still by now and he had to get them out of the sun before they spoiled. He knew he should throw Junk back. It would be the sensible thing to do. A little voice inside his head was telling him that if he didn't, he would live to regret it. No good would come from this. However, on the other hand, by the rules of the sea, he had landed him so he belonged to him, and Garvan never threw anything away unless he knew it wasn't going to be useful. He wasn't sure how or if Junk would turn out to be useful, but he didn't know that he wouldn't be, so he made a decision, locked the oar back into place and headed for shore.