Crossing the ledge over the elkhorn, an admiring barracuda came to share the dive, then, quicker than the eye, a second appeared in the beam of his light. When he was on the wall, descending again, they followed him down in a slow spiral.
Equalizing, he felt as though the pressure against his body were the weight of darkness itself. Dark possibility above and below, everywhere beyond the little circle of his light. But close at hand, the wall was richer than he had imagined. Colors came forward almost violently, flashed into life within the vagrant cordon he spread. Star coral hung on the underledges; there were caves where baby sponges grew on a gleaming black carpet, like anemones in a lava field. Black coral, something rare. Probing farther along, he saw that a lot of it had been chipped away; the claw of a lost hammer glinted among the fans.
Attended by the 'cudas and a cautious trumpet fish, he moved out from the face and tried to accelerate a little, to lose more of the air in the big BC. He passed beautiful terraces of brain coral. When he had first seen brain, diving years before, it had stirred his faith, the form of it, suggesting in that deep liquid world the mind itself, the mind of things. A little savor of that time was with him when he came to the field of ruined coral. Below him was a trail of hacked and severed creatures, bare soiled sand and broken rock. His light struck a rainbow. Following it with his beam, he saw that the rainbow was rising in a broad column toward the surface. For some reason, the prismatic column was crowded with fish. There were more than he had seen so far: parrotfish, wrasse, tangs and, in great numbers, angelfish. For some reason the fish were circling, remaining within the colored circumference. He turned the beam down and saw that the numbers of fish increased with depth. Paddling away from the destroyed terrace, he followed the rainbow down.
So many fish, he thought, lovely in their numbers. A cloud of angels — and on the edge of vision the trembling barracudas, waiting to pick off stragglers. Ten feet farther down the column and the track of destruction, his light fixed on the plane.
Its serial number was stenciled in black on the blue-gray skin. Hoping to keep clear of debris, Michael moved away from the face of the wall and descended from open water. The beam of his light was just large enough for him to get a working picture of the wreck. The plane was upside down at a forty-five-degree angle, nose foremost into the reef. The rainbow column rising from it was composed of the last dregs and fumes from its fuel tanks. Somehow they had failed to discover a slick on the surface. The cabin door on the side facing Michael was open, showing the empty passenger seat just inside. The seat next to the vacant one had something piled on it, something obscured by the swarms of fish of every shape and species that teemed in it. Through its open door the cabin looked like an aquarium tank — but not an aquarium, he thought, swimming over with the light. More like a fish market's display bin because of the sheer volume of the creatures. No responsible scientific or educational enterprise, no aquarium, would confine living creatures in such insufferable density. He closed on the upended aircraft and poked his light into the cabin.
Of course the remains of the pilot were inside, and of course the fish were there in uncountable numbers to eat them. The remains were hugely swollen, stuffed into khaki cloth, and the head was so horrible that it frightened Michael into dropping his flashlight, leaving him traumatized in sudden darkness. He had to hurry down after the tumbling illumination while its beam careened over the coral wall, lighting crevices where half-coiled morays darted, lighting pillars of sea snow, the tiny flakes ceaselessly falling. A barracuda, drawn by the light's filament, made a lightning charge. He finally managed to get a grip on the handle about ten feet below the plane.
He wrapped the light's strap around his wrist and began to explore the space behind the seats. His hands were trembling, his entire body was. He worked hard to avoid looking at the dead pilot; the corpse was a revelation, an undeniable demonstration of the ghastliness inherent in material existence. The swelling was unbelievable, the beard and hair grotesque, also the lipless teeth. The whole vocabulary of features made a distinctly different statement.
Creatures had occupied the large storage space behind the seats and they fled his light in a scurry of fin and claw. He used his hands very tentatively, exploring the inside, hoping to keep his fingers intact. There had been dive mittens at the shop but he had chosen canvas gardening gloves instead. He had been down on enough wrecks to know that without a securing line he had better not venture too much of himself inside. Doors could shut forever. The aircraft's position was unstable; the whole thing could shift and plunge off the reef and into the Puerto Rico Trench. The trench began about three miles away, all of it dark and all of it down.
He could see the two cases and a tubular package that might contain paintings. He leaned as far forward as he could to get a hold of one of the cases but the tanks on his back stiffened his reach. At last he caught a piece of one with the light. Just as he did, he felt the plane he was leaning on begin to shift. For a moment he thought he was imagining it. Then he pulled out, trying not to fuck it up in the rush, trying not to spring his own deathtrap. When he was out he thought again he had imagined it, the shifting. No way to be sure.
Finally, swatting at shadows, feeling himself buried alive, half unconscious with fear, he got the tube. He held it for a moment between his legs and its weight bore him down; he had to inflate the BC slightly to hang on. Next he got one of the cases into the seat beside the pilot. The swarming fish made him shudder with loathing. With both cases and the big tube he began to consider how to get all three of the things to the surface. He was breathing hard; all at once it struck him that he had not once checked his pressure gauge. When he did, he saw the arrow trembling on the edge of the red zone. He had been overbreathing like a rookie. The sight of it put ice in his blood.
Easy, easy, he said, speaking to the fish, to the pilot, his pal and fellow aquanaut. He gathered the cases and started up.
He had ascended about ten feet by his wrist depth gauge when he began to feel the straps of his BC contract. Everything he wore, all the gear, weight belt, tanks, seemed to be squeezing him sick. Allowed a tiny window, a glimpse of calm, he tried to run through the diver's mental checklist. As the straps gripped him, he saw the BC ballooning. He had gone down with too much air in the thing and it had contracted under the water's pressure. Now as he rose it expanded, and as the binding cut into his flesh, his speed of ascent went out of control.
Don't breathe! Don't breathe was the thing, the only thing, because a single intake of breath would do to his lungs what air was doing to the orange BC — puff them out like a kiddie's birthday party balloon until, like one of those merry little numbers, they popped, blood and tissue splattering his chest cavity. The higher he rose the more unbearably pressed the weight against his thumping, stifling heart, feeling like Cousin Clarence in the malmsey, the pain it was to drown, right, and the dreadful sights of water and the men that fishes gnawed upon. He tried exhaling the little swallow of soiled used air he was holding inside. The rule of ascent was follow your bubbles — no faster. Follow the bouncing ball. But the bubbles he could bring to the party were few and small, and he rose faster than they. The kids would be disappointed.
Then the air in his tank ran out. He did not trouble to waste the priceless energy required to reach the J-valve. Moreover, he had no free hand. He was clutching the shit he had gathered in the plane like life itself. And of course there was no need for air — au contraire.