His worst fear was realized. The new software didn’t work.
Below him, Alison’s earplugs screeched with a jumble of high-pitched noise as IMIS listened and tried unsuccessfully to translate hundreds of conversations at once. Sound carried further in water, which meant everything from any dolphin within earshot of Alison was easily picked up by the vest’s microphone. All without the video feed, an essential element needed for identifiable translation. The sheer deluge of noise completely overwhelmed both the processors on Alison’s vest and those in Lee’s small servers.
Alison cringed in pain and immediately yanked the buds out of her ears. “Lee! It’s too loud!”
“I know, I know!” He scrambled to lower the sound. “Is that better?” There was no response. “Ali? Ali, can you hear me?”
With one headphone back in, she nodded. “Yes, barely. But I can still hear all the noise. Turn it off!”
A moment later, the background noise was gone and Lee’s voice rose again in volume. “Sorry. How’s that?”
“Better. What happened?”
“The software doesn’t work.”
“Crap. Okay, just turn Dirk and Sally back on.”
“I can’t. The process is hung on the server. I can’t stop it without stopping everything.”
“You mean permanently?”
“No, just until I can reboot the system. Maybe ten minutes.”
Alison looked at the dive watch strapped to her left arm. “That doesn’t leave much time. We have to surface soon.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. But we have no choice. The only thing that isn’t hung is our radios.”
Alison shook her head and peered at Neely and Lightfoot, who were both watching her.
“Fine. Reboot.”
71
From their viewpoint, Sally and Dirk were both watching Alison, puzzled. They didn’t understand why she was not speaking.
“Why are they no speak?” one of the elders asked.
Dirk peered at Alison. “They talked much before.” He drifted in closer and could see Alison’s mouth moving inside the glass. He examined the machine on her chest. The small light was on. Dirk circled back toward the other two. Their mouths were also moving. “I don’t know.”
The three elders continued floating, waiting.
After a long wait, the silence was broken by Alison’s translated mechanical voice.
— ally Dirk can hear me?
“Yes, Alison. We hear you now. You are not talking before.”
Metal broken. Work now. Sorry.
Sally watched as the three older dolphins glided in closer. “You hear us?”
There was no answer.
“Alison, you are hearing?” repeated Dirk.
Metal broken. Hear Dirk and Sally. No heads.
One elder seemed to understand and spoke through Dirk instead. “Ask her why plants.”
“Why do you come back, Alison? For plants?”
Yes. Plants important.
“Yes. You take plants, Alison. We want to talk.”
Alison turned and nodded at Neely, who was still hovering beside her.
Neely acknowledged and reached down to retrieve a knife from her leg. She then reached out and cut a small sample from a nearby tendril. She moved forward and took a piece from another plant, continuing until she had several. The dolphins followed her curiously.
What talk?
Dirk turned back to her. “You come back with more friends. Heads want to know how many others.”
From inside her face mask, Alison watched as the dolphins spoke to each other. She paused, trying to understand Dirk’s translated question. The IMIS system was amazing, but it still had limitations. And the way Alison sounded to them must have been just as challenging.
“How many of us? Um… three.”
She watched the elders speak again through Dirk.
Not three. How more?
How more? Alison thought to herself. How more what?
“I don’t understand.”
How more peoples?
“How many people where?”
No. How more peoples there.
Alison still didn’t understand. What did they mean by there? On the boat?
“I’m not-” she began to speak but stopped. IMIS hadn’t caught it. But she suddenly did. They didn’t mean there, they meant everywhere!
“You mean how many people are there?”
Yes. How peoples all there?
Alison smiled, briefly gloating over the realization that she’d translated something before IMIS did. Yet her face became dour again as she considered the question. They wanted to know how many humans there were. In total. She suddenly found herself nervous. They understood numbers, but there was no way they could understand billions. And if they did, her answer was probably going to scare the hell out of them.
“Many,” she replied.
How?
Alison looked to Neely and Lightfoot, both still watching her. She wasn’t about to lie, but there was no way the dolphins were ready for the truth of just how many humans there really were. Not by a long shot.
“Many,” she repeated. She took a breath. “Like fish.”
Their reaction was unreadable. The elders simply stared at her with their dark, soft eyes. It wasn’t worth pointing out that not all people were friends.
The third elder on the right moved closer. She drifted past Alison’s shoulder, examining the scuba gear.
She say stay.
Alison began to reply when she was interrupted by the beeping from her dive computer. They were reaching their nitrogen limit. They needed to get to the surface. “I cannot stay. We must go up.”
She motioned to the others and added a brief blast of air to increase her buoyancy. “I’m sorry, we’re out of time. We will come back.”
They want stay.
“I’m sorry,” Alison repeated. “I cannot. But I will come back.”
It was the last translation Alison heard before reaching the pod of dolphins above her, where the trio stopped and hovered for a few minutes before finally breaching the surface.
Bobbing among the waves, Alison pulled her mask off and inhaled a lung full of fresh air.
She raised her voice so the others could hear her. “We have to get back aboard!”
Lightfoot nodded and swam forward. Neely followed, leaving Alison floating behind them. Something had struck Alison from the moment they’d reached the bottom, but it didn’t register until Dirk mentioned the plants. She suspected neither Neely nor Lightfoot knew enough about phosphorescence to catch it. There was something wrong with what they saw. Bioluminescence caused by the light-emitting pigments and enzymes, luciferin and luciferase, had very distinct hues of green and blue. But what Alison had just seen below was not the same — it was a very different hue of green. One that she’d seen only once before and in a place very far from the ocean. It had been on top of the Acarai Mountains in South America. She didn’t notice the first time she’d seen the plants because they were there during the day.
She had to get to a phone. Immediately.
72
The tropical waters from which Alison was being lifted could not have been more different from those in which John Clay now stood. Water had collected at the lowest point of one of the mine’s shafts, leaving an ultra-clear basin that was waist-high, stretching over a hundred yards along their path. And unlike the warm Caribbean, this water was ice-cold.
Carrying his bag on one shoulder and holding his phone and flashlight with the opposite hand, Clay could feel his toes growing numb. Which meant it must be even worse for Li Na, who was trailing behind him.