“Why not?” asked one of Argus’ friends. “What do you have to hide?”
Garrett gave his favorite answer. “Why does the deer flee the hunter?”
Argus laughed. “You strike me as more predator than prey.”
“They must have a low admissions standard.” He thought of an old movie about a rabbit cop and a fox.
“I’m saying you can take care of yourself. You don’t need to hide behind masks and secrecy. Where’s the freedom in that?”
“I don’t feel ‘free’ if I’m being stared at by people with the authority to make me vanish. Yeah, you’re not with Homeland Security, but that ‘we know what the Net knows’ thing works both ways, doesn’t it?”
Argus shrugged. “Can’t avoid the Eye. Besides, without our hardware, you could shoot us and no one would know.”
Garrett let the subject drop. On the horizon loomed Castor, where he could stay away from worrying about dollars and laws. The challenges there were ones he could grapple with his hands.
“Watch your step,” he said, helping the tourists at the North Tower dock. On the radio Martin had sounded surprised but pleased to hear they were coming. The tourists stepped right up and gawked, making Garrett grin. The platform towered over them.
The iron door at dockside opened, revealing Tess.
“Oh, you finally got that thing unstuck?” said Garrett.
Tess scowled. “I had to. Who’re they?”
While the tourists brought their gear inside, Tess waved Garrett to come upstairs with her. She said, “I’ve been useless. We’ve still got equipment underwater, including the desalinator.”
“Great.” A big part of the bulky, expensive water-purifier had been installed outdoors. It must have come loose. The lack of water would eventually ruin them, but that problem was in the category of what Uncle Haskell called second-tier trouble, the kind that could wait. “Maybe we can improvise something.”
They went downstairs, still talking. The tourist group overheard and Argus said, “You’ve got sunken treasure? We can find it!”
“Don’t bother. I’ll have Zephyr… never mind. I could use the help.”
He’d lost the gear, so he should be the one to find it. He also didn’t trust these people messing around at his station. Come to think of it, he did have an underwater camera left; he could collect some footage for Samuel if nothing else. “Give me a few minutes to get ready,” he said.
Before long, he was breathing cold nitrox and letting himself slip beneath the waves. Today the sea was warm, barely justifying a wetsuit. He was tempted to ask why the CelebPix folk didn’t strip, but was afraid they would.
The water closed around him so that he was on life support, surviving thanks to machinery. As always, he gave silent thanks to Jacques Cousteau for opening this world.
Garrett descended to the dim plain of sand. The light rippled along his arms, the other divers, and the seabed like crazy spotlights, playing across the station’s pneumatic cylinders and the various concrete jacks and stray rocks. Here was a real Atlantis. Fortunately Poseidon had left some of the kelp intact, which was impressive. Then again the green-brown-red fronds were built to withstand the eternal sloshing of normal current, which could snap steel hulls in half. The kelp towered around him as he kicked to fly over the seabed ruins.
He followed the divers without complaint. Together they toured the area and found a tangle of sunken machinery: the desalinator. Garrett swooped down to inspect the thing. As he’d hoped, nearly all of the rugged device looked salvageable. He waved the tourists closer. With a few sign language gestures he managed to convey how the equipment should be lifted. Here in this quiet space it was satisfying to know that he could communicate. On a count of three everyone heaved up from the sand, making the bulky hardware turn and glide. Garrett found himself nearly crushed beneath the thing and flipped out of the way, eyes wide.
They broke the water’s surface together, then grunted and heaved their catch up to the dock. They sat around at dockside, talking shop about farming and dive gear. Then it was back into the water for them, searching for sunken treasure among the waving towers of kelp. A pipe here, a cable there, a not-so-buoyant hydroponics square. Every piece was a helpful find. The process of seeking it out, patrolling the blue and flying over the ground, finally took Garrett’s mind off the disaster. He had to admit he was having fun again.
By evening they were worn out. “Almost like home, eh?” said Garrett, sprawled on a blanket they’d spread on deck. Overhead the clouds had turned to gold, and the waves broke like calm breaths.
Tess ate a frozen dinner quietly, and Garrett tried to bring her into the conversation. “You should’ve gone with us. We got a lot done. Want to join us in the morning? Or you, Martin?”
Tess said, “We should bring Zephyr.”
“What, on a screen?” Garrett glanced at the tourists, wondering how much they knew about the bot. They had insisted on donning their video gear again as soon as they got dry, which struck Garrett as boorish. Zephyr’s existence felt like a secret to Garrett even though they’d been on television together. “Martin, what do you think of this business with Zephyr?”
Martin shrugged. “He’s a useful tool. Your roboticist friend is clever.”
The tourists listened.
“Well,” said Garrett to them. “Sorry we don’t offer better accommodations.” Their room was hardly more than a concrete alcove.
Argus said, “You should advertise this place.”
“We’re really not here for entertainment.”
Martin looked thoughtful, saying, “We should be.” When Garrett started to object he added, “You’ll still be able to do your work, Fox. Leave it to me.”
Garrett didn’t feel mollified. He could imagine strangers stomping through his station, stealing and breaking stuff. It’d be out of his control.
Argus said, “How hard would it be to add a snack bar, say?”
“Easy!” Tess said, getting up to look around. “Um. We could dedicate a small room to a snack bar and gift shop.”
Garrett’s face fell. “A gift shop? Castor is not a tacky roadside attraction! I understand the need for money, but are we going to go totally mercenary now? It’s not about profit.” He stood and paced, fuming. “This isn’t a safe place. Things are broken and missing. It never measured up to the ideal plan. It’s dirty and isolated and Spartan. Why would anyone in their right mind want to come here? It’s not good enough!”
Argus said, “So fix it!”
His friends joined in. “Yeah, fix the place up.”
“Fix it!” Tess echoed with a grin.
Martin joined in, so that everyone was practically yelling at him to “Fix it!”
Garrett held up his arms and felt driven back a step. Yeesh! “I’ll think about it, okay?”
He couldn’t sleep. In North Tower he made himself useful shoving boxes of expensive gear around. He’d sunk nearly everything into Castor, and here people were trying to turn his nice, clean science project into something it was never meant to be.
He sat on a plastic cooler with a cartoon sun on it. In an idle moment he’d used his computer to call up the original college plan and was comparing it to the version he and Martin had settled for. If he’d had a jillion dollars he’d have done it all. Many giant platforms, great sealanes lined with silver windvanes, internal roads of high-tech trams and gondolas. A city of mathematically arranged, standard modules in a gloriously efficient urban plan, better than the rotting husks that were modern cities. The concept art gleamed like something from Star Trek: blue and white, right-angled and upstanding, neat and orderly. Apparently that wasn’t in the cards.