“Oh, darn. I’m sorry.” She sat up and stifled another yawn. “It’s just so boring.”
“It could’ve gotten a lot more interesting!”
“I said I’m sorry, okay? All clear.”
He sighed, counted to ten, and let the ever-changing sea calm him.
Alexis said, “You need to learn to relax. It’s a nice night.” She patted the seat beside her.
He took it, but not so much because he wanted to be close to her right now. Somebody had to be properly on watch. “I’m a little worried. We need to make everything work.”
“You’re overthinking things. You’ve got the skills and the hardware, and the other stuff is under control.” She snuggled closer to him. “C’mon, help me stay awake.”
He brought one arm over her shoulder, and sat there while waves churned.
“Are we there yet?” said Tess one morning. The pre-dawn air made them shiver.
“Not quite.”
“Are we there yet?”
Garrett turned and glared at her, but she only grinned. “Hmmph. Anyway, we’re about a mile from the target.”
“How about we roll some dice and build a few hundred yards off in a random direction?” Garrett twitched at the thought. She laughed and said, “You’re sure you didn’t want to be a surveyor?”
He’d picked this shallow spot carefully. The original version of Project Castor was a giant sea-city that would mine the seabed, but that was crazy on his budget. There were big legal problems too. The UN Law of the Sea Treaty basically granted ownership of the world’s vast ocean resources to an International Seabed Authority. If he wanted to mine, he’d have to survey two sites, then let the ISA decide which to keep for itself and which to tax him for. Since he didn’t know much metallurgy anyway and had such a small starting crew, there was no way. Without mining, at least he could pick from more possible sites.
When they did arrive at his chosen spot, he only knew by the beeping of the GPS unit. This patch of shimmering morning sea looked the same as any other. He said, “It’s weird that we’re letting this thing tell us where to go.”
She looked puzzled. “Something has to.”
He took another manual reading with his sextant. He was stalling. When he looked up from the instruments he paid more attention to the seascape itself. The water was so pure he could gauge its depth by the patches of royal blue and sapphire and emerald and aqua. It mirrored the clouds in the sky. “Let’s get the others on deck.”
Tess took a deep breath and shouted, “Whee-ooh! All hands on deck!”
Garrett winced. “Not so loud.”
“Why? Who’s gonna stop us? I’ll shout as loud as I want!”
He guessed she was right. So he filled his lungs with salty air and yelled it too. “All hands on deck!” The words vanished into the infinite sky.
Martin and Alexis staggered into view, half-dressed. “What the hell?” said Alexis.
Garrett pointed out the GPS. “This is the place.”
“Just another patch of water,” she said.
Martin said, “It’s our job to change it. Do you mind if we have a prayer before we start?”
Garrett frowned, seeing no point. Tess was no fan of religion either, and presumably the robot Zephyr didn’t know or care one way or the other. “Alexis?” he asked.
She shrugged. She’d left her hat and sunglasses below (making Garrett realize he had, too) and was squinting at the sun. She was an Episcopalian by default.
“If it makes you uncomfortable,” said Martin, “a moment of silence instead?”
“Fine,” said Garrett. Martin took off his hat and they all spent a minute staring at their boots and the cluttered deck.
They’d come a long way, put in a lot of training, and spent a hell of a lot of money to get here and have nothing but the sea itself waiting for them. Without human hands and eyes, the wilderness did nothing, meant nothing, had no value. The blank space frightened Garrett. People weren’t meant to live in such a place, were they?
When he looked up, the others were watching him. He turned to look at the sea again, stretched like a blank canvas in all directions. A canvas wanted paint. The wind swirled around them and the American flag snapped and fluttered in the dawn’s light, making the loudest sound within earshot. “We should probably get started,” he said, but he ended up watching the sky as if waiting for a sign. Nobody moved. He wondered if this whole project was a dumb idea after all, and fantasized about saying “Never mind” and recovering a chunk of his sudden fortune. He could be reasonably happy as a surveyor back on land.
But that wasn’t what he really wanted to do.
What the hell. He looked back at his crew and said, “Let’s roll.”
As if a spell had been broken, everyone moved at once. It made Garrett’s mind spin to think of how many things needed to be done, even before the delivery of the main Castor platform. The first order of business: flotation. While people chattered, Garrett went to a box of life preservers and threw several into the water. Now there was something to hang onto down there, if not to stand on. Orange against the blue.
Garrett and Martin were struggling with a mass of plastic rods and mesh. Hopefully it’d become one of several big floating squares they could stand on and use for Alexis’ first farming attempts.
“Oof!” said Alexis. “Where’d you buy this thing?”
Garrett cursed and said, “Secondhand marine supply.” There’d been other aquaculture operations closer to shore, and some other gear was from Hollywood. “You ever watch The Ocean Kings, Martin?”
“I heard it was terrible.”
“It was. We’ll be walking on part of the set.”
“Oh, neat!” said Alexis.
Martin said, “Somehow I don’t feel honored.”
Garrett grunted as he forced rods into place. “Movie stars outrank engineers and businessmen. All we’re using this hardware for is science. We should be kissing this piece of Hollywood/Bollywood history.”
Alexis said, “I’ve been hit in the face with it already, thanks.”
“Okay, set it down. Time to try it out.”
Zephyr was moving boxes. “What’s my assignment?”
Garrett wasn’t sure; it was like giving orders to the anchor. “Uh, how about scouting the water to spot anything unusual?”
The robot nodded his sleek head, making his ears bob. “Aye aye, Captain Fox!”
“Arr,” Garrett answered.
For a while Garrett worked on unrolling black suncloth. Hopefully the stuff would hold up well enough to help power the station. For now it kept Tess happy, giving her electricity to use for playing with the sensors. She rolled her eyes as Alexis walked by in a swimsuit. “Why’d you have to bring her?” Tess said.
Garrett recovered from staring at Alexis. “Do you know how to grow plants?”
Tess muttered, but then they saw Zephyr return. His segmented tail helped him glide through the bright water to surface near the ship. “Reporting, Captain! I saw: a broken bottle, a sneaker, and some pretty seashells. Also I have: new map data. This area is empty.”
“Good, I guess,” said Garrett.
Tess leaned over the rail. “Cool! Did you get sonar readings and everything?”
“I don’t have sonar. This body is a prototype. It was built hastily. I used this mission as a shakedown. My maker should’ve done that.”
11. Tess
Tess was on watch, humming in the night. Wind blew through the ship’s bridge and made her shiver. So did the thought of how alone she was.
No, she told herself, I like it out here. Here there weren’t those girls who’d tagged her with an obscene nickname for no reason. None of those pointless classes either. Henweigh taught Wellness, which was just plain creepy. History was about memorizing which explorer raped which Indian tribe and which greedy capitalist screwed up what part of society. Science was history too, plus explanations of climate change and the space shuttle disasters. Language Arts class was Spanish, English, and books about white boys learning to overcome prejudice. Math… it was hard to screw up math; it was like making cereal. That left an hour a week for scoreless softball and athletic trust exercises. Not worth putting up with a week of school for that, not when Henweigh might have smiles and suggestions for her. Tess had learned to fake her way through classes while learning fun computer stuff on her own. With computers you could do almost anything.