Barry saw him watching, and gave the circular OK signal with his right hand. Mark waved back. Cobalt ring snakes thrummed inquisitively in their niches as they swam lazily overhead. Rugpikes crawled over the reef, hundreds of tiny stalk eyes swiveling as if they were a strip of soft green wheat waving in a gentle breeze. Fish were clotting the water around them like a gritty kaleidoscope cloud. Thousands of brilliantly colored starburst particles whose spines and spindles pulsed rapidly, propelling them along in jerky zigzags. They came in sizes from brassy afriwebs half the length of his finger up to lumbering great brown and gold maundyfish, bigger than humans and moving with drunken sluggishness around the lower reefs. A shoal of eerie milk-white sloopbacks wriggled right in front of Mark’s goggles, and he made a slow catching motion with his hands. The palm-length creatures bent their spines back to form a streamlined teardrop and jetted away.
Barry was doing slow barrel rolls, his flippers kicking in careful rhythm. Both hands were clenched around flakes of dried native insects, which he was slowly rubbing apart. Fish followed him, feeding on the tiny flecks. They formed twin spirals in his wake, like intersecting corkscrews. As they ate, their unique digestive tract bacteria began to glow, illuminating them from within. Looking down on them against the murky bottom was to see an iridescent comet tail spinning in slow motion across the darkness.
With the food almost gone, Barry slapped his hands together, creating an expanding sphere of broken flakes. The Trine’ba fish swarmed in, creating a galaxy of opalescent stars around him.
Mark smiled proudly inside his gill mask. The boy was everything he could have wanted in a son: happy, cheeky, confident. He’d grown beautifully in this environment. It was becoming hard to remember Augusta now. Neither of the kids ever talked about it these days, even Liz called her friends back there less and less, and he hadn’t spoken to his father in months.
He kicked his legs, closing in on his son as the shroud of luminous fish darkened and swam away in search of more food. The timer in his virtual vision said they’d been exploring the reef underwater for forty minutes now. He pointed to the surface. Barry responded with a reluctant OK hand sign.
They came up into warm bright sunlight that had them blinking tears against it as they searched around for the boat. The catamaran was a hundred fifty meters away. Liz was standing on the prow, waving at them. Mark took the gill mouthpiece out. “Got a long swim over there. Better inflate your jacket.”
“I’m all right, Dad.”
“I’m not. Let a little air in, huh, make your mom happy.”
“Okay, I guess.”
Mark pressed the pump valve on his shoulder, and felt the warmsuit jacket stiffen as the fabric inhaled, puffing up around him. They rolled onto their backs, and began a steady kick.
Sandy was still snorkeling around the yacht, along with Elle, one of the Dunbavand kids. Lydia and her two lads, Will and Ed, were already back on the catamaran, washing their diving gear. David and Liz were starting to prepare lunch on the middeck.
Panda barked delightedly as Barry swam up to the small dive platform at the back of the yacht.
“Stay,” Liz called. The dog looked like she was about to jump in and swim again.
Barry clambered onto the dive platform and took his flippers off. “Did you miss me?” he asked Panda. “Did you?”
The dog was still barking excitedly, her tail wagging furiously. Barry made a fuss of her when he climbed up the small chrome ladder to the main deck. He started to reach for one of the boiled eggs from the salad Liz was setting out. “Clean up and dry out first,” his mother warned him.
Mark helped Sandy onto the dive platform. She lifted her mask off, and smiled happily at her father. “I saw a grog down there, Daddy. It was hugely big.” Her arms stretched out wide to show just how big.
“That’s lovely, darling,” he said as he pulled his own flippers off. “Did you put your sunscreen on before you went in the water?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded vigorously.
Even though Sandy’s skin was a lot darker than his, he was suspicious about the back of her neck and arms; they looked slightly sunburnt to him. “Well, let’s put some aftersun salve on, shall we?”
Happy with the attention, she agreed readily.
“You shouldn’t have taken him out for so long,” Liz chided when he sat down and began applying the salve to Sandy’s back. “I was getting worried. And look how far away from the boat you got.”
“But, Mom, it was so clear down there today,” Barry protested. “You could see for kilometers. It’s never been so good before.”
Mark gave his wife a helpless look. How could you prevent a kid having that much fun? She gave the pair of them an exasperated stare, and carried on with the salad.
The catamaran belonged to David and Lydia, who used it during the summer months to explore the little coves and inlets along Trine’ba’s shoreline. In wintertime it was hauled up the Randtown yacht club’s slipway, so on the weekends David could spend hours in the boatshed painting the hull and repairing the rigging ready for the next season. Mark loved the yacht, and had already begun to think seriously about getting one himself. Not that they could afford one yet. It was a bit like having a dog and a four-by-four, all part of Randtown.
When everyone was finally washed and dry and sitting down to lunch, the catamaran’s electromuscle rigging unfurled its sails and set off for one of the tiny conical atolls that poked up from the very deepest part of the lake. They’d promised the kids they could visit one in the afternoon to see if the balloon flowers were inflating yet. It was almost time for the annual event, which Randtown celebrated with parades and a huge lakeside barbecue in the evening.
“The vineyard association said they haven’t noticed any decline on orders,” David said when the kids had all gone to sit on the stern to eat their lillinberries and ice cream. “I was at the meeting last night. You should have come, Mark.”
“Not sure I’d be welcome.”
“Don’t be so paranoid,” Lydia told him. “You didn’t even get your fifteen minutes of fame; you were just a one-minute wonder that evening. All the media cares about right now is the Burnelli murder.”
“That Baron woman is still using the phrase,” Mark said. “According to her show all of Randtown is antihuman.” Everyone in the district was worried about the effect Baron’s propaganda would have on their small economy. So far it hadn’t been bad. After a five-day standoff, the navy trucks had eventually retreated back down the highway, and the tourist buses had returned. Of course, the summer bookings had been made months before; it was too late for anyone to cancel. The true test would be next season’s bookings. A surprising number of visitors had congratulated the residents on making their stand—Mark’s interview was politely never mentioned. In the meantime, people were watching to see what would happen to their small export trade of wines and organic food.
“Nobody on Elan is going to organize a boycott, for heaven’s sake,” Liz said. “In any event, half of the wine we make is sold right here in the district; and the kind of people who buy proper organic produce support what we did anyway.”
Mark nodded glumly, and poured himself some more Chapples wine. “I might have got away with it, then.”