Breathing became difficult as the muscles demanded oxygen: the lungs began creating a vacuum, setting up pressure lag at the regulator.
He had stopped his left-hand action because I was holding the air tube out of his reach, my back arched and my head angled, but this was defensive because my right hand was immobilized and time was already running out: in scuba diving exertion of any kind is at a heavy premium and we were making demands on oxygen that weren't going to be met. I estimated we had two more minutes before exhaustion set in.
The current was taking us slowly away from the substructure of the rig and we were drifting higher, with the sandbars below us losing definition. The only purchase either of us had was against the other's body and we were using our legs now, not for striking but for leverage, my right foot working for pressure against his neck as one of his legs was hooked suddenly around mine as he went for a knee lock and got it and began putting stress into the movement with our ankles braced together bone on bone.
Our black rubber bodies drifted, entangled intimately in a deathly embrace, a slow and freakish sea-creature afloat on the current, the pressures and tensions of its own destruction working within it, the quadruple lung system starving for air, the twin heads close together in mortal enmity, each willing death on the other.
This wasn't how it was meant to be, this slow surrender to the sea itself, the drifting away to death of a four-armed creature, the light turning as the grey-green world revolved, the mind spinning in silence, in eternal peace.
Think.
A whirlpool of colours streaming, swirling, a singing of yellow in my eyes as the deep came, darkening.
Think.
Nitrogen narcosis.
Do something.
The consciousness ebbing as the rapture of the deep drew over me, the pain sharp in my knee and the brain waking, Christ sake do something, finish him off and get up there, his hand hooking again and the rush of salt water against my face as the mask was wrenched away, fighting him half-blinded now and with pressure against the nose and the shape of his other hand indistinct as his wrist came free and he hooked again and dragged my air tube away, taking my last hope of life.
Not good enough and had to try but salt water now in my eyes and in my mouth and no more air and he kicked with his fins to get clear while I drowned but don't let him he'll leave you here to die and my hand moved, frenzied, part of the mind driving it, part of the mind striving to clear a space for conscious thought like a bubble in black water, a bubble of light, my fingers closing and snatching at his head and dragging the mask off and going for his air tube and finding it and tearing it away as he squirmed clear of the knee lock and began fighting for his life against the sea.
Then at some time our faces passed close to each other and his looked as dead as mine must look, the eyes dulled by the water and the mouth flattened as he held on to the last breath of his life, as I was doing. Then we drifted apart in the reddening light as the blood from the wound in my hand began clouding against my eyes. I felt behind me for the air tube but it was out of my reach: he'd pulled the mouthpiece over my head and the tube was hanging somewhere behind my shoulder-blades. The longing began in my chest: the longing to drag air into the lungs and breathe again.
The sea darkened as he loomed suddenly against my face, his shoulder hitting and turning me as 'his arm hooked again and again behind him, his hand trying to find the air tube as it drifted past my eyes. I cut it away with my knife and kicked clear of him.
The effort had taken the last of my strength and my chest was hammering with the need for air and I knew that soon my throat must open and suck the water in, and in the deep red singing I saw Moira, as I knew one day I would, her long eyes and the flow of her copper hair, turning her head in the way she did, to watch me with her smile as my mind became lulled in the soft-coming waves of nothing, nihil, annihilation, while somewhere as if in a different place the organism continued with its desperate travail, my hand reaching overhead and the fingers searching, the breath held in the hollows of the sea and the mind lingering, alive, the nerves subservient to the primitive nub of matter at the top of the spine — the hand suddenly frenzied as the fingers touched the concertina rubber of the tube and grasped it, pulling it over my head and trying to force the mouthpiece against my teeth, think, as they closed on it, on the life it could give, but think, as the forebrain was roused from its narcosis — face the surface and my legs kicked and I turned on my back, remembering, my hand lifting, taking the mouthpiece higher than the regulator with the opening downwards, bring it down, my face reaching upwards and my mouth hungry for the bubbling air and biting on it, exhale, the water turning me, swallow, my body drifting, now breathe, the sigh of the cylinders echoing in the deep vaults of the sea, now breathe, the lungs greedy and pulling at the valve and sweetly filling, breathe.
I saw him once more.
He was slowly windmilling in the blood-red cloud, his arms open and his legs apart and his movement graceful as the current turned him, his eyes quiet as he danced alone.
His mask was still hanging at his neck, its strap holding it, and I pulled it over his head and put it on, squeezing the water out by degrees as I breathed into it. Then I kicked with my fins and my hands reached upwards, following the bubbles and slowly climbing their chain.
Don't hurry.
Let the bubbles go, there's no hurry.
Remember what you know: never climb faster than they do. Let them go.
The light grew stronger above me, its molten silver spreading in a pool as I neared the surface, following the bubbles, following. Globules of darkness began appearing and I watched them, amused, think, their effect mesmeric, their dark spheres floating psychedelically against my eyes, remember, their thin strings stretching above them, remember the mines.
The faint trellis of girders was on my left and I turned and moved in that direction, my heart thudding because the organism had been perturbed. Basic forebrain cerebration was starting up again as the effect of the nitrogen narcosis began wearing off: at the crude decision-making level I was able to plan what I was going to do for the next few minutes. Consideration of later problems was beyond me for the moment: it was enough to be alive.
When I reached the surface below the deck of the rig I removed the mouthpiece and turned off the air and hooked both arms across a horizontal girder and hung there, filling my lungs, slowly and deeply, again and again, sending oxygen through the system and driving the residue of carbon dioxide out of the body tissues, hanging as limp as I could and thinking of nothing, closing my eyes.
The water lapped at the girders, a slow swell moving the surface without disturbing it; I heard a sea bird call as it flew between the islands; another answered, far away.
Then the riveter started up again and the shock went through me and I opened my eyes, thinking I'd slept: maybe I had. It was time to go.
I didn't find it easy to put the mask on and the mouthpiece between my teeth because there'd been death down there and I didn't want to go there again, but I couldn't stay here by daylight: there was no certain cover for me above the water-line.