She'd done it.
Refuge
Johanson was sitting by the lake. The water lay still before him, covered with stars. He'd been longing to return there. He looked at the landscape of his soul and was filled with joy and awe. He felt strangely disembodied, with no sensation of warmth or cold. Something had changed. He felt as though he were the lake, the small house beside it, the silent dark forest all around him, the noises in the undergrowth, the dappled moon… He was everything, and everything was in him.
Tina Lund.
It was a pity that she couldn't be here too. He would have liked to grant her this restfulness, this peace. But she was dead, killed by nature's violent protest against the rot of civilisation that had spread along the coasts. Wiped away, like everything else, leaving nothing but the image in front of his eyes. The lake was eternal. This night would never end. And the solitude would give way to soothing nothingness, the final pleasure of the egotist.
Was that what he wanted?
Solitude had undeniable advantages. Time was precious, and being alone meant that you could spend it with yourself. If you listened, you could hear the most extraordinary things.
But when did solitude become loneliness?
Suddenly he felt fear.
Fear, like a pain spreading through him, eating at his chest and stealing his breath. A chill crept over him and he shivered. The stars in the lake expanded into red and green lights and buzzed with electricity. The landscape blurred, becoming shiny and rectangular. He was lying in a tunnel, a pipe or a tube.
In a flash he was conscious.
You're dead, he told himself.
No, he wasn't quite dead. But he knew he had only seconds. He was lying in a submersible bound for the depths, laden with radioactive pheromone to repay the yrr's crimes, if that was what they were, with an even worse transgression.
There were no stars in front of him; just the control panel of the Deepflight. The lights were on. He raised his eyes in time to see the well deck disappear.
They were in the sluice.
In a tremendous act of will-power he swivelled his head to the side. In the body pod next to him he saw the beautiful profile of Judith Li.
Li.
She had killed him.
Almost.
The boat sank. Steel plates and rivets flashed past. Soon the submersible would be out of the vessel. Then nothing and no one would be able to prevent Li emptying her murderous cargo into the sea.
He couldn't let it happen.
Sweating with effort he pushed his hands from under his body and stretched out his fingers. He nearly blacked out. The instruments were in front of him. He was lying in the pilot's pod. Li had transferred the controls, and was steering with the co-pilot's instruments – but that could be changed.
One push of a button and the controls would switch to him.
Which one?
Roscovitz's chief technician, Kate Ann Browning, had shown him how to use the boat. She'd been thorough, and he'd listened attentively. He was interested in that kind of thing. The invention of the Deepflight heralded a new era of deep-sea exploration, and Johanson had always been fascinated by the future. He knew where the button was. And he knew how to use the other instruments and how to achieve what he intended. All he had to do was retrieve it from his memory.
Think.
Like dying spiders his fingers crawled over the control panel, smearing it with blood. His blood.
Think.
There it was. And next to it…
He couldn't do much now. The life was ebbing from his body, but he still had a last reserve of strength. And that would suffice.
Go to hell, Judith Li.
Li
Judith Li stared out of the view dome. A few metres in front of her she could see the steel wall of the sluice. The boat was sinking leisurely towards the depths. One more metre, and she'd start up the propeller. Then a steep course downwards and to the side. If the Independence was going to sink within the next few minutes, she wanted to be as far away from it as possible.
When would she encounter the first collective? A large one might pose a problem, she was aware of that, and she had no idea how large a collective could be. There was also the danger of running into orcas, but whatever happened she could blast her way free. She had nothing to fear.
She had to wait for the blue cloud. The right moment to release the pheromone was when the yrr-cells were on the point of aggregation.
Those goddamn amoebas were about to get the shock of their lives.
Such an odd thought. Did amoebas feel shock?
She did a double-take. A change had taken place on the control panel. One of the display lights had gone out, telling her that the controls had been…
The controls!
She was no longer in charge of the submersible. The controls had been switched to the pilot. On the monitor a display screen appeared, showing a diagram of four torpedoes; two slim ones and two larger ones.
One of the heavyweight torpedoes lit up.
Li gasped in horror. She banged on the control panel, trying to regain the use of the instruments, but the command to launch the missile couldn't be reversed. The figures on the display reflected in her deep blue eyes, running backwards in an inexorable countdown:
00.03… 00.02… 00.01…
'No!'
00.00
Her face froze.
Torpedo
The torpedo that Johanson had launched left its tube and shot forwards. It got less than three metres through the water before it hit a steel wall and exploded.
An enormous pressure wave took hold of the Deepflight. It slammed backwards into the sluice. A fountain of water shot out. While it was still spinning through the water, the second torpedo launched. With a deafening bang the well deck exploded. The Deepflight, its two passengers and its deadly cargo went up in a ferocious ball of flames that consumed all evidence that they'd ever existed. Flying debris bored its way through the decks and bulkheads, piercing the ballast tanks at the stern, allowing water to gush in. Thousands of tonnes of seawater poured into the crater that had once been the basin.
The stern plunged.
The vessel was sinking at an incredible speed.
Exit
Anawak and Crowe had just reached the top of the ramp when the shockwave from the explosion shook the vessel. Anawak was flung through the air. He saw the smoke-wreathed walls of the tunnel spinning round him, then plummeted head first inside the black maw. Crowe tumbled through the air beside him, then disappeared. The ridged steel scraped his shoulders, back, chest and butt, tearing at his skin. He sat up, flipped over and was seized by another shockwave, which catapulted him so violently that he seemed to fly back into the hangar. There was an incredible din all around him, as though the whole ship had been blown to smithereens. Plummeting downwards, he curved through the air towards the water, and vanished beneath the surface.
He kicked out with his arms and legs, fighting the current, with no idea which way was up or down. Hadn't the Independence been sinking bow first? Why was the stern full of water?
The well deck had exploded.
Johanson!
Something smacked him in the face. An arm. He seized it, gripping it tightly as he pushed off with his feet. He didn't seem to be getting anywhere. He was thrown on to his side and pushed back, as the water tugged him in all directions. His lungs felt as though he were breathing liquid fire. He needed to cough and felt nausea rising as the watery rollercoaster plunged him down again.