“Must be reacting to the sensors,” Naqi said.
“I’ve hauled them in. We’re not trailing anything within thirty metres of the surface. The node’s reacting to us, Naqi-to the presence of the airship. The Jugglers know we’re here, and they’re sending us a signal.”
“Maybe they are. But it isn’t our job to interpret that signal. We’re just here to take measurements, not to interact with the Jugglers.”
“So whose job is it?” Mina asked.
“Do I have to spell it out? Specialists from Umingmaktok.”
“They won’t get here in time. You know how long nodes last. By the time the blackout’s lifted, by the time the swimmer corps hotshots get here, we’ll be sitting over a green smudge and not much more. This is a significant find, Naqi. It’s the largest node this season and it’s making a deliberate and clear attempt to invite swimmers.”
She stepped back from the railing. “Don’t even think about it.”
“I’ve been thinking about it all night. This isn’t just a large node, Naqi. Something’s happening-that’s why there’s been so much sprite activity. If we don’t swim here, we might miss something unique.”
“And if we do swim, we’ll be violating every rule in the book. We’re not trained, Mina. Even if we learned something-even if the Jugglers deigned to communicate with us-we’d be ostracised from the entire scientific community.”
“That would depend on what we learned, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t do this, Mina. It isn’t worth it.”
“We won’t know if it’s worth it or not until we try, will we?” Mina extended a hand. “Look. You’re right in one sense. Chances are pretty good nothing will happen. Normally you have to offer them a gift-a puzzle, or something rich in information. We haven’t got anything like that. What’ll probably happen is we hit the water and there won’t be any kind of biochemical interaction. In which case, it doesn’t matter. We don’t have to tell anyone. And if we do learn something, but it isn’t significant-well, we don’t have to tell anyone about that either. Only if we learn something major. Something so big that they’ll have to forget about a minor violation of protocol.”
“A minor violation…?” Naqi began, almost laughing at Mina’s audacity.
“The point is, sis, we have a win-win situation here. And it’s been handed to us on a plate.”
“You could also argue that we’ve been handed a major chance to fuck up spectacularly.”
“You read it whichever way you like. I know what I see.”
“It’s too dangerous, Mina. People have died…” Naqi looked at Mina’s fungal patterns, enhanced and emphasised by her tattoos. “You flagged high for conformality. Doesn’t that worry you slightly?”
“Conformality’s just a fairy tale they use to scare children into behaving,” said Mina. “ ‘Eat all your greens or the sea will swallow you up forever.’ I take it about as seriously as I take the Thule kraken, or the drowning of Arviat. I’m fully aware of the risk.”
“The Thule kraken is a joke, and Arviat never existed in the first place. But the last time I checked, conformality was an accepted phenomenon.”
“It’s an accepted research topic. There’s a distinction.”
“Don’t split hairs…” Naqi began.
Mina gave every indication of not having heard Naqi speak. Her voice was distant, as if she were speaking to herself. It had a lilting, singsong quality. “Too late to even think about it now. But it isn’t long until dawn. I think it’ll still be there at dawn.”
She pushed past Naqi.
“Where are you going now?”
“To catch some sleep. I need to be fresh for this. So will you.”
They hit the lagoon with two gentle, anticlimactic splashes. Naqi was underwater! for a moment before she bobbed to the surface, holding her breath. At first she had to make a conscious effort to start breathing again: the air immediately above the water was so saturated with microscopic organisms that choking seemed a real possibility. Mina, surfacing next to her, drew in gulps with wild enthusiasm, as if willing the tiny creatures to invade her lungs. She shrieked delight at the sudden cold. When they had both gained equilibrium, treading with their shoulders above water, Naqi was finally able to take stock. She saw everything through a stinging haze of tears. The gondola hovered above them, poised beneath the larger mass of the vacuum bladder. The life raft that it had deployed was sparkling new, rated for one hundred hours against moderate biological attack. But that was for mid-ocean, where the density of Juggler organisms would be much less than in the middle of a major node. Here, the hull might only endure a few tens of hours before it was consumed.
Once again, Naqi wondered if she should withdraw. There was still time. No real damage had yet been done. She could be back in the boat and back aboard the airship in a minute or so. Mina might not follow her, but she did not have to be complicit in her sister’s actions. But Naqi knew she would not be able to turn back. She could not show weakness now that she had come this far.
“Nothing’s happening…” she said.
“We’ve only been in the water a minute,” Mina said.
The two of them wore black wetsuits. The suits themselves could become buoyant if necessary-all it would take would be the right sequence of tactile commands and dozens of tiny bladders would inflate around the chest and shoulder area-but it was easy enough to tread water. In any case, if the Jugglers initiated contact the suits would probably be eaten away in minutes. The swimmers who had made repeated contact often swam naked or near naked, but Naqi was not prepared for that level of abject surrender to the ocean’s assault. Nor was Mina.
After another minute the water no longer seemed as cold. Through gaps in the cloud cover the sun was harsh on Naqi’s cheek. It etched furiously bright lines in the bottle-green surface of the lagoon, lines that coiled and shifted into fleeting calligraphic shapes as if conveying secret messages. The calm water lapped gently against their upper bodies. The walls of the lagoon were metre-high masses of fuzzy vegetation, like the steep banks of a river. Now and then Naqi felt something brush gently against her feet, like a passing frond or strand of seaweed. The first few times she flinched at the contact, but after a while it became strangely soothing. Occasionally something stroked one or other hand, then moved playfully away. When she lifted her hands from the sea, mats of gossamer green draped from her fingers like the tattered remains of expensive gloves. The green material slithered free and slipped back into the sea. It tickled between her fingers.
“Nothing’s still happened,” Naqi said, more quietly this time.
“You’re wrong. The shoreline’s moved closer.”
Naqi looked at it. “It’s a trick of perspective.”
“I assure you it isn’t.”
Naqi looked back at the raft. They had drifted five or six metres from it. It might as well have been a kilometre for all the sense of security that the raft now offered. Mina was right: the lagoon was closing in on them, gently, slowly. If the lagoon had been twenty metres wide when they had entered it must now be a third smaller. There was still time to escape before the hazy green walls squeezed in on them, but only if they moved now, back to the raft, back into the safety of the gondola.
“Mina… I want to go. We’re not ready for this.”
“We don’t need to be ready. It’s going to happen.”
“We’re not trained!”
“Call it learning on the job, in that case.” Mina was still trying to sound outrageously calm, but it wasn’t working. Naqi heard the flaw in her voice. She was either terribly frightened or terribly excited.
“You’re more scared than I am,” she said.
“I am scared,” said Mina. “Scared we’ll screw this up. Scared we’ll blow this opportunity. Understand? I’m that kind of scared.”
Either Naqi was treading water less calmly, or the water itself had become visibly more agitated in the last few moments. The green walls were perhaps ten metres apart, and now were not quite the sheer vertical structures they had appeared before. They had taken on form and design, growing and complexifying by the second. It was akin to watching a distant city emerge from fog, the revealing of bewildering, plunging layers of mesmeric detail, more than the eye or the mind could process.