“Out of her uploads to GreeNet.” Rahel jerked a nod down at Keim, still watching from the foot of the long staircase. “Whatever ‘free speech’ she’s been dumping on them, it just convinced them to dump us in the slough along with Sadena’s million credit skate and a busted-up Newborn.”
“Oh, my God…”
She almost enjoyed the look of pale horror on the other proctor’s face as she dropped the half-kilo memory pack into his hand. “Tell Sadena he can avoid future equipment loss by using some of his influence to keep Greens and reporters out of our hair instead of kissing up to them. And we’re going to need some pretty basic sampling equipment replaced, not to mention a little extra time built into the project.”
“Does that mean you’re not prepared to make a statement about the cause of Uriel’s ecological crisis?”
Scraping her hand up the front of Paval’s skinsuit, Rahel collected a handful of stinking mud and slapped it onto the reporter’s notebook. “That’s right—I’m not.”
“Rahel!”
Cameras and notepads flew into excited activity even as Nils hurried to interpose himself between the reporters and his colleagues. Crooking her arm around Paval’s neck, Rahel turned her back on the crowd and limped toward the hotel entrance with Paval firmly at her side, leaving Nils to sputter whatever apologies or explanations struck his fancy.
The next day, two plastically handsome young men in turquoise-and-salmon suits met Rahel at the door of her suite to escort her up to the roof of the Startide. They tried hard to make the detour chatty and inoffensive. Their smooth and well-practiced behavior, however, only convinced Rahel even more that Sadena was beginning to consider the Greens a greater risk than the feeding frenzy of reporters. By the time they joined Paval and his own escort beneath the wings of an elegantly sculpted short-range hop, Rahel could hear the Green chant of “You stay, you pay!” battling against a babble of reporter questions below. Nils, poor thing, was probably down there already, wading through the morass of human stupidity and earning his keep.
“I don’t know what’s worse,” Rahel commented aloud as she mounted the stairs into the open hatch. “A day penned up with those reporters, or another hike through the margin sloughs.”
Paval followed with a new equipment pack slung across one shoulder. “At least the reporters don’t stink or bite.”
He obviously hadn’t dealt with the press for very long.
In contrast to their two previous sojourns into the Odarkan, the hop lifted them away from the Startide’s landing field in whisper silence, with no real sense of acceleration to betray the moment when they took off. There weren’t even windows or viewscreens in the passenger cabin. No scenery to watch, no reporters to piss at, no fresh air to breathe. Rahel sat heavily on the silk brocade settee and watched Paval experiment with opening and closing the bar with one flipper.
“This place is nicer than our hotel rooms,” he said at last. Apparently, the tri-D VR cabaret impressed him.
Rahel was more worried about the immediate reality before them. “You ever done an ocean dive before?” It was something they should have talked about yesterday, but Keim’s presence had sidetracked things somewhat.
Paval glanced at her over his shoulder, then shrugged and went back to playing with the entertainment automation. “Recreational scuba, but not with these kinds of skinsuits. I’ve done a lot of EV work, though. I figure these suits can’t be very different.”
Not that Rahel would know. She tended to avoid EV at least as much as she avoided underwater time. “No rebreathers,” she told him, snapping her own flippers onto her feet. “The skinsuit extracts dissolved gases from the surrounding water to supply you with breathable atmosphere, then uses the waste gases to keep you warm, keep you buoyant, and whatever else you need to stay happy underwater.” She’d passed Ark certification in these skinsuits only a few months before, so still had a lot of the junk information memorized. That had been in an aqua tank back home, though, with less than four meters of water over her head. “Skinsuits won’t process as fast as a tank system, so you can’t get too wildly active. These things were designed so we could bob around watching animals without coming up for air, not so we could tango underwater.”
Paval nodded, then turned away from Sadena’s techno gadgets as though just realizing that Rahel was ready to get down to business. “That’s why sport divers don’t use them,” he said as he sat on an ottoman directly in front of her. “But I watched somebody in a full skinsuit once, and I’ve always wanted to try one.”
“Well, now’s your chance.” Rahel leaned forward to grab the ottoman’s skirt, dragging it and her apprentice to within touching range. “The buoyancy control device is built in, just like usual. You vent it—” She pulled Paval’s mask down over his face and tapped the upper left-hand corner, “—here. Blink twice to vent, three times to fill. One long blink stops it, either way.”
Paval raised both hands to touch the sides of his mask, then had to reach quickly to his right when the hop banked abruptly and started its descent. “Two, three, one. Got it.” The full-face visor kept Rahel from seeing his expression, but he sounded grim enough to sink a boat. A young man’s way of paying attention.
“Your BCD pressure valve is still back here.” She slapped the vent at the back of his neck, and he nodded understanding while gathering up the bandolier with his slides and sample bottles. “Be careful—the blink toggle is a lot touchier than the tongue release. You’ll lose buoyancy faster than you expect. Play around with it while you’re still up top, and don’t dive ’til you’re sure you’ve got the feel.”
And that was all they had time for. A resort employee in a fashionable short-sleeved halter cat-footed out to them from the cockpit and hurried them politely toward a cargo door in the farthest back compartment. From there, a wide open loading platform lowered them through the floor and into the bright, heady spangle of full sunlight above the rucked-up sea. The skate waiting below looked nearly shattered by the force of the hop’s repulsors.
“I think I liked the balloons better,” Rahel commented as the skate pilot ran out to meet them. Paval only grunted. She assumed that meant he was no more crazy about trying to jump from one craft to the other than she was.
“Slide down on your bottom!” the pilot shouted above the hop’s wind pollution. Rahel recognized his iron-dark features and patterned shirt from their first night counting jellies from the air. “I’ll take your gear, ma’am! You just slide on down!”
Gripping a corner cable with one hand, she eased herself awkwardly over the edge of the platform and dangled her pack into Jynn’s waiting arms. He placed it quickly but gently to one side, then positioned himself underneath her to offer support while she slid down after it.
“Is this thing gonna be here the whole time we’re under?” she asked as Jynn guided Paval down in turn. She didn’t like trying to imagine the noise and turbulence the aircraft’s constant presence might cause.
“Oh, no, ma’am.” The pilot darted a smile at her before turning back to wave off the waiting hop. “We’ll be going another few kilometers north and east of here yet. Mr. Sadena arranged it specially so we wouldn’t put you down right on top the jellyfish site.”
Instinct made Rahel grab the edge of the skate when the hop’s retreating pressure swell shoved it down into the water, then roughly released it again. “Apparently, fuel and time are not an issue as far as Mr. Sadena is concerned.” She scowled at Paval when he stumbled against her, but didn’t shake him off when he ended up clinging to her shoulder to steady himself.
“Mr. Sadena’s not the sort of man who cares too much what it costs to get his druthers,” Jynn remarked as he picked his way across the heaving deck toward the pilot’s station. He flashed Rahel a wry smile as he squeezed himself past. “But, then, I figure you noticed that already.”