“Marius, come have a peek,” he said.
Beside him, Marius assumed a comparably awkward stance to look at the watertight rectangular box.
“A splice enclosure,” he said. “I didn’t know the wire had old repairs.”
“It doesn’t. Or it shouldn’t. None.”
“You’re positive?”
“None,” Cédric repeated. “You can take a look at the grid charts once we’re back on the ship. But trust me, I’d remember. I’ve been maintaining the cable almost since it was laid.” He carefully extracted the splice housing from the mud with his prehensors. “Something else. The enclosure doesn’t look like any type Planétaire’s used in the past. It’s very similar, yes. Not identical.”
Marius produced a confused frown. “Do you think it has some connection to the service failure?”
“No. You saw where a dredge frame tore up the cable. That was unmistakable.”
“Then what are you trying to say?”
“I’m not certain.” Cédric paused. “But this is a damned mystery.”
Marius’s frown deepened. “Do we tell Gunville about this now or later?”
Cédric silently withdrew a hand from the sleeve of his hardsuit and flipped a switch on the radio console illuminating its inner hull’s chest piece. The diver-to-surface channel opened up with a faint hollowness that he always associated with holding a paper-cup-and-string telephone to his ear in childhood.
“Now,” he said at last. “We’d better let him know right away.”
In the Africana’s monitoring operations room, Captain Pierre Gunville already knew.
His eyes circles of bright green fire in a smooth, mocha brown face — at fifty-two years old, Gunville was sufficiently vain to pride himself in a complexion free of lines, wrinkles, or sagging skin — he stood watching an alarm light flash on a signal column in front of him, sliding his right forefinger over a rudimentary mustache, and silently mouthing the words to a folk ballad he’d learned long, long ago. Its expression of a heart captured by desire, of grace through love’s devotion… not in the five hundred years since the song’s composition had anything surpassed it.
“Belle qui tiens ma vie, captive dans tes yeux, wui m’as l’ame ravie, d’u souris gracieux…”
“Sir, Dupain’s hailing on the transceiver.” Seated with his back to Gunville, one of the half dozen handpicked crewmen at the consoles glanced over from the marine radio’s surface station, his earphones pulled down off his head. “How do you want me to respond?”
The red alarm light continued its steady blinking. Gunville stood in his customary place at the operation room’s rear, moved his finger back and forth over the faint dash of hair above his upper lip, and whispered remembered verses of song. He’d been growing the mustache for less than a week, and it was at the irksome stage where it was neither here nor there — an adolescent’s whiskers. But Jacqueline had told him she found mustaches appealing on men of his type, though she hadn’t elaborated on just what type that was, and by her lack of specificity might as well have said she found it appealing on a mulâtre. Gunville could read between the lines and accept social enlightenment for the theatrical prop it was. Still, he had to admit to being beguiled by the siren. And everything balanced out in the end. Gunville would show her the fullness of his passion, then leave her stung by his spite.
“Sir—”
“I know. Dupain calls.” Gunville was disappointed by Andre’s skittishness. The find below had been anticipated. Only its timing had been at question. “You can tell him I’m busy with a mechanical problem at the aft crane. Or in the engine room. Or that I’m holding a conference, or napping in my cabin. I don’t care what you say. Just stall until this problem’s been solved.”
“Yes.”
Gunville looked at him.
“Another thing,” he said. “Contact the tether winch detail. I want to be sure there are no unassigned hands on deck except the tenders. No witnesses, comprendez-vous?”
After a moment’s hesitation, the radio man nodded, put the cans over his ears, and returned his attention to the console.
Gunville studied the back of his head. Andre was a likeable sort. Married, young children. Of Bantu descent, as had been Gunville’s mother. And he’d worked aboard the Africana for years. But the nature of the ship’s business had rapidly evolved, and it seemed Andre had failed to adapt. Gunville himself felt a great deal of stress, but also realized that he simply had to bear it, putting confidence in his new business alliance and their joint ability to execute contingency plans.
It was sad, he thought. So sad.
Andre would have to go, but at the same time he could not be allowed to move on elsewhere. Leaving him to become a casualty of change. A failure of evolution like poor Cédric and Marius.
Gunville took a mournful breath, reached down into his memory, and again began to move his lips in a low whisper: “Libre de passion, mais l’amour s’est fait maitre, des mes affections, et a mis sous sa loi…”
Immersed in the song’s romantic sentiment, finding comfort in its lyrics and melody, he soon felt very much better.
The yacht rolled over the calm, dimpled sea between the quays of Port-Gentil and the long band of oil platforms extending southward off the Gabonese coastline. These resources, trading port and near-shore petroleum fields, framed an economic success that gave the little nation’s citizens average head-for-head incomes surpassed only by South Africans among their territorially advantaged regional neighbors.
Though of high style, the yacht, or superyacht — as the vessel’s 130-foot length, structural enhancements, and sophisticated onboard technologies truly classed it — was not at all a conspicuous sight as it ran a gentle northerly course toward the Gulf of Guinea, waters abounding with giant blue marlin, tarpon, and other potential brittle-scaled, rubber-finned sportfishing trophies. Individual opulence sparkles amid general prosperity, and the few may taste rare luxury where there is common satisfaction — the queen bee in her honeyed chamber knows.
Inside the Chimera’s four spacious decks, every detail was of plush yet tasteful elegance. There were lacewood and sycamore finishes, walls covered with embroidered Canton silk damask, marble veneers imported from the stone quarries of Pordenone, Italy. On its exterior starboard quarter, a single touch of ostentation flared at the eye: a decorative painting of the ship’s mythological namesake, a creature with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and a sinuous serpent’s tail. In this particular depiction, the monster was shown breathing flames.
The owner of the yacht had an appreciation for fables, relishing the age-old stories for their grand scope, color, and subtext. He had much the same fondness for word-play. Constrained in manner, offering a dispassionate face to the world, he was a man who privately enjoyed the artful lark, the inside jest, the nuanced turn of phrase.
Etymologically, Chimera is the word root of chimerical, an adjective that can be used to describe something — or someone — of a nature that is deceptive and slippery to the mind.
In ichthyology, Chimera is a genus of fish, distantly related to the shark, that has existed in the world’s oceans for four hundred million years — a phenomenal triumph of survival attributed to its swimming at great, lightless depths beyond the safe reach of those who would hunt and trap it.
In genetic science, a chimera is defined as an organism spawned of two or more genetically distinct species. Chimeral plants are propagated by horticulturists and fancied by collectors. Laboratories have created mixed-species test rodents in vitro. Fueled by calls for artificially grown transplant organs and tissues, recombinant-DNA technologies have produced the means to spawn human-animal chimeras through manipulation of embryonic stem cells. Some have been given European patent approvals.