“To a rascal, yes. In fact, your reputation as a young fellow always coming up with bothersome questions helped me bargain well for you. Did you intend it that way, I wonder? For you to wind up only sought by one like me, who would value such attributes? If so, clever boy.”
Jonah decided to keep silent, letting Petri give him credit for cunning he never had. After a moment, she shrugged with a smile, then continued in a voice that was nearly inaudible.
“But in fact, our small bunch of conspirators and connivers were inspired by yet another rascal. The one we have foremost in our minds was a fellow named … Melvil.”
Jonah had been about to ask about the mysterious “we.” But mention of that particular name stopped him short. He blinked hard—two, three times—striving not to flinch or otherwise react. It took him several tries to speak, barely mouthing the words.
“You’re talking about … Theodora Canyon?”
A place of legend. And Petri’s eyes now conveyed many things. Approval of his quickness … overlain upon an evident grimness of purpose. A willingness—even eagerness—to take risks and adapt in chaotic times, finding a path forward, even if it meant following a folktale. All of that was apparent in Petri’s visage. Though clearly, Jonah was expected to say more.
“I’ve heard … one hears rumors … that there was a map to what Melvil found … another canyon filled with Gift-of-Venus bubbles like those the Founders discovered here in Cleopatra Canyon. But the mothers forbade any discussion or return voyages, and—” Jonah slowed down when he realized he was babbling. “And so, after Melvil fled his punishment, they hid the map away …”
“I’ve been promised a copy,” Petri confided, evidently weighing his reaction, “once we’re ready to set out.”
Jonah couldn’t help himself. He turned around again to check the next compartment, where several smaller children were chasing one another up and down the luggage piles, making a ruckus and almost tipping over a crate of Panalina’s smithy tools, consigned for transshipment to Gollancz Dome. Beyond, through a second hatchway to the final chamber, where sweating rowers would normally sit, lay stacked bags of exported Tairee rice. The refugee family and several of Petri’s subadult cousins lounged back there, talking idly, keeping apart from the raucous children.
Jonah looked back at his bride, still keeping his voice low.
“You’re kidding! So there truly was a boy named Melvil? Who stole a sub and—”
“—for a month and a week and a day and an hour,” Petri finished for him. “Then returned with tales of a far-off canyon filled with gleaming bubbles of all sizes, a vast foam of hollow, volcanic globes, left over from this world’s creation, never touched by human hands. Bubbles just as raw and virginal as our ancestors found, when they first arrived down here beneath a newborn ocean, seeking refuge far below the poison sky.”
Much of what she said was from the Founders’ Catechism, retaining its rhythm and flowery tone. Clearly, it amused Petri to quote modified scripture while speaking admiringly of an infamous rebel; Jonah could tell as much from her wry expression. But poetry—and especially irony—had always escaped Jonah, and she might as well get used to that husbandly lack, right now.
“So … this is about … finding new homes?”
“Perhaps, if things keep getting worse here in Cleo Abyss, shouldn’t we have options? Oh, we’re selling it as an expedition to harvest fresh bubbles, all the sizes that have grown scarce hereabouts, useful for helmets and cooking and chemistry. But we’ll also check out any big ones. Maybe they’re holding up better in Theodora than they are here. Because, at the rate things are going—” Petri shook her head. And, looking downward, her expression leaked just a bit, losing some of its tough, determined veneer, giving way to plainly visible worry.
She knows things. Information that the mothers won’t tell mere men. And she’s afraid.
Strangely, that moment of vulnerability touched Jonah’s heart, thawing a patch that he had never realized was chill. For the first time, he felt drawn … compelled to reach out. Not sexually. But to comfort, to hold …
That was when the thump struck—harder than Jonah would have believed possible.
Concussion slammed the little submarine over, halfway onto its port side, and set the ancient bubble hull ringing. Petri hurtled into him, tearing the rudder straps from his hands as they tumbled together backward, caroming off the open hatch between compartments, then rolling forward again as Bird of Tairee heaved.
With the sliver of his brain that still functioned, Jonah wondered if there had been a collision. But the Laussanite ship was bobbing and rocking some distance ahead, still tethered to the Bird, and nothing else was closer than a bubble habitat, at least two hundred meters away. Jonah caught sight of all this while landing against the window patch up front, with Petri squished between. This time, as the Bird lurched again, he managed to grab a stanchion and hold on, while gripping her waist with his other arm. Petri’s breath came in wheezing gasps, and now there was no attempt to mask her terror.
“What? What was …”
Jonah swallowed, bracing himself against another rocking sway that almost tore her from his grasp.
“A thump! Do you hear the low tone? But they’re never this late!”
He didn’t have breath to add: I’ve never felt one outside a dome before. No one ventures into water during late morning, when comets always used to fall. And now Jonah knew why. His ears rang and hurt like crazy.
All this time he had been counting. Thump vibrations came in sequence. One tone passed through rock by compression, arriving many seconds before the slower transverse waves. He had once even read one of Scholar Wu’s books about that, with partial understanding. And he recalled what the old teacher said. That you could tell from the difference in tremor arrivals how far away the impact was from Cleopatra Canyon.… twenty-one … twenty-two … twenty-three …
Jonah hoped to reach sixty-two seconds, the normal separation, for generation after generation of grandmothers.
… twenty-four … twenty-f—
The transverse tone, higher pitched and much louder than ever, set the forward bubble of the Bird ringing like a bell, even as the tooth-jarring sways diminished, allowing Jonah and Petri to grab separate straps and find their feet.
Less than half the usual distance. That comet almost hit us! He struggled with a numb brain. Maybe just a couple of thousand kilometers away.
“The children!” Petri cried, and cast herself—stumbling—aft toward the middle compartment. Jonah followed, but just two steps in order to verify no seals were broken. No hatches had to be closed and dogged … not yet. And the crying kids back there looked shaken, not badly hurt. So okay, trust Petri to take care of things back there—
—as he plunged back to the tiller harness. Soon, Jonah was tugging at balky cables, struggling to make the rudder obedient, fighting surges while catching brief glimpses of a tumult outside. Ahead, forty or fifty meters, the Pride of Laussane’s propeller churned a roiling cauldron of water. The men inside must be cranking with all their might.
Backward, Jonah realized with dismay. Their motion in reverse might bring the Pride’s prop in contact with the towline. Why are they hauling ass backward?