I didn't bother to consult my compass. I assumed Tolliver had consulted his. I assumed Tolliver could find his way around down here with his eyes closed, which was what it was starting to feel like as we rode the back-eddy: swimming with closed eyes. The stain grew thicker, the water murkier.
Ahead, Tolliver and then Walter seemed to slow and I thought, that's strange.
And then I too slowed, no longer certain where I was, where the off-ramp on this eddy was, where we needed to exit in order to find our tunnel.
The murk was thick as soup. The dying plankton, caught in my light beam, fell like stars.
The current whispered me along.
Tolliver and Walter were ghostly shapes, just ahead, riding the current.
Shouldn’t we exit now?
And then something came into my light, something so otherworldly that for a moment I forgot to breathe.
It drifted along with me.
It was the size of my fist and the shape of a walnut and I could see through it.
It was outlined in rows of sparklers.
The rows looked like combs, bent along its curves like curved combs holding up a woman’s hair.
The combs were vibrating, propelling the creature through the water, a gentle assist to the current.
And as I shifted my light the sparklers went out and I realized that my light had diffracted off the combs.
It was the damnedest jellyfish I had ever seen.
The creature was so transparent I could see tiny shrimp inside its body. It was a hunter and I guessed it had hunted out there beyond the stain, out where the upwelling brought food, and then it had got caught in this trickster of an eddy.
Like us.
And as we drifted along, another little jelly jewel appeared.
And then another.
And then either I drifted into their bloom or they bloomed around me.
I thought hey Tolliver maybe we should get the hell out of this current, but Tolliver and Walter were just dark shapes in the jelly soup.
Even then I was entranced, even then I was dazzled by sparklers everywhere as I moved my light to and fro — until the bloom thickened and coated me with little jellies, jellies sparkling on my wetsuit, on my mask, on my face.
On my bare face.
I thrashed.
And even as I brought my gloved hands to my face to wipe it clean of jellyfish I was thinking holy shit it’s too late they’re already stinging.
But there was no sting. There was no pain. There was only tickling as jellies brushed my skin.
I focused in on a jelly right in front of my mask and I took note of the obvious. There were no tentacles.
I was coated with jellyfish that did not sting.
I was the luckiest diver in the world.
And then I saw that I was the only diver in this world because Tolliver and Walter were gone and the thousands of tiny jewel jellies that were my companions were engulfing me, smothering me.
I could not even see my own bubbles.
Sometime later — an eternity, surely — a hand grasped my hand.
I crushed the hand in a death grip.
It tugged me.
It brought me close to Tolliver, who turned his mask my way and then jerked his head in a move-it signal because he had no hands free for hand signals because Walter was holding his other hand.
The three of us kicked as one, moved forward as one, hands locked, finning through the soupy current that wanted to carry us forever.
No way.
We cut out.
We emerged from the soup to the normal murk and it was like going from deepest night to just before dawn.
Straight ahead by the light of our glove torches I could see the mouth of the tunnel.
I would have wept in relief but I was already immersed in water.
Tolliver and then Walter entered the tunnel.
As for me, I could not resist a look back. If I'd had a camera I would have snapped a selfie. Look where I've been.
The jeweled jelly bloom had passed by.
The murk seemed to have thinned or I'd just gotten used to it or perhaps it was a different angle of view.
But I could see farther than I had before.
I could see the canyon arms, the rims reaching out to the edges of Target Red, and as I took in the view I saw at the far reach of the ghostly kelp forest a new shape.
Something different.
Something big.
Or was it just skewed perception?
No, it was big. Huge. It was something altogether mammoth out there at the edge of this world.
I blinked.
It had to be a jellyfish because it trailed long tentacles.
A purple-stripe, I thought. Bigger than the big one I’d seen from the Sea Spray, it was the kind of jellyfish that stung the diver Joao Silva nearly to death.
I blinked again.
The tentacles were stalks of kelp.
Or no.
Not stalks. Tentacles after all.
A Humboldt. The squid that Robbie Donie hunted, the squid that inked the Outcast.
Or no.
It moved.
A shadow.
This murk.
I could not see.
Had I seen something?
Shadows of the mind.
We swam like fish through the tunnel, through the healthy kelp forest to intersect the yellow anchor line.
As we began to ascend I looked up toward the brilliant blue sun-splashed surface and I saw a big shadow.
Two shadows.
One was most certainly the Breaker.
The other was another boat.
CHAPTER 27
We stood dripping aboard the Breaker, facing the boat parked alongside.
It was twice the length of Tolliver’s boat, a sleek cruiser with a jutting flybridge atop the cabin area that gave it the look of a hunting shark. The hull was painted carbon black. The name was in silver, letters steeply slanted forward as if bracing into the wind. It was called Destiny.
I could not have imagined a more fitting boat for Oscar Flynn.
Flynn himself leaned on the flybridge rail, massive forearms crossed, looking down upon us. He was bare-headed and his scalp glistened through his buzz-cut. He wore aviator shades.
Flynn was not alone.
I could not have imagined a more surprising crew member on the stern deck down below — Jake Keasling. Jake too wore aviator shades and leaned coolly on the railing but there was no question which guy was top dog. Green-haired Captain Kayak was looking out of place.
“Howdy Oscar,” Tolliver said. “Howdy Jake.”
The two men aboard the Destiny nodded.
“Give us a moment.”
They nodded again and waited in silence while we removed our tanks and heavy gear. Faith James stacked the gear on the racks and then returned to the jump seat, swiveling it to face the Destiny.
I wondered what words had been exchanged between the two boats before we surfaced. I knew what I would have said. Something along the lines of fancy meeting you here. You been following us?
I wanted to strip off my wetsuit and let the sun warm my skin but I did not want to strip down to my swimsuit in front of Oscar Flynn and Jake Keasling.
Walter and Tolliver seemingly felt the same way.
We lined up like neoprene seals along the starboard bench seat looking across the water to the big black boat.
Tolliver resumed the communication. “What are you doing here?”
Yes, I thought, that’ll do.
When Flynn didn’t answer, Jake spoke up. “We’re eco-warriors.”