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As from a great distance, A

As the mud fog cleared, so did A

A kick brought A

A

Vague and fumbling in mind and body, A

A

The small circle of light her lamp cast on the Kamloops‘ deck dwindled. Finally it no longer touched the dead ship. A

From below, where her finger of light poked into the blackness came a white amorphous shape. A

Not dead: hands trailing ribbons of saponified flesh reached for her. Before the fingers could close, the body drifted away into the dark. De

In and out of dreams, A

Then A

To lie back, to sleep, to stop struggling, would be heaven but Molly was nagging at her, something about staying in the game. After she had rested, A

Cigar smoke and fishes: the note was jarring. A

The strange smoke, clear as a beacon, stayed in the air. Blind and deaf and aching in every joint, she floundered on, kicking away the cold, kicking away death for one more minute.

Her mind narrowed to the odor of exotic tobacco and the need to keep moving.

Stay in the game.



Finally death, tired of waiting for life’s leftovers, overtook her. Her leaden arms were pinioned, dragged forward. “No!” she screamed around the mouthpiece that choked her.

Voices were burbling in her ears again. “We’ve got you. Don’t fight. We’ve got you,” they were saying. The voices of the dead in the engine room. A

Her regulator, the breath of life, was pulled from her numbed lips. She stopped breathing to cheat death another few seconds. Her face mask was ripped away.

“A

Fight faded. A

“Don’t flop,” Tinker said gently. “You’ll overturn us. Come into the boat. Death can’t follow you into the boat.”

A

“What’re you doing out in the fog?” A

“An experiment in sensory deprivation,” Damien told her seriously.

“And Oscar was stinking up the tent,” Tinker added. “I told him if he had to smoke his smelly old cigars, he could brave the elements.”

A

“I’m buying you a case of Havanas,” A

TWENTY SEVEN

The Coggins-Clarkes had been floating in darkness and silence-feeling the lake breathe, they said- several miles off Kamloops Point. Near as A

Free of tanks, mask, and flippers, but still swaddled in the dry suit, she lay like a landed fish amidships of the little runabout. At his own request-transmitted via Tinker- Oscar had been zipped inside her suit. Not without great risk of wetting his fur, as the little bear had pointed out.

After the surreal quality of the dive, Tinker and Damien arguing good-naturedly with a stuffed bear in a rain jacket didn’t strike A

Half sitting, she leaned against Tinker’s knees. She could feel the other woman’s long slender fingers resting along the side of her head. To keep it from rolling off, A

A