The Lazarus Effect

"The doctor?"

"Something more important than that, I think."

"What?"

"I don't know," Brett whispered. "Let's keep going. We have to be out of sight of them by daybreak."

"I keep worrying that we'll run into dashers."

"I'm keeping a grenade handy. They like to sleep in the kelp. We'll have to dive for it if we surprise one."

"I wish I could see better."

Brett took her hand and they moved through the water as silently as possible.

As they brushed through the thick fronds in their maddeningly slow passage, an odd sense of calm came over both of them. They began to feel almost invulnerable to dashers - any variety, green or black. Under the water, touching the kelp, they moved to deep and stately music, something not quite heard but recognized. When they surfaced for air, the world became different, another reality. The air felt clean and satisfying.

Breaking through a profound shyness, they told each other about this feeling. They both imagined telling the other and the telling came out just as they had imagined. They thought they could go on forever this way, that nothing could harm them.

At one break for air, Brett could no longer contain the sense of an alien experience. He put his mouth close to Scudi's ear. "Something's happening down there."

Both of them had grown up on stories of the old kelp days, the mystical detritus of their history, and each suspected what the other was thinking now. Neither of them found it easy to put into words.

Scudi looked back at the foil, which lay in a low outline under its anchor lights. It still seemed much too close. The foil itself appeared so i

"You hear me, Scudi?" Brett whispered. "Something's happening to us when we're under water." When she remained silent he said, "They say when you're under water sometimes it's like a narcotic."

Scudi knew what he meant. Cold and the deeps could do things to your body that you did not notice until your mind started to come apart at the dreams. But this was no depth narcosis. And the dive suits kept them warm. This was something else and, here on the surface, knowing they should not delay long, she felt suddenly terrified.

"I'm scared," she whispered, staring at the foil.

"We'll get away from them," Brett said, seeing the direction of her gaze. "See? They're not chasing after us."

"They have a sub."

"The sub couldn't go fast in kelp. They'd have to cut their way through." He pulled himself closer to her along their belt line. "But that's not what's scaring you."

Scudi didn't say anything, she floated on her back under a swatch of kelp, conscious of a heavy iodine smell from the leaves. The weight of the kelp frond on her head was like an old, kindly hand. She knew they should be going. Daylight must not find them in sight of the foil. Her hand on the concealing kelp, she turned and a bit of the kelp came away in her grip. Immediately, she was thrust into the euphoria she had felt underwater. There was wind all around. A sea bird she had never seen shrieked somewhere in perfect time with the waves. The hypnotic effect unfocused her eyes, then centered them on a human being - prone and very old. An old woman. The old woman existed in a glowing space without any sense of world around her. The vision moved closer and Scudi tried to relax an intense pressure in her stomach. Monotony of waves and the shrieking bird helped, but the vision would not fade.

The old, old woman lay on her back in the blur of light. Alone ... breathing. Scudi noticed a clump of white hair jutting from a mole near the old woman's left ear. The eyes were closed. The old woman did not appear to be a mutant. Her skin was dark and heavily wrinkled. It gave off a greenish cast like the begi

Abruptly, the woman sat up. Her eyes remained closed but she opened her mouth to say something. The old lips moved slow as cold oil. Scudi watched the play of wrinkles released across the face by movement. The woman spoke, but there was no sound. Scudi strained to hear, pressing close to the wrinkled lips.

The vision dissolved and Scudi found herself coughing, retching, held across her floating survival kit by strong hands.

"Scudi!" It was Brett's voice in a loud whisper close to her ear. "Scudi! What's happening? You started to drown. You just sank under the water and ..."

She coughed up warm water and took in a choking breath.

"You just started sinking," Brett said. He was struggling to balance her on the kit. She pushed herself across its rasping surface and slipped back into the water, holding the kit by one hand. She saw immediately what Brett had done - set the kit's hydrostatic controls for surface and used it as a platform to support her.

"It was like you just went to sleep," Brett said. The worry in his voice seemed amusing to her, but she restrained a laugh. Didn't he know yet?

Brett glanced back at the foil about a kilometer away. Had they heard?

"Kelp," Scudi choked. Her throat hurt when she spoke.

"What about it? Did you get tangled?"

"The kelp ... in my mind," she said. And she remembered that old face, the open mouth like a black tu

Slowly, hesitantly, she described her experience.

"We've got to get out of here," Brett said. "It can take over your mind."

"It wasn't trying to hurt me," she said. "It was trying to tell me something."

"What?"

"I don't know. Maybe it didn't have the right words."

"How do you know it wasn't trying to hurt you? You almost drowned."

"You panicked," she said.

"I was afraid you were drowning!"

"It let go of me when you panicked."

"How do you know?"

"I ... just ... know." Without waiting for more argument, she reset her survival kit's controls, pulled it under and began swimming away from the foil.

Brett, attached to Scudi by the belt line, was forced to follow, towing his own kit and sputtering.

Much later, on the coracle with Twisp and Bushka, Scudi debated recounting the kelp experience. It was late morning now. Still no sign of Vashon on the horizon. Brett and Bushka had fallen asleep. Before they had reached the coracle, Brett had warned her to say nothing of the kelp experience to Twisp, but she felt that this time Brett could be wrong.

"Twisp will think we're crazy as shit pumpers!" Brett had insisted. "Kelp trying to talk to you!"

It really happened, Scudi told herself. She looked from the sleeping figure of Brett to Twisp at the coracle's tiller. The kelp tried to talk to me ... and it did talk!

Brett came abruptly awake as Scudi shifted her position. She leaned back now with her elbows over the thwart. He looked up and met her eyes, realizing immediately what she had been thinking.

About the kelp!

He sat up and looked around at an empty horizon. The wind had picked up and there was spray in the air, scudding off the wavetops. Twisp swayed with a rhythm that marked both the pitch of the waves and the throb of the engine. The long-armed fisherman stared off across the water ahead of him the way he always did when they were chugging along in the fish runs. Bushka remained asleep near the bow cuddy.

Scudi met Brett's gaze.

"I wonder if they got their doctor," Brett said.

Scudi nodded. "I wonder why they needed one. Nearly everyone down under is trained as a med-tech."

"It was something pretty bad," Brett said. "Had to be."

Twisp shifted his position. He did not look at any of them and said, "You got doctors to spare down under."

Brett knew what the older man meant. Twisp had spoken of it bitterly many times, as had many Islanders. Topside technology, predominantly organic, meant that most topside biologists who might otherwise go into medicine were lured by higher-status maintenance positions in the cash business of the Islands' bioengineering labs. It was an ironic twist that had them keeping an Island itself fit while the Islanders made do with a handful of med-techs and a family shaman.