Half the Day Is Night (2 page)

“Just David,” he said.

“Are you Chinese?” she asked.

“No, ma'am,” he said, “my great-grandparents were from Viet Nam.”

She nodded, “My greats,” she waved her hand to indicate a couple of more greats, “were Chinese. My grandfather is Chinese-American, but I'm a, I guess I'm a mongrel.” She laughed. “There aren't many Asians in Caribe. Some Cuban-Chinese, so you can get good Chinese food, and good Cuban beans and rice in the same restaurant.”

She talked fast, mostly about the ninety-day probation period, because, she said, although his qualifications were fine they had no idea how comfortable they might be with each other. Tim slouched in the background, brooding.

“It's an American insurance company,” she said, “and there are all sorts of restrictions about who I should hire. There's a lower premium for someone with security or military experience. They don't consider our military real military experience. Here, we don't fight much except each other, and people who join the military tend to stay in, you know?”

He nodded although he didn't know and didn't care. He was working hard to understand what she was saying.

“Can you drive?” she asked. He told her about his experience with jeeps. “In Africa,” she said. “You were an officer?”

“Because I had a degree from the university,” he said. “I was a lieutenant.”

“Well,” she said, “you'll be a driver but you're not expected to clean or cook. I have someone come in once a week and do the cleaning.” She paused. He was tired of sorting things out, tired of foreignness. “It znat really nezesaribu can you youza recike?”

He didn't understand.

“A recyc,” she said, slower. “For swimming, can you swim?”

“I have swim, swam, in a pool. Not like in the ocean.”

“Tim can teach you tomorrow, it's not hard. And he'll help you with driving. Tim will be with us for a while longer, until everything is settled,” she said.

“Ah,” he said.

Tim had his hands in fists on the back of her chair, now he leaned against the chair as if doing push-ups. He didn't say anything. She did not look at him, either. Very angry, this room.

“I don't expect problems,” she said, “you shouldn't either. Sometimes Tim and I eat dinner together when I'm home,” Ms. Ling said. “Tonight you should eat with us, until you get some groceries.”

“Thank you,” he said, not feeling especially thankful at all.

*   *   *

He expected that the first thing he would learn was driving. The job description had specifically mentioned driving. At dinner he admitted that he was surprised that there were cars. “It seems, it would be bad for the air?” he said.

“There aren't really that many of them,” Mayla said. “The people who have them live where the air recirculation is good, anyway, like here, where the system can handle it.”

“But there is the highway.”

Mayla frowned. “The highway?”

“The beltway,” Tim said.

“Oh right,” she said. “I'm sorry. I guess it is a highway, I just never thought about it. That was built when I was a girl, by President Bustamante.”

“With money advanced from the World Fund. It was supposed to improve infrastructure,” Tim explained.

“Roads are infrastructure,” Mayla said.

“Sewers are infrastructure. Air recirculation is infrastructure,” Tim said.

“I'm not disagreeing with you,” Mayla said. “Everybody knows it was a misuse of the money. I just get tired of hearing you bash the government.”

“Kids on the lower levels don't develop right because there isn't enough O
2
in their air mix and the bloody President for Life wants to build a highway,” Tim said.

“We get the point, Tim, you don't care for the local politics,” Mayla said.

“Don't get sanctimonious,” Tim said. “You bitch, too.”

Mayla turned to David, “It's really probably better that you didn't talk about politics, much. Here it can get you into trouble.” She looked over at Tim. “Even if you carry a foreign passport.”

“Aren't we prissy this evening,” Tim said.

“I guess we are,” Mayla said.

David looked at his fish and wished he could go to bed.

*   *   *

The next morning he had his lesson with the recyc system. Bennet took Ms. Ling to work and came back with a rented diving suit. It was blue with yellow reflective stripes like racing stripes down the legs and across the flippers. “I guessed the size,” Bennet said. “It'll be a short lesson so it should be all right.”

He took the suit back to his rooms and put it on. The tunic part was all right, but the tights were too long and they bunched around his knees and ankles. He stood in front of the mirror and tried to decide if his bad knee was obvious. It wasn't like his good one, up above it the yellow stripe down the tights showed the kind of hollow place where it was all scarred up. And he had skinny legs, legs like a chicken.

David had trouble with the seals, it took him awhile to figure out how they worked. He pulled up the hood and decided he didn't like the way he looked so he pulled it back down. He would have liked to pull his hair back, maybe he should get it cut? Long hair was old-fashioned. Eh, not the time to think about it.

He picked up his flippers and gloves and went out through the living room to a kind of utility room.

Bennet didn't have his hood up, either. He was doing something with the recyc units. David waited a moment, not sure if Bennet knew he was there or not. “I should, ah, learn what you are doing?”

Bennet started a little but didn't look up. “Yeah, the masks are in the closet.”

The two masks were hanging on the wall like faces. Above them on the shelf was an AP15 rifle. He looked at the rifle. “Why does Ms. Ling have an AP15?” he asked. He could not stop himself from picking it up.

“She has a permit. I took some security classes, they said she was allowed to have one. She's going to sell it back.”

David popped the clip and cracked it to see if it was clean. The clip was full, the rifle looked as if it had never been used. “I thought they did not allow them in Caribe.”

“Military issue. They're not a good idea in a dome. Crack the dome, you break the integrity and the water pressure squashes the place flat.”

His head was a little clearer this morning, he had followed that. “What's the range underwater?”

“I don't know,” Tim sounded irritated. “You ever used one before?”

“Not underwater. In Africa.” In Namibia, Windhouk, Gobabis, and the Kalahari, David thought. Before that in Serowe, Soweto, Pretoria. Mbabane and bloody Durban.
South
Africa.

“Are you going to stand there and play with the gun or are you going to hand me a mask.”

“Excuse me,” David said, embarrassed. But he pulled the clip before he put the rifle back and picked up two masks. Idiot. He had promised himself he would be careful, he would make a good impression on these people. It was time to forget Africa. He should have ignored the rifle. So clean, still steel blue and smelling faintly of oil.

He'd had an AP15 but not one like this with its fake wood stock. His stock had been a metal frame with a place on it where he'd scraped it on the sidewalk in Joburg.

He could not keep this job. Too many things were not right. He had come here to start new but security was guns and fear and he did not want any of that.

“Mayla has three recyc units but the Honeywell is so old that it doesn't even have a humidifier.” Bennet showed him how to put one on, how to jack the connections into the mask and hook the airfeed into the jaw. “Ever use a full facemask before?”

“Yes, and a mike. What is the setting?” He had never used one for swimming but the facemask was similar to the respirator mask they used to drill for gas attacks. He would not mention that.

“Three. Four through eight are commercial bands. Nine is official, Port Authority mostly. Most of the fish jocks use eleven and twelve, so if you need help, try those.”

“Fish jocks?” David said.

“Fish jockeys. The guys that work at the fish farms. Divers. Public starts at thirteen so everything above that is crowded. Eighteen is emergency but the local police force is not very useful.” Tim pulled on his flippers. “Ever swam in the dark?” Tim asked.

“No.” And did not plan to do it often, thank you.

“Okay. There's a lamp mounted on your mask. The switch is a touch plate, you have to tap it twice to turn it off.” He tapped once underneath the eye of the light and it came on. He tapped twice and nothing happened. Tapped twice with more emphasis and the lamp went off. “They turn on easier than they turn off.”

David pulled on the mask, it was cold against his chin and smelled of metal. He tapped blindly since the lamp was on the forehead of the mask and it came on. It took him a couple of tries to get it off. Why would anyone ever want to turn one off?

“Look,” Tim said, looking at the floor, “I ah, I noticed your limp. Your, ah, leg. Will it bother you swimming?”

“No,” David said. “It's fine.” He looked at Tim so that Tim could not look at his knee and Tim hauled the recycs out of the pool instead.

“Yeah. Ah, well then,” Tim said. “As soon as we're suited up, that's it. The thing to remember when you're diving is to breathe normally. There's a telltale on your facemask that measures the amount of carbon dioxide in your blood. Just try to keep it within normal range and if you find you're having a problem, let me know.”

They hauled on the recyc units, heavy with water, and David fell backward into the entry pool, copying Tim.

The water was very cold. It was a shock. The tights and suit had been uncomfortably warm but they weren't now. The pool was really a tunnel, a u-shape that dove under the ground and back up into the sea. It was about two meters across and that didn't seem like much. Tim hit an orange circle between two lights and the opening above them constricted shut. The air from the recyc had the faintest taste of the inflow valve, a rubbery taste, but it was warm. He tried drawing deep breaths to keep himself warm. The warm air in his lungs would warm his blood and that would warm all of him, but he might hyperventilate.

“When you come out,” Tim's voice came clearly, “don't look straight into the lights, okay?”

“Okay.” The telltale displayed amber numbers, they seemed to hang in the water in front of him about level with his left eyebrow.

They began to swim down, angling their bodies. Tim kicked lazily, David felt the water resisting his kicks. Cold, viscous saltwater. (He knew cold water did not resist any more than warm water did.) He was not sure if he was breathing properly, he seemed to be taking unnecessarily deep breaths. The telltale flickered, “26, 27, 26, 27, 28, 29, 28.…” What was normal and correct? Ahead was the black eye of the ocean, or was it black because the ocean had no eyes? His indicator told him his respiration was still increasing. They followed the tunnel up, no more than six meters all told, and rose out of the garden, outside the dome. They came up past the window, looking in the living room, and the benevolent sun on the wall watched them sadly.

They rose over the second floor, all dark, and their headlamps reflected off the dome. Their masks were blanks of copper in the reflection, like new smooth coins. Down the other side towards the lighted ring of garden. It would be better in the garden, in the light he would not feel so adrift.

There was no feeling of weight, they moved through space unencumbered, down past the curtained main floor to the rock garden below, where frightened fish fled silver around the dome.

Into the dark beyond. David slowed up, Tim kicked easily, moving like a shark. David followed. Light was swallowed up by ocean. He had to swim hard to catch up. He had trouble knowing which way was up and which was down. His legs were shorter, he kicked more often than Tim, and because of his bad knee he kept veering to the left. He wasn't in very good shape, but at least he wasn't worried about hyperventilating anymore.

He wished Bennet would slow down, but he wasn't about to ask for any favors. Where the hell were they going? If he lost Bennet he wouldn't have any idea where he was, although he figured he could always double back. He glanced back, he could still see the dome. But then he had to work to catch up. Funny there weren't any other domes out this way, Bennet must be taking him out away from the city. They angled up a bit until the ground disappeared. He looked back again, barely able to make out the glow of the dome. Goddamn it was cold. He should stop right here and not go any farther. He should swim back.

Which was ridiculous, Bennet must have a reason for swimming this way. He concentrated on working his bad leg better, making his kicks more even. This would be good exercise. The therapist had told him that swimming was good, no weight on his knee. No dome visible behind them. The farther they went, the more depth the dark had, not by the absence of light so much as the quantity of dark that separated them from the lighted dome. Entropy made palpable. Entropy, quit thinking like a physics student. Besides, entropy isn't a substance, it's an absence. Disorder, not malevolent, but the slow seepage of energy, the heat leaving his body, swimming slower and slower, as Bennet, the machine, would disappear into the dark at the edge of the light cast by his mask. He would be lost out here, without even directions like up and down. He wouldn't even realize he was slowing down, but he would get slower and slower until he was empty and the heat of his body evenly, randomly dispersed among the cold water.

Particularly paranoid this morning, he thought. It was the dark, the dark always bothered him. A child's distress, maman don't turn out the light.

He was panting with the effort to keep up. Bennet wanted him to ask to slow down. Macho nonsense. So ask to slow down, you stubborn fool. Where were the other domes? What were they doing out here? How did Bennet know where they were? They could be angling up. That was dangerous, could lead to the bends. Nitrogen bubbles in the blood. Stroke.