“He must approve of what you’re doing,” Dave said.
“How’s that?”
“Dr. Mauritz used to have top pick for these dives.” Stanley Mauritz was the Sea Messenger’s chief oceanographer and director of research, on loan to the ship from the Scripps Institution in exchange for Montoya’s support of student research. “But you’ve had three in a row.”
“Yeah,” I said. The researchers on board Sea Messenger fought for equipment and resources just like scientists everywhere.
“Nadia’s trying to keep the peace,” Dave added after a pause.
“Sorry to upset the balance.”
Dave shrugged. “I stay out of it. Let’s do our check.”
We used our separate turquoise monitor screens to examine different shipboard systems, focusing first on air. Mary’s Triumph maintained an oxygen-enriched atmosphere at near sea-level pressure.
Dave raised his mike and clicked the switch. “Mary to Messenger. We’re at one thousand meters. Systems check okay.”
The hollow voice of Jason, our shipboard dive master and controller, came back a few seconds later. “Read you, Mary.”
“What’s going on between Nadia and Max?” Dave asked with a leer. Max was science liaison for the ship. Rumors of their involvement had circulated for weeks. “Any hot and heavy?”
The question seemed out of character. “Nothing, at the moment,” I guessed. “She’s probably spending most of her time in the head.”
“What’s Max got that I haven’t?” Dave asked, and winked.
Max was twenty-seven years old, self-confident without being cocky, handsome, but smart and pleasant to talk to. His specialty was Vestimentiferans—tube worms. Dave was not in Max’s league, and neither was I, if it came right down to it.
“Enough about women,” I suggested with a sour look. “I’m just getting over a divorce.”
“Poor baby,” Dave said. “No women, no chess. That leaves philosophy. Explain Kant or Hegel, choose one.”
I chuckled.
“We’ve got lots of time,” Dave said, and put on a little boy’s puzzled frown. “It’s either read or play chess or get to know each other.” He fiddled with the touch pad mounted at the end of the couch arm and once again punched up the atmosphere readout. “Damn, is the pressure changing? It shouldn’t be. My gut’s giving me fits.”
I cringed.
Four thousand feet.
“I met Owen just once,” Dave said. Everyone in Montoya’s employ called him Owen, or Owen Montoya, never Mr. Montoya, and never “sir.” “His people trust me to keep his expensive toy from getting snagged, but when he shook my hand, he didn’t know who I was. He must meet a lot of people.”
I nodded. Montoya seemed to enjoy his privacy. Best not to divulge too much to the hired help. Still, I felt a small tug of pride that I had spent so many hours with this powerful and wealthy man, and had been told we were simpatico.
I had met all sorts of people rich and superrich on my quest for funding. Montoya had been the best of a mixed lot, and the only one who outright owned an oceanographic research ship and DSV.
He was a whole lot more likable than Song Wu, the sixty-year-old Chinese nightclub owner who had insisted I try his favorite youth enhancer—serpent-bladder extract diluted in rice wine. That had been an experience, sitting in his living room, six hundred feet above Hong Kong, watching Mr. Song squeeze a little sac of the oily green liquid into a glass while I tried to keep up a conversation with his sixteen-year-old Thai mistress. Mr. Song refused to spend a single square-holed penny until I gave snake gall a fair shake.
All the while, a withered feng shui expert in a gray-silk suit had danced around the huge apartment, whirling a cheap gold-painted cardboard dial over the marble floor tiles, babbling about balancing the forces of past and future.
“You know Owen personally?” Dave asked.
“Not well.”
Mary’s Triumph leveled and alerted us with a tiny chime. Dave adjusted the trim again. The sub’s thermometers had detected a temperature rise. The sea map display clicked on between us and a small red X appeared, marking where we had encountered warmer water. We had just crossed into a megaplume, a vast mushroom of mineral-rich flow rising over a vent field.
“That could be from the new one, Field 37,” I guessed. I looked at the printed terrain map pasted between us, dotted with known vent fields in green, and six red vents roaring away along a recent eruption.
“Maybe,” Dave said. “Could also be Field 35. We’re four klicks east of both, and they swivel this time of year.”
The world’s seawater—all the world’s seawater—is processed through underwater volcanic vents every few million years. The ocean seeps through the sediment and porous rock, hitting magma sometimes only a few miles below the crust. Deep-ocean geysers spew back the water superheated to the temperature of live steam—well over 350 degrees Celsius. But at pressures in excess of 250 atmospheres, the water stays liquid and rises like smoke from a stack, cooling and spreading, warm and rich enough to be detected this high above the field: a megaplume.
“Nadia tells me you’re looking for new kinds of xenos,” Dave said. “Ugly little spuds.”
“Interesting little spuds,” I said.
Nearly every dive in these areas found xenos—xenophyophores, the single-celled tramps of the seafloor, some as big as a clenched fist. Xenos are distantly related to amoebae and resemble scummy bath sponges. They use sand as ballast, glue their waste into supports, and coat their slimy exteriors with debris as they roll around on the ocean floor. Their convoluted, tube-riddled bodies hide many passengers: isopods, bacteria, predatory mollusks. True monsters, but wonderful and harmless.
“What’s so interesting about xenos?” Dave asked.
“I have a snapshot taken by some postdocs two months ago. They found what they called ‘sea daisy fields’ north of the new vents, but they didn’t have a good fix on the position because one of the transponders had stopped sending. I examined a frozen specimen two months ago at the University of Washington, but it was all busted up, membranes ruptured. A specimen in formalin was nothing but gray pudding.”
Dave had already gotten a briefing on our dive. This was telling him nothing more than what he knew already. “Yuck,” he said. “So what’s it to Owen?”
“Right.” I smiled.
Dave lifted his eyebrows. “I’ll just mind my own business and drive,” he said, and rubbed his finger under his nose. “But I do have a master’s in ocean biochemistry. Maybe I can render some expert assistance when the time comes.”
“I hope so,” I said.
