Daughter of the Deep(31)

I’m tempted to say that Gem isn’t so bad, but that’s not for me to tell Nelinha, given their history. I just shrug.

‘Hmph.’ Nelinha turns her attention back to the half-disassembled device in her hand.

I think back to that infamous day in September of our chum year. We were brand new, trying to survive the meat grinder of orientation month. Two of our classmates had already dropped out and gone home in tears.

Nelinha was struggling more than most. Her English was excellent, but it was still her second language. She was relieved to sit next to me in the cafeteria because I knew some Portuguese. Then, one night at dinner, Gem’s shadow fell across our table. He stood over us, gawking at Nelinha like she was a unicorn.

‘Are you the scholarship kid?’ he asked. ‘From Brazil?’

There was no malice in his voice, but his words carried. We’d just finished a hard day of physical training. Nobody had much energy left for chatting. Our classmates turned to see who Gem was talking about.

The scholarship kid.

Nelinha’s face hardened. My fingers curled around the handle of my fork. I was tempted to stab Gemini Twain in the thigh. He’d just reduced my new friend’s identity to three words that would cling to her for the rest of the year.

Gem seemed oblivious. He started rambling about his brother who was an LDS missionary in Rocinha. Did Nelinha know him? Had she met any of the missionaries? How was life in the favela?

Eventually I would realize that being a straight shooter was just an extension of Gem’s personality. When he saw a target, he aimed and shot. He did not think about collateral damage.

Nelinha put down her utensils. She gave Gem a sour smile. ‘I don’t know your brother. Ana, you finished?’

She stormed off. I gave Gem a withering look, then abandoned my dinner and rushed to follow her out of the cafeteria.

Later in the eighth-grade barracks, after lights out, I heard Nelinha sobbing in her bunk. At first, I assumed it was Ester. But Ester was fast asleep and snoring. Nelinha was curled up and miserable, shivering under her blankets. I crawled in next to her and held her while she wept, until finally she fell asleep.

Nelinha had gone through a lot in her thirteen years. She grew up an orphan – no family, no opportunities, no money. Then, thanks to an elementary-school teacher who saw something special in her, Nelinha was recommended for the HP entry tests in Rio. She blew the tops off all the mechanical-aptitude scores. She deserved to be known as more than the scholarship kid.

Since that day in the cafeteria, I’ve stayed angry at Gemini Twain for almost two years. I guess that wasn’t fair or justified. But I don’t like anyone making my friends hurt.

Now, HP has been destroyed. Nelinha’s future is once again a giant question mark. Like me, she doesn’t have any family or home to return to. All we have is this boat ride to the middle of nowhere …

‘This is crazy.’ Her voice breaks me out of my trance. I wonder how long I’ve been standing there watching her work.

‘What’s crazy?’

She holds up her gadget, which looks like a bespoke metal tennis ball that had a head-on collision with a Slinky. ‘If I’m right, this is a LOCUS.’

I try to place the name. The memory of Dr Hewett’s dry voice comes back to me from some long-ago theoretical marine sciences lecture. ‘An electrolocation sensor?’

‘Correct!’ Nelinha wriggles her immaculately groomed eyebrows. ‘Imagine a more effective, undetectable alternative to radar and sonar, based on aquatic mammals’ senses. Whales. Dolphins. Platypuses. If I can figure it out, it could allow us to check for incoming hostiles without giving away our position.’

‘Or it could make us light up on sonar screens,’ I speculate.

‘Maybe,’ Nelinha agrees cheerfully. ‘Where’s your sense of adventure?’

I shake my head in amazement. ‘How can you take all this so calmly? Stuff like that shouldn’t be scientifically possible.’

She tosses the LOCUS into the air and catches it again. ‘Babe, our understanding of the laws of science changes all the time. We’ve only got so many senses. We have such a narrow perspective on reality –’

‘Uh-oh.’ I realize I’ve blundered right into a #NelinhaLecture.

‘That’s right, uh-oh. This LOCUS … it’s like something dolphins might engineer if they wanted to augment their natural senses. Or squid, if they had a few more millennia of evolution. Your ancestor was a genius. It’s like everybody was looking at the world in three dimensions, and somehow he was able to step back and see it in five. Everything is the same, but everything is different. If we could replicate –’

I’m saved from the rest of the lecture when Ester stumbles in breathlessly, Top at her heels.

‘COME WITH ME – YOU NEED TO SEE THIS.’ Her eyes are red from crying. ‘YOU DON’T WANT TO, BUT YOU NEED TO.’





What I hate the most?

None of us will ever be able to get these images out of our heads. The feed recorded at HP by Dr Hewett’s drones is playing on six monitors on the bridge. We will be reliving this trauma in full colour for the rest of our lives.

Tia stands back from the console, her hands tented over her mouth. Virgil and Dru seem paralysed at their stations. When we walk in, Nelinha grunts like she’s been punched in the chest.