Daughter of the Deep(43)

In the left corner, a living-room area has been set up. Two cushy sofas make an L around a coffee table. A tyre swing hangs from the ceiling. (Why?) A jumbo television, attached to half a dozen gaming consoles, is playing what looks like a cooking show. Stacks of Blu-rays are piled next to the screen. I guess the island doesn’t get satellite or streaming services.

In the right corner of the room, a chandelier made of abalone shards glitters above a long metal dining table. Sitting alone at the far end is a diminutive woman with a magnificent mass of braided grey hair like a heap of barbed wire.

She’s cross-legged and barefoot. Her thick steel-rimmed glasses glint in the light of her laptop computer. Steel bangles decorate her forearms. Her black leggings and yoga top don’t look so much like athleisure wear as a diabolical-acrobat costume.

She gives Barsanti a guarded glance, as if she’s ready to press a very dangerous button on her laptop. ‘Should I vaporize them?’

‘No, no, they’re friendly.’ Barsanti holds up his bread pan. ‘I must check the oven. Jupiter will kill me.’

‘Fine.’ The woman waves him away. She looks a bit disappointed.

Barsanti smiles at me. ‘This is Ophelia, mia moglie. Please, make yourselves at home.’

He hurries off down one of the side corridors.

Ophelia rises. She is decidedly not tall. She pads over to us like the Steel Ninja Leprechaun of Death. She appears ready to say something – perhaps an explanation of how she will incinerate us if we misbehave – when our Orca team arrives with Dr Hewett’s stretcher.

Ophelia scowls at our comatose patient. After three days in the sickbay, he looks terrible. He smells even worse.

‘Theodosius, you idiot,’ Ophelia grumbles. She snaps her fingers at the Orcas. ‘Come. No time to waste.’

We all start to follow, but Ophelia clicks her tongue. ‘Just the medics, thank you. The rest of you, wait here.’

Off they go down another corridor. Nelinha starts to drift towards one of the worktables until Ophelia yells back, ‘TOUCH NOTHING.’

The rest of us stand there uneasily, looking at one another like, Well, here we are. Now what?

‘Make yourself at home!’ Nelinha says, mimicking Luca Barsanti. Then she switches to Ophelia’s voice: ‘But touch nothing!’

Robbie Barr sneezes. ‘Well, she didn’t say we couldn’t look. I’m going to check out those game consoles.’

‘Me, too,’ Kay Ramsay says. ‘Whoa, is that a Nintendo 64?’

Gem gestures at his fellow Sharks. They fan out to examine the room. Nelinha and Meadow Newman conduct a purely visual inspection of the disassembled gadgets on the nearest table.

Halimah sidles up to me. ‘Cad a cheapann tú?’

The other Dolphins gather around.

‘I’m not sure,’ I answer, also in Irish, though I doubt any language is safe, given the level of coding we had to do just to get in the front door. ‘They seem friendly enough. If they were with Land Institute …’

I let that thought drift away unanchored. How would we know if we had walked into a trap? I’m starting to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake bringing us here …

Then Robbie Barr does the unthinkable. He stops the video playing on the TV.

I guess he assumed the touch nothing order didn’t apply to entertainment options. As he rummages through the Blu-rays, an outraged howl erupts from one of the side corridors. A humanoid creature waddles into the room, flailing his furry orange arms. My god. It’s an orangutan. And he’s wearing a cooking apron decorated with smiley-face daisies.

The orangutan bares his fangs at Robbie, then says in perfectly clear sign language, NO TURN OFF MARY BERRY.





The Sharks reach for their guns.

‘Stand down!’ I yell.

Thankfully, they listen.

‘Robbie,’ I say, my heart pounding, ‘put down the remote control and back away.’

Not being an idiot, Robbie does so. I gesture at my friends to give the orange newcomer some space.

The orangutan snatches up the remote control. He returns us to our regularly scheduled programme, which appears to be a bunch of British people sweating over the creation of bread puddings.

I approach the orangutan slowly. My hands are out to show they’re empty. The orangutan seems unconcerned about being surrounded by armed humans. He’s no more than five feet tall, but he’s still an impressive and scary-looking guy. He probably weighs as much as I do. He’s definitely got bigger teeth. His face – flat and round with a wispy orange beard – reminds me of picture-book illustrations of the Man in the Moon. Fur cascades off his limbs like orange fringe curtains. The name JUPITER is stitched onto his smiley-face daisy apron.

When he notices me, I sign, We are sorry about the TV. I see you speak sign language.

His eyes are a beautiful dark brown, full of quiet intelligence. He slips the remote control into the pocket of his apron. Then he signs back, You speak Orangutan.

I introduce myself as A-N-A. (I am fortunate to have an easy name to sign.) I’m trying to figure out which of several dozen questions I want to ask when Luca Barsanti hurries back into the room without his cooking mitts or bread pan.

‘Oh, dear,’ he mutters. ‘I see you have met Jupiter. Please never turn off The Great British Bake Off. It is a religion for him, and Mary Berry is his goddess.’