Daughter of the Deep(51)

Oh, and, by the way, it’s right through this door. Would I like to meet it?

I’m not fully aware when I cross the bank-vault threshold. My mind is too busy see-sawing between rage and terror. I hear Ophelia saying, ‘Come.’

Nelinha takes me by the elbow. ‘I got you, babe. Let’s go.’

Then we are inside the dormant central vent of the volcano. Sheer stone walls soar upward, forming a cone-shaped cathedral of glistening black rock. I feel like I’m standing inside a gigantic hollowed-out chocolate drop. There is no floor – just a pier jutting into a wide circular lake.

Above us, dozens of dragonfly drones buzz through the air, their metal wings flickering in the glow of their jewelled eyes. Are they there for surveillance, or to provide light? Maybe this is just where the robo-bugs hang out when they aren’t piloting boats into the atoll or escorting lost freshmen through the base.

The lake is illuminated, too, from below. Clouds of what look like phytoplankton shimmer in the depths. I’ve seen bioluminescent blooms before, but they are usually blue. These tiny creatures, whatever they are, form thousands of constellations of orange, green, red and yellow, as if the lake’s entire biome has decided to hold a Holi festival. I wonder if my parents saw this, and if they had the same thought. Did they die surrounded by these bewildering nebulae?

Next to me, Ester makes small whimpering noises. Top goes on high alert, sitting in front of Ester and giving her a quick yip that says, Hey, it’s fine. Cute dog right here. Nelinha whistles under her breath. ‘Vixe Maria.’

I force my eyes to follow her gaze along the length of the pier to the vessel moored at the far end.

The Nautilus is like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s difficult for me to even think of it as a submarine.

Granted, I’ve never been on an actual sub. That training doesn’t start at HP until the second half of our sophomore year. But I have seen and studied submarines. Most modern ones look like sleek black tubes with barely any surface profile – just the gentle curve of their topside and a single conning tower or ‘sail’. The largest ones in the US Navy can be over six hundred feet from nose to rudder, about the length of two football fields.

The Nautilus is about half that size, though that still makes it a big ship. It appears to be tube-shaped – I remember Jules Verne described it as a giant cigar – but it is neither black nor low profile. Its hull is made from interlocking panels of nemonium, glistening like abalone shell. Intricate coils run along its sides, interspersed with bristly clusters of filaments and rows of indentations that remind me of the vibrissal crypts on Socrates’s skin – electroreceptors that allow him to sense his environment.

I can’t imagine how a hull so complicated and delicate-looking could have survived intact since the 1800s. It looks like the skin of a sea creature – something between a lionfish and a dolphin.

Even more unsettling are the Nautilus’s eyes. I can’t think of what else to call them. Set in the ship’s bow are two transparent convex ovals latticed with metal girders, like the compound eyes of an insect.

My mind rebels at this design flaw. Windows on a sub? Especially big domed windows? The hydrodynamic drag would make navigation sluggish. The ship’s profile would make it easy to spot on sonar. Worst of all, as soon as the sub reached any kind of depth, those windows would implode, flooding the interior and killing everyone inside. And if you went into battle against modern ships with explosive weapons? Forget it. You might as well go to war inside a big glass bottle.

‘This should not exist,’ I say. ‘It definitely shouldn’t be seaworthy.’

Ophelia shrugs. ‘And yet …’

And yet here it is: a high-tech, century-and-a-half-old work of nautical art, docked in the middle of a volcano. I remember one of the creepier passages from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where survivors of the Nautilus’s attacks reported seeing giant glowing eyes under the water – the eyes of a sea monster.

I have to admit, if I were a sailor on a three-masted, wooden-hulled merchant ship and I saw this crazy vessel barrelling towards me underwater at ramming speed, I would’ve wet my nineteenth-century knickers.

‘But it’s in perfect condition,’ Nelinha says. ‘You repaired it in just two years, just you and Luca?’

Ophelia snorts. ‘Hardly. The exterior needed a lot of cleaning and many minor repairs, but the hull is self-maintaining. When Nemo died, the sub sat at the bottom of this lake, buried in silt, and went into a state of estivation.’

‘Like an African lungfish,’ Ester says. Suddenly she is back in familiar territory. ‘They can stay underground in suspended animation for years.’

Ophelia looks pleased. ‘Exactly so, Ester. The Nautilus went into self-preservation mode. It was mostly dormant, using electrical currents and water circulation around the hull to maintain its integrity. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t damage. There were leaks. The inside of the ship wasn’t flooded, but …’ She puts her hand in front of her nose, as if remembering the smell.

I sway back and forth, though I don’t think the boards are moving under my feet. My gaze wanders across the pier. The opposite side of the dock is lined with workstations and supply sheds that remind me, weirdly, of the shops on the Santa Monica Pier. I feel a hysterical giggle building in my chest. I wonder if we can get an ice-cream cone or some candyfloss before we go aboard the Nautilus.