Daughter of the Deep(60)

While I sleep, I have more nightmares about being trapped and drowning. Only this time my underwater tomb looks like the bridge of the Nautilus.





The next morning, I’m up early again to dive.

Socrates is nowhere to be seen. In fact, the lagoon seems devoid of any dolphins. This doesn’t help my sense of foreboding.

At breakfast, my classmates are in good spirits. Trying to sail the Nautilus will be the most challenging thing we’ve ever done, and I can practically smell the adrenalin in the air, along with the scent of Jupiter’s blueberry muffins.

Linzi Huang reports that last night in the sickbay, Dr Hewett farted in his sleep. Apparently, this means his bodily systems are working better. She jokes that he’ll be lecturing us again in no time. Cooper Dunne claims he had a dream about how to fix the Nautilus’s torpedoes. His fellow Sharks tease him about doing his best thinking while he’s unconscious. Kay Ramsay, who hasn’t smiled since she lost her sister in the attack on HP, actually laughs at one of Robbie Barr’s corny jokes – something about how many nuclear engineers it takes to change a light bulb. Cephalopod humour – I don’t get it.

Some of the crew are whispering about how creepy the old sub is, which just makes them more excited. A few gossip about where Captain Nemo’s body was found, and how exactly my parents were killed. They try to have these conversations out of my earshot, so as not to upset me. Unfortunately, I can read lips.

Everybody seems to think that our first spin in the Nautilus will be a great success.

‘You’ve got the Nemo touch!’ Kiya Jensen tells me, as if she wasn’t questioning my taking command of the Varuna just a few days ago.

Even Nelinha, who knows how tricky advanced tech can be, seems perfectly at ease. ‘We are about to operate the oldest, most complicated submarine on the planet,’ she says. ‘Aren’t you even a little excited?’

I don’t know how to answer her. These days, I’m having trouble distinguishing between excitement and terror.

After cleaning up from breakfast (because time, tide and dirty dishes wait for no one), we gather on the Nautilus’s dock for a pre-dive briefing. The Cephalopods have brought their tool kits. The Sharks have brought their weapons. Gemini Twain has so many guns and other dangerous objects strapped to his body he looks like he’s expecting to fight off a mermaid apocalypse.

He catches me looking and shrugs like, You never know.

The Nautilus herself appears unchanged since yesterday. No flames have been painted on her prow, thank goodness. Her giant insect eyes glint in the dim light of the cavern. In the water around her, the multicoloured phytoplankton are still putting on their Holi festival.

The submarine looks timeless – as if she literally exists outside of time. She doesn’t belong in the twenty-first century any more than she belonged in the nineteenth. I try to imagine how lonely that would feel, especially if my creator scuttled me at the bottom of a volcanic grotto for over a century. Would I even be sane after all that time?

I don’t realize I’ve zoned out from Luca’s lecture until he says, ‘As I’m sure Ana would agree.’

Everybody looks at me.

‘Sorry, what?’

My classmates laugh.

‘Ana is simply proving my point,’ Luca says, giving me a good-natured smile. ‘We must stay focused at all times and take things slow. For today, our task is simple. If we can submerge the Nautilus and resurface, that will be a triumph!’

‘Aww, but, Dad,’ Halimah jokes, ‘can’t we just take a short spin around the lake?’

‘I want to see what she can do in the open sea!’ Dru counters.

The others clap and whoop in approval.

‘Hold on,’ I whisper to Ester. ‘How does the sub get from here to the open sea?’

‘Luca was just saying there’s an underwater tunnel that leads out past the atoll.’ She madly jots down this information on her note cards. ‘It’s probably an old lava vent. Do you think I should write lava vent or just tunnel?’

Ophelia claps twice, loud and sharp, to get our attention. ‘Freshmen!’

The group falls silent. For the first time, I appreciate that Ophelia is an HP teacher as well as a scientist. I bet her classes would’ve been hard. Super interesting, but hard.

‘So, then,’ she continues. ‘We will take this assignment seriously. The Nautilus has not been operated in almost two hundred years. We must give Ana, and the rest of us, time to acclimatize. It will be a bit like learning to ride a horse.’

Meadow Newman frowns. ‘The sub is still a machine, right? You make it sound like a wild animal!’

The Nautilus is not amused. The whole ship begins to hum.

Ester yells, ‘Look out!’

She hits the deck as water blasts from either side of the Nautilus’s prow, arcing backwards over the top of the ship. The starboard deluge falls harmlessly into the lake, but the port-side spray soaks all of us from head to foot.

There’s a moment of stunned silence.

Meadow looks flabbergasted. ‘I’m sorry, Nautilus! You are a magnificent creature!’

The crew starts laughing. Top barks and shakes himself off. I can’t help but crack a smile. Now we know that the submarine has pride, good hearing and maybe even a sense of humour, given the fact that it didn’t try to kill us.