The Anomaly(72)

“It’s going to be right at the other end.”

We kept going. The plant material resisted being torn, seeming almost to knit up again after we’d passed through, though that was presumably merely the effect of currents bringing it back together in our wakes. I realized I was unconsciously keeping both arms up and well clear of the water, even though when we found the balls we were going to have to reach down into it to lift them. Each time I believed I’d thought something through, a few seconds later I realized I’d missed something incredibly obvious. That worried me.

It scared me, in fact.

“Nolan?” Pierre spoke quietly, apparently in an effort to prevent the others from hearing. I remembered the way sound had carried across the water when I’d been in here before, however, and pitched my voice even lower.

“What?”

“I just felt something.”

“A ball?”

“No. It brushed against my thigh. I think it was a fish or something. But…”

“But what?”

“It felt kind of…big.”

“Just keep moving.”

We advanced, a couple of yards apart, taking our little pool of light with us. About twenty feet from the end, my foot stubbed into something. It was hard and heavy but moved a little. “Wait. I think we’ve got one.”

Pierre came over and moved his foot around until he found it. “Oh yeah. Okay.”

I used my elbows to shift the plant stuff aside, and we looked down at the water. It was clear enough that I could see a sphere. Its diameter was about the length of my foot, meaning it was one of the smallest ones.

“Now what?”

“Eyes shut. Mouth shut.”

“What about nose?”

“Shit. I don’t know.”

“How about we each close our own nose, go down with one hand on opposite sides of the ball, lift it together?”

“Pierre—that’s going to be really hard.”

“I don’t want that water in me.”

“Neither do I. Okay.”

We maneuvered around so we were facing each other. I balanced the light on a thick and unbroken section of the plant material and gripped my nostrils shut with my left hand. “Fast, but not too fast—or we’re going to fumble it. On three.”

We nodded at each other: one, two…

And dropped at the same time.

Finding the ball was easy—my hand landed right on it. I slipped my fingers underneath, gave it a beat, and then tried to lift. Pierre did it half a second before me.

It slipped out of our grasp.

We surfaced. “Crap,” Pierre said. His voice was shaky, and I didn’t blame him. Being under the water felt really dumb. “Seriously, Nolan—are we sure this is worth it?”

“It was your idea, dude.”

“Yeah, but what the hell do I know? I’m just the guy who points the frickin’ camera.”

“We’re doing it. Try again.”

We did the same thing, at the same measured pace, with the same result. This time when we surfaced I heard Ken shout.

“You two okay?”

“We’re fine. It’s not going well, though.”

I wiped each eye against the corresponding shoulder. Pierre did the same. The plant material now surrounded us in a circle. It was hard not to feel like it was closing in.

“We’re going to try this one more time,” I said.

“Okay.”

God, he looked young. I didn’t know Pierre’s exact age. Twenty-six, thereabouts. I’m sure he would have been embarrassed to know how much he looked as though he needed reassurance from someone who had experience. A grown-up. A dad.

But I wasn’t one of those, and it was looking increasingly unlikely I was ever going to be. The best I had for him was a smile and a wink.

“You know what?” I said. “Screw this.”

And before he could move, I clamped my eyes and mouth shut, tilted my head forward, and dropped.

I got my hands around the ball immediately. It was heavy, though. Very heavy.

I yanked at it with all my strength and it did come up, but I lost my balance and found myself keeling over to the right, the ball slipping out of my fingers.

Then Pierre’s hands were on it, too.

We burst up out of the water coughing and blinking, the ball wedged between us. It was very, very heavy.

“You okay?”

“I think so,” he said. “This looks like copper, right?”

“Yeah.” I remembered seeing this sphere the night before, admiring the smoothness of it. The surface was matte now, however, and markedly pocked in places.

“So now what?”

“We take it down to the end.”

Pierre pulled his shoulders back, causing the ball to move smoothly into a firm grip between his arms. He clasped his hands to hold it there, tendons standing out like cords in his arms and neck. We slowly headed together toward the platform. I was aware of my feet knocking against other balls below—we were walking through a field of them now.

Dropping full-body into the water had screwed any chance of making a precise judgment on whether the level was coming higher up our chests, but it didn’t seem like it was. Which should mean the carbon ball would be right where we were headed.